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Cultural Strategies and the Political Economy of Protest in Mid-QingChina, 1740-1839

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Ho-fung Hung
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Abstract

In the historical study of contentious politics, political economy theories seethe transformation of the dominant form of contention from reactive violence toproactive demonstration in early modern Europe as a result of large-scalepolitical-economic processes like state formation and market expansion.Culturalist theories emphasize instead the significance of large-scale culturalreconstitutions in forging such transformation. Judging between these twotheories is no easy task, as macropolitical-economic and cultural changes wereconcurrent in most cases. Mid-Qing China (c. 1683-1839), which experienced statecentralization and commercialization in conjunction with a relatively stableneo-Confucianist hegemony, constitutes a telling case that helps resolve thedebate. By analyzing a catalog of political protest events derived from archivalsources, I find that Chinese protest changed from predominantly reactiveviolence in the seventeenth century to proactive demonstration in themid-eighteenth century and back to reactive violence in the nineteenth century.The general direction of change can be explained by the cyclical trajectories ofstate formation and market development alone. At the same time, the specificclaims and repertoires of protest were always delimited by the cultural idiomsavailable in the overarching neo-Confucianist orthodoxy of the time. This studysuggests an integrated perspective synthesizing both culturalist and politicaleconomy accounts to offer a fuller explanation of macrohistorical changes incontentious politics.

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Social Science History , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , Spring 2009 , pp. 75 - 115
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Copyright © Social Science History Association 2009 

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