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Sage Publications, Inc. Modern China: This Content Downloaded From 196.207.110.38 On Mon, 21 Aug 2017 13:14:58 UTC
Sage Publications, Inc. Modern China: This Content Downloaded From 196.207.110.38 On Mon, 21 Aug 2017 13:14:58 UTC
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Modern China
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Review Article
Imperialism and
the Chinese Peasants
The Background of the Boxer Uprising
KWANG-CHING LIU
University of California, Davis
102
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Kwang-Ching Liu / IMPERIALISM AND PEASANTS 103
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104 MODERN CHINA / JANUARY 1989
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Kwang-Ching Liu / IMPERIALISM AND PEASANTS 105
The priest would force the fined "offenders" to serve each dish to
the Christians, on bended knee, while drums and firecrackers
announced the Christian victory to all. By turning rituals of
community solidarity into occasions for open flaunting of
Christian power, the Catholics of southern Shandong were
fostering a tremendous reservoir of popular resentment [p. 186].
Christianity was not only foreign, and thus suspect for xenophobic
reasons; it was also clearly heterodox-containing beliefs in
miracles and salvation, and rituals of congregational worship
which mixed men and women in the same church-which had led
earlier emperors to link it with such proscribed sects as the White
Lotus. Furthermore, most nineteenth century missionaries-
though Protestants more rigorously than Catholics-presented
Christianity as an either/ or alternative to Chinese popular culture
[pp. 85-86].
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106 MODERN CHINA / JANUARY1989
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Kwang-Ching Liu / IMPERIALISM AND PEASANTS 107
One wishes that the author had provided more case studies of
the White Lotus sects and, for that matter, of the Christian
converts in northwest Shandong, the area where the Boxers
originated and where landlordism was weak and small peasant
owner-cultivators existed in overwhelming numbers. On the basis
of his excellent chapters on the rise of the anti-Christian Boxers in
the years 1897-1900 in Guan county, in Pingyuan, and in Chiping,
one finds it difficult to generalize on the social background of
Christians.2 Perhaps in this subregion of Shandong, Esherick's
remarks on a final category among Chinese Christians would
apply:
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108 MODERN CHINA / JANUARY 1989
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Kwang- Ching Liu / IMPERIA LISM A ND PEA SA NTS 109
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110 MODERN CHINA / JANUARY1989
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Kwang-Ching Liu / IMPERIALISM AND PEASANTS 111
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112 MODERN CHINA / JANUARY1989
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Kwang-Ching Liu / IMPERIALISM AND PEASANTS 113
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114 MODERN CHINA / JANUARY 1989
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Kwang-Ching Liu / IMPERIALISM AND PEASANTS 115
NOTES
1. For political and military background, see Tan (1955) and Fleming (1959). On the
Boxer indemnity, see Wang (1974).
2. Discussing the Christians of this area, Esherick cites one "classic case involving an
agricultural laborer who forced his employer to serve him a feast" (p. 215).
3. Purcell's book displays extensive documentation from archival sources, however.
It is still useful, despite its many deficiencies.
4. See articles by Li Shiyu, Lu Yao, Lu Jingqi, and others in the two symposia from
Chinese historians (Qilu shushe, 1982, and Yihetuan yundong shi yanjiu hui, 1984).
5. This line is usually interpreted to mean the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month.
6. The historian Cheng Xiao has studied the evidence for the Boxer belief in the
kalpic crisis. See his important article published in 1983.
7. Ch'en refers to the influence of the Qing men tradition. On this tradition, see
Kelley (1982).
8. For an analysis of the Boxer gods of various origins, see Jerome Ch'en (1960) and
Cheng Xiao (1983).
9. For Esherick's account of the Boxers'"peaceful and protective" activities, acting
only as "counterweight to the autonomous power of the Catholic Church," see pp. 202,
216.
10. Dai (1963) seems to reach his conclusions independently of Steiger (1927).
11. Lao (1901) is available in a photographic reprint dated 1972 and in the Zhongguo
shixue hui (1951, vol.4, pp.451-490, and esp. 453). Lao wrote in a letter that when he first
pronounced the Boxers heterodox, he was "only talking on paper" (zhi-shang zhi tan). He
said, however, that two monks captured at Jingzhou and Gucheng, Zhili, had confessed
that they were affiliated with "Eight Trigrams" and with the "Li Trigram," respectively
(Zhongguo shixue hui, 1951: 459).
REFERENCES
AGULHON, MAURICE (1982) The Republic of Village: The People of the Var from the
French Revolution to the Second Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
BAYS, D. (1982) "Christianism and the Chinese sectarian tradition." Ch'ing-shih wen-t'i
4, 7: 33-55.
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116 MODERN CHINA / JANUARY1989
BUCK, DAVID D. [ed.] (1987) "Editor's introduction." Recent Studies of the Boxer
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