The imperial examination system, combined with the popularization and application of printing and the general increase of educational opportunities, contributed to the transformation of social form during the Tang and Song Dynasties. This change is manifested in the society of Song Dynasty, which is the acceleration of the vertical flow of the ruling class society. In the past, the situation that political power was monopolized by a few aristocratic families for a long time no longer existed, and scholars from imperial examinations took their place and became the core of politics, and it was often up and down, so it was not easy to form a political power that could last for hundreds of years. As important and interrelated as the imperial examination system and the vertical social mobility, there is also the influence of the imperial examination system on family organizations. The formation of the aristocratic family in the Middle Ages was maintained externally by appearance and lineage, internally by etiquette and Confucian classics, and its political status continued by the Nine-product system. The family organization of emerging scholars in Song Dynasty was closely related to the influence of imperial examination system. On this point, some scholars put forward enlightening views in special articles; Although this book also deals with some aspects of the influence of the imperial examination system on family organizations, such as the righteousness mentioned in the seventh lecture, it fails to discuss this issue as a whole.
As early as the 29th year of the Republic of China (1940), Qian Mu pointed out in Chapter 41 of the Outline of National History that after the middle of the Tang Dynasty, China had undergone two major changes, one was the economic and cultural transfer between the north and the south, and the other was the gradual decline of aristocratic families in society. It is further believed that after the decline of family status, there are three new social images: first, the spread of academic culture is more extensive, second, the liberation of political rights is more common, and third, the social class is more melted. In the fact that the liberation of political rights is more common, he said, "People who used to participate in political activities were generally hit by several clans, but now they are changing quickly and acting quickly. It is common for real white officials." 1950, Qian Mu named the society with the above characteristics after the Tang Dynasty as "Imperial Examination Society" in the article "Social Evolution of China", and said: "This society began in the Tang Dynasty and began in the Song Dynasty, and began to take shape. The central force of this society is completely pinned on the imperial examination system. " This article was later included in Qian Mu's short story A New Theory of National History.
Three years before Qian Mu wrote "The Social Evolution of China", the academic circles began to explore the vertical flow between the upper and lower classes in the Song Dynasty in a statistical way. This research direction first appeared in the United States, and the founder of American Song history research, Craig (E.
A.Kracke, Jr) published "Family and Merit among Civil Servants in China" in 1947.
The next exam
In the article "Empire", this paper uses the two admission lists of Jinshi in the Southern Song Dynasty, the 18th year of Shaoxing and the 4th year of Baodou, and counts the proportion of so-called "new blood" in these two lists. Then, in 1950, Japanese scholar Zhou Tengji made a more extensive statistics with the same data in his book Bureaucrats of the Song Dynasty. 1959, Sun Guodong, a student of Qianmu, published the article "The Disintegration of Social Clans in Tang and Song Dynasties" in Hong Kong, and compared the differences of characters' backgrounds between the middle Tang Dynasty and the Northern Song Dynasty by using the family information of the characters listed in the New Tang Dynasty, the Old Tang Dynasty and the History of Song Dynasty. 197 1 Chen Yiyan, a graduate student of the institute of political studies of Taiwan Province University of Political Science, published a part of his master's thesis "Taking Buyi as an official to analyze the social mobility of the Buyi class in the Northern Song Dynasty", and counted the background of the characters in the Biography of Song History. 1977 published a master's thesis "Study on Social Mobility of the Ruling Class in Northern Song Dynasty". Their research results generally confirm Qian Mu's views in the Outline of National History.
The China history circle in the United States is also a study of social mobility in the imperial examination era. In addition to the Song Dynasty, there is He Bingdi's study of Ming and Qing Dynasties. /kloc-in the 1950s, he analyzed the three generations of ancestors of nearly 40,000 people by using the list of scholars, juren, Gong Sheng famous books and students. He also believes that although the chances of upward mobility of civilians have gradually decreased since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, as far as the whole Ming and Qing Dynasties are concerned, his monograph "On"
The ladder of success of the Chinese empire: all aspects of social mobility,
1368-1911(On the Social History of Ming and Qing Dynasties), published in 1962. It was not until AD1980s that this view was accepted by American scholar Robert M.
Hartwell) and his student Robert P. Hymes.
The above research on social mobility in Tang and Song Dynasties pointed out that although the imperial examination system had become an important way for the government to recruit talents in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, in the middle and late Tang Dynasty, family forces still occupied an important position in politics. According to Sun Guodong's statistics, nearly seven-tenths of the characters in Old Tang Books from Tang Suzong to the end of the Tang Dynasty came from noble families and children of senior officials, and less than one-seventh of them were born in poverty. If we compare Zaifu's family background, the ratio between them is even greater (80%: 7%). After the chaos in the late Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties, the bureaucratic family in the Tang Dynasty was devastated and divorced from the political core. In the Northern Song Dynasty, a number of new scholars were active in politics. Of the more than 1000 characters in the biographies of the History of Song Dynasty, only 32 people's ten surnames originated in the Tang Dynasty. Their families either declined in the late Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties, no different from those in poverty, or moved to other places and lost their jobs. The family background of politicians in the Song Dynasty is quite different from that in the Tang Dynasty. According to Chen Yiyan's statistics, only about a quarter of the characters in the Northern Song Dynasty in the biographies of History of Song Dynasty were born in a noble family, and more than half of them were born in cloth, and with the evolution of time, the later the times, the higher the proportion of cloth. According to the origin of Zaifu, the situation is similar. In the early Northern Song Dynasty, about one-third of the cloth officials were from imperial examinations, more than three-quarters in the middle of the Northern Song Dynasty and more than four-fifths in the late Northern Song Dynasty. The influence of the imperial examination system is very obvious. Krieger pointed out that in the 18th year of Shaoxing in the Southern Song Dynasty (1 148) and the 4th year of Baoyu (1256), more than half of the three generations of scholars were not officials.
The above statistics show that in the Song Dynasty, aristocratic families could not monopolize official career as before the Tang Dynasty, and it was no longer easy for official families to maintain their official position from generation to generation, unless future generations could continue to perform well in imperial examinations from generation to generation; Buyi's way to be an official is much broader. As long as you can show your talents in the imperial examination, you will have the opportunity to enter the official career and even be promoted to a senior official. In other words, the mobility of the ruling class in the Song Dynasty was much higher than that in the Tang Dynasty. The so-called acceleration of social mobility is relative to the Tang Dynasty, and in terms of the Song Dynasty itself, social mobility still has its limitations. First, in the Song Dynasty, there was still a nepotism system on the way to the promotion of official positions. Children, relatives and even door guests of senior officials could join official positions by virtue of nepotism. Second, with the increase of population and the expansion of the gentry class, the competition of imperial examinations is becoming more and more fierce. Even if the number of people admitted to the imperial examination for the first time is close to 1000, the probability is quite small in terms of the proportion of candidates. If you want to excel in the exam, you must spend a long time preparing, not making a living. In this case, children from wealthy families are more dominant. Third, the above statistics are based on the official identity of direct ancestors such as father, grandfather and great-grandfather. However, the direct ancestor has never been an official, and there may not be other blood relatives or in-laws. If the experience of these blood relatives or in-laws can affect a person's future, then the meaning of the so-called cloth birth will be greatly reduced. This is Hao Ruobei's book Demography,
Political and social changes in China,
In the article "750- 1550", Han is studying the book Scholars and Gentlemen: the Elite of Fu in Song Dynasty in Fuzhou, Jiangxi.
Zhou, Jiangxi, in the north and south.
In Song Dynasty, there are important reasons different from Krieger and He Bingdi. Han even analyzed local elites, including officials, scholars and people without such status, from the aspects of family background and marriage relationship, and thought that there was no vertical social mobility in Song Dynasty.