Donglin Movement And The End Of Scholar-official Politics In The Ming Dynasty

Donglin Movement was a significant event for the political culture in the late Ming dynasty. From the surface, Donglin Movement appeared to be always closely connected with cliquish fighting in the late Ming political circle , was even stricken and persecuted for being named as"Donglin Faction", and ran into political cliquish disaster and prejudices caused by the opposite cliques. The issue of Donglin Faction is always a controversial research subject. The scholars in the academic field have studied the issue from many relevant perspectives, such as the sprout of capitalism, cliquish politics, the cultural connotation of Confucianism and so on, and have obtained fruitful achievements. This thesis, however, discusses it from the aspect of its concrete political practice, and holds the point that Donglin Movement was not the reflection of the capitalism sprout in the political area, and did not have the features of Cliquish Politics, such as forming cliques with people in the same position and repelling those in the opposite, forming a clique to pursue selfish interests and lacking the principle and etc. ; Instead, Donlin Movement was a political group movement of the scholar-officials who had the similar political conceptions and the clear political propositions and whose academic and political propositions exhibited the obvious spirit of rescuing the society from decaying.From the prospect of the scholar-official politics, the thesis takes Donglin Movement as a phenomenon of the political culture, studies it in the context of the scholar-official movements in Ming dynasty and attaches importance to the analysis of their academic and political propositions in view of the political culture connotation. Donlin Movement was actually a concrete reflection of the traditional scholar-official politics in the special political situation of the Ming dynasty. The scholar-officials in this movement insisted on justice and public discussion, took an active part in the national political administration, showed a strong subjective political consciousness and a strong sense of responsibility of"serving the people"and objectively made reasonable adjustment to the autocracy of imperial power, which can be considered as the last prominent demonstration of the traditional Chinese political culture. In Qing dynasty when the autocracy of imperial power was further strengthened, scholar-official politics was suppressed severely under the imperial power politics, and became depressed. The tradition of scholar-official politics and its feature of transcendence gradually exhibited the state of termination with the end of Donglin Movement.