Explain how civil service examinations influenced the development of a strong central government in China.

The civil service examination system, a  

method of recruiting civil officials based on  

merit rather than family or political connections, played an especially central role in  

Chinese social and intellectual life from 650  

to 1905. Passing the rigorous exams, which  

were based on classical literature and philosophy, conferred a highly sought-after status,  

and a rich literati culture in imperial China  

ensued.

Civil service examinations connected various aspects of premodern politics, society, economy,  

and intellectual life in imperial China. Local  

elites and the imperial court continually influenced the  

dynastic government to reexamine and adjust the classical curriculum and to entertain new ways to improve  

the institutional system for selecting civil officials. As a  

result, civil examinations, as a test of educational merit,  

also served to tie the dynasty and literati culture together  

bureaucratically.

Premodern civil service examinations, viewed by  

some as an obstacle to modern Chinese state- building,  

did in fact make a positive contribution to China’s emergence in the modern world. A classical education based  

on nontechnical moral and political theory was as suitable  

for selection of elites to serve the imperial state at its highest echelons as were humanism and a classical education  

that served elites in the burgeoning nation-states of early  

modern Europe. Moreover, classical examinations were

Explanation:

an effective cultural, social, political, and educational  

construction that met the needs of the dynastic bureaucracy while simultaneously supporting late imperial social structure. Elite gentry and merchant status groups  

were defined in part by examination degree credentials.

Civil service examinations by themselves were not an  

avenue for considerable social mobility, that is, they were  

not an opportunity for the vast majority of peasants and  

artisans to move from the lower classes into elite circles.  

The archives recording data from the years 1500 to 1900  

indicate that peasants, traders, and artisans, who made  

up 90 percent of the population, were not a significant  

part of the 2 to 3 million candidates who usually took the  

local biennial licensing tests . Despite this fact, a social  

byproduct of the examinations was the limited circulation in the government of lower-level elites from gentry,  

military, and merchant backgrounds.  

One of the unintended consequences of the examinations was the large pool of examination failures who used  

their linguistic and literary talents in a variety of nonofficial roles: One must look beyond the official meritocracy  

to see the larger place of the millions of failures in the  

civil service examinations. One of the unintended consequences of the examinations was the creation of legions  

of classically literate men who used their linguistic talents  

for a variety of nonofficial purposes: from physicians to  

pettifoggers, from fiction writers to examination essay  

teachers, and from ritual specialists to lineage agents.  

Although women were barred from taking the exams,  

they followed their own educational pursuits if only to  

compete in ancillary roles, either as girls competing for  

spouses or as mothers educating their sons.

from the religious point of view, the conflicts began because of the enmity between catholic and protestants. in 1649, at the insistence of baltimore, the colonial assembly approved the act of religious tolerance, the first law in the colonies granting freedom of worship, though only for christians. in 1654, however, with the protestants of maryland in the majority, the act was revoked. the almost civil war broke out and order was not restored until 1658, when lord baltimore was returned to power.

on the issue of class conflict, the chesapeake region offered few economic opportunities to contract employees who had served their term of obligation. even with the small amount of capital needed to grow tobacco, former hired servants at best became subsistence farmers, a mature class for those called to rebellion, such as those proposed by nathaniel bacon. as the number of new hired workers declined because of limited chances of progress and reports of severe treatment, they were replaced by african slaves.

from the racial point of view, after 1660, the chesapeake colonies imposed laws that defined slavery as a lifelong and hereditary condition based on race. this made slaves profitable because planters could rely not only on their work but also on their children. the slave population, which numbered four thousand in virginia and maryland in 1675, grew significantly by the end of the century.