Free Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 by Philip A. Kuhn Page A

palace coups, no praetorian juntas, but instead large scale military campaigning. All conquest regimes were, by their
nature, military impositions upon the nation. For the Ch'ing, as for
their Mongol forerunners of the thirteenth century, this imposition
was complicated by the conquerors' alien culture. However cunningly
the conquerors might frame the rhetoric of succession (a virtuous
regime replacing a corrupt one was the conventional rhetoric of the
Mandate of Heaven), there was always the danger that the symbolism
of legitimate rule might be challenged by ugly ethnic feelings: the
claim that these rulers were usurpers precisely because they were
outsiders. It was such a possibility that kept Ch'ing rulers alert against
sedition. But the terms in which the Throne confronted sedition
evolved with the times.

    By Hungli's time the full ornamentation of the universal empire
seemed firmly in place. Here was no raw victor-vanquished relationship, but one in which sedition could plausibly be confronted in
conventional terms: a legitimate and virtuous Confucian monarchy,
worthily graced by Heaven's Mandate, confronting perverse and
degenerate plotters. How far beneath the surface lay the old ethnic
hostility, we can never determine. Yet to understand the events of
1768, when the crudely ethnic issue of headdress came back into
prominence, we shall have to sample the atmosphere of the early
conquest years, when the issue was very much alive. The macabre
tonsure cases of the early Ch'ing suggest what dark surmises may
have hidden behind the imperial smile.
    Retrospective: The Conquest Years
    While combat still echoed through the Yangtze Valley, the newly
installed Manchu court was already preparing, in 1645, to forge
chains between victors and vanquished. The young emperor, Fulin,
was but nine years old and wholly dominated by his uncle, the regent
Dorgon. Although Dorgon was a skillful cultivator of Han support,
in this matter he was implacable: the sign of unconditional submission
would be a simple, visible hallmark of Manchu culture, the shaved
forehead in front and braided queue in back.,
    The tonsure decree. Even before the Manchu armies had entered the
Great Wall, Chinese who surrendered to them had to signify submission by adopting the Manchu headdress. Accounts of the conquest
generally emphasize the shaved forehead as the indispensable sign
of surrender. Dorgon's determination to enforce the Manchu tonsure on everyone was evident from the day he entered Peking (June 5,
1644). During the conquest of the South, headdress became the
rallying point of a desperate Chinese resistance and certainly made
the Manchu takeover many times bloodier than it would otherwise
have been. Nevertheless, for the first year after the conquest of
Peking, Dorgon wavered about enforcing the headdress even at
court. At last, however, he issued the requirement as a formal statement through the agencies of civil government.'

    The origin of the tonsure decree was Dorgen's exasperation at
court officials' simpering objections to the Manchu headdress by
appealing to the "System of Rites and Music" (the mandated ceremonials) of the defeated Ming Dynasty. Notwithstanding that Ming
institutions would undergird the reconstituted imperial government
after the conquest, Dorgon would brook no sneers at Manchu customs. Such talk was "highly improper ... does our Dynasty not have
a System of Rites and Music? If officials say that people should not
respect our Rites and Music, but rather follow those of the Ming,
what can be their true intentions?" When it came to the shaved
forehead, Dorgon conceded that there might be some justifiable Confucian objection that because a man's body was inherited from his
parents it ought not be violated. "But instead we hear this incessant
`Rites and Music' rubbish. I have hitherto loved and pitied the [Han]
officialdom, allowing them to follow their own preference [in matters
of