Political chess and vernacular discursive strategies: A study of the late Qing Sichuan Railway Protection Movement

Abstract

ABSTRACTInterdisciplinary literary and historical studies of late Qing vernacular are rare, and the vernacular texts of the Sichuan Railway Protection Movement have been overlooked by academics. This paper focuses on this topic, arguing that the discursive strategies in such texts revolved around the movement's aim of “breaking the agreement and protecting the railway,” and primarily included discourses on constitutionalism, financial interests, patriotism, cultural order, and the late emperor, as well the ideas of “ridding the emperor of evil ministers,” borrowed from traditional Chinese political discourses, and “national subjugation,” within the context of the national crisis. None of these discourses were “anti-Manchu” or “revolutionary,” yet they were able to mobilize the people of Sichuan to devote themselves to the Railway Protection Movement, as well as attracting the “sympathetic understanding” of high-ranking Sichuan officials, such as Wang Renwen 王人文 and Zhao Erfeng 赵尔丰, thus lending discursive power to the railway protection camp in its game of political chess with the Qing court. Meanwhile, the government's weak discursive power was an important factor in the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty by the revolutionary tide triggered by the Sichuan Railway Protection Movement. The discursive strategies in vernacular texts on railway protection (including the particularly strategic discourse on the late emperor) spread, transformed, and were reborn to varying degrees over the course of history.