| The
Central Questions
Chinese emperors
and their courts influenced many facets of life in China
and East Asia. The imperial family was an important
patron of Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian rites, buildings,
and activities. The imperial family maintained imperial
painters, artisans, musicians, chefs, astronomers, and scribes.
A sophisticated
system of assessment, collection, and transportation extracted
an enormous variety of physical goods and services from
across the country to support the emperor and his establishment.
The emperor and his high officials attempted to dictate
the clothing, the housing, the transportation, and the place
of residence of his subjects. The emperor rendered critical
decisions about war, relations with domestic minorities,
and foreign powers.
If we can easily
grant the importance of Ming emperors, the imperial family,
imperial in-laws, and palace eunuchs, we can say much less
with confidence about the shape, texture, or dynamics of
court culture. In his introduction to the recent
The Princely Courts of Europe, 1500-1750, John Adamson argued
that the court defined not merely a princely residence "a
lavish set of buildings and their pampered occupants" but
a far larger matrix of relations, political and economic,
religious and artistic, that converged in the ruler's household
(p. 8).
How well does
this definition fit Ming China? How are we to describe
the physical plant and personnel around the Son of Heaven?
The term court frequently appears in scholarship on both
native and foreign dynasties based in China, but its meaning
is often left vague or ill-defined. Who and what did
in encompass? Was there a sufficient body of shared attitudes
and interactions to justify the term "court culture; or
court cultures" If, as some have argued, it is inappropriate
and misleading to talk of a court or court culture during
the Ming and Qing periods, what then are the alternatives?
Based on conditions
in Western Europe, scholars have argued that important insights
that can be gained from careful consideration of court culture.
These range from the exercise of power, the use of patronage
in political and social competition, the often dramatic
influence of physical space, and the political and sacral
nature of the sovereign's power. This scholarship
also demonstrates the need for a multi-disciplinary approach.
Even if we do not accept "court culture" in Ming
China as self-evident, we can fruitfully draw upon the methodologies
of those who study early modern Western European counterparts.
Because the emperor and his court lay at the nexus of so
many fields of interest, one must draw upon the perspectives
of political, intellectual, economic, social, architectural,
art, religious, gender, and military history.
Goals
of the Conference
The Ming Court
Culture Conference represents an initial exploration of
court culture during the Ming period and should form an
important complement to recent scholarship related to the
Song, Yuan, and Qing periods. Comparison across dynastic
periods is essential to better delineate the distinctive
elements of Ming culture and to discern broader continuities.
One of the most
important goals of this conference is to identify key questions
for future exploration and reexamination. We will also think
about how to integrate studies of Ming court culture into
our overall understanding of the Ming period, in particular,
and late imperial China, as a whole.
Our most common
impressions of Ming emperors, their advisors, their interests,
and the tenor of their courts derive from problematic sources'
the writings of highly educated men whose interests and
perspectives differed in important ways from those of the
imperial family. It can be argued that literati, whether
writing in their official capacities as government officials
or as private scholars and observers, have left us with
a deeply misleading impression of court life. They
dealt at length on things that concerned them, highlighting
political struggles, historical precedents, intrigue, and
ritual controversies. Things of which they did not
approve or found beneath notice received far less loving
attention. Put simply, we have been sold a bill of
goods. One of the primary goals of this conference
is to de-center these literati historians/commentators and
develop a more accurate and textured vision of the world
inside the walls of the Forbidden City.
The conference
will begin to construct a more integrated sense of the sounds,
sights, and rhythms of the Ming court. What did the emperor,
his women, and his high officials wear at court, how did
it change over time, and what did it mean? We know
that ritual activities occupied much of the court's time
and generated a voluminous documentary record, but what
specifically did they involve and how were they understood?
The multi-disciplinary
approach will facilitate making connections that for us
are not obvious but for contemporaries would have been axiomatic.
For instance, a battery of dances, musical scores, and divinatory
practices at court accompanied military campaigns conducted
throughout the empire and beyond. This reflected an
understanding of war that not only included logistics, armaments,
field strategy, intelligence, discipline, and bravery, but
also included the need to secure divine protection and favorable
cosmic conditions. Military historians need to talk
to scholars of ritual and dance just as art historians have
incorporated the work of intellectual and political historians.
Only then will we begin to grasp the complex set of relations
and concerns that constituted the court.
The conference
sheds new light on larger issues in Ming history and how
we characterize the period. The first involves the issue
of imperial rule. Chinese and Japanese scholarship
still regularly refer to the despotic autocratic tone of
Ming government, a tone that has been variously attributed
to the pernicious Mongol legacy, to a natural extension
of trends visible during the Song, or to the personality
of the founding Ming emperor. Nearly all the papers illuminate
the exercise of the emperor's will and the constant negotiation
it entailed. Specific facets include relations with
his family, his high officials (Peter Ditmansen), his bureaucracy,
his army and neighboring countries. The venues varied
from patronage of intellectual projects (Chu Hung-lam) and
relations with the emperor's high officials to projecting
the emperor's desired image in art (Dora Ching) and playing
the role of imperium's supreme military leader (Kenneth
Swope).
A second theme
is the Ming court's engagement with its neighbors, including
diplomacy, the impact of foreign envoys, and the influence
of foreign religion. The Ming is often described as
an insular period, the time when China turned its back on
the outside world, especially the emerging maritime world.
The Ming is contrasted with the cosmopolitan Yuan and multi-ethnic
Qing dynasties. Fuma Susumu and John Wills explore
the role of foreign envoys and tributary relations at the
court. The broader question of engagement with foreign
culture and religions, particularly Tibet, also runs through
papers by Dora Ching, James Geiss, and David Robinson on
imperial portraiture, religious patronage, and debates over
defining the emperor's identity. The early Ming's
ostensible return to pure Chinese customs after the "polluting"
influence of the Yuan (and to a lesser degree the Liao and
Jin) directly influenced the court's efforts at sumptuary
regulations related to proper dress, and establishment of
proper ritual through music and dance. Yuan Zhujie,
Joseph Lam, and Nicholas Standaert address these questions
with exciting new materials. |
