¹ Meadows, Th.T., The Chinese and Their Rebellions, Viewed in Connection with Their National Philosophy, Ethics, Legislation, and Administration (London, 1856), p. 25. Italics in the original.Google Scholar

² For information on the dynastic cycle, see Fairbank, J. and Reischauer, E., China: Tradition and Transformation (Sydney, 1979), pp. 70–75;Google Scholar Yu-kung, Kao, ‘Source Materials on the Fang La Rebellion‘, in: Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, XXVI (1966), pp. 211–40;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Muramatsu, Yuji, “Some Themes in Chinese Rebel Ideologies”, in: The Confucian Persuasion, ed. by Wright, A. F. (Stanford, 1960), pp. 241–67;Google Scholar Shih, V., “Some Chinese Rebel Ideologies”, in: T'oung Pao, XLIV (1956), pp. 150–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ The basis of this argument originated in the fourth century BC in the writings of the philosopher Meng K'e, better known as Mencius. See Mencius, , transl. by Lau, D. C. (Harmondsworth, 1970), especially Book IV, Pt A.Google Scholar

⁴ See the introduction in The Pattern of Chinese History: Cycles, Development, or Stagnation?, ed. by Meskill, J. (Lexington, 1965).Google Scholar

⁵ An excellent critique on the predominance of Chinese political history is in Wright, A. F., “The Study of Chinese Civilization”, in: Journal of the History of Ideas, XXI (1960), pp. 233–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Further criticism on current writing about Chinese history, especially since the mid 1960's, may be seen in Metzger, Th. and Myers, R., “Sinological Shadows: The State of Modern China Studies in the US”, in: The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, No 4 (1980), pp. 1–34.Google Scholar For a critical and penetrating analysis of popular movemenu in Chinese history, refer to the excellent article by Wakeman, F. Jr, “Rebellion and Revolution: The Study of Popular Movements in Chinese History”, in: Journal of Asian Studies, XXXVI (1976–1977), pp. 201–37.Google Scholar

⁶ For a thorough introduction to Chinese Communist historiography on peasant rebellions before 1966 at the start of the Cultural Revolution, see Harrison, J. P., The Communists and Chinese Peasant Rebellions (New York, 1969)Google Scholar, especially Pt I. Between the 1950's and 1966, a few eminent historians voiced discontent over the revolutionary aims of peasants’ role in class struggle. They would write, as did Jian Bozan in 1961, that peasant rebels opposed landlords, but not landlordism. These historians were, however, a definite minority. See Harrison, , pp. 215–24.Google Scholar

⁷ Tse-tung, Mao, Selected Works (Peking, 1961), III, p. 76.Google Scholar

⁸ Kahn, H. and Feuerwerker, A., “The Ideology of Scholarship: China's New Historiography”, in: History in Communist China, ed. by Feuerwerker, A. (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), p. 5.Google Scholar

⁹ See the Preface to From Ming to Ch'ing: Conquest, Region, and Continuity in Seventeenth-Century China, ed. by Spence, J. D. and Wills, J. E. Jr, (New Haven, 1979)Google Scholar, and Wakeman, F. Jr, “The Evolution of Local Control in Late Imperial China”, in: Conflict and Control in Late Imperial China, ed. by Wakeman, F. Jr, and Grant, C. (Berkeley, 1975), pp. 1–25.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Liu, Kwang-Ching, “World View and Peasant Rebellion: Reflections on Post-Mao Histonography”. in: Journal of Asian Studies, XL (1980–1981), pp. 295–326.Google Scholar

¹¹ To date, the most thorough and extensive coverage of related materials on violence and political protest in Chinese history may be found in Ssu-yü Teng, Protest and Crime in China. A Bibliography of Secret Associations, Popular Uprisings, Peasant Rebellions (New York, 1981). This volume contains entries on 4,000 articles, books, reviews, dissertations, local gazetteers, unpublished papers and rare editions in Chinese, Japanese, English, French, German, Russian, Dutch and Korean in collections in the United States, the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and Europe. See also the chapter “The Study of Peasant Uprisings” in Ming and Qing Historical Studies in the People's Republic of China, ed. by Wakeman, F. Jr (Berkeley, 1980), pp. 104–12, and C. K. Yang, “Some Preliminary Statistical Patterns of Mass Actions in Nineteenth-Century China”, in: Conflict and Control, op. it., pp. 174–210, for application of the use of the computer to mass movements.Google Scholar

¹² Scholars have conventionally termed part of this ruling class in China as “gentry”, but for reasons of clarification it would seem best not to use this expression here. The distinction is made in this paper between the local elite, those possessing bureaucratic degrees and/or landed wealth, and the court elite, those members of the bureaucracy working in court circles with the Emperor in Peking. For further explanation see Wakeman, F. Jr, The Fall of Imperial China (New York, 1975), pp. 19–37,Google Scholar and Zurndorfer, H., “The Hsin-an ra-tsu chih and the Development of Chinese Gentry Society”, in: T'oung Pao, LXVII (1981), pp. 154–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹³ Mentioned in Yuan, Tsing, “Urban Riots and Disturbances”, in: From Ming to Ch'ing, op. cit., pp. 277–320.Google Scholar

¹⁴ For a detailed list of these cities and the years of disturbances, see Tadao, Sakai, Chugoku Zenshô no kenkyû (A Study of Chinese Morality Books) (Tokyo, 1960), pp. 152–56.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Excellent descriptions and analyses of the late-Ming economy are in Atwell, W. S., “Notes on Silver, Foreign Trade, and the Late Ming Economy”, in: Ch'ing-shih Wen-t'i, III, No 8 (1977), pp. 1–33, and the same author's “International Bullion Flows and the Chinese Economy circa 1530–1650”, in: Past & Present, No 95 (1982), pp. 68–90.Google Scholar For a stimulating discussion on the implications of a growing Ming economy, see Myers, R., “Some Issues on Economic Organization during the Ming and Ch'ing Periods: A Review Article”, in: Ch'ing-shih Wen-t'i, III, No 2 (1974), pp. 77–93.Google Scholar

¹⁶ See Balazs, E., “The Birth of Capitalism in China”, in Chinese Civilisation and Bureaucracy (New Haven, 1964), pp. 34–54,Google Scholar and compare Weber, M., The Religion of China (New York, 1951).Google Scholar

¹⁷ Major violent urban incidents occurred in 1567, 1571, 1582, 1592, 1593, 1596, 1597, 1599, 1600, 1601, 1602, 1603, 1604, 1607, 1626, 1628 and 1641. On the richness and sophistication of urban life in the late Ming see Mote, F. W., “A Millennium of Chinese Urban History: Form, Time, and Space Concepts in Soochow”, in: Rice University Studies, LIX (1973), pp. 35–65, and the same author's essay on gastronomy during the Ming in Food in Chinese Culture, ed. by K. C. Chang (New Haven, 1977), ch. 5.Google Scholar

¹⁸ On eunuch involvement in Chinese economic life, refer to Zurndorfer, H., “Chinese Merchants and Commerce in Sixteenth Century China”, in: Leyden Studies in Sinology, ed. by Idema, W. (Leiden, 1981), pp. 75–86.Google Scholar Compare Hucker, Ch., “Su-chou and the Agents of Wei Chung-hsien”, in Two Studies on Ming History (Ann Arbor, 1971).Google Scholar

¹⁹ Yuan, , “Urban Riots and Disturbances”, loc. cit., p. 310.Google Scholar

²⁰ Dennerline, J., The Chia-ting Loyalists: Confucian Leadership and Social Change in Seventeenth Century China (New Haven, 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²¹ Atwell, W., “From Education to Politics: The Fu She”, in: The Unfolding of NeoConfucianism, ed. by Debary, W. T. (New York, 1975), pp. 333–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also Meskill, J., Academies in Ming China: A Historical Essay (Tucson, 1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²² See Yuan, , “Urban Riots and Disturbances”, pp. 298–308; S. H. Wu, Communication and Imperial Control in China (Cambridge, Mass., 1970);Google Scholar and Huang, P., Autocracy at Work: A Study of the Yung-cheng Period, 1723–1735 (Bloomington, 1974).Google Scholar

²³ A good review of the “traditional interpretation” of late-Ming peasant rebellions may be found in Parsons, J. B., Peasant Rebellions of the Late Ming Dynasty (Tucson, 1970).Google Scholar

²⁴ See Liu's excellent article “World View and Peasant Rebellion”, loc. cit., for an introduction to this new historiography, especially pp. 296–303.

²⁵ An abridged English translation of this work may be found in Chinese Literature, 1978, Nos 4–8. Li Zicheng represents the minority view of certain historians writing before the Cultural Revolution (compare note 6). Further publication of the novel was suspended when authorities during the period 1966–76 ascribed the “revolutionary consciousness” of peasants to be even greater than that of the proletariat. Thus it was not until the death of Mao and the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976 that this minority view could be heard again.

²⁶ Further information on Li, using yeshi of “wild, unofficial histories”, may be seen in Wakeman's, F. essay “The Shun Interregnum of 1644”, in: From Ming to Ch'ing, pp. 39–87. Refer also to Wakeman's massive study on North China in the late Ming and early Qing, The Great Enterprise, forthcoming.Google Scholar

²⁷ Liu, , “World View and Peasant Rebellion”, p. 298. In leading Chinese journals and newspapers the present view of Chinese historical development emphasizes the forces of production, especially technology, no longer class struggle. This affirmation of the connection between the superstructure and the economic foundation reflects the current national policy preoccupation with modernization.Google Scholar

²⁸ Ibid., p. 300. In general, this “new” historiography subscribes to the classic Marxist view of peasants, formed from the perspective of urban and industrial Europe in the nineteenth century.

²⁹ Ibid., pp. 301–03.

³⁰ Dennerline, J., “Hsü Tu and the Lesson of Nanking”, in: From Ming to Ch'ing, pp. 89–132.Google Scholar

³¹ Ibid., p. 110.

³² See H. Zurndorfer, “Commercial Wealth and Rural Pauperism in Sixteenth Century China: Huizhou Prefecture in Transition”, forthcoming.

³³ Beanie, H. J., “The Alternative to Resistance: The Case of T'ung-ch'eng, Anhwei”, in: From Ming to Ch'ing, pp. 239–76.Google Scholar A penetrating study of one of the longest resistance actions in Chinese history, occurring in Chiang-yin, is Wakeman, F. Jr, “Localism and Loyalism During the Ch'ing Conquest of Kiangnan”, in: Conifict and Control, pp.43–85.Google Scholar

³⁴ Beattie, , “The Alternative to Resistance”, p. 256.Google Scholar

³⁵ One of the best studies of this topic is by a Korean historian, I Songgyu. See a translation of his work “Shantung in the Shun-chih Reign: The Establishment of Local Control and the Gentry Response”, in: Ch'ing-shih Wen-t'i, IV, No 4(1980), pp. 1–34, and No5(1981), pp. 1–31.

³⁶ Two case-studies on the re-establishment of tax privileges are Dennerline, J., “Fiscal Reform and Local Control: The Gentry-Bureaucratic Alliance Survives the Conquest”, in: Conflict and Control, pp. 86–120,Google Scholar and Beattie, H. J., Land and Lineage in China: A Study of T'ung-ch'eng County, Anhwei, in the Ming and Ch'ing Dynasties (Cambridge, 1979).Google Scholar

³⁷ The best study to date in English on the phenomenon of the feud in China is Lamley, H., “Hsieh-tou: the Pathology of Violence in Southeastern China”, in: Ch'ing-shih Wen-t'i, III, No 7 (1977), pp. 1–39.Google Scholar

³⁸ Ibid.

³⁹ Ibid., p. 11. Compare Meskill, J., A Chinese Pioneer Family: The Lins of Wu-feng, Taiwan, 1729–1895 (Princeton 1979).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ For explanation of the Three Feudatories, see Kessler, L., K'ang-hsi and the Consolidation of Ch'ing Rule (Chicago, 1976). Compare L. Struve, The Southern Ming, forthcoming.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Compare Groves, R. G., “Militia, Market, and Lineage: Chinese Resistance to the Occupation of Hong Kong's New Territories in 1899”, in: The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, IX (1969), pp. 31–64,Google Scholar and Jones, S. M. and Kuhn, Ph. A., “Dynastic Decline and the Roots of Rebellion”, in: The Cambridge History of China, X: Late Ch'ing, 1800–1911, Pt I, ed. by Fairbank, J. F. (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 107–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴² Chan, Hok-lan, “The White Lotus Maitreya Doctrine and Popular Uprisings in Ming and Ch'ing China”, in: Sinologica, X (1969), pp. 211–33; Overmeyer, D., Folk Buddhist Religion: Dissenting Sects in Late Traditional China (Cambridge, 1976).Google Scholar

⁴³ Naquin, S., Shantung Rebellion (New Haven, 1981).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Compare similar situations in other historical civilisation in Adas, M., Prophets of Rebellion (Chapel Hill, 1979).Google Scholar

⁴⁵ de Groot, J. J. M., Sectarianism and Religious Persecution in China: A Page in the History of Religions (Leiden, 1901).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ This event in Chinese history has been conventionally labeled the Revolution of 1911, but as Wakeman points out in The Fall of Imperial China, op. cit., pp. 225–28, the appropnateness of the word “revolution” here is questionable.