On the Trail of the Yellow Tiger: War, Trauma, and Social Dislocation in Southwest China During the Ming- Qing Transition'

H-War Wu on Swope, 'On the Trail of the Yellow Tiger: War, Trauma, and Social Dislocation in Southwest China during the Ming- Qing Transition'

Review published on Thursday, May 20, 2021

Kenneth M. Swope. On the Trail of the Yellow Tiger: War, Trauma, and Social Dislocation in Southwest China during the Ming-Qing Transition. Studies in War, Society, and the Military Series. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018. Illustrations, maps. 456 pp. $55.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8032-4995-0.

Reviewed by Ting-Chih Wu (University of Pennsylvania)Published on H-War (May, 2021) Commissioned by Margaret Sankey (Air University)

Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=55217

This book concerns the lives and struggles of the warlords of Southwest China between 1630 and 1664 by focusing on Zhang Xianzhong, his followers, and other military powers. Kenneth M. Swope narrates a vivid epic of how these leaders from the lower classes appeared on the historical stage while bringing wars, chaos, and traumas to the civilian population during the Ming-Qing transition. Complementary to Lynn Struve’s The Southern Ming, 1644-1662 (1984) mainly focusing on Southeast China, On the Trail of the Yellow Tiger provides detailed accounts of the military conflict, cannibalism, and social dislocation that persisted in Southwest China in the mid-seventeenth century. Swope locates these turbulent events within the context of the seventeenth-century “global crisis,” a series of natural disasters that caused political and social unrest around the world on an unprecedented scale (p. 9).

This book is divided into two parts. The first part examines the rise and death of Zhang. Chapter 1, as the introduction of the book, showcases the characteristic of Zhang’s legacy, his bloody rule in Sichuan, a province in Southwest China. Chapter 2 looks at how continuous natural disasters and the corruption of government officials propelled Zhang’s rise to prominence in his early life before 1644 by gathering his followers and rebelling against the Ming administration. Here we should note that although Swope refers to the widespread banditry from the 1630s to 1660s as “peasant rebellions,” many of these rebels, including Zhang, were not peasants but soldiers, vagrants, and workers. Chapter 3 presents Zhang’s establishment of his Great Western Kingdom and his efforts to found the legitimacy of his regime in Sichuan by holding official examinations, combating superstition, and educating the masses. Zhang’s state-building efforts and his interest in European knowledge and civilization demonstrate that he was not just a psychopathic tyrant. Chapter 4 interrogates the decline of Zhang’s administration that led to his psychological collapse and his death. Like Chinese scholars, Swope acknowledges that although the myth of Zhang’s killing six hundred million Sichuanese people is outrageously exaggerated, he was directly responsible for most of the indiscriminate killing and looting in Sichuan from 1644 to 1647.

The second part examines the post-Zhang period by delineating the political relations between Zhang’s two most influential adopted sons, Sun Kewang and Li Dingguo; the southern Ming court;

Citation: H-Net Reviews. Wu on Swope, 'On the Trail of the Yellow Tiger: War, Trauma, and Social Dislocation in Southwest China during the Ming-Qing Transition'. H-War. 05-20-2021. https://networks.h-net.org/node/12840/reviews/7744705/wu-swope-trail-yellow-tiger-war-trauma-and-social-dislocation Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-War and other military powers under the Ming flag, including semi-independent warlords, the Ming princes, bandits, and aboriginal chieftains. Chapters 5 and 6 illustrate the apex of the southern Ming military power and its subsequent decline due to internal conflicts. As for Sun and Li, to win the support of the Ming loyalists, they chose to join the southern Ming court. However, Li did not completely accept Sun’s leadership from the start, which led to the increasing strife between these two “brothers.” Chapter 7 surveys the efforts of Sun, Li, and other Ming loyalists’ final efforts against the Qing in Southwest China and Burma and the fatal decline of the southern Ming administration. Chapter 8 tells the stories of a group of local military forces against the Qing in East Sichuan, Kuidong 13, which consisted of an alliance of bandits from within and outside the province, as well as local peasants. This fragile alliance could not endure for long after the collapse of the southern Ming court. Chapter 9, as the conclusion, examines the implications of the catastrophes during the Ming- Qing transition.

After finishing this book replete with catastrophes, wars, and traumas, we may further ponder the nature of the Ming-Qing transition. The contents of this book amply demonstrate the chaos and disorder of the Ming-Qing transition. It was a period dominated not by officials, scholars, or literati but by rebels, rogues, and rascals. They first appeared on the historical stage because they tried to revolt against the Ming administration. However, some of them eventually joined the southern Ming group and defended it to their deaths against the Qing. It would be interesting to interrogate what kinds of ideologies or motives drove these people to stand with the Ming until the end. The other related question is how Wu Sanqui, the general who quelled these rebels and rogues, later commandeered their force to fight against the Qing. How did the shadow of the Ming affect people in the Qing, especially the residents in South China?

Readers might appreciate it if Swope had offered additional information at some points in the book. For example, Kuidong 13 appears many times throughout the book, but Swope only formally introduces it at the end of the book. A short annotation on it at the beginning would have been helpful. Since many wars in this book happened in the rugged terrain in Southwest China, readers would also have benefited from additional contour lines on the maps in this book.

Swope here provides an in-depth study of the transition from Ming to Qing in Southwest China. This book is satisfying to readers who are interested in the history of the Ming-Qing transition and military conflicts in seventeenth-century global history.

Citation: Ting-Chih Wu. Review of Swope, Kenneth M.,On the Trail of the Yellow Tiger: War, Trauma, and Social Dislocation in Southwest China during the Ming-Qing Transition. H-War, H-Net Reviews. May, 2021. URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55217

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.