The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 13: Republican China 1912-1949, Part 2
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SPONTANEOUS PEASANT AGITATION 29I
party
(lu-tui)
responsible for preventing their escape, attacking them with
their picks. In either case the trump card of the labourers was clearly their
number: albeit unwillingly, they represented a huge concentration of
workers who would normally have been much more widely dispersed. But,
in the first case, these peasants transformed into labourers would be trying
out a form of resistance with which they were unfamiliar (agricultural
workers themselves would hardly ever go on strike). In the second case,
in contrast, they would quite simply be anticipating (or reproducing) the
habitual pattern of battles between peasants and soldiers (or ' bandit-
soldiers').
51
During the spring of 1926, the Red Spears of western Honan (a secret
society identified as a movement of protection for the rural inhabitants)
are said to have massacred as many as fifty thousand, meaning a great
many, defeated soldiers.
52
Peasant self-defence against the soldiery had
been especially necessary and widespread in the warlord era. During the
Nanking decade, it continued to be so both in outlying provinces fought
over by quasi-autonomous warlords and also against units of 'bandit-
soldiers'
:
bandits who, it had been believed, could be domesticated if they
were enrolled in the regular forces but for whom the temptation to return
to their old ways was all the stronger given that their pay was hardly ever
forthcoming at the appointed time.
53
The Lung-t'ien incident (27-28 December 1931) illustrates just such a
case.
Because the exactions and brutality of the troops stationed in the
Lung-t'ien peninsula, Fu-ch'ing hsien, Fukien, had exceeded normal
levels,
several tens of thousands of peasants attacked 2,500 soldiers,
all
—
including their commanding officer
—
former bandits. These soldiers
had kidnapped villagers for ransom, auctioned off looted goods and
tortured peasants who resisted them. Finally, when a soldier had
attempted to cut off the finger of a woman who had not been quick enough
at removing the ring that he wanted and the incident had been followed
by collective rape, the peasants armed themselves better than usual (with
the inevitable clubs, daggers and pikes but with pistols and rifles as well)
and exterminated the soldiers. More than half the 2,500 men are said to
have perished. The peasants also suffered heavy losses but remained
masters of the field. They would agree to stop the fighting only when
given an official promise that the troops (or what was left of them) would
be transferred elsewhere. And, on 17 January 1932, reinforcements
51
Many cases
of
resistance
to
compulsory labour are recorded
in
NYTL 3.1025-8.
52
Tai Hsuan-chih, Himg-cb'iang-bui (The Red Spear Society), 192. On the Red Spears,
cf.
Elizabeth
Perry, Rebels, ch.
4.
53
Lucien Bianco,'La mauvaise administration provinciate en Chine (Anhui, 1931)'',Revue d'bistoire
modernt
et
contemporaine, 16 (April—June 1969) 306-7.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
PEASANT MOVEMENTS
brought up from Foochow did indeed overcome the obstinacy of the head
of the vanquished troops (who had been holding out for a bribe in return
for agreeing to a transfer).
54
The exactions in which the regular army indulged from time to time,
although less frequent than those of former bandits integrated into the
army, were equally feared, sometimes even more than those of
the
bandits
whom the army was sent in to crush. These expeditions against bandits
(to whom the army would sometimes be selling arms and ammunition)
were seldom effective. Some resulted in even more farms and villages being
burned down and more peasants being massacred than in the course of
the raids by the bandits themselves.
55
Judging 'the remedy to be worse
than the original evil', the inhabitants of one zone of Fukien, which was
infested by banditry in 1932, sent off one petition after another requesting
(in vain) that the forces of order be recalled '
so
that they would be left
with only the bandits to fight'.
56
During the Sino-Japanese War, not only the provinces over which the
Kuomintang control was weak but also the very ones in which it was
entrenched, starting with Szechwan, became the scene of confrontations
between the peasantry and a predatory army. Thus, the peasants in the
Hsii-fu region (at the confluence of the Yangtze and the Min Rivers)
appealed to the Big Sword Society
(Ta-tao-hui)
which, one fine summer
morning in 194}, lost no time in dealing with a group of soldiers from
the 76th Army who were pilfering marrow. A ten-day battle ensued from
16 to 27 July (dubbed 'the Marrow war'). The outcome was that the 76th
Army, which had received reinforcements, put the Big Swords to
flight - and went on to loot more than ever on the pretext of looking
for Big Sword members.
57
Theft and extortion provoked fewer revolts than abuses in the conscrip-
tion system and the requisitioning of men for the army. In a famous
memorandum to Chiang Kai-shek, General Wedemeyer reminded him of
the scandalous trafficking and the terror inspired by conscription:
' conscription comes to the Chinese peasant like famine or flood, only more
regularly - every year twice - and claims more victims'.
58
On top of the
54
On
the Lung-t'ien incident,
cf.
the official correspondence
of
the American consul
at
Foochow
(Burke)
in
USDS 893.00/1181; (2; January 1932); 893.00/11837 (12 February 1932); 893.00 PR
Foochow/48
(13
January 1932) and /49 (10 February 1932).
55
One example (among dozens of others) concerning the region
to
the east
of
P'ing-tu (Shantung)
is described
in
USDS 893.00/8841, Webber (Chefoo),
2
April 1927.
55
Ibid.
893.00
PR
Foochow/57,
4
October 1932.
57
Ibid.
893.00/15141 (G.
E.
Gauss, Chungking,
29
September 1943).
58
Cited in Charles F. Romanus and Riley Sunderland, Stilwel/'s mission to China, 369. On the suffering
of the peasants conscripted
as
soldiers
and
inflicted
by
them
on the
civilian population,
see,
among others, Joseph W. Esherick, ed. host
chance
in China: the World War II
despatches
of
John
S. Service, 35-7; Theodore H. White and Annalee Jacoby, Thunder out of China, 132-40, 143-4;
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SPONTANEOUS PEASANT AGITATION 293
iniquities of a conscription system that hit only the poorest, there was
the periodic requisitioning of thousands and thousands of coolie labourers
who were herded about like cattle. The high mortality rate among
conscripts as well as coolies (often ill-treated and always ill-cared for) and
the brutalities and harassment inflicted upon civilians by the army over
eight years of the war, all exacerbated the peasants' traditional hatred of
the army. By the early 1940s, the iniquities
of
conscription and
the
exactions of the army had become comparable even to taxation as a factor
leading to peasant agitation. For
a
while,
it
seemed that
a
combination
of the two types
of
factors was prevalent: quite
a
few revolts were
provoked both by resentment
at
collection of land tax in kind and by
hatred of recruiting sergeants,
a
euphemism for the gangs who would
swoop down upon the cultivators in their fields and promptly tie their
hands behind their backs. Within less than a year (between autumn 1942
and summer 1943), peasant revolts of varying size and duration (some
involved fifty thousand men and lasted
for
several months) affected
virtually every province of China.
59
They were followed by another wave
in 1944, when Chinese soldiers fleeing before the new Japanese offensive
in Honan sustained numerous attacks from the survivors of the serious
famine
of
1942-3.^ The worst would befall soldiers who were isolated,
left behind or wounded. It was mainly in fiction that the peasants would
end up feeling pity for the plight of the soldiers (who were, after all,
peasants like themselves). Their initial instinct was to mete out to them
a slow and painful death.
61
A schematic chart (table 2) sets out the various types
of
spontaneous
peasant disturbances. The affairs classified separately (in the bottom part
of the table) comprise on the one hand a very small number of complex
movements, lasting longer than the average disturbances; on the other
hand, a very large number of elementary movements as short-lived as they
were frequent. From the point of view of our first criterion (the target),
complex movements were, by definition, mixed. Even when not aimed
from
the
start against several different targets, they tended,
as a
consequence of their very duration, to acquire new ones as time passed.
Nevertheless, they were more closely related
to
the first category
of
and Lucien
Bianco,
Origins
of
the
Chinese
Revolution,
rfij-rp0,
15
5—7.
For
a
later
period,
see
Suzanne
Pepper,
Civil
mar in
China:
the political struggle
1941—1949,
i6}-8.
59
And in
particular:
the
east
and
west
of
Kweichow (USDS
895.00/14991;
15095),
north Szechwan
(ibid.
893.00/14997;
15022;
15026;
15055),
and
above
all the
Lin-t'ao region
in
southern Kansu
(ibid.
895.00/15009;
15033;
15047;
15074;
15107;
15112,
published
in
Esherick,
Lest
chance,
20-2).
60
USDS 893.00/6.1044
(Gauss,
Chungking,
10
June
1944),
13 and n. 26.
61
Chang
T'ien-i,
Ch'ou-ben
(Hatred).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
294
PEASANT MOVEMENTS
TABLE 2
Typology of peasant disturbances
Directed against the public
authorities
Directed against a fraction
of the rural population
Disturbances classified A
Anti-fiscal riots
according to their targets Land tax
Opium tax
Salt tax"
Others" (dues
on alcohol, pig-
slaughtering, etc.)
B Others
Against initiatives
and abuses on the
part of the
administration
Resistance to
compulsory labour
Resistance to the
army
Disturbances classified Major: Complex movements
separately because either
too major or too minor
A
The
poor against the rich
Tenants
Debtors
Agricultural workers"
B Vertical
movements
One community
against another
Minor: Elementary movements
(looting) + +
" Items not discussed in this chapter, for lack of space.
Frequency
(a subjective estimation):
— extremely rare
— rare
= average frequency or, in the case of the army, variable
+ quite frequent
+ + very frequent
disturbances, that is to say, those that were directed against the public
authorities (hence their position in the table). The elementary movements
(simple incidents of looting with or without violence of limited proportions)
are placed in the right-hand column of the table: the hungry went to
loot or eat grain where they knew they would find it, that is to say, in
general, in the homes of the rich or the stores of grain-merchants.
Among the disturbances classified according to their targets, we know
that those directed against the public authorities were by far the most
frequent. Not only were disturbances placed in the right-hand column
of the chart less frequent, but furthermore the social significance of the
two sub-categories that we have distinguished are quite different. With
'A'
disturbances (the only ones we have so far examined), the poor are
opposed to the rich. 'B' disturbances (vertical movements) set in
opposition socially heterogeneous communities, each of which
is
composed
of a majority of poor and a minority of rich who either protect or
manipulate the poor and at all events organize them.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SPONTANEOUS PEASANT AGITATION
2
95
Vertical
movements.
As under the Ch'ing, these vertical social conflicts
(feuds, vendettas) would set in opposition two clans, two villages or two
groups
of
villages over some issue
-
such as the use
of
water (or the
prevention of flooding), an area of cleared land, the exploitation of forests,
burial grounds,
or
control over
a
local market.
62
On the
northern
boundary of Anhwei and Kiangsu,
a
region prone to frequent flooding
was within four years the scene of four conflicts relating to the control
of the water.
In
June 1932, the drainage operations and the work
of
dredging two rivers undertaken
by the
inhabitants
of
Hsiao-hsien
(Kiangsu, but now Anhwei) were threatening to cause flooding
in
the
fields of Su-hsien (in Anhwei). Over two thousand armed men from
Su-hsien accordingly set out to fill in the ditches that had recently been
dug.
A
conflict in which cannon were used resulted in the destruction
of several villages of Hsiao-hsien (1 July 1932). The following year only
the intervention of the army prevented the peasants of Feng-hsien and
P'ei-hsien (Kiangsu) from breaching river dikes
in
order
to
direct the
threatening flood towards the neighbouring hsiens. The March 1935
disturbance followed the 1932 pattern: the dredging of a tributary of the
Huai
by
villagers
of
Hsiao-hsien was brutally interrupted
by the
inhabitants of Su-hsien and fighting ensued, claiming many dead. In May
1936,
another conflict brought the same antagonists, of Hsiao-hsien and
Su-hsien, into confrontation yet again.
63
Repeated conflicts between neighbouring communities created a tradi-
tion of hostility and strife. A clash of interests would keep such a tradition
alive but it would also be fuelled by a thirst for vengeance to such a degree
that the most unexceptional incidents would serve to renew hostilities.
To protect themselves and defend the interests of the community, the
villagers when necessary would resort
to
secret societies
or
organize
themselves into rival societies such as the Red Flags and the Black Flags
of Haifeng and Lufeng in Kwangtung (see below, pp. 296-7, 313-14). One
instance of a secret society revived by
a
threatened community was the
Small Swords Society
(Hsiao-tao-hui)
in four hsien close to Chen-chiang
(Chinkiang, Kiangsu), in 1927-8. The members of the Small Swords were
all immigrants from north of the river. Meanwhile the natives formed
a
rival society,
the
Big Swords (Ta-tao-bui).
In
September 1928,
two
thousand peasant members of the Small Swords massacred two hundred
62
Hsiao Kung-chuan, Rural China, 361—9
and
419-26; Harry
J.
Lamley, 'Hsieh-tou:
the
pathology
of violence
in
southeastern China', CSUTT
}.
7
(Nov. 1977) 1-39;
Robert
B.
Marks,' Social change
in Haifeng county
on the eve of the
Haifeng peasant movement, 1870-1920', 17-29.
63
Ta-van-pao,
22
June
1932 and
Sbib-sbib biin-pao,
5
July
1935,
cited
in
NTCC 1.535; USDS
PR
Nanking/68
(Oct. 11, 1933)
9
and PR
Nanking/86 (April
8, 1935) n;
NYTL 3.1027.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
PEASANT MOVEMENTS
people and burned down six villages in Tan-t'u hsien, which had been
guilty of setting up local sections of the Big Swords.
64
The antagonism between the Small Swords and the Big Swords divided
each village down the middle, whereas the Red Flags and the Black Flags
of eastern Kwangtung represented veritable village alliances, formed in
the nineteenth century when new market towns had been established. The
new villages founded in the no man's land between two marketing
systems, and the weaker lineages that were situated on the periphery of
a market system and were seeking to escape from the domination of a
lineage solidly entrenched in the market town, tended to federate
themselves with the organization that was the rival of the one to which
their over-powerful neighbours belonged: namely, the Black Flags if the
closest market town was controlled by the Red Flags, and vice versa.
Thus,
by the end of the nineteenth century, Haifeng and Lufeng counties
were covered by a veritable (black and red) chequer-board of rival
organizations polarized into two great antagonistic
camps.
These organiza-
tions,
somewhat similar to Brecht's Round Heads and Long Heads, were
still very active during the 1920s.
65
The Red Flags and the Black Flags of eastern Kwangtung were thus
organized on a much larger scale and were potentially more destructive
than the sections of the Small Swords revived by the communities under
threat in Kiangnan. But this difference in scale should not mask the
identical nature of the vertical conflicts in which these various organizations
engaged. Although the demarcation line between Small Swords and Big
Swords divided each village, it did not separate the well-off or wealthy
homes from the poor ones. The real division, symbolized by the
opposition between the two secret societies, was between local folk and
the colonizers from elsewhere (a few leagues to the north) and their
children born locally but from families too recently arrived to be
integrated as yet; a body of foreigners which still, after one or two
generations, had not become assimilated.
66
Similarly, the conflicts which
had become endemic in eastern Kwangtung in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries did not divide wealthy landlords from their tenants
or other landless peasants, but instead set in opposition rival communities
each with its own habitual cross-section of rich and poor. The leader of
the Red Flags or of the Black Flags was usually a wealthy man, who could
64
L. Bianco, 'Secret societies and peasant self-defence, 1921-193}', in J.Chesneaux, ed. Popular
movements and secret societies
in
China, 1X40—1)10, 221-2.
65
Marks, 'Social Change
in
Haifeng', 18-19 and 24-9.
66
Some immigrants really were foreigners:
at
Wan-pao-shan, eastern Liaoning,
in
July 1951,
500
Chinese peasants destroyed
a
dam and irrigation canal built by Korean immigrants. The Japanese
made
a
diplomatic incident out
of
it, two months before the Mukden coup.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SPONTANEOUS PEASANT AGITATION 297
use his fortune and influence to bribe or intimidate the officials and protect
his followers against taxation as well as against the enemy Flags. It was,
in effect, this protection that guaranteed the peasants' loyalty to their
particular Flag - protection which was even more necessary here than in
the rest of the Chinese countryside, on account of the insecurity fostered
by the activities of the rival Flags.
While conflicts between tenants and landlords may legitimately be
termed social, vertical conflicts only expressed local parochialism: the
adversary was not the rich but 'the others'. On occasion, the alien was
the worker (who was also a peasant) who had come from elsewhere; in
that case, the competition was not over land or water but over
employment. In
1921,
the China International Famine Relief Commission
made the mistake of employing on the construction of the Peking-Tientsin
road (destined, among other things, to make it possible to transport food
to areas in need) 2,800 workers recruited in Shantung. On the morning
when work started, the peasants of Hopei, helped by hooligans, attacked
these intruders and put them to flight, following which several hundreds
of local men demanded to be taken on in place of those they had
dispersed.
67
In early nineteenth-century France, artisan and worker
corporations used to inflame provincial and professional rivalries. They
put a brake on the development of class consciousness and undermined
the beginnings of a modern social movement. The struggles between the
Red and the Black Flags and the Big and the Small Swords, etc., a century
later, were to some extent a (Chinese and rural) replica of those French
confrontations between the
Gavots
and the
Devorants.
Complex
movements:
the example of
Cb'ang-le.
From the outset, the revolt
that erupted in November 1931 in Ch'ang-le (to the south of Foochow,
Fukien) was a double resistance: against both the army and taxation. In
January-February 1932, this movement targeted against the public
authorities was amplified by a vertical conflict, which precipitated the
eventual collapse of the movement. At the source of the disturbances was
a surtax on land imposed in the
hsiang
of Hu-ching (in Ch'ang-le county).
The purpose of this surtax was to help finance a plan for hydraulic
improvements undertaken by a naval detachment who were deeply
loathed by the villagers (they forced the latter to sow poppy seeds with
the sole aim of taxing the opium smokers). When the Hu-ching villagers
refused to pay the surtax, two naval battalions were rushed to the spot
to make them pay up. But the result was quite the opposite: the naval
battalions arrived on 4 November; on the 5th, the peasants declared war
on them.
67
John Earl Baker, 'Fighting China's famines' (unpublished manuscript, 1943), 147.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
298 PEASANT MOVEMENTS
This movement was not just complex; it was also better organized than
most peasant riots and revolts (which probably explains how it lasted so
long).
The villagers of Hu-ching, who since 1922 had been compelled to
serve in the local militia, were better - or at least less poorly - trained and
armed than their peers elsewhere. The leader of the revolt, Lin Ku-ju,
was none other than the commander of the militia of Hu-ching
hsiang.
Lin hired several graduates from the Pao-ting military academy to
complete the training of the militiamen and also a number of bandits to
whom he paid two months' salary in advance in return for their
commitment to serve right in the front line. During the night of 21
December, prepared and reinforced in this fashion and with a ten to one
superiority in numbers, the peasants of Hu-ching attacked the hsien yamen
of Ch'ang-le. The navy troops responsible for protecting it rapidly took
to their heels, abandoning arms and ammunition and the hsien magistrate
too.
This initial success made the rebels over-confident. They destroyed two
pumping stations installed by the navy and demanded that the latter depart
forthwith. Liu Ku-ju declared local autonomy and, without further ado,
took over the administration of the whole of Ch'ang-le county. He seized
all the revenues so as to cover his military expenses, retained and collected
the opium tax that he had been denouncing two months earlier and lifted
restrictions on the opening of opium dens and gambling houses. The
inhabitants of the other cantons
(hsiang)
of Ch'ang-le county, who had
not been subject to the surtax in the first place, were discontented at being
obliged to finance a struggle that was no concern of
theirs.
Furthermore,
the bandits who had been hired as mercenaries liberated common-law
prisoners and held up and robbed those fleeing on the roads. Clashes
ensued and soon turned into an
inter-hsiang
war at the very moment when
the authorities were sending in reinforcements. In February 1932, an
enemy
hsiang,
Hao-shang, captured Lin Ku-ju and handed him over to
the authorities, who executed him. On the 28th the navy attacked Hu-ching
and lent strong support to the inhabitants of Hao-shang when they came
to burn down the Hu-ching villages. By the time calm was restored, at
the end of March, forty villages had been razed to the ground and more
than seven thousand people were without shelter. During the agricultural
season of 1932, there was a wide band of uncultivated land between
Hu-ching and Hao-shang; but nobody dared venture into it to farm the
fields situated alongside enemy territory.
The Ch'ang-le revolt was exceptional in its complexity and organization
but in the end it foundered by reason of weaknesses that were not
exceptional at all: namely, the failure to maintain control over the bandits
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SPONTANEOUS PEASANT AGITATION 299
whose help had initially been so valuable; the unpopular devices used
to
raise fresh
tax
money
in
order
to
face
the
authorities' counter-attack
(although that counter-attack was very slow in coming); and finally
—
and
above all
—
the absence of solidarity between neighbouring villages whose
divergent interests
set
them
in
opposition
to one
another
at the
very
moment when repression fell upon them.
68
Elementary
movements.
In
contrast
to
complex movements, elementary
movements were directed against one fraction (the most wealthy)
of
the
rural population. But, except
in a few
cases,
the
looters were
not
after
the rich men in person, but only their possessions, in particular their grain.
Often enough, they did
no
more than
go to
quell their pangs
of
hunger
in the houses of the rich, in times of famine. Expressions such as
ch'ih-ta-hu
(to
eat in
the houses
of
the rich)
or
hsiang fu-min
tso-ch'ih
(to go
and
sit
at the tables of the rich) recur time and again in the inquiries and reports
concerning virtually every province, from Chekiang and Kiangnan, both
of which were affected
by
the crisis
in
silk-worm production,
to
poorer
provinces like Anhwei and Honan.
A
few
very incomplete data give some idea
of the
extraordinary
frequency
of
incidents
of
looting (ch'iang-mi
feng-ch'ao,
seizing stocks
of
rice).
An agency
for
economic information notes 64 cases
of
looting
for
the year
1934 as
follows: Chekiang,
28
cases; Kiangsu,
19
cases;
Szechwan,
5
cases; Anhwei,
4
cases; Honan,
3
cases; Shensi,
3
cases;
Kwangtung, 2 cases.
69
Almost three quarters (47 out
of
64)
of these cases
took place in the reputedly rich provinces of Chekiang and Kiangsu, since
the inquiry
was
based, essentially, upon information provided
in the
newspapers
of
Shanghai and Nanking.
In
another report that mentions
26 cases
of
looting
for the
summer
of
1934 alone (between 1 July
and
11 September),
70
only four provinces are represented (Chekiang, 14 cases;
Kiangsu, 5; Anhui, 4; Honan, 3), all of which are quite accessible
to
the
reporting newspaper
in
Nanking.
A
single hsien close
to
Shanghai
(Chia-hsing, Chekiang) is the scene of
6
of the 26 incidents recorded. One
final example illustrates
not
only
the
non-representative nature
of the
statistics
at our
disposal
but
also
the
extreme frequency
of
looting
incidents: twenty-five cases are recorded in Wu-hsi hsien (Kiangsu) alone,
within
the
space
of a
month (from
11 May to 10
June 1932)
and
furthermore the compiler points out that the local newspapers
on
which
68
The Ch'ang-le incident is described in detail in USDS 895.00 PR Foochow/47 (4 December 1931);
/48 (13 January 1931);
/49
(10 February 1932);
/50 (7
March 1932); /51
(4
April 1932);
/$2
(4 May 1932). In contrast, the moneylenders' practices
in
Ch'ang-le denounced four years later
gave rise to no agitation: TFTC 33.10 (16 May 1936) m-12.
«• NYTL 3.1032.
70
Cbmg-buajib-pao,
12 September 1934, cited in NYTL 3.1031-2.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
300 PEASANT MOVEMENTS
his information is based only mention two or three out of every ten cases
of looting that actually took place.
71
Another type of relatively serious and less ephemeral incident was
itinerant looting. Groups of as many as several hundred or even a
thousand hungry men, each equipped with a sack, would go from village
to village, seizing provisions.
72
Sometimes they would band themselves
into associations of the needy; the 'association of the poor people'
{ch'iung
kuang-tan
hut),
'
the company of starving people'
(cti"i-min-fuari)
or ' the
company of those who eat together'
(kung-ch'ih
fuan)."
13
But, for the most part, rice looting and rioting are typically elementary
movements, of limited scope and duration. In the spring, at the bridging
time between the harvests, a few hundred or even just a few dozen men
(and sometimes bands composed solely of women, old people and
children) would sally forth to make sure of a few days' provisions by
robbing a landowner, a shop, a depot or a junk. When the police or
authorities did intervene, it was sometimes to distribute provisions to the
looters, to get them to disperse more quickly.
74
Occasionally, the forces
of order would open fire but that was not the usual pattern. It was, in
principle, only when the starving peasants were forced to 'set out along
the dangerous road' (become bandits in order to survive) that repression
was unleashed.
75
These occasional looters were at pains to distinguish themselves from
professional bandits. Sometimes they petitioned the hsien magistrate to
be allowed to go looting, by reason of the exceptionally difficult
circumstances; or they would fall on their knees before the landowner
they were robbing, begging him to forgive them for the excesses to which
they were momentarily driven. Many of these looters took care to limit
their thefts to items of food and some were anxious to leave behind food
in sufficient quantities for the landowner and his family not, in their turn,
to go hungry.
76
" NTCC
1.425.
72
Examples relating to Honan and Hunan in NYTL 3.1030.
" Examples relating to Honan, Hupei, Anhwei and Kiangsu in NYTL 3.1033; to Szechwan,
ibid.
3.1029.
1*
The same procedure was followed during
the'
expensive bread riots' in France under Louis XIV:
cf. Yves-Marie Berce, Histoire
its
Croquants: etude des soulhemenli populaires au XVIIeme siecle dans
It tud-ouest de
la
France, J48.
75
For an example in eastern Szechwan, see NYTL 3.1029-30 (troops of warlord Yang Sen
sent against starving peasants turned bandits).
76
Cf. an
example
in
Wu-hsi
in
June 1932 (Htin-cb'uang-tsao (New creation) 2.1-2, July 1932, cited
in NTCC 1.428).
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