Thursday, April 28th, 2011 The Transnational Repercussions of Village Pacification in Southeast Coastal China, 1869-1891

Description

The emigrant communities of southeast coastal China maintained strong connections with sojourning Chinese, and local events rarely remained exclusively local for long. Events had repercussions that rippled back and forth across the seas, illustrating the intimately shared historical experiences of people living within a vast maritime space. This presentation will explore the transnational effects of General Fang Yao’s campaign of village pacification in Chaozhou prefecture (Eastern Guangdong) from 1869 to 1891. General Fang was officially charged with ridding this unruly region of its powerful criminal underworld and rebellious brotherhood organizations; collecting unpaid taxes; and imposing a militarized social order. His violent campaign of rural pacification not only transformed the social landscape of coastal Chaozhou, it had a significant impact on Shanghai and the British Straits Settlements. The campaign also advanced the interests of Chaozhou’s sojourning commercial elites as they struggled for dominance in the South China Seas region.

Melissa Macauley (Ph.D., Berkeley, 1993) is Associate Professor of History and East Asian Studies at Northwestern University. She is the author of Social Power and Legal Culture: Litigation Masters in Late Imperial China (Stanford, 1998) and various articles and book chapters on Chinese social history, the port culture and transnational history of southeast coastal China, and the transformation of non-Western law in the age of colonialism and imperialism. She is currently completing a book titled Chaozhou Sojourners: Crime and Migration in the South China Seas, 1662-1937.