Dai Mingshi Case (Nanshan Collection Literary Inquisition)

In 1711, Imperial Censor Zhao Shenqiao accused the prominent scholar Dai Mingshi of sedition over his work “Nanshan Collection” (Nanshan Ji). The book used Southern Ming reign titles and recorded controversial historical details, which the Qing court interpreted as a direct denial of Manchu legitimacy and an incitement to rebellion. The Kangxi Emperor ordered a ruthless investigation. Dai was arrested, tortured, and charged with high treason. The case rapidly expanded, implicating over 300 individuals, including the celebrated essayist Fang Bao, who had written a preface for the collection. In 1713, Dai Mingshi was executed by beheading; many of his male relatives were killed or enslaved, and women were exiled. Fang Bao and others were spared execution but were sentenced to penal servitude in the banner garrisons. The book was completely proscribed and burned, turning a scholarly work into one of the deadliest literary persecutions of the early Qing.

Dai Mingshi was sentenced to death by beheading (a commutation from the originally proposed death by a thousand cuts). His sons and many male relatives were executed or enslaved, and female family members were banished. Fang Bao and several other scholars originally condemned to death were pardoned but placed into penal servitude under the Han military banners; they were later gradually rehabilitated. The “Nanshan Collection” was officially banned, and its woodblocks destroyed.

The core dispute was whether the use of a fallen dynasty’s reign title and unofficial historical narratives constituted a genuine act of treasonous rebellion against the Qing, or merely a scholar’s historiographical habit. The case raised fundamental questions about the boundary between academic freedom and political crime, the extreme application of collective punishment to acquaintances who provided prefaces, and the state’s right to reinterpret intellectual work as evidence of a capital offense.

The case intensified the Qing dynasty’s culture of literary inquisition, sending terror through the scholarly world. It forced literati to adopt extreme self-censorship, stifled free historical inquiry, and solidified imperial autocracy over intellectual life. The persecution starkly exposed the ethnic tension between Manchu rulers and Han scholars, setting a chilling precedent for later and larger purges such as the Zhuang Tinglong case, and cementing state terror as a tool of ideological conformity for generations.