Qing Dynasty Memorial Archives

Qing Dynasty Memorial Archives has a broadly inclusive content, which is not limited to a single geographic location, and encompasses both public affairs and private morality. In this, the archives offer scholars a very rich and direct set of historical sources for the Qing Dynasty. The database is currently comprised of sources from two important categories, economic records of finance and taxation, and criminal cases. Historical sources pertaining to finance and taxation can be further divided according to the attribution of responsibility into inner and outer court: outer court records include Qing Dynasty imperial prescripts, memorials, and financial administration, the annotated catalog of the register of official salaries, routine memorials of the grand secretariat, Board of Revenue; tax brackets and salt production. The inner court sources are comprised of the Full-Text Archive of the Imperial Workshop of the Imperial Household Department, Full-text Archive of the Imperial Household Department Financial Reports, Imperial Household Department routine memorials. The criminal case section includes the Catalog of the Board of Punishments Routine Memorials, and the Catalog of Chinese Yellow Registers of the Archives of the Grand Secretariat.

The Archive of Finance and Taxation presents a social slice of several hundred years of the Qing Dynasty. Within the archive, the Imperial Household Department record of accounts provides a firsthand portrait of life in the imperial household. The documents in criminal cases cover legal precedents throughout Qing Dynasty history and allow us to catch a glimpse of the actual conditions of their time. The various memorial archives offer a faithful record of how successive generations of Qing court rulers and ministers both handled the country’s court politics and major social events and discoursed on them. It could be said that these are extremely valuable original documents. Following the digitalization of these important holdings, users can avail themselves of a more convenient method to accurately search for the information they need.

(From the original website)