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Administrative Involution and the Fate of Premodern Empires: Bureaucracy, Paperwork, and Rebellion in Late Imperial China
Keliher, Macabe
Keliher, Macabe
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Abstract
This article examines the political systems of large bureaucratic empires with a focus on Qing China (1636-1912) as a case study. It inquires into the phenomenon of how early modern empires developed sophisticated bureaucracies and ruling technologies yet struggled with new challenges in the nineteenth century and eventually succumbed to political revolution and dissolution. While scholars have either posited a long decline or examined the development of the pinnacles of imperial power, this paper identifies structural contradictions in the political and administrative systems. It argues that premodern empires suffered from administrative involution, or the growth of administrative oversight and work without corresponding gains in governance and state capacity. The empirical case study of the paper shows what this looked like in the Qing by taking up the administrative response to a minor social disturbance in Hubei in 1768. It demonstrates both the effectiveness of the administration at its height, but also how administrative practices hindered greater state capacity. The paper further contextualizes the trend of administrative involution within intensifying environmental and demographic changes of the early modern period, which led to social and political challenges that were ultimately insurmountable.