User:Sol Pacificus/Notes – Tang government

The following are my notes on the government system of the Tang dynasty. Countless references are made to it and its offices throughout Assassin's Creed: Dynasty, but there is often next to no background information offered as to the duties and powers of each position. The political system of China evolved constantly throughout the millennia and even within the Tang dynasty itself, there were a confusing and complex array of changes from ruler to ruler. Sometimes, these changes were as minor as the renaming of an office, but if the renaming did not last for more than several generations, it would be a highly technical detail in the grand scheme of things and only exacerbate the confusion.

I intend this space first and foremost to be my own personal notes to keep better track of the Tang's political system and reforms as I learn more about it. Because of this, this is not necessarily meant to be a rigorously researched and exhaustive article on Tang politics. It may turn out that errors have appeared in this document, I may chance upon other interpretations that I find more convincing later, or I may look back on this years later and find that it does not quite fit the narrative I had once believed. In any case, I am keeping the notes here in case it would also prove useful for fellow editors as a guide for understanding terms and titles that appear in Dynasty. That is the secondary purpose of this page, which is why I will also be expounding on some concepts that might be more helpful to a non-Chinese audience instead. But one should also bear in mind that I am not an expert in Chinese history.

Philosophy on translations

Of particular aid here may be my translation notes since I find that many scholars tend to be inconsistent with the translation of historical Chinese titles. Take a glance at Wikipedia's article on "Translation of Han dynasty titles for an example. Often times, the most literal translation of a Chinese title may be misleading or sound awkward in English, and so scholars translate using original names that offer better clarity as to the position.

One of the Nine Ministers of the Han was 太僕 (Cantonese: taai³buk⁶), which is a name that literally means 'grand servant'. This is quite vague, so Australian sinologist Rafe de Crespigny translated it to "Minister Coachman" because it was actually the official in charge of the Emperor's stables. However, I have found that this practice has produced a wide range of varying translations. Different authors may prefer different translations that they think indicates the office's duties better, and this inconsistency has always been grating to me. Being a bilingual speaker of Chinese and English, it is far more convenient for me to memorize one name in Chinese and have the English be the closest translation. While I understand this may not be true for non-Chinese speakers, I also think that it is an additional merit that translations which are more faithful to the original name better preserves the quirks in the native form. If a name is a misnomer in the original language, I would like it to still be a misnomer when translated. This preserves and more accurately translates the nature of the name. Likewise, I cannot say that the title 'grand servant' in Chinese is any less vague or misleading than it would be in English.

We have the example of 太守 (Cantonese: taai³sau²), the title of the office in charge of a commandery during both the Han and the Tang. 太 (tai) is frequently translated into English as 'grand' while 守 (sau) means 'protect', etymologically derived from a sense of shelter. In this light, I believe that it would best literally be translated into something like 'grand protector', but I have never encountered this translation elsewhere. I surmise that it is because the title sounds a bit too fantastical and heroic in English, especially when it is only an office for a secondary-tier of administration. It can be confusing for English speakers because it ranks below the title for the provincial governor, 刺史 (Cantonese ci³si²), which is typically translated as "Inspector" but sounds higher in station than that. Hence, I almost always encounter 太守 (taisau) translated into the generic and vague word "Administrator". For my part, I prefer to keep the character of the name as it was rather than distorting it for a title that might seem to be clearer.

For this reason as well as for the sake of consistency, I opt for my own translations of the titles into English. There are also certain cases where it would be better to use the native name as a loanword rather than translating it at all, but in other cases, I do not believe this is not conducive to alleviating confusion.

Finally, I shall also note here that I will be using Cantonese as the default.

Core structure

The Tang was a monarchy, but it was neither a constitutional monarchy nor an absolute monarchy. This is in contrast to the Qin dynasty, which was perhaps the only pre-industrial example of a concerted effort to create a totalitarian regime, and the later Ming and Qing dynasties, when absolutism was institutionalized with the dissolution of the three departments. Despite a division of powers, the Tang also lacked true constitutionalism due to imperfect checks and balances.

The imperial title

The sovereign of the Tang bore the title of 皇帝 (Cantonese: wong⁴dai⁶, Mandarin: huángdì).
The consort of the sovereign bore the title 皇后 (Cantonese: wong⁴hau⁶, Mandarin: huánghòu).
This was the case throughout the entire imperial era of China.

Wongdai is almost always translated as emperor while wonghau is almost always translated as empress. In virtually all cases, this is unproblematic because with one sole exception, the wongdai was always a male while the wonghau was always a female.

This one sole exception was, of course, Wu Zetian. She took on the title of wongdai, so it is often said that she was the only "female Emperor" in Chinese history. When I first read about her in my preteens, the text even told me that she made a conscious decision to take the masculine title to emphasize and reinforce her sovereignty. This is erroneous.

Wongdai semantically is not a gendered term. It is only "gendered male" via connotation due to the history of all wongdai in history being male save one, but the title itself is semantically gender-neutral. Likewise, wonghau might also be semantically gender-neutral, but even more-so than wongdai, it came to be seen as gendered (in this case feminine) due to all wonghau in history being women. But 后 (hau), in fact, was the title borne by the Kings of the Xia, the first dynasty of China, before evolving to refer to female leaders and then finally to royal consorts, making its status as a gendered or gender-neutral word admittedly more complicated.

Regardless, wongdai cannot refer to a consort, male or female, and wonghau cannot refer to a sovereign ruler, male or female. The terms are not defined by their genders but by their status.

In contrast, the English word emperor is masculine while empress is feminine. Unlike wonghau, empress does not necessarily have to refer to a consort; it can refer to a sovereign in her own right. In English, the distinction between a monarch being the sovereign or being the spouse of the sovereign is denoted by the terms regnant and consort respectively. A sovereign queen would be a queen regnant and her king would be the king consort.

Hence, it is erroneous to describe Wu Zetian as the first "female Emperor of China", and this is a forced and clumsy way of trying to translate the Chinese imperial titles. A female emperor is an empress, regardless of whether she is the head of state or the spouse of the head of state. Neither was Wu Zetian the only female ruler in Chinese history. In particular, empress dowagers and empress consorts during the Han dynasty frequently wielded power that eclipsed that of the actual emperors. What made Wu Zetian unique was that she was the only female ruler in Chinese history to have put herself on the throne as the formal head of state, rather than ruling by seniority as the emperor's mother or from behind the throne as the emperor's consort.

In that position as head of state, it would not have made sense for her to retain the title of wonghau. It was not a matter of consciously taking on a "masculine"' title to downplay her womanhood. It was the simple matter that wongdai denoted the sovereign while wonghau meant consort. Although in Chinese, a female wongdai may be called 女皇 (neoi⁵wong⁴), adding 女 (neoi⁵, 'female') as a prefix, this is only for the sake of clarity and disambiguation as a result of the popular misconception that the term 皇帝 must refer to a man. Properly translated, Wu Zetian was the first Empress Regnant of China, not its first "female emperor", which is just an equivalent way of saying "first empress" in English.

Branches of government

The Tang government was divided into three departments and six ministries. These three departments were:

• The Department of the Central Secretariat (中書省)
  • Responsible for drafting policy and legislation
  • Headed by the Director of the Central Secretariat (中書令), which I like to shorten to Central Secretary
    • Lieutenant was the Central Secretariat Attendant-Courtier (侍郎)
• The Department of the Undersecretaries (門下省)
  • Responsible for reviewing draft policies and checking for non-compliance with protocol
  • Headed by the Attendant-at-Centre (侍中)
    • Lieutenant was the Undersecretary Attendant-Courtier (侍郎)
• The Department of State Affairs (尚書省)
  • Responsible for enacting policies and managing the six ministries
  • Headed by the Director of State Affairs (尚書令), which can also be translated as Secretary of State Affairs
    • Lieutenants were the Left and Right Deputies to the Secretary of State Affairs (左、右僕射)

The standard procedure for policy-making was:

1. The Central Secretariat introduce draft legislation
2. It is passed to the Emperor for either approval or veto
3. It is passed to to the Undersecretaries for review
4. It is then passed to the Department of State Affairs to be carried out through the relevant ministries.

Alternatively, the Emperor could be the one to initiate a decree, but theoretically, it still had to pass through the Central Secretariat and Undersecretaries before the Department of State Affairs could execute it.

Six ministries

The six ministries of the Tang were essentially equivalent to modern ministries of most governments today, albeit organized in a slightly different structure. All six ministries fell under the oversight of the Secretary of State Affairs while the heads of each ministry did not necessarily form a cabinet (or royal council). Instead, they were technically ranked lower than the heads of the three departments. Hence, whereas department today is synonymous with ministry, department referred to a higher division, a branch of government, under the Tang and Song dynasties.

The six ministries were:
1) Ministry of Personnel (吏部)

• the civil service ministry

2) Ministry of Households (戶部)

• the finance and economics ministry

3) Ministry of Rites (禮部)

• the religious and cultural ministry

4) Ministry of Troops (兵部) aka the Ministry of War (武部)

• the war & defence ministry

5) Ministry of Punishment (刑部)

• the justice ministry

6) Ministry of Works (工部)

• the engineering, craftsmanship, and infrastructure ministry

Notes to be organized

This section is just my flurry of notes off the top of my head because I fear it would take too much time to organize them neatly right now, but I am jotting them here quickly in case I forget some details and have to review later.

• 宰相 means 'prime minister' or 'chancellor'. It was an officially recognized status, but it was never a formal name for an office its own right. Depending on the dynasty, different offices may carry this status or it may exist as a sole office but officially known by a different name.
• During the Han dynasty, the Left and Right Chancellors were the two prime ministers. But during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, the Central Secretary got renamed to "Chancellor of the Right" (右相) apparently. This was one of two offices of Yang Guozhong who held the status of prime minister.
• Under the Tang dynasty, only three offices were initially seen as chancellorships: the heads of the three branches. At this point, we can use 'chancellor' and 'prime minister' as interchangeable translations. However, Emperor Taizong disliked factional fighting between the Central Secretariat and the Undersecretaries and decided that they should share the same hall and have conferences together. In practice, this merged the two branches into one chamber. Later, he also decided that he wanted more voices at these meetings, but for whatever reason, this necessitated granting officials who were not in one of the 3 chancellor offices a certification that they had "status equal to chancellors" with their lower office. This had the effect of diminishing the significance of being a chancellor, especially as titles began to be granted out spuriously, as we can see from the practice of Emperor Xuanzong. Yet certain individuals obviously wielded more influence and authority than others despite this dilution of the "chancellor" title. This is why for translation purposes, I have decided to distinguish between the 'chancellor' and the 'prime minister', a chancellor who actually is the most powerful official. So on the eve of the An Lushan Rebellion, Yang Guozhong was the prime minister though this is helped by the fact one of his two simultaneous offices was one of the original chancellorships.
• While the head of the Department of State Affairs was originally the Secretary of State Affairs, after Li Shimin acceded to the throne as Emperor Taizong, it became a vacant office. This led to the vice chairs, the Left and Right Deputies, to be the de facto heads of the department and chancellors instead. Ironically, these two offices were stripped of this status later even while other officially lesser offices were granted the certificate of "equal to chancellors".
  • When An Lushan wanted to be chancellor, it would have been a step forward had Emperor Xuanzong granted that certificate even without granting him a technical chancellor office. Intercession by Guozhong led to Lushan being given the title of Left Deputy to the Secretary of State Affairs instead. As just explained, this would have made Lushan de facto head of the three branches of government due to the vacancy of the actual Secretary of State Affairs. But it had been stripped of the 'chancellor' status and so didn't actually come out to a step forward to him. Also since Lushan was a jiedushi commanding armies on the frontier, there was no way he could have actually fulfilled the duties of this office... So. The vice chair of the department became de facto chair, but with An Lushan in the position, it was also de facto voided of its powers and duties...
• I take serious issue with the way Emperor Xuanzong handed out these high offices so frivolously, and it is hard for me to tell how much integrity these offices even had by the end of his reign. The fact that people like Yang Guozhong could simultaneously hold more than one office was also a serious problem.
• The Ministry of Personnel was named the Ministry of Culture during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong. The head of this ministry was Guozhong's other office. In this office, Guozhong would have been de jure subordinate to Lushan when Lushan was made the Left Deputy to the Secretary of State Affairs. However, Guozhong's main office was as Chancellor of the Right, heading the Central Secretariat, which of course was what made him prime minister.
• In the comic, An Lushan has heard from his spies how Guozhong refused to let him acquire "equal to chancellor" status anytime from before he arrived in Chang'an to before he has his audience with the Emperor. In the actual historical text Zizhi Tongjian, the Emperor does not consider promoting him until a few days after Lushan's arrival, neither does Guozhong intercede until then. So, Lushan historically did not hear the news from his spies by his arrival in Chang'an. The requests made by Lushan are also made successively over the course of the month whereas the comic condenses everything into one day: the day of his arrival and the almost certainly fictional Flower Banquet. It may be possible to reconcile this with the comic's condensation by having Lushan's requests all take place on the day of arrival but take over a month to be successively fulfilled (during which he could have asked again if he was so brazen) due to the bureaucratic process, paperwork and all.
• 門下省 is typically "translated" as "Chancellery" (see Wikipedia), but I think this would be confusing as hell for people because all three branches of government were led by chancellors (at least initially). The name "chancellery" implies that this was uniquely the department of the chancellor. It also has no connection with the Chinese name whatsoever, which literally translates to "department below (or at) the gate". Department at the Gate was indeed the translation I preferred throughout my high school and college years; it might not indicate what it is but neither does "Chancellery" and at least it's an actual translation rather than a misleading new name. But after I did a bit deeper research, I think that "at the gate" was being used here as a sort of metonymy for servants who were originally junior scribes or courtiers but rose in importance beyond what their name would suggest. For now, I have thus chosen the term "Undersecretary" because it's an actual English word even though it's certainly not quite the same meaning. I liked that it also mirrors that the Chinese name has the word for 'below, under'.
• The Central Secretariat, the Undersecretaries, and the Department of State Affairs may be seen as parallels of the legislature, judicial, and executive branches of government in modern politics. While this may be a simplified model that would make it easier for people to understand them, it can also be hugely misleading. There was no real checks and balances between the three departments, the Central Secretariat was not composed of elected representatives, the Undersecretaries was not a supreme court, and the heads of the ministries under the Department of State Affairs did not form a "cabinet".
• In the Jurchen Jin state, only the Department of State Affairs ("the executive branch") was retained, allowing its emperors to issue decrees that would be directly executed without being reviewed by the Central Secretariat and the Undersecretaries.
• After the Mongols conquered the Song dynasty, the Yuan similarly retained only the Central Secretariat department while abolishing the other two departments. The Central Secretariat was given direct control to govern a wide swathe of territory in the country. I have yet to read about how this exactly worked or how it could have been feasible. I surmise though that this is how the word for department in Chinese later evolved to become the current word for 'province' in the People's Republic of China (this is just my complete speculation).
• The first Ming emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang, abolished the Central Secretariat as well. This signified the complete dissolution of the three departments and six ministries system and marked China's turn to absolutism because it allowed emperors thereafter to monopolize what had been their powers to themselves.