THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO INSURGENT DYNAMICS: THE COMING OF THE CHINESE REBELLIONS, 1850-1873 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY BY YANG ZHANG CHICAGO, ILLINOIS AUGUST 2016 To My Family Table of Contents List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... iv List of Tables .................................................................................................................................. v Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................... vi Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... xi Chapter 1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................1 Chapter 2 Were Structural Conditions Ripe? ................................................................................52 Chapter 3 Contentious Turn of a Christian Society ......................................................................83 Chapter 4 Insurrections of Elite-Led Militias …………………….............................................136 Chapter 5 Mobilizing Muslims, Unlike Uprisings.......................................................................192 Chapter 6 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................268 Bibliography ...............................................................................................................................279 iii List of Figures Figure 1.1 Mass action incidents and organized battles by year, 1820-1875…………………......7 Figure 1.2 Provincial distribution of mass action incidents, 1846-1875…………………….……8 Figure 2.1 The quantity of opium imports, 1800-1850…………………………………………..73 Figure 2.2 The value of opium imports, 1800-1850……………………………………………..73 Figure 2.3 Price trend index during 1825-1850………………………………………………….78 Figure 3.1 Number of contentious groups by year in Guangxi Province, 1846-1850…………...99 Figure 3.2 Map of frequency of rebellions by prefectures in Guangxi Province, 1846-1850.....104 Figure 4.1 Causal processes: From counter-insurgent mobilization to elite insurrection…….…149 Figure 4.2 Cumulative number of fortifications in Taihe County, 1852-1861……….………...156 Figure 4.3 Average size of new fortifications in Taihe County, 1853-1861.…………………...157 Figure 4.4 Structure of the comparison: Three levels of variations………………………...…..183 Figure 5.1a Provincial distribution of mass action incidents, 1856-1865…………..……...…...193 Figure 5.1b Provincial distribution of mass action incidents, 1866-1875………….……...…...193 iv List of Tables Table 1.1 Major rebellions in China, 1850-1873………………………………………………….6 Table 1.2 Four models in explaining revolutions and rebellions………………………………...44 Table 2.1 Size of the Qing state, 1780-1850……………………………………………………..60 Table 2.2 Number of mass action incidents by form, 1796-1865………………………………..61 Table 2.3 Comparison of state size among Eurasian countries, 1850……………………………64 Table 2.4 Population amount and growth rate under Qing………………………………………77 Table 2.5 Regional distribution of population, population density and uprisings in 1840s……..79 Table 2.6 Regional uprisings before the outbreak of the Taiping Rebellion……………………..79 Table 3.1 Analytic framework on the ecology of rebellions…………………………...………...94 Table 4.1 Social background of militia leaders…………………………………………………159 Table 5.1 Existing and emerging factors during the three Hui rebellions………………….…...204 Table 5.2 Overview of demographic information of the three provinces………….…………...218 Table 5.3 Han-Hui conflicts in Yunnan, 1800-1856……………………………………………222 Table 5.4 Four centers of Muslim forces in Gansu Province…………………………………...252 v Acknowledgements I came to the University of Chicago in Fall 2008 with the deterministic thinking that a work is basically predetermined by the author’s intrinsic talent and thus its quality has been fixed even before its start. During the dissertation process, however, I realized that the dissertation was the collective result of a long-term process, shaped by many individuals who were woven into a network through the coordination efforts of the author. To express my gratitude to these contributors is also a memory of the making of the dissertation itself. It is not an exaggeration to say that the direction of the dissertation was largely driven by my committee members, who also provided me with a great deal of intellectual, moral, and emotional support. Andrew Abbott, my co-chair, showed me rigorous scholarship, breadth of knowledge, and outstanding intellectual taste. I thank him for his persistent inspiration, insightful advice, and continuous encouragement on my own way to grow as a scholar. Dingxin Zhao, the other co-chair, has known me and encouraged my intellectual endeavors since 2006, and always trusted my potential, even when I found it hard to make breakthrough in my research. I am grateful for his excellent mentorship and personal support during my eight years in Chicago. Elisabeth S. Clemens carefully read every draft and provided critical and constructive feedback—including page-by-page comments and overall suggestions—and taught me how to engage in theoretical debates in a decent way. With enormous amounts of caring and help, she set a high-level moral standard to me as a scholar and teacher. Some of my original ideas were forged in courses I took during my second and third academic years in Chicago. These include: “Co-Evolution of State and Markets” (by John F. vi Padgett, Fall 2009), “Sociological Inquiry II” (by John Levi Martin, Winter 2010), “Seminar: Power” (by Andrew Abbott, Winter 2010), “Topics in the History of Capitalism” (by William Sewell, Jr., Spring 2010), “Reading course: Comparative Historical Sociology” (with Elisabeth Clemens, Spring 2010), “Library Methods for the Social Sciences” (by Andrew Abbott, Winter 2011), and “Seminar: Chinese Revolutions” (by Dingxin Zhao, Winter 2011). The instructors of these courses gave helpful feedback on my term papers, research proposals, and/or response papers, all of which were related to the dissertation topic. My ideas became clear in dialogues with these great thinkers and teachers. Although the dissertation themes have continued shifting since then, many core elements crystallized in these courses. Another course, “Reading Qing Documents” (by Guy Alitto, Fall 2011) helped me prepare for the archival fieldwork in China. During the dissertation write-up period, I audited two history courses from Kenneth Pomeranz—“State and Society in Late Imperial and Modern China” (Spring 2013), and “Research Seminar in Qing Social and Political History” (Fall 2013). These two courses equipped me with new progress on modern Chinese historiography, and helped me develop the dissertation in the post-fieldwork period. I deeply appreciate the workshop system at The University of Chicago. My dissertation proposal and chapters were circulated, presented, and discussed several times in the Social Theory and Evidence Workshop, Social Theory Workshop, Politics, History, and Society Workshop, East Asia Workshop, and the Chinese Political Sociology Workshop (at the University’s Beijing Center). I received helpful comments and critiques from the discussants and workshop participants, including: Marco Garrido, Kimberly Hoang, Cheol-Sung Lee, Ellis Monk, vii Kristen Schilt, William Sewell Jr., Dan Slater, Paul Staniland, Kazuo Yamaguchi, Dali Yang, Maryam Alemzadeh, Jan Doering, James Iveniuk, Mishal Khan, Jane McCamant, Ben Merriam, James Murphy, Robert Owens, Yaniv Ron-El, Ben Ross, and Hanisah Binte Abdullah Sani, not to mention my advisors. My dissertation-based articles were presented in a number of conferences—including: American Sociological Association Annual Meeting 2012-2015, Association for Asian Studies 2015 Annual Conference, Social Science History 2011 Annual Meeting—and workshops or invited talks at University of Notre Dame, Northwestern University, American University, and the Watson Institute at Brown University. I received insightful comments from discussants, other panelists, friends, and known or unknown scholars, including: Adam Auerbach, Michael Biggs, Keith Trisko Darden, Cedric de Leon, Barry Eidlin, Shizheng Feng, Agustina Giraudy, Austin Hart, Wenkai He, Ho-fung Hung, Andrew Junker, Danielle Kane, Yan Long, Rory McVeigh, David S. Meyer, Charles Ragin, Dan Slater, Yang Su, and Xiaohong Xu. Further support came from a number of institutions that generously funded my dissertation research. My archival fieldwork in 2012 and 2013 was supported by a number of university and external grants, including the Social Science Overseas Dissertation Research Grant and the Graduate Student Residency Fellowship at Beijing Center from The University of Chicago, and a Research Fellowship from the Paulson Institute. During the dissertation write-up stage between 2013 and 2016, I was supported by three dissertation fellowships—the Center for East Asian Studies Dissertation Fellowship and the Charles Henderson Dissertation Fellowship from The University of Chicago and the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation Dissertation Fellowship. Finally, viii awarded the “Robert E. Park Lectureship,” I had the opportunity to teach the course