Joseph W. Esherick, 1987: The Origins of the Boxer Uprising
This book’s aim is to search for the origin of the rise of the Boxers in an analysis of the “contemporary environment—the structure and mentality of society in west Shandong, and the shape of provincial, national, and international politics on the eve of the twentieth century” (316). What Esherick mainly illuminates in the book includes not only the origin for a mass movement in response to major social crisis, but also the origin/contributors for the specific form of the Boxer Uprising in varied local societies.
From a contemporary perspective, it seems like that all the prominent peasant groups originated in different regions in Shandong at different periods during the last few decades of the 19th century could be labeled as the “Boxer organizations” in its broadest sense or its variations. Actually they are distinct organizations, stemming from diverse local socio-economic environment and developing in quite varied routes. Even though the Boxers in northwest Shandong in1899 and those in Guan County in 1898 shared the same name “Boxers United in Righteousness”, there is no necessary continuity between the two groups of Boxers. The “adoption of the name did not mean the spread of any organization” (165). Instead of inspecting the history of the Boxers on a basis of a lineal organizational sequence, Esherick takes the Boxer rituals and practices as the key for understanding the origin and evolution of the Boxers. It is the transmission of rituals rather than the diffusion or mobilization of certain organizations that played a decisive role in the dispersion of Boxer Uprising in northern China.
In Epilogue, Esherick seeks to explain the outbreak of a social movement and the form it takes in the dialectic between “the structure and event” (320). Exogenous forces and domestic contradictions together produced social crisis, and in response to that, a social movement led by a new idea and new organizations emerged. Natural disasters, impotence of the Qing state and the intrusion of imperial powers in the form of missionaries became the main forces in triggering local peasant resistance, yet these variables could not suffice to explain the form of resistance and the reason of the prevalence of certain beliefs and rituals. Therefore Esherick proposes the “popular culture” to bridge the gap between structure and event. It is the Boxers’ application of certain cultural elements such as the “peasant habitus of possession rituals and heroic narrative” (321) that made their idea more acceptable and familiar to the local peasants, who then could be mobilized to struggle against the foreign religion.
According to the specific form of Boxers in varied regions and periods, Esherick mainly examined the predecessor of Boxers in southwest Shandong (the Big Sword Society 大刀會), the “Boxers United in Righteousness” in Guan County (冠縣義和團) and the Spirit Boxers (神拳) in northwest Shandong chronically. The socio-economic environment is not simply background but preconditions for the specific form the movement takes. In the case of Boxers uprising, the local social environment not influenced but confined the possible formations people could choose from. It is due to the loyalist purposes of the Boxers, who sought to operate “within the confines of the established order” (319) and did not devote themselves for a revolutionary mission or new social order as the radical millenarian movements entailed. This is also what Esherick hold as a rebuff to Purcell’s argument that there was an anti-dynastic phase in the Boxer Uprising.
The different forms taken in northwest Shandong and southwest Shandong thus reflect the varied socio-economic conditions of local society. In southwest Shandong, a relative stable landlordism and a troubled border region teeming with extralegal cultivation of opium and endemic banditry “caused the villages to become close-knit cohesive communities”. (27-28) Then the Big Sword Society there was put to an end by the “arrest and execution of a few leaders” (122) in 1896 due to the landlord elites’ control exerted on it and its close ties with officials and local militia. But the same thing would not happen to the Boxers in northwest Shandong where the villages were more heterogeneous, people more open and social mobility much greater.
Esherick also clarified the boxer-sectarian relationships, indicating that there is no necessary connection between martial groups and sects. (53) Additionally, it is arbitrary to deduce that the practice of certain rituals (such as spirit-possession and invulnerability) was derived from a sectarian tradition. Rather, one should examine case by case. For instance, in the case of the Spirit Boxers, the mass character of the possession would be the results of both the traditions of martial arts and sectarian activity and vernacular literature/opera.
Apart from that, Esherick inspected the role of local government, the rural mentality and the activities of western missionaries. He presented us a detailed and marvelous illustration of the source and contributors of the outbreak of the uprising.
Nonetheless, by no means would that be a passive determinist view of history. Although the dominant role of the objective “structure” of a society or the popular culture in confining the form of a movement was elaborated, the interaction between the relatively “static” environment/structure and the dynamic actors/events could not be overlooked. In my view what is also inferred in this book is the initiative of both peasants and Boxers in deciding what the best way they will use to fight against the enemies is. It is like a survival strategy where people seek for both adaptability and amelioration of their combat tactics.
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