Ecology, Ethnicity, And Class

This dissertation aims to study the origins of Land Revolution in Gannan area (southern Jiangxi) through a study of the social conflicts and clashes in Gannan during the Ming and Qing dynasties, namely, the "bandit unrests" of Ming Dynasty, the "tenant rebellions" of early Qing Dynasty, and the "armed ethnic group fights" during late Qing and the Republican period (1911-1949). The author argues that the complicated social setting and conflicts the Communists were faced with in the 1920s and 1930s in rural Gannan were shaped through long-term vicissitudes during the Ming and Qing dynasties. The Land Revolution in Gannan was, therefore, not only the result of external factors like the political mobilization and organization of the Communist Party, it was also, to much extent, created by such internal factors as the ecology, economic structure, and social conflicts of this area.The dissertation is in five parts and is approximately 180,000 Chinese characters in length. In introductory part, the author first explains why he selects this topic and how his thinking developed, he then gives a review of relevant theoretical background and studies, which is followed by a brief explanation of the basic materials and analytical structure of this dissertation.Part Two investigates the ecological characteristics of the frontier communities in the upper middle Yangzi highland and the social identities and ethnic backgrounds of the "unregistered refugees" and "uncivilized savages" from Fujian and Guangdong provinces in Ming Dynasty. The adverse ecological environment in mountains directly produced a struggle for the scant living and production resources like arable land between the refugees and roving bandits on the one side and the aborigines on the other. Their distance in socio-political positions and ethnic cum cultural backgrounds accounts for the state of face-off between them and for frequent and violent "bandit unrests" in this frontier area. This chapter also discusses how the aborigines and various levels of government took corresponding measures against the bandits: for one thing, the aborigines gathered in ethnic groups and hence settled collectively to protect themselves, for another, the refugees and roving bandits from Fujian and Guangdong, under the pressure of the governmental suppression and propitiation, settled insitu, thus the settlement pattern and ethnic structure in rural Gannan were dramatically changed.Part Three discusses the shake-up of rural Gannan society in early Qing Dynasty. The large-scale reclamation of land by Fujian and Guangdong immigrants and universal growth of cash crops helped the exploitation of this area and the development of rural economy. But the0tension between man and land became serious and it was followed by a serious shortage of food supply, the tenants and local landowners, therefore, turned increasingly adverse to each other in terms of the distribution of land proceeds, resulting in widespread "tenant rebellions". Meanwhile, in their process of settlement and localization, the conflicts between the dependent tenants from Fujian and Guangdong and the aborigines, with the tenant-lord conflict and aborigine-immigrant conflict interwoven, complicated the social contradictions in the rural Gannan.Part Four analyses the overall shift and formation of the rural society in Gannan from late Qing to the Republican period. With the large-scale immigration from Fujian and Guangdong on the decline and the stabilization of modern resident composition, the rural ethnic groups which had spread widely since the beginning of the Dynasty matured and flourished and began to play a vital role in the organization and leadership of public affairs in many places. Therefore ethnic group autonomy with an independent regime came into being. Under these circumstances, the scramble for various living and production resources between different ethnic groups inevitably ended up in conflicts and contradictions of one form or another, which were demonstrated in the prevalence of armed ethni...