Discusses And Analyzes About Shandong Bandit During China Republic Period

Under the guidance of historical materialism and the study approaches of history, politics and sociology, this thesis discovers the bandits from panoramic view in Shandong Province in 1912-1935 period. Makes every effort distribution which promulgates the Shandong bandit to arm, its its harm to society. Explains the reason from the social regulation and control angle which the bandit grows vigorously.The purpose of this thesis is to strengthen the knowledge of Shandong society of this period by the local case study of the bandits.The bandits lived on robbery and brought sever harms to the local people, and they became a big social problem, especially at the beginning of Republic of China, there were bands of bandits in Shandong Province, and Shandong was a center of bandits. By statistics, there were bandits in 85 of the 107 counties in Shandong Province and the biggest band was 327 of bandits. In this period, the bandits were in large numbers and large scales with modern weapons, they were well-organized.The bandits, weapons and arms, was a big harm to the society by attacking the cities, killing the civilians, raping, kidnapping, robbing and various activities for private interests and benefits, greatly threatening the administration of both local and central governments. Therefore it was an important administrative activity to clear off the bandits in Shandong Province.But there were not measures of eradicating the political and economic roots of bring about the bandits, thus the bandits could not be cleared off once and for all. The so-called "clearing off the bandits" was but a contemporary measure.There were sophisticated historical reasons to the rise of the bandits. In its political background, in the beginning of China Republic, there were the army officials pursuing powers and turbulent political struggles, and whole China was in a up-down state, all these paved the way for the rise of the bandits. For the local officials, they robbed the civilians and feared the bandits and escaped their responsibilities for defending the civilians against the bandits, some even went out of their way to become the aides for the bandits. For the military background, Shandong Province was in a riot state in this period, there were groups of warriors backing up different political groups, breaking down the economic setting that the peasants depended upon, thus creating large number of refugees. The refugees without any property went their way to become the bandits, and may defeated soldiers also became the bandits fro they had nothing to support themselves after being defeated in the war. What was even worse, soldiers became the bandits with the support of their officers to rob the property from the civilians, from the phenomenon of "hard to distinguish soldiers form the bandits". And the military sense of the civilians became strengthened in the midst of their seeing the military actions in their daily lives. For the economic factors concerned, little land for many people, heavy taxes and heavy economic burdens, consistent natural disasters all contributed to the worsening of the country economy and the agriculture in Shandong Province, large numbers of peasants were separated from their lands, thus giving birth to the rise of the bandits, forming "the old filing the ditches while the young becoming the bandits". With the deepening of social crises, the number of the refugees and the floating people became larger, the twisted mentality ideas under the worship of violence, the competing trends and the backward education formed the background of the rise the bandits.The boom of the bandits was an important feature of deepened political, economic and social crises in half-feudal and half-colonized society in China. Ever since the 1911 revolution and the beginning of China Republic, with the changes of social order, the weakening of national authority, the missing of the order with in the whole social order, and the unbalanced distribution of social resources, and people's wonder of social re-organization, there were various disorders in China. Because of the misuse and the loss of the social coordinating measures, the mass disorder was not cleared off, and the return of the disorder doers were well paid off, attracting more and more in becoming the bandits. That such models became worsened in that period was the inner reason of the bandits in Shandong Province. Therefore in the social order changing period, the existence and the development of social phenomenon called for the urgent demands of strengthening social orders and maintaining social stability.