THE REFORM OF MILITARY EDUCATION IN LATE CH'ING CHINA, 1842-1895
RICHARD J. SMITH*
Throughout much of the nineteenth century, Chinese and Westerners alike perceived the need for meaningful reform in Chinese military education. The problem could hardly be ignored, especially after the disastrous Opium War of 1839-1842. But change in this key area of late Ch'ing administration came slowly. Not only did it involve sensitive political issues, such as internal security, civil-military relations, and central versus local government responsibility; it also raised basic questions of educational policy, including the relationship between elite and popular instruction, between Confucian moral cultivation and technical specialization, and ultimately between Chinese and Western forms of civil and military knowledge. Complicating matters were the usual practical problems facing Chinese modernizers in the nineteenth century: widespread and entrenched vested interests, bureaucratic inertia, scarcity of revenue, and foreign pressure.
The Ch'ing dynasty's basic approach to military education can be seen clearly in the Ch'ing-ch'ao t'ung-chih, officially compiled during the Ch'ien-lung period: "Our Emperor, succeeding and exalting the sages, treats the selection of talents as most important. In the literary arts, elegance and refinement is the aim. In military examination, familiarity with riding and shooting is [most] important." During the Tao-kuang reign, this emphasis on technical military skills received special stress. In 1833, for example, the emperor issued an edict stating that the education of Bannermen should be in horsemanship and archery, so that they would be kept "simple and straight and not exposed to weakening [literary] influences." Similar statements abound in the dynastic record,
* Professor Smith writes: S. A. M. Adshead has recently remarked that while "China's failure to industrialize is well known, her failure to professionalize is less often commented upon." (See his review of John Fairbank et al "The I.G. in Peking" in the Journal of Asian Studies, 36.4 (August, 1977). This paper may be viewed as a brief comment on China's early effort to professionalize in military affairs.
The author is Associate Professor of History at Rice University, Houston, Texas.