Ability and Difference in Early Modern China is a study of Ming merit nobles (xunchen 勛臣) through the story of the Wu family, a Mongol clan who surrendered to the Ming at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Robinson devotes a chapter to each of the eight-generation holders of the title Marquis of Gongshun, along with two chapters that follow the fortunes of a nephew and a brother of the original title holder. This sweeping overview of two and a half centuries highlights the surprising consistency of their relationship with the throne.
By interweaving the themes of difference and ability (the meanings of these terms will become evident below), Robinson effectively argues that merit nobles were integral to state administration and imperial power. Merit nobles, whether Han or of another ethnicity, were men who fought alongside the Ming founders and were rewarded for their service and loyalty to the throne. Rewards included estates, official posts with generous compensation, legal privileges, and, most importantly, a title that propelled them to the top of society.
The first contribution of this book is to revise the image of these men as idle holders of sinecure positions, an image crafted in the historical record by career officials who were often the institutional rivals of merit nobles. From Batu-Temür, who surrendered to the Ming in the early fifteenth century, to Wu Weiying, who witnessed the collapse of the dynasty in its final years, generation after generation of Marquises provided valuable services to their emperor. However, the kinds of service changed along with the throne’s changing needs and the Wu family’s changing abilities, as they transformed from Mongols based in the Steppe to an elite Beijing family of scholars and administrators.
Chapters 1–3 cover the first half of the fifteenth century. Here, Robinson’s concepts of difference and ability are straightforward: Using their knowledge of the Steppe, warfare, and the Mongol language, Batu-Temür, his son, and his grandson fought on the battlefield for the Ming regime and served as diplomats and mediators between the throne and Mongol communities that settled within the dynasty’s borders. However, later generations who continued to serve in military posts lacked the skills and experience of their forefathers. What kind of ability did they offer?
The very skills and abilities that distinguished the Wu family men from their Han peers had faded. Having lived in the capital and received the education of the Chinese elite, it is difficult to say how much later generations retained of their Mongol heritage, or even language. Their assimilation is most evident in contemporary mentions of them that ignore their Mongol origin altogether. Consequently, chapters 4-7 focus on issues of ability and inability as they outline the military carreers of the Gongshun Marquises throughout the sixteenth century. Merit nobles were expected to perform military duties, but very often proved completely inadequate. Efforts to develop an education and training curriculum yielded mostly disappointing results. Merit nobles, like any other officials, were subject to performance evaluations meant to keep the talented and remove the incompetent.
That said, the value of merit nobles went beyond the military. In Chapter 8, Robinson details the ceremonial duties that merit nobles performed. On occasions related to the life cycle of the imperial family, they made trips to the courts of Ming princes to deliver investiture tablets, preside over dowry ceremonies, and attend ancestral rituals. They were qualified to represent the emperor not only by virtue of their title, but also because they had married into the imperial clan. They were family. What Robinson does not touch on that deserves mention in this context is that merit nobles performed a service that closer kin could not. Imperial princes were barred from taking on any official role, sitting for examinations, or traveling around the empire unless invited by the emperor. Therefore, the suitability of merit nobles emanated, on the one hand, from their close acquaintance with the ruling family, and, on the other, from the fact that they were not actual kin and therefore could not pose a threat to the dynastic line.
This ceremonial role reminds us that, in addition to being a bureaucratic state, the Ming was also an empire with a vast and complex nobility. Spread throughout the realm, imperial princes and their kin presented another visible facet of imperial power. When a merit noble arrived at the court of a prince to present an investiture tablet to his heir, he was acting on behalf of the emperor in actualizing and perpetuating imperial authority.
Even without battlefield experience, some of Batu-Temür’s descendants had dutifully performed administrative duties in the capital’s military branch, which was itself a vast and complex organization. The career of Wu Weiying (Chapter 9) is most revealing, as much of his correspondence has survived. He served under the Chongzhen emperor as the superintendent commander-in-chief of the Capital Training Division. In this capacity, he gathered and delivered information to the emperor on troop deployments, battles fought, soldiers’ performance on the battlefield, and the situation in the countryside following Manchu attacks. He also sent memorials to the throne with tactical and strategic suggestions. At the same time, he continued his ceremonial role in major life events of the imperial clan.
The Wu family survived the collapse of the Ming. As shown in Chapter 10, Wu Weihua implemented the strategies of his forefathers and proved useful to the new Manchu masters. However, he was stripped of his title and exiled with his family following allegations of fraud and embezzlement. His son managed to regain the family title and fortune under the Qing Kangxi emperor, but the family never regained imperial favor.
Questions of difference and ability appear in greater relief when comparing the choices and strategies of the Wu family in the early Ming and early Qing, although Robinson chooses not to dwell on the comparison. Whereas Batu-Temür and his son fought for the Ming emperor, and the son even died protecting him, Wu Weihua offered his knowledge of the Ming central administration and its personnel, a valuable asset but perhaps not one that could create as personal bond as that generated on the battlefield. And whereas the Wu family managed to marry into the Ming imperial clan, under the Qing, they were indistinguishable from other Han Chinese administrators and were therefore barred from establishing family ties with the ruling clan.
This perhaps explains the Ming leniency towards them, discontinued by Qing rulers. Ming emperors regularly forgave the transgressions of their merit nobles and, as Robinson shows in Chapter 7, repeatedly refused their own requests to resign upon receiving poor performance evaluations. Why was that? One possibility is that personal bonds played an important role in maintaining noble status. In a court where the emperor met daily with career officials who were never solely loyal to him but to the dynasty, and who promoted their own agendas, there were very few men in whom he could confide or with whom he could simply have a face-to-face conversation. Throughout the monograph, the reader gets the impression that the Marquises of Gongshun provided that service. They were the emperor’s men. Across the generations, the bond between the Zhu and Wu families created deep ties of memory, relationships, and obligations that were powerful enough to ward off accusations of incompetence and malpractice. In addition, merit nobles were part of an intricate web of relationships and rivalries that included career officials and eunuchs. Accusations of misconduct often had political motives, and emperors sought to maintain their own discretion in such matters as a means of retaining their power against the bureaucracy.
In this monograph, Robinson continues his important historiographical project of exposing the presence of men and groups that rarely make it to the historical record. While still, as in his earlier work, relying on the Veritable Records—reign histories that were compiled from daily chronicles of court proceedings and events—Robinson also uses epitaphs, inscriptions on stelae, and lists of benefactors inscribed on temples as evidence of the merit nobility’s place in the Ming court and in Beijing elite society. Finally, he uses the historian’s most valuable resource, imagination, to breathe life into brief references or dry government reports and to reveal the complex social drama of the Ming court.
The book is a joy to read. Robinson does a wonderful job in maintaining a balance between an informed historical study and a good story. The narrative flows despite several pauses for detailed or technical explanations. It is, therefore, a gift for any introductory or advanced course. It is also a valuable contribution to scholars working on the social and administrative history of Ming Beijing. Finally, this book points in a promising direction for any scholar seeking to go beyond the Han elite and illuminate the lives of people and groups who were marginalized in the historical record.
