The Epidemic of Pneumonic Plague in Manchuria 1910-1911 Author(S): Mark Gamsa Source: Past & Present, No

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The Epidemic of Pneumonic Plague in Manchuria 1910-1911 Author(s): Mark Gamsa Source: Past & Present, No. 190 (Feb., 2006), pp. 147-183 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3600890 . Accessed: 16/03/2014 17:11

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This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE EPIDEMIC OF PNEUMONIC PLAGUE IN MANCHURIA 1910-1911

Of the threeforms of plague knownto affectman, the most common bubonic variety(taking its name fromthe swollen 'buboes' thatdevelop on the patient'sbody) is carriedby fleas fromrodents to humans,but does not otherwise pass from person to person;before these facts were established by bacteriological scienceand beforethe emergence of antibiotics, this plague, most famouslyassociated with the fourteenth-centuryBlack Death, provedlethal for about 60 percent of its victims. Swift to spread throughan infectedorganism, and potentiallyfatal even with modem medical intervention,septicaemic plague (in which bacteriapenetrate the blood system)would countas the most dangerousform were it to constitutean epidemicin itself,rather than a complicationliable to accompanythe bubonic or the pneumonickind. That last,an extremetype of lung infection, highlycontagious and stillimpossible to cure unlessidentified withinthe first twenty-four hours, is therarest as wellas thedead- liestform of a plagueepidemic. The Manchurianoutbreak in the autumnof 1910 was theworst such epidemic in recordedhistory. The firstmanifestation ofthe plague was in Chineseterritory in thevicinity of Manzhouli (now Inner Mongolia; then Heilongjiang province),a stationof the ChineseEastern Railway bordering on the RussianTransbaikal District. Begun in 1898 and fully operatingsince 1903, the CER was laid out by Russia as the last leg of the Trans-Siberian.Trains bound fromChita to Vladivostokentered China in Manzhouliand leftit in Suifenhe (now Heilongjiangprovince); at a spot roughlytwo-thirds of theroute due east,on the siteof a smallvillage in theterritory of the thenJilin province, the cityof Harbin was foundedin 1898 as headquartersof the CER and was governedby a Russian administrationuntil after the October Revolution. The firstpart of thisarticle describes the course and after- mathof the epidemic. The second suggestsan interpretationof theevents that differs from previous studies, which have mostly been interestedin theplague as a catalystfor the introduction of Westernmedicine into China. The thirdthen examines the

Pastand Present, no. 190 (Feb. 2006) C The Past and PresentSociety, Oxford, 2006 doi:10.1093/pastj/gtj001

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 148 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 190 earlierscholarship on the plague in Englishand the current literaturein Russianand Chinese.Finally, the last part analyses contemporaryresearch on epidemicsin late colonialAsia from a historiographicalperspective; after considering the merits and disadvantagesof the relativistapproach now prevailingin the field,it arguesfor a humanistalternative.

PLAGUE Fromplague-infested Manzhouli, the sick escaped south with all thespeed that railway travel could provide. Deaths soon began to occurin Fujiadian,the Chinese town which owed itsdispropor- tionategrowth to the promisethat employment in the foreign- dominatedcity held forthousands of migrantworkers from the villagesof North China. It was,however, the discovery of a first plague case on a Harbinstreet, on 27 October,that stung the Russianauthorities into action.An improvisedplague hospital was made readyin recordtime, and an observationpoint for plaguesuspects was establishedin theso-called Moscow barracks outsideHarbin. Fujiadian was the seat of Binjiangprefecture; underthe jurisdiction of the Jilin governor, and ultimatelysubor- dinateto theviceroy (governor-general) ofManchuria, it did not belongto the CER zone, the Russianconcession that by 1911 measured257 squaremiles in all,on bothsides of the railway line fromManzhouli to Suifenheand southwardsfrom Harbin to Changchun.The Russiandemand to take up the anti-plague workthere was turneddown by Fujiadian's influential Chamber of Commerce(established 1907), as were,up to late December 1910, subsequentRussian proposals (conveyedthrough the mediationof the circuitintendant of North-WestJilin) to allow Russiandoctors to inspectthe plague situation in Fujiadian,or failingthis to guaranteethat the Chinese town would embark on itsown upon the course of Western preventive measures. Situated just beyond the railway,within walking distance fromcentral Harbin, Fujiadian was also known as Daowai ('outsidethe track'),which is stillthe name of thispart of the Harbinmetropolis today. Its strictly Chinese inhabitants consisted ofa nucleusof merchants and entrepreneursand an exclusively malemajority of seasonal labourers, who used it as theirbase for

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This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 150 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 190 dailycommuting to the city.Harbin itself had a largeChinese population,chiefly in the commercialquarter of townlocated directlyto the west of Fujiadian and flankedby the Sungari (Songhua)river on thenorth. It was calledPristan' ('the wharf') by the Russians,and Daoli ('withinthe track') by the Chinese. The sanitaryconditions in whichmost of the Chineselived in Daoli fellfar below the living standards of RussianHarbin, but dirt,poverty and malnutritionwere even worse in Fujiadian. Fromearly on it becameclear that for those who had already contractedthe disease no cure was available:mortality in the previouslyunfamiliar pneumonic plague proved to be one hundredper cent.Everyone known or suspectedto have been in contactwith a sick personwas to be takeninto a five-day quarantine,long enough for the plague symptomsto be revealed,for death usuallycame on the second or thirdday followingthe infection.With the exponentialgrowth of the populationto whomsuch treatmenthad to be applied,rows of railwaywagons were pulled togetherand thousandsof plague suspects and 'contacts', almost withoutexception Chinese, werelocked in. Thus, in houseswhere a patientor a corpsehad been discovered,all inhabitantsthat could be detainedby the Russianpolice were taken in, and theirapartments sealed.1 The Russian demand for an active role in the campaign against the plague in Fujiadian had only been met to the extentthat a single Russian doctor was permittedto begin workin the Fujiadian hospitaland serveas an adviserto his Chinese colleagues,as well as provideliaison with the Harbin administration.2The doctorwas RogerBudberg-Boenninghausen

1 An insider'sperspective on theformation of a strategyto confrontthe epidemic is providedby the diaryof Roman A. von Arnold (1871-1930), the Harbin Chiefof Police from1907 to 1917 and memberof the town's Chief Sanitary Committee. Von Arnoldconceded that expediency, rather than quality, was thehallmark of the plague hospital,which together with the attachedrailway wagons could accommodateup to fivethousand persons. 'A plague hospitalis a three-or four-daytransportation point to a betterworld. Why then bother with comfort? ... The main thingto keep in mind is thatthe sick and the suspectsconsist exclusively of the Chinese poor, forwhom even the most modest barracks and wagons are luxuryin comparison to their usual lodgings'. Diary of 1910-11 (unpaginated;my translation from the Russian), AntoninaR. von ArnoldPapers, Hoover InstitutionArchives, Stanford. 2The Harbin Yuandongbao reportedon 20 November 1910 that Doctor Bu (Bu daifu) had made his firstinspection tour of Fujiadian on the previous day, accompanied by head of the CER departmentof Chinese affairs,Evgenii Daniel. (cont.on p. 151)

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PNEUMONIC PLAGUE IN MANCHURIA 151 (1867-1926), a BalticGerman baron and self-taughtSinologist, the onlyRussian national in Harbinto marrya Chinesewoman and to immersehimself in Chinesesociety. His long-forgotten memoirof Harbin's plague years, Bilder aus der Zeit der Lungenpest- Epidemienin derMandschurei, 1910/11 und 1921, undoubtedly the most importantbook to emergefrom the Russian-Chinese encounterin Manchuria,is introducedin thisarticle. Dr Budberg remainedthe only Russian physician in Fujiadianfor the duration of two months,whereupon he tenderedhis resignation.By that time both governmentshad delegatedto Harbin the experts whomthey regarded as mostcapable of handlingthe deterior- atingsituation: the Ukrainianepidemiologist Professor Danilo Zabolotnyi(1866-1929) arrivedfrom St Petersburg,while the Chinese Ministryof ForeignAffairs enlisted the servicesof a Malayan-bornBritish subject and graduateof Emmanuel College, Cambridge,Dr Wu Liande (Wu Lien Teh, alias G. L. Tuck, 1879-1960).Neither side being able to offera curefor the disease, both applied themselvesever more vigorouslyto prevention measures,while carrying out independent laboratory work to deter- minethe causes of the epidemic and themeans by which infection was passed.Both also had a mandateto do whateverthey deemed fitin Manchuriaso longas theepidemic was containedwithin the regionrather than spread into Russia and metropolitanChina; fromthe Chinese government's perspective, failure to puta quick end to theplague would spell a loss ofinternational prestige and likelyintervention by theforeign powers. A growingdegree of co-operationwas reached on the ground,as the Russian medical organizationlearned that it could soonerfind a commonlanguage with the foreign-trained Chinesedoctors who followedWu Liande thanwith the original Jilinadministrators.3 Russian Harbin was dividedinto quarters withrestricted passage betweenthem, and Wu employedthe

(n. 2 cont.) Referringto the segregationof Chinese pupils fromthe Russians in Harbin's No. 2 primaryschool, the same paper statedon 24 November that 'the Fujiadian physician Budberg'would soon be payinghome calls to the Chinese familiesaffected by thisdecision. The Yuandongbao (1906-21) was Harbin's firstChinese daily;pub- lishedas an organof the CER undera Russian editorit echoed the railway'spolicy, but remainsan indispensablesource of information. 3These werereplaced by governmentdecision in lateJanuary, officially for 'failure to put down the plague'. The zealousness of theirsuccessors can be understoodin the lightof thisprecedent.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 152 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER190 same strategyin Fujiadian.Two days aftera Russianmilitary cordon had isolated Harbin fromthe neighbouringChinese town,a Chinesepolice force established its own cordon around Fujiadian.4 More than a thousand soldiers, detailed from Changchun,took over the cordonin January,replacing the six hundredpolicemen who were now chargedwith the enforce- mentof quarantineand protectionof the Chinesedoctors.5 In negotiationsheld in Harbin,the Chinesemagistrates asked for and receivedadditional CER wagons for quarantineneeds.6 Afterspending five to sevendays in the wagons,Chinese beg- gars,the homeless and theunemployed were banished from the Harbinarea. In Harbinitself a large-scaleburning took place: of houses whichhad lodgedplague victimsor whose inhabitants had been removedfor observation, as wellas ofthe dead themselves,whose bodies had been throwninto plague pits. By springtimethe epidemichad runits course,though under the meltingsnow corpses that had been hiddenor hastilydisposed ofin thewinter months were coming to thelight of day.7 Complex political interestsof Russia, China and Japan (whichhad been mountingits own fightagainst the plague in the territoryit controlled in SouthManchuria),8 as well as the

4 See Ivan L. Martinevskiiand Henri Mollaret,Epidemiia chumy v Man'chzhuriiv 1910-1911 gg. (geroicheskiipodvigrusskikh ifrantsuzskikh vrachei v bor'bes nei) [The Plague Epidemic in Manchuria, 1910-1911 (Heroism of Russian and French Physiciansin the Fightagainst It)] (Moscow, 1971), 88-9. 5Richard P. Strong (ed.), Reportof the InternationalPlague Conferenceheld at Mukden,April 1911 (Manila, 1912), 465. 6 Yuandongbao, 12 Jan. 1911. 7 The epidemicended, in earlyMarch 1911, as suddenlyas it had begun. Then as now, thereis no readyexplanation: preventive work had probablycontributed its share to the plague's disappearance,which could also have been due to meteoro- logicalfactors decreasing the virulenceof the bacteria. 8The plague had only a limitedeffect in the Japanese-ownedSouth Manchuria Railwayzone (107 square miles in all, on both sides of the track) and the Guan- dong Leased Territory(1,336 square milesin the southernpart of Liaodong penin- sula), acquired by Japan at the end of the Russo-JapaneseWar in 1905. That the highestmortality registered in Dairen (Dalian) amountedto sixty-sixdeaths could have been due to the impositionof a war-likeregime, including the discrimination and expulsionof lower-classChinese. See Strong (ed.), Reportof theInternational Plague Conference,33, 253-6, for data delivered by the SMR head physician. Dr Lancelin, 'La Peste de Mandchourie: sa prophylaxie',Archives de medecineet pharmacienavales, xcviii (Nov. 1912), includesa summaryof theJapanese prevention measures.On Japanesemedicine in thisregion, see, mostrecently, Robert J. Perrins, 'Doctors, Disease and Development: Engineering Colonial Public Health in SouthernManchuria, 1905-1926', in MorrisLow (ed.), Buildinga ModernJapan: Science,Technology, and Medicinein theMeiji Era and Beyond(Basingstoke, 2005).

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PNEUMONIC PLAGUE IN MANCHURIA 153 racefor scientific laurels, culminated in April 1911 at thefam- ous Mukdenconference. Also knownas the'assembly of ten thousandnations' (wanguo hui), thisfirst medical conference in modemChinese history was heldonly months before the collapseof the Qing dynasty. Dr Wu Liande,the plague fighter and firstphysician to introducecremation and autopsyinto Chinesemedical practice, chaired the carefully choreographed event.9He wenton to a brilliantcareer at the head of the ManchurianPlague Prevention Service, which upon the conference'srecommendation was establishedlater in the same year.10A keyrole was also played by D. K. Zabolotnyi,head of theRussian delegation, who presented to the conferencehis theoryon the tarbagan(Siberian marmot) as the carrierof pneumonicplague. The conference'shost in Mukden (present- day Shenyang),the Mongol viceroy of ManchuriaXi Liang, openedthe proceedings with a much-publicizedstatement to the effectthat Western medicine, like railways'and other modeminventions', was a prerequisitefor China's progress.1 His address,made in classicalChinese, was followedby anotherin excellent English, as theCornell University graduate and ImperialCommissioner to theconference Sao Ke Alfred Sze outlinedthe Chinesegovernment's expectations.12 It appearedthat never before had scientificcollaboration for a

9The luxurious surroundingsand impressiveentertainment programme are vividlyevoked in a pamphletby the French delegate,one of the veryfew foreign participantsto have also seen plague-strickenHarbin and Fujiadian:Charles Broquet, La Confirencede la peste,ai Moukden(avril 1911) (Cahors, 1914): 'fonds Charles Broquet', InstitutPasteur (Servicedes Archives),Paris. 10Wu Liande became Presidentof the China Medical Associationin 1916, serv- ing in thiscapacity until 1920. In Shanghai,from 1931 to theJapanese occupation in 1937, he directed the National Quarantine Service. A full listingof other achievementsand awards is provided by Wu himselfin Wu Lien-Teh, Plague Fighter:The Autobiography ofa ModernChinese Physician (Cambridge, 1959). High honourswere also in storefor the Westerndelegates. When D. K. Zabolotnyidied in 1929 he was Presidentof the UkrainianAcademy of Sciences. The rise to fame of the chiefAmerican delegate Richard Strong is documented by Eli Chernin, 'Richard Pearson Strong and the Manchurian Epidemic of Pneumonic Plague, 1910-1911', Ji Historyof Medicine and AlliedSciences, xliv, 3 (1989). 11Strong (ed.), Reportof the InternationalPlague Conference,4-5. Cf. Carl F. Nathan, 'The Acceptanceof WesternMedicine in Early 20th CenturyChina: The Storyof the NorthManchurian Plague PreventionService', in JohnZ. Bowers and ElizabethF. Purcell(eds.), Medicineand Societyin China (New York, 1974), 59, 72. 12'No doubt some of you gentlemenfrom your previous experience will be able to help us withuseful advice as to whatmethods are bestfor quarantining large bodies of theirresponsible coolie class': Strong(ed.), Reportof the International Plague Conference, 6.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 154 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER190 humanitariancause been as successfulin bridgingthe divide betweenconflicting perceptions of medical care. Yet the assemblyof ten thousandnations left many voices unheard.The Harbin doctors,who had foughtthe epidemic beforeZabolotnyi's arrival and who continuedunder his orders as theplague went on, werebarred from attending the conference. Zabolotnyiwas probablycarrying out the will of the ForeignMinistry in St Petersburg,determined to preventany falsetunes from marring the performance of the Russiandele- gation,but it is also likelythat the ambitious epidemiologist did notwish rival theories about the plague, let alone criticism of the anti-plaguemeasures, to be airedfrom within the Russian camp. A muchmore ominous absence in Mukdenwas thevoice of the plague's victims.Estimates of the numberof people who losttheir lives in theepidemic (more than half of themin Jilin province)range from 42,000 to 60,000.13 Betweenseven and eightthousand of these deaths occurred in Fujiadian,amount- ing to about a thirdof the Chinese town'spopulation.'4 Out of a total population in Harbin of approximately30,000 (includingmore than 10,000 Chinese), about 1,500 people died; onlyforty of thesewere Europeans, of whomthirty-one belonged to the medical staff.'5'The poor man's death', as plaguewas knownin medievalEurope, could well be appliedto

"3Carney T. Fisher,'Bubonic Plague in Modem China: An Overview',Jl Oriental Soc. Australia,xxvii-xxviii (1995-6), 98, comparesthe varyingdata. The highest figureof sixty thousand dead is put forwardby Wu Liande: see his PlagueFighter, 33. 14Emmanuil P. Khmara-Borshchevskii(ed.), Chumnyeepidemii na Dal'nem Vostokei protivochumnye meropriiatiia Upravleniia Kitaiskoi Vostochnoi zheleznoi dorogi [Plague Epidemicsin the Far East and Anti-PlagueMeasures by the CER Adminis- tration](Harbin, 1912), 257, considered'upwards of 6,000' the most conservative estimate.According to Yuandongbao of22 March 1911, 7,214 deathshad been regis- teredin Fujiadianby thattime, a figureto whichGuo Yunshen,'Haerbin 1910-1911 nian de da shuyi'[The Great Plague Epidemicin Harbin, 1910-1911], Heilongjiang shizhi,no. 5 (1996), 47-8, would add about a thousandunreported cases. Guo also puts at 18,597 the numberof Fujiadian's residentson the eve of the epidemic:esti- matesas highas twicethis figure have been suggested,reflecting a state of unregulated labourmigration into Harbin's Chinese satellite. A roughtotal of twenty-five thousand residentsseems the more theseeducated 15 plausibleamong guesses. On the Europeanvictims, see Khmara-Borshchevskii(ed.), Chumnyeepidemii na Dal'nem Vostoke,375. Ibid., table 8 puts the number of Chinese residentin the Harbin's Wharf(Daoli) area at 10,548. The totalnumber of casualtiesin Harbin is 1,556, as given by R. K. I. Quested, 'Matey' Imperialists?The TsaristRussians in Manchuria,1895-1917 (Hong Kong, 1982), 199, on the basis of consularreports. Broquet,La Confirencede la peste,18-19, citesa totalof 1,469 dead in Harbin,291 of (cont.on p. 155)

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PNEUMONIC PLAGUE IN MANCHURIA 155 theepidemic that ravaged North-East China: in their'exposure to death' coolies and beggarsranked first, the wealthyand the foreignerslast. Hovels withno sanitaryfacilities, where win- dows werekept shut throughout the long Manchurianwinter, and the coal-heatedkang (a raisedbrick and mud bed) was sharedat nightby menwho had spenttheir days in hardphys- ical labour,became the naturalbreeding grounds of infection. However,as we shall see, these circumstancesby themselves are stillnot enoughto explainwhy, in a largeethnically mixed cityand the locationworst hit by the epidemicin Manchuria, plaguedid not crossover racial lines. If the plague's victimswere largely irrelevant at Mukden,it was in part because the epidemichad leftfar more bereaved relativesin Shandongand Zhili (now Hebei) provincesthan in theterritory that made up Manchuria- today'sHeilongjiang, Jilinand Liaoning,and the easternpart of Inner Mongolia. While settlers'hamlets were wiped out by the plague all over theManchurian countryside, the majority of the dead in Harbin were workerswho eithercommuted to theirnative villages everyyear, or (ifalready established in theNorth East) had yet to bringtheir families to join them.16The expendabilityof thevictims in theeyes of Chinese government officials reflected an age-old attitudeof the statetowards the lowliestelements of Chinese society,as well as the cheapnessof humanlife in the China of the late nineteenthand the twentiethcentury, whenuntold numbers perished in droughtsand floods,and in such man-madedisasters as wars and sectarianrebellions."7

(n.15 cont.) them belongingto the extendedsanitary personnel of 2,885 policemen,firemen, coolies and soldiers.Three doctorswere among the heavy losses sufferedby themedical staff:the FrenchmanG6rald Mesny (delegatedby theImperial Medical College in Tientsin,where at his deathhe would be replacedby the physicianand writerVictor Segalen); Maria A. Lebedeva, a graduateof Geneva Universitywho had joined the fightagainst the plague whilepassing through Harbin en routeto Vladivostok;and VladimirM. Michel,who had headed a team of studentvolunteers from the Univer- sityof Tomsk. A Britishmissionary doctor, Arthur F. Jackson,died of the plague in Mukden. 16 Roger Baron Budberg,Bilder aus derZeit der Lungenpest-Epidemien in der Mand- schurei,1910/11 und 1921 (Hamburg, 1923), 51, says thatChinese patientsdid not wish theirrelatives to be informedof the cause of theirdeath. Because migrants consideredthe plague a shamefuldisease, some householdsin Shandong probably neverfound out whathad preventedthe son's or brother'sreturn from Manchuria. 17Cf. Diana Lary and Stephen MacKinnon (eds.), Scars of War: The Impactof Warfareon Modem China (Vancouverand Toronto,2001), editors''Introduction', 6.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 156 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 190 The Shandongpeasants, propelled to migrateby the effectsof just such events,were streaming to Manchuriato earnmoney forthe families they had leftat home.This missionwas seen as all-important,enough to justifyany amountof sufferingthat the migrantshad to bear; endurancein hardship(chiku nailao) was theircardinal value. It is because migrantswere deter- minedto liveas cheaplyas possible,so thatthey could remit the incometo theirfamilies, that Fujiadian looked as itdid. By seek- ing accommodationwith other fellow villagers, newly arrived migrantsperpetuated the crowded lodging conditions.18 Migrantsencountering a naturaldisaster normally headed back to theirhomes.19 January 1911, the last monthof the lunarcalendar, was also thetime when workers were preparing theirannual return to Shandongfor the New Year. When the CER, aimingto block the mass movementwhich spread the plague along its path, stoppedselling third- and fourth-class tickets,many tried to travelsouth by carts or attemptedto walk home; thebodies of thosewho had alreadybeen infectedsoon linedthe roads. Otherswho had escaped fromthe citiesto the Manchuriancountryside died of cold and hunger,as peasant settlersmaintained a self-imposedblockade of theirvillages fromdesperate refugees. Froman earlystage in theepidemic, fear of the Russians was at least as greatas the fearof deathitself. It did not takelong forChinese to discoverthat nobody who enteredthe Russian plaguehospital ever came out of it again.While the same held true of the hospital run by Chinese doctors in Fujiadian, rumoursoon circulatedthat the Russians were killingtheir patientsand makingmedicine for their own people fromthe victims'organs: this is whyall Russianskept their health. There was also widespreadtalk of plague cases supposedlycured by able Chinesephysicians, and commondenial thatthe disease

18Thomas R. Gottschang and Diana Lary, Swallows and Settlers:The Great Migrationfrom North China to Manchuria(Ann Arbor,2000), 109. In an infected house, plague would, therefore,have claimed the lives of migrantscoming largely fromthe same village. 19Ibid., 117. Note that plague would not have been the only cause forreturn migration:Heilongjiang sheng dang'anguan [Heilongjiang Provincial Archive], Heilonglianglishi dashiji (1900-1911) [Chronicleof Main Events in Heilongjiang History (1900-1911)] (Harbin, 1984), 180-1, 216, described the floods that spread all over the provincein the summersof 1910 and 1911 as the worstin a hundredyears.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PNEUMONIC PLAGUE IN MANCHURIA 157 was in factthe epidemic which foreigners called it.20 Chinese resentedthe cruelty with which the Russian police were indis- criminatelyrounding up peopleas plaguesuspects; in Shanghai, an influentialjournal stated that the Russians were using the plagueas a convenientpretext to banish the Chinese from town centresand take possession of their land.21 In Harbin,of which RogerBudberg's memoir has left us an unparalleleddescription, the relativesand acquaintancesof an infectedperson could rarelyif ever be inducedto complywith the Russian demand forimmediate notification. Those of themwho realizedthe perilof keeping the sick were faced with an excruciatingchoice. Familymembers were usually still cared for in the home; others leftof their own accord, in order not to endangertheir relatives andfellow villagers, and spenttheir last hours hiding from the Russian'flying squad'. Whilesingle men were turned out of innsand hostelsby landlords unwilling to havetheir business closeddown, and themselvestaken to the isolationwagons, everythingimaginable was done to concealthe bodies of the dead. The FrenchCatholic mission in Fujiadianbecame the lastresort for over two hundred Chinese, either recent Christian convertsor (manymore) men who, fearing the plague hospital, had pinnedtheir hopes on theGod of FatherJ. F. Bourlks. Trustingin thesame divine protection and ignoringmedical advice,the priest led his flock in prayer, consoling the sick and offeringthe sacrament in articulo mortis, up to hisown death of theplague on 13January.22

20This attitudewas also adopted by officialsfearful of losingtheir jobs, nowhere more thanin the Heilongjiangprovincial seat, Qiqihar. A reportof 16 January1911 declared that efficientmedicine had been administeredto the patients (with the resultthat only 30 out of the 230 died): 'We now know that tales of this disease being plague (shuyi[literally, rat epidemic]) or "pest" (baisidu)are all rumourand have no basis in fact'. Heilongjiangsheng dang'anguan,Heilongjiang lishi dashi ji, 195. 21In additionto thisclaim, 'Manzhouli Haerbin fangyiji' [Plague Preventionin Manzhouli and Harbin], Dongfangzazhi, vii, 12 (25 Jan. 1911), also said thatthe Chinese werebeing forciblyundressed in the open fieldfacing the quarantinewagons, and that some died of the bittercold; once inside the wagons (waguan che), theydid not get enough nutrition.The anonymousauthor of this articlebased on 'knowledgeablesources' his contentionthat the plague had originatedin Moscow. 22Budberg, though a criticof the mission,remembers Bourlks as a close friend: see his Bilderaus derZeit der Lungenpest-Epidemien,298. See also much material in the 1911 issues of Annalesdes MissionsEtrangeres and Compterendu, Socidte des MissionsEtrangeres de Paris.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 158 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER190 In an atmosphereof mountinghostility from the Chinese population,responsibility for finding the hotbedsof infection and identifyingthe provenanceof the corpsesthat littered the streetsof Harbin everymorning was entrustedto the only Chinese-speakeramong the Russiandoctors. Baron Budberg, having left his firstassignment at the Fujiadian hospital, appliedhimself to thetask of intelligence-gathering at the head of a smallstaff of Chineseagents. He had no doubtsabout the necessityfor what he was doing,as he sharedthe beliefin the indispensabilityof forcedisolation. At the same time,he was voicingunheeded protests against the treatmentof Chinesein the quarantinewagons. He also disagreedwith the policyof 'disinfecting'Harbin by burningdown Chinese apartments, which he later describedas 'destroyingother people's prop- erty'.23Budberg felt most acutelythe ambiguityof his own positionwhenever a Chinesewhom he had apprehendedon the streetwould need to be pickedup by theRussian sanitary cart. On top of such four-wheeled,horse-drawn carts, closed wooden crates were mounted,and air and lightwere only admittedthrough a small square-shapedopening. For the ordinaryRussian stretcher-bearer, aware of the fatalityof the disease and withno meansof communication,a Chinesediag- nosed as a plaguecase lostany value he mayhave possessedas a livingperson, and was insteadperceived and treatedas a public menace. Alwaysentering into conversationwith the sick, Budbergavailed himself of the opportunitythat such encoun- ters presentedto the medical anthropologist,even as he regardedit his dutyto alleviatethe patients'last momentsin whateverway he could.24 From the beginningof Chinese migrationto Manchuriain the 1860s,the migrants had attachedgreat importance to being

23 Budberg,Bilder aus derZeit der Lungenpest-Epidemien, 154. 24Ibid., 52-4: an attemptto conveythe terrorof these momentsfrom the perspective of the victim.The 'dreadfulwagon' finallyarrives, its crew dressed in white.They ask the sickman to cough,or just push a pad down his throatto obtain the sputum that would laterbe sent forlaboratory examination. With the words tsouba,khodia ('get going,Chink', in Russian-Chinesepidgin) he is shoved intothe warmwagon. Soon afterthe beginningof his journeyhe noticesthe smoke of fur- naces; rememberingthe horrorstories which he has heard, he triesto hide but is pushed out of the crate and forcedinto the death room,where others like him are lying.The door rarelyopens, only to admit a new victimor take out a corpse. Beforedeath comes, he is alreadyin an unconsciousstate.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PNEUMONIC PLAGUE IN MANCHURIA 159 laid to restin theirhome villages. By 1910 piles ofcoffins were still awaitingthe eventualshipment home from'beyond the GreatWall'. Committingthe dead to Manchuriansoil was an option of economicnecessity, though some of the poor who could not affordthe expenditureof transportinga coffin preferredto burna relative'sremains so thatat leastthe bones could be broughtto the nativeplace.25 Those who did bury theirfamily members in theNorth East upheldthe tradition of keepingthe coffins at homefor at leastthree days after death.26 In theearly stage of the plague epidemic in Harbin,the Chinese governmenthad supplied coffinsfor the deceased, but this practicewas soon abolished,and the burial of hundredsof decayingbodies delayed.The intensecold and lack of man- powerto carryout thetask were the officially cited, but possibly not theonly, reasons.27 In lateJanuary 1911, as thedaily death rate in Fujiadian soared to a record of 183, Wu Liande obtainedimperial permission for an unprecedentedburning of the remains.28Dr Wu had stressedthe imminentdanger of

25Ibid., 228-9. 26The richdid not partwith coffins for many years, while childlesswidows kept theirhusband's coffinin anticipationof the day when theywould be laid to rest together.The CentralPlague PreventionBureau in Mukden, Fengtianquansheng fangyizongju, Dongsanshengyishi baogao shu [Reporton the Plague in the Three EasternProvinces] (Fengtian, 1911), pt 1, ch. 4, liststhis among the customsthat could not be reconciledwith the anti-plaguemeasures. 27The discontinuationof coffinsupply is one among several aspects of the campaignin Fujiadian to warranta suspicionthat government funds earmarked for plague reliefwere not always put to their designated use. The Yuandongbao, reportingon 14 Januarythe decision to abolish burial in coffins(the dead were fromnow on to be enwrappedin cloth and disinfectedwith carbolic acid), also mentionedthe beginningof an inquiryinto alleged embezzlementin the Fujiadian plague bureau. Rampant corruptionamong local Chinese officialsis describedin the memoirsof Sao Ke AlfredSze (1877-1958), the court's Commissionerto the Mukden conferencein 1911, who had servedas superintendentof customs in Harbin from 1908 to 1910 before becoming the Chinese ambassador to London and Washington:see his Shi Zhaoji zaonian huiyilu [Reminiscencesof Early Years] (Taipei, 1967), 61-9. 28 The sectionon 'corpse disposal', in Dongsanshengyishi baogao shu, pt 2, ch. 3, explains that (practisingBuddhists apart) cremationin the North East had been previouslyknown only in Heilongjiang,where it existedalongside burial due to the freezingof the ground in winter. In Jilinprovince, of which Harbin was part, Dr Wu's initiativearoused greatpopular fearand was eventuallyadopted onlywith the provisosthat burning in the collectivepits would be limitedto certifiedplague cases, and that relativeswould be allowed to crematetheir dead privately.This policywas also implementedin Changchun,which had the secondheaviest mortality, but no corpses were burntin the provincialseat Jilintown, none in Mukden, and veryfew in the restof Fengtian(modern Liaoning) province.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 160 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER190 infectionfrom what by thenwere overtwo thousandcorpses, but, only'a couple of days' afterthe firstburning, he ordered 'extrasquare pits, each measuringtwenty feet by twenty feet' to be 'dug to a depthof ten feetin the softenedground for the receptionof future coffins and bodies'; theinitial impracticabil- ityof mass burialmay thus have been overstatedby a believer in the modernbenefits of cremation.29On the Russianside of theHarbin anti-plague organization, Peking's decree was inter- pretedas a licenceto exhumeand bum a thousandcorpses pre- viouslyburied in a separateplague cemetery.30A second mass burning,carried out underD. K. Zabolotnyi'sorders in March, involvedall the Chinese and Westerners(members of the Russian medical staffincluded) who had been buriedin and around Harbin since the beginningof the epidemic.Earlier Chinese graveswere also disturbedin the process,and Roger Budbergdescribed the horrorof his wifewhen she foundout thather father,who had died yearsbefore, was amongthose unearthedand burnedin theplague pits.31 Thus to fearof Russians and fearof death was added the terrorof expected vengeance from the thousands of 'descendant- less' plaguevictims, most of whom died too youngto have left the progenynecessary for the performanceof ancestralrites, and whohad notbeen given proper burial. The affrontto Chinese sensibilitieswas great,yet resistance to thepreventive measures was limitedto escape attempts,and rarelyassumed a violent form.32Working hand in hand,the Chinese and Russianplague

29Quotations from Wu Lien-Teh, PlagueFighter, 30. The eventsof January 1911 are put in contextin Wu Lien Teh, 'Cremationamong the Chinese - Past and Present',Pharos, xv, 3 (1949), 9-11, a speech deliveredto the CremationSociety of GreatBritain in his capacityas Presidentof the CremationSociety of the PerakState ofMalaya. 30Strong (ed.), Reportof theInternational Plague Conference,205. Burningwas also adopted to preventthe exhumationof plague victimsby kinsmenintent on givingthe deceased a ritualburial. 31 Budberg,Bilder aus derZeit der Lungenpest-Epidemien, 228. This was in violation of the provisionsunder which cremation had been acceptedin thefirst instance, and restedon thetheory that in cold climaticconditions plague bacillicould remaininfec- tious in a dead organism.D. K. Zabolotnyi'sreport on the Manchurianexpedition, as citedin his Izbrannyetrudy [Selected Works], 2 vols. (Kiev, 1956-7), i, 212, makes clearthat some of theexhumed corpses were used fordissection. 32In earlyJanuary 1911, about threethousand Chinese workersescaped from Harbin, crossed the frozenSungari to nearbyHulan and thereset ablaze the local Chinese magistrate'soffice: see Li Shuxiao, Haerbinlishi biannian (1763-1949) [A Chronicleof Harbin History(1763-1949)] (Harbin, 2000), 50.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PNEUMONIC PLAGUE IN MANCHURIA 161 fightersshared a beliefin thesupremacy of Western methods, andhad no patiencewith grass-roots superstition.33 Dr Budberg foundthe CER's SanitaryCommittee far from eager to publish hisbooklet in Chinese,in whichhe suggestedsuch prevention methodsas he believedwere compatiblewith traditional notions:steaming, a familiarpractice of theChinese kitchen, was usefulfor disinfectionand certainlyless radicalthan burning.34Ensconced behind the protective shield of the militarycordon, Russian Harbin did not display neighbourly char- itytowards the quarantined Chinese town. Almshouses opened bythe Russian authorities in Harbin'splague-stricken Chinese quartersoffered free meals and a bath,but pursued the same goal as thequarantine wagons: to getChinese off the streets and underRussian surveillance. There was wide agreement thatlaxity on theChinese government's part was to blamefor theplague having reached the city, and a consensusthat the Chineseshould be gratefulto theRussians for bringing an end to theepidemic.35 Both in Harbin and in Russia,the press had been publishingrumours and unverifiedreports - themost persistentof whichclaimed that the Chinese,possibly in preparationfor a new Boxeruprising, were trying to infect

33Fengtian quansheng fangyi zongju, Dongsanshengyishi baogao shu,pt 1, ch. 4, blames 'traditional customs' for their negative impact on preventionefforts. Blind trust in providence, resistance to cremation, rejection of foreignmedicine, attemptingto regain the native village in defiance of quarantine regulations, and the filialpiety which obliged sons to care for infectedparents - all these come under varyingdegrees of criticismand are occasionally described as 'ignorant'. 34We have to take on faithBudberg's assertionthat the pamphlet,distributed at his own expense, was well received by its audience; according to his Bilder aus der Zeit der Lungenpest-Epidemien,62, 'the governorof Kuanchengzi [the southernterminus of the CER at Changchun] apologized for having reprinted and spread 20,000 copies withoutthe author's permission'. The bibliographical section of the Harbin-based journal and organ of the local Society of Russian Orientalists, VestnikAzii, no. 8 (Feb. 1911), 159, mentions a pamphlet published by Baron Budberg 'for the benefitof the benighted Chinese popu- lace', giving the title as Baohu wenyi [Protection from the Plague]. Roger Baron Budberg, 'Einige hygienischePrinzipien im Volksleben der Chinesen', Deutsche medizinischeWochenschrift, xxxvii, 37 (14 Sept. 1911), 1707-8; and Budberg, Bilderaus derZeit derLungenpest-Epidemien, 39, give a fairidea of the contents. 35 To preventfuture threat to the Russian town, anotherarticle in VestnikAzii concluded with a call for the annexation of Fujiadian to the CER zone: see Andrei N. Titov, 'Chuma v Kitae' [Plague in China], VestnikAzii, no. 8 (Feb. 1911).

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 162 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER190 Europeanswith the plague.36Popular opinionconsidered the most efficienthandling of the situationto have been demon- stratedin Manzhouli,where (after the early escapees had already carriedthe epidemicdown the railwayline) the Russianpolice had successfullyrounded up forquarantine the entireChinese population.Yet a lonevoice emanating from Harbin presented a completelydifferent picture to the Europeanreading audience: anonymousreports in the influentialSt PetersburgerZeitung insistedthat the plague had exposed the unwillingnessof Russiansin Chinato adaptto theways of another culture.37 Pneumonicplague returnedto Manchuriain 1920-1 and claimed 3,125 lives in Harbin (includingFujiadian, now an integralpart of town).According to officialChinese statistics, therewere 9,300 dead in all ofManchuria and theRussian Far East, thenin thegrip of a civilwar.38 To gainsome idea of the renewedclimate of hostilesuspicion in Harbin,we can turn to the proclamationsissued by the town's temporaryplague preventionbureau. The organizationestablished under Wu Liande in thewake ofthe 1911 disasternow tookover most of the anti-plaguework, and all Chinesepatients were referred to Dr Wu's hospitalin Fujiadian. Also, it was the Manchurian PlaguePrevention Service that took charge of quarantining suspects in railwaywagons and cremating1,300 of the plague's victims.39It was attackedtogether with the Russianphysicians by a population to whom Westernconcepts of preventive

36See, in a digestof the Russian and internationalpress on Far Easternaffairs, 'Chuma v Man'chzhurii:ee posledstviiai vozbuzhdenie v naselenii'[Plague in Manchu- ria: Its Consequencesand Unrestamong the Population],Dal'nevostochnoe obozrenie (St Petersburg),no. 6-7 (Mar. 1911), esp. 31-5. Budberg blamed Harbin's main Russian paperNovaia zhizn' forwhipping up an anti-Chinesecampaign, and thereby undermininghis own attemptsto reachco-operation with the Fujiadian authorities. 37The authorshipof these dispatchesdid not remainsecret for long. They are reprinted,with some modifications,in the firstpart of Budberg,Bilder aus derZeit derLungenpest-Epidemien. 38Figuresfrom Wu Lien Teh, 'The Second Pneumonic Plague Epidemic in Manchuria, 1920-21', Ji Hygiene,xxi, 3 (1922-3), 264-5. Wu's data should here be treatedwith caution, as he had a vested interestin provingthat the Plague PreventionService under his directionhad managed to reduce mortalityin the second epidemic(which it had been establishedto prevent). 39The next time cremationwas to be used in Harbin was in the years of the Japaneseoccupation. Following the Great Leap Forwardof 1958, thepractice was imposed throughoutthe People's Republic. Cf. Liu Dazhi, 'Haerbin minjian huozang zakao' [A Random Investigationof Popular Cremation in Harbin], Heilongjiangshizhi, no. 5 (1986), 38-9.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PNEUMONIC PLAGUE IN MANCHURIA 163 medicinewere, apparently, as alienas everbefore.40 Educated peoplein Harbinin 1921 wereprobably more receptive to foreignmedicine than they would have been a decadeearlier, but plagueremained a diseaseof the poor.41 Cholera, transmitted throughpolluted water and food,was lessso, andserious out- breaksin 1919,1926 and 1932 (therewere also theinfluenza pandemicof 1918, and typhusin 1930) madethe threatof epidemicdisease an ever-presentfeature of life in North-East Chinain thefirst half of the twentieth century. A fewhours' walkfrom Harbin, the small town of Hulan paid its due to each ofthe deadly visitations, and it is to thepen of the writer Xiao Hongthat we owea rareand disturbing impression of Western medicalaid from the vantage point of Chinese peasants.42

40 Haerbin linshifangyi zongshi wusuo [Harbin TemporaryCentral Plague Pre- ventionBureau], Minguoshinian fangyi baogao shu [Reporton Plague Preventionin 1921] (Harbin, 1921), sectionof public proclamations during the plague, begins (on 15 February1921) withan appeal in colloquial language forthe people to report plague cases and submitto quarantinein the railwaywagons. The textgoes on to rebutrumours dating back to 1911, namelythat patients in the wagonswere given lime to drinkand poison to eat. A proclamationostensibly devoted to hygiene,on 9 March, in factcondemned an attackon foreignersthe previousday, and refuteda rumourthat 'foreigners' (i.e. Russians) werepoisoning patients' water at the plague hospital.On 10 March appeal was made forpeople 'to takeno noticeof rumours and bringin theirrelatives' and 'not to conceal [their]sickness for fear of the doctors'. Wu, in his 'Second PneumonicPlague Epidemicin Manchuria,1920-21', includesa frank,if bemused, account of such impedimentsto anti-plaguework. 41Between1928 and 1930, shortlybefore it was to close down due to the 1931 Japaneseinvasion of Manchuria, the Service's attempts to intervenein an epidemicof bubonic plague encounteredfierce popular opposition in villages surrounding Tongliao,now south-easternInner Mongolia: Carl F. Nathan,Plague Prevention and Politicsin Manchuria,1910-1931 (Cambridge,Mass., 1967), 71-2. When plague nextbroke out in the same area, however,the Chinese CommunistParty was able to crushall resistancewith such novel measuresas compulsoryvaccination, forced segregationof suspectsfrom their families, an organized'rat-catching movement', instantfines and prisonsentences for villagers failing to reporttheir dead. Although thirtythousand died, the survivors'became firmfollowers of the Party',since, being 'liberatedfrom their superstitious beliefs, they acquired true scientific knowledge of plague prevention'.Gong Yan, '1947 nian Liao-Jidiqu shuyiliuxing qingkuang ji fangyigongzuo chengjiu' [Bubonic Plague in the Liaoning-JilinRegion in 1947, and theAchievements of Plague Prevention],Zhongguo keji shiliao, xvii, 4 (1996), 20-3. 42The Hulan-bornwriter Xiao Hong (Zhang Naiying,1911-42) losther mother in thecholera of 1919. Chapter9, 'Epidemic',in TheField of Life and Death(1935) avoids identifyingthe diseaseby a name whichwould not have been familiarto thevillagers, but leavesno roomfor doubt in thedescription of white-smocked Russians performing a salineinfusion. 'I'm worriedthat the "devils"are coming',says one woman,'They giveshots even to littlebabies. You see, I've broughtmy child with me. I won'tlet them sticka needle in him. I'd rathersee him die first!'Xiao Hong, TheField ofLife and Deathand Talesof Hulan River,trans. Howard Goldblatt(Boston, 2002), 58.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 164 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER190 II

AN INTERPRETATION Whilethere can be no generallaws coveringhuman behaviour, the broadlysimilar effects of fearon shapingpopular reaction to epidemicshave long attractedhistorians' attention.43 Epi- demics afflictingmostly or exclusivelythe poor segmentsof societyhave been knownto provokesuspicion and, frequently, violentaction againstthe rich,the ethnicminorities and the medicalprofession. This patternof response needs little factual justification,as, triggeredby panic, it feeds on pre-existing stereotypesand fears,but it naturallygrows in intensityparallel to theintrusiveness of sanitary measures.44 In a colonialsetting, theoutbreak of an epidemicis likelyto laybare a mutualmistrust between the native and foreignpopulations.45 Rather than impressupon the massesthe superiorityof Westernmedicine,

43 See, in the European context,Jean Delumeau, La Peur en Occident XVI e sidcles):une citi assieg'e(Paris, 1978), ch. 3, 'Typologie des comportements(XIVe- collectifsen tempsde peste', esp. 131-6. 44Withinthe traditionof the mentalitisschool, see Ren6 Baehrel, 'La Haine de classe en temps d'6pidemie',Annales ESC, vii (1952). Violence againstphysicians and Jewscharacterized the 'cholera riots'in Russia in 1892: see Nancy Mandelker Frieden,Russian Physicians in an Era ofReform and Revolution,1856-1905 (Prince- ton, 1981), 143-58. So did the suspicionof poisoning,which in 1910 was directed towardsthe Russiansand theJapanese - see, forthe latter,Dugald Christie,Thirty Years in Moukden, 1883-1913 (London, 1914), 247 - but which Karl-Heinz Leven, 'Poisoners and "plague-smearers"',Lancet, cccliv (2000), suppl., p. 53, regardsas a universalreaction in timeof epidemics.In the same yearas the plague epidemicin Manchuria,rumours of poisoned waterin thepest-house accompanied a coercivepublic health campaignto igniteviolence among the poor of southern Italy: Frank M. Snowden, 'Cholera in Barletta,1910', Past and Present,no. 132 (Aug. 1991). RajnarayanChandavarkar, 'Plague Panic and Epidemic Politics in India, 1896-1914', in Terence Rangerand Paul Slack (eds.), Epidemicsand Ideas: Essayson theHistorical Perception of Pestilence (Cambridge, 1992), mountsa counter- argumentfor the specificand rationalnature of popularresistance. 45See FaranirinaEsoavelomandroso, 'R6sistance a la medecineen situationcolo- niale: la peste a Madagascar', AnnalesESC, xxxvi(1981), on an epidemic which firstappeared on the island in 1921. The French administration'sburning of contaminatedhouses, interventionin burial rites, and experimentalvaccination became political issues in the anti-colonialstruggle. The next outbreakof pneumonic plague afterManchuria, analysedin Myron Echenberg,Black Death, White Medicine:Bubonic Plague and thePolitics of Public Health in ColonialSenegal, 1914-1945 (Portsmouth,NH, 2002), invitescomparison with Harbin: in 1914 the disease invaded the native Senegalese quarterof Dakar, which was then segregatedfrom the French city.The by now familiarscenario of foreignersburning down native houses, takingover the burial of the dead and launchinga campaignof obligatory vaccinationled to petitions,a strike,and finallya revoltthat put an end to the destructionof propertyand ensuredcompensation for the damage inflicted.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PNEUMONIC PLAGUE IN MANCHURIA 165 thetypically lower death rate among Westerners tends to inten- sifysuspicion against them (it may,though, have the former effectupon theupper classes, whose contacts with the foreigners would usuallydate back to beforethe epidemic). Whatever readinessthere had previouslybeen to seek thehelp of foreign doctors,or to use foreigndrugs as a complementto traditional remedies,46is quicklyforgotten at a timeof crisis, when choices on bothsides are dictatedby prejudiceand superstition.West- erners,who may have embracedliberal views beforedisaster struck,now perceivetheir neighbours as thecarriers of disease. The epidemic of bubonic plague in Hong Kong in 1894, famousfor the discovery of plague bacilli by theFrench doctor AlexandreYersin, exhibitedall these traits,with measures enforcedby the Britishauthorities running up againstChinese fearand protest.47San Francisco'sChinatown was suspectedas thehotbed of theplague as soon as theglobal plague pandemic had reachedthe city by sea in 1900.48 The Manchurianplague disrupteda stateof affairsthat had enabledRussians and Chinesein the CER zone to limittheir communicationto the essentialsof economicexchange. Now, foreignersintruded into domains of Chinesesociety which they had hithertostayed clear of (and thereforeknew very little about): medicalcare;49 the seasonal migration cycle; and thebasic habits ofdaily life and burialcustoms. The CER's decisionto layoff its Chineseworkers caused wide unemployment, and compelledthe

46 On the precipitouscollapse of Chinese trustin Westerndrugs and doctorsat the time of the plague, see E. P. Khmara-Borshchevskii,K voprosuo vozniknovenii chumyna Dal'nem Vostokei merybor'by s rasprostraneniemchumnoi zarazy [Regard- ing the Appearance of Plague in the Far East and Measures to Combat the Spread of Plague Infection](Harbin, 1912), 32-4. 47See Carol Benedict, Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-CenturyChina (Stanford, 1996), 137-49; and, fromthe perspectiveof the Shropshiretroops upon whose shouldersthe disinfectionwork fell, Jerome J. Platt,Maurice E. Jonesand Arleen Kay Platt, The WhitewashBrigade: The Hong Kong Plague of1894 (London, 1998). 48See Nayan Shah, ContagiousDivides: Epidemicsand Race in San Francisco's Chinatown(Berkeley, 2001); MarilynChase, The BarbaryPlague: The Black Death in VictorianSan Francisco(New York,2003). 49Employees of the CER had been the only Chinese to receivetreatment in the Harbin centralhospital before the plague, whilethe earlyopening hours of Russian dispensaries had made them inaccessible to Chinese workers. 'Meditsinskaia pomoshch' kitaiskomunaseleniiu g. Kharbina' [Medical Aid to the Chinese Popu- lationof the Town of Harbin], Novaia zhizn' (Harbin), no. 108 (26 Apr. 1911), 2, also arguedthat Chinese trustin European doctorshad increasedwith the establish- mentof new dispensariesduring the epidemic.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 166 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER190 Chineseto seeksuch other jobs as couldbe foundin plaguetime; likeother methods adopted to preventcontact between Russians and Chinese,it may have saved Russianlives only at the cost ofsubjecting the Chineseto increaseddanger. The isolationof Fujiadian,and thecessation of commerceand dailycommuting to Harbin,forced men to takeup jobs as stretcher-bearers,corpse burnersand hospitalhands, and to pursuetrade in the clothes of the dead - evenin dead rats,secretly imported into the city once theauthorities offered to payfor their collection. The devo- tionand sacrificeof the medical staffs notwithstanding, the arbi- trarymeasures taken in Harbinand Fujiadianrank among the mostintrusive of Western-managedepidemics; mass cremation and forcedquarantine on a similarscale would have been incon- ceivablein late tsaristRussia, not to mentionWestern Europe, wheresanitary cordons and lazarettoshad been abandonedin the firsthalf of the nineteenthcentury. These policieshad a longerlife as instrumentsofcolonial control in Asia and Africa. That theydid not provokeopen rebellionin 1910, of the kindthat earlier in thesame year had eruptedin protestagainst theimposition of new taxesin Shandongprovince,50 from which mostmigrant workers hailed, must be relatedto themigrants' extremevulnerability and lack of organization,to the absence of a rootedpopulation in NorthernManchuria, to thereligious perceptionof plague as divineretribution, and to a cultureof forbearancein hardship.Passive resistancewas at the same timeubiquitous, expressed in suchforms as theconcealment of corpses,and the staunchrefusal of the sickto revealtheir last addressto theRussian medical staff.51 Trainedby a commonteacher in Paris,the leadersof both Russian and Chinese medicalexpeditions to Manchuriawere membersof a cross-nationalscientific community.52 In their whiteprotective clothing, which left only the eyes uncovered, otherRussian and Chinesedoctors were difficult to tellapart. Most of themneeded interpreters to communicatewith their patients

50oSee Roxann Prazniak,Of Camel Kings and OtherThings: Rural Rebelsagainst Modernityin Late ImperialChina (Lanham, Md., 1999), ch. 2. 51 Budberg,Bilder aus derZeit derLungenpest-Epidemien, 25 and passim. 52In 1900 and 1903, respectively,D. K. Zabolotnyiand Wu Liande had studied under the futureNobel laureateElie Metchnikoffat the InstitutPasteur. In Paris, too, both men would meet again in November 1911 as representativesof Russia and China at the InternationalSanitary Conference.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PNEUMONIC PLAGUE IN MANCHURIA 167 (WuLiande spoke fluent English and some French and German, butno MandarinChinese), while closely fitting masks did more to reduceeither side's possibilities ofnegotiating the treatment process.Contempt towards the coolies, for their senseless refusal to complywith regulations issued for their own protection, their superstitionand theirdesperate attempts to seekrelief in tradi- tionalmedicine, was characteristic ofthe Western-trained Chinese doctorseven more than of their Russian colleagues.53 The use to whichfire was put during the epidemic deserves specialattention. Wu Liande'scremation of the dead, a policy whichthe Russians were only too quick to pick up, was a crude and insensitivemethod whose chief advantage was to ease thework of themedical organization. Despite Wu's frequent intimationsin this regard, no causativelink may be established betweenthe mass cremationon 31 January1911 and the epidemic'send more than a monthlater. Traceable to the same Hippocraticorigins of Westernmedicine, the incineration of Chinesehovels in Fujiadian reflected the scientific standards of theday.54 Contrary to measurestaken by the British after their

53Apartfrom references to the 'unrulysoldiery' and 'ignorantpopulace', Wu Liande's writingsare repletewith satirical sketches of the native Chinese 'quacks'. He was probablyright about thelow leveland pecuniarymotives of the competition, but at least one exampleshows that things may not have been so clear-cut.Cao Tingjie, 'Fangyichuyan xu ji liyan'[Rustic Remarks on Plague Prevention:Introduction, and Notes on Usage], in Cong Peiyuanand Zhao Mingqi (eds.), Cao Tingjieji[Collected Worksof Cao Tingjie],2 vols. (Beijing,1985), ii, 275-9, is a famousNorth-Eastern scholar'sadvertisement of an allegedlywell-tested traditional 'cure' forthe plague; it does a fairjob in persuadingreaders of the author'spatriotic concern. Cao's was one of several introductionsto the volume RusticRemarks on Plague Prevention(Jilin, 1911); anotherwas contributedby ViceroyXi Liang, who just a fewmonths before had posed as an adept ofWestern medicine at theMukden international conference. 54Fire was reputedlythe weapon withwhich the 'fatherof medicalscience' deliv- eredAthens from the plague, though the abilityof fireto destroythe 'seeds ofplague' was disputedalready by Daniel Defoe in his A Journalof the Plague Year (1722), ed. Louis Landa (Oxford,1990), 172, 243 and notes.Long afterDefoe's time,as it was discoveredthat bubonic plague was spreadby rat fleas,it became possible to argue thatrats (rather than 'seeds') had been destroyedin the GreatFire of London. In this sense,new epidemiologicalknowledge encouraged a returnto ancientmethods: even an accidentalconflagration which left five thousand people homelesscould not cast doubtupon thewisdom of burninginfected locations during the epidemicof bubonic plague in Hawaii in 1900 norprevent the adoption of this policy in severalsucceeding epidemics,as shownby JamesC. Mohr,Plague and Fire:Battling Black Death and the 1900 Burningof Honolulu's Chinatown (Oxford, 2004). On his last assignmentprior to Harbin,a majoroutbreak of bubonic plague in Odessa in 1910, Zabolotnyidid oppose the citygovernor's policy of burning down the tenement houses of the poor, according to Nina E. Pitsyk,Daniil Kirillovich Zabolotnyi, 1866-1929 (Moscow, 1988), 110-14.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 168 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER190 burningof a Chinesecity quarter in the Hong Kong epidemic of 1894, demolitionin Fujiadianwas not followedby redevel- opmentof the area,which remained a slumwell into the PRC era. As a seniormedical officer in Harbinwould avow onlya year afterthe events,Chinese houses had been burntunder the pressureof Russian panic.55Yet the same methodwas endorsed,along with mass cremation, by the Chinese magistrate ofKuanchengzi (the CER railwaysettlement near Changchun), who in his anxietyto put a rapidend to the epidemicinflicted additionalsuffering on the plague-strickenpopulation.56 It is essentiallythe problemof importedmodernity that we are facedwith here, and returnto below.

III

OTHER INTERPRETATIONS 'Local Sino-Russianrelations were not harmed but rather improvedby the great Manchurianpneumonic plague epidemic',wrote Rosemary Quested in what remains the best narra- tivehistory of Harbin that we have." Startlingas thisconclusion mayseem, there is a sensein whichit is entirelycorrect: we have just seen the close co-operationbetween the Chinese and Russian administrationsand medicalpersonnel. International (ratherthan 'local') relationsbetween the two states, Russia and China,did improve in the wake of the Mukden conference, having been undera heavycloud shortlybefore: political brinkmanship relatedto Russia's demandsto extendher tradeprivileges in Mongoliahad led to a warscare in RussianHarbin during the plague, whichstirred up anti-Chinesesentiment in the local press.58Quested drew much of her informationfrom the

"5Khmara-Borshchevskii, K voprosuo vozniknoveniichumy na Dal'nem Vostoke, 46-8, defendedthe need to crematethe corpses of plague victims,but urged that any otheruse of firein futureepidemics be confinedto exceptionalcircumstances. 56Lancelin, 'La Peste de Mandchourie', 367. This was apparentlythe same official who distributed '20,000 copies' of another foreign remedy: Baron Budberg's booklets,which recommendedplague preventionthrough the imple- mentationof Chinese hygienicprinciples. 57Quested, 'Matey'Imperialists?, 199. 58The issues of contentionin Russian-Chineserelations are coveredby Quested: ibid.,ch. 11, 'The Various Crises of 1910-11'. Cf. EvgeniiA. Belov, Rossiiai Kitai v nachaleXX veka: russko-kitaiskieprotivorechiia v 1911-1915 gg. [Russia and China in the Early20th Century:Russo-Chinese Disputes, 1911-1915] (Moscow, 1997).

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PNEUMONIC PLAGUE IN MANCHURIA 169 correspondenceof Americanand Britishdiplomats, and in her magisterialaccount of the Russianenterprise in Manchuriashe sharedthese sources' interestin the politicalrather than the socialconsequences of the epidemic. A bias in favourof state-driven history is evidentalready in the titleof another fine book, Carl F. Nathan'sPlague Prevention and Politicsin Manchuria.Exceptionally lucid and well researched (thoughbased exclusivelyon English-languagesources), this shortmonograph presented Mukden as a milestonein Chinese history- themoment when China adopted the fundaments of a Westernmedical system. Once again,whether or notwe should agreewith the authordepends on thevantage point we choose. The Pekinggovernment's acceptance of a long list of foreign innovationsduring the epidemic was important,and theplace of thisdecision within the radical reform policies undertaken in the lastdecade of the Qing would merit further inquiry. In theterritory affectedby the plague, however, the implementation ofunfamiliar regulationsoccasioned an equallyimportant opposition - ifnot on thepart of thecoolies, then from the strong merchant guilds and allied 'native-place'associations (huiguan) who expectedto shoulderrelief work for the poor while maintaining the privileges ofthe rich, and who couldnot tolerate foreign doctors, house-to- housesearches, forced quarantine and police control.59 In Russiaand China mutuallyinsular versions of these events developed. With remarkableconsistency, the 'conquest of plague' was describedas a Russianor a Chineseachievement, respectivelybrought about by thepersonal leadership of either D. K. Zabolotnyior Wu Liande. In theirsublime disregard of each other,historians in bothcountries have cultivated a dubious notionof an epidemic'extinguished' or 'stampedout': in 1911,

59Upper-classChinese were, indeed, exempt fromthese regulationsand their freedomof movementwas not hampered: even in Manzhouli, the well-offwere allowed to pass quarantinein theirhomes. The merchantsin Fujiadian lobbied for the openingof an alternativeplague hospital,to provideless 'restrictive'treatment in accordance with Chinese medicine. In her summaryof the 1910 epidemic in Mukden, Benedict,Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-CenturyChina, 155-63, describes a similarreaction by the city'sChamber of Commerce. Such 'alternative'hospitals, set up by merchantsand the gentryin Mukden and Changchun,collapsed shortly aftertheir establishment as both staffand patientssuccumbed to the plague. The symbiosisbetween chambers of commerceand the local administrationin Liaoning in the early 1920s is described by Ronald Suleski, Civil Governmentin Warlord China: Tradition,Modernization and Manchuria(New York, 2002), 113-18, 200-3.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 170 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER190 however,there was wide agreementthat - ratherthan being conqueredthrough Russian or Chineseefforts - theepidemic had stoppedby itself.60So intenselyare Russianand Chinese historiographiespreoccupied with conveyinga self-flattering image of the nation,and so completeis each side's isolation fromthe opposing historical narrative, that they omit every fact thatdoes not suittheir purpose, and rearrangethe rest to their advantage.61Chinese historians' lack ofinterest in epidemicsis reflectedin the paucityof specializedstudies; all we mayfind on the plague of 1910 are short,uniform articles in praiseof Wu Liande, scatteredin the modem medical journals and North-Easternpublications.62 Their authorsquote Dr Wu's writingsin the available Chinese translations.But it was throughhis English-language publications that the self-promoting directorof theManchurian Plague PreventionService came to dominatethe historical record; coupled with a lack of access to the Russianside of the story,similar unanimity marks the few Westernstudies which have so fardealt with the subject.63

60 See, forexample, Khmara-Borshchevskii, K voprosuo vozniknoveniichumy na Dal'nem Vostoke,31; Budberg,Bilder aus derZeit derLungenpest-Epidemien, 90. This is not to denythat preventive work could limitthe exposureto infection,and there- forethe numberof victims,as long as the plague lasted. 61The hagiographicliterature that grew around the figure of Zabolotnyi in theSoviet Union allowedno space fornuance in presentinghis expedition as a life-savinghuman- itarianmission. No hintof the controversyover Zabolotnyi's actions in Harbin,or of the oppositionto themamong Harbin's Russian doctors (Budberg, Bilder aus derZeit derLungenpest-Epidemien, pts 1-2, has all thedetails of the row complete with petitions, reportsand caricaturesfrom the Harbin press), was everallowed into a Sovietpublica- tion.This also appliesto theonly monograph on thesubject: the Soviet-French collab- orativestudy by Martinevskii and Mollaret,Epidemiia chumy v Man'chzhurii. 62Eulogies in the PRC have minimizedreferences to Wu Liande's Britishnation- ality(and scarce knowledgeof the Chinese language), his titleof 'physicianextra- ordinary'to presidentYuan Shikai,and his neversetting foot in CommunistChina. The co-operationbetween Russian and Chinese doctorsis typicallyignored by Li Shuxiao, Haerbinlishi biannian, 50, whereRussians are repeatedlycondemned for 'usingplague as a pretextto harmthe Chinese people'. 63Uncriticallyechoing his hero's writings,Carsten Flohr, 'The Plague Fighter: Wu Lien-teh and the Beginningof the Chinese Public Health System',Annals of Science,liii, 4 (July1996), presentsWu as guardianof Chinese national interests againstRussian and Japaneseinvasion schemes. Fisher,'Bubonic Plague in Mod- em China', 92-101, has a bettersummary of the epidemic,but fails to support fromsources otherthan Dr Wu's publicationshis assertionthat the plague proved the efficacyof Western medicine over its Chinese counterpart- ifall patientsdied, why would anybody have considered one system 'better'? The list of recent researchon the epidemicof 1910 mustalso includeIijima Wataru,Pesuto to kindai Chugoku[Plague and Modern China] (Tokyo, 2002), ch. 4, whereit is studiedin the contextof a foreign-inducedinstitutionalization of Chinese public health.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PNEUMONIC PLAGUE IN MANCHURIA 171 The imageof the European-trained physician as a heraldof modernityin Chinabrings up a difficultyin the interpretation of thepast: its dependencyon shiftingintellectual fashions in the present.A convention,to whichNathan's book still adhered,allowed historians to describethe disseminationof Westernmedical science as coterminouswith progress. While thisapproach remains the basic premise for historians in Russia andin thePeople's Republic of China, it is nowall but extinct in English-languagehistoriography: writing for an Anglophone academicaudience today, it is nota goodidea to propose a tale ofscience triumphing over plague and superstition. The Man- churianPlague Prevention Service, established by Wu Liande in theaftermath of the 1910 epidemic,proclaimed the intro- ductionof Western medicine on itsbanner. It alsoasked ordin- arypatients wishing to be admittedto one of the Service's hospitalsto equip themselveswith the recommendationof 'some local tradesmanof standing',or a 'responsiblelocal authority',while 'members of the Maritime Customs and officers ofthe government' were attended to 'wheneverrequired free of charge'.Except in epidemics,the Service'shospitals did not admitpatients who could not be countedon torecover (and, in so doing, demonstratethe efficacyof Western-stylemedical treatment).64Nathan could not let this policy pass without comment,suggesting that it was littledifferent from the strategy of Dr Wu's competitors,the quacks who treatedpatients sufferingfrom the commoncold onlyto claim thatthey had curedthem of the plague.65The inequalityin the face of disease, whichhad so clearlymanifested itself in the anti-plague campaigns,seems even harder to ignore in 2005.

A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL PERSPECTIVE There was a time when compellingand influentialhistory could be writtenas the storyof how one thinghad led to another:from a chosen point on the chronologicalscale, the

64 See 'RegulationsConcerning the Duties of Medical Officersand the Manage- ment of Hospitals', NorthManchurian Plague PreventionService Reports, 1911-13 (Cambridge,1914), 150-4. 65 Nathan, PlaguePrevention and Politicsin Manchuria,50.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 172 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER190 historianlooked back to tracethe causes of change,with the predominatingassumption that the end stationwas better than the point of departure.66We are now likelyto distrust narrativesof 'progress',that inexorable movement of history tidingover appropriatelypositioned watersheds and turning points, and are inclined to detect power interestsbehind what earliergenerations more readilyascribed to altruismor patrioticspirit. There are two implicationsof this current scepticism,which are consideredhere in turn.The morepositive one is a heightenedawareness of the pitfallsof causal explanation in history,a problemof whichsecondary sources on the Manchurian plague provide us with an illuminating example. More oftenthan not, these accountsbegin withthe state- mentthat the plague had firsterupted among tarbagan hunters. We arethen told that a sharprise in theprice of the marmot's fur, followingthe growingdemand for it in Europeanmarkets, had resultedin theparallel rise in thenumbers of hunters, and that the new, inexperiencedChinese trappersbecame infectedas they ignoredprecautions which Mongols and Buriats had alwaystaken to avoid contactwith sick animals.The trouble withthis ubiquitous explanation is notthat it is untrue,but that the seamlesschain of eventswhich it constructsis hugelymis- leading.The transmissionof humanplague from the tarbagan in the Transbaikaland Outer Mongoliansteppe had been a favouritetheory of Russianscientists since the 1860s, and one vigorouslypromoted by D. K. Zabolotnyi.In the absence of sufficientproof the theorywas not endorsedby the specialists attendingthe Mukden conferencein 1911; only laterin the same yeardid Zabolotnyi'steam manageto diagnosea single plague-infectedtarbagan, a discoverywhich has since been hailed, especiallyin Russian publications,as conclusiveevi- dence forthe existence of epizootic plague among the marmots of Manchuria.Later researchconfirmed the tarbagantheory, but we maywell ask how relevantsuch confirmationmight be

66See David Cannadine, 'Historiansin "the Liberal Hour": LawrenceStone and J. H. Plumb Re-Visited',Hist. Research,lxxv (2002), esp. 350-4. A rare studyof plague historiography,Faye Marie Getz, 'Black Death and the Silver Lining: Meaning, Continuity,and RevolutionaryChange in Historiesof Medieval Plague', fl Historyof Biology, xxiv, 2 (1991), criticizesthe notionthat medieval plague 'gave rise to the Renaissance'.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PNEUMONIC PLAGUE IN MANCHURIA 173 to our understandingof the social, rather than the purely medical,history of the epidemic. It can be arguedwith a highdegree of probabilitythat, at the timeof the plague, no Chinese in Manchuriacould have been persuaded to believe that the disease had originated from the marmots,an explanationgrounded in the germ theoryof epidemicdisease and in the principlesof laboratory analysis. In 1910, both were far from the acknowledged orthodoxythat they would later become,67and, given the hopeless prognosisof pneumonic plague, Western science could not even claim thatthe identificationof the germheld any promiseof recoveryfor the patient.A bookletofficially distributedby the CER, as partof a campaignto explainthe epidemicwhich also includedpamphlets and eveninglectures, did attemptto arguethe tarbagan case to the Chinesepopula- tion,68 and the hantamarmot soon enteredChinese medical discourse.Yet even Dr Wu Liande, the firstChinese Pasteur- ian, remainedfar from convinced. In the summerof 1911 he travelledto Manzhouli and furtherinto Inner Mongolia, talkedto seasonedtarbagan hunters, but could findnone who had everseen a sickanimal or could recallan instancewhen a fellowtrapper was infected.69At an internationalcongress in London, as late as 1913, Wu came up with a memorable simile:'To concludethat a man whose occupationis thatof a tarbaganhunter, and who takesplague, has been infectedfrom a tarbagan,is comparableto concludingthat a man who sells

67 Doubts about the validityof bacteriologicaltheory in the West persistedinto the 1930s: see AndrewCunningham, 'Transforming Plague: The Laboratoryand the Identityof InfectiousDisease', in Andrew Cunninghamand PerryWilliams (eds.), The LaboratoryRevolution in Medicine(Cambridge, 1992), 238-9. Note also ibid., 209: 'the coming of the laboratoryhas led to the past of medicine being rewrittento accord withthe laboratorymodel of disease, and it has therebybeen misunderstood'(original emphasis). 68A pamphletby E. P. Khmara-Borshchevskiiwas translatedinto Chinese in Manzhouli prefecture,supplied with an introductionby theprefect, and distributed in ninetycopies in April 1911: see Heilongjiangsheng dang'anguan,Heilongjiang lishidashiji, 206. This should correspondto item242 in Olga Bakich,Harbin Rus- sian Imprints:Bibliography as History,1898-1961. Materialsfor a DefinitiveBibliogra- phy(New York, 2002). 69Thus accordingto Wu's account (cited in n. 70 below), which also seems driven by the political motivationto disprove the existence of endemic plague withinChinese territory.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 174 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER190 rice, and who develops plague, has been infectedfrom the rice'.70 To thetraditional Chinese practitioners the cause-and-effect explanationof theplague's originremained incomprehensible, and thereforeirrelevant, even at the followingstage of the chain,as pneumonicplague passed fromone humanagent to anotherin thecough droplets of the patients. The entirenotion of mass contagionwent against the grainof a medicalsystem that sought the explanationof disease in the body of the individual,and was, at most,ready to attributeepidemics to miasmicevaporations.71 A plague tractdistributed in Beihai (Guangxi province) in 1910 denied contagionalong with Westerngerm theory,explained bubonic plague's intrusion throughfoul air into an alreadyweakened organism, and advo- cated its cure by acupuncture,and by such supplementary meansas a potionof bear bile, and theurine of a smallchild.72 Furtherdown the scale of medical expertise,the chances appear infinitesimalthat the chain of infectioncould have made anysense to North-Easternlabourers and villagers.Theirs was a worldin whichepidemics were brought about by malevo- lentspirits, and reprievecame throughcommunal worship and the stagingof religiousprocessions.73 The mostthat could be fittedinto theircultural framework were simple preventive

70Wu Lien Teh, 'Investigationsinto the Relationshipof theTarbagan (Mongolian Marmot) to Plague', in TheXVIIth InternationalCongress of Medicine, London 1913, section xxi, 'Tropical Medicine and Hygiene', pt 2 (London, 1914), 47. In the same year,versions of Wu's articlecontaining this sentence appeared in the Lancet, in the Journalof Hygiene,in the Journalof TropicalMedicine and Hygiene,and, finally,in NorthManchurian Plague Prevention Service Reports, 1911-13. Wu shortly thereafteraccepted the tarbagantheory and, fromthat time on, avoided further referencesto his erstwhilepersuasion. 71The theorythat epidemics may be caused by pestilentialvapours originating in a polluted environmentis a point at which the so-called 'warm factor'school of traditionalChinese medicinemay be comparedwith Western aetiological concepts beforethe advent of bacteriological science: see Benedict,Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth- CenturyChina, 105. ShigehisaKuriyama, 'Epidemics, Weather,and Contagion in Traditional Chinese Medicine', in Lawrence I. Conrad and Dominik Wujastyk (eds.), Contagion:Perspectives from Pre-Modern Societies (Aldershot, 2000), shows thatcontagion was oftenacknowledged, but was consideredsecondary to the chief perceivedcause of infectionin epidemics: internalpredisposition, in conjunction withseasonal disturbance. 72Translated (with the originalillustrations) as 'Le Traitementde la peste d'apres les medecinschinois', La Semainemidicale, xxxi, 5 (1 Feb. 1911), pp. xviii-xix. 73Paul R. Katz, Demon Hordesand BurningBoats: The Cult of Marshal Wen in Late ImperialChekiang (Albany, 1995), ch. 2, 'Epidemics and Responsesto Them'.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PNEUMONIC PLAGUE IN MANCHURIA 175 measuresand increased sanitation, but they could neither grasp theneed for quarantine nor accept the notion of hospital death. A differentpicture begins to emergehere from the one set beforeour eyes by those accounts of the epidemic which had streamlinedhistory to matchthe fruits of scientific discovery: thevivid image of Chinese hunters being infected either by the tissueor throughthe fleas of sick rodents, then developing an infectionof the lungs, and carryingon thedisease into dense populationcentres. This is probablyhow it really happened - butit most certainly was not perceived to be so atthe time. To theextent that the present article deviates from earlier interpretationsofthe Manchurian plague, it is indebtedto the currentbroadening of historians' agendas, the interest in per- ceptionsand, in medicalhistory, the standpointof the patient.74It grows out of the same irreverent spirit which today encouragesus tolook with a criticaleye at eventhe most vener- ablepieces of historiographical heritage. A criticaleye, though, is also a goodmeasure to applyto ourown fin-de-sizcle icono- clasm.Never mind the tarbagan; did theBlack Death really triggerpersecutions against Jews in Europe?75And, that bold- estrecent challenge to receivedopinion (one seekingsome of itscorroboration in the Manchurian epidemics): was the Black Death 'plague' at all?76

74Paul Slack, 'Introduction',in Rangerand Slack (eds.), Epidemicsand Ideas,2-3. 75This has long been a fundamentalassumption of plague history,and willprob- ably remainone even afterthe publicationof Iris Ritzmann,'Judenmord als Folge des "Schwarzen Todes": ein medizinhistorischerMythos?', Medizin, Gesellschaft, und Geschichte,xvii (1998) - see the riposte by Karl-Heinz Leven, 'Schwarzer Tod, Brunnenvergiftungund Judenmord:nur ein medizinhistorischerMythos?', Praxis(Bern), lxxxix,9 (2000), 374-6. 76Samuel K. Cohn, Jr,'The Black Death: End of a Paradigm',Amer. Hist. Rev., cvii (2002), argues that the epidemic that decimated Europe in the fourteenth centurydid not involvethe same disease as the one whose bacilli (now knownas Yersiniapestis) were identifiedduring the Hong Kong plague of 1894. Much of the argumentrests on the claim thatcontagion in the modernepidemics spread signifi- cantlyslower than it did duringmedieval plague. In his effortto downplayconta- gion in the Manchuriancase, however,Cohn, in his TheBlack Death Transformed: Disease and Culturein EarlyRenaissance Europe (London, 2002), resortsto selective quotation fromWu Liande's articles- Wu, in his 'Second Pneumonic Plague Epidemic in Manchuria', 268, in fact, spoke of 'the extremeinfectiousness of pneumonicplague', confirmingthe conclusionsin Strong(ed.), Reportof the Inter- nationalPlague Conference, 411. Cohn furthercreates the impressionthat the plague raged chieflyamong the 'closely huddled ... tarabagan trappers',ignoring the high mortalityamong hospital staffand the wiping out of a thirdof Fujiadian's (cont.on p. 176)

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 176 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER190 The otherimplication of scepticismfor historical research is emotionalpoverty. We have become accustomedto irony,as opposed to earnest celebration:that there could be many versionsof truthand conflictingperceptions of progresshad been an importantchallenge to historians'complacency some decades ago, but by now even first-yearstudents know that theyare expectedto qualifywith inverted commas such terms, as wellas a growingnumber of others,on thelist that includes science and civilization."This descent into cynicismleaves modernWestern historians badly equipped forthe possibility that ideals, not just interests,may have guided the historical agents. The young volunteerswho rushed to conquer the plaguein Manchuriamay have been dreamingof grand careers in the golden age of bacteriology;78of the eighteenstudents (tenfrom Tomsk University and eightfrom the Military Medical Academyin St Petersburg)four did become professorsin the SovietUnion, but two died ofthe plague. There is arrogancein declaringthat their corporate identity as the representativesof imperialistmedicine was what essentiallydetermined their behaviourand reactions.79 It is a commonplaceto point out that governmentsand administratorsfacing the menaceof epidemicstend to put the preservationof theirown authorityabove the preservationof lives,and thatdecision-makers in the capitaloften approve of more radical measuresin the peripherythan can be implementedin the centre;the concernsproper to colonialpolicy

(n. 76 cont) population in 1910-11. The main reason for the exceptionalvirulence of pneumonic plague, the rapid passage of infectionin cough droplets(radically different from the bubonic form,which being dependent on rats and rat fleas cannot be transmitteddirectly from person to person), has led some scholarsto suspect pneumonicplague behindthe catastrophiclosses of the Black Death - a school of thoughtthat Cohn rejects: see his Black Death Transformed,ch. 3, 'Historians Square the Circle'. 77Lionel Gossman, 'Towards a Rational Historiography',Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc., lxxix,3 (1989), 16-18, called this'the platitudinizingof formerlyavant-garde positions'. 78 On the riseof professional specialization in bacteriologyas a new alternativeto generalistpractice, leading to thefirst congress of Russianbacteriologists in January 1911, see JohnF. Hutchinson,Politics and PublicHealth in RevolutionaryRussia, 1890-1918 (Baltimore,1990), 63-9. 79Amongmany statementsin this vein, see Andrew Cunninghamand Bridie Andrews(eds.), WesternMedicine as ContestedKnowledge (Manchester, 1997), editors' 'Introduction'.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PNEUMONIC PLAGUE IN MANCHURIA 177 added to,rather than supplanted, those basic considerations.In Manchuria,Russian power afterthe Russo-Japanesewar did not extendbeyond Harbin and the CER zone, and indeed its representativesin Harbinwould have gotnowhere in Chinese- governedFujiadian had not a commoninterest in containing the epidemicsecured them the co-operationof the Foreign Ministryin Pekingand theViceroy in Mukden.What came out of thisco-operation is regrettablebut hardlysurprising, as we rememberthat coercionwas regularlyemployed by the late Qing and Romanov empiresagainst their own nationals- thoughsuch infringements ofhuman rights do pale in comparison withboth empires'totalitarian successors. While the rela- tionshipbetween the medical profession and thestate deserves carefulstudy, men and womentreating infectious patients at thescene ofthe events cannot be arbitrarilyreduced to replicas of governmentagendas.80 The decisionstaken on the groundcannot, furthermore, be analysedsolely in termsof a strugglefor power,dissociated fromthe circumstanceswhich had made them urgent.The Russian and Chinese authoritiesand medical staffshad to confronta virtuallyunknown disease in townsteeming with rumourand infestedby the fearof death.81Whatever the turn

80 Contraryto the image conveyedby David Arnoldin his Colonizingthe Body: State Medicineand EpidemicDisease in Nineteenth-CenturyIndia (Berkeley,1993), Cohn, Black Death Transformed,38, findsin Britishplague commissioners'reports 'respectfor the native populations', an attituderewarded by the co-operationof their Indian assistants.In his Chumnyeepidemii na Dal'nem Vostoke,Deputy Head physician of the CER and liberalintellectual E. P. Khmara-Borshchevskii(1865-1921) qualifiedChinese resistanceto Russian plague preventionmeasures as 'a sad, but understandablephenomenon' (p. 45). A lecturedelivered in 1912 to colleaguesin the Harbin centralhospital, his K voprosuo vozniknoveniichumy na Dal'nem Vostoke acknowledgedthe errorsof the militarycordon, the detention'for observation' of thousandsof Chinese along the CER line and the burningof Chinese houses. He concludedwith a call forwhat, he believed,was the singlemost effective measure in plagueprevention: 'to improvethe living conditions of the poor' (pp. 50-1). 81 Carol Benedict, 'Framing Plague in China's Past', in Gail Hershatteret al. (eds.), RemappingChina: Fissuresin HistoricalTerrain (Stanford, 1996), 35, argues thatBritish response to the plague in Hong Kong in 1894 had 'less to do withthe threatit actuallyposed to the European communitythan with fears of the Chinese underclassand their"lack of hygiene"'. But the extentof threat'actually posed' could onlybe knownafter the epidemic,and was obviouslydependent on measures taken in its course, whereas the impossibilityof directinter-human contagion in bubonic plague was scientificknowledge not acquireduntil the 1910s; fearon both sides of the ethnicdivide was the most naturalreaction in a time of epidemic,and personalhygiene was indeedrare among poor people livingin overcrowdedlodgings.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 178 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER190 theywould have takenat thiscrossroads, we wouldalways find groundsfor criticizing their choice: foreign powers that, rather than intervenein an epidemic,have leftnatives to theirown devices while supplyingcolonialists with the latest achieve- mentsof Western medicine, have been accused ofpursuing an enclavistand discriminatorypolicy. A course of action that wouldnot provide easy ammunition to thepost-colonial critic is thusimpossible to imagine,but thevery ease withwhich such criticismsare currentlymade is symptomaticof a wideninggap betweenthe past as a lost,yet real experience, and an academic discoursebent on exploitingthe past as a platformfor the reaffirmationof its own, rigidand predictable,rhetoric. The chargedhistory of Western presence in thenon-Western world cannotbe fruitfullyapproached with the stereotypedvocabu- larythat, for the umpteenth time, would convict the imperialist whileflattering the native. Ironically, it is thoseleast tolerant of theconcepts of progress held by past societies who most earnestly trustin theprogressive quality of their own positions.82 Nor does an explanationsetting up Westerndictate against Chinese contest and reinterpretationprove helpfulto our understandingof Dr Wu Liande and his creation,the Manchu- rianPlague PreventionService. Through almost thirty years of workin China, from1908 to 1937, Wu made an exceptional contributionto his ancestralland, in which- his memoirs makeit plain- he oftenfelt a foreigner.He was theright man in theright place, a civilservant whose due regardfor the privi- legesof powerearned the trust of thegentry and thewarlords. He reliedon such protectionto carryout his work:founding hospitals,promoting scientific research, and (a campaign which,in hisyounger days in Malaya,had landedhim in serious troublewith the colonial authorities) fighting against drugs and

82Ruth Rogaski,'Hygienic Modernity in Tianjin', in JosephW. Esherick(ed.), Remakingthe ChineseCity: Modernity and NationalIdentity, 1900-1950 (Honolulu, 1999), discussesthe effortsof severalmunicipal administrations to make Tianjin a cleanerplace, in line withthe oftenbigoted views of Frenchand Japanese,as well as Chinese,officials on thedefinition of a cleanenvironment. Dirt and thedanger of cholera existedonly in the foreigners'imagination; as to Chinese reactionto the sanitary campaignsin thecity, it consistedof 'translation,contestation and negotiation'(p. 30). The 'people of Tianjin',we learn,'interpreted, mediated, and contested'their public healthadministration (p. 39), emergingin theend witha modernity'reinterpreted and reshapedin uniqueways' (p. 46). It is doubtfulwhether such abstractions corresponded to anyreality beyond the author's preconceived image of the colonial encounter.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PNEUMONIC PLAGUE IN MANCHURIA 179 drugdealers.83 His unambiguousequating of himselfwith Westernmedical science, institutionalized health care and state-monitoredsanitation made him an ambassador ofmodernity forsome of China's young intellectuals, the 'returned students' fromwhose ranks he recruitedWestern- and Japanese-trained doctorsto complementthe predominantly foreign staff of the PlaguePrevention Service.84 Raisedin the lap ofa colonialempire, Wu Liandeeasily fitted intoa modernizingChina busywith the assimilationof a broad rangeof ideas,which (from Darwinism, through sanitary policy to literarytheory) all seemedto providethe key to Westernmight and thereason for Chinese inadequacy.85 For all his European education,Wu was not 'ashamedto be Chinese'- and Baron Budberg,who dislikedhim forspeaking English and wearing Westernclothes, and even morefor reaping the lion's shareof gloryin theend ofthe anti-plague campaign, missed much in the man who cultivateda genuinerespect for Chinese tradition, but refusedto identifyit withwhat he believedwere backwardness and superstition.86It was preciselyas a pioneerChinese physician thatWu was so conspicuouslyavid for fame and recognition.The powerbestowed upon him duringthe plagueepidemic allowed himto provehimself the equal, or indeedeven the better, of his Europeanpeers, and hispolicy amounted to whatBudberg, in his

83'Is it imaginablethat the world will continueto toleratesuch a conditionof affairs,in whicha nation,numbering nearly one thirdof thehuman race, eminent in historyand brimfulof futurepossibilities, harmless, peaceful, and industrious,is being slowlypoisoned to death by the callousnessof morphine-producingcountries and the rapacityof a mere handfulof manufacturersand smugglers?':from Wu Liande's articleof 1920, repr.in NorthManchurian Plague Prevention Service Reports, 1918-1922 (Tientsin, 1922), 247. A Queen's scholarthough he was, Wu did not hesitateto say thatthe morphinewhich found its way to China via Siberiaand Japan came 'mainlyfrom two firmsin Edinburghand one firmin London': ibid.,243-6. 84 See a table of the Service'ssenior medical officersin Nathan, PlaguePrevention and Politicsin Manchuria,79-80; cf.Wu Lien-Teh, PlagueFighter, 386. 85On one of the ideas thatWu promoted,the medical police as a tool to combat epidemicsand monitorpublic health,see BridieJ. Andrews, 'Tuberculosis and the Assimilationof Germ Theory in China, 1895-1937', Jl Historyof Medicineand Allied Sciences,lii, 1 (1997), 129-32. It was a German model adopted in Meiji Japan and put into practiceby the Japanesein South Manchuria; in Mukden, as Benedict, BubonicPlague in Nineteenth-CenturyChina, 156-60, shows, the newly formedChinese police forcewas widelyused duringthe epidemicof 1910. s6 For his criticism,see Budberg,Bilder aus derZeit derLungenpest-Epidemien, 76, and ch. 8, 'ChinesischeArzte, 1910/1911'. A lifelongcollector of Chinese medical books, Wu went on to co-author(with Wang Jimin)a Historyof ChineseMedicine (Shanghai, 1932), whichremains in use to thisday.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 180 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 190 shortperiod as a representativeofWestern medicine in Fujiadian, had refusedto provide:the wholesaletransfer to the Chinese townof measuresemployed in RussianHarbin, with no accom- modationto traditionalperceptions or culturalsensitivities.87 By the time his book on the Manchurianplague appeared with a small Baltic publisherin Hamburg,in 1923, Baron Roger Budberghad servedtwo termsof imprisonmentunder trumped-upaccusations of espionage.The experiencehad left him a brokenman, and an enemyof RussianHarbin. This and the grudgehe bore againstZabolotnyi (back in 1911 he had challengedhim to a duel, which the professormanaged to avoid), as well as the ranklinginsult of havingbeen deniedthe chanceto presenthis research on theplague at theMukden conference,come out at leastas importantin hismemoir as does his indignationat thetreatment of Chinese patients in plaguetime. Budberg'smarriage in 1907 to a destituteyoung girl from one of the small Chinese townsnear Harbin, togetherwith his masteryof the Chinese language,enabled him to develop contactswith the lowestand mosthumble layers of a society thatremained closed to all but a fewof his compatriots.An expertgynaecologist who also servedas Harbin's chiefprison physician,he gained entranceinto the world of prostitutes and criminals.This privilegedinsight lent his writing(there were, among the published works, two other remarkable books in Russian and many journal articles)an immediacy unmatchedby any otherWestern commentator.88 His own disappearancefrom memory is a gapinghole in thehistoriography

87See R [RogerBudberg], 'Die Pest in Charbin',St PetersburgerZeitung, no. 355, 23 Dec. 1910 (5.1.1911 NS), 9; Budberg,Bilder aus derZeit der Lungenpest-Epidemien, 22-3. As he describedit, Budbergwas expectedeither to transplantto Fujiadianthe Russiananti-plague system, flying squads and all,or else justto leavethe Chinese alone. It was,however, his opinion that some Chinesefacilities should be transferredto Harbin instead:Fujiadian, he believed,had a better-organizedpolice force than Harbin, a well- functioningsystem for the collectionand disposalof refuse(such thatHarbin did not possess) and, importantlyin plaguetime, methods of keepingrecords of the clientsof innsand opiumdens - establishmentswhich in Harbinescaped any municipal control. 88Memuary Doktora-Meditsiny R. A. Barona Beningsgauzen-Budberg(Harbin, 1925) narratedthe ordeal of his arrestsin 1915 and 1919, and his struggleto restorehis good name amid incessantplotting and conspiracytheories partly the creationof his own mind.A polemicautobiography unlike any other, it provides a publicportrait of Harbin overtwo decades and an intimateone of culturaland emotionalimmersion intoChinese society. In his lastbook, R. A. Baron Budberg,O zhizni:besedy akushera [On Life: The Conversationsof a Male Midwife] (Harbin, 1926), he was finally (cont.on p. 181)

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PNEUMONIC PLAGUE IN MANCHURIA 181 ofRussian-Chinese relations in Manchuria,a neglectinexplicable even by the limitedavailability of his works.89What Budberg saw in thestreets of Fujiadian, in thefields beyond the borders of the city,in the cemeteriesand burninggrounds of the plague's victims,he capturedwith his camera - the 140, mostlyoriginal, photographs in Bilderaus derZeit der Lungenpest- Epidemienadd up to a portraitof Harbin strikinglydifferent fromthe familiar sights of Russian churches and busyshopping streets.90Baron Budberg's love for China, however, could also be paternalisticinasmuch as he expectedthe Chineseto conform to hisidealized image.91 This is anotherreason to readhim crit- ically,though not to dismissthe most attentive and empathetic observerof ChineseHarbin. Rather than employ the standards of our own age and environmentto pass judgementon those whosetestimonies of the past we read,we woulddo wellto make out theirmotives and perceptions.It willthen emerge that individuals'views may both reflect and standin oppositionto what we knowwere the prevalent views in thesocieties in whichthey lived.The effortto understandthe past on its own termsdoes notimply suspension of critical judgement, which does become irrelevantonce historicalagents are reducedto beingfaceless representativesof theirsocial milieu or of the institutionsto whichthey belong. Accepting that individuals have a capacity

(n.88 cont.) readyto addressthe Russianpublic he had so oftencriticized in his writings,but with whom he had neverhad a dialogue. Begun and concludedwith the same quotation fromConfucius, this book revealed some of the intellectualsources of Budberg's inspiration,and the increasinglymystical turn that his thoughttook in lateryears. 89No mentionof Budberg, nor any awareness of his writings,can be found in secondaryliterature. Quested, 'Matey' Imperialists?,276, 280, 291, is once again the only valuable exception, though noting Budberg's as the only marriage between a Russian man and a Chinese woman in Harbin, the authorwas misled into describinghim as a Buddhistwho 'wore a long Chinese gown', and his wife as 'a businesswoman who owned a steamer plying the upper Sungari'. The steamerHarbin was Budberg's own; he may have worn gowns but neverconsid- ered himselfa Buddhist; Li Yuzhen was fourteenat the time of her marriage,and not yettwenty-seven at her death. 90The book is also a major contributionto plague literatureand iconography, but, in thiscontext too, it is entirelyforgotten. The onlyreference is an entryin an exhibitioncatalogue: see Hans Wilderotter(ed.), Das grosseSterben: Seuchen machen Geschichte(Berlin, 1995), 139. 91See esp. RogerBaron Budberg,'Vom chinesischenZopf', Deutschemedizinische Wochenschrift,xxxviii, 30 (25 July 1912), 1421-2, a vitriolicresponse to the queue-cuttingmovement that had reachedNorth-East China withthe accession of Yuan Shikaiin March 1912.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 182 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER190 formoral choice, we shouldproceed to evaluatetheir actions and statementswithin the range of alternatives(and, one might add, thevocabulary) available to them.92We must,in turn,be preparedto face the challengeof genuinehistory writing: the greaterthe amount of information we uncover,the more difficult it becomes to impose a ready-madegrid, whether a covering law or a politicaltheory, upon the infinitediversity of human reaction.93 Chinese menialworkers were unable to recordtheir plague experience.Understanding their perspective is essential,and would appear to mostof us todayas a moreurgent task than assessingthe epidemic'simpact on diplomaticrelations or tra- cingits contributionto the riseof modernmedicine in China. To look at theplague through the eyes of its victims would not, however(even had survivingrecords allowed us to do so), sufficeto describewhat 'the plague' was like.Thus theChinese side encompassedmany other social groups,each certainto have had a differentoutlook on the epidemic:officials of local and alienorigin within the North-Eastern administration; traditional practitionersversus Western-traineddoctors and the non-professionalmedical staff;the urban and countryside population of Manchuria; and merchantsand long-term settlers,as opposedto migrantsand sojourners.On theRussian side, the plague meantdifferent things to Harbinresidents, to thestudent volunteers and to membersof the scientific delegation fromSt Petersburg;it broughtto the forea strugglefor power betweenthe Russian civilianand militaryauthorities, and highlightedracial tensions not onlybetween Russians and

92 Isaiah Berlin,'Historical Inevitability' (1953), in his TheProper Study of Man- kind: An Anthologyof Essays, ed. Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer (London, 1998), has lost nothingof itspower of persuasion as a rebuttalof determinismin all its cyclicalreincarnations. 93D. K. Zabolotnyidid not come to Manchuriato cure the sick,but to studythe originand symptomsof the plague and to preventits spillingover into Russian territory.Indeed, assistance to plague patients did not figurein the 25-point programmethat he and his team draftedon the trainjourney from St Petersburgto Harbin: see Zabolotnyi,Izbrannye trudy, i, 211-12. In 1910-11, he was alreadyon his second stayin China, and he had previouslyobserved plague in Arabia, India, Persia and Scotland. It is perhapsnot whollyirrelevant to the 'largerpicture' that duringhis time as head of the Russian medical organizationin Harbin he adopted an orphaned Chinese child, a survivorof the plague, whom he laterraised as his son.

This content downloaded from 129.133.6.95 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:11:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PNEUMONIC PLAGUE IN MANCHURIA 183 Chinese,but also withinthe Russian communityitself.94 The listcould be prolongedindefinitely; in theend, no matterhow thickthe book we write,we shallnever be able to do fulljustice to the polyphonyof history'svoices and had betterrecognize thechoices that we are compelledto make.95 I have arguedhere thatin the plague epidemicof 1910-11 the lower-classChinese, who were the plague's main victims, wereregarded as expendableby boththe Russian and Chinese administrations,and thatthe coercivepolicy which Russia was applyingwithin its railwayzone was carriedout withthe con- sentand activeparticipation of the Chinese state.I have tried to showfirst that good evidenceexists to supportmy interpretation,and second that the plague, as I describedit, is by necessityan imaginativereconstruction. Yet, as the foregoing discussionmade clear,to admitthis is not to detractfrom the validityof the argument. Demand for the 'native voice', coming as it does withknee-jerk prejudice against any formof Western involvementin late colonialAsia, has promptedthis article to contend,along with an uprootedBaltic nobleman who tried to find a homelandin Manchuria, that a voicewas the one thing possessed by all thehistorical agents we study;indeed, that to discoverand interpretthe voices and thoughtsof thepast withoutdrawing a class,gender or racedistinction between them is whatwe arehere to do. Nativesand colonialistsalike, people in Manchuriain the winterof 1910 sharedthe same emotionswhich the threatof a deadlyepidemic had triggeredin the past and will continueto evokein thefuture. Chief among these are fearand suspicionof the other,and the anxietyof thosenot yetinfected to segregate themselvesfrom plague's victims, both real and perceived.

TelAviv University Mark Gamsa

94The frictionbetween provinceand metropolecomes out clearestin Petr S. Tishenko, Kitaiskaia VostochnaiaZheleznaia doroga,1903-1913 gg. [The Chinese EasternRailway, 1903-1913] [Harbin,1914], 136-7. Belittlingthe impactof outside help, this authorinsisted that the decisive contributionto anti-plagueefforts was made by the CER and itsmedical staff. In turn,the diaryof R. A. von Arnold(see n. 1 above) reflectsa power strugglebetween the CER, to whichvon Arnold's own Police Departmentbelonged, and the Harbin City Council. Here too, all success is attributedto the CER while the initialfailure to preventthe plague's spread into Harbin is relatedto the cowardiceof Jewish doctors, whom the Council had hired. 95 See the discussion in Miles Fairburn,Social History:Problems, Strategies and Methods(Basingstoke, 1999), ch. 1, 'The Problemof Absent Social Categories'.

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