平臺紀略

Píngtái jìlüè 平臺紀略

Account of the Pacification of Taiwan by 藍鼎元 (撰)

About the work

The Píngtái jìlüè in 1 juǎn, with the appended Dōngzhēng jí 東征集 in 6 juǎn, is the eyewitness account by Lán Dǐngyuán 藍鼎元 (1680–1733) of the suppression of the Zhū Yīguì 朱一貴 revolt of Kāngxī 60 (1721) — the largest of the early-Qing risings on Taiwan and the campaign that saw the dynasty re-establish direct control of the island within seven days. Lán Dǐngyuán served on the staff of his elder brother Lán Tíngzhēn 藍廷珍, then Provincial Commander of Nán’ào 南澳, who together with the Fújiàn Naval Brigade Commander Shī Shìbiāo 施世驃 (son of the Shī Láng 施琅 who had taken Taiwan from Zhèng Kèshuǎng 鄭克塽 in 1683) crossed the strait, retook Tāinán in seven days from the 4th to the 11th month of 1721, and captured Zhū Yīguì shortly after; Shī Shìbiāo then died on campaign, and Lán Tíngzhēn carried through the mopping-up and the post-rebellion administrative settlement, much of it on the strength of Lán Dǐngyuán’s policy memoranda. The opening Píngtái jìlüè is the narrative; the appended Dōngzhēng jí is the working corpus of operational orders, dispatches, manifestos, and long-form policy memoranda from the campaign. Compilation: the jìlüè itself is dated by self-preface to Yōngzhèng rénzǐ (1732); the Dōngzhēng jí materials are from 1721–1723; the engraving was supervised in Yōngzhèng rénzǐ (1732) at Guǎngzhōu by Wáng Zhěfǔ 王者輔, with Lán Tíngzhēn’s older preface of Kāngxī rényín (1722) carried over.

Tiyao

The Píngtái jìlüè in 1 juǎn, with the appended Dōngzhēng jí in 6 juǎn, was composed by Lán Dǐngyuán of our (Qīng) dynasty. Dǐngyuán, zì Yùlín, hào Lùzhōu, was a man of Zhāngpǔ; rose, by way of gòngshēng, to Prefect of Guǎngzhōu. — The work records the pacification of the rebellious Taiwan rebel Zhū Yīguì in xīnchǒu of Kāngxī (1721); from the 4th month of that year to the 4th month of Yōngzhèng 1 — two years’ affairs in all. Before it stands a self-preface, which says that there had been a Shìjìng tái shílù 市靖臺實錄 in circulation, which the author regretted as not having been written from first-hand experience and observation; that its author had got the materials by hearsay; that the place, the people, the time, and the matters were many of them confused and erroneous; and that he had therefore composed this account in detail of what had actually happened. — Dǐngyuán’s elder brother Tíngzhēn was at the time Provincial Commander of Nán’ào 南澳; with the Fújiàn Naval Brigade Commander Shī Shìbiāo, he combined forces and pressed the attack; in seven days they recovered Taiwan, soon thereafter capturing Yīguì. Shortly afterwards Shìbiāo died on campaign; subsequent residual outbreaks were all put down by Tíngzhēn’s pacification-and-extermination, who personally directed the shànhòu (post-affairs) settlement, much of which was according to his proposals. — Dǐngyuán was in Tíngzhēn’s camp throughout, and saw all things one by one, so the chronicle is the most exhaustive. His narrative of merit and crime carries no avoidance or taboo, much spoken-of as straight-brushed. His discussion of the Bànxiàn 半線 corridor — terrain difficult, garrisons few, hard to suppress — was followed in the eventual creation of Zhānghuà county, which has stood the test of subsequent events and has continued to anchor the dynasty’s control. The work may be called of usable substance: not paper-on-paper soldiering. — The Dōngzhēng jí in 6 juǎn is wholly the documents of the prosecution: official dispatches, manifestos, and orders. Although signed by Tíngzhēn, the prose is all Dǐngyuán’s. The older edition went separately; the present compilation has it appended after, that the source-and-end of the affair may corroborate one another the more clearly. — In the 6th juǎn there are seven pieces on terrain (jìdìxíng 紀地形); in matters of mountain-and-river strategic disposition this is most exact, and the work is rich in support for further investigation. — In Yōngzhèng rénzǐ (1732) Dǐngyuán was lodging at Guǎngzhōu; the engraving was first cut there. Wáng Zhěfǔ of Tiāncháng 天長 wrote a preface; together with Tíngzhēn’s older preface of Kāngxī rényín (1722), which says that of the kě cún zhě (worth-keeping) materials a hundred pieces were chosen, but the present cutting has only sixty pieces — Dǐngyuán having further pruned the rest, retaining only the most essential. — Reverently collated, Qiánlóng 46 (1781), 11th month. Chief compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Senior collator: Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

Lán Dǐngyuán’s Píngtái jìlüè is the principal contemporary documentary source on the Zhū Yīguì rising and the early-Qing reconstruction of Taiwan administration. The campaign itself was over in seven days of Strait crossing and battle (Lán Tíngzhēn’s force took Tāinán by 7 May 1721 in our calendar); the larger story is the shànhòu settlement: the establishment of Zhānghuà 彰化 as a fourth county to control the central plain (1723), the reorganisation of the local garrison structure, the formal extension of mainland-style administration to the central highlands. Most of the policy proposals of Lán Tíngzhēn — and so of Lán Dǐngyuán, his policy author — date from this aftermath. The 6-juǎn Dōngzhēng jí is the complementary document-corpus: orders to garrisons, manifestos to settlers, terrain-survey memoranda. Wilkinson cites the closing volume of the work for its statement of historiographical principle (Lùzhōu chūjí 1, quoted at Wilkinson p. 40767): “What historians attach importance to is praise and blame of what is right and wrong, not just recording events and words” — a sentence that has been read as a self-conscious framing of Lán’s own Píngtái jìlüè method.

The work is the principal early-Qing settler-administrator’s account of the eighteenth-century Qing-era reconstruction of Taiwan, and a major source for the development of Qing Taiwan policy that runs through to the Lín Shuǎngwén affair seventy years later (cf. KR2c0017). For the standard scholarly treatment in English see Shepherd 1993 and Teng 2004.

Translations and research

• Píngtái jìlüè and Dōngzhēng jí. Punctuated edition: Tāiwān wénxiàn cóngkān 臺灣文獻叢刊 series, no. 14 (Tāinán: Tāiwān yínháng jīngjì yánjiūshì 臺灣銀行經濟研究室, 1958), with later reprints.
• Shepherd, John Robert. 1993. Statecraft and Political Economy on the Taiwan Frontier, 1600–1800. Stanford: Stanford University Press. (Uses the Píngtái jìlüè extensively for the post-1721 frontier policy.)
• Teng, Emma Jinhua. 2004. Taiwan’s Imagined Geography: Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683–1895. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Asia Center. (Treats Lán Dǐngyuán’s place in the Qing colonial-cultural project.)
• Hummel, Eminent Chinese, biographies of Lán Tíngzhēn, Lán Dǐngyuán, Shī Shìbiāo, Zhū Yīguì.
• Wilkinson, Chinese History, p. 40767 (citing the Lùzhōu chūjí on the historian’s task); ch. 50 (placing the Píngtái jìlüè as a privately-produced jìlüè).

Other points of interest

Although classified by the Sìkù compilers under the jìshì běnmò division alongside the imperially commissioned fānglüè, this work is not an imperial fānglüè: it is a private-staff campaign memoir by a senior secretary in his commander-brother’s headquarters, written from a settler-administrator’s perspective and dating from immediately after the events. It is therefore one of the more candid source-texts in the division — Lán’s tendency, noted by the Sìkù compilers, to “no avoidance or taboo” in the assigning of gōng zuì (merit and fault) is in marked contrast to the fānglüè that surround it.

Links

• Wikipedia: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/平臺紀略
• Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11106912