中国近古官僚制的强专制力与弱基础权力——从明末抗清中的辽东军事财政危机说起

Strong Autocratic Force and Weak Infrastructural Power of the Bureaucratic System in the 10-19th-Century China——A Topic Initiated by Liaodong Military Financial Crisis in the Late Ming Dynasty

黄仁宇在其诸多著作中当论述有关明代的官僚体制之时都存在一种论述的困境,一方面他对明代文官制的控制力有所肯定,皇权闲置之时整个国家仍能够稳定地运作;另一方面又对文官制的管理有所质疑,明代的灭亡在很大程度上是因为不能实现数目字上的管理,其中一个体现就是明末的辽东财政危机。应抛开传统的财政亡明论,从官僚制本身权力架构入手,探寻中国传统专制国家的本质。

In many of his works Ray Huang is confronted with a predicament in analyzing the bureaucracy of the Ming Dynasty: on the one hand,he affirms its control force which ensured the stable operation of the country when the imperial power stood idle,on the other hand he questions the management of the civil service system,and claims that the fall of the Ming Dynasty was largely due to the failure of management based on statistics,as indicated by the late-Ming Liaodong financial crisis.Starting from this dilemma,and discarding the traditional theory of the financial failure,this paper attempts to analyze the power structure of its bureaucratic system,and to explore the essence of the traditional authoritarian China.