-Brief introduction

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the Gyeonggi Capital Cao Yun Division was placed, and the Cao Yun envoy was set up, which was soon abolished. During the Yongle period, the chief military officer of Caoyun was placed, and during the Xuande period, he sent Shilang, Du Yushi, Shaoqing and other officials to supervise Caoyun. In the second year of Jingtai (1451), he placed and the governor of Huai, Yang, Lu, and Feng, Xu, He, and Chuzhou, and stationed in Huai'an (now Jiangsu), and then set up a governor, and in the 40th year of Jiajing (1561), he was merged, and the governor Caoyun and the commander of military affairs were not divided. Qing along the place, subordinate to the inspection of Cao Wu, the supervision of grain roads, the management of grain with knowledge, the general judgment, the escort general judgment and other officials. In the thirty-first year of Guangxu (1905), it was abolished due to the abandonment of the river.

- Set the reason

One of the main functions of the ancient canal was that the government organized the transfer of grain to meet the normal administrative expenses of the state and the consumption of the royal family, which was the transportation of water in the usual sense. Therefore, the Grand Canal was also known as the Cao River in ancient times. The Ming Dynasty government further dredged the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal after the transformation and straightening of the Yuan Dynasty, and made the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal have the shipping value of connecting the north and south in a real sense by constructing the Nanwang water diversion project known as the "water ridge" in Shandong.

Since then, the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal has become the transportation lifeline on which the economic circulation and political rule of the Ming and Qing governments depended. In order to ensure the unimpeded flow of this lifeline, the Ming and Qing dynasties provided guarantees from political, economic, and military aspects almost regardless of the cost.

One of the important manifestations of this is the gradual standardization and strengthening of the management of canal affairs. With the north-south connection of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, the importance of the canal's waterway management and maintenance is to some extent more important and tricky than the transportation itself. Therefore, the Ming and Qing governments changed the status quo of the previous management by the water administration department or the water transport officials who were also in charge of river affairs, and set up a special local management agency for the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, which was directly under the central government——。

- Institutional nature

Signature. In the Ming Dynasty began to set up, the Ming generation called them the Governor Cao Yun and the Governor (Li) River, and later generations called them respectively the Governor Cao and the Governor River, which was set earlier. In the second year of Jingtai (1451), due to the failure of Caoyun, the Ming government appointed the deputy imperial envoy Wang Hong, the governor of Caoyun, to be stationed in Huai'an, marking the beginning of the establishment of the post of the Ming court. At that time, the full name was "Governor Cao Yun and Admiral, Military Governor, Fengyang and other places in charge of the river", and its main function was not only to supervise the provinces involved in Cao to transport grain to Beijing through the canal, but also to supervise the local government and take charge of the maintenance and management of the river. In October of the seventh year of Chenghua (1471), in view of the silting up of the river, the transportation of the river was blocked from time to time, and the commissioner was needed to coordinate the river affairs, so the imperial court ordered the prime minister of the Ministry of Punishment to be stationed in Jining, Shandong, to preside over the governance and maintenance of the canal and the Yellow River, which was the beginning of the central government of the Ming Dynasty to set up a special official for river control, and it was also a sign of the separate management of the river and the river in the management of the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal. However, for most of the Ming Dynasty, the Governor of Hehe only went out as the emperor's representative to supervise or govern the river, which was a temporary assignment and was not a fixed official position.

In the Qing Dynasty, the management of the canal was further strengthened, and the responsibilities of the water transportation management system and the river management system were more distinct and standardized. In the early years of Shunzhi, the Qing court set up a river governor and one each, as the highest administrator responsible for grain transportation and river management, and officially incorporated the river governor into the official system.

The following officials have patrol envoys, supervising grain roads, and managing grain with knowledge, etc., and the army under their jurisdiction is called "Cao Biao". After Qianlong, the subordinate institutions of the river governor were designated as three levels: province, department, and flood, and were managed in sections. The subordinate officials have river reservoirs, river channels, river management and general judgment, etc., and the army under their jurisdiction is called "river mark". However, there were no subordinate officials in the yamen of the governor of Hehe, and only 20 scribes were set up to handle the affairs of the yamen.

The Qing Dynasty Yamen was still stationed in Huai'an, and had jurisdiction over the eight provinces of Shandong, Henan, Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Hubei, and Hunan. From the collection and transportation of the grain, to the northward passage of the Cao ship through Huai and its arrival in Tongzhou, the Cao Governor had to personally audit and supervise, and the important situations in the transportation process had to be reported to the emperor at any time. In the twenty-first year of Kangxi (1682), it was stipulated that after the grain ship passed through Huai, the general cao should go north with the ship, and lead his subordinates to inspect the transportation situation and dispatch the whole Cao. After the grain ship passed through Tianjin, the general Cao immediately entered Beijing to meet and report on his work, and then returned to Huai to handle the collection and transportation of the next year.

-abolition

--Due to the fact that it involves the management of the canal in sections, the establishment of the river governor in the Qing Dynasty is much more complicated. In the first year of Shunzhi, there was only one river governor, who was in charge of the Yellow River, the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and the Yongding River embankment, dredging and other matters, and the seat of governance was in Jining, Shandong. In the sixteenth year of the Kangxi reign (1677), the governor of the river had to move from Jining to Qingjiangpu (Huai'an City) in Jiangsu. In this way, if the embankment workers in Wuzhi and Zhongmu in Henan were in danger, the river governor stationed in Huai'an was often beyond the reach of the whip, and the Qing court set up the post of deputy chief river in the second year of Yongzheng (1724), stationed in Wuzhi, Henan, and was responsible for Henan river affairs.

In the seventh year of Yongzheng (1729), the governor of the river was changed to the governor of Jiangnan River to supervise military affairs (referred to as the governor of Jiangnan River or the governor of Nanhe), and the deputy governor of the river was the governor of Henan and Shandong rivers to supervise military affairs (referred to as the governor of Hedong River or the governor of Donghe), respectively managing the affairs of the two major river sections in the north and south. In the event of two common matters, the two river governors negotiated and dealt with them. In the eighth year of Yongzheng (1730), the Qing court set up the governor of river water conservancy in Zhili, who had jurisdiction over the prevention and control of various rivers and canals in the Haihe River system. So far, the Qing Dynasty river governor was divided into three, and in terms of river engineering tasks and the impact on Cao Yun, the most important position among the three rivers was the Nanhe governor. In the 14th year of Qianlong (1749), the affairs of the Zhili River gradually got on the right track, and the post of Governor of Beihe was abolished, and its functions were concurrently held by the Governor of Zhili.

In the Qing Dynasty, the Yellow River has a history of four or five hundred years, and the frequent occurrence of river disasters caused by sediment accumulation has made the canal management face dead-end problems, especially in the Qingkou area at the intersection of the Yellow River and the Huaiyun of the South River, and the river engineering task is particularly arduous. This situation led to some subtle changes in the social role with the Governor of the River. First, the Qing court attached much more importance to the governor of the river than the Ming Dynasty, and the status of the general river gradually surpassed that of the general river. In the Ming Dynasty, the general river often acted as an agent for river affairs, and the post of the general river was set up and abolished, and the post of the general river in the Qing Dynasty was never vacant, and there were many people who acted as the general river affairs, but the phenomenon of the general river and the river affairs was very few. Second, the danger of Zonghe's career is much greater than that of Zongcao. In the face of the incurable river disasters at that time, the river governors (especially the governors of the Nanhe River) often walked on thin ice, and sudden river disasters often brought them the end of losing their official positions and being convicted.

Although they have special responsibilities with the governor of the river, their common goal is to ensure the smooth flow of water, so the two sides must achieve a division of labor without separation. However, after all, they are two separate administrative systems with different specific tasks, different priorities, and the same canal, and often encounter overlapping rights and conflicts of interest in many places and many affairs. As a result, there were often many contradictions between Zongcao and Zonghe, and sometimes even quarrelsome, so that the imperial court had to intervene. Like Jin Fu, the river governor and Mu Tianyan, the governor of Cao, during the Kangxi period, were both Caohe cadres relied on by Kangxi, but the two attacked each other from the position of the two governors of the river and Cao, and as a result, they were both cut officials.

As the Yellow River moved north to Shandong in the fifth year of Xianfeng (1855), the channel of the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal was blocked, and the inland river transportation was of little significance, and the governor of the river also lost the meaning of existence. The governor of Jiangnan River was abolished in the third year after the diversion of the Yellow River (1858), and the governor of Donghe was abolished in the 28th year of Guangxu (1902) and the 31st year of Guangxu (1905) respectively.

-Rank

In the Qing Dynasty, he was a member of the first and second ranks. The hat is decorated with ruby (the second product is coral), the python robe is nine pythons and five claws (the second product is the same), and the crane supplement (the second product is the golden chicken).

The income is not high, and the annual silver is only 180 taels (155 taels for the second grade). The annual incorruptible silver is about 15,000 taels to 30,000 taels (less than 20,000 taels for the second grade).