Elite Strategies for Big Shocks: The Case of the Fall of the Ming

Carol H. Shiue and Wolfgang Keller

No 33121, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper documents persistence in the power of elite families in Central China despite dynastic change. We study the impact of the fall of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) on couples and their descendants (treatment of people), and present evidence on the response of multigenerational family lines to a big shock. Local Ming elites suffered a decline in influence in the short run, but in the long-run their descendants recovered and tightened their grip on power in their role as the elites of the new Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). In contrast to the recovery of family lines, the fall of Ming had a more persistently negative impact on the regions that historically were most strongly negatively affected by the shock (treatment of regions). The paper suggests that the elite reversal is due to trauma caused by Ming destruction that shifted norms towards the most socially respectable career paths based on the civil service exam; these norms were, to a greater degree, intergenerationally transmitted in family lines that suffered more from the destruction in the fall of the Ming dynasty.

JEL-codes: N35 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-edu, nep-his, nep-lab and nep-ure
Note: CH DAE POL
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