Elizabeth J. Perry. Rebels and Revolutionaries in
In
her first major publication Elizabeth Perry sets out to answer one of the
important questions of modern Chinese history: “Why do some peasants rebel (p.
1)”? To illuminate answers to such a
deceptively simple question, Perry crafts a powerful, nuanced analysis of the
causal factors of peasant rebellions as they occurred in a single part of
China. Focusing on the rebellion prone
Huai Bei region, the study investigates three major peasant uprisings that
occurred there, spanning a century.
Central to her analysis is the pioneering two-pronged position that to
understand peasant revolution in
China, one must first understand a region’s history of rebellion. Perry finds the role of the local environment
a major factor for reaching such an understanding (p. 249). Gone from her preconceptions is a notion,
prevalent in previous studies, of an evolutionary link between rebellion and
revolution. Rebellion, she argues, is
not an irrational, crude act, to be replaced by “modern” revolution. It is on the contrary, a “sustained,
structured, and sensible form of collective action” (p. 2). The book breaks much ground in that it
successfully challenges previous understandings of both rebellion and
revolution in rural China.
The
structure of the book and its argument is a model of clarity. Chapters one and two introduce the framework
through which Perry views the Nien, Red Spear, and finally CCP actions. Environmental factors are a major component
of her analysis. She finds that peasant
actors in the region were compelled to pursue activities conducive to
rebellious behavior, due in large part to severe environmental restraints. However, Perry is careful not to assign a
total role to the environment in shaping history. She admits that social and political factors
were also important causal factors, and she includes them in a more complicated
definition of the local environment (p. 249).
Rural violence as a response to environmental uncertainty, she argues,
can only be translated into sustained action by social forces.
In
the core chapters of the book Perry presents a framework placing rebellions
into two categories based on peasant’s strategies for survival. One strategy she labels predatory and the
other protective. While she uses this model to describe the Nien as largely
predatory and the Red Spears as protective, her characterization is not
rigid. Rather, for Perry the crucial
point is that in any sustained rebellion both strategies come into play within
a given movement. It is this synthesis,
she concludes, that allowed for sustained action (p.122, 167). In an illuminating final chapter on the CCP’s
revolution in the region, Perry compellingly demonstrates that the CCP, in its
quest to transform rural China, was confronted with groups characterizing these
strategies. Who the Party chose to align
itself with, or tried to control, varied through changing historical circumstances,
with varying degrees of success and failure.
What
Perry clearly argues is that the CCP could not simply take advantage of some
prior peasant unrest to further its goals.
Rebellions did not stack on top of one another, like blocks, with the
final piece being a modern revolution. By
freeing herself from standard historical periodizations, her analysis both
traces continuities in human responses to environmental factors, and
illuminates the impact of historical change on that response. This study shows that a collective action
repertoire existed among peasants, and it was indeed exploited by the CCP. She takes rebellion seriously precisely
because of the power of this repertoire to ward off or attack perceived outside
threats. Her final picture is a view of
revolutionary process that was difficult, changing, and local as it confronted
such repertoires. Perry thus
demonstrates how the CCP’s victory in the countryside clearly rested on its
abilities to “overcome—rather than reflect” previous (environmental)
conditions. Philip Kuhn praised the work
as outstanding social history, but was critical of Perry’s overly rational,
functional approach to local culture. He
wanted more attention to cultural factors like the Red Spears’ belief systems
apart from any functional roles those systems played (Pacific Affairs, 54.3: 513-515).
It has been twenty years since the book’s publication and students today
may find its assumptions and conclusions about the environment, rebellion, and
revolutionary process somewhat obvious.
That the points she makes are commonplace today is a testament to the
foresight of such a pioneering scholar.
Christian
Hess
©
Copyright 2002. All Rights Reserved.