Study On Banditry In Longnan And The Control Of Grass-Roots Society During The Period Of The Republic Of China

Bandit problem was one of the social problems which existed widely during the period of the Republic of China, at the same time, it was the concentrated representation of social anomie and sociopathy during the period of social trasformation. Longnan located in boder land of Sichuan, Gansu and Shanxi province,and it was an very important traffic channel that get into Sichuan and Shanxi provinces, so both the geographical position and the strategic position was very special and important, which combined with a lot of forests and mountains in Longnan region, thus it provided unique natural and geographical conditions for banditry activities and hiding, so there were many bandits in Longnan and it was an area of “flow bandits are easy to arrive”during the period of the Republic of China.In addition, after the establishment of the Republic of China, the central power increasingly became weak and the politics increasingly corrupted, Longnan local warlords scuffled, the political situation remained highly unstable and the gonvernment changed frequently, this phenomenon made Longnan be stucked into a power vacuum and local society was out of control. What’s more, official corruption,years of natural and man-made disasters, all of those caused a lot of people were forced to take risks to become bandits, also made Longnan become one of the place where banditry was most serious in Gansu province.In a word, the bandits in Longnan during the period of the Republic of China had following features: numerous participant, high degree of organization, broad movement area and destructive. The bandits were not only directly against the authorities, they rob despotic gentry and strong landlords, but also caused serious harm to ordinary people’s life and property security. To a high degree,banditry have a serious negative impacted on local social economy, local grassroots rigime and general mood of society in Longnan. When the banditry occurred, local government and the public in Longnan adopted a series of prevention measures, such as “joint defense”, “clearing up”, “check on household occupant”, “Bao-jia collective punishment”, “civilian gun registration”, “ban on opium-smoking and the opium trade”, “contain and prevent secret society”, “prohibition of gambing”, “military eliminate”, conduct the “civil corps and deity group”, build “fortress” and other measures to prevent the bandits. But due to the complexity relationship between bandits and local political power in Longnan, and the different attitude of authority on suppression or stroke for bandits, so the effect of curing bandits was not very significant.Most bandits were from agricultural society, and the reason why become a bandit is that the livelihood was very helpless, but we shouldn’t sympathize the bandits’ behaviors and give its legitimacy. Bandits, after all, was a aparasitic social group and incompatible with the existing social order in essence, the bad behavior of destroying everythings made the history of the bandits turned into misfortune people’s mishaps.Furthermore, banditry had a huge negative effect on the development and change of regional society.On the basis of the existing historical data, combine with some knowledge and theories of other disciplines, the paper will try to research bandits in Longnan, bandits causes in Longnan, the influence of bandits to Longnan local society. What’s more,this paper will analyze some relevant control activities about banditry by local government and local people in Longnan during the period of the Republic of China.While revealing the basic features and regular of society running in Longnan, the change of regional political environment and social environment are proved to be a basic premise of the bandits growth or decline. Finally, it is also proved that only political progress and the development of rural economy are the key to the eliminate bandits and ensure social stability and harmony, which provides a good historical reference for current social management.