History
For around 1300 years, from 605 to 1905, mandarins were selected by merit through the extremely rigorous imperial examination.
China has had civil servants since at least the Zhou Dynasty. However most high ranking positions were filled by relatives of the sovereign and the nobility. It was not until the Tang Dynasty when the final form of the mandarin was completed with the replacement of the nine-rank system. The mandarins were the founders and core of the Chinese gentry. The mandarins were replaced with a modern civil service after the fall of the Qing Dynasty.
Vietnam, after becoming free of Chinese rule and setting up its own independent monarchy, emulated the Chinese system of mandarins in its civil service.
Read more about this topic: Mandarin (bureaucrat)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“We may pretend that we’re basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.”
—Terry Hands (b. 1941)
“In front of these sinister facts, the first lesson of history is the good of evil. Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)