My research

[benlehman]

I'm researching a very interesting text right now. Well, not interesting in its contents so much as the things that it could be used for. It's called the Suishoudengjidang (roughly: file registry of things that passed through our hands -- it sounds better in Chinese). It's a record of all incoming and outgoing communication from the Grand Council, a group that advised the Emperor and basically acted as the nerve center of the Qing empire. Every single piece of communication is logged with a summary, date, imperial comments (if any) and various other bits of data. In all, it amounts to a huge amount of data about the internal functioning of one of the largest and longest lived governments in the world.

I'm hoping to do some basic mathematical analysis on it, looking at things like "does the volume of bureaucracy grow over time and, if so, how much?" or "do crises create more or less communication with the capitol?"

I think that there are pretty interesting implications for modern governments, as well.

Comments

[gbsteve.livejournal.com]

That sounds very interesting indeed. Do you have a translation of it?

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

No. It's not likely to be translated, either, as it's a rather dense text (like most registries) and most people who even know it exists can already read it in its original language. It's also huge. I'm working with a 30 year span, which is contained in a 46-volume set, with each volume clocking in at several hundred pages. The whole thing (mid-18th century to late 19th) is probably 5x that length.

I may fully translate a few of the summaries in the course of my research, in which case I'll probably post them. They'll be boring, though (Gov. Yutai thanks the emperor for his appointment. Gov. Yutai is inspecting the grain silos in Jiangsu. That sort of thing.) I find the text exciting more in aggregate (the wealth of data available) than individually (which is about as interesting as government paperwork throughout the world.)

[gbsteve.livejournal.com]

I thought it might make an interesting document on which to base a game. I'm not quite sure how though but the entries seem to make up one side of a greater story that could be expanded upon by the players.

But that aside, as a civil servant and an operational researcher, I'm interested in the question as to how many civil servants you need for the proper functioning of government. I wonder if there are any equivalent documents in English.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Huh.

That's an interesting idea. A game about the Qing period based on memorial summaries as a situation root? Huh.

yrs--
--Ben

[summercomfort]

Haha. YES THIS. Memorials are so impressively awesome/trivial because it reminds me that the past is full of functioning boringness. It's not just the "Best of" that we usually get when discussing history.

[kitsuchan.livejournal.com]

I think that's one reason why our professor had us pick a year and then look up all the edicts that were issued on our birthday of that year. You really get a sense of all the random trivial business from that year. The Qing bureaucracy was really kind of amazing.

[metalfatigue]

That sounds like a fascinating bit of cliometry. Keep us informed.

[platonic1.livejournal.com]

As a sometime database geek... your reasearch sounds Awesome! I am cowed. I'll go back to analysing the outcomes of my Race for the Galaxy games now.