White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates: Crisis and Reform in the Qing Empire, by Wensheng Wang

Abstract

White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates: Crisis and Reform in the Empire, Wensheng Wang. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2014. 339 pp. $39.95 US (cloth). Scholars of the empire (1644-1911) have conventionally divided its into two halves: first, the High Qing that lasted until the Qianlong emperor's death in 1799; second, a slow nineteenth-century decline culminating in the regime's collapse. Consequently, according historian Wensheng Wang, the transition from the Qianlong Jiaqing emperor has been unjustly overlooked as a dead middle period, which does not fit neatly into either epoch. In his study White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates, Wang attempts remedy this oversight and to restore continuity across the two halves of by reconceptualizing the place of Emperor Jiaqing and his seemingly unremarkable reign (p. 4). Wang argues that once the Jiaqing emperor took power in 1799, he initiated a set of sustainable reforms that strengthened the state. Specifically, Wang examines the emperor's response two ongoing political crises at the time: the sectarian White Lotus rebellion in the Han River highlands and the chronic threat of raiding pirates in the South China Sea. Whereas past historiography viewed these events as harbingers of eventual decline, Wang asserts that the two frontier threats, one inland and one maritime, actually a reorganization of the state which better prepared the dynasty deal with larger crises following the first Opium War (1842). In admirably ambitious fashion, then, Wang simultaneously analyzes short-term events, century-long trends, and judgments on the empire as a whole. After a historiographical introduction and background chapter, Wang divides his argument into two sections. In Part II, A View from the Bottom, he dedicates one chapter each the rebels and pirates, explaining both the ideological and social-economic conditions behind them. If these chapters lean toward sociocultural history (p. 5), then Part III, A View from the Top, adopts the tone of political history. Across four chapters, Wang contrasts the shortcomings of an octogenarian Qianlong emperor and his corrupt regent He Shen, on the one hand, versus the successful reforms of the Jiaqing emperor on the other. Whereas the late Qianlong regime nearly bankrupted the empire through costly wars, the Jiaqing emperor curbed military overexpansion pragmatically compromising with the rebels and pirates while simultaneously setting institutional limits on the power of inner court officials. These policies, laid out in chapter six, represent the major thrust (p. 113) of Wang's story. As the book progresses, Wang begins shift his claims about how exactly the Jiaqing reforms were related the rebels and pirates. Although he initially argues the two crises propelled change, his story in the end primarily revolves around the Jiaqing emperor. The rebels and pirates, therefore, served less as an impetus for reform than an opportune occasion for the Jiaqing emperor execute his plan. …