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Peasants Without the Party: Grass-roots Movements in Twentieth Century China
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Comments/Reviews
Description: This book sums up a lifetime of schoarship that has established Lucien Bianco as the leading specialist on China's twentieth century peasant resistance. It examines, reexamines, in bold and original ways, the question: Was the Chinese peasantry a revolutionary force?
Where most scholarly attention has focused on Communist-led peasant movements, Bianco's story is one of peasant thought and action largely unmediated by modern political parties. This volume pays particular attention to the first half of the twentieth century when peasant based conflict, ranging from tax and food protests to secret society conflicts, opium struggles, intercommunal conflicts, and tenant protests over rent, was central to nationwide revolutionary processes. While attentive to national and global forces penetrating the countryside, the book never loses sight of village roots of consciousness and resistance, the local character of many conflicts, and the interaction between the village and the milieu of war and international conflict that shaped China's great twentieth century transformations. It traces key themes of social conflict and peasant resistance from the Republic to the People's Republic down to the present.
Selected Contents:
1: Secret Societies and Peasant Self Defense, 1921-1933.
2: Reflections on Chinese Peasants and Revolution.
3: A Peasant Revolution?
4: How Credible Are the Numbers?
5: Peasant Uprisings Against Poppy-Tax Collection in Suxian and Lingbi (Anhui) in 1932.
6: The Responses of Opium Growers to Eradication Campaigns and the Poppy Tax, 1907-1949.
7: Resistance to Land Rent, 1895-1949.
8: Looting and Food Riots.
9: Early Twentieth Century Xiedou.
10: Xiedou during the Second Half of the Twentieth Century.
11: Peasant Responses to the Chinese Communist Party Mobilization Policies, 1937-1945.
12: Peasant Resistance in the PRC
13: Weak Weapons
Appendix 1: Time Distribution of Rural Disturbances.
Appendix 2: Cases of Peasant Resistance to Opium Eradication Campaigns, 1907-1949.
Appendix 3: Cases of Peasant Resistance to Opium Tax, 1896-1949.
Appendix 4:Geographical Distribution of Tenant Disturbances (1895-1949) in Various Sources.
Appendix 5: Differences and Convergence Between Bernhardt's and My Own Views.
Review(s): ...a solid contribution to our understanding of peasant movementsand rural conditions in China. Jnl of Peasant Studies
...the best introduction to the historiography on peasant violence in modern China. Revue Bibliographique de Sinologie
The book sheds light on an aspect of rural China that is seldom addressed and is, therefore, recommended to all of those who are interested in the Chinese agrarian and social development or in peasant movements. Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture 42 (3)
...this excellent book is a major contribution to the literature on peasant resistance and deserves a wide audience. China Perspectives, No.55
Peasants Without the Party is the product of remarkable resourcefulness in its research, analytic ingenuity and scholarly imagination. ... easants Without Pity is a very important book. ... it will be a long time before we see another China-wide historical survey of grassroots dissonance that is as finely constructed and expertly probed as this one. The China Journal, No.53
...is a volume that anyone interested in rural social change and political activism, generally as well as with respect to China, should have on their bookshelf and will ignore at their peril. In addition historians of China will find this an indispensable guide to both issues and literature on that country's peasantry. Etudes Chinoises, Vol. XXIV
    
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