Emperor Qianlong Son Of Heaven Summary

The book by Mark Elliot, Emperor Qianlong: Son of Heaven, Man of the World, reflects the important historical figure, Emperor Qianlong. During his reign between 1731-1795, there was a period of extremely rapid social, intellectual, demographic and environmental change. Elliot illustrates Qianlong complexity through this time of rapid expansion of social and environmental change, and it gives us as students of history an idea of what that time was like and how he as a person and as a powerful monarch handled this expansion.

In the first few chapters, Elliot touches on Qianlong’s early years in power, as well as his family duties that impacted not just his own family, but how it was for most families of that time in China. His family impacted his rule quite a bit and helped influence his decisions during his reign. According to Elliot, “A preoccupation with continuity

He was considered the “son of heaven,” and that was the reasoning as to why the Chinese had a booming population growth, powerful military, and a wealthy economy. He was seen as having “heavenly powers and obligation to maintain order on earth (Pélissier).” He was well respected and because of that, as well as not handing a government position to a favorite. He installed a civil service exam which was intensely competitive, and very few were chosen for government positions. The system was created for the scholar bureaucrats to help run the country, and not do anything that would work in their own favor to fit their personal agenda which is what was seen in most monarch controlled countries. However, this still gave wealthy families some advantages over the poorer ones. They had to be well educated in order to be a scholar and be schooled in calligraphy, which Qianlong was in fact, a scholar and a poet himself. Qianlong however, is famous for the censorship of the Anti-Manchu literature, which is the line that the Emperor himself was from( Elliot