Cine y motivación 125.

My hypothesis that ethnic relations adversely affected late Qing China’s industrialization formed and crystallized in three steps. The first is the idea that government leadership was critical to China’s industrialization. Second, ethnic conflicts in China undermined the power of the government. Third, ethnic conflicts stemmed from the government’s unequal treatment of the various ethnic groups. Here I present the most important works that shaped the formation of the ideas.

Building on Tominaga’s (1990) argument that the Meiji government not only presided over the industrialization of Japan but had a significant role in it, I hypothesized that Qing China’s tardy

industrialization resulted from inefficient government involvement in economic development (although the government did initiate economic transformation as evident in the Self-Strengthening Movement). Then the question arose: What made the Chinese government inept in promoting economic development? From a sociological perspective, I speculate that the reason lay in factors deeply embedded in Chinese society. The central question was: What factor(s) within the Chinese society prevented the Chinese government from actively fostering economic transformation?

I formed the tentative idea that ethnic relations might be a major factor in Qing politics by reading secondary studies. Evidence suggests ethnic conflict was a significant issue in Qing China. After all the Qing was a multiethnic empire ruled by a numerically small ethnic group, the Manchus. They invaded China proper and ruled the majority group, the Chinese, on the basis on ethnic inequality. Manchu rule was alien and unfair from the Chinese perspective. The Chinese did not fully accept Manchu rule as legitimate, and evidence indicates that they resisted Manchu rule throughout the duration of the dynasty. Ethnic rebellions undercut the power of the government, causing it to be unable to lead China’s economic transformation effectively in later years.

Studies on Qing ethnic relations indicate that Qing ethnic policies caused ethnic rebellions. Edward Rhoads (2000) makes the point that the Manchus and the Chinese remained two “separate and unequal” peoples in terms of social, political, and legal statues as of mid- to late nineteenth century. Zhou Wu (2003) points out that the Taiping Rebellion had profound socioeconomic impact on Qing society as a whole. To validate the hypothesis, it was essential to collect evidence to establish the connection between rebellions such as the Taiping Rebellion and ethnic inequality.

Materials left by contemporary Western and Japanese observers of Chinese secret societies testified that anti-Manchuism was a common goal of the organizations. Gustave Schlegel (1866/1973) provided valuable first-hand information on The Heaven and Earth Association. The main body of this book was a collection of the legends, rules, rites, symbols, and flags of the association compiled on the basis of the

documents confiscated by the Dutch colonial government in Java and Sumatra in the 1850s. Schlegel not only translated them into English instead of his native language, Dutch, but also presented the Chinese texts in juxtaposition with the English translation in the hope that his book would reach a larger audience and the errors in his translation would be corrected later. The information contained in this book confirms the notion that the association aimed to overthrow Manchu rule of China out of the view that Manchu rule was alien and cruel. Moreover, in his book on another well-known anti-Manchu secret society, the Association of Brothers (Gelaohui), and the revolutionaries’ affiliation with it, the Japanese observer

Hirayama Shu (1911) demonstrates that anti-Manchu revolts by Chinese were common in the Qing, and the revolutionaries who were active in the 1900s were motivated by anti-Manchuism.

Additional secondary literature indicates intrinsic connections between the Taipings and members of the secret anti-Manchu associations. Hence I came to the conclusion that the Taiping Rebellion was driven by anti-Manchu motives. A theme began to emerge in my mind: The Chinese were treated unequally by the Manchu government; therefore they rose up against the Manchu state. After all, Rhoads (2000) hints that the Taiping Rebellion was somehow connected to ethnic discord. At this point my task was to find out if there was really a connection between the Taiping Rebellion and Qing ethnic relations. Thus I intended to collect materials during my fieldwork in China.

Finally, secondary Chinese studies on the ethnic groups in the Qing broadened the scope of this study. In a ground-breaking book in the field of Qing ethnic laws, Liu Guang’an (1993) elaborates on Qing legal documents governing the military, political, economic, and social aspects of the Mongol, Uyghur, Tibetan, and Miao territories. This book reveals that the Qing was an empire legally divided along ethnic lines and the ethnic groups’ positions in the empire were unequal. Therefore it would be inappropriate to deal with Manchu-Chinese inequalities without paying due attention to the overall ethnic relations of the Qing. Because of this I set out to look for secondary studies on the other ethnic groups. These works eventually helped me to paint the broad picture of Qing ethnic relations, which became the framework in which I placed Manchu-Chinese relations.

Thus before I went to the field I had formulated the following questions that needed to be verified by field research:

1. Existing literature on Manchu-Chinese inequalities needed to be confirmed by preferably Qing official documents and accounts written by contemporary intellectuals. Furthermore, archival and primary data needed to be collected to obtain additional information on ethnic inequalities.

2. How closely was the Taiping Rebellion related to state-sanctioned ethnic inequalities? Were there any other ethnic rebellions by the subordinate groups triggered by ethnic inequalities? 3. If the answers to the above questions were affirmative, then what were their socioeconomic

implications? How did the implications affect the government and its policies on China’s industrialization?

I went to the field with these questions in mind. My main task, therefore, was to find materials, ideally archives and primary sources, on Qing ethnic relations. I collected archival data—Qing governmental documents on ethnic relations—from The First Historical Archives of China located in Beijing. In addition I obtained primary sources, namely Qing official records such as the Veritable Records of the emperors and the Donghua Record of the Guangxu Emperor. Moreover, I found

unpublished books and genealogies written by Qing intellectuals on various aspects of ethnic relations in the Qing. Archival and primary materials show that state-sanctioned ethnic inequalities were a major issue in Qing politics. Next I articulate what data I collected. Before elaborating on them, however, I give

a concise depiction of Qing political structure to shed light on the archival and primary sources. QING POLITICAL STRUCTURE

In the following paragraphs I will first address the power of the emperor, and then I will look at the various departments of the central government to emphasize that archives and primary sources used in this study are valid. Archives used in this study originally were documents submitted by Qing officials at various levels to the ministries and departments of the central government, and primary data were Qing official records of the daily activities of the emperors, including the Veritable Records of Qing emperors.

Information contained in this section is largely based on Meng and Wang’s (2003) depiction of Qing state bureaucracy.