Qing Political Order and the Codification of Li in Seventeenth-Century China

• In Event: Institutions, Law, and Governance: Lessons from Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century China

Abstract

This paper explores the importance of li (often translated as ritual or social order) in the formation of the Qing sociopolitical order, focusing on how it came to structure political life. The redefining of the principles and practices of li shaped the nature of politics, and codes created to mold the idea of order. This order was based on ranks and political positions, and it was manifest through practices that shaped the meaning of those regulations and thus the organization of power and distribution of political resources. There were four components to the code and practice of the political order expressed through li: clothing to reflect the level of rank of political actors; the size of one’s entourage; rites for greeting each other; and organization in ceremony. The paper opens with a short discussion of the idea of political order as articulated by the builders of the early Qing state. Officials and emperors envisioned their political world as one in which individuals were placed within a strict order of ranks and political positions. Each of these positions, from the emperor on down, carried with it certain political privileges, which limited both movement and opposition. The most efficient way to realize this order, actors argued, was through dress, whereby each actor donned hats and belts appropriate to his station. The paper then looks at regulated activity of political actors. Greeting rites told people what to do when they ran into another, while the size and type of entourage in travel, and one’s place in line in ceremony helped to enact the political order and define the power or lack of power of a position.

Author

• Macabe Keliher, Harvard University