Bypassing the Bureaucracy: Qing Rulership and the First Papal Legation to China

Abstract: The Qing inherited the Ming dynasty’s bureaucratic court system. Though recent studies show that the Qing used other ruling traditions and methods in governing frontier and non-Chinese areas, negotiations and deliberations between inner and outer courts are still the classic model for understanding Qing emperors’ practices of power in Beijing. Upon analysis of Qing’s receptions of the papal legations, this article reveals that Qing emperors intentionally bypassed the bureaucratic system by using a private power network to practice their power in traditional Chinese areas. Qing rulers’ practices of private power have long been neglected because of the lack of official Qing chronicles and histories covering this part of Qing rulership. Benefited from Jesuits’ records, this article reconstructs the basic operation mechanism of Qing rulers’ private networks, and argues that their private networks were not an add-on or attachment but a structure parallel to the bureaucratic system. This parallel power structure utilized but not well documented in official Qing writings, is in fact an important character of Qing rulership differentiating the Qing from the Ming.