# MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE
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General Gascoigne summed up the consequences of the occupation: "the forces of law... had disappeared on our arrival..."76
## Conclusions
The original questions, posed at page above, were how were composite militia forces organized and can they be related to what is known of other, enduring aspects of social organization in rural Kwangtung? It has been shown that the resistance movement was organized within and between standard marketing communities. For example, meetings were held at Yuen Long, and attended by leaders from throughout the area, prior to the first formal meeting with leaders from adjacent marketing communities. Meetings not held in ancestral halls were convened in the appropriate market town. In two of the markets - Shek Wu Hui and Tai Po - they occurred in temples which served existing market-wide associations.
The Tai P'ing Kuk was established at Yuen Long as headquarters for the entire resistance movement. It is probable that this kuk was intended to replace the Tung Ping Kuk of the intermediate market, Sham Chun. The latter was a meeting place not only for leaders from within the New Territory, but also for leaders from adjacent Chinese territory. Attempts to enlist their support for the resistance had failed. This may account for the establishment of a new kuk, to serve the organizational needs of those involved in resistance.
If, as has been suggested, the Tung Ping Kuk was a militia association, the constituent tung were not always organizational units. Although Yuen Long Tung appears to have been congruent with the Yuen Long marketing area, Sheung U Tung encompassed the marketing communities represented by Shek Wu and Tai Po markets. They, rather than the tung, were the loci of mobilization. A tentative view is that the tung were territorial areas of responsibility for the relatively few militia units within them, rather than organizational units per se.
The response to the occupation of Sham Chun confirms the significance of marketing areas for militia mobilization. The Rev. Schaub's letters depict, in outline, a nexus of organization closely resembling that revealed by the resistance movement within the New Territory.