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State University of New York Press - Jeff Hornibrook

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170 pages

English

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Jeff Hornibrook provides a unique, microcosmic look at the process of industrialization in one Chinese community at the turn of the twentieth century. Industrialization came late to China, but was ultimately embraced and hastened to aid the state's strategic and military interests. In Pingxiang County in the highlands of Jiangxi Province, coalmining was seasonal work; peasants rented mines from lineage leaders to work after the harvest. These traditions changed in 1896 when the court decided that the county's mines were essential for industrialization. Foreign engineers and Chinese officials arrived to establish the new social and economic order required for mechanized mining, one that would change things for people from all levels of society. The outsiders constructed a Westernized factory town that sat uneasily within the existing community. Mistreatment of the local population, including the forced purchase of gentry-held properties and the integration of peasants into factory-style labor schemes, sparked a series of rebellions that wounded the empire and tore at the fabric of the community. Using stories found in memoirs of elite Chinese and foreign engineers, correspondence between gentry and powerful officials, travelogues of American missionaries and engineers, as well as other sources, Hornibrook offers a fascinating history of the social and political effects of industrialization in Pingxiang County.
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Scratching the Dirt, Digging the Rocks: The Economy and Technology of Late Imperial Era Pingxiang County

2. Relatives, Clansmen, and Neighbors: Local Politics on the Eve of Mechanization

3. Self-Strengthening Up Above and Reorganizing Down Below

4. Irrevocably Remapping the County

5. Mechanization of the Coalmines: Tearing Down and Building Up

6. Social Atomization and Local Resistance: Divergent Desires and Strategies of Elites and Workers

Conclusion: Industrialization in the World’s Countrysides

Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

20th century

History of Asia

Asia

China

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Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	27 avril 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781438456898
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	11 Mo

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A GREAT UNDERTAKING
A GREAT UNDERTAKING
Mechanization and Social Change in a Late Imperial Chinese Coalmining Community
Jeff Hornibrook
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2015 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Diane Ganeles
Marketing, Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hornibrook, Jeff.
A great undertaking : mechanization and social change in a late Imperial Chinese coalmining community / Jeff Hornibrook.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5687-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5689-8 (e-book : alk. paper)
1. Coal mines and mining—China—Pingxiang (Jiangxi Sheng)—History—19th century. 2. Industrialization—China—Pingxiang (Jiangxi Sheng)—History—19th century. 3. Pingxiang (Jiangxi Sheng, China)—Economic conditions—19th century. 4. Pingxiang (Jiangxi Sheng, China)—Social conditions—19th century. 5. Pingxiang (Jiangxi Sheng, China)—History—19th century. I. Title. HD9556.C53P564 2015 338.2’7240951222—dc23 2014030656
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Scratching the Dirt, Digging the Rocks: The Economy and Technology of Late Imperial Era Pingxiang County
2. Relatives, Clansmen, and Neighbors: Local Politics on the Eve of Mechanization
3. Self-Strengthening Up Above and Reorganizing Down Below
4. Irrevocably Remapping the County
5. Mechanization of the Coalmines: Tearing Down and Building Up
6. Social Atomization and Local Resistance: Divergent Desires and Strategies of Elites and Workers
Conclusion: Great Undertakings around the Globe
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
While sitting in my office tracking down Chinese characters for the glossary and figuring out rent calculations in piculs of rice, it is easy to think that this book was done by my own hand with little outside assistance. In reality, this project has taken a very long time and relied on the kindness of many friends, colleagues, family members—and some strangers—along the way.
First, I would like to thank my professors at the University of Minnesota who helped me through the initial stages of this project. Because they were often skeptical that a study of modern coalmining was a suitable topic for a dissertation, I was doubly aware that my work had to pass the smell test on a number of occasions. Even more, for more than two years Drs. Romeyn Taylor and Ann Waltner took time out of their days to help me with my translations and think through the implications of the data I collected. Along with Ted Farmer, they also guided me through the initial process of learning to do research using Chinese sources, a skill that does not simply translate from American library systems.
Once I completed my dissertation, I found new data that dramatically altered my understanding of the history of Pingxiang County. I honestly didn’t know what to do with the increasingly apparent notion that Confucian scholars were also running firms as big as Guangtaifu. Fortunately, I could turn to an old friend, David Wakefield, whose understanding of Chinese history was unique and insightful. He set me straight and cleared up many misperceptions I had about my own data. Sadly, with his death, I lost a sounding board who listened to me and talked me through problems big and small. More importantly, I lost a true friend.
Translating and analyzing documents is, to say the least, a daunting task. I turned to many Chinese scholars and students to help me with translations and broader understanding of the documents on the social history of coalmining in Pingxiang County. For this endeavor I would like to thank Yao Yusheng, Hsu Pi-ching, Jiang Yonglin, Pan Mingte, Zhu Lisheng, Hao Yongjuan, Leigh Zhang, Zhang Jiefu, Stephanie Balfoort, Liu Tongfei, Li Minmin, Du Yisi, and Lily Wang. Also, a big thanks to Dr. Xie Liou for making the map of Pingxiang County and the environs.
Most of the research funding for this project came from State University of New York at Plattsburgh, where I have taught for the past sixteen years. Two presidential research scholarships allowed me to travel to Pingxiang County and find documents I could not find elsewhere and to simply take in the sights and feel of Anyuan and Pingxiang County. This work was greatly assisted by the wonderful staff at the Jiangxi Provincial Academy of Social Sciences in Nanchang and the branch office in Pingxiang County. To the many people in those two offices: I cannot thank you enough.
From the time I completed this work as a dissertation until now I have been adding/tweaking/rethinking much of the material as I put together papers and articles. I was inspired and assisted by my colleagues in the History Department at SUNY Plattsburgh, including Vincent Carey, Wendy Gordon, Gary Kroll, Stuart Voss, Doug Skopp, Jim Lindgren, Richard Schaefer, Jim Rice, Ryan Alexander, Mark Richard, and Sylvie Beaudreau. Also, while attending conferences, I met and gained insights from Elizabeth Perry, Madeline Zelin, Andrea McElderry, Joseph Esherick, Chris Isett, Fa-ti Fan, and Kristen Stapleton. However, it was not until I sent my draft to State University of New York Press that this research began to take on the form of a real book manuscript. The press’s anonymous readers provided me with sharp criticisms that allowed me to take my data and formulate it into something more organized and complete. I subsequently joined a writing group on campus made up of Monica Ciobanu, Dan Lake, Connie Shemo, and Jessamyn Neuhaus. They read each chapter and helped me bring my pages into book form. I must especially thank Connie Shemo for pushing me to make contacts and put myself out to the scholarly community when my personal inclination was to draw back. And I cannot miss the opportunity to thank Jessamyn Neuhaus for going over my text with a fine-toothed comb and encouraging me to make stylistic changes that made the narrative clearer and much livelier (how can I ever repay her for all this?).
Lastly, I wish to thank all my family members who have waited for a very long time to see me complete this work. In many ways, I received support and respite from each of them. I especially wish to acknowledge my beautiful daughter Olivia and my lovely wife Annette. If it wasn’t for them there would be no reason to strive to succeed, or at least success would have no payoff. It is to those two wonderful women in my life that this book is dedicated.
Introduction
In the spring of 1896, the people of Pingxiang County pursued their lives as they had for generations, indeed for centuries. In this isolated community located in Jiangxi Province just along the provincial border with Hunan to the west, peasants began the backbreaking work of planting their landlords’ rice fields and then continued throughout the summer with weeding and maintaining the crop. When the summer crop was harvested, they put in a fall crop of wheat or sweet potatoes, and then, when the winter months made farming no longer possible, the men and boys went off to the mountains to mine for coal. Using essentially the same tools they employed for farming—as these were the only ones they owned—they headed off to the landlords’ coalfields in hopes that they could extract pieces of coal for heating their homes, fueling their ovens, and perhaps selling in the market for a few extra coins. They dug holes in the mountains marked by small flags and extracted the minerals until the vein was depleted or the water table flooded the shaft. Then the work teams moved to the next spot, often a few yards away; planted another flag; and began the process again.
That fall, however, a German miner went into the mountains and began examining the quality of the minerals. The man’s name was Gustav Leinung, and he was sent by the imperial court to examine the coal deposits to determine if they could be used to fuel an ironworks in the Wuhan Cities to the north. This new factory was to be the focal point of a modernization scheme beyond the wildest dreams or understanding of most of the people of the county. And indeed, twenty years later, Pingxiang County’s mountains around the mining town of Anyuan were covered not with small mine shafts and flags but with railroads and factories, European compounds and workers’ dormitories, Christian churches and hospitals, gambling houses and opium dens. The changes were not only architectural, however. Local elites and lineage leaders that had overseen the politics and economy of Pingxiang County for centuries were pushed aside and replaced by a new sociopolitical blueprint. Mining was not only done seasonally but was year-round, and local peasants were increasingly working side-by-side with men recruited both regionally and even throughout the greater Chinese empire. Perhaps most importantly, the extracted coal came out of the mines in quantities one hundred times the amount it had in the past. And when it was taken from the mountains, it was placed on a modern train and sent far away from the county’s markets and the inhabitants that had relied on it for generations. The coal shipments traveled several hundred miles to factories that were forged to mode