Lecture by: Luke Habberstad, Associate Professor of Chinese
Literature at the University of Oregon
Lecture title: "Secretive Rulers and Leaking Officials:
The Case of Early Imperial China"
From news reports we learn that the Trump administration is hyper-concerned with loyalty and the management and exchange of privileged information. Consequently, there have been many “leaks” of information to the press that the White House would prefer remained secret. In turn, this leaking has provoked even greater strictures, focus on secrecy, and threats to those who would violate the administration’s attempted stranglehold on information.
This talk will focus on similar concerns at play in the ancient Qin and Han dynasties, the first unified empires to govern China some two millennia ago. Qin and Han rulers wanted to control information, and they also developed institutions and practices to maintain secrecy and loyalty at the imperial court. At the same time, early imperial Chinese officials were just as prone to leaking as their contemporary counterparts. Eventually, leaking at the early imperial court attained a symbolic and cultural value that had little to do with the authority of emperors and everything to do with the status of an increasingly autonomous corps of officials that rulers could never fully control.