White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates: Crisis and Reform in the Qing Empire

by Wensheng Wang

Overview

Wensheng Wang argues that a dramatic combination of internal uprising and transnational piracy during Emperor Jiaqing's reign, rather than being a hallmark of dynastic decline, propelled the Manchu court to reorganize itself through modifications in policymaking and bureaucracy that sustained the Qing Empire for another century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674725317
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	01/06/2014
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	8.20(w) x 11.90(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Wensheng Wang is Associate Professor of History at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

I Contextualizing Crises

1 Origins of the Qianlong-Jiaqing Crises 17

II A View from the Bottom

2 The White Lotus Rebellion in the Han River Highlands 37

3 The Piracy Crisis in the South China Sea 81

III A View from the Top

4 Court Politics and Imperial Visions 113

5 The Inner White Lotus Rebellion 132

6 The Jiaqing Reforms 165

7 The Piracy Crisis and Foreign Diplomacy 209

Conclusion 253

List of Abbreviations and Primary Sources 261

Notes 265

Acknowledgments 319

Index 323

Editorial Reviews

An impressive history of a critical and little-known period in the Qing dynasty, the first decade of the nineteenth century. Wang shows that the Jiaqing reign was not a time of weakness or decline, but a deliberate renunciation of the excessive overreach of his predecessor, the Qianlong emperor. Indeed, the Jiaqing emperor’s reforms left the empire better equipped to meet its many social and political challenges.
— Peter C. Perdue, Yale University

This important book brings the case of Qing China into our broader discussions of an age of multiple global transformations. It is theoretically ambitious, in control of scholarship in several languages, and based on extensive archival research, with an abundance of vivid quotations.
— John E. Wills, Jr., University of Southern California

From the Publisher

An impressive history of a critical and little-known period in the Qing dynasty, the first decade of the nineteenth century. Wang shows that the Jiaqing reign was not a time of weakness or decline, but a deliberate renunciation of the excessive overreach of his predecessor, the Qianlong emperor. Indeed, the Jiaqing emperor’s reforms left the empire better equipped to meet its many social and political challenges.

Peter C. Perdue

This important book brings the case of Qing China into our broader discussions of an age of multiple global transformations. It is theoretically ambitious, in control of scholarship in several languages, and based on extensive archival research, with an abundance of vivid quotations.

John E. Wills