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A discussion of the development of secret societies within China and among Chinese communities in colonial Southeast Asia in the late 18th and 19th centuries.
A discussion of the development of secret societies within China and among Chinese communities in colonial Southeast Asia in the late 18th and 19th centuries.
In this book, David Ownby provides a history of the development of the Chinese secret society from the 17th to the 19th century.
Histories, Cultures, Identities deals with two central questions relating to the Chinese community in Malaysia. First, how has being Chinese shaped the responses of this community to political, economic, and social developments in the country? And second, how have their experiences in Malaysia affected the way in which immigrants from China and their descendants identify themselves as Chinese?
Annotation Southeast Asian scholars may have special insights into their respective countries, but they are just as easily infected by political and didactic functions of their national histories as any historian. The editors (a professor and former professor with the School of Humanities, U. Sains Malaysia) present 15 papers in which Southeast Asian scholars turn a critical eye on their national historiographies. Five of the papers explore broad methodological issues, while others examine particular historiographic traditions from Burma (Myanmar), Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. The final group consists of case studies of the application of new methodologies and understandings to particular historical events or periods. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).
Exploring one of the most dynamic and contested regions of the world, this series includes works on political, economic, cultural, and social changes in modern and contemporary Asia and the Pacific. The leading specialist on China's twentieth century peasant resistance 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, inter-communal conflicts, and tenant protests over rent, was central to nationwide revolutionary processes.
The Tiandihui, also known as the Heaven and Earth Association or the Triads, was one of the earliest, largest, and most enduring of the Chinese secret societies that have played crucial roles at decisive junctures in modern Chinese history. These organizations were characterized by ceremonial rituals, often in the form of blood oaths, that brought people together for a common goal. Some were organized for clandestine, criminal, or even seditious purposes by people alienated from or at the margins of society. Others were organized for mutual protection or the administration of local activities by law-abiding members of a given community. The common perception in the twentieth century, both in China and in the West, was that the Tiandihui was founded by Chinese patriots in the seventeenth century for the purpose of overthrowing the Qing (Manchu) dynasty and restoring the Ming (Chinese). This view was put forward by Sun Yat-sen and other revolutionaries who claimed that, like the anti-Manchu founders of the Tiandihui, their goal was to strip the Manchus of their throne. The Chinese Nationalists (Guomindang) today claim the Tiandihui as part of their heritage. This book relates a very different history of the origins of the Tiandihui. Using Qing dynasty archives that were made available in both Beijing and Taipei during the last decades, the author shows that the Tiandihui was founded not as a political movement but as a mutual aid brotherhood in 1761, a century after the date given by traditional historiography. She contends that histories depicting Ming loyalism as the raison d'etre of the Tiandihui are based on internally generated sources and, in part, on the "Xi Lu Legend," a creation myth that tells of monks from the Shaolin Monastery aiding the emperor in fighting the Xi Lu barbarians. Because of its importance to the theories of Ming loyalist scholars and its impact on Tiandihui historiography as a whole, the author thoroughly investigates the legend, revealing it to be the product of later - not founding - generations of Tiandihui members and a tale with an evolution of its own. The seven extant versions of the legend itself appear in English translation as an appendix. This book thus accomplishes three things: it reviews and analyzes the extensive Tiandihui literature; it makes available to Western scholars information from archival materials heretofore seen only by a few Chinese specialists; and it firmly establishes an authoritative chronology of the Tiandihui's early history.
Renowned historical sociologist Charles Tilly wrote many years ago that “banditry, piracy, gangland rivalry, policing, and war-making all belong on the same continuum.” This volume pursues the idea by revealing how lawbreakers and lawmakers have related to one another on the shadowy terrains of power over wide stretches of time and space. Illicit activities and forces have been more important in state building and state maintenance than conventional histories have acknowledged. Covering vast chronological and global terrain, this book traces the contested and often overlapping boundaries between these practices in such very different polities as the pre-modern city-states of Europe, the modern nation-states of France and Japan, the imperial power of Britain in India and North America, Africa’s and Southeast Asia’s postcolonial states, and the emerging postmodern regional entity of the Mediterranean Sea. Indeed, the contemporary explosion of transnational crime raises the question of whether or not the relationship of illicit to licit practices may be mutating once more, leading to new political forms beyond the nation-state.
Do Chinese voluntary organizations continue to have a role in modern societies enmeshed in a globalizing world that questions continuation of the nation-state and ethnic identity? This book argues that Chinese voluntary organizations continue to play a significant role in both the established and new Chinese communities in the Diaspora. They are able to do so because of their ability to transform their organizational structure and functions. At the same time, they are able to reinvent their own images to suit their co-ethnic community and the wider polity. The uniqueness of this volume lies in its integration of historical and contemporary approaches to the study of traditional Chinese voluntary organizations in the Diaspora. The chapters explore how the Chinese voluntary organizations continue to fulfil the needs of the Chinese community in different parts of the world, and do this by both localizing and globalizing their functions and roles in the countries where they have established roots. The contributors cover traditional Chinese voluntary organizations from Asia to Australia, North America and Europe examining not only their activities in established Chinese communities such as Singapore and Malaysia, but also in the new emerging Chinese communities in Canada and Eastern Europe. This allows the readers to compare and contrast the voluntary organizations across countries and across time. Readership for this book includes scholars and students of Chinese Studies, Asian Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Diaspora Studies, History, Social Organizations and the general educated Chinese population.