Tag: cged-q

New paper on nominative linkage in the CGED-Q in Historical Life Course Studies

Cameron Campbell and Bijia Chen published a paper “Nominative Linkage of Records of Officials in the China Government Employee Dataset-Qing (CGED-Q)” in Historical Life Course Studies. It shares their experience with nominative linkage in the CGED-Q. It is  intended to be useful to others who are engaged in large-scale, automated nominative linkage (disambiguation) of individuals in historical Chinese-language sources.

While the approach that they arrived at after many iterations may be specific to the CGED-Q and its contents, the summary of the challenges will be of broader interest, and the methods should at least be a roadmap for others with related projects. Major issues the paper documents and then addresses include the use of variant orthographies for the same character in different editions or sources, replacement of characters with ones that look similar but are actually completely different, replacement of characters with homophones, inconsistencies in the writing of the names of counties, and changes in boundaries that led the same county to be associated with different provinces in different sources or editions.

The complete tabulations that are the basis of the tables in the paper are also available. These include the frequencies of surnames and given names in the CGED-Q JSL, and the frequencies of discordance across record of the same individual in the recording of surnames, characters in given names, and place of origin. The tabulations can be downloaded at the HKUST and Harvard Dataspaces:

https://dataspace.hkust.edu.hk/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.14711/dataset/M8HQEA

https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/4OSP8V

Those not specifically interested in linkage may still be interested in the tabulations of surnames and characters in given names.

ERRATA

Footnote 21 on page 245 states that “Huguang湖廣” refers to “Hunan and Guangdong”. Ma Ziyao has written to point out that “In most cases, however, it has been a legacy term for Hubei and Hunan. The “guang” here originally comes from Guangxi during the Yuan but should not be mistaken for the Qing-era Liangguang兩廣 region to the south of Hunan.” We are grateful to Ma Ziyao for bringing this to our attention.

Xue Qin publishes lead-authored article on officials in the Ministry of Personnel in the late Qing using the CGED-Q

Xue Qin published a lead-authored article on officials in the Ministry of Personnel in the late Qing that uses the CGED-Q. The title of the article is 清季改革视阈下吏部官员群体的人事递嬗与结构变迁(1898—1911）——以《缙绅录》数据库为中心 Change and Constancy: The Personnel Evolution and Structural Change of the Ministry of Personnel during the Reform in Qing Dynasty —— Based on China Government Employee Database – Qing (CGED-Q). The article appeared in 社会科学研究 (Social Science Research). Cameron Campbell was the second author.

Here is the Chinese language abstract:

吏部是传统政治体制下的重要行政部门之一。自戊戌变法起至清末新政，官制改革使官员的人事嬗递与群体构成发生了整体性的重大变化。然而，从《缙绅录》记载来看，进士和举人在吏部的任职和仕途变化与官制改革前相比变化较小，这与其他新设部门的官员群体有着明显差异。这一方面体现了清代的官员群体构成和官员迁转秩序具有一定稳定性，改革在较短时间内难以彻底改变固有结构;另一方面也凸显了自上而下的改革没有使清廷走出传统的制度困境。缓滞的改革措施和不尽如民意的改革效果，成为清廷统治陷入困局的重要原因。

Complete reference:

薛勤 (Xue Qin) and 康文林 (Cameron Campbell). 2022. 清季改革视阈下吏部官员群体的人事递嬗与结构变迁(1898—1911）——以《缙绅录》数据库为中心 Change and Constancy: The Personnel Evolution and Structural Change of the Ministry of Personnel during the Reform in Qing Dynasty  —— Based on China Government Employee Database – Qing (CGED-Q). 社会科学研究 (Social Science Research). 2(259):173-182.

Congratulations Xue Qin!

 

CGED-Q Jinshenlu 1850-1864 Public Release now available

We just made available for download the China Government Employee Database-Qing (CGED-Q) Jinshenlu 1850-1864 Public Release.This release consists of 341,092 quarterly records of 37,632 (by our linkage) officials who served between 1850 to 1864. The information is drawn from 26 quarterly editions.

We chose 1850-1864 as the next period for a release since it includes the Taiping Rebellion, a major event in 19th century Qing history.

Each record includes information about the post, and if it was occupied, the holder, including their name, province and county of origin, qualification, and other information.

Together with our previous release of 686,945 records for the period 1900-1912, we have now released publicly more than 1,000,000 records from the CGED-Q.

The 1850-1864 and 1900-1912 releases may be downloaded at the HKUST Dataspace, the Harvard Dataverse, and the mirror site at Renmin University Institute for Qing History:

HKUST Dataspace

https://dataspace.ust.hk/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.14711/dataset/E9GKRS

Harvard Dataverse

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/GMQWVZ

Renmin University Institute for Qing History

http://39.96.59.69/DownloadFile/DLFile

 

Major phase of data entry for the China Government Employee Database-Qing Jinshenlu (CGED-Q JSL) completed

In November 2021, our coders completed the entry of virtually all the quarterly editions of the rosters of Qing civil officials 縉紳錄 and military officials 中樞備覧 available to the Lee-Campbell Group, including all the editions from the published Tsinghua University Library collection and other editions from  the Columbia University and Harvard University libraries, as well as the National Library and Shanghai Library. We are grateful to the staff of all these libraries, in particular the Columbia University Library, for their cooperation in making their library holdings available.  We have also located a number of other editions in the Peking University library and the Palace Museum Library, but do not yet have access to these data.  We are not aware of any other readily accessible editions in other collections.

The CGED-Q JSL now consists of 4,433,600 records of 327,618 officials for the period between 1760 and 1912. 3,843,644 are records of civil offices in editions of the jinshenlu and 589,956 are records of military offices in editions of the zhongshubeilan. The data are most complete for the period 1830 to 1912. According to our analysis based on our most recent record linkage, of these officials, 261,451 were civil officials, 58,482 were military officials, and 7,685 made appearances as both civil and military officials. Please note that since these counts of numbers of officials are based on record linkage, they may change as we adjust our nominative linkage procedures.

Figure 1 (below) summarizes the coverage of the entered 縉紳錄 editions by decade (black bar) and compares it to the potential coverage if all the editions in different collections were entered. In the 1840s, and then from 1870 to 1912, we have entered at least one edition per year. In the 1830s, and then from 1850 to 1869, we have at least one edition entered for 9 out of 10 years in each decade. Between 1800 and 1830, the coverage of our entered data is spottier. We have at least one edition in 7 out of 10 years in the 1800s, 4 out of 10 years in the 1810s, and 6 out of 10 years in the 1820. From 1760 to 1800, our coverage is less complete, with at least one edition entered every 2 to 4 years per decade.

Figure 1. Entered and Available Editions

Based on our review of the catalogs of other collections, it should still be possible to improve coverage of the last half of the 18th century and first half of the 19th century. The heights of the green bars represent the numbers of years for which at least one edition appears to exist in other collections. Most of these are in the Peking University Library and the Palace Museum. We hope very much to gain access to these collections at some point in the future.

Figure 2 presents a more detailed view of the coverage of the editions so far. From about 1865 onward, we have 3 or 4 editions per year entered all the way to 1911. From 1830 to 1865 or so, we have at least one or two editions per year entered, except for one year each in the 1850s and 1860s where we have no editions at all. Before 1830, it is more common to have one or two editions entered, or none at all.

Figure 2. Entered editions by year

For more details about the CGED, please see the project page.

Addendum – 30 April 2022

Since November 2021, we found five more editions that had been entered but not added to our central work file. This post and the content of related pages has been accordingly updated.

CGED-Q Jinshenlu 1900-1912 Public Release Tabulation and Visualization Platform

Charlie Liu, an undergraduate in the Quantitative Social Analysis program at HKUST, created a platform for producing tabulations and visualizations with the CGED-Q Jinshenlu 1900-1912 Public Release. At the platform, users can explore the contents of the publicly released CGED-Q  for the period 1900-1912 without having to download data and open it in a statistical package in R or Stata. Among the available variables are province and county of origin, location of current post, Banner status, and exam or purchase degree (出身). Here is the CGED-Q tabulation and visualization platform.

Our CGED-Q project page has more information about the CGED-Q itself, including links to sites where advanced users can download the data to be analyzed in a statistical package like R or Stata. These sites also include documentation.

As a reminder, if you’re looking for a specific official, the entire CGED-Q is searchable via this platform, originally created by Fi Siwei and housed on a server by the HKUST VisGroup.

 

New Lee-Campbell Group Dataverse at Harvard Dataverse, with CGED-Q Jinshenlu 1900-1912 Public Release

We have created a Lee-Campbell Group Dataverse at Harvard Dataverse to host the CGED-Q Jinshenlu 1900-1912 Public Release and future publicly releases. This will complement the sites that already host our public data at the HKUST Dataspace and the Renmin University Institute of Qing History. We hope that this will facilitate access to the data by users in North America and also increase the visibility of the publicly released data.

Lee-Campbell Group Dataverse at Harvard Dataverse

CGED-Q Jinshenlu 1900-1912 Public Release at Harvard Dataverse

Data will continue to be available at the existing sites. Please see the CGED-Q page for links.

Cameron Campbell’s 2020 paper on exam degree holders at the end of the Qing mentioned in 2020年历史学研究发展报告

Cameron Campbell’s 2020 paper in 社会科学辑刊 on the careers of exam degree holders at the end of the Qing was mentioned in a year-end report on the development of the discipline of history in 2020 (2020年历史学研究发展报告) published at China Social Science News (中国社会科学网), which is the official media platform of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (中国社会科学院). It was one of six papers listed in the section on Modern Chinese History and National History (中国近代史, 国史研究) subsection on National Governance (聚焦国家治理).

Paper on CGED-Q visualization in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics by Bijia Chen, Cameron Campbell and others

Overview of CareerLens

Bijia Chen and Cameron Campbell were co-authors on a paper titled “Interactive Visual Exploration of Longitudinal Historical Career Mobility Data” that just appeared in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics that introduces CareerLens, a visualization platform for exploring the careers of officials and their social networks in the China Government Employee Dataset-Qing. The lead author, Yifang Wang, is a PhD student of Professor Huamin Qu, a colleague in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at HKUST whose research focuses on visualization and graphics. Other co-authors include Professor Qu and members of his VisLab group.

Here is a link to the paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9382844

Wang Yifang’s website has a page about the paper that includes a downloadable PDF, for those of you who can’t access it from the IEEE website.

An example of the CareerLens interface

 

And the abstract…

Abstract: The increased availability of quantitative historical datasets has provided new research opportunities for multiple disciplines in social science. In this paper, we work closely with the constructors of a new dataset, CGED-Q (China Government Employee Database-Qing), that records the career trajectories of over 340,000 government officials in the Qing bureaucracy in China from 1760 to 1912. We use these data to study career mobility from a historical perspective and understand social mobility and inequality. However, existing statistical approaches are inadequate for analyzing career mobility in this historical dataset with its fine-grained attributes and long time span, since they are mostly hypothesis-driven and require substantial effort. We propose CareerLens, an interactive visual analytics system for assisting experts in exploring, understanding, and reasoning from historical career data. With CareerLens, experts examine mobility patterns in three levels-of-detail, namely, the macro-level providing a summary of overall mobility, the meso-level extracting latent group mobility patterns, and the micro-level revealing social relationships of individuals. We demonstrate the effectiveness and usability of CareerLens through two case studies and receive encouraging feedback from follow-up interviews with domain experts

New paper on prefects during the Qing using the CGED-Q

Hu Heng at the Institute of Qing History at Renmin University just published a paper on the appointment of prefects during the Qing, with Bijia Chen and me as second and third authors. The paper makes use of spatial data as well as the government ratings of prefectures that determined who controlled the appointment of their prefects, and makes use of the CGED-Q to examine the qualifications, and previous and subsequent appointments of prefects. The paper is available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.6743%2fNAJ.202008_37.0009 Here is the abstract:
Prefects played an essential role in the system of local government during the Qing dynasty. Examining the process by which they were appointed, including exceptions and variations, sheds light on the governing strategies of the Qing state. We conduct spatial and quantitative analysis of the appointment of prefects based on the most recent data on the government’s ratings of the significance and difficulty (chongfanpinan and quefen) for each prefecture. The results reveal the importance of the process of appointment of variations across prefectures in transportation, government affairs, revenue collection, and public security. They collectively determined who had the authority to appoint the prefect for a prefecture: the Emperor (gingzhi que), the Board of Personnel (buxuan que), or the Governor-General (tidiao que). Appointments by the Emperor accounted for 48.3 percent of prefectures. These were in the most important regions of the country. Appointments by the Governor-General accounted for 26.1 percent of prefectures. At the beginning they were mainly in the regions where the Miao resided, including Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi and Hunan. Later, some prefectures on the provincial boundaries were also included. In the late Qing, prefects in all the newly created provinces were appointed by Govermors-General. Appointments by the Board of Personnel accounted for 25.6% of prefectures and they were concentrated in areas close to the boundaries of inland provinces. The spatial distribution of the classifications generally followed the government’s assessment of the difficulties of governing various regions in China, but there were exceptions and problems like the differentiation of treatment in the Southwestern boundary regions, neglect of the change of prefectures and classifications in coastal border areas and qualification immutability. The classification of prefectures was closely related to the appointment of prefects. We analyzed the career histories of 3403 prefects recorded in 37752 entries about Qing civil servants extracted from the 3,000,000 in nearly CGED-Q database. Using STATA to categorize, summarize, correlate and track these data ,, we examine the time trends in the characteristics of prefects, including the proportions of Manchu or Han prefects and their province of origin. For the latter, we focused specifically on the increase in the number of prefects from Hunan in the late Qing period. The results of our analysis make use of new data to advance our understanding of the political geography of China in the late Qing and the Republican periods. Regarding the career transitions in the civil service, 61.9 percent of prefects were transferred from posts in the central govermment and only 35.8 percent were promoted from posts in local govermments. This undoubtedly had a negative effect on the motivation of county magistrates. Prospects for promotion for prefects was generally high: 21 percent would reach higher office. For prefects who served in prefectures categorized as most significant (zuiyao gue) and significant (vao gue), the chance of promotion was between 23.5 and 26.3 percent. Those who were prefects in provincial capitals had even higher chances of being promoted: 40.5 percent. The distribution of control over the appointment of prefects and the institutional changes over time reveal the tension and competition over power between the central and local government. In the Qing, governance at the prefectural level was characterized as ＂blocking between the upper and the lower [level of government]＂. This was partly driven by the structure of the system, according to which officials were more likely to manage other officials than govern people, and prefects were more likely to be transferred from the central government than promoted from lower levels of local government. The increased power of Governor-Generals and the prevalence of temporary appointments for prefects may have been responses to these drawbacks, but the imbalance of the distribution of power was also a challenge for the state.
胡恆(Hu Heng), 陳必佳(Bijia Chen) and 康文林(Cameron D. Campbell. 2020. 清代知府選任的空間與量化分析——以政區分等、《縉紳錄》數據庫為中心 (The Appointment of Prefects during the Qing —- A Spatial and Quantitative Analysis Focusing on the System of Administrative Division and Using the CGED-Q). 新亞學報(New Asia Journal).37(August):339-398. http://dx.doi.org/10.6743%2fNAJ.202008_37.0009