On the “Incompetence” of Officials and Their Dismissal in the Han Dynasty

Abstract

“Incompetence” originally meant that one thing cannot withstand other things. During the Warring States period, the word gradually became a common term for describing officials who were unable to do their job properly. There are many records of “incompetent” officials in the bamboo and wooden slips and handed down documents of the Han Dynasty in the Juyan area, and the meanings of the word had been further expanded in the Han Dynasty to include not only insufficient personal ability, but also negligence, poor health, weak personality, and poor performance assessment results. In the Han Dynasty, the most common treatment of incompetent officials was dismissal. Depending on specific circumstances, their punishments included dismissal from one official position and reassignment to another or, in the most common case, dismissal from all official positions. In addition, their superiors or recommenders were also held accountable. As compared to other types of incompetent officials, the weak and those frontier incompetent ones were more severely punished. The refinement and differentiation in identifying and punishing “incompetent” officials in the Han Dynasty were the result of the development of the ancient bureaucratic system itself and also a reflection of the Han Dynasty’s expanding territory and increasing achievements.

Keywords

Han Dynasty / Juyan bamboo and wooden slips / officials / incompetence / dismissal

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