Dian Murray - origins

Dian Murray: The origins of the Tiandihui
Standford UP Stanford alifornia, 1994
P1” Iwas discomforted by indication that the tiandihui members I encountered were more atively involved in the struggle for eonomi surial than in political struggle
Intro
“One of the most exiting developments for historians of hina during the last twenty years has been the opening of arhives on both Taiwan and the hinese mainland rih in material on the eonomy and society of the late imperial period Among the newly revealed panoramas of daily life, scholars have been afforded preious glimpses of the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth entury sojourners ,,, who were instrumental in founding and spreading the heaven and earth society ,,,
Now, however, with the opening of qing dynasty arhives, and speifially, with aess to the palae memorial olletions in the first historial arhives in Beijing and the national museum in taibei, we are able to determine the irumstanes under whih the tiandihui emerged in zhangxhou prefecture, Fujian as well as the ways in whih it spread throughout hina in the period before the opium war and thereafter to suh distant plaes as southeast asia and the united states These memorials , as we will see in the first two hapters of this study, reveal the tian di hui as a multisurname fraternity that was transmitted throughout south hina by an emigrant society
However, some of this information is dubious as it was obtained by polie under torture, and may have been extracted from innocent people
In any event, one thing is lear, the view of the tiandihui as a mutual aid society that emerges ffrom rhival documents stands in marked ontrast to the view that has prevailed throughout muh of the twentieth entury , to wit that it was reated by zheng henggong(Kongxinga) or other loyalists of the seventeenth entury for the purpose of “overthrowing the qing and restoring the Ming” Histories that espouse Ming loyalism as the raison d’etre of the Tiandihui tend to be based on internally generated soures and in particular on its reation myth, “the Xilu legend”
These hypotheses are now being hallenged by scholars of the Mutual Aid shool
Beginnings:
The eighteenth entury
Founded at the Guanyinting (goddess of mery pavilion) Gaoxi township, in Zhangpu ounty, Zhangzhou prfeture, Fujian provine, sometimes in 1761 or 1762

Southeast maroregion – hakka and hokkien
Maily ommerial region due to its oastline – difficult to farm under ming and gets worse under qing
P7
“to give some indication of the magnitude of the problem, in 1751 fujian provine had an estimated 7,736155 inhabitants about 1,500,00 of whom lived in the two largest prefectures Zhangzhou and quanzhou The sueeding years saw a population explosion that pushed the late eighteenth or early nineteenth entury figure beyond even the 1953 ensus’ estimate of 131 million in terms of land d tenure, this meant that whereas in 1571, the average landholding in zhangzhou was estimated at 50 mu per person, by 1812 the figure had shrunk to 093, well below the 40 mu needed for bare subsistene “
Zhangpu, home of tiandihui was hit very hard
“Whenever the people of zhangzhou or quanzhou got hungry, pirates emerged”
People turned to kinship patterns for protection and survival, from land, landlords and pirates
Religious societies in Fujian allowed their premises to be used
“Loal religious societies organized for the support of loal deities or ancestor worship, often finaned theses feuds and allowed their temples to be used as the headquarters for feud operations”
P13“One lous of early ativity was Taiwan, where the prevalene of sworn brotherhood s was noted by Ji Qiguang
P14 “A new phase began after the qing had ompleted their territorial onquest in 1683, when opponents of the new government, now driven underground, ombined the techniques of sworn fraternity and rebellion to ontinue resistane Soiety formation flourished as these rebels began to bbase pro-ming uprisings on foundations of blood brotherhood
P20 “The opportunity to “rise-up” was not the only thing that indued people to join the tian dihui during the early period Self interest surely guided some”
“The Western Historiography”
P89 “uriously enough, it was foreigners, not hinese who first beame interested in then tiandihui in its own right Their interest was partial rather thatn sholarlyand their fous omtemporary rather than historiaal As ivil servants of the Duth, British and Frenh governments, their task was to deal with the overseas hinese ommuniteis of Southesat Asia Theses ommunities werwe often more under the ontrol of societies rather than of their respeive olonialgovernments, and onsequently, ivil servants tried to learn as muh as they ould about them Some went as far as to join them and participate in ther initiation eremoneies Others gleaned their knowledge thogroug the handling and proessing of offenders arrested within their bailiwicks
It was also westerners and not hinese who first applied the term seret societies to these organisations
P90
The western diovery of seret societies in hina at a time of widespread suspicion of this darker side of masonry aused freemasons to seize on the find to prove that theirs was a honourable order that had originated in antiquity, as a resultwhen European ivil servants enountrered the tian dihui and its offshoots in asia , they immediately foused on the similarities between the seert societies of east and west Freemason intellectuals rated the myth that the hinese and masoni orders werr desendant of a ommon anestor
“The nineteenth –entury environment of the European olonial officials was one in whih seret societies dominated the intellectual landsape Foremost among these was the order of Freemason, whih had ommanded the membership of suh luminaries as Benjamin Franklin, Frederik the Great of Prussia, Wolfgang Mozart, and Voltare Many of the ivil servants werew members themselves and the rest were ertainly aware of the Freemasons existene