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John Cantwell · Takabumi Hayashi
Editors

Paradigm Shift
in Technologies
and Innovation
Systems
Paradigm Shift in Technologies and Innovation
Systems
John Cantwell Takabumi Hayashi
•

Editors

Paradigm Shift
in Technologies
and Innovation Systems

123
Editors
John Cantwell Takabumi Hayashi
Rutgers University Rikkyo University
Newark, NJ, USA Tokyo, Japan

ISBN 978-981-32-9349-6 ISBN 978-981-32-9350-2 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9350-2
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019, corrected publication 2019
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Preface

Innovation is essential to maintain market competitiveness and sustainable growth,

as well as to drive socioeconomic development. Accordingly, at all times, larger
companies have been committed to research and development (R&D) investment,
securing outstanding R&D personnel, and building an effective R&D management
system.
However, there is no universally desirable R&D strategy that a firm should
pursue. For example, the nature of the qualities required for R&D talent appropriate
to drive innovation will change over time and will vary across industries. The
importance of cooperative relationships with other companies in R&D also chan-
ges, and the purpose of cooperation also varies. A critical reason is that technology
continues to evolve and the technological structure required by firms and industries
changes. As the set of technologies at the core of the technological system changes,
not only the size of the R&D project required and the composition of researchers
will change, but so too the combination of proprietary development and technical
cooperation with other institutions. In other words, the paradigm of innovation in a
systemic sense continues to evolve. The sustained growth of a firm’s market
competitiveness depends upon its capacity to reflect, respond and adapt to this
evolving paradigm. The most common reason for the decline of an excellent
company in the past has been the failure to adapt to a shift in the prevailing
paradigm. Understanding the changing character of the technological paradigm is,
therefore, an important research theme in management and economics. The purpose
of this book is to elucidate various unexplored aspects of a technological paradigm,
and of paradigm change over time.
As is well known, information technology (IT) has been at the core of techno-
logical architecture since the late-twentieth century. IT has streamlined factories,
office labor, and social infrastructure not only in the electrical and electronics
industries, but in all industries, and it has spurred numerous product innovations to
create a variety of innovative new products, thereby creating a new kind of con-
sumer society. It appears that Japanese companies were initially successful in
adapting successfully to the IT-centered innovation paradigm and strengthening
their market competitiveness.

v
vi Preface

However, the technological architecture has evolved further, now becoming

centered on digital technology, and the paradigm of innovation has changed
accordingly. As symbolized by the concept of a knowledge-based economy at the
end of the twentieth century, innovations in the massive and highly sophisticated
use and processing of data and knowledge have continuously emerged. Within IT,
software technologies such as computer programming, computer system design,
and artificial intelligence have become the core of the technology system rather than
hardware. The foundations for the primacy of these software technologies include
the explosive evolution of the internet, the digitization of data, and the dramatic
improvement in computer information processing capabilities.
This new technological architecture is in the process of further transforming the
paradigm of innovation. For example, we have witnessed the emergence of an open
modular industrial system in place of a closed integral system as in the past, which
had taken the form of a vertically integrated business model in which all tech-
nologies were developed and produced internally. The current shift toward an open
modular business model is based on the premise of a global division of labor, and
therefore, a platform-type business model that acquires global standards through an
increasingly open international division of labor, and this has been gradually
undermining strategies of concealing and monopolizing technologies in specific
firms or locations. Software development and the explosive spread of the internet,
which do not require large-scale equipment and funds, have enabled some areas of
knowledge to be disseminated throughout the world including in developing
countries, as well as facilitating the sharing and integration of excellent knowledge
from around the world. As a result, the globalization of R&D systems, which can
take advantage of geographically diversified talented human resources, has become
an indispensable R&D strategy. Furthermore, since basic research has become more
important for the development of these advanced technologies, a strengthening
of the collaboration between private companies, universities, and other research
institutions has become an important strategic issue.
Firms that failed to adapt successfully to this new paradigm have lost their
competitive advantage and have stagnated, whereas those that have succeeded in
adapting have gained a competitive advantage.
What kinds of strategic adaptation will enterprises and industries need to adapt to
the new paradigm in the future? From this viewpoint, the book will analyze the state
of internationalization of corporate R&D, the new development of global stan-
dardization strategies, and the role played by large cities, where research institutes
are concentrated, in the exchange of technical knowledge, the development of
human resources for knowledge, and methods for formulating research and
development strategies.
Accordingly, the book consists of two parts. The first part, which consists of the
following five chapters, mainly discusses the concept of a techno-paradigm from
the perspective of its historical and macroeconomic sides. Then, in the second part,
paradigm shifts are examined from the perspective of specific industrial sectors and
companies.
Preface vii

Here we would like to highlight some of the key themes to emerge from each
chapter.
Chapter 1 of the first part, entitled “The Philosophy of Paradigm Change in the
History of Social Evolution” by John Cantwell, begins by defining and explaining
the meaning of a technological paradigm, and of paradigm shift. The chapter places
the idea of paradigm change in a philosophical context, arguing that a paradigm
shift can be seen as representing a Hegelian evolutionary process in a social or
cultural setting. The development of a techno-socio-economic paradigm at a
society-wide level is a process of continual co-evolution between three sets of
factors: knowledge, institutions, and technology in production.
In Chap. 2, “Paradigm Changes in Technological Knowledge Connections in
Urban Innovation Systems” by Salma Zaman, it is argued that innovation today
cannot be realized by only one company or even by one location in isolation, and
often there is a need for cross-city and cross-firm knowledge exchange. Therefore,
taking the world’s largest cities for innovation leading to patenting, this study
examines between which cities knowledge flows occur more intensively. For this
purpose, by analyzing the pattern of connections between cities from a mapping
of the locations of the inventors of pairs of citing and cited patents, based on the
data of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, this chapter elucidates the
city-based knowledge network that shows the geography of knowledge exchange
relationships. The chapter discusses the effect of paradigm shift on this subnational
geography of knowledge sourcing in innovation.
Chapter 3, “World-Wide Dispersion of Research and Development (R&D)
Capabilities” by Takabumi Hayashi and Atsuho Nakayama, examines to what
extent R&D capabilities have been geographically disseminated and dispersed
worldwide over the past 40–50 years, analyzing scientific papers and US patents as
R&D outputs. The analysis shows that the number of different nationalities of
author affiliations on papers and the range of locations of the first-named inventors
of U.S. patents have increased and diversified.
Chapter 4, “International Standardization of the New Technology Paradigm: A
Strategy for Royalty-Free Intellectual Property” by Yasuro Uchida, starts from the
point that in the past, the international standardization of intellectual property
(IP) was an important strategy. One of the roles of IP has been to generate a source
of revenues from royalties, but what is now increasing in IT-related business fields
is actually royalty-free exchange. This means that we have witnessed a paradigm
shift in IP strategy in the IT-related fields. This chapter examines in detail why such
royalty-free cases are increasing, and the background to this emergent phenomenon.
Chapter 5, “New Roles for Japanese Companies at the Knowledge-Based
Economy” by Fumio Komoda, examines how the technology paradigm has shifted
from being hardware-oriented to becoming software-oriented in accordance with
trends in the progress and adaptation of IT. The author argues here that one of the
reasons for the downturn of Japanese companies is that they had not been suc-
cessful in adapting themselves to the transition from hardware to software tech-
nologies, remaining overly committed to their hardware heritage.
viii Preface

In Chap. 6, moving into the second part of the book, “Paradigm Shifts in the
TFT-LCD Industry and Japan’s Competitive Position in East Asia”, by Kazuhiro
Asakawa, identifies paradigm shifts in the TFT-LCD industry that have directly or
indirectly led to a change in Japan’s competitive position. The chapter shows that
the declining competitiveness of a country and a firm cannot be fully understood
without closely relating it to the shifts in the paradigm of the industry. In addition,
this chapter shows the mutual alignment between paradigm shifts in the industry,
the changing competitive positions of a country and a firm, as well as the changing
locus of innovation, in terms of the distribution of efforts between domestic versus
international or in-house versus collaborative activities.
In Chap. 7, “Business-University Collaboration in a Developing Country in the
Industry 4.0 Era—The Case of Hungary” by Annamaria Inzelt, discusses how in
recent years the majority of Hungarian business R&D expenditure has come from
companies wholly, or majority-owned by foreign interests. This high proportion
indicates the substantial role of foreign companies in the Hungarian research agenda
and in business-university collaboration. This chapter focuses on how foreign
companies are shaping business-university collaboration in research and experi-
mental development and touches upon the role of government as facilitator.
Chapter 8, “Text Mining Method for Building New Business Strategies” by
Fumio Komoda, Yoshihiro Muragaki and Ken Masamune, examines how under a
new technology paradigm, identifying market needs and finding appropriate tech-
nical ideas become much more unpredictable. In order to solve this problem, using
pinpoint focus type text mining may successfully provide useful solution methods
for companies. To demonstrate this, the authors use the illustration of a neurosur-
gical robot and discuss how well-founded ideas for the development of a surgical
robot can successfully be discovered.
Chapter 9, “Paradigm Change in the History of the Pharmaceutical Industry” by
Sarah Edris, argues that with the advancement of molecular biology as a science,
we see a paradigm shift in the nature of R&D in the development of new drugs from
around the 1990s. As a result, many new forms of cooperation in R&D among
private companies, universities, and public research institutions have now become
unavoidable.
Chapter 10, “Knowledge Transfer and Creation Systems: Perspectives on
Corporate Socialization Mechanisms and Human Resource Management” by
Tamiko Kasahara, explores the role played by corporate socialization mechanisms
(CSMs) and human resource management (HRM) practices in knowledge sharing
and creation in multinational corporations. Drawing on a longitudinal case study of
Cambridge Technology Partners (CTP), the findings of this study show that CSMs
were incorporated into HRM practices. Specifically, training and development
practices played a role in transferring knowledge from the headquarters to a focal
subsidiary at the corporate level, and from senior to junior consultants at the
individual level. At present, CSMs have laid the foundation for further knowledge
creation for CTP.
Preface ix

Finally, Chap. 11, “Redefining the Internationalization of R&D Activities: How

Far Have the Firms’ R&D Members of US and Japanese Companies Been
Diversified?”, by Takabumi Hayashi, examines how the role played by foreign
researchers and engineers engaged in R&D activities in the US and in the overseas
R&D activities of US multinational corporations are no longer negligible. The
chapter also examines the extent to which the internationalization of R&D by US
companies would be affected if the outcomes of their activities in the US were
included in the internationalization of R&D. Finally, analyzing the case of Canon
Inc., the most active Japanese-based company in patenting, it is shown how much
the internationalization of R&D activities differs between IBM and Canon.
The further evolution of IT, and of international knowledge creation and sharing
will doubtless continue to lead to further gradual changes in the innovation para-
digm. The various themes presented in this book help us to better understand at
least some aspects of this evolution. We encourage further research on these topics
in the future, and hope to contribute to such efforts ourselves.
Finally, in editing the book, we would like to express our gratitude to the
following editing staff members of Springer publishing: Ms. Swetha Divakar, Mr.
Yutaka Hirachi, and Ms. Shinko Mimura, for their valuable comments and kind
cooperation.

Newark, USA John Cantwell

Tokyo, Japan Takabumi Hayashi
Contents

1 The Philosophy of Paradigm Change in the History of Social

Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
John Cantwell
2 Paradigm Changes in Technological Knowledge Connections
in Urban Innovation Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Salma Zaman
3 World-Wide Dispersion of Research and Development (R&D)
Capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Takabumi Hayashi and Atsuho Nakayama
4 International Standardization of the New Technology Paradigm:
A Strategy for Royalty-Free Intellectual Property . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Yasuro Uchida
5 New Roles for Japanese Companies at the Knowledge-Based
Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Fumio Komoda
6 Paradigm Shifts in the TFT-LCD Industry and Japan’s
Competitive Position in East Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Kazuhiro Asakawa
7 Business-University Collaboration in a Developing Country
in the Industry 4.0 Era—The Case of Hungary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Annamaria Inzelt
8 Text Mining Method for Building New Business Strategies . . . . . . 197
Fumio Komoda, Yoshihiro Muragaki and Ken Masamune

xi
xii Contents

9 Paradigm Change in the History of the Pharmaceutical

Industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
Sarah Edris
10 Knowledge Transfer and Creation Systems: Perspectives
on Corporate Socialization Mechanisms and Human Resource
Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Tamiko Kasahara
11 Redefining the Internationalization of R&D Activities:
How Far Have the Firms’ R&D Members of US and Japanese
Companies Been Diversified? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
Takabumi Hayashi
Correction to: Knowledge Transfer and Creation Systems:
Perspectives on Corporate Socialization Mechanisms and Human
Resource Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C1
Tamiko Kasahara
Editors and Contributors

About the Editors

John Cantwell (Co-editor, Chap. 1) (Ph.D., Reading) is Distinguished Professor

of International Business at Rutgers University (New Jersey, USA) since 2002. He
was previously Professor of International Economics at the University of Reading
in the UK. His early work helped to launch a new literature on multinational
companies and international networks for technology creation, beyond merely
international technology transfer. Professor Cantwell’s total citation count on
Google Scholar is well over 15,000. His published research spans the fields of
International Business and Management, Economics, Economic History and
Philosophy, Economic Geography, and Innovation Studies. He served as the
Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS) from 2011–16.
He was the elected Dean of the European International Business Academy (EIBA)
Fellows from 2015–18. He is also an elected Fellow of the Academy of International
Business (AIB) since 2005.

Takabumi Hayashi (Co-editor, Chap. 9 and Chap. 10) (Ph.D. in Economics,

Rikkyo University) is Professor Emeritus of Rikkyo University, Tokyo. He suc-
cessively filled the position of Senior Lecturer at Fukuoka University, Associate
Professor, and Professor of International Business at Rikkyo University, and
Professor at Kokushikan University, Tokyo. His recent research areas are innova-
tion systems and R&D management, focusing on knowledge creation and diversity
management. His works have been widely published in books and journals. His
book “Multinational Enterprises and Intellectual Property Rights” (in Japanese;
Moriyama Shoten, Tokyo, 1989.)” is widely cited, and “Characteristics of Markets
in Emerging Countries and New BOP Strategies” (in Japanese; Bunshindo, Tokyo,

xiii
xiv Editors and Contributors

2016) received the award from Japan Scholarly Association of Asian Management
(JSAAM) in 2018. He has been sitting on the editorial board of several academic
journals.

Contributors

Kazuhiro Asakawa Graduate School of Business Administration, Keio

University, Yokohama, Japan
John Cantwell Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA
Sarah Edris Rutgers Business School, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA
Takabumi Hayashi Rikkyo University, Tokyo, Japan;
Tokyo Fuji University, Tokyo, Japan
Annamaria Inzelt IKU Innovation Research Centre, Financial Research Co.,
Budapest, Hungary
Tamiko Kasahara School of Information and Management, University of
Shizuoka, Shizuoka, Japan
Fumio Komoda Honorary Professor, Saitama University, Saitama, Japan
Ken Masamune Institute of Advanced Bio-Medical Engineering and Science,
Tokyo Women’s Medical University, Tokyo, Japan
Yoshihiro Muragaki Institute of Advanced Bio-Medical Engineering and
Science, Tokyo Women’s Medical University, Tokyo, Japan
Atsuho Nakayama Marketing Sience, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Tokyo,
Japan
Yasuro Uchida Graduate School of Business, University of Hyogo, Kobe, Hyogo,
Japan
Salma Zaman Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Lahore,
Pakistan
Chapter 1
The Philosophy of Paradigm Change
in the History of Social Evolution

John Cantwell

Abstract A technological paradigm identifies the coherent features consistently

present in the evolution of an innovation system over time. These shared charac-
teristics refer to a widespread cluster of innovations during a given era that rely on a
common set of scientific principles and on similar organizational methods. The idea
of an overarching paradigm that depicts commonalities in innovation efforts may be
applied at the level of an industry, a technical field, or in society as a whole, as in
the case of a techno-socio-economic paradigm. Occasional paradigm shifts entail
some change in the framework for innovation, while preserving certain features of
the old ways in a new synthesis. Thus, paradigm shift takes the form of an Hegelian
evolutionary or dialectical process. The evolution of an innovation system as a
whole derives from the interaction or co-evolution of its central elements: knowl-
edge, institutions, and technology in production. While conventional science iso-
lates causal associations between specific parts of a system, Hegelian conceptual
reasoning addresses the combined and interconnected movement of a complex
relational system with multiple interdependencies. In the light of this contention,
I argue that we should move away from age-old debates over whether social
evolution or development is driven primarily by knowledge, by institutions or by
the forces of production. Our attention should now turn instead to how these parts
move together in an evolving system, and how their mutual goodness of fit adjusts
during phases of paradigm shift and realignment.

Keywords Technological paradigm Techno-socio-economic paradigm





Paradigm shift Hegelian approach Social evolution Technological evolution

J. Cantwell (&)
Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 1

J. Cantwell and T. Hayashi (eds.), Paradigm Shift in Technologies and Innovation
Systems, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9350-2_1
2 J. Cantwell

1.1 The Meaning of a Technological Paradigm,

and of Paradigm Shift

Based on the original contribution of Perez (1983), Christopher Freeman and

various of his co-authors and associates at the Science Policy Research Unit
(SPRU) in Sussex developed the concept of a techno-socio-economic paradigm
(Freeman 1987; Freeman and Perez 1988; von Tunzelmann 1995, 2003; Freeman
and Louça 2001; Perez 2002, 2009). While one critical element of the emergence of
a new techno-socio-economic paradigm is some radical breakthrough ‘macroin-
vention’ that forms the basis for a newly pervasive strand of general purpose
technology (Bresnahan and Trajtenberg 1995; Lipsey Carlaw and Bekar 2006)—
such as machinery, electrical equipment or information technology in each of the
three industrial revolutions respectively—in the SPRU tradition a paradigm refers
to considerations that range beyond the immediate characteristics of technological
innovation itself to the wider social and economic context in which a given tech-
nological trajectory is embedded. In this tradition a technological paradigm can be
defined as a system of scientific and productive activity based on a widespread
cluster of innovations that rely on a common set of scientific principles and on
similar organizational methods (as suggested by Dosi 1984). Thus, a prevailing
paradigm regulates the cognitive frames shared by technological practitioners in
knowledge-based communities, establishes the heuristics of search for solutions to
technological problems, and encompasses normative considerations such as the
criteria for assessing potential solutions, and goals for the improvement of practice
(Dosi and Nelson 2010). In the sense of a paradigm as a society-wide
techno-socio-economic paradigm, each paradigmatic system characterizes an
epoch, of which there have been three since the first industrial revolution: the
mechanical age, the science-based mass production age, and the information age.
The concept of a technological paradigm is bound up with a certain set of social
institutions, and with selected organizational forms or methods in the economic
domain of production, distribution and exchange. It is a concept that can be applied
at various levels of analysis. In particular, the notion of a technological paradigm
may also be applied in a microtechnological sense such as the semiconductor
paradigm (Dosi 1982), or in the sense of a technological regime that characterizes
the nature of innovation among the firms of a given industry (Nelson and Winter
1977) such as the pharmaceutical industry (which is the sense of a paradigm used
by Edris 2019). The broader sense of a techno-socio-economic paradigm as used by
Freeman, Perez or von Tunzelmann constitutes a constellation of technological
paradigms in these narrower senses of the term (Dosi and Nelson 2010), and in this
chapter when speaking of a paradigm I will refer primarily to the more macro or
integrative concept of a techno-socio-economic paradigm. This conceptualization
helps us to explain how a new paradigm emerges once an earlier one has run out of
steam, and so innovation becomes increasingly constrained, difficult and costly
under the old paradigm. However, it also helps to account for an often lengthy
gestation period of slower growth and impaired economic development in the
1 The Philosophy of Paradigm Change in the History … 3

transition between paradigms, since social institutions must be adapted to the new
requirements, and this creates problems and resistance from those who believe their
interests to be threatened by the change. Another key implication of the gradual
adaptation of social institutions during phases of paradigm change, allied to the
cumulative nature of technological knowledge which always builds upon and
recombines some elements of prior knowledge (Pavitt 1987; Cantwell 1989; Arthur
2007), is that each new paradigm partially incorporates and synthesizes earlier
paradigms in the process of reconstituting a new social formation. Thus, for
instance, in the realm of technology we move from the centrality of the mechanical
to the electro-mechanical, and then to the electronic, as we move from one age to
another. In other words, shifting from one paradigm to another is an evolutionary
process, not a revolutionary overthrow of the paradigms that preceded it.
Another frequently used and somewhat related construct in the innovation
studies literature is the concept of a system of innovation. This has been variously
used to refer to a national system of innovation (Nelson 1993; Freeman 1995), a
regional system of innovation (Asheim and Gertler 2005), or a sectoral system of
innovation (Malerba 2004). This conceptualization might be extended to include
the emergence of a global system of innovation in the information age of ‘intel-
lectual capitalism’ (Granstrand 2018). Just as with the idea of a paradigm, an
innovation system generally supposes a framework of interconnectedness across
multiple actors, a given institutional context, and a prevalence of certain kinds of
business organization and relationships between organizations engaged in pro-
ductive activities. However, the difference with paradigm shift is that an innovation
system is a comparative construct intended to analyze variation across some
characteristic forms of innovation arranged in a typology, whether across countries,
regions or industries, or for the more (versus less) globally connected forms of
activities. It is designed to answer the question ‘what is distinctive about the
structure of innovation in this country, region or industry, or kind of activity,
compared to others?’. In this respect e.g. the national systems of innovation liter-
ature bears some relationship to the varieties of capitalism literature, or that on
national business systems, and so on.
In contrast, the notion of paradigm shift is intended to focus attention on an
evolutionary process over time. In particular, a paradigm shift refers to the occa-
sionally punctuated character of evolutionary change. The counterpart of this social
process in evolutionary biology is the normal stability of a species once it has been
established (corresponding to the conduct of normal science within some estab-
lished settled framework in Kuhn’s (1962) terminology of the workings of scientific
communities), but with occasional processes of speciation (akin to the occasional
scientific revolutions that episodically transform the nature of science according to
Kuhn 1962). Once a new species emerges it shares many of the characteristics of
the species from which it has descended, and yet it also has some new distinctive
features that ensure that there is a structural shift in the way in which it interacts
with its environment, thereby implying a shift in its path of evolutionary devel-
opment. Likewise, occasional scientific revolutions lay the foundation for a new
theoretical and methodological framework for science, setting it on some new
4 J. Cantwell

direction that leads to new kinds of discoveries. In the context of technological

change, as one technological paradigm comes to succeed another it is not just the
leading edge of technological knowledge and the focus of innovative
problem-solving that shifts (as would also occur in a scientific revolution), but the
associated governance structures, organizational forms and business relationships
shift as well (von Tunzelmann 2003).
The distinction between change within a paradigm, and change due to a shift in
paradigm, delineates the two major components of an evolutionary process. First is
the within-paradigm element of continuity or persistence that is a consequence of
path dependence, and which is sometimes associated with lock-in and positive
feedback effects (e.g. Arthur 1989). Within a technological paradigm, the cumu-
lative and incremental character of technological change is the basis for the con-
ceptualization of technological accumulation in which new knowledge discovery
and recombination is interconnected with knowledge use and application (Cantwell
1989). The biological equivalent of a sustained path is the role of inheritance in
reproduction, and in the progress of science it is the consistency of the received
theoretical framework and the kinds of experiments to which this regularly gives
rise in normal scientific endeavor. Second is the occasional paradigm-shifting
emergence of some radical new departure that supercedes and yet also absorbs
many aspects of the previously established path, thereby altering the character and
behavior of a system. The biological representation of such a path-shifting synthesis
of older and newer elements generating a related but novel form begins with genetic
mutation (which may be reinforced by environmental diversity or divergence) that
then leads to variety in characteristics and ultimately to speciation. In science such
novelty is brought about by occasional scientific revolutions that alter some of the
fundamental assumptions or premises on which the science in question builds, and
so set a new and usually more complex agenda for the subject.
In the case of a techno-socio-economic paradigm we are addressing evolutionary
processes at the level of a society or community, rather than in a particular stream of
technology or in a specific industry. So when the paradigm shifts the society and its
system of technology, production methods and social institutions must be expected
to interact differently in some respects. Thus, as we move from the mechanical age
to the science-based era of mass production, and then to the information age, the
nature of capitalism changes, and society and the economy function somewhat
differently than they did in the past. For this reason attempts to derive some fun-
damental ‘laws of capitalist development’ or some ‘stylized facts of economic
development’ that are universally applicable from the time of Ricardo or Marx
through to the present day are likely to be flawed. One such widely discussed recent
attempt has been by Piketty (2013), in his contention that a rising inequality of
income and wealth is an inherent tendency in a capitalist economy, which of course
echoes some of the claims of Marx in the nineteeth century and calls to mind the
so-called gilded age of the late nineteenth century. To maintain a kind of continuity
between the gilded age and the trends of the early twenty-first century Piketty
1 The Philosophy of Paradigm Change in the History … 5

argues that the period between 1930 and 1975 in which inequality fell was a kind of
temporary aberration.
Yet we should recall that during that same period Kuznets (1955) had convinced
many with his ‘stylized facts’ that income inequality tends to fall with economic
development, while the capital-output ratio remains roughly constant—which
trends again fitted well the context of the period in which he was writing. So rather
than referring to a lengthy period of exceptional circumstances, it seems more
plausible to simply say that the techno-socio-economic paradigms of the mechan-
ical age, the science-based mass production age, and the information age are dis-
tinct, and aggregate tendencies change as we move from one to the other. One
feature shared by the mechanical age and the information age is an increase in rents
from land and natural resources, associated with a rising price of land and hence
substantial gains by landowners in their holdings of wealth. Yet the institutional
context for this commonality varies considerably between the 19th and 21st cen-
turies: in the 19th century there remained an aristocracy, or those who aspired to
join an aristocracy, whereas in the 21st century holdings of land and natural
resources are more linked to financial institutions.

1.2 Paradigm Shift as an Hegelian Evolutionary Process

I will argue that in philosophical terms the course of paradigm change can be
depicted as an Hegelian evolutionary or dialectical process. In an Hegelian per-
spective as humans or human societies or groups interact with our environment we
may consolidate or change our way of life, our knowledge about ourselves and
about our environment. As we reflect on the relationship between ourselves and our
environment we may also come to reconfigure and to challenge not just our prior
knowledge, but the very way in which we think about ourselves, our values or
beliefs, our actions, and our way of life. Thus, a contradiction may arise between
our old way of looking at the world and some new way of thinking about it. Since
the new way of thinking and acting is likely to also imply challenges to our existing
norms or institutions, to the prevailing social or organizational structures, and to the
interests that may be embedded within them, the contradiction is liable to give rise
to a period of conflict or tension between the old and the new, as well as giving rise
to increased uncertainty. Yet ultimately some form of reconciliation is generally
found between the old and the new approaches, some way of combining the two
that preserves aspects of both in some form of synthesis.
Any synthesis between the old ways and the new provides a generally more
profound and distinctive way of thinking about the world, which tends to facilitate
the scope for sustaining greater diversity or pluralism both within and between
societies or social structures such as organizations, by increasing the extent of
mutual recognition of relational interdependencies between the various elements of
a complex social system. In the Hegelian perspective an evolutionary process of
social transformation is inherently systemic or interconnected, the different parts or
6 J. Cantwell

particulars of a system must move together or co-evolve. Thus, it is not just our way
of thinking about the world that comes to be reshaped, but the nature of the
reasoning we give for our actions (how we interpret rationality), and our system of
practice. Much of this has been reflected in the re-thinking of Hegel that has been
under way in recent years among philosophers in the English language literature.
These scholars have shown how, in an Hegelian view, through mutual recognition
and acceptance of common norms or institutions we can exercise free and rational
agency in collaborative endeavors, which may lead to social transitions if crises
arise in the authority of norms (Pippin 2008); how human knowledge and ideas are
rooted in practice (Westphal 2003); and how there is always a social or relational
content in the exercise of rational intentionality (Pinkard 1994), requiring us to
move beyond methodological individualism.1
An Hegelian approach to paradigms and paradigm change is therefore grounded
in the historical evolution of technological or social practice, and is concerned with
how the parts of an innovation system interact with one another, and thereby move
the system as a whole. Since, as we have seen, a techno-socio-economic paradigm
is an interconnected or complex social system, we can think of a paradigm as an
historically specific form of interaction between knowledge, institutions, and
technology and production, and paradigm shift as the emergence of a new form of
capitalism characterized inter alia by a shift in the nature of innovation. The nature
of knowledge, beliefs or institutions, and practice or conduct of actors within a
paradigm is shaped by the system in which they live and operate (which Hegel
referred to as a shape of consciousness, or the spirit of an age as a self-conscious
way of life). Thus, a paradigm incorporates an outlook on innovation in terms of
what are regarded as being the most relevant problems that need to be addressed,
and how they can be solved, which includes some understanding about how pre-
vailing practice works, and its limits (Dosi and Nelson 2013). As an outlook, a
paradigm includes both the cognitive frames shared by practitioners that orient their
innovative or problem-solving activity (Constant 1980), and the normative con-
siderations involved in judgments about how to search for and to share knowledge,
and how to set and assess the goals of innovation. In this kind of Hegelian evo-
lutionary process there is a continual interaction and interdependence between the
subjective side of knowledge, values and beliefs, and the objective side of the use of
technologies in production and their impacts on organizations, society and the
natural world.

1
I note in passing that these re-readings of Hegel have the effect of bringing our interpretation of
his work closer to that of the early Marx, whose writings were deeply Hegelian in these senses.
This calls into question the exaggerated distinction between Hegel’s ‘idealism’ and Marx’s ‘ma-
terialism’ that remains commonplace in the Marxist literature. For a critique of the view that Marx
was an ontological materialist, in the sense that our ideas are essentially just a reflection of the
character of ‘matter in motion’ or what Engels termed the ‘dialectics of nature’, see Kline (1988).
1 The Philosophy of Paradigm Change in the History … 7

In political philosophy the focus of Hegelian scholarship has been on the his-
torical evolution of justice and freedom (e.g. Pinkard 2017). Part of that process of
evolution has been a change over time in the very meaning of these terms as
institutions have evolved. My focus here is on another feature, namely the
improvement and transformation of our knowledge base in the course of social
evolution. We may think of what Hegel called ‘absolute knowledge’ as that kernel
which is held in common among various societies or organizations (or other social
units), and which has been preserved or inherited from the past. Of course, this kind
of foundational knowledge base will not necessarily be held by every society or
organization, and some forms of knowledge may atrophy, recede or be lost or
forgotten over time. In the case of technological knowledge the relevant distinction
is between private knowledge which is held mainly by firms, and public knowledge
that is shared and held in common in the public domain in some social context or
setting (Nelson 1989). This latter public knowledge base constitutes the foundation
for any paradigm. The public aspect of technology is associated with knowledge
diffusion and enables the community as a whole to benefit from technological
innovation. As indicated earlier, a paradigm is constituted by some common set of
scientific principles and organizational methods.
It is worth touching here on the role of teleology in an Hegelian perspective. It is
necessary to distinguish between two senses of teleology, one of which relates to
the present day, and the other to an imagined future hypothetical state of the world,
which carry very different meanings and should not be confused.2 With respect to
the present day, an Hegelian perspective is exclusively backward looking or his-
torical. This is the contention that we can trace out from the past how we came to
have the kinds of knowledge or ways of thinking, the institutions, and the tech-
nologies that we have today. In other words, we can find the origins or roots of our
current techno-socio-economic paradigm, in the form of an historical evolutionary
path that led us to where we are now. It is important to appreciate that a social
evolutionary framework is not predictive, but explanatory. At any critical juncture
in the past where the path has shifted it did so in ways that were conditional at the
time they happened. A complex social system is open and creative, and not closed
or pre-determined. However, with respect to an imagined future hypothetical state
of the world an Hegelian perspective is forward looking, but considers a desirable
condition that can never be actually realized. This is what Hegel referred to as the
absolute, in which knowledge would be infinite, and we would enjoy perfect
relationships between ourselves and with the world. Hegel associated this state of
perfection with God. For an evolutionary approach, the relevance of this aspira-
tional state, rather like the notion of utopia (Hodgson 1999), is that it identifies our
ultimate consistent goals and purposes. While we can never attain perfect justice,

2
Confusing these two is responsible for various false attributions, such as the assertion that for
Hegel the Prussian state of the 1820s was an ideal state, or Fukuyama’s claiming as Hegelian his
notion that liberal capitalism represented the ‘end of history’.
8 J. Cantwell

freedom, or comprehensive knowledge, we can strive towards these goals. Seeking

to continuously improve our knowledge becomes a goal of self-conscious rational
actors.
Following an Hegelian typology, knowledge tends to develop first as an
understanding of some processes as phenomena through some form of abstraction
that isolates a regular cause and effect relationship. In the case of technological
knowledge this relates to the acquisition of know-how and then usually later
know-why, sometimes guided by science. Yet in the case of technological
knowledge even when there is some know-why, know-how cannot be easily
replicated across different contexts, whether across firms or across locations (Winter
and Szulanski 2001). To the extent that there is a richer pool of relevant shared
public knowledge, the costs of technology transfer or diffusion may be reduced, but
not eliminated. Within a paradigm these costs can be somewhat offset when the
relevant public knowledge pool lies in and around the core technologies of that
paradigm, in which area of problem-solving search there is a greater common
awareness of the properties of a wider range of distinct applications across a variety
of contexts. This feature of a paradigm also helps to perpetuate the paradigm itself,
since it encourages innovation that connects to these core fields of understanding
that mark out the paradigm, since these are likely to have a greater potential spread
of applications. In such core domain activities within a paradigm, in Hegelian terms
understanding passes over into more fundamental conceptual reason, in the sense of
a capacity to conceptually recognize and to relate (and hence to learn from) dif-
ferences in particular behaviors associated with individual concrete applications
across specific contexts.
Turning from the development of technological knowledge within paradigms to
the wider social and economic characteristics of a techno-socio-economic paradigm
that tend to remain relatively stable within a paradigm, but may be disturbed during
a paradigm shift, the relevance of a distinction between Hegelian understanding and
reason is equally germane. In understanding some social or economic relationship
through the abstraction entailed in a formal theory, or a mathematical representa-
tion, or in claiming a fixed law or consistent tendency in observed data, a claim is
usually made for the generalization (or universality) of that relationship over time
and across contexts. As suggested earlier, this kind of generalization may carry
some justification within a paradigm, by representing the stylized facts of an era—
e.g. the existence of a rising capital-output ratio in the mechanical age (as described
in Marx’s version of the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall), or the
constancy of the capital-output ratio in the science-based mass production era that
prevailed for much of the 20th century (as described by Kuznets 1955). Using the
terminology of evolutionary economics (Nelson 2018), formal theory is relatively
better suited to an analysis of these kinds of regularities within paradigms that
provide an Hegelian understanding of some selected prominent and consistently
observed phenomena. Instead, appreciative theory relatively better allows for
complex interdependencies, and for the kinds of systemic movements or shifts
1 The Philosophy of Paradigm Change in the History … 9

associated with the emergence of contradictions or tensions within a complex social

system that moves us into the Hegelian realm of conceptual reason.3 As explained
earlier, when a techno-socio-economic paradigm occasionally shifts, not only is
there a shift in the commonly observed regularities of behavior at a systemic level,
but allied to this there is a shift in our ways of thinking about the world and of
reasoning about it. From a philosophical perspective it is important to try and better
grasp the generally subtle shifts in modes of reasoning or rationality that provide a
kind of foundational underpinning to the occasional shifts in techno-socio-
economic paradigms.

1.3 The Continual Co-evolution of Knowledge,

Institutions, and Technology in Production

In any social and economic system there is a continual interaction between the
knowledge base of a society or community, its institutions—ranging from values
and beliefs through informal norms to formal laws or regulations—and its tech-
nology developed and used in production. In a capitalist society of the kind that
took root after the first industrial revolution from the techno-socio-economic
paradigm of the mechanical age onwards, in which innovation in production
became central, all three of these elements (knowledge, institutions and technology)
have been changing and interacting with one another continuously. In the heyday of
a paradigm the three elements advance together faster and more effectively, as the
paradigm ensures a good fit between them. The nature of the interaction between
the three elements follows a consistent pattern or structure which reflects the
essential outlook of the age, and which ensures some degree of regularity of pro-
gress within that structure, although the precise form of that progress is always
characterized by some ex ante uncertainty and unpredictability. However, once a
paradigm runs out of steam, experimentation with different kinds of practical
solutions and new ways of thinking begin to spread more widely, and as they do the
three elements tend to fit less well together, creating greater frictions and conflicts at
a systemic level. Within a paradigm the structure of interaction between the three
elements of the system is largely consistent, but during windows of paradigm shift
the very nature of the structure of that interaction changes. The change in the way in
which knowledge, institutions and technology interact in a new paradigm is

3
It may be worth noting in passing the sharp difference between the simplistic and impoverished
interpretation of reason or rationality found in contemporary Economics as a pure economic
self-interest, and the much more sophisticated accounts of rationality found in the philosophical
literature of the Enlightenment era, culminating in Kant’s critical philosophy. Hegel’s critique of
Kant moved us yet another step forward in allowing for the social evolution of reason or
rationality, in the way that I echo here, and which is precluded if we treat human rationality as
being fixed or given in nature.
10 J. Cantwell

manifested in some differences in behaviors or tendencies in the workings of a

system as we move from one paradigm to another, as discussed earlier.
So, I am arguing, in any social system knowledge, institutions and technology
continually co-evolve. Within a paradigm the evolution of each of these three
elements is largely consistent, and so as they change they still continue to fit
relatively well with one another, hence leading to mutually reinforcing positive
feedback effects on each part of the system. Instead, during periods of paradigm
shift, the three elements evolve in ways that become potentially less consistent, and
so the form of co-evolution of the three parts involves an increasing number of
negative feedback effects that may disrupt and stymie progress in the system as a
whole. Establishing a new paradigm is essentially a process of finding some new
form of re-alignment between the three elements that once more ensures a better fit
between these parts in the course of their mutual co-evolution. The overall evo-
lution of a social system depends on the development of a satisfactory structure of
mutual relational interdependencies between its various parts. A structure of
interconnected social co-evolution that is satisfactory for at least a time can be
described as a paradigm, while the necessity of an occasional shift in that structure
can be represented as a paradigm shift. Once this is appreciated, then we should
focus our attention on the changing goodness of fit between the parts of a social and
economic system as that system evolves over time.
Unfortunately, most of the relevant social science and economic history litera-
ture has not focused on this co-evolutionary goodness of fit issue. Rather, much of
this literature has debated what is the primary direction of causality between the
parts of an economic and social system—which debate, from a co-evolutionary
perspective, is rather like trying to resolve the ‘chicken and egg’ problem. In
Hegelian terms, this debate remains trapped at the level of attempting to discern a
simple understanding of an observed pattern of behavior in a nutshell (in the
deterministic form that ‘A causes B’), rather than moving on to a more mature form
of conceptual reasoning that can better accommodate complex relational interac-
tions. It is perhaps especially sad that Hegel and Marx are today often interpreted
purely through this kind of identification of a primary causal chain of directionality.
In the usual Marxist account, the economic structure or the forces of production are
believed to drive the superstructure of social institutions, and the ideas and beliefs
that prevail in a society are said to reflect the interests of the dominant class in the
existing mode of production (see e.g. Cohen 1978). Indeed, the conventional per-
spective of neoclassical economics is somewhat similar in the primacy it attributes
to the economic realm, although this is interpreted more in terms of exchange rather
than production, and it stresses in particular the role of markets in coordinating the
decisions of independent utility maximizing actors. However, within economics
there has been a gradual shift in recent years towards the alternative perspective of
institutional economics, which argues the other way round that institutions tend to
drive and to regulate the way in which an economy functions (see e.g. Acemoglu
and Robinson 2012, on the effects of extractive vs. inclusive institutions, or the
similar distinction between limited access vs. open access orders by North et al.
2009). While the first two approaches argue for the primacy either of the economy
1 The Philosophy of Paradigm Change in the History … 11

or of institutions, a third makes the case for the primacy of knowledge or ideas.
Among economic historians, Mokyr (2002) contends that the development of
knowledge and scientific breakthroughs can explain industrialization and economic
development, while McCloskey (2016) claims that it is ideas and values that have
driven economic growth.
These kinds of debates over the causal sequencing of the elements of social
evolution can never really be resolved, since each of the three camps can refer to
legitimate historical evidence that is supportive of their claims. From a
co-evolutionary perspective the arguments are akin to the story of the blind men and
the elephant: each school of thought provides a valid way of thinking about the
evolution of a social system historically, so long as one shares their starting point
for analysis and their framing of the critical issues. What is more, their accounts of a
complex reality are potentially consistent, even though none of these contributors is
generally willing to countenance the possibility of a synthesis, since they remain
trapped in a common belief that the fundamental question is one of establishing
causal primacy. Addressing that question all depends on how one sets up the
problem at hand. The antecedents of most knowledge or ideas can generally be
traced back a very long way. So if the question posed is ‘which came first?’ the case
for knowledge or values or beliefs as the driver is at its strongest. However, when
knowledge or ideas first arise they may be relatively little related to practice, or at
least narrowly constrained in their practical applicability. An extreme illustration
would be da Vinci’s helicopter, which was realized in practice only around
450 years later. So if instead the appropriate question is ‘what drives the devel-
opment of practice?’ the answer is the accumulation of technological knowledge
and expertise through a continual process of innovative problem-solving in and
around production (Rosenberg 1982). So this takes us back to the story of the
system of production and technology as the primary driver of social evolution. Yet
at this stage we are reminded of how Freeman and Perez (1988) showed how the
selection of viable new technologies, organizational methods and products depends
on the adaptability of institutions. So if the question becomes ‘what drives the
take-up, diffusion and survivability of lines of innovation once they have been
hatched?’ we are more likely to turn to an institutional story, such as whether
institutions are more extractive or inclusive in nature.
Once we step back in Hegelian fashion and attempt to conceptualize the
movement of a social system as a whole in history, it becomes necessary to rec-
ognize the continual relational interdependence between knowledge, institutions
and technology in production in the course of development, rather than a neat
primary causal direction of change. This is especially true if our focus of attention is
on the evolution of a holistic techno-socio-economic paradigm, as opposed to an
attempt to explain some certain specific chain of events or phenomena, or some
particular phase of history. An encompassing techno-socio-economic paradigm
evolves organically and interdependently, thereby exhibiting a kind of inner life or
vitality from within itself, rather than through a simple deterministic response to
some underlying primary exogenous mechanism or driver. The movement of the
whole entails a necessary co-evolution of the parts, such that we must consider the
12 J. Cantwell

complex relational interaction between each of the parts and the overall system. The
behavior of a system, whether within a paradigm or in a period of paradigm shift, is
related to the ever-changing and continuously tested degree of fit or compatibility
between the elements of that system, and the extent to which the goodness of fit can
be retained or improved. In an Hegelian co-evolutionary approach we must con-
sider the movement of both the whole system and the particulars within it.
Hegel once said famously that a philosopher can only present a philosophy that
reflects the context of his or her own time, and the spirit of the age in which he or
she lives. This follows from his backward-looking evolutionary approach to explain
the roots of the present and the selective absorption of ideas taken from the past,
and a belief that the future is unpredictable. It is also related to his even better
known saying that ‘the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the
dusk’, meaning that the philosophical knowledge that captures the spirit of an age
can only reach full fruition once we have passed the zenith of that age. In other
words, only once a society or a way of life has reached maturity can we fully
conceptualize the course of its evolution over its entire lifetime. However, on this
point I believe that Hegel was not entirely right. As commented upon a moment ago
in a different context, ideas can sometimes arise well ahead of their greatest
applicability to practice. Indeed, some of the ideas that Hegel took from Aristotle
are arguably of this kind, and they were more relevant in his era than they had been
in ancient Greece. I would contend that despite his own opinion on the matter,
Hegel is more relevant to our age than he was to his own. This would help to
account for the shunning of Hegel’s work among English speaking philosophers
following his death for most of the 19th and 20th centuries, and yet the revival of
interest and rediscovery of his writings today.
The spirit of the Enlightenment era was perhaps given its ultimate expression in
the classical political economy of Adam Smith and the critical philosophy of Kant.
The progress in scientific thought and methods also inherited from the
Enlightenment laid the foundations for modern science and social science, groun-
ded on the principle of examining deterministic cause-effect relationships by iso-
lating phenomena and separating them (controlling for) any other extraneous
influences. This has led to the dramatic growth and an ever faster expansion of
increasingly specialized bodies of knowledge. Yet although these methods continue
to be highly useful and productive, we have surely now reached the stage at which
the relevance of complex interdependencies must also be given greater attention.
With regard to the topic of this paper and this book, we need to be able to analyze
the entirety of a techno-socio-economic paradigm and its constituent elements of
knowledge, institutions and technology in production, rather than treating the parts
separately or continuing to debate which of these parts should be accorded primacy
(which is just another variant of the traditional scientific focus on causality). In
today’s techno-socio-economic paradigm in the information and digital age, not
only are knowledge, institutions and technology more interconnected than ever
before, but in our way of life we have begun to increasingly appreciate the inter-
relationship between our society, our production, and the natural world around us
and the planet on which we live. In our current paradigm in which co-evolution is
1 The Philosophy of Paradigm Change in the History … 13

more pronounced than ever before, we need to be able to better conceptualize the
movement of a complex relational system. This calls for an Hegelian approach, as I
have argued here.

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730–743.
1 The Philosophy of Paradigm Change in the History … 15

John Cantwell (Ph.D., Reading) is Distinguished Professor of International Business in Rutgers

University (New Jersey, USA) since 2002. He was previously Professor of International
Economics at the University of Reading in the UK. His early work helped to launch a new
literature on multinational companies and international networks for technology creation, beyond
merely international technology transfer. Professor Cantwell’s total citation count on Google
Scholar is well over 15,000. His published research spans the fields of International Business and
Management, Economics, Economic History and Philosophy, Economic Geography, and
Innovation Studies. He served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Business
Studies (JIBS) from 2011–16. He was the elected Dean of the European International Business
Academy (EIBA) Fellows from 2015–18. He is also an elected Fellow of the Academy of
International Business (AIB) since 2005.
Chapter 2
Paradigm Changes in Technological
Knowledge Connections in Urban
Innovation Systems

Salma Zaman

Abstract The late twentieth century marked the advent of a new information based
and internationally networked paradigm, much different from its old science-based
predecessor. As we enter the diffusion stage of this paradigm, we expect to see
changes in the way organizations and locations interact with one another. We
envision that cities and clusters will not rely exclusively on local knowledge
sources but will need to combine local with complementary geographically distant
(trans-local) knowledge sources. This chapter contributes to the literature on the
changing geographic composition of knowledge connections in the new paradigm.
Using social network analysis techniques, we construct a unidirectional network of
62 selected cities, since backward citations point in just one direction to prior
knowledge sources. We observe how the spatial distribution of our technological
network changes during our time period, both in the aggregate and at the level of
five selected sectors. The nodes in our network represent cities while the edges
represent citations from one city to another. We calculate network statistics such as
degree strength and eigenvector centrality to determine which cities have gained
influence over time and which cities have become relatively less important. Overall,
we observe that the technological knowledge network between our cities is getting
denser and more dispersed over our time period. We see that many developing
cities are gradually increasing in their centrality to our constructed network and that
this increase in centrality is more pronounced in certain sectors, characteristic of the
new paradigm, such as the ICT sector. We also observe that while developing cities
have become important sources of technological knowledge, they still lag in terms
of the knowledge they receive from external sources.

S. Zaman (&)
Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Lahore, Pakistan
e-mail: [email protected]

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 17

J. Cantwell and T. Hayashi (eds.), Paradigm Shift in Technologies and Innovation
Systems, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9350-2_2
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
birthday ceremonies to present congratulations and gifts.
Conspicuous by his absence, however, was the Emperor’s brother,
Prince Ch’un (the present Regent), who had applied for short leave
in order to avoid being present, and who offered no presents.
A significant incident occurred in connection with the birthday
ceremonies. Among the many complimentary scrolls, presented by
friends and hanging on the walls, were a pair which attracted much
attention, until they were hurriedly removed. One contained the
following inscription:—“5th day of the 8th Moon of the Wu Shen year”
(this was the date of the crisis of the coup d’état when Yüan Shih-k’ai
warned Jung Lu of the plot, and thus brought about the practical
dethronement of the Emperor), and on the other were the words:
—“May the Emperor live ten thousand years! May Your Excellency
live ten thousand years.”
The words “wan sui,” meaning “ten thousand years,” are not
applicable to any subject of the Throne, and the inner meaning of
these words was, therefore, interpreted to be a charge against Yüan
of conspiring for the Throne. It was clear that some enemy had sent
the scrolls as a reminder of Yüan’s betrayal of his Sovereign ten
years before, and that they had been hung up either as the result of
connivance or carelessness on the part of Yüan’s people. Four
months later, when the great ex-Viceroy fell, this incident was
remembered and inevitably connected with Prince Ch’un’s non-
appearance at the birthday ceremonies.
In September, the Dalai Lama reached Peking, but owing to a
dispute on certain details of ceremonial, his audience was
postponed. It was finally arranged that the Pontiff should kowtow to
the Throne, and that the Emperor should then rise from his seat and
invite the Lama to sit beside him on a cane couch. This ceremonial
was most reluctantly accepted, and only after much discussion, by
the Dalai Lama, who considered his dignity seriously injured by
having to kowtow. He had brought with him much tribute, and was
therefore the more disappointed at the Old Buddha’s failure to show
him the marks of respect which he had expected. His audience was
held early in October, when Her Majesty requested him to offer up
prayers regularly for her long life and prosperity.
 In October, the foreign Ministers were also received at the
Summer Palace, and on the 20th of that month the Court returned to
the Lake Palace for the winter. On this, her last State progress, the
Empress Dowager approached the city as usual in her State barge,
by the canal which joins the Summer Palace Lake with the waters of
the Winter Palace, proceeding in it as far as the Temple of Imperial
Longevity, which is situated on the banks of this canal. It was
observed that as she left the precincts of the Summer Palace she
gazed longingly towards the lofty walls that rise from the banks of the
lake, and from thence to the hills receding into the far distance.
Turning to the “Lustrous” concubine who sat at her feet, she
expressed her fears that the critical condition of the Emperor would
prevent her from visiting her favourite residence for a long time to
come.

View, from the K’un Ming Lake, of the Summer Palace.

 The Old Buddha sat in a cane chair on the raised deck of her
magnificent barge adorned with carved dragons and phœnixes; she
was surrounded by her favourite eunuchs, and half a dozen of the
chief ladies of the Court. As she descended from the barge,
supported by two eunuchs, and entered the sedan chair which bore
her to within the temple precincts, her vivacity and good spirits
formed a subject of general comment. She performed the usual
sacrifices at the Temple of Imperial Longevity, a shrine which she
had liberally endowed; but it was remembered after her death, as an
unfortunate omen, that the last stick of incense failed to ignite. Upon
leaving the temple she begged the priests to chant daily liturgies and
to pray for her longevity, in view of her approaching birthday.
After leaving the temple precincts she proceeded with her ladies-
in-waiting to the Botanical and Zoological Gardens, which lie just
outside the “West-Straight gate” of the city. On arrival at the gates,
she insisted upon descending from her sedan chair, and made the
entire round of the gardens on foot. She expressed interest and
much pleasure at the sight of animals which she had never seen
before, and announced her intention of frequently visiting the place.
She asked numerous questions of the keepers, being especially
interested in the lions, and created much amusement amongst her
immediate entourage by asking the director of the gardens (a
Manchu official of the Household) for information as to where the
animals came from, a subject on which he was naturally quite
uninformed. “You don’t seem to know much about zoology,” she
observed, and turned from the crestfallen official to address one of
the keepers in a most informal manner. The chief eunuch, Li Lien-
ying, wearied by such unwonted exercise, implored Her Majesty not
to tire herself, but the Old Buddha took pleasure, clearly malicious, in
hurrying him round the grounds. The occasion was unusual and
remarkably informal, and the picture brings irresistibly to the English
mind memories of another strong-minded Queen and her inspection
of another garden, where heads were insecure for gardeners and
Cheshire cats. Eye-witnesses of that day’s outing commented freely
on their Imperial Mistress’s extraordinary spirits and vitality,
predicting for her many years of life.
 Her Majesty, whose memory on unexpected subjects was always
remarkable, referred on this occasion to the elephant which had
been presented to her by Tuan Fang upon his return from Europe,
and which, together with several other animals for which she had no
fitting accommodation in the Palace grounds, was the first cause and
first inmate of the Zoological Gardens. The elephant in question had
originally been in charge of the two German keepers who had
accompanied it from Hagenbeck’s establishment; these men had
frequently but unsuccessfully protested at the insufficient rations
provided for the beast by the Mandarin in charge. Eventually the
elephant had died of slow starvation, and the keepers had returned
to Europe, after obtaining payment of their unexpired contracts, a
result which brought down upon the offending official Her Majesty’s
severe displeasure. She referred now to this incident, and expressed
satisfaction that most of the animals appeared to be well cared for,
though the tigers’ attendant received a sharp rebuke.
After Her Majesty’s return to the Winter Palace, everything was
given over to preparations for the celebration of her seventy-third
birthday on the 3rd of November. The main streets of the city were
decorated, and in the Palace itself arrangements were made for a
special theatrical performance to last for five days. A special
ceremony, quite distinct from the ordinary birthday congratulations of
the Court, was arranged for the Dalai Lama, who was to make
obeisance before Her Majesty at the head of his following of priests.
The health of His Majesty did not permit of his carrying out the
prescribed ceremony of prostration before Her Majesty’s Throne in
the main Palace of Ceremonial Phœnixes; he therefore deputed a
Prince of the Blood to represent him in the performance of this duty,
and those who knew its deep significance on such an occasion
realised that the condition of his health must indeed be desperate.
This impression was confirmed by the fact that he was similarly
compelled to abandon his intention of being present at a special
banquet to be given to the Dalai Lama in the Palace of Tributary
Envoys. The high priest, who had been compelled to kneel outside
the banquet hall to await the arrival of His Majesty, was greatly
incensed at this occurrence.
 The Empress Dowager, with the Chief Eunuch, Li Lien-Ying.

At eight in the morning of the birthday His Majesty left his Palace
in the “Ocean Terrace” and proceeded to the Throne Hall. His
emaciated and woe-begone appearance was such, however, that the
Old Buddha took compassion upon him, and bade his attendant
eunuchs support him to his palanquin, excusing him from further
attendance. Later in the day she issued a special Decree praising
the loyalty of the Dalai Lama, and ordering him to return promptly to
Thibet, “there to extol the generosity of the Throne of China, and
faithfully to obey the commands of the Sovereign power.” The
Empress Dowager spent the afternoon of her birthday in the
congenial amusement of a masquerade, appearing in the costume of
the Goddess of Mercy, attended by a numerous suite of concubines,
Imperial Princesses, and eunuchs, all in fancy dress. They picnicked
on the lake, and Her Majesty appeared to be in the very highest
spirits. Unfortunately, towards evening, she caught a chill, and
thereafter, partaking too freely of a mixture of clotted cream and crab
apples, she had a return of the dysenteric complaint from which she
had suffered all through the summer. On the following day she
attended to affairs of State as usual, reading a vast number of
Memorials and recording her decision thereon, but on the 5th of
November neither she nor the Emperor were sufficiently well to
receive the Grand Council, so that all business of government was
suspended for two days. Upon hearing of Her Majesty’s illness, the
Dalai Lama hastened to present her with an image of Buddha,
which, he said, should be despatched forthwith to her mausoleum at
the hills, the building of which had just been completed under the
supervision of Prince Ch’ing.[127] The high priest urged all haste in
transmitting this miracle-working image to her future burial-place; if it
were done quickly, he said, her life would be prolonged by many
years, because the unlucky conjunction of the stars now affecting
her adversely would avail nothing against the magic power of this
image. The Old Buddha was greatly reassured by the Dalai Lama’s
cheerful prognostications, and next morning held audience as usual.
She commanded Prince Ch’ing to proceed without delay to the
tombs, and there to deposit the miraculous image on the altar.[128]
She ordered him to pay particular attention to the work done at the
mausoleum, and to make certain that her detailed instructions had
been faithfully carried out. Prince Ch’ing demurred somewhat at
these instructions, inquiring whether she really wished him to leave
Peking at a time when she herself and the Emperor were both ill. But
the Old Buddha would brook no argument, and peremptorily ordered
him to proceed as instructed. “I am not likely to die,” she said,
“during the next few days; already I am feeling much better. In any
case you will do as you are told.” On Monday, November 9th, both
the Empress Dowager and the Emperor were present at a meeting
of the Grand Council, and a special audience was given to the
Educational Commissioner of Chihli province, about to leave for his
post. At this audience the Old Buddha spoke with some bitterness of
the increasing tendency of the student class to give vent to
revolutionary ideas, and she commanded the Commissioner of
Education to do all in his power to check their political activities.
Shortly afterwards four more physicians, who had come up from
the provinces, were admitted to see His Majesty. That same
afternoon he had a serious relapse, and from that day forward never
left his palace. On the following morning he sent a dutiful message
(or it was sent for him) enquiring after the Empress Dowager’s
health, she being also confined to her room and holding no
audiences. The Court physicians reported badly of both their
Imperial patients: being fearful as to the outcome, they begged the
Comptroller-General of the Household to engage other physicians in
their place. The Grand Council sent a message to Prince Ch’ing,
directing him to return to Peking with all haste, his presence being
required forthwith on matters of the highest importance. Travelling
night and day, he reached the capital at about eight o’clock in the
morning of the 13th, and hastened to the palace. He found the Old
Buddha cheerful and confident of ultimate recovery, but the Emperor
was visibly sinking, his condition being comatose, with short lucid
intervals. His last conscious act had been to direct his Consort to
inform the Empress Dowager that he regretted being unable to
attend her, and that he hoped that she would appoint an Heir
Apparent without further delay. Whether these dutiful messages
were spontaneous or inspired, and indeed, whether they were ever
sent by the Emperor, is a matter upon which doubt has been freely
expressed.
Immediately after the arrival of Prince Ch’ing, an important
audience was held in the Hall of Ceremonial Phœnixes. Her Majesty
was able to mount the Throne, and, although obviously weak, her
unconquerable courage enabled her to master her physical ailments,
and she spoke with all her wonted vehemence and lucidity. A well-
informed member of the Grand Council, full of wonder at such an
exhibition of strength of will, has recorded the fact that she
completely led and dominated the Council. There were present
Prince Ch’ing, Prince Ch’un, the Grand Councillor Yüan Shih-k’ai,
and the Grand Secretaries Chang Chih-tung, Lu Ch’uan-lin and Shih
Hsü.
Her Majesty announced that the time had come to nominate an
Heir to the Emperor T’ung-Chih, in accordance with that Decree of
the first day of the reign of Kuang-Hsü, wherein it was provided that
the deceased Sovereign’s ancestral rites should be safeguarded by
allowing him precedence over his successor of the same generation.
Her choice, she said, was already made, but she desired to take the
opinion of the Grand Councillors in the first instance. Prince Ch’ing
and Yüan Shih-k’ai then recommended the appointment of Prince
P’u Lun, or, failing him, Prince Kung. They thought the former, as
senior great-grandson of Tao-Kuang, was the more eligible
candidate, and with this view Prince Ch’un seemed disposed to
agree. The remaining Grand Councillors, however, advised the
selection of Prince Ch’un’s infant son.
After hearing the views of her Councillors, the Old Buddha
announced that long ago, at the time when she had betrothed the
daughter of Jung Lu to Prince Ch’un, she had decided that the eldest
son of this marriage should become Heir to the Throne, in
recognition and reward of Jung Lu’s lifelong devotion to her person,
and his paramount services to the Dynasty at the time of the Boxer
rising. She placed on record her opinion that he had saved the
Manchus by refusing to assist in the attack upon the Legations. In
the 3rd Moon of this year she had renewed her pledge to Jung Lu’s
widow, her oldest friend, just before she died. She would, therefore,
now bestow upon Prince Ch’un as Regent, the title of “Prince co-
operating in the Government,” a title one degree higher than that
which had been given to Prince Kung in 1861, who was made
“Adviser to the Government” by herself and her co-Regent.
 The Son of Heaven. H.M. Hsüan-T’ung, Emperor of China.

Upon hearing this decision, Prince Ch’un arose from his seat and
repeatedly kowtowed before Her Majesty, expressing a deep sense
of his own unworthiness. Once more Yüan Shih-k’ai courageously
advanced the superior claims of Prince P’u Lun: he was sincerely of
opinion that the time had come for the succession to be continued
along the original lines of primogeniture; it was clear also that he fully
realised that Prince Ch’un was his bitter enemy. The Old Buddha
turned upon him with an angry reprimand. “You think.” she said, “that
I am old, and in my dotage, but you should have learned by now that
when I make up my mind nothing stops me from acting upon it. At a
critical time in a nation’s affairs a youthful Sovereign is no doubt a
source of danger to the State, but do not forget that I shall be here to
direct and assist Prince Ch’un.” Then, turning to the other
Councillors, she continued:—“Draft two Decrees at once, in my
name, the first, appointing Tsai-feng, Prince Ch’un, to be ‘Prince co-
operating in the Government’ and the second commanding that P’u
Yi, son of Prince Ch’un, should enter the palace forthwith, to be
brought up within the precincts.” She ordered Prince Ch’ing to inform
the Emperor of these Decrees.
Kuang-Hsü was still conscious, and understood what Prince
Ch’ing said to him. “Would it not have been better,” he said, “to
nominate an adult? No doubt, however, the Empress Dowager
knows best.” Upon hearing of the appointment of Prince Ch’un to the
Regency, he expressed his gratification. This was at 3 p.m.; two
hours later the infant Prince had been brought into the Palace, and
was taken by his father to be shown both to the Empress Dowager
and the Emperor. At seven o’clock on the following morning the
physicians in attendance reported that His Majesty’s “nose was
twitching and his stomach rising,” from which signs they knew that
his end was at hand. During the night, feeling that death was near,
he had written out his last testament, in a hand almost illegible,
prefacing the same with these significant words:—

“We were the second son of Prince Ch’un when the

Empress Dowager selected Us for the Throne. She has
always hated Us, but for Our misery of the past ten years
Yüan Shih-k’ai is responsible, and one other” (the second
name is said to have been illegible). “When the time comes I
desire that Yüan be summarily beheaded.”
 The Emperor’s consort took possession of this document, which,
however, was seen by independent witnesses. Its wording goes to
show that any conciliatory attitude on the part of the Emperor during
the last year must have been inspired by fear and not by any revival
of affection.
Later in the day a Decree was promulgated, announcing to the
inhabitants of Peking and the Empire that their sovereign’s condition
was desperate, and calling on the provinces to send their most skilful
physicians post-haste to the capital so that, perchance, His Majesty’s
life might yet be saved. The Decree described in detail the
symptoms, real or alleged, of Kuang-Hsü’s malady. It was generally
regarded as a perfunctory announcement of an unimportant event,
long expected.
At 3 p.m. the Empress Dowager came to the “Ocean Terrace” to
visit the Emperor, but he was unconscious, and did not know her.
Later, when a short return of consciousness occurred, his attendants
endeavoured to persuade him to put on the Ceremonial Robes of
Longevity, in which etiquette prescribes that sovereigns should die. It
is the universal custom that, if possible, the patient should don these
robes in his last moments, for it is considered unlucky if they are put
on after death. His Majesty, however, obstinately declined, and at
five o’clock he died, in the presence of the Empress Dowager, his
consort, the two secondary consorts, and a few eunuchs. The
Empress Dowager did not remain to witness the ceremony of
clothing the body in the Dragon Robes, but returned forthwith to her
own palace, where she gave orders for the issue of his valedictory
Decree and for the proclamation of the new Emperor.
The most interesting passage of the Emperor’s valedictory Decree
was the following:—“Reflecting on the critical condition of our
Empire, we have been led to combine the Chinese system with
certain innovations from foreign countries. We have endeavoured to
establish harmony between the common people and converts to
Christianity. We have reorganised the army and founded colleges.
We have fostered trade and industries and have made provision for
a new judicial system, paving also the way for a Constitutional form
of government, so that all our subjects may enjoy the continued
blessings of peace.” After referring to the appointment of the Regent
and the nomination of a successor to the Dragon Throne, he
concludes (or rather the Empress concluded for him) with a further
reference to the Constitution, and an appeal to his Ministers to purify
their hearts and prepare themselves, so that, after nine years, the
new order may be accomplished, and the Imperial purposes
successfully achieved.
The Old Buddha appeared at this juncture to be in particularly
good spirits, astonishing all about her by her vivacity and keenness.
She gave orders that a further Decree be published, in the name of
the new Emperor, containing the usual laudation of the deceased
monarch and an expression of the infant Emperor’s gratitude to the
Empress Dowager for her benevolence in placing him on the Throne.
It will be remembered that the Censor Wu K’o-tu committed
suicide at the beginning of Kuang-Hsü’s reign, as an act of protest at
the irregularity in the succession, which left no heir to the Emperor
T’ung-Chih, that monarch’s spirit being left desolate and without a
successor to perform on his behalf the ancestral sacrifices. The
child, P’u Yi, having now been made heir by adoption to T’ung-Chih,
in fulfilment of the promise made by Tzŭ Hsi at the time of this
sensational suicide, it appeared as if the irregularity were about to be
repeated, and the soul of Kuang-Hsü to be left in a similar orbate
condition in the Halls of Hades, unless some means could be found
to solve the difficulty and meet the claims of both the deceased
Emperors. In the event of Kuang-Hsü being left without heir or
descendant to perform the all-important worship at his shrine, there
could be but little doubt that the feelings of the orthodox would again
be outraged, and the example of Wu K’o-tu might have been
followed by other Censors. The Empress Dowager, realising the
importance of the question, solved it in her own masterful way by a
stroke of policy which, although without precisely applicable
precedent in history, nevertheless appeared to satisfy all parties, and
to placate all prejudices, if only by reason of its simplicity and
originality. Her Decree on the subject was as follows:—
 “The Emperor T’ung-Chih, having left no heir, was
compelled to issue a Decree to the effect that so soon as a
child should be born to His Majesty Kuang-Hsü, that child
would be adopted as Heir to the Emperor T’ung-Chih. But
now His Majesty Kuang-Hsü has ascended on high, dragon-
borne, and he also has left no heir. I am, therefore, now
obliged to decree that P’u Yi, son of Tsai Feng, the ‘Prince co-
operating in the Government,’ should become heir by
adoption to the Emperor T’ung-Chih, and that, at the same
time, he should perform joint sacrifices at the shrine of His
Majesty Kuang-Hsü.”

To those who are acquainted with the tangled web of Chinese

Court ceremonial and the laws of succession, it would seem that so
simple (and so new) an expedient might suitably have been adopted
on previous similar occasions, since all that was required was to
make the individual living Emperor assume a dual personality
towards the dead, and one cannot help wondering whether the
classical priestcraft which controls these things would have accepted
the solution so readily at the hands of anyone less masterful and
determined than Tzŭ Hsi.
In a subsequent Decree the Empress Dowager handed over to the
Regent full control in all routine business, reserving only to herself
the last word in all important matters of State. The effect of this
arrangement was to place Prince Ch’un in much the same position of
nominal sovereignty as that held by Kuang-Hsü himself, until such
time as the young Emperor should come of age, or until the death of
the Empress Dowager. In other words, Tzŭ Hsi had once more put in
operation the machinery by which she had acquired and held the
supreme power since the death of her husband, the Emperor Hsien-
Feng. There is little doubt that at this moment she fully expected to
live for many years more, and that she made her plans so as to
enjoy to the end uninterrupted and undiminished authority. In her
Decree on this subject, wherein, as usual, she justifies her
proceedings by reference to the critical condition of affairs, she
states that the Regent is to carry on the Government “subject always
to the instructions of the Empress Dowager,” and there can be no
doubt that had she lived the Emperor’s brother would no more have
been permitted any independent initiative or authority than the
unfortunate Kuang-Hsü himself.
 XXVII
TZŬ HSI’S DEATH AND BURIAL

At the close of a long and exciting day, Her Majesty retired to rest
on the 14th of November, weary with her labours but apparently
much improved in health. Next morning she arose at her usual hour,
6 a.m., gave audience to the Grand Council and talked for some time
with the late Emperor’s widow, with the Regent and with his wife, the
daughter of Jung Lu. By a Decree issued in the name of the infant
Emperor, she assumed the title of Empress Grand Dowager, making
Kuang-Hsü’s widow Empress Dowager. Elaborate ceremonies were
planned to celebrate the bestowal of these new titles, and to
proclaim the installation of the Regent. Suddenly, at noon, while
sitting at her meal, the Old Buddha was seized with a fainting fit, long
and severe. When at last she recovered consciousness, it was clear
to all that the stress and excitement of the past few days had brought
on a relapse, her strength having been undermined by the long
attack of dysentery. Realising that her end was near, she hurriedly
summoned the new Empress Dowager, the Regent and the Grand
Council to the Palace, where, upon their coming together, she
dictated the following Decree, speaking in the same calm tones
which she habitually used in transacting the daily routine of
Government work:—

“By command of the Empress Grand Dowager: Yesterday I

issued an Edict whereby Prince Ch’un was made Regent, and
I commanded that the whole business of Government should
be in his hands, subject only to my instructions. Being seized
of a mortal sickness, and being without hope of recovery, I
now order that henceforward the government of the Empire
shall be entirely in the hands of the Regent. Nevertheless,
should there arise any question of vital importance, in regard
 to which an expression of the Empress Dowager’s opinion is
desirable, the Regent shall apply in person to her for
instructions, and act accordingly.”

The significance of the conclusion of this Decree is apparent to

anyone familiar with Chinese Court procedure and with the life
history of the Empress herself. Its ingenious wording was expressly
intended to afford to the new Empress Dowager and the Yehonala
Clan an opportunity for intervention at any special crisis, thus
maintaining the Clan’s final authority and safeguarding its position in
the event of any hostile move by the Regent or his adherents. And
the result of this precaution has already been shown on the occasion
of the recent dismissal of Tuan Fang[129] from the Viceroyalty of
Chihli for alleged want of respect in connection with the funeral
ceremonies of the Empress Dowager, an episode which showed
clearly that the Regent has no easy game to play, and that the new
Empress Dowager, Lung Yu, has every intention to defend the
position of the Clan and to take advantage thereof along lines very
similar to those followed by her august predecessor.
After issuing the Decree above quoted, the Empress Dowager,
rapidly sinking, commanded that her valedictory Decree be drafted
and submitted to her for approval. This was done quickly. After
perusing the document, she proceeded to correct it in several
places, notably by the addition of the sentence, “It became my
inevitable and bounden duty to assume the Regency.” Commenting
on this addition, she volunteered the explanation that she wished it
inserted because on more than one occasion her assumption of the
supreme power had been wrongfully attributed to personal ambition,
whereas, as a matter of fact, the welfare of the State had always
weighed with her as much as her own inclinations, and she had been
forced into this position. From her own pen also came the touching
conclusion of the Decree, that sentence which begins: “Looking back
over the memories of these fifty years,” etc. She observed, in writing
this, that she had nothing to regret in her life, and could only wish
that it might have lasted for many years more. She then proceeded
to bid an affectionate farewell to her numerous personal attendants
and the waiting maids around her, all of whom were overcome by
very real and deep grief. To the end her mind remained quite clear,
and, at the very point of death, she continued to speak as calmly as
if she were just about to set out on one of her progresses to the
Summer Palace. Again and again, when all thought the end had
come, she recovered consciousness, and up to the end the watchers
at her bedside could not help hoping (or fearing, as the case might
be with them) that she would yet get the better of Death. At the last,
in articulo mortis, they asked her, in accordance with the Chinese
custom, to pronounce her last words. Strangely significant was the
answer of the extraordinary woman who had moulded and guided
the destinies of the Chinese people for half a century: “Never again,”
she said, “allow any woman to hold the supreme power in the State.
It is against the house-law of our Dynasty and should be strictly
forbidden. Be careful not to permit eunuchs to meddle in
Government matters. The Ming Dynasty was brought to ruin by
eunuchs, and its fate should be a warning to my people.” Tzŭ Hsi
died, as she had lived, above the law, yet jealous of its fulfilment by
others. Only a few hours before she had provided for the
transmission of authority to a woman of her own clan: now,
confronting the dark Beyond, she hesitated to perpetuate a system
which, in any but the strongest hands, could not fail to throw the
Empire into confusion. She died, as she had lived, a creature of
impulse and swiftly changing moods, a woman of infinite variety.
At 3 p.m., straightening her limbs, she expired with her face to the
south, which is the correct position, according to Chinese ideas, for a
dying sovereign. It was reported by those who saw her die that her
mouth remained fixedly open, which the Chinese interpret as a sign
that the spirit of the deceased is unwilling to leave the body and to
take its departure for the place of the Nine Springs.
Thus died Tzŭ Hsi; and when her ladies and handmaidens had
dressed the body in its Robes of State, embroidered with the
Imperial Dragon, her remains and those of the Emperor were borne
from the Lake Palace to the Forbidden City, through long lines of
their kneeling subjects, and were reverently laid in separate Halls of
the Palace, with all due state and ceremony.
 The valedictory Decree of Tzŭ Hsi, the last words from that pen
which had indeed been mightier than many swords, was for the most
part a faithful reproduction of the classical models, the orthodox
swan song of the ruler of a people which makes of its writings a
religion. Its text is as follows:—

The Valedictory Mandate of Her Majesty Tz’ŭ-Hsi-Tuan-Yu-

K’ang-I-Chao-Yü-Chuang-Cheng-Shou-Kung-Ch’in-
Hsien-Ch’ung-Hsi, the Empress Grand Dowager,
declareth as follows:—
“I, of humble virtue, did reverently receive the appointment
of the late Emperor Hsien-Feng, which prepared for me a
place amongst his Consorts. When the late Emperor T’ung-
Chih succeeded in early childhood to the Throne, there was
rebellion still raging in the land, which was being vigorously
suppressed. Not only did the Taiping and turbaned rebels
engage in successive outbreaks, but disorder was spread by
the Kuei-chou aborigines and by Mahomedan bandits. The
provinces of the coast were in great distress, the people on
the verge of ruin, widespread distress confronting us on all
sides.
“Co-operating then with the senior Consort of Hsien-Feng,
the Empress Dowager of the Eastern Palace, I undertook the
heavy duties of Government, toiling ever, day and night.
Obeying the behests of His late Majesty, my husband, I urged
on the Metropolitan and provincial officials, as well as the
military commanders, directing their policies and striving for
the restoration of peace. I employed virtuous officials and was
ever ready to listen to wise counsel. I relieved my people’s
distress in time of flood and famine. By the goodwill and
bounty of Heaven, I suppressed the rebellions and out of dire
peril restored peace. Later, when the Emperor T’ung-Chih
passed away and the Emperor Kuang-Hsü, now just
deceased, entered by adoption upon the great heritage, the
crisis was even more dangerous and the condition of the
people even more pitiable. Within the Empire calamities were
rife, while from abroad we were confronted by repeated and
increasing acts of aggression.
“Once again it became my inevitable and bounden duty to
assume the Regency. Two years ago I issued a Decree
announcing the Throne’s intention to grant a Constitution, and
this present year I have promulgated the date at which it is to
come into effect. Innumerable affairs of State have required
direction at my hands and I have laboured without ceasing
and with all my might. Fortunately, my constitution was
naturally strong, and I have been able to face my duties with
undiminished vigour. During the summer and autumn of this
year, however, I have frequently been in bad health, at a time
when pressing affairs of State allowed me no repose. I lost
my sleep and appetite, and gradually my strength failed me.
Yet even then I took no rest, not for a single day. And
yesterday saw the death of His Majesty Kuang-Hsü; whereat
my grief overwhelmed me. I can bear no more, and so am I
come to the pass where no possible hope of recovery
remains.
“Looking back upon the memories of these last fifty years, I
perceive how calamities from within and aggression from
without have come upon us in relentless succession, and that
my life has never enjoyed a moment’s respite from anxiety.
But to-day definite progress has been made towards
necessary reforms. The new Emperor is but an infant, just
reaching the age when wise instruction is of the highest
importance. The Prince Regent and all our officials must
henceforth work loyally together to strengthen the foundations
of our Empire. His Majesty must devote himself to studying
the interests of the country and so refrain from giving way to
personal grief. That he may diligently pursue his studies, and
hereafter add fresh lustre to the glorious achievements of his
ancestors, is now my most earnest prayer.
“Mourning to be worn for only twenty-seven days.
“Cause this to be everywhere known!
 “Tenth Moon, 23rd day (November the 15th).”

The title by which Her Majesty was canonised contains no less

than twenty-two characters, sixteen of which were hers at the day of
her death, the other six having been added in the Imperial Decrees
which recorded her decease and praised her glorious achievements.
The first character “Dutiful”—i.e. to her husband—is always
accorded to a deceased Empress. It is significant of the unpractical
nature of the literati, or of their cynicism, that the second of her latest
titles signifies “reverend,” implying punctilious adherence to ancestral
traditions! The third and fourth mean “Equal of Heaven,” which
places her on a footing of equality with Confucius, while the fifth and
sixth raise her even higher than the Sage in the national Pantheon,
for it means “Increase in Sanctity,” of which Confucius was only a
“Manifestor.” In the records of the Dynasty she will henceforth be
known as the Empress “Dutiful, Reverend and Glorious,” a title,
according to the laws of Chinese honorifics, higher than any woman
ruler has hitherto received since the beginning of history.
Since her death the prestige of the Empress Dowager, and her
hold on the imagination of the people, have grown rather than
decreased. Around her coffin, while it lay first in her Palace of
Peaceful Longevity and later in a hall at the foot of the Coal Hill,
north of the Forbidden City, awaiting the appointed day propitious for
burial, there gathered something more than the conventional regrets
and honours which fall usually to the lot of China’s rulers. Officials as
well as people felt that with her they had lost the strong hand of
guidance, and a personality which appealed to most of them as
much from the human as from the official point of view. Their
affectionate recollections of the Old Buddha were clearly shown by
the elaborate sacrifices paid to her manes at various periods from
the day of her death to that day, a year later, when her ancestral
tablet was brought home to the Forbidden City from the Imperial
tombs with all pomp and circumstance.
On the All Souls’ day of the Buddhists, celebrated in the 7th Moon,
and which fell in the September following her death, a magnificent
barge made of paper and over a hundred and fifty feet long was set