Civil Examinations and Meritocracy in Late Imperial China / / Benjamin A. Elman.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Asian Studies Backlist (2000-2014) eBook Package
• VerfasserIn: Elman, Benjamin A.,
• Place / Publishing House: Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, , [2013]; ©2013
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource :; 2 halftones, 20 line illustrations, 2 maps, 14 tables

During China's late imperial period (roughly 1400-1900 CE), men gathered by the millions every two or three years outside official examination compounds sprinkled across China. Only one percent of candidates would complete the academic regimen that would earn them a post in the administrative bureaucracy. Civil Examinations assesses the role of education, examination, and China's civil service in fostering the world's first professional class based on demonstrated knowledge and skill. Civil examinations were instituted in China in the seventh century CE, but in the Ming and Qing eras they were at the center of a complex social web that held together the intellectual, political, and economic life of imperial China. Local elites and the court sought to influence how the government regulated the classical curriculum and selected civil officials. As a guarantor of educational merit, examinations tied the dynasty to the privileged gentry and literati classes--both ideologically and institutionally. China eliminated its classical examination system in 1905. But this carefully balanced, constantly contested piece of social engineering, worked out over centuries, was an early harbinger of the meritocratic regime of college boards and other entrance exams that undergirds higher education in much of the world today.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Conventions -- Introduction -- Part I Becoming Mainstream: "Way Learning" during the Late Empire -- 1. Ming Imperial Power, Cultural Politics, and Civil Examinations -- 2. Ming to Qing: "Way Learning" Standards and the 8- Legged Essay -- Part II Unintended Consequences of Civil Examinations -- 3. Circulation of Ming- Qing Elites -- 4. Classical Literacy in Late Imperial China -- 5. Anxiety, Dreams, and the Examination Life -- Part III Retooling Civil Examinations to Suit Changing Times -- 6. Limits of Dynastic Power -- 7. From Ming to Qing Policy Questions -- 8. Curricular Reform: From Qing to the Taipings -- Appendixes -- 1. Dates of Chinese Dynasties -- 2. Emperors of the Great Ming (1368- 1644) -- 3. Emperors of the Great Qing (1644- 1911) -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index