THE TASK OF EXAMINING THE OFFICIALDOM UNDER THE NGUYEN DYNASTY (1802 – 1885)

Abstract

The Nguyen dynasty was among the ones that paid attention to the establishment of a quality officialdom under Vietnamese feudalism. The mandarins of the Nguyen dynasty efficiently supported the emperors in building up a highly centralised feudal regime. With a view to manipulating and enhancing the capacity of their high-rank officials, the Nguyen emperors had many measures to constrain and supervise their officialdom for the purpose of avoiding the state of “bending the law” or “stealing emperors’ power”. Within the scope of this paper, we study the regulations for examining the Nguyen dynasty’s officialdom, which focus on three major contents namely fixed conventions on examination time, work efficiency and the officials’ moral behaviour, whereby we draw out lessons for the management task in our time.