The Christian ”Revolution“ and the Muslim ”Rebellions“ in Mid-19th-Century China

Yang Zhang, American University

The century-long Chinese revolution commenced with the Taiping Revolution and simultaneous Muslim uprisings in the mid-19th century in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), but their revolutionary nature has not been fully understood. My article contends that this wave of revolution was less driven by class struggle or elite conflicts than being the result of ideological struggles between competing universalist interpretations of the legitimate order and the growing ethnic awareness that fueled resistance against the imperial rule. Furthermore, it was ethnic particularism under religious universalism that made this wave of revolutions fragmented yet full-blown. Such ethno-religious entanglement became a recurrent pattern throughout modern China’s nation-empire project, playing a consequential, albeit overlooked, role in subsequent republican and communist revolutions. This pattern also explains post-revolution politics in present-day PRC. Reevaluating the modernity project through ethno-religious and imperial lenses, I attempt to renew the theoretical tradition in historical sociology initiated by Max Weber and Barrington Moore by engaging with the ongoing cultural and imperial turn in the field.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 134. Critical Approaches to Revolutions