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Treason by the Book

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The story of a treason investigation in eighteenth century China might have limited reader appeal until one learns the author. Yale history professor Jonathan Spence (Mao Zedong, 1999) has rivals for the title of world's leading Chinese scholar but none for the excellence of his writing in that field.

Everyone hates paperwork except historians, and the massive archives of Imperial China contain treasures that scholars are still mining. Spence's odd but fascinating story begins in 1728 when a provincial governor receives a letter insulting the emperor. The paranoia of Stalin's Russia was nothing compared 18th century China. For a government official to accept such a treasonous message might be fatal. The frightened bureaucrat seized the messenger and quickly learned the names of those involved in composing the letter. Eagerly he poured a stream of reports to the emperor, a stream which quickly became a two way flood. More people were interrogated, more names were named. The efficient Chinese bureaucracy sent orders to every province to arrest and interrogate everyone named along with (this being China) their families. Ironically, to our eyes, none of the accused planned to harm anyone. Their offense was to spread rumors, grumble in private, or write poetry that might be interpreted as critical of the current dynasty. Imperial China was positively Orwellian in its efforts at thought control. Hundreds were arrested. Many spent years in prison including many of the suspects' bewildered wives, uncles, sons, and cousins. Careers were ruined (the provincial governor's among them). A few executions took place. Much poetry was burned. Eventually the government turned to other matters, and the investigation petered out. Only the paperwork remained.

In movies, people from the past are identical to us except for the funny clothes. In reality, their minds worked differently; they believed strange things and behaved in ways we find incomprehensible. Yet they are recognizably human. This book, like all good history, brings it all to life.

"Treason by the Book", by Yale historian Jonathan D Spence, is my early candidate for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for History. It is a slim jewel of a book about the investigation and prosecution for treason of a rustic scholar by the third emperor of the Manchu dynasty. Spence's book is so many-faceted that it is hard to summarize -- reflecting backward to the very origins of Chinese culture and forward into our own time. It sheds light on the nature of Chinese government and society in the early 18th century, relates a police-procedural story worthy of Ed MacBain, and tells the story of a book coauthored by an emperor and a traitor. "Treason by the Book is essentially a book about the power of words -- those written down and preserved and those spread by gossip and rumor that harden into myth.

The story begins in 1728 when the Governor General of a remote province is handed a letter by a stranger which contains a denunication of the Manchu emperor, Yongzheng. The writer, calling himself "Summer Calm", urges General Yue to "rise in revolt" and stop serving a "bandit ruler". "The barbarians(Manchurians) are different species from us (Chinese)...[and] should be driven out". The letter goes on to accuse the emperor of plotting against his parents, murdering several of his brothers, piling up material wealth, and living a debauched life. It praises a scholar, identified as "Master of the Eastern Sea" who has upheld the ideals of earlier times.

General Yue, though Chinese, is a loyal official of the "bandit ruler". He arrests the messenger, tortures and interrogates him to find out more about the conspiracy hinted at in the letter. His report to the emperor sets off an imperial investigation involving hundreds of officials in many provinces. Through detective work worthy of a modern police state, they net everyone connected to the messenger and, no matter how remotely, to "Summer Calm", a rural teacher whose real name in Zeng Jing. The roundup also includes the family, friends and former students of a poet-scholar name Lu Liuliang, the "Master of the Eastern Ocean" who has been dead for forty years. Not even dead poets can escape the long arm of a Chinese emperor.

One is awed by the efficiency of the Manchu emperor's administrative control over his vast country -- exercised through his Confucian-trained bureaucracy and a communication system unmatched in the west until the advent of the railroad. At about the same time Louis XIV's Intendants were just beginning to challenge the hereditary nobles for administrative control of the French provinces and the Hanoverians in Britain, a new alien dynasty like the Manchus, had no professional administrators. The British civil service, that would rule an empire greater than Yongzheng's, was a century in the future.

Under interrogation, Zeng Jing confessed that the "conspiracy" was mostly in his head, germinated by his reading of Lu Liuliang and nutured by gossip about the emperor he heard from a mysterious scholar named Wang Shu who had visited his schoolhouse six years earlier. After Zeng had been tried and convicted, the emperor decided that clearing his own reputation was a more important matter than executing a misguided slanderer. Zeng, he announced, was just a dupe of literary troublemakers like Lu Liuliang. To set record straight, the emperor published a 500 page book titled "Awakening from Delusion" Containing his own critque of the Zeng letter, an attack on the writings of Lu, and -- strangest of all -- a series of written exchanges between himself and Zeng Jing regarding the allegations of the letter. Zeng Jing confessed his errors of "understanding" abjectly, but in the process argued for land reform, more equitable distribution of wealth, and local "selection" of officals. The emperor made an enlightened argument for tolerance in a multi-ethnic nation. Both based their reasoning on the writings of Confucius and earlier scholars. Hundreds of thousands of copies of "Awakening" were printed and distributed throughout the empire together with imperial orders that it was to be read at bi-monthly public gatherings.

Neither of the principals lived to see the ironic conclusion of the decade-long affair. Nor could they have imagined that three hundred years later a "barbarian" scholar would use their story as a mirror in which his readers can study the reflection of their own times.

_Treason by the book_
jonathan spence

This book once again cements my feeling that J.Spence is the best English speaker on the History of China. The book is truely amazing.
Part of the amazement is that the topic can be worded so narrowly that you wonder how to write an essay on it, rather than a whole and interesting book.

For from the outset the book is about a note, passed from the hand of one-Zhang Xi to General Yue Zhongqi , in the city of Xi 'an, late October 1728 (western calendar of course). The emperor is Yongzheng, of the Qing dynasty, which has been in power since 1644. It is what Spence does with this event, how he unfolds and adds systematically to our knowledge of China, to our appreciation of the intricacies of Chinese society and its governance by the Manchurians, having replaced the Ming who were native Chinese, that makes this a great book. It reads like a detective novel, slowly introducing new facts as we need them, leading us by the hand to his deep and sympathic understanding of Chinese history, all the time using words and phrases that beguile and intertwine us with the unfolding events as they become real from the distant past. Spence found his calling by crossing from academic writing in his strict histories back and forth to this genre which is more accurate than historical novels yet shares in the attractiveness and readability of them. The qualities of respect for historical accuracy and a good storyteller are not commonly found inside one person's head and i am gratefully for their collusion in J.Spence for his writing makes us all much more aware and involved in the history of the Chinese.

From the last page:
"Thus it can be said that both emperors got it wrong. One emperor thought that by airing all the negative facts against himself, he could purge the record of the noxious rumors, and because of his honesty posterity would revere his name. But his people remembered the rumors and forgot the disclaimers. The second emperor thought that by destroying the book he world lay his father's ghosts to rest. But his people thought that the reason he wanted to destroy the book was because so much of what it contained was true. " pg 247

It is a good book, one of those pieces of history that in the writing and our reading of it, transcend the particular and cast light on the general condition of being human. Certainly there is much in this book particular to being Chinese in the early 1700's, much that is culture bound and as a result something i can read about but can never experience. But in sharing those particulars, Spence has shown, and often made us feel, what it means to live as human beings, striving to understand while trying to get enough to eat. Striving to honor parents, governmental authorities, Heaven itself, while exercising freedom of thought, and pushing the limits of acceptability to the greater classes to which they belong.

I put the book down with a greater respect for Confucian classics and the way they held China together for 2500 years, for the respect that the Chinese have for book knowledge, for calligraphy, for writing, for scholarship. I am left with a much better understanding of the problems of bureaucracy and governing a population of tens of millions before electronic means of communication and the instantaneousness we have come to demand and expect. All big ideas that Spence could have written a dry scholarly textbook on, say _the means of governance of China via Confucian classics and the literary bureaucracy_. but i know this imaginary book could have none of the emotional appeal and humanity that _Treason by the book_ does. Form does matter, some things do communicate better, more forcefully and easier, this book is one. So, if you have any interest in China, again J.Spence has my highest recommendation and grateful thanks.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly why this book is so arresting. Maybe it's because Mr. Spence takes the historical records from the period of the third Qing emperor of China and crafts lucid characters from them, whom we can relate to in their struggles to deal with unexpected and unwelcome situations -- we can relate to them as persons. Maybe it's the cycle of mystery and revelation that pervades the book, as the author follows only a few steps behind the imperial investigators who track down the author of a treasonous letter or the mysterious, so-called "Wang Shu", who ws the ultimate source of much of the letter's content. Maybe it's the inherent foreigness of the world the book describes -- far different from ours, with its First Amendment freedoms; in the world Spence describes, spreading critical rumors about the government can lead to any number of punishments, including being sliced to death. Maybe it's the sense of seeing an emporor do what none had done before him: enter into dialogue with a traitor and publish a book based on that correspondence. Maybe it's the sense of seeing how government worked in China almost three centuries ago -- I think you'll be surprised. Whatever the reason, this book is a good read.

Faced with treason, most absolute monarchs strike it down with a heavy blade. But though the Manchu Emperor Yongzheng was not above doing so, in one extraordinary case in 1728 he did not.

How and why this potentate struck back with scholarship instead of a sword forms the heart of Jonathan Spence's latest narrative reconstruction of incidents from Chinese history.

This incident involves a strangely incompetent would-be rebel named Zeng Jing, an obscure schoolteacher. He thinks he can overthrow Yongzheng through a mass uprising if a certain general will just give the word. After a manifesto delivered to this general brings the plot to light, careful investigation leads to the arrest of Zeng Jing and a handful of "conspirators," a deluded assortment of isolated people who have no weapons, no other followers, and no plan.

End of story? Not in Yongzheng's mind. He wants to know all about the rumors and writings that fed this manifesto. The rumors claim that whole provinces suffer under drought and flood as the emperor sits idle, that his economic policies fail, that his rule is unjust, his character dissolute. The writings, shockingly, turn out to be secret journals of a late respected Chinese scholar. As the intellectual basis of Zeng Jing's treason, the journals play the race card: Many Chinese scorn the rule of the "barbarian" Manchus.

In total control but still unsatisfied, Yongzheng wishes to refute every seditious, malicious accusation against him. For this he marshals his considerable command of facts and philosophy.

As the captured traitor is made to read the emperor's point-by-point annotation of the false manifesto, he concedes his errors and Yongzheng's wise justice. Rebel and regent then relish a debate by letter on the nature of good government. The resulting book, consisting of Zeng Jing's misunderstandings and Yongzheng's corrections, is distributed to every scholar in China. Zeng Jing's life is spared.

What? Pardon and publicize treason? Bad judgment, many officials grumble. But, Spence writes, "The idea of disclosure rather than concealment has come to fascinate Yongzheng: how much better to appear to reveal all, and then demolish the parts of the story one does not like, than to pretend nothing has happened and let the rumors build."

Spence's book presents twin feats of investigation. First, by the Chinese bureaucracy: Its agents could trace not only obscure people and rumors with little to go on, but also could "round up an entire literary tradition" to solve a political problem. (Sounds like "re-education" in Chinese communism.) Tracking the source of the rumors Zeng Jing heard to a mysterious stranger, they even dig up a corpse for proof.

Second is Spence's own scholarship. At times his book seems too detailed, but in going back through it I was hard-pressed to say what I would have left out. The Yale scholar's gift for lifting fascinating stories from great masses of documents is dazzling.

Jonathan Spence provides another brilliant piece of scholarship on Chinese history. An unquestioned authority on the subject, Spence's use of archival evidence allows him to weave an interesting and intricate web of intrigue. What may be most important about this book, as some reviewers have mentioned, is the way it illuminates the attitude of the Manchu dynasty Emperors and the historical "Chinese" way of handling governmental publicity. Spence's book is a scholarly and well-written example of larger trends in the struggle for Chinese governmental legitimacy that has relevance for today. I highly recommend this book not only for its insight into Chinese government and society but also for its entertainment value. Well worth the buy!

Treason by the Book is a fascinating look at two men, one the emperor and the other who plotted against him, that begins as a crime, turns into a dialogue between them, meanders into a mystery and ends in tragedy. This is one of the most entertaining of Jonathan D. Spence's many books on China that combines elements of good scholarship, a panorama of a time and place with an exciting story. The true joy in the story comes from the way each element of it and every discovery leads all the participants from one mystery to another. The emperor and the traitor are both interesting and well developed throughout the book and it is their dialogue and personalities that forms the basis for this wonderful read.

Treason by the Book by Jonathon Spence...slogging through the first fifty or so pages I was prepared to write a scathing two star review, but then something weird and cool happened it sucked me in. The fear of treason consumes the leadership throughout 1600's China having just recently overthrown a previously corrupted impure leadership. But who has committed this treason and how ? Treason is a sickness gripping society where words, actions, the people you associate with, even the books you read fall under the scrutiny of the authorities often consuming many innocents. Book also provides interesting insights into the power of words and ideas to influence a population and the war of propaganda waged between the "evil books" and counter propaganda created by the state. Overall, its not an easy book to read through, its' a book that requires an exercise of free thought because there are surface ideas like what happens to persons accused of treason? And then broader ideas like what happens when a culture of fear is created amid a culture of ever shifting propaganda and counter propaganda?

Rumours as a source of evil has always bedevilled mankind. As early as the 18 th-century China , 14 Dec 1728 to be precise, General Yue Zhongqi concluding his report on an interrogation of a prisoner to Emperor Yongzheng reflected on the way rumours spread in general :

One person said something ,someone else misheard it and repeated it, someone heard the new version for the first time and believed it to be true.

A good recent example , Yue observed, was the rumours swirling around that the current emperor was a heavy drinker, ... an initial statement by a senior official ...that the emperor now found wine bad for his health, had been transformed by the rumour mill into the fact that the emperor drink immoderately.

-extract from `Treason by the book' by Jonathan Spence 2001 Penguin edition page 79. An interesting read on the astonishing true story of a plot to overthrow the Manchurian Emperor in 1728. A lot of fascinating insight into the mind of a Confucian ruler.


The book is a revelation. It shows :-
a) how hardworking was Emperor Yongzheng,
b) how even in early 18th century the Chinese officials can trace a rumour to a group of prisoners in a chain gang seen on a certain road at a certain time several years earlier, and then check the files to locate and interrogate every single suspect,
c) how Emperor Yongzheng struggled with the critical questions ,"What is a good ruler? " "What is the law ?"

Yongzheng has always been overlooked by historians who highlighted the achievements of his father and his son. A book that to a certain degree redeems Yongzheng's reputation is this book.Jonathan Spence has written an outstanding history book.

Poor Emperor Yongzhang, the third emperor of the Manchu dynasty, attempting to but seemingly unable to crush unfavorable rumors. Jonathan Spence reconstructs a very short-lived attempted rebellion and its suppression or more precisely spreading of invidious rumors and their suppression. The rebellion was so short-lived that it actually was only manifest in a letter delivered from a near-do-well scholar, Zhange Xi, to the regional commander-and-chief of Sichuan province, General Yue Zangqi. The General immediately interrogates Zhang and relays the interrogation notes to the Emperor.

Dr. Spence describes the bureaucracy in the authoritarian, imperial China of the 1720s and 1730s as if he is describing a modern highly efficient totalitarian regime. He interprets the mindsets of the conspirators, the interrogators, and the bureaucrats using language and imagery that grabs and holds the reader, even one unfamiliar with China.

Two categories of relationships are explored in depth: the emperor-bureaucrat (governor, interrogator, or general) relationship and the emperor-conspirator relationship. The relationships between individual bureaucrats and conspirators are only touched upon and they do not necessarily support Spence's conclusions.