Negotiating Interests, Negotiating Change

Issues of cultural identity on occasion complicated debates over relative levels of ad­ministrative inclusion and exclusion, but they were just one variation on a broader pattern whereby the state tried to incorporate individuals and families into the dynasty.

Despite faith in the state's ability to transform potentially disruptive men and communities into productive subjects, imperial officials and educated observers knew that such efforts were imperfect, needed periodic adjustment in light of shifting socioeconomic conditions, and in the final analysis were subject to nego­tiation.^[1452] The Ming founder stressed the importance of moral precepts, compiling simple dictums about filial piety, dynastic loyalty, and social harmony that were to be read aloud regularly in all villages.^[1453] The court also promulgated written sump­tuary regulations, guidelines for etiquette (terms of address, forms of bowing, etc.), and periodic edicts devoted to specific moral issues, inveighing for instance against ostentatious consumption or denouncing officials for abusing the people.^[1454] During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, educated writers complained that com­mercialism was subverting the natural and proper social order in the empire's more affluent regions: ungrateful men and women of the lower orders challenged the rightful privileges of their social superiors; farmers abandoned the safety and sta­bility of the villages to pursue economic advantage in distant and morally suspect market towns and cities; families of good breeding humbled themselves before (and even intermarried with) crass parvenus; and fake cultural goods like paintings, porcelains, and antiques flooded the markets.^[1455] Writers from Guangdong in the south to Liaodong in the north fretted that civilization's hold at the edges was pre­cariously vulnerable, subject to barbarian contamination. Most officials under­stood that state institutions such as military garrisons, which were designed to regulate and discipline large numbers of men and their families, provided a base to pursue private, often illegal ends with imperial resources.^[1456] Men registered in mili­tary garrisons near the capital engaged in banditry, highway robbery, extortion, and other crimes.^[1457] Families from coastal garrisons in Fujian, Zhejiang, and Guangdong participated in international smuggling, piracy, and extortion.^[1458] Officers and soldiers along the northern border in places like Liaodong engaged in smuggling, illicit logging, hunting, and entrepreneurial violence.

As noted earlier, men with education, land, and official titles similarly turned the state to their own interests. They used the founding emperor's proclamations to discredit policies they disliked and justified personal enthusiasms by referring to imperial law. In official compilations they portrayed government as largely static or reform as a return to the founder's vision of the fourteenth century, be­cause for them the state should not be an agent of change, a role many gentry considered uniquely their own. They used their influence to obstruct magistrates' efforts to survey lands, collect taxes, and eliminate smuggling by lobbying for the removal of persistent officials or by taking the initiative in ways that maximized their interests, often at the expense of both the state and non-elite subjects. Lineage heads appropriated lower-level administrative structures to advance family interests at the same time that they emphasized adherence to precisely such structures as evidence of their loyalty to the dynasty in their competition with local competitors.^[1459]