Buying Office in Times of War: Degree Purchase and Bureaucratic Selection during the Taiping Rebellion, 1850–1864

How does war reshape who governs the state? This paper examines how fiscal pressures during China's Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864)—one of history's deadliest civil wars—transformed the credential composition of county magistrates. Using 17,701 personnel records spanning the pre-war Qianlong period (1760–1798) and the rebellion years, I document that officials holding purchased degrees (jiansheng) nearly doubled as a share of magistrates, from 9.4% to 18.9%. This expansion occurred through both selection channels: local nomination (Ti) and central assignment (Xuan) both showed parallel increases of 12–13 percentage points, suggesting a system-wide shift in the candidate pool rather than changes in selection criteria. Within the rebellion period, purchased-degree holders were more prevalent in rear areas than war zones (18.7% vs. 14.0%), and their share increased from 17.6% in 1850–53 to 24.1% in 1861–64. While the analysis is descriptive rather than causal, these patterns are consistent with a fiscal mechanism: the Qing state expanded degree sales to finance military operations, and credential holders subsequently entered the bureaucracy. The findings illuminate how wartime fiscal expedients reshape state personnel systems, contributing to literatures on rent-seeking, war finance, and Chinese institutional history. JEL Codes: D73, H11, H56, N45, P16