What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
Zhitai, Futai, Zhentai, Fantai, Daotai, Futai, and Xuetai were honorific titles for local officials in the Qing Dynasty, and if these officials were clearly understood, they would have a general understanding of the local bureaucratic system of the Qing Dynasty.
However, the local system of the Qing Dynasty is the most complex, in different periods, the bureaucratic system has changed a lot, this article has done its best to give you a comprehensive overview of the introduction, where there are problems, please also include more.
The system of the platform, that is, the governor, the official of the two pins, plus the rank of shangshu of the military department can reach from one pin
The governor was a local administrator in charge of one province to many provinces in the Qing Dynasty, and the official name should be the viceroy, but the subordinates usually called it the zhitai in order to show respect, and other local officials were also honored as various stations.
The main functions of the governor are to "control the military and the people, to control the civil and military forces, to inspect and raise officials, and to repair the feudal territory", usually referred to as the feudal governor is the governor, and the influence in the local area is quite large.
In the middle of the Qing Dynasty, when the viceroy system was stable, there were eight viceroys directly subordinate to the viceroy, the viceroy of Liangjiang, the viceroy of Liangguang, the viceroy of Huguang, the viceroy of Sichuan, the viceroy of Fujian and Zhejiang, the viceroy of Yungui, and the viceroy of Shaanxi and Gansu.
In the middle and early Qing Dynasty, the governor was mainly in charge of the administration, and after the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, the governor gradually grasped military power and gradually had the capital to compete with the central court.
Futai, that is, the inspector, from the Erpin official, plus the rank of soldier to the rank of waiter can reach the main Erpin
Futai is also the honorific title of the inspector, is generally in charge of the affairs of a province, everyone may think that the Qing court is a province to set up an inspector, in fact, it is not like this, the Qing Dynasty has about twelve or so inspectors, far lower than the number of provinces.
The main reason is that, in most cases, in the administrative areas where the Governor is in charge of multiple provinces, there are no inspectors in the provinces where the Governor is stationed, and there are inspectors in other provinces that are not the Governor's residence, which we simply refer to as the Governor of different cities (in most cases).
Therefore, the relationship between the governor and the governor was actually very delicate, and it was a clamping plan adopted by the rulers of the Qing Dynasty to prevent a local administrator from having too much power.
Because of this, although the rank of the governor is lower than that of the governor, it is not a relationship between superiors and subordinates, but at the same time responsible to the central government.
Summary of the Qing Dynasty Supervision System
The supervision system is the most important bureaucratic system ruled by the Qing Dynasty, although the Qing government let the governors contain each other, but still did not rest assured, the early stage did not put all the military power into the hands of the governors, such as the general system of the Eight Banners and the green camp of the governor system, these two sets of military and political systems are parallel to the supervision system, and mutual restraint, until the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, the eight flags and the green camp collapsed, the governor completely grasped the local administrative power.
Of course, during the reign of the Qing Dynasty, local governments rarely rebelled against the central government, the main reason is not limited to this, in the specific management of local government affairs, but also set up envoys, according to the inspection envoys, xuezheng to be responsible for specific affairs, although responsible for the supervision, but have the power to directly play the central government, especially the study of politics is directly appointed by the central government, similar to the status of Chincha.
Now let's put the "troika" of political envoys, envoys, and studying politics in charge of the localities.
The domain, that is, the envoys, from the erpin officials, the province's administration and finance
The domain is also known as the envoy, which is the local administrative official second only to the inspector, and before the Qing Dynasty, the governor did not become a full-time official, the envoy was the highest local administrator.
Although in the same level as the inspector is from the second product, but the two are a clear superior-subordinate relationship, because the inspector will add the rank of soldier to become the second product, really encounter the unadumbered from the second product inspector, the two are really similar in grade.
Of course, the specific is still in the post, after the Qing Dynasty governor became a permanent official, the envoy became a subordinate official of the governor, responsible for the administrative affairs of a province such as financial endowments and personnel, equivalent to the two mouths of administration and finance, and the actual power is very large!
The taitai is the official of the three products, who is responsible for the judicial system of the whole province
Although they are zhengsanpin officials, the specific work is very important, that is, it is responsible for all the relevant work of the province's public security, justice and even prisons.
The actual power is greater than the current public prosecutor's law, because in ancient times there was no police to maintain law and order, and it was necessary to rely on the army to achieve many things, so the inspectors were able to command a part of the Green Battalion.
In ancient times, it was not a legal society, and there were often contradictions between officials, and whoever had soldiers in their hands was an ox!
Of course, in the local judicial practice, The Two People's Nest also has a major influence, basically fighting a big lawsuit, and later having to be decided by the Taiwan, in the four major suspicious cases of the late Qing Dynasty, the "Yang Naiwu and Xiao Cabbage Case", two people in the local government because of the beating into a confession, Zhejiang Zhentai believes that there are problems but did not overturn the retrial, and finally was implicated.
Xuetai is the study of politics, there is no fixed grade, and it is in charge of a provincial education examination
Xuetai is the honorific title of Xuezheng, the full name of Xuezheng is "Ti dou Xuezheng", is the local cultural and educational administrative official of the Qing Dynasty, and is the same as the troika of the local bureaucracy, and even a little higher than the first two.
Many people may think that an official in charge of the education system is so great that he is even more remarkable than the envoys and inspectors in charge of finance and justice.
Although there is no fixed grade of xuezheng, it is personally appointed by the emperor, has the status of Chincha, and is itself a Beijing official (Hanlin Academy system), only when the imperial examination is held, it goes to the local area to preside over the examination, and the local official is naturally slippery when he sees it.
When Zeng Guofan was a Beijing official, his biggest dream was to go to the local government to take the examination, and the local official would give the chief examiner a few thousand taels of silver in some names.
Before he formed the Xiang Army, the imperial court arranged for Zeng Guofan to go to Jiangxi to preside over the township examination, and as a result, his mother passed away, according to the rules of the Qing Dynasty, when the official's parents died, the officials should keep filial piety, but Zeng Guofan wanted the filial piety of the Jiangxi officialdom, and specially did not send funerals, waited until he received money from the Jiangxi territory, and then asked the imperial court to keep filial piety.
The reason why xuezheng has a face in the localities is that in addition to the ideological factor of "all things are inferior but only high in reading", more importantly, xuezheng is not only responsible for the examination of the biggest thing of ancient readers, but even if the students have committed crimes, they have directly bypassed the inspection and the xuezheng is responsible for the trial, and the students also have many privileges on the issue of taxation, which is also beyond the control of the envoys.
During the Qing Dynasty, the number of students was close to one million, all of whom were managed by xuezheng, which shows how cattle the xuezheng system is.
Summary of provincial administrative bodies in the Qing Dynasty
From the introduction of the above officials, everyone should be able to see that under the supervision system, the governor and the inspector are the nominal highest officials of the locality, and the envoys and envoys and xuezheng are the subordinate officials of the governor.
But in fact, the study of politics was directly responsible to the imperial court, and the envoys and envoys also had the power to report directly to the central government, and to a large extent, it was also a kind of surveillance of the overseers.
Of course, the five people who were overseers and envoys, envoys, and scholars basically formed the leading bodies at the provincial level in the local administrative organs of the Qing Dynasty, and the positions overlapped and the relationship was very delicate.
In the final analysis, this is all bureaucracy at the provincial level, and corresponding to this, bureaucracies at other levels at the local level.
Daotai, that is, the Daoist, is four products up and down, between the provincial capitals, and the responsibilities are not fixed
The local management system of the Qing Dynasty was divided into three levels of "province-prefecture-county", the above is all at the provincial level, under the provincial level, in fact, it should be talked about the government, but the three-level local bureaucratic system of the Qing Dynasty is not complete, and between the provincial governments there is a Daotai Yamen, who is in charge of the Daoist and is honored as the Daotai.
In fact, the establishment of this Daotai was also a separation of powers and checks and balances on the local bureaucracy by the Qing court, and it was worried that the governor and the governor had too much power, and some powers related to the national economy and the people's livelihood were separately assigned, and Daoists were sent to be specially responsible, such as grain roads, rivers, and post-station preaching.
Before the Qing Dynasty, this was done by the officials who participated in the government and the senate under the envoys, and after the Qing Dynasty, they were pulled out and also had the right to play directly to the emperor.
In terms of rank, Daoists are ostensibly above and below the zhengsipin officials, and because of the power of the tantric performance, in some places, special Daoists can even reach the grade of erpin and can completely compete with the provincial bureaucracy. It can be seen from this that in order to prevent local rebellions, the Qing court set up how many "insurances" there were.
Futai, or prefect, is a middle-level cadre of local administrative bureaucracy
Through the introduction of the bureaucratic system at the provincial level, everyone should be able to see that the "essence" of the local bureaucratic design of the Qing Dynasty is all around the circle of provincial administrative power, and when it really reaches the prefect level, it is no longer within the direct control of the central government.
In other words, daoists were able to play tantras directly to the central government, which was a very difficult thing to do before the Qing Dynasty, and it was not easy for the Qing Dynasty to do it, but it was quite difficult to directly inquire about the specific affairs at the prefectural level.
Of course, this does not mean that the prefect's life is better, because among the officials at the provincial level, the Qing Dynasty has blessed too many levers, and in the end it all needs to be completed by the prefect-level yamen, which leads to the prefect's encounter with trouble, like sorting garbage, first returning to the government, of course, the student side is to report on the study of politics, taxation, personnel transfer reports to the envoys, judicial reports according to the inspectors, and so on.
In order to be able to make a smooth transaction, it is inevitable to bubble up, because of the more comprehensive power, it is easier for the prefect to corrupt the law, the so-called "three years of Qing prefect, 100,000 snowflake silver" is so arrogant.
Below the prefect, there were also officials at the level of Zhi County, representing the lowest administrative organs that the Qing government could effectively rule, with an average of about seven pins, and were responsible to the prefect.
On the whole, the local bureaucratic system of the Qing Dynasty was set up very exquisitely, and through this set of systems, the local officials were pinched to death, but there was also a problem here, obviously there were many things that an official could do, but it was necessary to use a large number of bureaucrats to restrain it, and the result was that the overall efficiency of work was extremely low.
Under such an inefficient administrative bureaucracy, there is still a lack of supervision, resulting in local officials often "mingling together", forming a situation in which officials and officials interact with each other.