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- Vol 5 RE: Chapter 1
civil service examinationslate imperial chinaneo-confucian learningelite educationsocial mobilityexamination culturestate formationBook Evidence summaryAt a glance
Elman reconstructs the civil examination system of late imperial China using more than a thousand examination records and extensive social, political, literary, and institutional evidence from the Yuan, Ming, and Qing periods.
Key ideas
Examinations selected many officials and shaped elite education, publishing, family strategy, regional competition, cultural orthodoxy, and popular imagination. The study argues that the system established after 1370 differed substantially from earlier Tang and Song literary examinations and helped make Neo-Confucian learning authoritative in government and literati life. Although examination achievement offered a recognised route to status and created forms of geographic and social circulation, preparation required resources and networks, competition was extreme, and lineage, gender, wealth, and region structured access. The system also produced unintended cultural and political effects that outlasted its abolition in 1905.
Why it matters
Elman’s account complicates simple descriptions of examinations as either meritocratic equality or sterile memorisation by showing an evolving institution embedded in state power and social life.
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Edition abbreviations
- TE
- Teacher Edition
- PE
- Practice Edition
- RE
- Research Edition
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