page_title: Imperial examination
section_title: West
hierarchical_section_title: Imperial examination / Influence / West
caption_attribution_description: Depicted person&#58; &#32;Voltaire&#32;– French writer, historian, and philosopher
context_page_description: Chinese imperial examinations were a civil service examination system in Imperial China for selecting candidates for the state bureaucracy. The concept of choosing bureaucrats by merit rather than birth started early in Chinese history but using written examinations as a tool of selection started in earnest during the mid-Tang dynasty. The system became dominant during the Song dynasty and lasted until it was abolished in the late Qing dynasty reforms in 1905.
  The exams served to ensure a common knowledge of writing, the classics, and literary style among state officials. This common culture helped to unify the empire and the ideal of achievement by merit gave legitimacy to imperial rule. The examination system played a significant role in tempering the power of hereditary aristocracy, military authority, and the rise of a gentry class of scholar-bureaucrats.
  Starting with the Song dynasty, the system was regularized and developed into a roughly three-tiered ladder from local to provincial to court exams. The content was narrowed and fixed on texts of Neo-Confucian orthodoxy by the Ming dynasty, during which the highest degree, the jinshi, became essential for the highest offices.
context_section_description: The imperial examination system was known to Europeans as early as 1570. It received great attention from the Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), who viewed it and its Confucian appeal to rationalism favorably in comparison to religious reliance on "apocalypse." Knowledge of Confucianism and the examination system was disseminated broadly in Europe following the Latin translation of Ricci's journal in 1614. During the 18th century, the imperial examinations were often discussed in conjunction with Confucianism, which attracted great attention from contemporary European thinkers such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Baron d'Holbach, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Friedrich Schiller. In France and Britain, Confucian ideology was used in attacking the privilege of the elite. Figures such as Voltaire claimed that the Chinese had "perfected moral science" and François Quesnay advocated an economic and political system modeled after that of the Chinese. According to Ferdinand Brunetière (1849-1906), followers of Physiocracy such as François Quesnay, whose theory of free trade was based on Chinese classical theory, were sinophiles bent on introducing "l'esprit chinois" to France. He also admits that French education was really based on Chinese literary examinations which were popularized in France by philosophers, especially Voltaire. Western perception of China in the 18th century admired the Chinese bureaucratic system as favourable over European governments for its seeming meritocracy. However those who admired China such as Christian Wolff were sometimes persecuted. In 1721 he gave a lecture at the University of Halle praising Confucianism, for which he was accused of atheism and forced to give up his position at the university.
  The earliest evidence of examinations in Europe date to 1215 or 1219 in Bologna. These were chiefly oral in the form of a question or answer, disputation, determination, defense, or public lecture. The candidate gave a public lecture of two prepared passages assigned to him from the civil or canon law, and then doctors asked him questions, or expressed objections to answers. Evidence of written examinations do not appear until 1702 at Trinity College, Cambridge. According to Sir Michael Sadler, Europe may have had written examinations since 1518 but he admits the "evidence is not very clear." In Prussia, medication examinations began in 1725. The Mathematical Tripos, founded in 1747, is commonly believed to be the first honor examination, but James Bass Mullinger considered "the candidates not having really undergone any examination whatsoever" because the qualification for a degree was merely four years of residence. France adopted the examination system in 1791 as a result of the French Revolution but it collapsed after only ten years. Germany implemented the examination system around 1800.
  Englishmen in the 18th century such as Eustace Budgell recommended imitating the Chinese examination system but the first English person to recommend competitive examinations to qualify for employment was Adam Smith in 1776. In 1838, the Congregational church missionary Walter Henry Medhurst considered the Chinese exams to be "worthy of imitating." In 1806, the British established a Civil Service College near London for training of the East India Company's administrators in India. This was based on the recommendations of British East India Company officials serving in China and had seen the Imperial examinations. This established the principle of qualification process for civil servants in England. In 1847 and 1856, Thomas Taylor Meadows strongly recommended the adoption of the Chinese principle of competitive examinations in Great Britain. Both Thomas Babington Macaulay, who was instrumental in passing the Saint Helena Act 1833, and Stafford Northcote, 1st Earl of Iddesleigh, who prepared the Northcote–Trevelyan Report that catalyzed the British civil service, were familiar with Chinese history and institutions. When the report was brought up in parliament in 1853, Lord Monteagle argued again
caption: Voltaire
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