The Red Turban Rebellions and the Emergence of the Ethnic Consciousness of the Hakkas in Nineteenth-Century China
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Date
2005-08
Authors
Kim, Jaeyoon
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
My dissertation, "The Red Turban Rebellions and the Emergence of Ethnic
Consciousness of the Hakkas in Nineteenth-Century China," focuses on one of most
important and controversial minorities in China-and a group that significantly shaped
the country's nineteenth and twentieth century history: the Hakka or "guest people." Han
Chinese who migrated from western Fujian to Guangdong province in search of new
economic opportunities over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these
"guest people" challenged the economic control of earlier settlers in these provinces and
thereby sparked some of the most violent struggles of late Qing China. I examine, in
particular, how the participation of the "guest people" in a series of struggles, the Red Turban Rebellions (1854-1856) and the Hakka-Punti War (1856-1867) in the Pearl River
Delta areas of South China, helped create among these people a distinct sense of identity,
a sharp sense of their own, different, Hakka, ethnicity.
My study is designed to provide a detailed historical analysis of the construction
of Hakka identity. I focus on the whole network of different interests and relationships
that led to the Red Turban Rebellions and the Hakka-Punti War of the mid-nineteenth
century: the long-standing economic conflicts over land use; the part played by local
gentry and lineage organizations in Hakka-Punti feuds; the role that the state, and most
particularly local governments, played in intensifying existing tensions and thus drawing
"ethnic" lines. In short, in focusing intensively on one particular place and time, my work
provides a full and rich picture of all the factors--economic, political, as well as social-that
contributed to the definition of Hakka ethnicity. My dissertation thus helps us
understand more precisely the complex process by which ethnicity is constructed.
Description
307 pages
Keywords
population growth, regional differences, The Opium War, Pearl River Delta, The Taiping Rebellion