Bannerman and Townsman: Ethnic Tension in Nineteenth-Century Jiangnan

Abstract

Vol. 11, No. 1 Late Imperial ChinaJune 1990 BANNERMAN AND TOWNSMAN: ETHNIC TENSION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY JIANGNAN* Mark Elliott Introduction Anyone lucky enough on the morning of July 21, 1842, to escape the twenty-foot high, four-mile long walls surrounding the city of Zhenjiang would have beheld a depressing spectacle: the fall of the city to foreign invaders. Standing on a hill, looking northward across the city toward the Yangzi, he might have decried the masts of more than seventy British ships anchored in a thick nest on the river, or perhaps have noticed the strange shapes of the four armored steamships that, contrary to expectations , had successfully penetrated the treacherous lower stretches of China's main waterway. Might have seen this, indeed, except that his view most likely would have been screened by the black clouds of smoke swirling up from one, then two, then three of the city's five gates, as fire spread to the guardtowers atop them. His ears dinned by the report of rifle and musket fire and the roar of cannon and rockets, he would scarcely have heard the sounds of panic as townsmen, including his own relatives and friends, screamed to be allowed to leave the city, whose gates had been held shut since the week before by order of the commander of * An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Manchu Studies (Manzokushi kenkyùkai) at Meiji University, Tokyo, in November 1988. For their criticism and suggestions regarding the manuscript at various stages, 1 would like to express my sincere thanks to Pamela Crossley, Nicola Di Cosmo, John Fincher, Linda Grove, David Keightley, Okada Hidehiro, R. Bin Wong, and my advisor, Frederic Wakeman, Jr., as well as the anonymous referees of Late Imperial China; I have also received valuable help from Professor Gene Irschick of the University of California, Berkeley. Discussions with Hosoya Yoshio, Ishibashi Takao, Kanda Nobuo, Matsumura Jun, and Nakami Tatsuo, all of the Tôyô Bunko Seminar on Manchu Studies, and with Chuang Chi-fa of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, have been very stimulating. Research for this article was carried out with the generous support of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Japanese Ministry of Education (Monbushô), and with the cooperation of, in Japan, the staffs of the Tôyô Bunko, the Seikadô Bunko, and the libraries of the Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa of Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and the East Asia Research Institute of the University of Tokyo; in Taiwan, the National Palace Museum Archives and the National Central Library; and in the United States, the Library of Congress. To them my grateful appreciation. Late Imperial China 11, No. 1 (June 1990):36-74 T by the Society for Qing Studies 36 Bannerman and Townsman: Ethnic Tension in Nineteenth-Century Jiangnan 37 38Mark Elliott the Zhenjiang banner garrison. Yet above even this tumult, he could not have missed the sound of the three explosions that shook the ground when British miners blew up the western gate; and he could only watch as hundreds of red-coated soldiers overran the city. By now it would be midday, and the sun, already extremely hot earlier in the morning, would have been burning directly overhead, forcing him to seek the shade. An hour or so later, however, the sound of gunfire off in the distance would draw him back to witness a last, desperate street skirmish between bannermen and British troops. The defenders were soon overpowered, ending all hopes of saving the city, and the observer, now a refugee, would have had no choice but to set off and seek haven in the countryside.1 Had he remained inside the city, he would have witnessed even more terrible scenes, particularly in the garrison compound where the bannermen and their dependents resided. Within its walled confines, men cut the throats of their wives and children before falling upon their swords or rushing off to meet the enemy and death. One after another, entire families jumped down wells, took poison, or hanged themselves, rather than face defeat and disgrace.2 The fall...