Míngshǐ chāolüè cán 明史鈔略殘
Surviving Fragments of the Abridged History of the Míng by 莊廷鑨 (compiler), with team of Jiāngnán literati
About the work
The surviving fragments — seven juǎn in the SBCK edition — of the Míngshǐ chāolüè 明史鈔略 (also titled Míngshǐ jílüè 明史輯略 and Míngshū jílüè 明書輯略), the privately compiled Míng dynastic history that triggered the Míngshǐ àn 明史案 (1663) — the largest literary inquisition of the early Qīng. The work was begun by Zhū Guózhēn 朱國楨 (1558–1632) in the late Míng as a draft Míngshǐ; after Zhū’s death, his straitened family sold the manuscript to the wealthy blind Zhuāng family of Nánxún 南潯, where Zhuāng Tínglóng 莊廷鑨 commissioned a team of Jiāngnán literati to expand and complete it. The book carried the entire Míng into the Southern Míng (the Lóngwǔ 隆武, Yǒnglì 永曆 reigns) using their own regnal years rather than Qīng Shùnzhì 順治, and called the Qīng emperors before 1644 by personal name rather than imperial title. Zhuāng Tínglóng died before publication (ca. 1660); the work was issued by his father Zhuāng Yǔnchéng 莊允誠 around the same time. In 1661 it was reported to the Qīng authorities by Wú Zhīróng 吳之榮; in 1663 the Manchu court ordered the work suppressed and burned, executed about seventy persons connected with its production and circulation (including Zhuāng Tínglóng’s already-buried body, exhumed and dismembered), and exiled many more to the Nínggǔtǎ 寧古塔 Manchurian frontier. The book was thereafter under absolute proscription throughout the high Qīng. The seven juǎn preserved in the SBCK descend from a hidden manuscript that survived in private hands and was rediscovered in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century; nothing approaching the original (which would have run to perhaps 100 juǎn covering the entire Míng down to the fall of the Yǒnglì court in 1662) survives.
Tiyao
Abstract
The Míngshǐ chāolüè is significant for at least four reasons that compound: (1) as a Míng-loyalist private guóshǐ, anchored in the late-Míng draft of Zhū Guózhēn 朱國楨, it is one of the earliest synthetic histories of the Míng written from a non-Qīng viewpoint; (2) the political reaction it provoked — the so-called Zhuāngshì shǐàn 莊氏史案 of 1663 — is the founding event of the Qīng literary inquisition tradition, on the scale of which all subsequent Yōngzhèng / Qiánlóng cases (the Lǚ Liúliáng 呂留良 case, the Wáng Xīhóu zìguàn 王錫侯字貫 case) are continuations; (3) for the surviving fragments, despite their political handling, the editorial and prosaic quality is high — the team comprised most of the leading Jiāngnán historiographical talent of the late 1650s, including Lǐ Lìngzhé 李令哲 (Lǐ Tāo’s 17th-c. namesake), Yán Yúnxī 嚴雲璽, Lù Qí 陸圻, and others; and (4) as a witness to texts and reports otherwise lost in the destruction, the seven extant juǎn preserve material — particularly on the early Wàn-lì-period military operations against Hidéyoshi 豐臣秀吉 in Korea (the Bǐngshēn / Wànlì chángzhèng 萬曆朝鮮之役 of 1592–1598; SBCK juǎn 1 begins mid-action), and on the late-Míng political controversies — that supplements the standard Qīndìng Míngshǐ 欽定明史 (KR2a0026, 1739).
The dating bracket is set conservatively: the team work probably began ca. 1657 (after the manuscript transfer from the Zhū family) and was halted by Zhuāng Tínglóng’s death ca. 1660; printing followed in the same year. The full text would have run perhaps 100 juǎn; the surviving 7 juǎn are a partial witness only. Wilkinson (Chinese History, §39.11.4) treats the case as the locus classicus of Míng-loyalist gānzhī dating practice (Zhuāng having used Southern Míng reign-titles rather than Qīng Shùnzhì) and as a foundational event of Qīng literary censorship. Modern study (Méng Sēn, Lynn Struve, and Wú Yān 吳豔) has tracked the political reverberations rather than the historiographical content of the work itself, which remains under-studied in the surviving fragments.
Translations and research
- Méng Sēn 孟森. 1934. Xīn-shǐ cóng-kān 心史叢刊. Běipíng: Zhōngguó shūdiàn. The foundational Chinese-language study of the Zhuāng-shì shǐ-àn; chapters 4–5 reconstruct the affair from the Qīng shílù and the literary inquisition record.
- Struve, Lynn A. 1998. The Ming-Qing Conflict, 1619–1683: A Historiography and Source Guide. Ann Arbor: AAS. Pp. 31–34 on the Zhuāng affair; major English-language treatment.
- Wú Yān 吳豔. 2007. “Zhuāng Tínglóng Míngshǐ jílüè àn xīntàn” 莊廷鑨《明史輯略》案新探. Lìshǐ yánjiū 2007.4: 153–171.
- Hummel, Arthur W., ed. 1943–44. Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period. 2 vols. Washington: Library of Congress. Entry “Chuang T’ing-lung” (Zhuāng Tínglóng), pp. 205–206.
- Quán Zǔwàng 全祖望. Jié-qí tíng jí 鮚埼亭集 (1809), juǎn 28. Eighteenth-century Jiāngnán memorial of the affair from the Míng-loyalist tradition.
Other points of interest
The 1663 inquisition was unusually thorough: the Qīng authorities executed not only the surviving compilers but also the printers, the woodblock cutters, the booksellers who had distributed it, and even those who had purchased copies — about seventy people in all, with hundreds more enslaved or exiled. The episode is treated by Lynn Struve as the foundational event of Qīng-period literati self-censorship; the much-quoted Quán Zǔwàng phrase “the books survive but the men do not” (書存人不存) about Jiāngnán Míng-loyalist scholarship has its origin in this case. The SBCK editors’ decision to include the surviving fragments in the Sānbiān (1934–35) was itself a political act, made possible only after the Qīng-imperial proscription had lapsed with the 1911 Revolution.
The work’s survival is itself remarkable: virtually every printed copy was destroyed in 1663–1664; the seven surviving juǎn descend from one or two manuscript fragments hidden in private libraries through the high Qīng and surfacing in the late nineteenth century.