Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-2011
Abstract
The land-locked north China province of Shanxi, identified in 1870 by the geologist Baron Richthofen as ‘one of the most remarkable coal and iron regions in the world’, was the site of a provincially–defined national movement far removed from the better–studied treaty ports and their articulate and prolific nationalists. This late-Qing provincialism may be read as a mediating symbol of an emerging national consciousness. Social tensions were exacerbated by external challenges brought by foreign agents, and their Chinese collaborators, of cultural and economic imperialism. Opposition to missionaries and Chinese Christians had begun as early as the 1860s. In 1898 the British Pekin Syndicate and its extra-provincial Chinese associates, with the backing of the central government, secured rights to Shanxi’s rich coal and iron resources. These rights were ceded back ten years later after a successful ‘rights-recovery’ movement that possesses similarities to (but also significant differences from) the well-studied oppositional movements in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hunan, and Shandong in the period 1905–1911. The duration of Shanxi’s struggle, along with its extra-bureaucratic elite activism, popular mobilization, and cooperation with Beijing, makes its rights-recovery movement distinctive. The rhetoric and practices of the movement, which began before the Boxer Uprising of 1900 and reflects the rhetorical influence of these earlier protests, contributed to a strong regional solidarity that was backed by central state authority. There were various patterns of protest, one indigenous and provincial, one extra-provincial and nationalist, that interacted in the period 1902–1908. Provincial activists, including merchants, peasants, students, degree holders, and officials, insisted that Shanxi’s coal was for the use of the community, the province, and the nation on terms established by and for the people of Shanxi. In their victory, localism, provincialism, and the national project, had come together.
Publication Title
Modern Asian Studies
Volume
45
First Page
1261
Last Page
1288
Required Publisher's Statement
© 2011, Cambridge University Press. View original published article in Modern Asian Studies.
Recommended Citation
Thompson, Roger R., "'If Shanxi's Coal is Lost, Then Shanxi is Lost!': Shanxi's Coal and an Emerging National Movement in Provincial China, 1898-1908" (2011). History Faculty and Staff Publications. 9.
https://cedar.wwu.edu/history_facpubs/9
Subjects - Topical (LCSH)
Mines and mineral resources--China--Shanxi Sheng; Coalmines and mining--China--Shanxi Sheng; Anti-imperialist movements--China--Shanxi Sheng
Geographic Coverage
Shanxi Sheng (China)--History--19th century; Shanxi Sheng (China)--History--20th century
Genre/Form
articles
Type
Text
Language
English
Format
application/pdf
