Treason by the Book

Treason by the Book begins in 1728 when the scholar Zeng Jing attempted to persuade the Qing general Yue Zhongqi to rebel against the Yongzheng Emperor. Yue reported the approach, setting in motion an investigation that traced anti-Manchu arguments through teachers, students, prohibited writings and rumours about the emperor’s accession.

Rather than executing Zeng immediately, Yongzheng interrogated him, demanded a public recantation and published the case as an assertion of imperial legitimacy. Spence uses the surviving exchanges between emperor and officials to examine surveillance, confession, ideological control and the political use of mercy within eighteenth-century Qing government.