"The city of Qufu in north China's Shandong Province is famous as the hometown of Kong Qiu (551-479 BCE)--known in English as Confucius, and in Chinese as Kongzi or Kong Fuzi--and the site of his tomb and temple. Serving the Sage traces the history of the direct descendants of Confucius from the inception of the hereditary title Dukes for Fulfilling the Sage in 1055 through its dissolution in 1935, after the fall of China's dynastic system in 1911. The Kongs' administrative record, the largest such family archive in China, documents the history of northern Chinese agriculture, market formation, rural violence, and rent resistance. Serving the Sage draws on this rich material to address key themes in Chinese social history, such as agricultural commercialization, the structure and function of periodic marketing systems, and the impact of rural violence on political destabilization and social upheavals. The picture that emerges is that of a kinship group descended from Confucius and ruled by a hereditary duke that mobilized substantial and often coercive forces to manage agricultural labor, dominate rural markets, and profit from commercial enterprises. The book also examines how genealogies and ritual texts, through their performance and circulation, reproduced a model of kinship organization that reinforced ducal power. Elites shaped cultural practice and collective memory, while competing with state and popular interests. Confucian ritual was at once a means to reproduce existing social hierarchies and a potential site of conflict and subversion"-- Provided by publisher.