Rebels and Revolutionaries in North China 1845-1945 by Elizabeth Perry
Rebels and Revolutionaries in North China 1845-1945 by Elizabeth Perry
Most theories about why peasants have rebellions stereotype peasants as weak and isolated people and so focus on external forces that they say make rebellion possible. They often dismiss early rebellions as random and irrational. Many also try to explain rebellions as caused by secret societies, but Perry argues that these societies played only a small role.
Perry on the other hand argues for an economic perspective. Perry said that peasants adapt to their environment and that violence is a rational extension of these adaption strategies that all peasants do. Perry believes that instead of focusing on the relationship between the peasant and overlord, it is better to study the environment in which rebellions take place because rebellions tend to happen often in only specific areas, not equally over the country. In her book, Perry focused on one of the biggest hotbeds of rebellious activity: Huai-pei. Huai-pei was a particularly disaster wrought place which suffered many floods and droughts and so was a likely place for a rebellion to happen because violence is caused by competition over scarce resources.
Perry said that every peasant uses survival strategies and then come together in groups organized by family, class, friendship, or occupation and use group survival strategies. Perry separates the survival strategies into sedentary and migratory solutions. One sedentary strategy performed at the household level is infanticide. Infanticide was widely used by peasants to keep down the number of mouths to feed in hard times, and more commonly, to keep down the number of female mouths. This leads to an excess of young males who are unable to get married. These males were the main recruits for rebels.
Another sedentary solution is borrowing. According to one survey at the time, ½ of households were in debt, and 80% of that debt was for food. In order to avoid high interests rates which would get peasants that live day by day into a hole they couldn’t climb out of, peasants created societies in which everyone would pool their money so they could afford things like funeral expenses or warm clothing. These societies normally consisted of extended families.
A mobile solution is migration. Perry said that mobility was a way of life for Huai-pei peasants. They would have to migrate seasonally when there were no crops to take care of, and when natural disasters struck. Peasants would become beggars and would actually live fairly well. Perry said that being a beggar wasn’t a shameful thing but simply a part of life. Perry argues that since this migratory pattern is followed by the whole village, it actually strengthens their ability to perform the collective action needed for a rebellion not weakens it.
Perry argued that violent strategies were an extension of these survival strategies. Violent strategies were easy to get away with because government control over Huai-pei was very minimal. Perry grouped violent strategies into 2 categories. The first category is predatory strategies that had to do with taking others’ resources and included smuggling, banditry and feuds. Smuggling was a common practice at the family level. Huai-pei’s salt was very bad tasting and expensive, so peasants would often migrate out to Ch’ang-lu and smuggle back their salt which was tastier and half as expensive. Since smuggling was illegal, it brought peasants close to rebellious acts. Banditry was rampant in Huai-pei. There were small gangs made of younger sons who could not marry and so supported their parents’ income with banditry. In bad times, these small gangs would have to operate the whole year and they would often get a rich gang leader to fund their activities. Sometimes these larger gangs would join together and create a bandit army that would hold entire towns hostage. These gangs were good candidates for a rebel army. Finally, there were feuds which often took place between families or towns. Feuds made every villager have to walk around armed and could escalate to larger battles.
The Second category of violent strategies is protective strategies which are the defensive reactions against predation and include crop-watching, village militia, and fortified communities. Crop-watchers were hired by the whole community to protect their crops from thieves and bandits. Young, jobless men were often hired to watch the crops in order to offer them a livelihood other than being crop stealers themselves. Because the local government wouldn’t offer villages protection, the villages would often create their own defensive militia. Having a militia caused a rise in tax evasion in which the militia would protect the city from the government. Having a militia made it much easier to start a rebellion because the town could legally train all of its residence in combat and build a weapon supply. Towns would often stop using their militia only for protective strategies and move to predatory strategies by attacking other villages and bandits would often join the militia and use it to do banditry legally. Lastly, in times of violence and decline especially during the end of a dynasty, towns erected fortifications around themselves and build forts in which to hide from attack even by their own government.
In conclusion, Perry argues that rebellion is a rational process in which harsh environments lead peasants to adopt adaptive strategies, these strategies lead to violent strategies, and violent strategies can but don’t necessarily lead to rebellion.