Local Administration In Ming China

Thomas G. Nimick, a leading authority on Ming government, draws on Chinese sources to provide the most detailed account of local Ming government available in English. Rational bureaucratic administration is one of China's greatest contributions to the art of governance. After centuries of evolution, the Chinese civil service system reached new heights during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Local Administration in Ming China traces the origins and evolution of the lowest level of administrative offices over the course of the dynasty. It starts with the Ming founder's experiments with using members of the local elite to collect taxes and goes on to the increased reliance on magistrates and prefects sent out from the center. The story concludes with the fiscal problems at the end of the dynasty. This work includes the following contents: Introduction, Local Government in Early Ming, Changes in Local Government int he Fifteenth Century, From Specially Selected Officials to Province and Magistrate, Fiscal Pressures and Operational Changes, Continued Possibility of Structural Changes and the Climax of Fiscal Troubles, Conclusion, and Annotated Bibliography

Originally published in 1974, this is a detailed study of the financial administration of the Chinese government during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), with particular attention to the sixteenth century, a topic about which very little has been published either in Chinese or any Western language. Professor Huang has worked through an enormous quantity and variety of source material - in particular the 133 substantial volumes of the Ming Veritable Records - and has compared the documents on financial matters with the entries in local gazetteers. The complicated workings of government finance present great difficulties to all specialists in Chinese financial and administrative history and in different branches of local Chinese history from the fifteenth century onwards. Professor Huang's study will provide all such researchers with an authoritative work of reference.

The Mongolian Yuan dynasty, 1272-1368, is a short but interesting chapter in the long history of Sino-Mongolian relations. Faced with the challenge of governing a huge sedentary empire, the traditionally nomadic Mongols acceded to some Chinese institutional precedents, but, in large part, adhered to their own Inner Asian practices of staffing and administering the government apparatus. Yuan administrative documents provide information that permits a fairly accurate reconstruction of the day-to-day functioning of the local government bureaucracy. From these materials, Endicott-West has put together a detailed picture of the Mongols' methods of selecting local officials, the ethnic backgrounds of officials, and policy formation and implementation at the local level.

This book attempts to describe, analyze, and interpret the structure and functioning of local government at the chou and hsien levels in the Ch'ing dynasty. It contains an introduction, ten chapters, conclusion, notes, index, bibliography, and glossary.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ...of the prefect, and all loans for over 30 years (or their amount exceeding 1,000,000 francs) must be approved by decrees of the President issued in the Council of State. All lottery loans, departmental or communal, must be authorized by a special law.1 During the World War, short-term bonds were resorted to by the departments and the communes as a result of the shortage of revenue. This process of raising revenue was sanctioned by the central government through a ministerial decree and through the final ratification by Parliament in 1915. The law was still effective in 1920. The emission must first be approved by the Council of State.2 Central and Local Finance in Japan. Japan is one of the countries which have adopted the French system of local administration. Hers is just as centralized and bureaucratic as the French. Although during the earlier days, Japan's administrative system was modeled after that of China, her system of local administration resembles the French more than the Chinese, for Japan has always made theory and practice coincide, which is usually not the case in China. Japan up to Dec. 31st, 1918 was territorially and administratively divided as follows.3 1 Allix, op. cit., pp. 838-839. 2 Allix, op. cit., p. 839. 3 The Twentieth Financial and Economic Annual of Japan, 1920, p. 2. All the administrative and executive officials from the mayor of the city up are appointed by the emperor. The towns and villages have elective assemblies by which the mayor and other officials are chosen. In 1880, the promise of prefectural assemblies was fulfilled, but they do not possess absolute control of their local affairs--in fact, they are not entirely independent of the central government; in all cases the financial ratification rests...