Since 221 BC, when Qin Shi Huang established the Qin Dynasty, feudal monarchy finally reached its peak in the early years of the Qing Dynasty after nearly two thousand years of gradual development. The gradual strengthening of feudal monarchy and the strengthening of centralized power are inseparable and mutually reinforcing. The rulers of the early years of the Qing Dynasty took a series of measures to strengthen the centralization of power, so that feudal monarchy finally reached its peak.
(1) Changes in the organs of central government power.
In the fifteenth year of Shunzhi (1658), the imitation of the lighting system was changed to the inner three houses into a cabinet. There are 2 people each in Shiman and Han, 1 person in Co-organizing University Shiman and 1 in Han, 6 people with bachelor's degree and 4 han people. The responsibilities of the cabinet were the same as those of the Ming Dynasty, such as "voting for proposals", drafting decrees, deliberating on government affairs, etc., but because some of its important affairs were divided into the Southern Study And the Military Aircraft Department that was later established, the actual power was much smaller than that of the Ming Dynasty, and it was only a nominal head organ.
In the sixteenth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1677), a Southern Study Room was set up outside the Cabinet, and a simple and talented and excellent minister was appointed, so that he was drafted into the Imperial Decree, and actually became the Emperor's private secretary team, so that the power of the Cabinet was divided with the South Study.
The Kangxi Emperor set up the Southern Study, which divided the power of the cabinet
The real supreme authority was the Council of Ministers in the early Qing Dynasty and later the Military Aircraft Department. At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, all important tasks of the military state were discussed and decided by the Council of Ministers, and "the kings and ministers discussed and established, although the supreme being was not as good as anything", and the power was extremely great. Its members were "all filled with Manchus" and the Han were not allowed to participate. This political system not only contradicted the emperor who wanted to monopolize power, but also was not conducive to the Qing regime's further efforts to win the support of the bureaucracy of all ethnic groups, especially the Han chinese. Therefore, in order to centralize power, with the decline of the power of the kings and banner lords, the power of the Council of Ministers was constantly contained and weakened, and by the fifty-sixth year of Qianlong (1791), it was finally abolished.
In the seventh year of Yongzheng (1729), due to the use of troops in the northwest, the military machine room was set up as a temporary military administrative body. By the tenth year of the Yongzheng Dynasty (1732), the Military Aircraft Department had become a permanent core institution for handling military and political affairs throughout the country. The Military Aircraft Department undertook to handle the aircraft affairs, replacing the power of the kings of the Council of Ministers to participate in the administration of government affairs. The ministers of the Military Aircraft Department were selected at any time by the emperor among the Manchu and Han scholars, as well as the Shangshu and Shilang of various ministries, that is, the so-called "non-specialist officials". Its names include The Minister of Military Aircraft, the Minister of Military Aircraft walking, and so on. All the ministers who were elected to the Military Aircraft Department were the emperor's favorite cronies and participated in the affairs of the military state, but the decision was up to the emperor. The Minister of War was no more than the Emperor's confidential secretary.
The Yongzheng Emperor set up a military aircraft office, and the feudal monarchy reached its peak
The Military Aircraft Service is characterized by the rapid and confidential handling of government affairs. The edict drafted by the Military Aircraft Department was issued through two channels: first, the cabinet, then the ministry, and then the layer by layer, called "Mingfa"; the second was that the military aircraft department was tightly sealed, bypassing the cabinet, the ministry, and going through the post station to the local governor, called "court mail". Local governors can also fold major problems and go directly to the emperor through the military aircraft.
The establishment of the court mail system further strengthened the connection between the central and local governments, and the emperor's will could be carried out unimpeded. Although the military aircraft department was prominent, it was completely subordinate to the emperor. Therefore, the establishment of the Military Aircraft Department reflects the strengthening of the monarchy's power and is the product of the continuous development of the feudal autocratic centralized system.
(2) Changes in local government bodies.
The local administrative organs of the Qing Dynasty were divided into four levels: provinces, provinces, provinces, and counties. In addition, there are special administrative regions of the frontier parallel to the provinces, prefectures and departments directly under the prefecture parallel to the prefectures, and scattered prefectures and departments parallel to the counties.
The province is the highest administrative body, and the governor is the governor and the inspector. Each province has an inspector, and each province or two or three provinces has a governor who holds the military and political power of one or more provinces. In the Ming Dynasty, the governor and fu were temporary dispatches, but in the Qing Dynasty, they were fixed and became real officials. They were all confidants of the emperor, and they did everything according to the emperor's will. In addition, each province also has the posts of envoy, envoy, and inspector, and is in charge of the finances, personnel, justice, education, and science of a province.
Map of the Governor's Jurisdiction
Save the road and set up a roadman. The Dao of the Ming Dynasty was a supervision area, and its chief was also a temporary dispatch, without grade. Since the Qianlong Dynasty, Daoists have become local officials. Qing Dynasty Daoists were generally divided into "Shoudao" with fixed jurisdictions and "Patrol Roads" that patrolled a certain area.
The province is the prefectural government. Fuxia is a county and a county. There is also a baojia system below the county level, with 10 households as the card, 10 cards as the card, and 10 cards as the guarantee, and the card head, the head of the armor, and the baozheng, all of which are played by the local rich households and landlords. Through the armor protection system, the Qing government exercised close surveillance and control over the people. The armor protection system played an important role in consolidating the feudal rule of the Qing Dynasty, and at the same time, it also reflected the increasingly tight control of the state apparatus over the people in the late period of feudal society.
The grass-roots society of the Qing Dynasty implemented the armor protection system
In addition to provinces, provinces, prefectures, and counties, the Qing Dynasty also implemented the management system of special administrative regions in the border areas. In the northeast, Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, Qinghai and other places, the five general jurisdictions of Shengjing, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Ulyasutai and Ili and the two jurisdictions of the minister of affairs in Tibet and Qinghai were established respectively. In some ethnic minority areas in the southwestern provinces, the toast system of the Ming Dynasty was followed in the early Qing Dynasty. After The Yongzheng Dynasty, the policy of returning land to the stream was implemented, and the tuguan was successively changed to a rogue official, and the direct rule over the southwest region was strengthened.
(3) Confinement in the ideological and cultural fields.
The Qing rulers reached a historical extreme in strengthening the control of cultural thought. On the one hand, the Qing rulers recruited Han landlord intellectuals through examinations, vigorously advocated Cheng Zhu Lixue, and compiled books; on the other hand, they vigorously promoted the prison of writing, looked at the literary life and righteousness, hunted the wind and shadows, fabricated criminal complaints, and carried out severe restraint and cruel suppression of those ideas, words, and deeds that were not conducive to their own rule. The number of times, the breadth of the strains, and the coolness of the punishment are beyond any previous dynasty.
The Qianlong Emperor destroyed a large number of books by repairing the Siku Quanshu
During the Qianlong period, the literal prison reached the point of no return, such as Hu Zhongzao's "Jian Mo Sheng Poetry Copy" in which "a heart and intestines are turbid", and Xu Shukuo's "One Pillar Building Poetry Collection" has "Zhen Fei during the Ming Dynasty, go to the Qing capital in one fell swoop", etc., all of which are considered to have the heart to oppose the Qing Dynasty and restore the Ming Dynasty and constitute the crime of rebellion. If the literary prison during the Kangxi and Yongzheng periods was aimed at intellectuals with anti-Qing and restoration ideas, and there was barely a reason to punish them, then the literary prison in the Qianlong period was completely based on the desire for literature and righteousness, catching wind and catching shadows, in order to show the emperor's obscene power of life and death.
The qing dynasty's literal prison is a reflection of the unprecedented strengthening of feudal absolutism's centralized power in the ideological field, and the social consequences of the "ten thousand horses and horses" caused by it are extremely serious.
Through a series of measures taken by the rulers in the early Qing Dynasty to strengthen the centralization of power, feudal monarchy finally reached the peak of history. The joint rule of the Manchu and Han landlord classes, with the Manchu aristocracy as the mainstay, was strengthened, and the state apparatus of feudal absolutism was more complete.