3. The Rise, Decline, and Reinforcement of the Crafts in the Service of the State

Historians’ opinions are divided as to the usefulness of the classical pattern of ascent, f lourishing, decay, and decline for the structural framework of analysis of political entities. In China, this had been a time-honoured concept applied to all dynastic histories. Yet it has been criticized because it focuses too much on the central government and is therefore not able to analyze socio-economic trends over periods that span several dynasties, most prominently the ‘commercial revolutions’ in the Song and the Ming.1 Nonetheless, since dynastic power did rise, flourish, and decline, this basic pattern for the shifts in power relations is certainly applicable to the core political decision-makers. This is especially so when it is combined with a complementary perspective on local and regional elites and bureaucracies, whose influence tends to increase after the central power has passed its apex.2 Naquin and Rawski have modif ied the paradigm with regard to the most influential networks or factions in the empire. In their three-phase model, imperial princes and Manchu institutions f irst wielded the greatest political power between 1644 and the 1730s; in the second phase, between the 1730s and the 1820s, the off icial examinations for both Manchus and Chinese were the career path to highest political influence, and the most powerful institution in the central government was the Grand Council. During the third phase, lasting from 1820 to the end of the Qing dynasty, extrabureaucratic, intellectual networks and provincial administrators dominated, although at the top of the central government, Manchu control resurged.3 It was not embodied in the persons of the young or weak emperors Xianfeng, Tongzhi, Guangxu, and Puyi but by their regents: Empress Dowager Cixi, the mother of the Tongzhi and the aunt of the Guangxu emperors, Prince Gong (Yixin, 1840-1891), the brother of the Xianfeng emperor, and Zaifeng (1883-1851), the father of the last emperor Puyi. In this sense, this could be considered dynastic decline if the power of the dynasty is associated only with the influence of the emperor. However,