A Note on Loyalty
in t h e Ming-Qing Transition
Ian McMorran 1
It is when the state is in turmoil that loyal
ministers émerge.
(Daode jing 18)
"In the world there are two suprême imperatives, " said Confucius. "One of them is destiny, the other duty. A child's love ofhis parents
is destined: it cannot be dispelled from his
heart. A minister's service to his lord is duty;
wherever he may go his lord is his lord. Between heaven and earth there is no escape from
them: thèse are what I call the suprême imperatives. "
(Zhuangzi, "Renjian shi")
Two Sorts
of
Loyalty?
One may say that the state was in turmoil throughout the Ming-Qing
transition. It was a chaotic period that began well before the double
invasion of Peking in 1644 and continued even into the early 1700s.
However, by one of those ironies of history it was not a loyal minister
but a figure condemned by historians as one of the most notorious traitors
in the annals of impérial China, the Ming gênerai Wu Sangui (1612-
1
Ian McMorran is Professor at the University of Paris 7, 2 place Jussieu, 75005
Paris.
Études chinoises, vol. XIII, n° 1-2, printemps-automne 1994
Ian
McMorran
1678), whose activities spanned the peak period of this turmoil: Wu's
collaboration secured Peking for the Manchus in 1644, and his eventual
revolt against his new masters resulted in the Rébellion of the Three
Feudatories (San fan zhi luan, 1673-1681). Nevertheless, the Daodejing's
statement is confirmed over and over again by the historical record,
particularly during the frenetic saga of Southern Ming résistance.
Despite what Confucius is supposed to hâve said according to the
second of the two quotations that appear above (both, of course, of Taoist
provenance), Confucius did not actually hâve much to say about the duty
of ministers or subjects to be "loyal" (zhong) to their ruler. It is true that
the terni zhong occurs eighteen times in the Analects, but it appears to
be used rather in the sensé of the gentleman's whole-hearted honesty and
single-minded dévotion in word and deed in the context of social
relationships in gênerai, where it is often linked with good faith or being
true to one's word (xin). Even on the one occasion that the term is evoked
with référence to the respective duties of a ruler and his ministers, one
should surely understand it in the same way: as an application of a
generally désirable social virtue rather than a politically spécifie one.2
And that is undoubtedly how one should understand its use in the famous
définition of the one thread running through the Master's Way: "Loyalty,
considération" (zhong shu er yi yï)}
It is tempting to see Confucius and Mencius as among the precursors
of those who in successsive dynasties defended a rational and relativist
interprétation of the duty of loyalty against the absolutist tendency which,
from Han times on, sought to bracket and even amalgamate loyalty and
filial piety {xiao) as intégral éléments of Confucian ethics in the service
of the dynasty.
Indeed both Confucius and Mencius (who mentions the term only
eight times, and is far more concerned with the duties of the ruler than
those of his ministers or subjects) hâve even been critieized as lacking
2 Cf. Lee Cheuk-yin's study, "Zhong xiao bu liang quan," Jiuzhou xuekan, 4.2,
juillet 1991, pp. 35-47. Cf. also Lunyu 3.19.
3 Cf. ibid. 4.15.
48
A Note on Loyalty in the Ming-Qing
Transition
loyalty towards the Zhou dynasty. Mencius, in particular, according to his
critics, had behaved in a flagrantly disloyal way by wandering from one
principality to another in search of a true ruler who would be sufficiently
enlightened to employ him and go on to unité ail the central states under
his sway and thus replace the Zhou monarch, who was still nominally the
Son of Heaven to whom Mencius owed allegiance.4
By Han times the politicization of loyalty had taken a big step
forward. The Confucian propagandist Dong Zhongshu, in his systematic
account of social and political order gave loyalty to one's superior a
cosmic justification (graphically supported by playing on the contrasting
meanings of the characters zhong, loyalty, and huan, catastrophe, the
former indicating single-minded dévotion to one aim while the latter was
the resuit of one mind having two aims).5 It was, he maintained, as natural
as the inferiority of Earth to Heaven: a son's filial service of his father
incorporated the same cosmic principle. It is hardly surprising that both
the Xiaojing and the Zhongjing were for long thought to hâve been
composed during this period. (The Xiaojing may well hâve been
fabricated somewhat earlier, while the Zhongjing, usually attributed to Ma
Rong [79-106], is more likely to hâve been composed in Song times when
impérial despotism was again on the increase.) In the latter little treatise
loyalty is prized above ail other virtues. Far from accepting that there
might be a conflict between loyalty to one's ruler and filial duty to one's
parents, it is even argued that only through loyalty may one be truly filial:
only the son who serves his ruler loyally acquires the rank and wealth that
allow him to look after his parents as he should, for example. But loyalty
to one's ruler is absolute: the minister/subject must die, if necessary, for
his ruler.6
4 Cf., for example, Yoshida Shôin (1830-1859), quoted in Yamanoshita Ryûji,
"The Development of Ideas on Sovereignty," Acta Asiatica, 52, 1987, pp. 6162.
5 Cf. Dong Zhongshu, Chunqiu fanlu jinzhu jinyi, éd. Taipei, Taiwan shangwu
yinshuguan, 1984, pp. 279 and 315.
6 Cf. Zhongjing, éd. Taipei, Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1965 (Congshu jicheng jianbian), pp. 3 and 10.
49
Ian McMorran
In the Xiaojing the same process of conflating zhong and xiao was
promoted quite artlessly... "The gentleman, serving his parents is filial; so
his loyalty may be transferred to his ruler."7 And again, "if one serves
one's ruler filially, then one is loyal."8 Nevertheless, one may argue that,
given the currency, at least in Warring States times, of the formula that
the ruler was "the father and mother of the people," the Xiaojing's, thesis
was certainly a logical enough conclusion.
The traditional Chinese code of loyalty was a very complex one, but
in so far as loyalty to one's ruler was concerned, one may perhaps make
a division into two broad tendencies: on the one hand the absolutist,
religious interprétation, and on the other a more rational, relative one.
Neither seems ever to hâve been fully articulated, nor do they appear to
hâve been generally perceived as mutually exclusive.
The absolutist case, in virtually identifying zhong with xiao, appealed
to deep-seated and powerful religious sentiments. The claims of filial
piety were closely associated with the cuit of the ancestors, and lay at the
very core of socio-religious imperatives. In the poems of the early Zhou
Shijing, for example, xiao most often refers to duties towards the dead.
Indeed, one suspects that the notion that a subject owed absolute loyalty
to his sovereign in life and death drew on primitive, quasi-religious
attitudes that may be traced back to the very earliest times, and probably
had their origin in Xia-Shang culture. The ancient practice of burying
rulers along with their most prized possessions included the human
sacrifice or "voluntary suicide" of their favorite consorts, ministers, and
retainers.9 And this practice continued even in Zhou times, as both the
7 Xiaojing, Section 14.
8 Ibid., Section 5.
9 Cf. Ho Ping-ti, The Cradle of the East, Hong Kong/Chicago, The Chinese
University of Hong Kong/Chicago University Press, 1975, p. 310. See also
J.J.M. de Groot, The Religious System of China, Leiden, E.J. Brill, vol. 2, part
3, chap. 9, pp. 721-827, and P. Demiéville, "Quelques traits de mœurs barbares dans une chantefable chinoise des T'ang," Acta Orientalia Hungarica,
15.1-3, 1962, pp. 71-85.
50
A Note on Loyalty in the Ming-Qing
Transition
Zuozhuan and Shiji testify. The Zuozhuan records, for example, an event
lamented in the Shijing too (Ode 131 "Huang niao"): that three outstanding retainers/ministers were among the one hundred seventy seven
persons who accompanied Duke Mu of Qin (Qin Mu Gong) to the grave
in 621 B.C.10 And the Shiji states that when Qin Shihuang died in 210
B.C. "a large number" of his palace women were commanded to follow
him in death." In accord with such primitive practices, then, both retainers/ministers and consorts (bracketed in Shang inscriptions as chen and
qie: Ho Ping-ti suggests the translations "royal stewards" and "wives,"
respectively12) were expected to die with their lord: their death was the
proper response to his death.
The code of loyalty that prevailed in impérial times stipulated rather
that a minister should be prepared to die for his ruler. But the distinction
between dying with one's ruler and for one's ruler was not always a clear
one, and in periods of crisis one may observe honourable men desperately
striving to elucidate as well as to fulfil their duties as loyal ministers.
Thus it is that one finds, towards the end of the Ming dynasty, Zuo
Guangdou dying in prison as a tortured victim of the eunuch Wei
Zhongxian, invoking death as the only way to "make recompense to the
emperor... My body belongs to my ruler-father (junfu)."n And later, after
the fall of Peking and the emperor's death, there were many loyalists who
experienced what Kang-i Sun Chang has described as "the tension between the détermination to die for the Ming cause and a feeling of shame
for not being able to realize it in action sooner," believing that an
"honourable suicide was the only way of preserving one's integrity in the
face of the collapse of the dynasty."14 The young martyr, Xia Wanchun,
10
11
12
13
Cf. Zuozhuan, Wen Gong 6.
Cf. Sima Qian, Shiji, éd. Peking, Zhonghua shuju, 1963, p. 266.
Cf. Ho Ping-ti, The Cradle of the East, pp. 299 and 309.
The translation is Hucker's. Cf. C.O. Hucker, "Confucianism and the
Censorial System," in D. Nivison and A.F. Wright, eds., Confucianism in
Action, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1959, p. 208.
14 Cf. Kang-i Sun Chang, The Late Ming Poet Ch'en Tzu-lung, New Haven/
London, Yale University Press, 1991, p. 114.
51
Ian McMorran
expressed somewhat similar feelings in the poetry and letters that he
wrote in prison, awaiting the exécution that he had willingly brought upon
himself. His father, Xia Yunyi, had already committed suicide, and he
regarded his own death as both loyal and filial.15 Others, no less loyal,
struggled in desperation to find some significant or useful way of dying
for their ruler. Wang Fuzhi's self-composed epitaph, for example, reveals
that he went to the grave "nursing the solitary wrath of a Liu Yueshi (?317), but having found no way of sacrificing [his] life."16 And Wang had
not only taken up arms against his ruler's enemies, he had also thrown
himself into the maelstrom of factional strife at the Yongli Court of the
Ming pretender, the Prince of Gui. But he had eventually been forced to
withdraw — lucky to escape with his life — and reduced to the kind of
powerless frustration that he likened to that of a famous Chu forbear and
symbol of misunderstood and thwarted loyalty, Qu Yuan (nor was he
unique in having recourse to such an analogy).
Such loyalists were, it seems to me, at grips with what I hâve referred
to as the two interprétations of the code of loyalty. They responded to the
religious imperative to die with one's ruler, and al the same time sought
some rational means of satisfying its dictate, a way of dying for the
emperor, for the dynasty, for the state.
What, then, Was the "Rational" Interprétation
the Code of Loyalty?
of
Opposition to human sacrifice seems to hâve grown gradually
throughout the Chunqiu period (722-481). The Zhou generally prided
themselves on their civilized ritual, and Confucius is reported17 to hâve
15 Cf. Xia Wanchunji, Shanghai, 1959, pp. 152-154.
16 I. McMorran, The Passionate Realist, Hong Kong, Sunshine Book Co., 1992,
p. 1; and Wang Fuzhi, Chuanshan yishu, éd. Shanghai, Taipingyang, 1933,
ce 69: Jiangzhai wenji buyi, 2: pp. 10b-lia.
17 Cf. Mengzi IA.4.
52
A Note on Loyalty in the Ming-Qing
Transition
cursed those who initiated the practice of burying human images with the
dead — presumably believing that it was what led to the burial of real
men and women.
The absolutist code of loyalty too was already being questioned and
"relativized" by Confucius' day. An anecdote in the Zuozhuan relates
how Yan Pingzhong, minister in the state of Qi, reacted to the death of
his ruler, Duke Zhuang (Zhuang Gong) in 548 B.C., and his subséquent
justification of his own conduct.'8 Duke Zhuang had been assassinated by
another high officiai in the state, Cui Zhu, because the Duke had been
conducting a scandalously ostentatious affair with Cui's wife. When Yan
Pingzhong was asked by his retainers whether he intended to follow his
ruler in death, he replied: "Why should I die? Am I the only one whose
lord he was?" After rejecting suggestions that he might flee into exile, or
return home (he was waiting outside the Cui mansion where the Duke had
been murdered, and insisted on entering it in order to give ritual expression to his mourning), Yan went on to explain his position:
Does being ruler of the people consist merely of lording it over them?!
His chief concern should be to maintain the altars of the state (Le. the state
itself). Does one serve one's ruler as a minister just for the sake of an
officiai salary?! One's concern should be to support the altars of the state.
Therefore, if one's ruler dies for the sake of the state, one dies with him.
If he goes into exile for the sake of the state, one goes into exile with him.
But if he dies or goes into exile in the pursuit of his own personal interests, then who but his personal favourites would présume to accept the
responsibility of sharing in his fate?
Yan, in his rationalization of the relationship between ruler and ministers,
distinguishes between the private person and the officiai rôle, and insists "
that the interests of the state take precedence over those of ruler and
minister alike. It is, of course, consonant with Mencius' later emphasis on
the relative importance of the altars of the state in the formula: people >
state > ruler. And it is also in Une with Xunzi's description of the idéal
18 Cf. Zuozhuan, Xiang Gong 25.
53
Ian
McMorran
minister as one who is primarily a "minister of the state", sheji zhi chen
(rather than a minister of his ruler).19
It is, in addition, a striking anticipation of the stance adopted by
certain Ming loyalists, such as Huang Zongxi in his famous Mingyi
daifang lu (translated by W.T. De Bary as Waiting for the Dawn. A Plan
for the Prince). The same distinction is drawn between the ruler's private
person and his impérial rôle, and between the ruler's personal favourites,
who belong to him in a private way, and his ministers who perform a
public service, cooperating with him in the government of the state.20
Significantly, Huang goes on to reject the arguments of those who
extended the analogy between the minister's duty to his ruler as tantamount to that of a son to his father. The son, he déclares, owes his entire
existence — body and soûl — to his father, whereas a minister is bound
to his ruler only by the situation in which both co-operate in administering the state. In office one is a "mentor and colleague," he affirms, out
of office no longer the ruler's minister, just "another man in the street."
There is hère not only a Confucian defence of the status of the
minister, and, in the process, of officiais in gênerai. There is also an
important qualification of the duties of ministers and officiais. In short,
Huang was expressing a widely-held view that holding office increased
one's moral responsibilities to the ruler and the state in gênerai. This was
particularly important when it came to one's duty to share in one's ruler's
fate. A contemporary of Huang's, Zhu Zhiyu {hao Shunshui, 1600-1682),
who fled to Japan after the catastrophic events of the 1640s, explains, in
a letter requesting permission to stay there, that he had not sacrificed his
life on the fall of the dynasty partly because of filial concern for his
parents, and partly because he had never held any officiai post. He had
not, as he put it, somewhat inelegantly, one feels, "received any emol-
19 Cf. Mengzi 7B.14 and Xunzi, éd. Coll. Zhuzi jicheng, Peking, Zhonghua
shuju, 1959, vol. 2, p. 166.
20 Cf. W.T. De Bary, Waiting for the Dawn. A Plan for the Prince, New York,
Columbia University Press, 1993, pp. 94-96.
54
A Note on Loyalty in the Ming-Qing
Transition
uments from the sovereign."21 That receiving officiai émoluments rendered one liable to what I am tempted to call "death duty" was, however,
by no means an exclusively Ming notion. An early commentator on the
account of Yan Pingzhong's refusai to die with Duke Zhuang of Qi
suggested that it might hâve been motivated by the fact that Yan had been
cold-shouldered for some time by the late Duke, and no longer counted
as a high minister.22
It would be a mistake, however, to assume, on the basis of the above,
that ail Confucians held to a rationalist interprétation of the code of
loyalty. Certainly, it is possible to see the two interprétations in terms of
Legalist-influenced absolutism versus Confucian rationalism. The Legalist version of despotic government did in practice, if not always in theory,
incline towards an absolutist conception of the minister's function.
Nevertheless, the division is both more profound and more complex than
that. Many Confucians, for example, are to be found adopting, for
Confucian reasons, the absolutist position. Zhu Xi, the giant of Song
Confucianism, in commenting on the passage in the Analects 1.7, "if, in
serving his prince, he can dévote his life" (shi jun neng zhi qi sheri),
suggested that one should understand "dévote" to mean "surrender," and
that the whole phrase means "devoting one's life in complète surrender"
so that "one no longer possesses a (separate) life."23 But the Japanese
Confucian Ogyû Sorai (1666-1728) criticized Zhu's interprétation as "the
way of women."24
Song Confucianism generally exhibited rather more absolutist tendencies, and it was the great Song historian, Sima Guang (1019-1086), who
21 Zhu Shunshuiji, Peking, Zhonghua shuju, 1981, p. 37. See also F. Wakeman
Jr., The Great Enterprise. The Manchu Reconstruction of Impérial Order in
Seventeenth-Century China, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1985,
vol. 1, p. 272, for the corrélation between holding office and the duty to
commit suicide.
22 Cf. Yanzi chunqiu jishi, Taipei, Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1977, p. 297.
23 Zhu Xi, Sishu zhangju jizhu, éd. Peking, Zhonghua shuju, 1983, p. 50.
24 Yamanoshita Ryûji, 'The Development of Ideas on Sovereignty," pp. 60-61.
55
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McMorran
was responsible for giving widespread currency to the formula that links
the loyalty of a minister to his ruler with the fidelity of a wife to her
husband. Criticizing Feng Dao (881-954) for serving under no less than
five différent dynasties as a minister, Sima Guang declared in his Zizhi
tongjian: "A loyal minister does not serve two rulers any more than a
virtuous woman marries two husbands" (zhengnu bu cong er fu zhongchen bu shi erjuri).151 am not sure whether the Zizhi tongjian is the locus
classicus for this pronouncement, but it certainly ensured its propagation,
as Sima's work was one of the most widely read historiés, along with the
Shiji and Chunqiu-Zuozhuan. Thereafter this phrase seems to hâve caught
hold of the collective imagination, and it must be said that the metaphor
of the faithful wife was a telling one. Officiais throughout Song, Yuan,
and Ming times adopted it.
At this point one should, perhaps, mention that the lot of women
became more precarious as officiai orthodoxy paid more attention to their
honour! Both codes were rigidly enforced.
It was the founding-father of Neo-Confucianism, Cheng Yi (10331107), who took an uncompromising stand against the remarriage of
widows. When asked whether they might not remarry in cases where they
were "alone, poor, and with no one to dépend on," Cheng Yi replied:
This theory has corne about only because people of later générations
are afraid of starving to death. But to starve to death is a very small
matter. To lose one's honour, however, is a very serious matter.26
25 Zizhi tongjian, éd. Hong Kong, Zhonghua shuju, 1971, chap. 291, pp. 95119513. For criticism of Feng Dao, see also Wang Gung-wu, "Feng Tao: an
Essay on Confucian Loyalty," in A.F. Wright and D. Twitchett, eds, Confucian Personalities, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1962, pp. 123-145.
26 Chan Wing-tsit, Reflections on Things at Hand, New York, Columbia University Press, 1967, p. 177. I hâve changed the translation of jie, from
"integrity" to "honour."
56
A Note on Loyalty in the Ming-Qing
Transition
And a commentator adds that for a woman to sacrifice her honour for fear
of hunger is as bad as a minister surrendering to the enemy for fear of
battle.
Such a code of death before dishonour had terrifying implications. In
suggesting a psycho-religious connection between the absolutist interprétation of the code of loyalty — the duty to die for and/or with one's
ruler — and the practice of sacrificing favourite consorts and retainers on
the death of a ruler, I evoked the évidence from ancient Chinese history.
But in ternis of late-Ming attitudes it is not necessary to look so far back.
Under the Ming the sacrifice of impérial consorts and palace women
(gongfei) on the death of their emperor was normal practice up until the
latter half of the 15th century, and, as the modem historian Wu Han
pointed out,27 zealous champions of traditional morality encouraged the
widows of officiais to commit suicide on the death of their husbands.
Huang Zongxi celebrated the suicide of one such young widow in 1676
that led to "several thousand" people gathering to pay their respects.28
Upon the fall of Peking, and in the troubled years that followed,
women were frequently quick to set an example of sacrificial loyalty and
honourable suicide. Nor was such conduct the prérogative of impérial
consorts or the wives of officiais. Examples of heroic female self-sacrifice
abound at ail levels of society. It may be that the way that women of ail
kinds conducted themselves in this critical period enhanced their status in
the eyes of ail those men who were not impervious to recognising women
as anything but créatures cast in the traditional mould. Li Chengdong's
concubine, a former prostitute from Songjiang, committed suicide in front
of him in order to encourage him to be loyal to the Ming cause, an
incident that Wang Fuzhi records with approval in his history of the
Yongli Court.29
27 Cf. Wu Han, Wu Han shilun ji, Peking, Guangming ribao chubanshe, 1987,
pp. 212-213.
28 Cf. Huang Zongxi, Huang Lizhou wenji, éd. Peking, Zhonghua shuju, 1959,
p. 271.
29 Cf. Wang Fuzhi, Chuanshan quanshu, éd. Changsha, Yuelu shushe, 1992, vol.
11, Yongli shilu, pp. 447-448.
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The case of the fickle statesman Feng Dao was on the contrary
frequently cited with disapproval in discussions of ministerial loyalty.
Zhu Xi placed him in the category of the xiangyuan, the sanctimoniously
orthodox or provincial hypocrites... for which he was criticized by Wang
Fuzhi, who maintained that Feng's behaviour had been too outrageous to
fit such a description, that he was, in fact, "like a loose woman who takes
five husbands in the space of twenty years."30 Nevertheless, Feng Dao had
found at least one champion among the late-Ming literati. Li Zhi (15271602) had defended Feng by appealing to the rational and relative
interprétation of loyalty. Justifying Feng's conduct in terms of
Mencius' assertion that the people were the most important élément in a
state (followed by the altars of the state), he declared that to ensure the
security and welfare of the people is the minister's responsibility, and that
Feng did just that: "He may hâve served four dynasties and twelve
rulers... but if the people were spared the sufferings of war, it was entirely
due to Feng's efforts to guarantee their security and welfare."31
As an example of disloyalty, however, Feng Dao cannot compare with
Wu Sangui, whose réputation as a traitor has reverberated down the
centuries. Wu it was who turned traitor twice. First, in 1644, after Li Zicheng's peasant army had taken Peking and the last Ming emperor
committed suicide, Wu, the commander of the Ming troops in the NorthEast, joined forces with the Manchu invaders, and so helped install a new,
foreign dynasty. Rewarded with feudal control over a large part of SouthWest China, he turned against his new masters in 1673 in what is known
as the Rébellion of the Three Feudatories.
In fact, the real circumstances of his initial "treachery" are somewhat
confused — but the confusion itself is to some extent illuminating in so
far as contemporary attitudes to loyalty are revealed. According to some
versions, of which that of the "Yuanyuan qu"32 is the most well-known,
30 I. McMorran, The Passionate Realist, p. 52.
31 Li Zhi, Cangshu, éd. Peking, Zhonghua shuju, 1974, vol. 4, pp. 1141-1142.
32 Cf. Wu Weiye, Wu Meicun shiji jianzhu, éd. Hong Kong, Kwong chi Book
Co., 1959, pp. 201-204.
58
A Note on Loyalty in the Ming-Qing
Transition
Wu's décision to collaborate with the Manchus was a reaction to the news
that his favourite concubine, Chen Yuanyuan, a courtesan renowned for
her beauty, had fallen into the clutches of the peasant rebels. An alternative version33 would hâve it that his main motive was revenge for the
death of his emperor and the torture and murder of his father by the rebels
who had taken him hostage: that is to say, his collaboration was inspired
by a mixture of loyalty and filial piety. In which case he may hâve been
convinced (duped, as he later claimed34) by the Manchus'propaganda. For
Dorgon (Duoergun), their leader, was issuing proclamations declaring:
"We hâve corne to avenge your ruler-father" (wojinju ci wei erxuejunfu
zhi chou),35 and at the very least implied that they might help install the
Ming Crown Prince.36 The basic facts of the situation are fairly clear,
although there are crucial problems concerning the timing and séquence
of some of the principle events. Their interprétation is the problem. Some
historians hâve even suggested that the sentimental motive, celebrated in
Wu Weiye's satirically romande ballad, was exaggerated by the Manchus
to discrédit Wu Sangui (and it is true that the later, Manchu-approved
sources give this interprétation more space).37
Like Feng Dao, however, Wu Sangui found a defender. At least that
is how I am inclined to interpret Wei Xi's Liuhou lun, written in 1663.38
This défends Zhang Liang (d. 186 B.C.) against charges of disloyalty for
helping Liu Bang found the Han dynasty by collaborating with him in
overthrowing the Qin dynasty, which had earlier destroyed Zhang's native
state. Arguing that it was not only in the interests of the people and of
33 Cf. Chen Shengxi, Ming Qing yidaishi dujian, Zhengzhou, Zhongzhou guji
chubanshe, 1991.
34 Cf. ibid., p. 266.
35 Tan Qian, Guoque, Peking, Zhonghua shuju, 1988, p. 6087. Cf. also
F. Wakeman Jr., The Great Enterprise, pp. 316-317.
36 Cf. Chen Shengxi, Ming Qing yidaishi dujian, p. 266.
37 Cf. Angela Hsi, "Wu San-kuei in 1644," Journal ofAsian Studies, 34.2, 1975,
pp. 443-453.
38 Cf. Hou Fangyu Wei Xi Wang Wan sanwen xuan, Hong Kong, Sanlian
shudian, 1990, pp. 123-129.
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McMorran
the state, but a loyal vengeance against the régime responsible for the ruin
of his own state, the loyalist Wei appears to provide a rational defence
of Ming-Manchu collaboration in gênerai, and of Wu Sangui in particular
through this historical parallel:
If someone has the capacity to avenge a man's father, and that man serves
him as his own father to help him destroy their common foe — how could
that be anything but filial? [...] Moreover, the empire is a public vessel:
no one man or one family may appropriate it for their use. When Heaven
establishes a ruler for the people, it does so because he is capable of
saving them from disasters. Consequently, Heaven regards him as its son,
and the people support him as their father. Zi Fang (Le. Zhang Liang) was
intent on avenging his native state (Han, destroyed by Qin in 230 B.C.),
and found a ruler capable of restoring order to an empire that was in
turmoil, so he could not do otherwise than support the Han cause (of Liu
Bang, founder of the Han dynasty in 202 B.C.).39
Incidentally, in arguing that the state was not the private property of
any one family, Wei was not only in accord with contemporaries such as
Huang Zongxi, Wang Fuzhi, and Tang Zhen, but also with Dorgon's
propagandist proclamations. 40
Ail things considered, it was then appropriate that various Ming
loyalists, like the composer of the "Yuanyuan qu," should compare themselves in poetry to courtesans who had been abandoned. 41 The metaphor
may hâve been strengthened by the fact that a growing number of their
fellows had taken courtesans as concubines, and that several such liaisons
between caizi and jiaren (a popular literary thème in this period) had
enjoyed a certain famé: Hou Fangyu and Li Xiangjun; Mao Xiang and
Dong Xiaowan; Gong Dingzi and Gu Mei; Qian Qianyi and Liu Rushi;
and, of course, Wu Sangui and Chen Yuanyuan.
39 Ibid., pp. 125-126.
40 Cf. Tan Qian, Guoque, p. 6087: "The empire does not belong to any one man,
nor do the people or the army. It is he who possesses the necessary virtue that
rules over them."
41 Cf. Kang-i Sun Chang, The Late Ming Poet Ch'en Tzu-lung, pp. 17-18.
60
A Note on Loyalty in the Ming-Qing
Transition
Late Ming officiais, dépendent on the emperor, and their womenfolk,
particularly their concubines, whose fate was in the hands of their
masters, had much in common. And, in this period one may observe a
certain effort on the part of both to improve their position, even though
in both cases it was ultimately still made within, rather than against, the
existing System, notwithstanding the socially scandalous fashion in which
chen and qie sometimes collaborated with each other.
61
Ian McMorran
Chinese Characters
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62
A Note on Loyalty in the Ming-Qing Transition
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63
Ian
McMorran
Abstract
Ian MCMORRAN: A Note on Loyalty in the Ming-Qing Transition
A preliminary exploration of some aspects of loyalty in the Ming-Qing transition,
this note suggests that interprétations of the duty of loyalty to one's ruler had
tended throughout Chinese history to lie somewhere between two pôles: the one
absolute, and religious in inspiration, the other relative and rational. The former
may be traced back to ancient ritual human sacrifice (still practised, to some
extent, in Ming times). The latter, associated with seventeenth-century antiabsolutism, may also be traced at least as far back as to the Chunqiu period. The
tendency of the absolute imperative to conflate loyalty with filial piety, and
certain implications of the metaphor that linked the duties of ministers to a ruler
with those of wives to a husband are also noted. Ultimately, the relativist
interprétation is the product of a rational appréciation of the emperor's function
and their own as partners in the service of the state and the people by officiais
who rejected the sort of personal religious obligations to the ruler that a conflation
of loyalty and filial piety implied. In the turmoil of this period, both tendencies
were still very much in évidence as officiais faced alternatives that ranged from
self-sacrifice to collaboration.
Résumé
Ian MCMORRAN : Une note sur la loyauté dans la période de transition Ming-Qing
S'interrogeant sur certains aspects de la loyauté dans cette période, l'auteur
suggère qu'à travers toute l'histoire de la Chine les interprétations du devoir de
loyauté envers le souverain se situaient entre deux pôles. Il y avait d'une part une
loyauté absolue d'inspiration religieuse, et de l'autre une loyauté relative et
rationnelle. La première aurait ses origines dans les sacrifices humains des temps
anciens (toujours pratiqués dans une certaine mesure sous les Ming). La seconde,
généralement associée à l'esprit anti-absolutiste du xvne siècle remontait aussi
jusqu'à l'époque Chunqiu. L'auteur observe la tendance absolutiste à assimiler la
loyauté à la piété filiale, ainsi que les implications de la métaphore qui comparait la loyauté des ministres à celle des épouses. L'interprétation absolutiste fut
rejetée par ces lettrés qui, en tant que fonctionnaires, se considéraient comme les
partenaires de l'empereur au service de l'État et du peuple. Dans cette période
troublée, des fonctionnaires apparaissent aux prises avec un choix qui se situerait
quelque part entre le suicide et la collaboration.
64