R. Kent Guy’s Three Impeachments is the first English monograph on Kangxi-period high politics to appear in print in at least forty years. It is an essential reminder of how significant the early decades of the Kangxi reign were in establishing institutional norms that we take for granted for the rest of the Qing dynasty. The book offers a robust case study of the ever-present tensions between the throne and the civil service in Chinese politics. It highlights the unique problems of early Qing governance as power was shared between the conquest elite and the Han Chinese majority and gives readers a glimpse into how the Kangxi emperor consolidated his rule in the wake of the suppression of the Rebellion of the Three Feudatories.

The book is centered on the three famous impeachments of high officials submitted by the censor Guo Xiu (1638–1715) in 1688–1689. Guy uses a mix of the Veritable Records, the official “Diary of Activity and Repose” (qijuzhu) of the Kangxi emperor, and various other sources to reconstruct the events surrounding these impeachments. The key officials accused of malfeasance were all important figures in the Kangxi court at the time. The first impeachment was targeted at Jin Fu (1633–1692), the Director of the River Conservancy, and his aide Chen Huang, accusing them of corruption and embezzlement. The second impeachment went even higher, naming Mingju (1635–1708), a Grand Secretary and an imperial favorite, as the ringleader of a corruption network, with the Manchu minister Foron and Chinese minister Yu Guozhu, among others, as accomplices. Their alleged crime was the formation of a clique, trading financial gains for access and recommendations. Finally, the third impeachment was aimed at three Chinese scholars of the Southern Study headed by another favorite, Gao Shiqi (1645–1703), who were also accused of selling their privileged access to the emperor for personal advantages.

The book is set during what Guy calls the “early Kangxi” (viii, 3, 11) court—early not because of his time on the throne, for the Kangxi emperor’s reign began in 1661, and the events of this book took place mainly in the 1680s to 1690s, but because these were the first years after the end of the Rebellion of the Three Feudatories in 1681. It was the first time the Qing directly controlled the entire former Ming territory, and, in a sense, the period in question was the second founding of the Qing dynasty, establishing institutional norms that would endure for the rest of the dynasty’s history.

By investigating the circumstances surrounding these impeachments, the book echoes questions that Wu, Bartlett, and Kuhn posed in earlier studies of Qing imperial control of the civil service.Footnote ¹ How could an emperor, ensconced in the palace and relying on communication from officials in the field, obtain accurate information to devise the correct policies? How could unscrupulous officials close to the throne who sought to leverage their position for personal gain usurp such communication? What tools were available to an emperor who wished to combat this, and how successful were such attempts? These questions had plagued the Chinese imperial system for millennia, but the Kangxi emperor also had to address the power imbalance between bannermen officials from the conquest elite and the Han Chinese, who constituted the numerical majority. How did a Manchu emperor, fresh from his victory over rebellious subjects, consolidate his grip on his empire?

The book’s first section consists of three chapters that provide much-needed background on the cases. The first two chapters cover Jin Fu’s tenure as Director of River Conservancy from 1677 to his impeachment in 1688. His job was to manage the rugged Yellow River and its confluence with the Grand Canal, and to ensure that grain shipments from the south arrived unimpeded every year, while preventing flooding that could devastate the countryside. Jin’s solution was large-scale infrastructure work that would cost millions of taels of silver but promised to solve the issue of the rivers once and for all. He succeeded in ensuring grain deliveries to Beijing but not in preventing floods. As the dynasty quelled the Rebellion of the Three Feudatories and consolidated its rule in Southern China, the court also paid more attention to the question of elite economic and political interests in the Jiangnan area. As a result, differences in opinion regarding river management surfaced, with some questioning Jin’s proposals and ideas. Chapter 3 then pivots to the center, explaining how Mingju became the dominant official at court for over a decade, and how Jin Fu’s aggressive program of river management required Mingju’s enthusiastic support at court to materialize.

The core of the book, part two, covers the three impeachments. Chapter 4 explains the institutional background of the Censorate and the biography of Guo Xiu, highlighting how he came from a relatively humble background with perhaps a murky connection with Ming loyalists. Chapter 5 details the allegations in and the circumstances surrounding the first two impeachments, and Chapter 6 outlines the imperial response. In his reconstruction, Guy leverages all available sources to explain the cases Guo built to accuse Jin Fu and Mingju and their accomplices of crimes and the somewhat shaky nature of some of his accusations.

The final two chapters serve almost as an epilogue. Chapter seven focuses on the third impeachment, against three officials who were part of the Kangxi emperor’s Southern Study, a semi-official body originally set up for the Kangxi emperor to study and practice Chinese literati arts. Its leading figure, Gao Shiqi, was accused of concrete acts of corruption and extortion. The final chapter narrates the aftermath of the impeachments. Most of the officials charged with malfeasance were cashiered, often quietly without much fanfare, but some found appointments again in different capacities. Guo Xiu also lost his position after making too many enemies and becoming a target of attacks. The final result, as Guy notes, was that the interests and survival of the state were more important than the livelihood of any individual. The Kangxi emperor did not protect a whistleblower like Guo, but allowed him to suffer retaliatory attacks by others.

The narrative woven together in this book highlights a few key themes that recur throughout the Qing. Imperial favorites such as Mingju and Gao Shiqi could leverage their position to demand bribes from broad swaths of the civil service. The offices they “sold” were at a higher level than was legal, and the profits went to their own pockets rather than the state treasury. By acting as the crucial node of information between the civil service and the emperor, these officials could easily influence policy and appointments to their advantage. Here, we can see the seeds of what eventually became the Grand Council. After all, if the problem was key officials controlling communication using their position to profit, emperors could combat it with new communication protocols that bypass or diminish their influence.

Perhaps sensing this, the Kangxi emperor encouraged censors to come forward, which led to Guo’s impeachments. Some of the gaps in this book’s narrative are unlikely ever to be filled, barring a miracle of new sources. We do not know, for example, who provided Guo with the evidence for his impeachments, although Guy guesses at the source. Did the Kangxi emperor initiate the proceeding? After all, given Guo’s position, submitting such impeachments was extremely risky. Guo may well have received some signal beyond the mere public call to action. Guy hints at this possibility but stops short of speculating too far in this direction, for lack of concrete evidence.

Ethnic tension between the Manchus and Han Chinese also comes to the fore in Guy’s retelling of the story, and the changing dynamic of Manchu–Han relations became an ongoing theme for much of the early Qing. This dynamic transformed dramatically during the period, but at this early juncture, at least, the Manchus dominated at court, and the Chinese were the junior partners with less room to speak. The Kangxi emperor expressed frustration with their timidity, but the Chinese officials had good reason to be circumspect. After all, Guo was not rewarded for his bravery in coming forward with his accusations. By the time he earned a second chance in his career he was an old man, and Kangxi put him in a position where he could not succeed. There was, in other words, no real reward for speaking out as the Kangxi emperor hoped officials would. This is another institutional issue that remains unresolved at the end of this book and indeed found no good solution in the whole Qing period.

This book was written with an eye toward a more general readership. Guy successfully explains the essential institutional context in which these events took place. The result is a clear, concise narrative of a routine but illuminating case of bureaucratic management in a state still searching for its identity. Unfortunately, the book was originally published with a multitude of typographical errors in its glossary and bibliography. The University of Washington Press has put it through a revision which fixed a few of these errors, although many others remain. I hope that a future edition will include revisions that fix these glaring issues.