Legitimate Domination in the Early Modern World: Temple, Ritual, and Symbolic Power in Late Imperial China

Abstract This article examines how imperial domination was legitimized in the early modern world. While the growth of military and political power of early modern states and empires has long been of scholarly concern, less attention has been given to the question of why early modern actors accepted new and evolving social and political arrangements and how legitimizing practices emerged allowing them to do so. Focusing on the development and mobilization of symbolic power, this article looks at the social and administrative expansion of a Chinese village across four hundred years and the role played by temples and an annual temple festival to navigate that expansion and the increasing presence of the state. Drawing on fieldwork and local documents from the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1636–1912) periods, the article traces the demographic, economic, and administrative growth of the southern Chinese port village of Zhanglin and argues that ritual helped address both communal tensions and conflict, as well as the new political presence of the state. The case shows how ritual did the work of building new social and political orders and in the process legitimized emergent relations and social powers.