Citation

Chan YK. Journal of Chinese History 2018; 2(1): 109-143.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018)

DOI

10.1017/jch.2017.14

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In late imperial China, an extremely small number of bureaucrats adopted corpse admonition (shijian) to protest with their death what they regarded as inadequacies or failings in the imperial structure. This article introduces the case of Wu Kedu , who killed himself to protest the designation, by the late Qing empress dowagers Ci'an and Cixi, of Guangxu as the emperor, and as the adopted son of Xianfeng and not as the heir to Tongzhi. The article argues that Wu Kedu's suicide, which was highly praised during and after its time, was an attempt to sway bureaucratic opinion to put a check on the arbitrary power of empress dowagers, but instead had the unintended consequence of reinforcing it. More importantly, Wu Kedu's corpse admonition was a precursor of the outpouring of voices of remonstrance over political issues at the turn of the twentieth century, leading to further development of the Chinese constitutional agenda. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017.

Language: en

Keywords

suicide; Bureaucratic protest; constitutional agenda; corpse admonition; late Qing China