China Government Employee Database – Qing (CGED-Q) 中国历史官员数据库——清代

• 想按姓名搜索特定的官員嗎？請查看我們的搜索網頁.
  Searching for a specific official by name? Please see our Jinshenlu search page. 
• Links for downloading the CGED-Q JSL 1850-1864 and 1900-1912 public releases are below.
  1850-1864, 1900-1912年公開数据下载链接在下面。
• Resources for users of the CGED-Q JSL Public Releases including sample code, recode tables, and tutorials are available at Cameron Campbell’s web page.

Introduction

In 2013, Cameron Campbell (康文林), James Lee (李中清), Yuxue Ren (任玉雪) and their collaborators initiated a new project to study Qing educational and political elites and the Qing bureaucracy by construction and analysis of a longitudinal individual-level dataset from the surviving editions of the jinshenlu (縉紳錄) and zhongshubeilan (中樞備覧). The former was a roster of nearly all regular civil offices and their holders that was produced on a quarterly basis during the late Qing, and the latter was a roster of military officials. We refer to the resulting dataset as the China Government Employee Dataset – Qing (CGED-Q) Jinshenlu (JSL). For a subset of officials who held jinshi (进士) or juren (举人) degrees and were recorded in such records of degree holders as xiangshilu (乡试绿) and tongnian chilu (同年齿录), we have constructed a dataset with family background information including names and status of father and paternal grandfather and great-grandfather, exam rank and other details that we call the CGED-Q Examination Records (ER).

Please see our 2020 Journal of Chinese History article, lead-authored by Bijia Chen, for an article-length introduction to the CGED-Q. A 2016 Qingshi Yanjiu article provides a Chinese-language introduction, based on a very early version of the dataset and an understanding of the sources that has subsequently evolved.

The China Government Employee Database – Qing Jinshenlu (CGED-Q JSL) consists of records of officials in the jinshenlu, prepared every three months by the Department of Selection (文選司) under the Ministry of Personnel (吏部) which lists almost every civil office from the central government down to low-level county administrative offices including information about the official’s name, place of origin, ethnicity, location of post, job title, and other details. Nominative linkage of the records of the same official in different editions has proven straightforward, allowing us to construct and study career histories. Each edition lists 13,000-15,000 employees. We are also entering lists of military officials from zhongshubeilan. These editions typically record 7000-8000 military officials each.

At the micro-level, we are using the CGED-Q to examine how geographic origin, mode of appointment, family background, and other characteristics of government employees during the Qing (1644-1911) dynasty influenced individual career trajectories. For mode of appointment, we distinguish officials according to whether they entered service by examination qualification, office purchase, or by virtue of hereditary affiliation with the Eight Banner system. By linkage to other sources, we also examine the role of family background and exam performance.

At the macro-level, we use the CGED-Q to examine changes over time in the composition of the bureaucracy and of specific ministries and agencies. We assess the implications of key developments during the Qing for the  structure and composition of the state. While our analysis mainly relies on traditional quantitative methods, in recent years we have been collaborating with colleagues and students in computer science on visualization and computational approaches.

Previous studies of officials and other government employees have mainly been case studies of specific individuals or government offices. Larger scale studies have focused on examination qualification holders, and assumed that they represented the political elite. Studies of the bureaucracy, or specific ministries, have generally been institutional histories. To our knowledge, this is one of the first longitudinal studies of any national bureaucracy, contemporary or modern, in its entirety, using micro-data on the careers and family and geographic origins of nearly all officials.

Starting in spring 2019, we began to make the data public in stages, in collaboration with the Institute of Qing History at Renmin University. Our first release was in 2019 and consisted of the records for civil officials who served between 1900 and 1912. Our second release was in 2021 and consisted of records for civil offices who served between 1850 and 1864. Below we provide links to download sites at HKUST, Renmin University and Harvard University Dataverse.

We have also created a website where visitors can search CGED-Q JSL records by name.  Right now it allows search by surname and given name in traditional characters. We intend this to be useful for anyone who may want to look up an ancestor’s personnel records, or for researchers who are interested in looking up the records of a specific officials. Here are more details about the search facility. Siwei Fu created the site while he was a PhD student in Computer Science at HKUST. The site is kindly hosted on a server at Professor Huamin Qu’s VisGroup.

Co-Investigators/Collaborators

• Bijia Chen 陈必佳
• Yuxue Ren 任玉雪

Current Status

The first major phase of data entry was completed in November 2021, when entry of the last of the editions obtained so far by the Lee-Campbell Group was completed. Beginning in May 2024, we started entering editions downloaded from The National Archives of Japan’s Digital Archive. The entry was completed by October 2024. As of November 2024, the CGED-Q JSL consists of 4,629,016 records of 307,569 officials for the period between 1760 and 1912. 3,899,606 are records of civil offices in editions of the jinshenlu and 729,410 are records of military offices in editions of the zhongshubeilan. The data we have entered so far spans the period between 1760 and 1912 and is most complete for the period 1830 to 1912. Through record linkage, as of November 2024 we have organized the records into career histories of 307,569 officials. 242,499 were civil officials, 57,251 were military officials, and 7,819 made appearances as both civil and military officials. The counts of officials may change if we make further adjustments to our procedures for nominative record linkage.

CGED-Q JSL

The CGED-Q JSL contains 279 jinshenlu editions and 93 zhongshubeilan editions. Of the jinshenlu editions, 167 are from the Qingdai Jinshenlu Jicheng (清代縉紳錄集成) published by Tsinghua University Library, 48 are from the Harvard-Yenching Library, 32 are from the Columbia University Library, 15 are from the National Library, 9 are shared with us by Jiang Qin, 4 are from the Shanghai Library, and 4 are from Japan’s Digital Archive. Of the zhongshubeilan editions, 32 are from the Tsinghua University Library collection, 20 are from Columbia University Library, 19 are from Harvard Yenching Library, 18 are from the Japan’s Digital Archive, 3 are from the National Library, and 1 is shared with us by Jiang Qin.

We estimate that in addition to the records that we have already entered, there are another million or so records in jinshenlu and zhongshubeilan editions in other libraries, most notably the Palace Museum and the Peking University Library. We hope in the future to gain access to these editions, which would improve our coverage of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

For additional information about the family origins and other characteristics of officials, we have constructed and linked a dataset we call the CGED-Q Exam Records (ER) that is based on lists of jinshi degreeholders recorded in the (jinshi timinglu 進士题名录), classmate books (tongnian chilu 同年齒錄),  and lists of juren degree awardees (xiangshilu 乡试录).  These sources provide names of ancestors, kin, teachers, and classmates. For ancestors, they provide examination qualifications. By linkage, we can trace whether ancestors were government employees.

CGED-Q ER

For the CGED-Q ER, as of February 2022 we have 5,724 and 26,870 tongnian chilu records of jinshi and juren and 11,990 records of other degree holders that provide family background and other information. 3,574 jinshi records were transcribed directly from huishi tongnianchilu for 15 sittings of the exam in the 19th century: 1829, 1833, 1835, 1859, 1865, 1868, 1871, 1876, 1877, 1880, 1886, 1889, 1890, and 1895. We synthesized another 2,174 by combining information about huishi exam year and performance in the jinshi timinglu with information on ancestry from their xiangshi tongnianchilu records. The xiangshi tongnianchilu are from 28 different exam years. For 13 of these exam years (1810, 1816, 1821, 1825, 1828, 1832, 1835, 1840, 1844, 1849, 1855, 1870, 1879), we located and transcribed compendium volumes listing xiangshi degree holders from all provinces. For the remaining exam years, we have entered data for subsets of provinces for which we acquired tongnianchilu.  We also have 29,971 xiangshi lu records of juren that provide exam rank and age at time of the provincial exam (xiangshi), and 27,425 jinshi timinglu records. Our collection includes tongnian chilu and xiangshilu that Huang Yifei acquired for his dissertation at Caltech and then very kindly shared with us.

CGED-Q FF

We have also entered 分发 and purchaser lists that were included in commercial editions of the Jinshenlu.   At present we have 45,337 such records. We refer to the dataset consisting of these records as CGED-Q Fenfa (CGED-Q FF).

Other Data

We have supplemented information on officials with other data from the China Biographical Database Project, with whom we are cooperating. We have also exchanged data with Professor Liu Cheng-yun and his group  at the Institute of History and Philology at the Academia Sinica.

Publicly Released Data

CGED-Q: 1900-1912 JINSHENLU Public Release

Our first release in 2019 consisted of  jinshenlu (缙绅录) records of civil officials in the Qing for the period 1900-1912 and accompanying documentation. The release consists of 638,152 records of 40,242 civil officials (based on our linkage) recorded in 43 quarterly editions.

The data in the release are as much as possible a direct transcription of the contents of the original sources. For this release, we have not attempted to ‘correct’ any mistakes or inconsistencies that were apparent in the original data since doing so would require us to introduce our assumptions. Along these lines, the release data have not been processed to reconcile differences in orthography for the same character, link individuals, and so forth. In our own analysis, we use data that we have processed extensively to resolve inconsistencies, correct problems, and link individuals across time, and in 2020 we anticipate releasing some of our constructed or transformed variables.

Please make sure to download and read carefully the README (声明) files as well as the User Guide (用户指南) along with the data. It is urgent that users understand the requirements re acknowledging the funding source that supported the creation of the database and its public release and citation of the User Guide and relevant publications. It is also urgent that users understand the known limitations and caveats regarding the data that are described in the User Guide.

We expect the documentation and possibly the data to change as mistakes or other problems come to light, so please check back on a regular basis for updates.

We conducted a workshop introducing the public release on July 19-22, 2019 at Central China Normal University in Wuhan. The workshop was attended by 34 postgraduate students from institutions outside Wuhan, 5 faculty from institutions outside Wuhan, and approximately 15 participants from Central China Normal University and other institutions in Wuhan.

CGED-Q: 1850-1864 JINSHENLU Public Release

Our second release was in January 2022. It consisted of 341,092 records of 37,632 civil officials (according to our linkage) for the period 1850-1864, drawn from 26 quarterly editions. It is available at HKUST Dataspace, Harvard Dataverse, and Renmin University Institute for Qing History mirror site via links below.

Participants at the July 2019 CGED-Q 1900-12 public release workshop at Central China Normal University.

Download 下载

Recommended citations and acknowledgments

Please remember to cite the dataset and User Guide in all outputs that make use of it as specified below, and include an acknowledgment of the funding that supported the creation of the dataset. By doing so, you will help us document the value of the dataset and documentation to the larger community, and facilitate our efforts to seek support for expansion of these datasets or construction of new ones.

If you use the CGED-Q JSL public releases for teaching, please send a copy of the syllabus to [email protected] so that we can document to our funders the use of the data in pedagogy.

Download links follow the recommended citations and funding acknowledgments.

Recommended Citation for Dataset

Campbell, Cameron Dougall; Chen, Bijia; Ren, Yuxue; Lee, James, 2019, “China Government Employee Database-Qing (CGED-Q) Jinshenlu 1900-1912 Public Release”, https://doi.org/10.14711/dataset/E9GKRS, DataSpace@HKUST, V1

Recommended Citation for User Guide 使用指南

Chinese

任玉雪, 陈必佳, 郝小雯, 康文林, 李中清. 2019. 中国历史官员量化数据库―清代缙绅录1900-1912时段用户指南.

English

Ren Yuxue, Bijia Chen, Xiaowen Hao, Cameron Campbell and James Lee. 2019. China Government Employee Dataset-Qing dynasty Jinshenlu 1900-1912 Public Release User Guide.

Recommended Funding Acknowledgment

The construction and release of the CGED-Q was supported in part by Hong Kong Research Grants Council General Research Fund grants 16601718 and 16400114 (Cameron Campbell PI) and by intramural support from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Download Sites

The CGED-Q Jinshenlu 1900-1912 and the 1850-1864 Public Releases are available for download at three different servers. Choose the one that is most convenient:

Hong Kong: HKUST Dataspace 港科大平台下载

North America: Harvard Dataverse Lee-Campbell Group Dataverse

Beijing: Renmin University (人民大学) Institute of Qing History (清史研究所) Digital Qing History Laboratory (数字清史研究室) Qing Historical Data Sharing Platform (清史数据共享平台) – Updated May 24, 2024

Resources for users of the CGED-Q Public Release

Sample code, tables for recodes, tutorials other resources are available at Cameron Campbell’s website.

Teaching

As with our other projects we will incorporate the results of our CGED-Q related research in our on-line course Understanding China, 1700-2000: A Data Analytic Approach, in this case as Part Four – Who Gets Authority.