Lecture by Maura Dykstra: “On Archives and Administration: The Information Trap and the Corruption Crises of the Eighteenth-century Qing Empire”

30. Mai 2023, von AAI Webmaster

Foto: M. Dykstra

Die HSG (externer Link) und die Abteilung für Sprache und Kultur Chinas laden alle Interessierten zu einem Vortrag von Maura Dykstra (Yale) am Dienstag, 30.5.23, 18 Uhr, in englischer Sprache ein. Achtung: Der Vortrag findet in Raum 220 des Westflügels des Hauptgebäudes statt, nicht im AAI.

On Archives and Administration: The Information Trap and the Corruption Crises of the Eighteenthcentury Qing Empire

This talk will introduce several components of the basic argument in Dr. Maura Dykstra's Uncertainty in the Empire of Routine: The Administrative Revolution of the Eighteenth-century Qing State (2022). The author will provide an information-centered approach to understanding the late imperial bureaucracy to re-conceptualize the relationship between archive and administration. This introduction will be followed by a brief history of some of the highlights of the first hundred years of Qing central court attempts to supervise the sprawling territorial bureaucracy of the empire. With this background, the relationship between the corruption crises that shook the dynasty from the middle of the eighteenth century forward will be revisited from the information-centered view of the dynasty presented earlier in the talk. The proposed conclusion is that historians have been interpreting evidence of dynastic decline without paying attention to key factors.