明清檔案工作室 | GRAND SECRETARIAT ARCHIVES PROJECT

Open-Channel Imperial Edicts, or just Edicts, are the Emperor's direct proclamations to his bureaucrat-subjects. In Qing's system, there are two promulgation methods of Edicts: proclamation, and court letter. According to The Shu-Yuan Records (樞垣記略), "as the Council of State formats the Edict, if the Edict is written without a designated recipient, then it is (defaultedly) the Grand Secretariat receiving the mandate of the Emperor's Edict (then proclaimed to the world); if the Edict is written to reply a bureaucrat-raised issue, then it is the bureaucrat receiving the mandate of Edict; if the Edict is written to reply a bureaucrat-raised issue, but also is intended to be proclaimed to the world, then it is also called the Grand Secretariat receiving the mandate of the Emperor's Edict. The date of receiving the Edict is written in the front. After the Edict is already proclaimed, if it is then transferred to the Grand Secretariat to be copied and dispatched, then this Edict is called a proclamation. If the Edict is ordering an action of a Council of State bureaucrat without the Grand Secretariat's copying and dispatching, the Edict is called a court letter." Essentially, the Grand Secretariat receiving the mandate of the Emperor's Edict is proclamation, originally composed by the Grand Secretariat's secretaries. After the establishment of the Council of State, the bureaucrats from the Council of State started to compose the Emperor's proclaimed Edicts.