The Everlasting Empire (31 page)

The major factor underlying the protesters’ willingness to “play by the rules” was the dynasty’s awesomeness. For most political actors—from vagabonds to disgruntled literati—it was clear that a direct challenge to the emperor would be suicidal. The dynasty possessed—at least nominally—almost limitless military and administrative resources to deal with those who threatened its existence. Although regular military forces were only thinly spread throughout the country’s interior, a magistrate could still count on a local garrison, on police forces, and on the militia run by the local elite to deal with any calamity. In case of emergency, he could mobilize an ad hoc militia, ask for support from neighboring magistrates, or, in the worst case, request the intervention of regular troops from elsewhere. The combined power of these forces normally sufficed to deter potential rebels. So long as the dynasty’s awesomeness was not shattered by domestic or foreign debacles, it could expect that protests and collective violence would remain a localized phenomenon.

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This said, in certain conditions the would-be rebels had a chance. The imperial bureaucracy was often sluggish and inefficient; local military forces, uncoordinated, understaffed, and underpaid, lacked martial spirit; and the future rebels or their sympathizers could penetrate the lower levels of the administrative and military machine, gaining precious intelligence, and launching surprise attacks on government strongholds. Most importantly, the would-be rebels knew that a few successes would turn them into an attractive alternative for the latent opposition, the myriads of have-nots, who would then join their ranks and give them a decisive numerical advantage over the government forces. More often than not the rebellion started more or less accidentally, when one of the “agents of disorder” was pushed into a corner and challenged the local authorities; but if this challenge proved successful, then the rebellion would spread dramatically.
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Significantly, from the known trajectories of most rebellions—including those meticulously studied by Susan Naquin—it is clear that the government’s oppressiveness was of little significance as a cause of rebellion. Belying traditional complaints that officials “forced the people to rebel,” the government’s major problem was not its excessive use of force but rather its meekness and ineptitude. To be sure, Zhu Yuanzhang and the early Qing emperors were immeasurably harsher and crueler than their successors; but it was only under those latter weaklings on the throne that huge rebellions shattered the Ming and Qing dynasties. Weakness, not brutality, was the most unforgivable mistake of the dynastic leaders. Should the dynasty fail to suppress a criminal gang, should it allow sectarians to score a few victories, should it let rioters escape punishment— all these laxities would be interpreted as ominous signs of its decay and would change the balance of power. In that case even the government’s victories, unless decisive, would matter little; yet should the bandits, rioters, or sectarians inflict a major defeat on the government forces, the road to mass rebellion would be open. It was usually after such initial successes that a group of ordinary outlaws would proclaim their political aspirations to replace the dynasty. This would mark a new stage in the rebellion: the moment it outgrew the scope of a localized disturbance and turned into a dynasty-threatening calamity.

One of the most remarkable features of many rebellions is the amazing speed with which they spread after an initial success. Time and again we read of “dozens of thousands” and even “hundreds of thousands” of rebels flocking to a new leader, “gathering like clouds,” “responding to him like an echo,” and “following him like a shadow.” Why, then, did these insurrections spread like wildfire? Again, the immediate answer would be economic factors. For the masses of desperate men and women who had

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lost all their property and faced starvation, joining the rebellion brought amazing opportunities to benefit—even if for a short while—from the dolce vita of the proprietary classes. Looting of granaries, pawnshops, and the houses of rich landlords was the rebels’ modus operandi, and it surely attracted the dispossessed multitudes. Second, in the case of millenarian rebellions, some might have been attracted by the sects’ promises of salvation. Finally, not a few rank and file were simply coerced to join the rebels.
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Yet, economic and religious factors aside, I believe that political factors were of primary importance in igniting rebellion. It was no coincidence that a rebellion spread only after an initial failure on the part of government forces. The rebels’ victories, especially successful occupation of prefectural seats, or, better, of provincial capitals, signaled to many wavering fence-sitters that the dynasty was approaching its end. The moment the government’s awesomeness expired, it could no longer deter its foes or command the allegiance of its erstwhile supporters. The most desperate have-nots would be the first to swell the rebels’ ranks; but they would be followed by many others, for whom the collapse of the old order meant not just redistribution of material wealth, but also redistribution of power and prestige. Long before “The Internationale” was introduced to China, countless men would eagerly adopt its promise—“We have been nought, we shall be all!” The moment the dynasty appeared doomed, it was prudent to join the ranks of its foes. Not for ideological but for purely personal reasons many of those who joined the rebellion would say, anticipating the slogan of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), “To rebel is justified!”

GOING TO THE EXTREME

The transformation of riots, brigandage, and minor forms of resistance into full-scale uprisings was accompanied by woeful disintegration of the sociopolitical order. One of the immediate indicators of and causes for this disintegration was the comprehensive militarization of the society. Unable to contain the rebellion, the government had to rely on a broad variety of ad hoc paramilitary forces, from the elite-run militias to criminal gangs and alien tribesmen who were enlisted as the dynasty’s protectors; and these largely unreliable and unruly forces wreaked havoc in local society. Worse, even the government’s regular forces could become undependable in the wake of prolonged military crisis, with generals more interested in promotions and riches than in crushing the rebellion. Similar disintegration was endemic in the rebel camp as well. A common pattern was an increasing degree of autonomy on the part of regional

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rebel leaders, some of whom vied for recognition from their nominal superiors as new regional potentates, while others sought complete independence as the first step toward becoming full contenders for the rule in All-under-Heaven. Thus a rebellion triggered a war of all against all, in which competing armies, gangs, self-defense forces, and various militias could depopulate whole provinces. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the aftermath of rebellion, population registers would decrease by millions and even by tens of millions of subjects.

One of the most prominent features of rebellions was their extremely violent nature. To be sure, violence was endemic during any period of war and dynastic replacement, but it is difficult to avoid the impression that during popular uprisings it was exceptionally ferocious. Entering a lifeor-death contest with the government, the rebels pitied neither their foes nor their own kin. This was particularly true of millenarian insurrections. For instance, the allegedly Daoism-inspired rebels led by Sun En (399402) routinely eliminated those who refused to join their camp, including children and infants; and their ruthlessness extended even to their own progeny. The story is told that when the rebels were on move and unable to take their children with them, they would toss them into the water, saying: “We congratulate you on the first ascending to the Hall of Immortals! We shall follow you shortly.”
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Similar fanaticism characterized many other sectarian uprisings, culminating with the apocalyptic carnage wrought by the Christianity-inspired Taipings.

It is tempting to attribute exceptional brutality to “religious fanatics,” but this would be a gross oversimplification. Those rebellions in which the religious factor was less important present us with similarly hairraising stories of massacres. Let us look briefly at Huang Chao’s revolt (874–884), which delivered a nearly mortal blow to the illustrious Tang dynasty. Dynastic histories and a series of independent accounts uniformly attribute to Huang Chao, the self-styled “General [who brings] Equality,” an almost pathological hatred of the Tang regime and a desire to “clean out” its supporters. After occupying the Tang capital, Chang’an, in early 881, his army embarked on a systematic campaign of terror against local elite families, seizing their possessions, violating their daughters, expropriating their mansions, decapitating officials, and butchering all the members of the imperial lineage. When the rebel armies recaptured Chang’an for the second time, Huang reportedly ordered the killing of eighty thousand inhabitants to “wash the city” with their blood. These events are interpreted by some Chinese scholars as examples of “class struggle,” which may be the case;
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but Huang Chao’s victims were not exclusively the wealthy and the powerful. The laconic dynastic history narrates:

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At this time, the people [near] the imperial capital barricaded the val-
leys to protect themselves. [Since farmers] were thus unable to culti-
vate the lands, the price for a peck of rice rose to thirty thousand
cash… There were those who seized the barricaded people and sold
them to the bandits [i.e., Huang’s army], who used them as food. Each
of such people brought several hundred thousand cash.

Elsewhere the story continues:

… The people were for the most part starving and on the verge of
dying by the city walls and ditches. When the bandits captured them,
they used them as food. Daily, several thousands of them were thus
arranged together, while a hundred great pestles ground their skin and
bones in the mortars. [The bandits] would eat them completely.
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It is possible, of course, that some of these gruesome scenes were invented by the literati historians who hated Huang Chao, but it is difficult to reject them all as pure invention. The pattern of extreme violence in accounts of the rebellions is too persistent to be merely propagandistic; and while exaggerations are inevitable, the evidence of the rebels’ exceptional brutality is simply overwhelming. The elites were the rebels’ primary victims: officials, members of the imperial clan, eunuchs, ordinary literati, wealthy merchants, rich landowners—all were targeted both for their political identification with the ruling dynasty and for their wealth. However, as in Huang Chao’s case, many commoners were annihilated as well, particularly in the cities whose populations refused to surrender to the rebels.
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What accounts for this apparent addiction to violence?

The ferocity of the rebellions had multiple sources. On the most immediate level, it reflected a common pattern of brutality in Chinese wars, in which extermination of the noncombatant population was permissible, although by no means laudable. It was mirrored by the violence of government forces, which repeatedly massacred actual or imagined rebel supporters, and executed ringleaders in particularly cruel ways, such as by slow slicing. It was furthermore instrumental in cementing the unity of the rebels and preventing new recruits from absconding: once they had committed murders, they could no longer reasonably expect the government’s pardon.
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Yet beyond these immediate explanations, I believe that the rebels’ violence is directly related to what may be described as the culture of rebellion. In saying this, I do not intend to address anew such issues as the cultural aspects of violence, or the relations between martial (
wu
) and civilian (
wen
) values in Chinese culture,
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but rather to focus on a specific “rebel culture” in which violence was essential for the rebellion’s legitimacy. This issue was analyzed and aptly presented by the most sophisticated rebel in China’s history, Mao Zedong. In his 1927

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Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan
, having approvingly depicted the peasants’ brutal treatment of their foes, Mao concluded:

Without using the greatest force, the peasants cannot possibly over-
throw the deep-rooted authority of the landlords which has lasted for
thousands of years. The rural areas need a mighty revolutionary up-
surge, for it alone can rouse the people in their millions to become a
powerful force. All the actions mentioned here which have been la-
beled as “going too far” flow from the power of the peasants… It
was highly necessary for such things to be done… It was necessary
to overthrow the whole authority of the gentry, to strike them to the
ground and keep them there… To put it bluntly, it is necessary to
create terror for a while in every rural area, or otherwise it would be
impossible to … overthrow the authority of the gentry. Proper limits
have to be exceeded in order to right a wrong, or else the wrong can-
not be righted.
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Mao’s
Report
, arguably one of his greatest literary masterpieces, was written amid complex political polemics within the revolutionary camp, and it does not pretend to be a scholarly analysis of the history of “peasant rebellions.”
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Nonetheless, I think Mao grasped well an essential reason for the rebels’ ferocity: the association of extreme violence with “righting the wrongs.” One can easily identify a powerful undercurrent in Chinese culture of stories that exalt and laud those who fought resolutely for the sake of justice or to avenge themselves and their friends. These intrepid fighters, such as assassin-retainers or “knights-errant,” never hesitated to draw a sword or a dagger to settle accounts with the powerful and the wealthy, and for centuries they remained extraordinarily popular figures for members of all social strata.
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The popularity of these personages testifies to the existence of a strong antihierarchical current within Chinese culture, and to the tradition of associating extreme violence and defiance of established sociopolitical order with the utmost righteousness. This worldview is most powerfully depicted in a great literary masterpiece,
Water Margin
(fifteenth-sixteenth centuries), a novel dedicated to a group of rebels who defied the Song dynasty and strove “to implement the Way in Heaven’s stead” (
ti Tian xing Dao
).