A Clash Of Political Cultures At The Early Kangxi Court

Michael G. Chang, Department of History and Art History, George Mason University

During the 1660s and 1670s, the Kangxi emperor (b. 1654, r. 1661-1722) assumed direct rule and sought to establish and expand his imperial prerogatives. Because this entailed recruiting Han Chinese scholar-officials to service at court, many have assumed that the Kangxi emperor simply accepted and adopted of Confucian notions of imperial rulership along with its attendent institutional forms and practices. By providing a more detailed examination of interactions between the young Kangxi emperor and his advisors, this presentation will draw our attention to a much more dynamic and contentious interplay of political cultures at the early Kangxi court.