Title:   China's Imperial Bureaucracy

Speaker:   H.R. Spendelow

Topic/Issues:  

1. distinction between the "Inner" and "Outer" Courts
2. basic structures of the central government from the Sui/Tang
3. methods and institutions for exercising central control over the countryside
4. personnel, recruitment, and the "examination system"

Resources:

1. Brunnert, H.S. and V.V. Hagelstrom.  Present Day Political Organization of China (Foochow/Fuzhou, 15 August 1911)
2. the generalist/specialist dichotomy, as interpreted by Tom Lehrer (1928- )

Readings:

1. Franke, Wolfgang.  The Reform and Abolition of the Traditional Chinese Examination System (Harvard, 1960)
2. Miyazaki, Ichisada.  China's Examination Hell: The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China (Yale, 1981)
3. Chaffee, John W.  The Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung China: A Social History of Examinations (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995)

Goals:

1. [tbd]