The Ma 馬 Clan of Tong-zhou 同州, Shang-xi 陜西

This paper is a case study devoted to the problem of the local gentry. Utilizing the Guan-xi Ma-shi shi-xing-lu 關西馬氏世行錄 as a principal source, the author pursues the genealogy of the Ma clan of Tong-zhou, Shan-xi -- which produced the Ming Grand Secretary Ma Zi-qiang 馬自強 (1513-1578) -- and the activities of the clansmen over a period of four to five hundred years, from early Ming to late Qing. He concludes that nearly all the people who appear in the Shi-xing-lu were degree-holders (sheng-yuan 生員, ju-ren 舉人, or jin-shi 進士), and that with the exception of those clansmen who spent their entire lives in the imperial bureaucracy, all of the ones who were either retired from office and living in the countryside or still on active service were mainly preoccupied with agriculture and acted as landlords, moneylenders, merchants, and teachers in private academies. Furthermore, it is argued, the Ma clansmen were political, economic, and cultural leaders in the Tong-zhou area, and throughout the whole span of the Ming-Qing era their mode of life and their relations with village society remained virtually unchanged