I Read Books: The Art Of Being Governed

 

The Art Of Being Governed: Everyday Politics In Late Imperial China

Under the Ming dynasty households were registered as peasant, salt producers, artisan and military. Each had a specific contribution to make; peasants performed corvee (conscript) labour to maintain and extend infrastructure, salt producers had to provide a certain amount of salt. Military households were required to present one male member of the family to be a soldier.

Because of this families kept details records and genealogies amongst other records that cast light on the strategies they used to deal with these requirements. The author is especially interested in what he describes as “Everyday Politics,” methods of dealing with and even profiting from the institution, in ways that are not perceived as resistance. So desertion, a major problem, is less of interest than how families chose who would be conscripted, and how they might be encouraged to do so.

As well as official records, there are, as mentioned, family records kept by households to this day. More than that; the garrisons and military colonies have influenced settlement and farming patterns. In every case though it is the human stories, of people working within the system (sometimes to the system’s detriment, sometimes to there’s) that is explored here. How people dealt with the requirements.

Read This: A detailed set of examples of how people lived within the rules of later Imperial China with much to consider about other times and places
Don’t Read This: I actually asked for James C Scott’s The Art Of NOT Being Governed but the family present telegraph went wrong somewhere