The Emperor’s Coffer: The Qing Imperial Fiscal Separation Between Privy Purse and State Treasury (1644-1912)

This dissertation examines the imperial fiscal arrangement during the Qing dynasty that separated the privy or crown’s purse from the state treasury. In my dissertation, I argue that while the distinction between public and private finance has long been identified in European studies as an important sign of the rise of modernity, similar fiscal arrangements in China arose from the crown’s endeavor over several decades to consolidate authority first over the nobility and then over the Chinese state. I see dynamics of this separation as deeply rooted in China’s longstanding patrimonial bureaucratic rule. The continued functioning of the imperial state system into the Qing, a dynasty founded by non-Han rulers, thus suggests the remarkable resiliency of Chinese political traditions despite dramatic institutional changes brought by alien conquest. This dissertation is composed of an introduction, six chapters, and a conclusion. The introduction sets out the reasons why the public/private divide structure does not necessarily mean the rise of modernity and demonstrates how the separation was both indicative of and shaped by China’s longstanding patrimonial bureaucratic rule. Chapter 1 discusses the role played by Nurhaci’s economic strategies in the rise of Manchu power. Understanding the emergence of the imperial fiscal separation in the Manchu state formation process, Chapter 2 discusses how the establishment of the bureaucracy helped the throne win over the Manchu nobility and how the establishment of the bureaucracy as the new foundation of the imperial authority transformed the nature of the privy purse. Chapter 3 examines the formalization of the imperial fiscal separation and its functions, looking especially at how the consolidation of the Qing rule and the expanded territories under the imperial control shaped both source of privy revenues and imperial spending behaviors. Chapter 4 unveils the expansion of privy revenues during the eighteenth-century economic prosperous era both as the consequence of the political centralization and as the instrument of releasing fiscal and military dynamisms of the centralized crown. Chapter 5 discusses how the unprecedented duration and intensity of the Taiping Rebellion not only disrupted the traditional fiscal relationship between central and provincial governments, but also broke down the traditional fiscal separation between the central government and the imperial household. Chapter 6 examines the court’s effort to codify imperial fiscal separation into the constitution in last few years of the dynasty as its last attempt to revive centralized imperial power and how such efforts provoked even more vigorous elite protests and facilitated the dynastic downfall. The conclusion summarizes arguments of each chapter and unfolds the significance of this study on our understanding of the nature of the Qing rule and modernity in Chinese history