224
BOOK REVIEWS
is made to view the movements which have often been politically militant, first against the background of Chinese society, imperial power and foreign penetration, then the Republican cause, and finally in what is perhaps the most original and interesting section of the book, the period 1919-1949: 'the Chinese Revolution'. There are no Chinese characters in the text but a short character index is appended after an equally short bibliography and a slightly longer list of references.
This book seems to be mainly oriented to the general reader who is unfamiliar with the subject, and in as far as this is so the author may be excused for his almost entire use of secondary materials; even the official documents are largely culled from other published sources. But since he also states that one of his major concerns is to ‘illuminate certain aspects of the life of Chinese secret societies and the part they played in China's political upheavals', it does call for more considered criticism.
One does not, of course, blame the author for not reaching definite conclusions. As he says, the 'sixty or so original documents' are certainly not enough to provide an answer to such questions as how one might define a Chinese secret society in modern times (or for that matter, I would say, traditional times). Historical research is only just beginning. But I would take issue with him on what I consider to be a fundamental weakness in his analysis: the mixing of structurally and functionally, as well as ideologically, different categories. Here, in fact, the Chinese use of terminology is itself often misleading, for the same term might be applied indiscriminately to different orders of groupings: all organizations which have in common secrecy, religion, and militant, anti-establishment aims. The groups themselves, moreover, sometimes use the terms hui ('society') and tao ('religion') or men ('door' or 'sect') interchangeably, and even more confusing, dissimilar types of groups appear to have sometimes combined in order to pursue some particular aim of the moment. But enough has been written in the last decade to show that two distinctly different kinds of groupings emerged in China, and certain major differences may sometimes be discerned in fact from the earlier literature.
Groups such as, for example, the Pure Tea Sect (Ch'ing-ch'a-hui), the Way of Fundamental Unity (Yi-kuan-tao), the Eight Diagrams, the Observance Society, 'Vegetarians' (in fact a qualification for