Communication, empire, and authority in the Qing Gazette / by Emily Carr Mokros.

Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Johns Hopkins University (2016)
Bibliography: p. 352-379

Abstract

This dissertation studies the political and cultural roles of official information and political news in late imperial China. Using a wide-ranging selection of archival, library, and digitized sources from libraries and archives in East Asia, Europe, and the United States, this project investigates the production, regulation, and reading of the Peking Gazette (dibao, jingbao), a distinctive communications channel and news publication of the Qing Empire (1644-1912). Although court gazettes were composed of official documents and communications, the Qing state frequently contracted with commercial copyists and printers in publishing and distributing them. As this dissertation shows, even as the Qing state viewed information control and dissemination as a strategic concern, it also permitted the free circulation of a huge variety of timely political news. Readers including both officials and non-officials used the gazette in order to compare judicial rulings, assess military campaigns, and follow court politics and scandals.

As the first full-length study of the Qing gazette, this project shows concretely that the gazette was a powerful factor in late imperial Chinese politics and culture, and analyzes the close relationship between information and imperial practice in the Qing Empire. By arguing that the ubiquitous gazette was the most important link between the Qing state and the densely connected information society of late imperial China, this project overturns assumptions that underestimate the importance of court gazettes and the extent of popular interest in political news in Chinese history. Through engagement with previously unstudied gazettes, manuscripts, and diaries, the project demonstrates that political news and information derived from court gazettes influenced both individual encounters with the state and, more broadly, the evolution of administrative practice in  the Qing Empire. In so doing, this project connects scholarship in the emerging field of information history with work on Qing political institutions, print culture, and the history of newspapers. The project highlights the encounters of readers, publishers, and administrators with gazettes in order to illustrate the complexity and richness of information practices in a non-Western early modern context. In addition to demonstrating that court gazettes are important and underutilized sources for the study of Qing history, this project’s findings should encourage scholars of information and the state in other global contexts to investigate popular encounters with the state through the lens of news and information. 

In five thematic chapters, the project undertakes a multidimensional study of the role of the gazette in the Qing court, territorial bureaucracy, and empire. The first chapter explores the evolution of Qing information policy from the Qing conquest through the empire’s decline in the nineteenth century. The second chapter establishes a detailed history of the evolution of the gazette industry and its relationship to the growth of commercial publishing in late imperial Beijing. The third chapter provides evidence for how readers engaged with the gazette in their daily lives and careers. The fourth chapter examines how the gazette found a place in newspapers published in China and around the world, and posits that gazette information shaped the stories that could be read about China, especially in the nineteenth century. Finally, the fifth chapter looks at efforts to reconceive the gazette at the end of the Qing as representative of ongoing elite-led efforts to remake relationships between print and politics in a modernizing state.

Local access dig.pdf [Mokros-Qing gazette.pdf]

The Chinese gazette in European sources : joining the global public in the early and mid-Qing dynasty /  by Nicolas Standaert.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- The Kangxi Period (1662-1722) -- The Yongzheng Period (1723-1735) -- The Qianlong Period (1736-1795) -- General Conclusion.

"The Chinese gazette as a publicly available government publication was distributed in a variety of formats since the twelfth century. Little is known, however, about its form and content before 1800. By looking at China from the periphery, this study shows how European sources offer a unique way of expanding the knowledge about the gazette of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its interconnected history illustrates how the Chinese gazette, as translated by European missionaries, became a major source for reflections on state and society by Enlightenment thinkers. It thus joined a global public much earlier than so far assumed"-- Provided by publisher.

Note: Jingbao; also called dibao 邸報 , dichao 邸抄.
Cover illustration: Drawing of A-gui 阿桂 by Giuseppe Panzi (c. 1780): BnF, Bréquigny 114, fol. 177r.

Local access dig.pdf [Standaert-Chinese gazette.pdf]

See also:

Tizou shijian 題奏事件 (memorialised documents) at Exploring the Peking Gazette (jingbao 京報) here

Translations of the Peking Gazette Online (BC community)

The Peking gazette : a reader in nineteenth-century Chinese history / by Lane J. Harris.

"Scholarly introductions to thematic chapters of translated primary sources from the government gazette of the Qing Empire"--Publisher summary.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Intro; Contents; Acknowledgements; Qing Reign Periods; Terms of Measurement, Units of Currency, and Bureaucratic Titles; Introduction; Chapter 1 The Macartney Audience, 1793; Chapter 2 The Last Will and Testament of the Qianlong Emperor, 1799; Chapter 3 The Case against Heshen, 1799; Chapter 4 The Downfall of a Governor-General in the White Lotus Rebellion, 1800; Chapter 5 The Eight Trigrams Rebellion, 1813; Chapter 6 An English Barbarian Ship, 1832; Chapter 7 The Opium Debate, 1836; Chapter 8 The Opium War, 1839-1842; Chapter 9 Surviving the Taiping Rebellion, 1850-1864

Chapter 10 The Coup d'état of 1861Chapter 11 End of the Miao Rebellions, 1872; Chapter 12 The Incredible Famine, 1876-1879; Chapter 13 Imperial Rainmaking Practices, 1875-1879; Chapter 14 The Dalai Lama and the Qing Empire, 1879-1910; Chapter 15 Crime and Punishment; Chapter 16 Honoring Old Age; Chapter 17 Honoring the Gods; Chapter 18 The Cult of Female Chastity; Chapter 19 "True Stories" of Filial Piety; Chapter 20 "Tribute" Missions to the Qing Empire; Chapter 21 The Making of Taiwan Province, 1872-1887; Chapter 22 The Sino-French War, 1884-1885

Chapter 23 Anti-Missionary Violence, 1891-1899Chapter 24 The Sino-Japanese War, 1894-1895; Chapter 25 The Hundred Days' Reforms, 1898; Chapter 26 The Return of the Empress Dowager Cixi, 1898; Chapter 27 The Boxer Uprising, 1899-1900; Chapter 28 New Policies Reforms, 1901-1911; Chapter 29 The 1911 Revolution; Chapter 30 The Abdication, 1912; Chinese Name List; Index

Lane J. Harris offers an innovative text covering the extraordinary ruptures and remarkable continuities in the history of China's long nineteenth century (1793-1912) by providing scholarly introductions to thematic chapters of translated primary sources from the government gazette of the Qing Empire. 'The Peking Gazette' is a unique collection of primary sources designed to help readers explore and understand the policies and attitudes of the Manchu emperors, the ideas and perspectives of Han officials, and the mentality and worldviews of several hundred million Han, Mongol, Manchu, Muslim, and Tibetan subjects of the Great Qing Empire as they discussed and debated the most important political, social, and cultural events of the long nineteenth century.

Local access dig.pdf. [Harris-Peking Gazette.pdf]

Translations of the Peking gazette online / compiled by Dr. Lane J. Harris, Furman University.

Includes bibliography of source materials of the translations.

A database of previously-published English translations of official edicts and memorials from nineteenth century China's Qing dynasty, spanning from the Macartney Mission in 1793 to the abdication of the last emperor in 1912. The Peking Gazette provides insight into the Manchu state and its subjects as they grappled with imperial decline, re-engaged with the wider world, and began mapping the path to China's contemporary rise. Contains the voices of Manchu emperors, Han officials, gentry leaders, and peasant spokesmen as they discussed and debated the most important political, social, and cultural movements, trends, and events of their day, and provides insight into the policies and attitudes of the emperors, the ideas and perspectives of the officials, and the mentality and worldviews of the Han, Mongol, Manchu, Muslim, and Tibetan subjects of the Great Qing Empire.

Go to: Translations of the Peking gazette online

Go to: Peking Gazette Information Page