A Draft History of the Evolution of the Recommendation System

This book studies the recommendation system for selecting officials, which was established in the Han dynasty and eventually evolved into the imperial examination system in the Sui and Tang, tracing its course of change over seven or eight hundred years. The author identifies three main driving forces constraining the evolution of the recommendation system: the rational administration of bureaucracy, the distribution of privilege and power struggles under the imperial polity, and the dynamics of the knowledge group that supplied imperial officials. Through the examination and organization of a large body of historical sources, he analyzes in depth the manifestations, interrelations, and rise and fall of factors in the recommendation system such as "selecting by virtue," "selecting by ability," "selecting by literary talent," "selecting by reputation," and "selecting by clan." The book proceeds through five periods—Western and Eastern Han, Cao Wei, Western and Eastern Jin, Southern Dynasties, and Northern Dynasties: from the conflict and fusion of Confucian scholars and clerical officials and the examination-oriented experiments of the Yangjia reforms, to the late Han crisis in official selection and the prevalence of "selecting by reputation" and "selecting by clan"; then from the decline of recommendation under the nine-rank system to the revival of the examination system in the Southern Dynasties and the sprouting of "free application," and finally to the emergence of factors of the imperial examination system against the background of bureaucratic political revival in the Northern Dynasties. It thus offers a distinctive explanation of the origin and development of the recommendation system and its evolution into the imperial examination system, and is an important reference for understanding the transformation of the ancient Chinese official selection system.