"Taking Life Too Lightly" or "Martyred for Righteousness"? Officials' Suicides in the High Qing

Abstract: This article is a preliminary examination of officials' suicides in the high Qing. While existing research has amply described specific aspects of suicide in the Qing law, especially among women commemorated in the "chastity cult," this piece presents a more systematic view of suicide's legal definitions and common tropes in suicide cases. It also considers how the economic and cultural backdrop of the high Qing shaped elite men's suicides. How did officials' lives lead them to seek death by their own hands, how did their circumstances contrast to the suicidality of non-elite men and women, and how did their bureaucratic peers, superiors, and sovereigns regard their deaths?