Scoundrels and civil servants, clerks, runners and local administration in late imperial China

The subject of this dissertation is local administrative practice and its implications for state-society relations in late imperial China. Concentrating on the county of Ba Xian in Sichuan Province, the dissertation provides the first detailed look at the organization and daily operations of yamen clerks and runners, the lowest level of administrative personnel during the Qing dynasty.; Despite the critical position which these individuals occupied in the administrative apparatus, the Qing central government made few efforts to regulate the activities of clerks and runners. As a result, county administration was carried out in large part by functionaries who operated beyond the center's control. Rather than viewing this as an example of corruption, however, I instead examine these operations as constituting an extra-statutory but nonetheless standardized system of administration in which many technically illegal practices served as indispensable elements of county government. This unofficial system of administration in turn had a profound influence on the nature of the Qing state at the local level.; Instead of serving exclusively as an expression of state authority, the county yamen also functioned as a point of exchange, negotiation, and informal arrangements. In the realm of practice, state and societal institutions and boundaries melded together to create a remarkably stable system of administration, the specifics of which remained unknown to the central government in Beijing. In examining this feature of local administration, the dissertation also demonstrates how official discourse relating to public service, government, and political ethics was appropriated and modified by certain groups to justify, defend, or expand their authority and continued access to yamen resources. Finally, the dissertation suggests that to accurately understand the relationship between state and society, we must examine the state not only in terms of its structure, but also in regard to daily practice and the ways in which that practice was conditioned by localized patterns of social, economic, and political power.