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The Order of Local Things: Popular Politics and Religion in Modern The Order of Local Things: Popular Politics and Religion in Modern Wenzhou, 1840-1940 By Shih-Chieh Lo B.A., National Chung Cheng University, 1997 M.A., National Tsing Hua University, 2000 A.M., Brown University, 2005 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History at Brown University PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND May 2010 © Copyright 2010 by Shih-Chieh Lo ii This dissertation by Shih-Chieh Lo is accepted in its present form by the Department of History as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date_____________ ________________________ Mark Swislocki, Advisor Recommendation to the Graduate Council Date_____________ __________________________ Michael Szonyi, Reader Date_____________ __________________________ Mark Swislocki, Reader Date_____________ __________________________ Richard Davis, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date______________ ___________________________ Sheila Bonde, Dean of the Graduate School iii Roger, Shih-Chieh Lo (C. J. Low) Date of Birth : August 15, 1974 Place of Birth : Taichung County, Taiwan Education Brown University- Providence, Rhode Island Ph. D in History (May 2010) Brown University - Providence, Rhode Island A. M., History (May 2005) National Tsing Hua University- Hsinchu, Taiwan Master of Arts (June 2000) National Chung-Cheng University - Chaiyi, Taiwan Bachelor of Arts (June 1997) Publications: “地方神明如何平定叛亂：楊府君與溫州地方政治 (1830-1860).” (How a local deity pacified Rebellion: Yangfu Jun and Wenzhou local politics, 1830-1860) Journal of Wenzhou University. Social Sciences 溫州大學學報 社會科學版, Vol. 23, No.2 (March, 2010): 1-13. “ 略論清同治年間台灣戴潮春案與天地會之關係 Was the Dai Chaochun Incident a Triad Rebellion?” Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore 民俗曲藝 Vol. 138 (December, 2002): 279-303. “ 試探清代台灣的地方精英與地方社會: 以同治年間的戴潮春案為討論中心 Preliminary Understandings of Local Elites and Local Society in Qing Taiwan: A Case Study of the Dai Chaochun Rebellion”. Taiwan Shih-chi 臺灣史蹟, Vol. 38 (June, 2001): 135- 160. Teachings: University of Rhode Island, Feinstein Providence Campus- Rhode Island, Visiting lecturer, 2008-present Brown University - Providence, Rhode Island Teaching Fellow, Spring 2009 Teaching Assistantships Brown University - Providence, Rhode Island Teaching Assistant, 2004-2010 iv Abstract of “The Order of Local Things: Popular Politics and Religions in Modern Wenzhou, 1840-1940” by Shih-Chieh Lo, Ph. D., Brown University, May 2010 This dissertation offers a new approach to the still dominant state/society paradigm, which has long assumed that local society would inevitably succumb to state power in the course of modernization. By applying the concept of “popular politics,” my work illustrates how common people organized themselves to weather the great transitions and upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. My research is based on rich sources, including local archives like local gazetteers, as well as the anthologies and personal diaries of Wenzhou literati, many of which are only available at Wenzhou, where I have conducted extensive archival, library, and field research. My study shows that popular religion – not the state – was the most important social force in the daily life of commoners. Each chapter of my dissertation presents a different aspect of the relationship between religion and politics in modern China. I begin the dissertation with an analysis of two peasant uprisings of the 1860s, to explore interactions between local officials and the local community before the emergence of a strong Western presence in the region. The dissertation then identifies a local political reconfiguration triggered by the rapid penetration of foreign religions, especially Catholicism and Protestantism, on the heels of Wenzhou’s acquisition of treaty port status in 1877. Having characterized the nature of what I found to be an unparalleled reconfiguration of local politics, the project turns to the changing policies of local officials toward the v area’s most important non-Christian religious event, the Dragon Boat Race, which had been held annually at Wenzhou since the thirteenth century. The dissertation closes with an examination of the policies of the Nationalist regime (1928-1949), focusing in particular on its concerns with indigenous local religious practice. My overall objective is to flesh out the extent to which the Nationalist Party-State apparatus succeeded in molding the common people’s daily life by combining old and new religious systems. vi Table of Content: Abstract Introduction:……………………………………………………………………1-25 Chapter One:……………………………………………………………………26-70 How a Local God Pacified Rebellion: Yangfu Jun (Lord Yang) and Wenzhou Local Politics (1840-1860) Chapter Two:…………………………………………………………………...71-101 The Combat between Local God and Confucians: the Jinqian hui (Golden Coin association) Uprising (1850-1870) Chapter Three:…………………………………………………………………..102-166 Wenzhou and Christian Impact: Harbinger of New Political Order (1870-1900) Chapter Four:……………………………………………………………………167-225 Deep Play: Dragon Boat and Reconfiguration of Wenzhou Local Politics (1890-1927) Chapter Five:……………………………………………………………………226-291 Anti-Superstition Campaign and its impacts on Wenzhou local politics Conclusion:……………………………………………………………………..292-301 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………….302-321 vii Introduction: Whatever this hegemony may have been, it did not envelop the lives of the poor and it did not prevent them from defending their own modes of work and leisure, and forming their own rituals, their own satisfaction and view of life. E. P. Thompson (1924-1993), 1978: 163 1 I. Questions: This dissertation is an attempt to explore the correlation between popular religion and local politics in modern Wenzhou from 1850 to 1950. By using local archives collected from Wenzhou Prefecture 溫州府, which consists of six counties located in the southeastern part of Zhejiang 浙江 Province, I am going to apply the concept of “history from below,” 2 which has been successfully applied in European history, to shed light on the importance of popular religion in Chinese local politics. Additionally, in this dissertation, I offer a new approach to the still dominant state/society paradigm, which has long assumed that society would inevitably succumb to state power as modernization 1 See: E. P. Thompson, “Eighteenth-century English society: class struggle without class,” Social History , vol. 3, no. 2 (May 1978): 133-165. 2 On the discussion of the concept of history from below, see: Frederick Krantz, History From Below: Studies in Popular Protest and Popular Ideology (London: Basil Blackwell, 1985). 1 proceeded. 3 I do this by applying the concept of “popular politics,” which I adopt from its successful use in studies of European history, 4 to deepen our understanding of what I call “the order of local things” in modern Chinese society. By examining the importance of local religious traditions in local society, this dissertation is also an attempt to reexamine the modernization/secularization theory. The standard narrative of modern Chinese history incorporates a notion of increasing secularization, 5 but by doing Wenzhou local history; this dissertation shows that this 3 For a study on the state/society relation in modern China, see Prasenjit Duara’s influential book Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942 . In his groundbreaking book, Duara convincingly applied the concept of “cultural nexus of power” to illustrate the interactions between state and society in rural north China since the late nineteenth century. Throughout his book, Duara illustrates a story of how the “modern” state penetrated into local society in the process of “state-making” since the late nineteenth century. Duara implied that society will eventually succumb to the state and their modernization plan. It is not an exaggeration to say that Duara’s thesis has dominated the understanding of state/society relationship in modern China since the early 1990s. 4 Generally speaking, popular politics is common people’s politics. As for the discussion of “popular politics” in the context of European history, see: Tim Harris’s introduction in Tim Harris ed., The Politic of the excluded, .c 1500-1850 , (New York: Palgrave, 2001); Andy Wood, Riot, Rebellion and Popular Politics in Early Modern England , (New York: Palgrave, 2002); and Ethan Shagan , Popular Politics and the English Reformation , (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 5 Pioneering sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) came up with the notion of “secularization” based on his study of human’s religious experience in a modernized society. See Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life , (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Based on the Durkheimian approach, Berger (1967) defined secularization as “the process by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols. When we speak of society and institutions in modern Western history, of course, secularization manifests itself in the evacuation by the Christian churches of areas previously under their control or influence.” See Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of A Sociological Theory of Religion, (New York: Anchor Books, 1967), 107. Durkheim and Berger’s observations pointed out that the influence of religion has declined in the modern Western world since the age of enlightenment. As early as in the 1960s, C. K. Yang has challenged Liang Qichao 梁啟超 and Hu Shi’s 胡適
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