In his pathbreaking work of Qing history, The Board of Rites and the Making of Qing China, Macabe Keliher provides a keenly perceptive analysis of the potency and efficacy of li (ceremonies, rituals, and rites) and of the decisive and instrumental role of li in state-formation during the early Qing dynasty (1636–90). Acknowledging the importance of previous scholarship on state formation across Eurasia, which was previously focused on military and administrative institutions, Keliher's elucidation of li broadens our understanding of the formative years of Qing state-making. In this well-written and meticulously researched book, Keliher cogently explicates how early Qing rulers creatively used li as a tool for “discipline and domination” (6) to control imperial relatives and government bureaucrats.

Illuminating the political acuity of the dynastic founders, Keliher's work is a solid contribution to a growing body of literature that has highlighted the dynamic institutional innovation of the Qing. Recent historiography has shown a greater appreciation for the administrative resilience, legislative savvy, and institutional tinkering that sustained the dynasty for nearly three centuries from the establishment of imperial rule in 1636 to the failure of a nascent constitutional monarchy in 1911. (R. Kent Guy astutely describes the Qing redesign of provincial administration in the Han domains as “tinkering.”) Focusing on the formative years of 1636–90, Keliher provides a fresh take on a pivotal period when “state makers reimagined political culture and built anew political institutions to run a multiethnic empire” (22). Interestingly, despite its inclusion in the title, the manuscript spends little time on the inner workings of the Board of Rites. Instead, the author focuses the carefully and consciously constructed Qing version of li that would become a cornerstone for a multi-ethnic empire.

The book is organized in three parts that succinctly lay out the narrative of the regime's transition from military conquest to political consolidation. Part I concisely describes the Manchu ascendancy and Hong Taiji's deployment of li to outmaneuver and dominate his political rivals. Part II has three chapters that examine the symbolism of the New Year's Day ceremony, Hong Taiji's redefinition of the meaning of the sovereign, and the use of li to legitimize the dominant administrative role of the emperor. An important thread in these chapters is assertion that “the emperorship … was performed through li” and that the performance of li “facilitated Qing politics and constructed a particular system of domination” (66). During this decisive period of Qing history, the monopolization of symbolic power in li was “as essential to Qing state-makers as the establishment of administrative institutions and the mobilization of military force” (90). Keliher concludes that “the concept of li as an organizing force” was the basis for practices that were “instituted and policed by the Board of Rites.” Most urgently in these early decades, li was utilized to integrate imperial relatives (these would include direct relatives of the dynastic founder and collateral relatives of the imperial clan) into the evolving Qing administrative order. Part III examines institutionalization of imperial relatives in service to the regime via the Imperial Clan Court, the symbolic power of imperial dress, and the codification of li in the Da Qing Huidian. Keliher does a masterful job of demonstrating, and illustrating in case of imperial dress, the powerful symbolism and political significance of li as a pillar of Qing political power.

Legal historians will find the chapter on the codification of li in the Da Qing Huidian of particular interest as it reveals the formalization of the rules and regulations for governing, including the formalization of li, which laid the basis for political administration of the empire. As he does throughout the book, Keliher explains the Qing regime's adroit balancing of continuity and innovation in the process of codification. Keliher concludes his reconstruction of Qing state formation with the official issuance of the first of several versions of the Da Qing Huidian in 1690. Interestingly, subsequent emperors would update and reissue new versions of the Da Qing Huidian in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Interestingly, this inaugural compilation of Da Qing Huidian was prelude to a broader eighteenth-century legislative turn in Qing rule, which witnessed the most prolific period of legislative activity in all Chinese history. The year 1690 was much more than a codification of li. Legal scholars interested in subsequent compilations of the Da Qing Huidian should see the recent work of Nancy Park, whose work picks up the narrative where Keliher stops.Footnote ¹ As Park's research illustrates, the Da Qing Huidians  set forth the fundamental principles, institutions, and values of the state as well as administrative regulations.

Qing history has enjoyed decades of scholarly efflorescence since the opening of historical and legal archival sources and the development of international scholarly collaborations in the 1980s. Over the past four decades, scholars have reconceived the economic and social, and most recently, the legal history of late imperial China. Similarly, there has also been greater attention to the geographic origins and ethnic diversity of the Qing dynasty. While scholars may disagree over how best to characterize the history of the Qing, it is increasingly evident that the institutional creativity of Qing rulers was critical to dynasty's survival. Keliher's work identifies a key stage in the political evolution of the dynasty. If we measure success narrowly in terms of the preservation of dynastic power, specifically the power of the Aisin Gioro clan, the Qing was a remarkably successful dynasty. The Board of Rites and the Making of Qing China illustrates the power of li as well as the exceptional skill of the Qing founders as they charted a political course that respected millennia-old dynastic precedents, addressed challenges of seventeenth-century historical contingencies, and incorporated peculiar features of Manchu political culture to create one of the most powerful multi-ethnic empires in world history.