Qiushu chukeben (older name Ch'iu shu) was a political book by Zhang Binglin. It is often cited as influential to the 1911 Xinhai Revolution which overthrew the Qing dynasty of China and established a republic.
Name
editTranslation of the title into English[1]
Author
editZhang Binglin was a writer for a constitutional monarchist group under Kang Youwei which advocated gradual reforms. He held these reformist and Pan-Asianist ideas until the failure of the 1898 Hundred Days' Reform and Boxer Uprising (1899–1901) to resist imperialist countries' exploitation of China. Prior to the publication of Qiushu in 1900, Zhang published an essay called Kedu lun ("On the Guest Emperor"), which implicated the Qing dynasty as illegitimate "guests" in China. In Confucian historiographical terms, Zhang imitates the Zuo Zhuan style of commentary, as opposed to the Gongyang Zhuan style.[1]
While the anti-Qing movement was a broad coalition of revolutionaries united in their opposition to the Qing dynasty, its thinkers were divided on what role Manchu people should fulfill in a post-Qing China. In 1900, Zhang wrote essays and letters in criticism of Liang Qichao's apologia for the Qing. While Liang feared a massacre of Manchus should the revolutionaries succeed, Zhang argued that Manchus need not be the target of reprisals: although they continued to discriminate against Han Chinese and indeed massacred many Han in the Qing conquest of the Ming, they should be allowed to live freely under their own regime.[1]
Publication
editThe collection of fifty essays was first published in 1900. A newer edition was published in 1904: its many changes, omissions, and additions changed the Qiushu's reformist orientation to a more revolutionary tone. Zhang only ever referred back to the later edition of the Qiushu after its publication. The essays often make positive references to dissident thinkers in Chinese philosophy from the Hundred Schools of Thought, such as Xuncius.[2] Personally, Zhang often criticized Confucius, adhering to the Old Text school of Confucian interpretation.[3]
In the second edition of Qiushu, Zhang continues a study of surnames in the tradition of scholars like Gu Yanwu, in an attempt to trace Han people's lineage back to the Yellow Emperor. At the same time, he argues for a common origin for Chinese and Europeans through Chaldea, through a study of Sino-Roman relations.
Influences
editQiushu shows influence from the ideas of the Prussian Enlightenment thinker Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) in its Darwinism and acceptance of a single origin of the human race. Zhang broke from European thinkers at the time, however, by arguing that Chinese people could make a claim to be as "civilized" as Koreans, Japanese, and Europeans.[4]
Zhang also builds on the idea of Ming loyalist scholar Wang Fuzhi (1619–1692) which argued that Chinese people were influenced over a long time by the Geography of China.[4] While he was in jail in 1905, Chinese people participated in a boycott of American goods to protest the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882; Chinese intellectuals at the time were also heavily influenced by the Abolitionist and other movements for "oppressed" people around the world.[4]
Contents
editThe Qiushu argues against the Qing government based on the tradition of ancestor veneration in China. Although the idea of Han people (Hanren, "Chinese") and Man people (Menren, "Manchu") already had some use in China, Zhang pioneered the terms' use as ancestral lineage concepts.[1] Thus, he transformed the ancient Hua–Yi distinction on degrees of Chinese-ness from a cultural dichotomy to a genealogical dichotomy. His thesis ran contrary to the classical view of sinicization, which posits that anybody who accepts Chinese culture can be regarded as Chinese.[4]
After arguing that the idea of a "Han people"'s lineage was important, the Qiushu goes on then to argue that the oppressive rule of "usurpers" to that Han lineage is comparable to "adopting someone with a different surname as heir" (yi yixing wei hou).[1]
Bian zulei
Criticism
editRealistically it was not possible to discriminate between Han and non-Han by a person's ownership of a Chinese surname; since at least the time of the Northern Wei (386–535), semi-sinicized and pre-sinicized peoples living in China had adopted Chinese surnames.[1]
Influenced
editLiu Shipei, Rangshu.
References
edit- ^ a b c d e Dikötter, Frank, ed. (1997). The Construction of Racial Identities in China and Japan. University of Hawaii Press. pp. 36–43.
- ^ Shimada Kenji (1990). Pioneer of the Chinese Revolution: Zhang Binglin and Confucianism. Stanford University Press. p. 111.
- ^ Fogel, Joshua; Zarrow, Peter, eds. (1997). Imagining the People: Chinese Intellectuals and the Concept of Citizenship, 1890-1920. M.E. Sharpe. pp. 76–77.
- ^ a b c d Murthy, Viren (2011). The Political Philosophy of Zhang Taiyan: The Resistance of Consciousness. Brill. pp. 72–80.