12. Sources for the Qing Dynasty
See also:
a. Provincial regulations:
d. Administrative punishments statutes [chu fen ze li 處 分 則 例]
Read:
The most important change in this system occurred between 1700 and 1750 when the Grand Council [Jun ji chu 軍 機 處] replaced the Grand Secretariat as the highest decision making body below the emperor, and when secret memorials to the emperor gradually reduced further the role of the Grand Secretariat. Grand Secretariat materials in Taiwan are housed at Academia Sinica. Many have been cataloged, some are published, and available to scholars. Grand Council materials in Taiwan are at the National Palace Museum. They are being cataloged, published, and are open to foreign scholars. The Palace Museum in Taiwan has recently expanded its archive building for Qing documents, and the Ming-Qing Archives at Academia Sinica, Taiwan, founded by Chang Wejen, has issued many important collections. For the Academia Sinica, Taiwan, collection, see Catalog of the Qing Grand Secretariat Archives, Nei ge 內 閣].
A great deal of central government records survive in China. There is a Ming-Qing Archives Office at the western part [Xi hua men 西 華 門] of the National Palace Museum in Peking, and articles have appeared based on Grand Council type documents. For introduction to the materials there and elsewhere, see:
Check: Herbert A. Giles, A Catalog of the Wade Collection of Chinese and Manchu Books in the library of the University of Cambridge. Cambridge: University Press, 1898.
Vitually every edict issued in response to a memorial (as most were) contains a summary of that memorial. In the absense of the original memorial, an edict summary can be useful.
Some GC documents were published in the 1930s by the Palace Museum in Gu gong zhou kan 故 宮 周 刊, e.g., 1813 uprising, Ho-shen case.
Unpublished materials, possibly those cataloged, are in crates at the Academia Sinica, Taiwan. At present no one can use them. Many of these are gradually being scanned and catalogued in a searchable database, which can be viewed in the Fu Ssu-nien library of the Institute for History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taipei.
Researchers preparing to use Qing archives in either Beijing or Taibei for the first time would do well to consult publications of archival materials that give a sense of the different conventions for different documents (esp. for the Grand Council archives). The National Palace Museum has published a number of collections of archival materials related to the history of Taiwan that allow one to get a sense of the document types. See, for example Hong Anquan 洪安全 ed. Qing gong ting ji dang Taiwan shi liao 清宮庭寄檔臺灣史料 . Taibei: National Palace Museum, 1998.
The Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, has been publishing the Tsung-li Yamen archives on affairs involving missionaries and Christians. These include both memorials and edicts, and will ultimately cover 1860-1911. See Charles Litzinger, "Bibliographical and Research Note," Ch'ing-shi wen-t'i 3:1 (1974) : 95-99. An excellent source.