[
    {
        "id": 205497,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1968",
        "page_number": 39,
        "title": "RAS-1968",
        "content_text": "34\n\nMARJORIE TOPLEY\n\nUnder what circumstances might sects expand and include numbers of the ordinary peasantry? Did they ever include members of the local gentry or enjoy support of a whole village? The Nien is said to have recruited whole communities when getting ready to rebel.43 De Groot notes that when all villagers were members of a sect a piece of white cloth was used by the village as a mark of distinction.44\n\nRebellions and local disturbances initiated by sects appear to have taken place when economic conditions in the countryside worsened and local officials were at their most oppressive. Some sects clearly aimed mainly at the poor. One I know provided charms which when eaten were supposed to have overcome hunger for several months. In times of extreme poverty and oppression the organization of villages might have been weakened. The interests of village leaders and ordinary peasants might draw closer to each other in such conditions and also to those of the dislocated peasantry.\n\nThe objects of most religious rebellions was not to change the social order but purge the government of unvirtuous elements and sometimes change the ruling dynasty. Local village leaders in times of stress might also have desired this object. It seems that some organizations even attracted leaders of large mono-lineage villages. In times of disaster it must have been difficult to maintain a strong lineage organization to support the ancestral hall association with wealth. And other villages seeing their powerful landlords weakened might have taken advantage of the situation to resist their control. The Nien and the Eight Diagrams Sect are both said to have aided villages in inter-village fights (ultimately increasing their dominance over the villages concerned).45 The Eight Diagrams sect is said in fact to have risen as a result of antagonisms among village communities. Leaders of large lineage villages were made leaders of some organizations.46\n\nOne Nien head is said to have been leader of a \"clan\" composed of a thousand families, allying his village with more than ten others (his exact \"leadership\" status in the kin-group is not very clear, however).47 But the Nien was careful to preserve village leaders in its organization and this brought its own problems of expansion. The interests of various communities and local village heads inhibited the build up of centralized control over large areas by the Nien.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206682,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1972",
        "page_number": 230,
        "title": "RAS-1972",
        "content_text": "224\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nis 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.\n\nThis 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.\n\nOne 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.\n\nGroups 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",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h",
        "rank": 0
    }
]