Introduction
Following the outbreak of war between China and Japan in late 1937, the celebrated Hunan writer, Shen Congwen, issued a number of pleas to military commanders and local strongmen in his native West Hunan asking them to unify in the face of the national crisis.Footnote 1 One target of this appeal was a simmering Miao uprising in the mountainous border zone of West Hunan. This appeal did not fall on deaf ears. Instead of simply abandoning their struggle, uprising forces incorporated resistance to Japan into their own goals. In this case the anti-Japanese War of Resistance did not bring an end to internal conflict but gave it new shape and meaning.
The West Hunan Miao uprising had deep roots in the centuries-long expansion of the Chinese state on its southwestern frontier. The absorption of large stretches of territory inhabited by diverse ethnic groups made the assimilation or control of such groups a continuing concern of successive state regimes. The state-building project of the early twentieth-century Republic provided a new impetus for the administrative integration of ethnic populations in peripheral areas. This project, however, was confronted by remnants of earlier institutions established to deal with the problem of ethnic control that had, in many cases, generated deeply embedded social, economic, political and military structures. State intrusion in such cases was a destabilizing force that could aggravate long-standing ethnic resentments, while at the same time creating the conditions for a multi-layered struggle among a variety of state and local interests. The Miao uprising in West Hunan offers a particularly strong example of the way in which such interests competed and interlocked in the response to shifting political conditions.
The institution at the heart of the 1937 Miao uprising in West Hunan was a military-agricultural land system (tuntian) originally created in the early nineteenth century to support a military structure targeted at preventing Miao rebellion. Surviving anachronistically into the Republican period, the rents from this military land system became a base for autonomous warlord power in West Hunan. The Miao districts of West Hunan therefore presented both a challenge and a lure to potential state-builders. When a Miao uprising finally broke out against the military-agricultural land system in 1937, it occurred within a context of a multi-faceted struggle for the control of West Hunan that involved local strongmen, a regional warlord, and competing provincial and central state-building projects. In this context, the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War simply added another layer of complexity by providing uprising leaders with an opportunity to recast their struggle in patriotic terms. Thus, while Miao resistance to an oppressive land system lay at the heart of this uprising, the uprising responded to, and was shaped by, a broader range of political issues raised in a period of growing nationalism and state-building.
The origin of the West Hunan tuntian system
West Hunan (Xiangxi), a region largely encompassing the watershed of the Yuan River, has long had a distinctive place in the history of Hunan province. The region's most distinguishing characteristic is a mountainous terrain that limited agriculture and hindered transportation. West Hunan's second distinguishing characteristic has been its dominant non-Han ethnic population, the Miao, though other groups are also represented (including Dong, Hui, Tujia, Zhuang, and Yao).Footnote 2 The combination of difficult terrain and large minority populations complicated the extension of state power into West Hunan in both Imperial and Republican eras.
The Qing dynasty faced serious Miao unrest in the Southwest during the reign of the Yongzheng emperor (1723–1736) as increasing numbers of Han settlers pushed into Miao lands, and as the dynasty sought to tighten its early ‘loose rein’ over Miao regions by replacing native chieftains with regular officials (gaitu guiliu). The result was a series of Miao uprisings in Guizhou and West Hunan throughout most of the eighteenth century. The Miao region of West Hunan was the focal point of one of the largest of these uprisings in 1795, lasting 12 years and requiring 180,000 troops to suppress it.Footnote 3
With the suppression of this revolt, various measures were instituted to prevent the reoccurrence of Miao unrest in West Hunan. Some measures, such as the promotion of Chinese education and the suppression of Miao religious ceremonies, sought to make the Miao more tractable by cultural assimilation. Efforts were also made to limit Han-Miao contact, and thus conflict, by making Miao villages off-limits to yamen-runners and forbidding cross-ethnic land sales.Footnote 4 A strong military presence was also important in preventing further unrest. Thus over 9,000 Green Standard Army regulars were sent to garrison West Hunan from strategic walled towns.Footnote 5 The need for local troops who could be distributed more broadly across the area, meanwhile, resulted in the institution of a tuntian system with effects that would ultimately go beyond the defensive concerns that were its original raison d'être.
Tuntian, usually translated as ‘military agricultural colonies’, have a history in China dating back to the Han dynasty. Although appearing in various forms, tuntian generally sought to reduce military expenses by providing land for soldiers, or their families, with the expectation that they would support themselves by their own labour. As the Chinese state penetrated the Southwest, the establishment of military agricultural colonies of various sorts was an important part of its repertoire for controlling ethnic populations. The Ming dynasty, for example, used this technique extensively to quell ethnic unrest in Guizhou.Footnote 6
The establishment of tuntian in West Hunan began with a 1799 proposal by the Zhen'gan (Fenghuang) sub-prefect, Fu Nai, to ‘support braves and establish guardhouses’ (yangyong sheka) in defence against a recurrence of Miao uprisings. Fu's system was first implemented in five sub-prefectures, or counties, that had been at the centre of the Miao revolt: Fenghuang (Zhen'gan), Qiancheng (originally Qianzhou), Yongsui, Baojing, and Guzhang. To provide support for additional military forces, the system was later extended to Luxi and Mayang counties.Footnote 7
The largest portion of the land included in the tuntian system was in theory confiscated from Miao rebels. But this label was liberally applied to justify the seizure of sufficient private land to meet necessary quotas. The government also staked a claim on lands that had been recently opened in marginal areas. The amount of land taken varied by county, depending on the size of the Miao population and their level of participation in the revolt. In Yongsui, whose population was almost entirely Miao, nearly all agricultural lands were absorbed into the tuntian system. Percentages in other counties varied from 20–70 per cent. In the end, over 150,000 mu were seized, with the largest concentrations in Yongsui and Fenghuang (nearly 50,000 mu each). Approximately one-third of this land was apportioned to local soldiers and officers, and to local officials appointed to manage the tuntian system. The rest was rented out to tenant-farmers, drawn largely from the same Miao population whose lands had just been seized, with tuntian rents (tunzu) going to support the costs of the local military system.Footnote 8 Since most of the land was actually rented out, rather than being farmed by soldiers, tuntian, in this case, is probably better translated as ‘military-agricultural lands’, or more simply as ‘military lands’, rather than as ‘colonies’.
These military lands, and the rents they produced, supported a fairly complex system of local military forces, including 7,000 (mainly Han) ‘military land soldiers’ (tunding), 1,000 militia braves (yong), as well as 5,000 Miao troops (Miaobing) along with nearly 500 Miao officers.Footnote 9 All these men received either land or grain rations supplied through tuntian rents. Some of these men assumed regular military duties at permanent garrisons, while others were assigned to provide the ‘muscle’ to collect tuntian rents or guard granaries.Footnote 10 The system also supported a broad network of military fortifications, ranging from forts defended by several hundred men to local guardhouses holding little more than a dozen. These fortifications, numbering over 1,000, were scattered across the region, guarding major roadways and strategic points.Footnote 11
The Miao who became tenant-farmers on this expropriated land suffered from particularly high rents, ranging between 50 and 60 per cent of their harvests.Footnote 12 Insistence on the full collection of assessed amounts regardless of actual harvests made this rent particularly oppressive. Whereas, as a result of frequent floods and droughts, the practice for private lands in West Hunan was for varied rents that took larger or smaller percentages during good or bad harvests,Footnote 13 no such adjustment was made for tuntian rents, even when natural disasters reduced harvests below the assessed rents.Footnote 14 At the same time, a large number of ancillary taxes and fees were added to tuntian rents under various pretexts, either related directly to the tuntian system (for example, to cover grain transportation costs) or for other local expenses (such as famine relief).Footnote 15 Thus many Miao tenants were kept in a state of continual indebtedness.
Given the scope of the tuntian system, an administrative structure was required to manage the land and rent collections, which was also paid for by tuntian rents. The ‘tun head’ (tunzhang) was the main local manager of the system. Rents were collected in an extensive network of specially designated granaries (tuncang), which were managed by granary heads (cangzhang).Footnote 16 There were altogether 131 of these granaries in the seven tuntian counties.Footnote 17 The various administrative offices and military positions created under the tuntian system became a source of power for a number of local families. The management of granaries, as well as access to military force, also created many opportunities for corruption.Footnote 18 Some tuntian officials used their power to assert permanent rights over the military lands under their supervision. They then became effective tuntian landlords by renting these lands out to other tenants, creating a double layer of rents.Footnote 19
Although the oppressive features of the tuntian system contributed in some ways to the very discontent it was meant to guard against, its repressive features were largely effective in preventing the transformation of this discontent into actual rebellion. Even narratives that have a stake in presenting a history of continuous popular resistance to the tuntian system actually find few instances of such resistance prior to the end of the Qing dynasty.Footnote 20 There was, for example, almost no response in the Miao districts of West Hunan to the massive Miao rebellion in Guizhou in the mid-nineteenth century.Footnote 21 Officials in Guizhou ultimately responded to the unrest caused in part by the tuntian system in that province by returning the land to private ownership.Footnote 22 The lack of such open resistance in West Hunan ironically allowed the tuntian system in West Hunan to survive after the Qing dynasty itself.
Beyond the density of military forces created by the tuntian system in West Hunan, another factor in its ‘success’ may have been its principle of using Miao to control Miao. Tuntian officials were drawn from both Miao and Han families.Footnote 23 ‘Good’ Miao were also recruited into, and made up a substantial portion of, the local military forces supported by the tuntian rents.Footnote 24 Jeffrey Kinkley suggests that the system actually provided some degree of Miao autonomy while defining a Miao elite who had a stake in the system's survival:
The Miao had their own colony fields to plant, their own blockhouses to guard, and their own forts to live in. Virtually native heads, the Miao officers exercised judicial, taxation, and police powers over all Miao in the five frontier counties, so as to serve as a buffer between the ethnic groups. Though they were not supposed to pass on their posts to their sons, they evidently became a continuous legitimate ruling group.Footnote 25
Thus to the extent that there was resentment of the exploitative features of the tuntian system, it was directed as much at the Miao elite as at Han officials. Interestingly, then, although the tuntian system was at its heart an example of institutionalized discrimination against the Miao, the system itself did not simply reinforce Miao-Han antagonisms. As a result, while ethnicity provides an important framework for understanding conflicts that eventually arose over West Hunan's tuntian, these conflicts must also be understood in contexts broader than ethnicity alone.
Continuity and change in the warlord era
The 1911 Revolution brought little immediate change to the isolated counties of West Hunan. Indeed, the anachronistic survival of Qing dynasty institutions, including the Green Standard Army and tuntian, would become another distinguishing feature of West Hunan in the early Republic. The Green Standard Army would ultimately become the foundation for warlord armies that would dominate West Hunan for most of the Republic period. At the same time, this military base was enhanced by the resources provided by tuntian rents, which also continued to be collected regardless of political changes.
The quality of West Hunan's Green Standard garrisons declined significantly in the late Qing dynasty as a result of corruption and lax training. Nonetheless, these garrisons were among the few Green Standard forces exempted from late Qing orders for disbandment or reorganization. Thus, 7,000–8,000 Green Standard troops remained in West Hunan on the eve of the 1911 Revolution.Footnote 26 Following the Revolution, these forces remained under the command of the original Green Standard zhentai (brigadier-general) at the Fenghuang garrison. Partially reinvigorated by the addition of better-educated officers and better training, these forces would become one of the foundations for independent warlord power in West Hunan.Footnote 27
The most important warlord to establish himself on these resources was Chen Quzhen, sometimes known as the ‘king’ of West Hunan. Chen was a Hunan military academy graduate from a prominent Fenghuang military family. Chen began as the chief of staff for the West Hunan Garrison Commander (the title given the Fenghuang zhentai in 1913). In 1920, Chen eased his superior into semi-retirement and took direct command of his troops under the title of West Hunan Patrol and Defence Commander (Xiangxi xunfang tongling).Footnote 28 One of Chen's first actions was a major expansion of his army to 15,000 men.Footnote 29 In this way, Chen established himself as West Hunan's dominant warlord, a position he would guard jealously for the next 15 years.
While the main determinant of warlord power was personal control over military forces, this military power depended, in turn, on access to financial resources. As officially-recognized provincial forces, some West Hunan armies did receive some troop pay from the provincial government in Changsha, which provided the government with some leverage over their commanders. Thus, in the 1920s, Chen received approximately 30,000 yuan annually from the Changsha government.Footnote 30 These funds, however, were not sufficient even to pay for the troops he had originally inherited. To support his expanded forces, Chen needed other independent financial resources. A transit tax on Guizhou opium shipped through West Hunan was one of several special revenues developed by Chen for this purpose.Footnote 31Tuntian rents however provided a particularly significant revenue stream for Chen's military regime.
Because the purpose of the tuntian system was to support local defence forces, administration of the system remained under the Fenghuang zhentai following the 1911 Revolution.Footnote 32 It was on this basis that control over this system came into Chen Quzhen's hands. Ironically, though, the long period of peace in West Hunan in the late Qing dynasty had led to a decline in the military side of the system. While many soldiers continued to receive their rations, most no longer performed their required military duties. Corruption became rampant as officers neglected to refill vacancies in their ranks in order to pocket the soldiers’ rations.Footnote 33 Thus while the tuntian military command structure and its network of fortifications survived into the Republic, its military forces only remained in fragments. Rather than attempting to restore the tuntian military system to its original form, Chen simply used these remnants to bolster his other forces.
Of more importance to Chen than the surviving tuntian military forces were the military land rents that were supposed to support them. Over the system's long existence, the total amount of rent collected had steadily declined as a result of official remissions, the loss of land to floods, and repeated land transactions that obscured rent responsibilities. Footnote 34 By the 1930s, income from tuntian rents was only half what it had been originally.Footnote 35 Nonetheless, the decline of the military system actually released substantial funds, which Chen used to support his military expansion. Chen established a special bureau, the Military Land Affairs Office (tunwu jinglichu) to consolidate and secure his control over tuntian rents. While the total territory controlled by Chen Quzhen in West Hunan varied from time to time, Chen always fought to retain his direct jurisdiction over the seven tuntian counties, which indicated their importance to him as a revenue source.Footnote 36
The continued burden of military land rents provoked violent rent resistance in a number of instances in the first years of the Republic. Another flurry of rent resistance accompanied the organization of peasant associations by Communist Party activists in West Hunan in 1926, in the wake of the Northern Expedition.Footnote 37 The purge of the Communist Party in Hunan and the suppression of radical peasant associations in 1927 brought this resistance to an end. With this exception, very little military land rent resistance occurred during Chen Quzhen's period of control over West Hunan. This was largely the result of a policy of selective ‘benevolence’ by Chen to foster good relations with the Miao people. Thus, Chen generally did not press back rents in cases of obvious distress, and accepted smaller collections during poor harvests. He also built popular support by punishing local bullies who abused the Miao population. Finally, he openly recruited Miao soldiers and officers into his military forces. Thus, while still suppressing any open opposition, either to his rule or to tuntian rents, Chen's administration was not so harsh as to provoke widespread resistance.Footnote 38 When major resistance to the tuntian system did finally occur, it was not simply the result of accumulated grievances but of the intrusion of new political forces into West Hunan that upset the balances that had long sustained Chen's rule.
The provincial state-building challenge to West Hunan autonomy
The passage of the Northern Expedition through Hunan in 1926 largely ended an era of internal warlord conflict that had devastated the province for over a decade. Internal divisions still remained within the portion of the Hunan Army that had thrown its lot in with the Nationalist Party, but this conflict mainly manifested itself as factional struggles over the post of provincial governor. Two different military commanders held this post in rapid succession until the appointment of He Jian in early 1929. Although He had supported Chiang Kai-shek's enemies in some post-Northern Expedition struggles, he eventually won Chiang's grudging support as a result of his strong anti-Communist commitment. Quickly consolidating his position, He remained Hunan governor until late 1937.Footnote 39
He Jian's main policies were in essence an exercise in state-building carried out at the provincial level. While seeking to strengthen the forces of local order to thwart Communist organizing, He also sought to remove obstacles to the extension of state power into local society. Thus He worked to build up local militia, while at the same time insuring that provincial authority over these forces was not derailed by the local elite who had traditionally controlled them.Footnote 40 In the context of these efforts, surviving local military power-holders like Chen Quzhen were thorns in He's side. Thus, He sought any opportunity to end Chen's reign in West Hunan. Just as obviously, Chen continued to resist He's intrusion into his domain. The struggle between these two men ultimately created the context for the rise of an anti-tuntian movement, which would ironically play a role in the fall from power of both men.
Red Army forays into Hunan in 1930 provided opportunities for manoeuvring by both He and Chen. He's strategy was to make Chen responsible for suppressing Communist forces in West Hunan, while refusing to provide additional support for Chen's army or to replenish his losses. He hoped the expected depletion of Chen's forces would leave him too vulnerable to maintain his autonomy. Red Army incursions into Hunan were not, however, without dangers for He. In the summer of 1930, Communist forces captured the provincial capital, Changsha, in a surprise attack, forcing He's temporary flight. Rival Hunan Army commanders outside Hunan saw this event as an opportunity to push for He's removal. This anti-He movement provided Chen Quzhen with an opportunity to rebuild his forces. With support from He's enemies in Nanjing, Chen gained Central approval for the expansion of his army, its re-designation as a National unit (the 34th Division), and direct Central supplements of troop pay and armament. While the anti-He movement eventually collapsed when Chiang Kai-shek refused to consider He's removal, this national recognition of Chen's army exacerbated He's problem with West Hunan autonomy.Footnote 41
The struggle between He and Chen continued on many levels as they manipulated factional conflicts in Nanjing, took opposite sides in military struggles in neighbouring Guizhou, and competed for control of opium shipments travelling through West Hunan.Footnote 42 In the end, though, another largescale Red Army incursion into West Hunan in late 1934 provided He with the opportunity to undermine Chen's power. After Chen's forces suffered a major defeat at the hands of the Communists, He gained Chiang's approval to dispatch five loyal divisions into West Hunan. After driving the Red Army away, these forces remained to force a weakened Chen to yield to He's authority.Footnote 43
In early 1935, a series of provincial orders were issued that made a serious assault on Chen's power in West Hunan. The 34th Division was to be reorganized into several smaller units, placed under commanders appointed by He Jian, and transferred to other parts of the province. Militia and local administrative bureaus, controlled up to this point through Chen's military headquarters, were placed under the authority of local magistrates. Chen was also ordered to close down his armouries and abolish all extraordinary tax offices. Finally, the provincial government was to assume control over the appointments of tuntian officials. This was a combined attack on Chen's bases of military, administrative, and financial power.Footnote 44
Although Chen accepted these orders under military pressure, his influence was too deeply embedded in West Hunan to be easily removed. While rejecting a proposal from his officers to resist the dispersal of the 34th Division with force, Chen carefully dispatched excess officers and soldiers, who were supposed to have been demobilized, into county militia, preserving them as a hidden base of support.Footnote 45 Meanwhile, Chen gained a concession from He to preserve his command over the miscellaneous local military forces attached to the tuntian system, designated the Military Land Affairs Army (tunwujun). As such, he also engineered continued control over the Military Land Affairs Office (tunwuchu) that supervised the administration of the tuntian system.Footnote 46 At the same time, he created and chaired a supervisory ‘military land affairs committee’ (tunwu weiyuanhui) composed of magistrates and other representatives from the tuntian counties. By these means, Chen reinserted himself between county and provincial governments with regard to tuntian affairs. Meanwhile, Chen also began to rebuild his military forces on the foundation of the tuntian system. By early 1936 Chen consolidated and expanded the fragmented Military Land Affairs Army into three battalions and three corps.Footnote 47
A main purpose behind these administrative and military reorganizations was to ensure Chen's continued control over the revenues of the tuntian system. Indeed, given his other losses, these revenues were now more important than ever for the preservation of his power. Chen's Military Land Affairs Office calculated that a more rigorous accounting of military land rents could release more than one-third of the revenue, after meeting the costs of the tuntian system itself, to fund new initiatives (primarily for military expansion).Footnote 48 To this end, in early 1936, Chen dispatched units of the Military Land Affairs Army to different areas to press for full collection of military land rents (as well as a partial advance from the following year's rent), while at the same time undertaking a major auditing of local tuntian administrations. Opposition soon arose to both efforts. On the one hand, many tuntian counties suffered from successive years of drought, making it difficult for many Miao farmers to meet full rent payments;Footnote 49 on the other hand, Chen's reforms adversely affected the interests of some local officials and military officers. In particular, these men were concerned that a close auditing of tuntian accounts would reveal examples of their own malfeasance.Footnote 50 Chen's efforts to solidify his control over the tuntian system in this way ultimately provoked resistance that would lead to his own downfall.
The immediate catalyst for Chen Quzhen's fall was a revolt by a Military Land Affairs Army commander, Song Lianquan, known as the ‘Yongsui Incident’. Song had originally succeeded his uncle as a Patrol and Defence commander in Yongsui County in 1929. Later, Chen appointed Song to command five corps from the Military Land Affairs Army stationed in Yongsui, as well as three militia corps.Footnote 51 From this position, Song also supervised the collection of Yongsui's military land rents. Song increased tuntian rent revenues through additional levies and corrupt practices, such as adulterating grain measures. By such means he collected an additional 50,000–60,000 yuan over a two-year period, much of which went into his own pocket.Footnote 52
Song Lianquan's ire was first raised by Chen's reorganization of the Military Land Affairs Army. Song's general command was eliminated and he was demoted to battalion commander. Even then, some of the troops that should have come under his command were dispatched to other counties. While drastically reducing Song's military power, this reorganization also seemed to reveal Chen's loss of confidence in Song. In this context, Chen's determination to audit local tuntian accounts posed an additional threat. Song had reason to fear that he was being set up for a fall. When Song learned in late June 1936, that Chen was dispatching troops under another commander to Yongsui to audit Song's accounts, he realized he would not escape exposure. Therefore, Song decided to resist. On 24 June Song patched together an army from his current troops and old associates, arming them with weapons he had stored away during troop cutbacks. He also sent loyal subordinates to outlying townships and neighbouring counties seeking support from other miscellaneous forces. While still outnumbered by Chen's forces, Song was able to amass sufficient power to seize control of Yongsui city and neutralize forces loyal to Chen in the county.Footnote 53
What began as a power struggle between Chen Quzhen and Song Lianquan became something broader when Song decided to declare his objectives to be both opposition to Chen (fan-Chen) and resistance to military land rents (kangtun). While it is odd that someone who had benefited so much from the tuntian system would claim leadership of a movement against it, according to one source, Song had decided that if necessary to save himself, he would ‘smash this rice bowl so that no one else could eat from it’.Footnote 54 As a matter of fact, the announcement of this rent-resistance goal also helped Song make up for his comparative military weakness by drawing in several thousand eager Miao recruits dissatisfied with Chen's efforts to seek full collection of tuntian rents.Footnote 55 At this point, what largely began as an internal military dispute started to take on the colouration of a Miao uprising.
The actual military conflict between Song and Chen was fairly short-lived. Upon hearing of Song's actions, Chen ordered all Military Land Affairs Army units to gather for an assault on Song's forces in Yongsui. Before this attack could take place, though, He Jian intervened by ordering a loyal division commander stationed at Yuanling (the gateway to West Hunan) to ‘mediate’ the conflict, beginning with an immediate cease-fire. The end result of this mediation, announced in late July, supported Song's position. In early August, Chen accepted the inevitable and submitted his resignation as head of the Military Land Affairs Office. Soon after, Chen left West Hunan to accept an appointment in Changsha as an ‘advisor’ to the provincial government.Footnote 56 Thus ended Chen Quzhen's long reign as overlord of West Hunan.
Song Lianquan had used popular resistance to military land rents to strengthen his position against Chen Quzhen, and this in turn had provided He Jian with a pretext to intervene in West Hunan to bring Chen down. Up to the time of Chen's resignation, Song continued to promote the rent resistance movement, no doubt seeing its continuance as enhancing his own negotiating position. In particular, Song sought He's approval for the expansion of his forces into a provincial defence regiment (bao'antuan). Once Chen was removed, though, He's tolerance for Song quickly dissipated. Ultimately Song, like Chen, was forced to accept a nominal advisor's position in Changsha.Footnote 57 The military land rent resistance movement Song had promoted, though, had by that time taken on a life of its own. With the removal of both Chen and Song, it became He Jian's challenge to bring the expanding movement under control.
The anti-tuntian movement: from petitions to armed uprising
Following his initial break with Chen Quzhen, Song Lianquan gathered a group of Yongsui gentry to present his anti-Chen and rent resistance cause to provincial authorities. Because its members were all ethnically Han, though, the group was not credible in representing the cause of Miao tuntian tenant-farmers. After seizing control of Yongsui city, Song rectified this problem by calling a broader and more representative meeting of the local elite to discuss the abolition of the tuntian system. A leading participant who helped to link the meeting to real Miao interests was Long Ziyong, a member of a major Miao landholding family, responsible for over 400 dan in tuntian rents.Footnote 58 The main outcome of this meeting was the founding of the Yongsui Eliminate Military Land Rents Petition Society (Yongsui jiechu tunzu suyuantuan), dedicated to the abolition of the entire tuntian system. To give the petition society added prestige, a prominent Yongsui Miao intellectual, Wu Hengliang, was invited to serve as its head. While Wu began his career as an elementary school principal, he was hardly an ordinary intellectual. Bored with the educational routine, he sought adventure by joining a bandit band across the border in Sichuan. The ‘pacification’ of his band into a regular military force led to Wu's appointment to the staffs of several local commanders, including Song Lianquan. The petition society offered Wu an opportunity to take his career in yet another direction. Under Wu's leadership, the society issued several petitions to the government recounting the suffering of the Miao people and requesting that the entire military land system be abolished in favour of regular land taxes (feitun shengke).Footnote 59
A significant feature of the petition society's pronouncements was an effort to frame the abuses of the military land system in terms that appealed to Nationalist Party ideals. Special note was taken of how treatment of the Miao people under this system ‘remained a flaw in the equality of all Chinese nationalities under the Nationalist Party flag’. While expressing appreciation for increased government concern for Miao cultural advancement (which in practice was mainly assimilationist in focus)Footnote 60, they noted such efforts would come to naught as long as the Miao people suffered under the economic burden of military land rents. In an appeal to the Party's broader state-building goals, the petitions also noted how the peculiarities of the military land system were an obstacle to ‘national administration.Footnote 61 Such statements reveal not only how the political discourse of the Nationalist era had penetrated even this remote region, but also how this discourse actually provided a framework that ethnic groups could use to press their own interests.
While Song Lianquan had attempted to manipulate resistance to military land rents for his own ends, Miao leaders such as Long Ziyong and Wu Hengliang took the abolition of the tuntian system itself as their primary focus. As such, their efforts did not stop with the supposed political resolution of the Yongsui Incident. The two men continued to tour the surrounding countryside organizing Miao farmers against tuntian rents. They also continued to pepper provincial authorities with additional petitions from local town, township, and district heads, and even tuntian granary officials and military officers, calling for the abolition of military land rents. This growing opposition soon threatened the continued viability of the military land rent system.Footnote 62
He Jian had tolerated the rent resistance movement in Yongsui as long as it helped to undermine Chen Quzhen. After Chen's resignation, He's main concern shifted to the consolidation of his own power in West Hunan. To this end, He sought to assert more direct provincial control over military land rents. By doing this, He hoped to eliminate the independent financial base that had long supported West Hunan's military autonomy, whilst at the same time gain access to new resources that could offset the cost of extending provincial control over the region. In October 1936, He agreed, in response to the rent resistance movement, to write-off owed rent from 1935. The proposal to replace military land rents with regular land taxes was also accepted in principle. However, implementation of this measure was to be delayed until land surveys of the entire province were completed. In the meantime, the 1936 military land rents were to be fully collected.Footnote 63 This decision to push any change in the tuntian system to some unforeseeable point in the future was a serious setback for the anti-tuntian petition movement.
He Jian's agent for the implementation of his tuntian policy was Yu Fanchuan, a ‘special commissioner’ (zhuanyuan) appointed by He in the previous year to head an administrative supervisory district that encompassed six of the seven tuntian counties. With Chen Quzhen's resignation as head of the Military Land Affairs Office in early August 1936, Yu had also been appointed to this position, taking direct control over the administration of military lands. Touring the counties under his authority Yu gave local officials notice that two-thirds of the 1936 rent should be collected by 15 November, and the remaining one-third by 15 December. Yu also took a hard line against the rent resistance movement in Yongsui, beginning with the dissolution of the petition society.Footnote 64 Yu denounced the whole movement as the work of ‘a few deceitful rascals who falsely claim to speak for the people’.Footnote 65 Li then initiated a purge of magistrates and local township officials he felt were too lax in rent collections, replacing them with men willing to press for full collection.Footnote 66 Finally, local military garrisons were ordered to offer assistance in suppressing any resistance. To aid in this enforcement, approval was given for the expansion of the Military Land Affairs Army by one battalion, with 300 new guns provided by provincial authorities.Footnote 67
He Jian's determination to continue the collection of military land rents turned what had largely been a peaceful petition movement into an armed uprising. After Yu Fanchuan's crackdown, Wu Hengliang and Long Ziyong continued to travel amongst the Miao villages of the region urging rent resistance. These actions put them in direct conflict with the rent-collection efforts of local officials. As it became clear that their protests were simply being ignored, some people began to consider more extreme action.Footnote 68
Armed resistance began as relatively minor local incidents directed against local officials. The first incident occurred in Longtan Township of Yongsui County where Shi Daxuan, a Miao military officer holding an old Green Standard title of shoubei, had long irritated the local people with his rough collection of military land rents. As anger over the collection of the 1936 rents spread, a group of local Miao youths under the leadership of Shi Weizhen created a pact, with blood oath administered by a Miao shaman, to assassinate Shi Daxuan. While originally agreeing to give the petition society one last chance to plead the anti-tuntian case in Changsha, Shi Weizhen was moved to act when another group of youths attacked and killed a local military official and several Han soldiers who had harassed several old Miao women while pressing rent collections. On 26 January 1937, Shi Weizhen led his followers to seek out Shi Daxuan and stabbed him to death. After destroying the local granary, and distributing its contents to the local people, they spread out to attack other tuntian officials and granaries, and even defeated a unit of the Military Land Affairs Army sent against them.Footnote 69
This uprising provided the inspiration for others to take similar action. The first to respond was a former Miao soldier from Yongsui's Changtan Township, Liang Mingyuan, who had formerly served under Song Lianquan. Song had recalled Liang to service during the Yongsui Incident, dispatching him to tour Miao villages to recruit men for his anti-Chen army. This provided Liang with a network of contacts he soon put to broader use.Footnote 70 Learning of Shi Weizhen's action, Liang decided to organize a similar attack. Liang's target was Chang Jian, Changtan's township head and a militia commander who, like Shi Daxuan, had drawn local ire for his role in enforcing rent collections. In early March, Liang gathered a group of friends to attack and kill Chang. With guns seized from Chang's militia, Liang's men proceeded to attack tuntian officials and to destroy tuntian granaries. Quickly attracting other followers, Liang organized a military force of over 300 men. Similar uprisings followed in other Yongsui and Baojing locations, and their leaders soon linked forces with Liang. Liang then took his army to join Shi Weizhen in Longtan Township. There they organized a unified ‘Abolish Military Lands’ (getun) Army, with Liang as commander and Shi as vice-commander. Meanwhile, the leaders of the petition movement, Wu Hengliang and Long Ziyong, contacted the two men to express their interest in cooperating with the getun army.Footnote 71
More than simply building on widespread popular outrage over tuntian rents, the successful organization of an uprising army depended on the ability of the uprising leaders to tap into a range of social networks embedded in local society. Obviously contacts established by Liang, Wu, and Long through the petition movement helped them to gather supporters. Professional ties also came into play in several circumstances. Thus, one of Liang Mingyuan's most loyal advisors, Zhang Mengjie, had previously served with him in the Military Land Affairs Army.Footnote 72 Dong Ping, who would serve as a commander in the Abolish Military Land Army under Wu Hengliang, originally commanded a guard unit sent by Song Lianquan to protect Wu during the petition drive.Footnote 73 Wu Hengliang also relied on contacts made during his earlier flirtation with banditry to recruit over 40 Secret Society members from Sichuan to the cause.Footnote 74 Equally important, though, were networks of family and friends, clearly evident in the initial formation of uprising bands by Shi Weizhen and Liang Mingyuan.
Precedents in the West Hunan's highly militarized local culture also eased the formation of such armed ‘bands of brothers’. Given the extreme poverty of West Hunan, forming or joining an armed band was often the best way for young men to improve their prospects. Acquiring arms was the first prerequisite for the formation of such a band, often obtained by an attack on an unwary local militia or guard force. With guns in hand, these bands supported themselves by levies against rich households, usually in exchange for ‘protection’, or by providing ‘muscle’ in local feuds. While often portrayed as local bullies, the leaders of these bands often enjoyed positive reputations as ‘local heroes’ (yingxiong). These men also enhanced their reputations by following codes of behaviour expected of ‘brave men’ (haohan) and by performing Robin-Hood-like acts.Footnote 75 The relationship, and legal status, of these armed bands to local state and society could be quite ambiguous. Some were essentially and unabashedly bandit bands; others maintained close ties to their original communities to emerge over time as de facto militia.Footnote 76 Many such bands were ultimately ‘pacified’ by official incorporation into regular military forces. Wu Hengliang's experience showed how such pacification could lead to personal career advancement. Thus the bands formed by uprising leaders were following a well-worn trail that may have been seen as offering their followers more than just service to a righteous cause.
Uprising leaders sought to take advantage of these conditions by absorbing pre-existing local armed bands under the abolish-military-land umbrella. One prominent example of this was an alliance formed between Liang Mingyuan at the time of his attack on Chang Jian with Shi Xingshun, a local ‘tough’ who got his own start by killing, with guns borrowed from a friend with militia ties, a township head who had tried to arrest him for stealing a cow.Footnote 77 Allied to Shi Xingshun, in turn, was another local ‘tough’, Shi Baqi, who used borrowed guns to set up a local protection racket. Shi Xingshun introduced Shi Baqi to Liang Mingyuan, which led to his appointment as a ‘battalion commander’ in Liang's army.Footnote 78 Sympathetic accounts of these men clearly see a connection between their supposed Robin-Hood-like behaviour, based in their own impoverished backgrounds, and their decision to join the uprising. Nonetheless, it is equally clear from these accounts that personal ties played an important role in bringing them together, even as opportunities to expand their operations provided a more self-interested motivation.
Since Miao tenant farmers were most affected by the tuntian system, it is not surprising that the majority of the men drawn into the anti-tuntian uprising were Miao. The initial uprising by Shi Weizhen also showed that ethnic resentment—such as harassment of Miao women by Han soldiers—played a not insignificant role in stirring support for the uprising. Nonetheless, while in terms of its main ethnic base the uprising can be seen as a Miao uprising, the uprising itself never turned into a communal conflict that pitted one ethnic group against another. One reason for this, also seen in the Shi Weizhen case, is that the targets of uprising forces were often also Miao themselves. At the same time, while Miao resentment against the tuntian rents provided a ‘cause’ for the uprising, the motivations of the men who joined the uprising did not seem limited by either ethnic sentiments or even by direct experience with the oppression of the tuntian system. As such, as the uprising spread, it was actually able to absorb many non-Miao participants.Footnote 79 Thus, one early uprising commander mentioned above, Dong Ping, was ethnically Tujia, as was another local strongman, Tian Boqing, who brought his largely Tujia band over to the abolish military land cause.Footnote 80 There were even Han participants, such as Deng Shidi, who had lived in a predominantly Miao village and raised a mixed Miao-Han armed band to join Liang Mingyuan early in the uprising.Footnote 81
The rapid growth of uprising forces obviously alarmed local authorities in West Hunan. Many town and township leaders who had originally participated in the anti-tuntian petition movement now called on the provincial government for aid to suppress it.Footnote 82 In response, He sent new troops into West Hunan. Provincial orders were also issued for the arrest of Wu Hengliang, Long Ziyong, Shi Weizhen, Liang Mingyuan and other uprising leaders. Unable to stand against this onslaught, the uprising leaders scattered their forces and went into hiding. Failing to locate these leaders, provincial forces pillaged their family homes, killing in the process many of their family members, including Long Ziyong's father. By April 1937, the uprising appeared to have been completely suppressed.Footnote 83
The getun uprising did not deter He Jian from his goal of strengthening his control over West Hunan and its military land rents. In a report issued in June 1937, He acknowledged the abuses of the tuntian system and expressed sympathy to the Miao of West Hunan who had suffered under them. He again repeated his ultimate commitment to institute regular land taxes to replace the military land system, but he stressed that the rents would be collected as usual until this reform could be carried out. His only concession was a 10 per cent reduction in the 1936 rents, and a 20 per cent reduction in the 1937 rents.Footnote 84 At the same time, new penalties (up to 10 per cent of the rent) were announced for late payments.Footnote 85 In order to strengthen provincial control over this revenue, new regulations replaced the Military Land Affairs Office with a new organ, the Military Land Rent Collection Bureau (tunzu zhengshouju), which was placed directly under the Hunan provincial treasury. At the same time, county magistrates were assigned direct responsibility for the collection of military land rents, incorporating the tuntian system into the regular administrative system. Finally, the Military Land Affairs Army was reorganized into a provincially-controlled defence regiment (bao'antuan) under Yu Fanchuan's command.Footnote 86
He Jian also sought to strengthen his control over West Hunan by the confiscation of privately held guns. The strict registration or confiscation of private guns had long been part of He's state-building policy, which, in principle, had been extended to West Hunan in 1935.Footnote 87 Under the changed circumstances of 1937, He not only had the means to carry out this policy, but saw many advantages in doing so. Widespread banditry had plagued West Hunan since the 1911 Revolution, fed by easy access to guns scattered during recurring military conflicts.Footnote 88 These same guns likewise helped arm the bands that participated in the anti-tuntian uprisings. He Jian was also concerned that guns retained by Chen Quzhen's former subordinates could be used to support either his return to power or the rise of another local military leader. Gun confiscation, besides undercutting the potential for local military challenges, would also allow the transfer of the arms collected into He's own armies. Thus, just like military land rents, the guns of West Hunan could be viewed as resources to be brought under provincial control. In the process of confiscating these guns, though, He Jian's agents came into direct conflict with many local power-holders who saw this policy as a direct threat to their own ability to defend themselves against bandits or enemies in more unruly parts of the region.Footnote 89 This created a new source of dissatisfaction with the provincial intrusion into West Hunan that, along with continued opposition to military land rents, would contribute to a revival of armed uprisings.
National politics and patriotism in the revival and resolution of the Abolish-Military-Land Uprising
Given the military and administrative resources at his disposal, it is reasonable to assume that in time He Jian's state-building efforts in West Hunan would have been successful. Unfortunately for He, external events, specifically factional politics within the Nationalist Party and then the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, introduced new elements into the struggle for control of West Hunan that not only resulted in the collapse of He's provincially-based, state-building project, but also his own removal from Hunan.
The outbreak of war with Japan in early July 1937, forced He Jian to pull his troops back from West Hunan in preparation for their mobilization to the front. The resulting military vacuum provided an opportunity for a revival of the abolish-military-land uprising. In late summer, Liang Mingyuan, Shi Weizhen and other uprising leaders revived their forces and established a unified military command under Liang's leadership on the Yongsui-Baojing border. Meanwhile, after fleeing the province to avoid arrest, Wu Hengliang concentrated his efforts on recruiting secret society followers in Miao villages across the Hunan border in Sichuan and Guizhou. Wu then returned to Hunan and allied his forces with Liang's. These combined forces immediately took control of several townships where they destroyed tuntian granaries and proclaimed the abolition of military land rents.Footnote 90
The revival of the getun uprising in late summer, 1937, was also accompanied by its expansion from Yongsui and Baojing to other counties. The most important leader in this expansion was Long Yunfei, a former Miao military officer from Fenghuang County. Long's participation was also significant in reflecting a renewed linkage of local interests to national factional politics in the struggle for control of West Hunan.
Long Yunfei had served many years in Chen Quzhen's military forces, rising ultimately to the post of regiment commander. The demobilization of Chen's forces forced Long into retirement in Fenghuang, where he also ran foul of He Jian's private gun confiscation policy. Long saw the guns he had retained as necessary to defend his family from enemies he had made among local bandits during his years of military service. Fenghuang's magistrate, however, showed his intention to enforce He's policy strictly by executing a prominent citizen who had refused to give up his arms. As a result, Long felt himself to be in danger whether he gave up his guns or not. Seeking some way out of this dilemma, Long travelled to Changsha to seek advice from his old commander Chen Quzhen. Under He's thumb in Changsha, Chen could do nothing personally to aid Long. Chen had, however, maintained contacts with political factions opposed to He's continued rule in Hunan. Thus he suggested that Long proceed to Hankou to discuss his grievances with representatives of these factions.Footnote 91
There were numerous factions, both inside and outside Hunan, who wished to see He Jian removed from power. First, as noted above, there were other Hunanese military commanders who had long sought He's removal. Meanwhile, civilian political factions inside Hunan had also hardened along pro- and anti-He lines, exacerbated by He's tendency to favour candidates from his own county for official posts. He's Hunan opponents allied themselves in turn with the Nationalist Party Central Club (CC) clique, which saw He's political strength in Hunan as an obstacle to the consolidation of central authority. Gathering outside He's reach in Hankou, He's enemies saw the disturbance in West Hunan as an opportunity they could use against him. Thus CC clique leaders eagerly met with Long Yunfei when he arrived in Hankou bearing Chen Quzhen's introduction. They encouraged Long to return to Fenghuang to turn the abolish-military-land uprising into an anti-He movement.Footnote 92 While local grievances and particular political interests provided underlying motivations, this connection to the CC clique linked the West Hunan uprising to a broader state-building project dedicated to increasing central control over the provinces.
In August 1937, Long returned to West Hunan to organize an anti-He army. His task was made easier by his contacts with former Chen Quzhen subordinates, many of whom were Miao who had also been forced into retirement. Many of these men had also retained guns from their units, which could be used to arm uprising forces. In a short time, Long had organized a 4,000–5,000-man army in the counties of Fenghuang, Mayang, and Qiancheng. In early September, Long led his forces in a successful assault on the city of Qiancheng, which he would hold for a ‘half-month’.Footnote 93 Meanwhile, one of Long Yunfei's allies in Mayang County, the local police commander Long Jie, also led the men under his command to seize and hold Mayang city for several days.Footnote 94
While Long Yunfei's factional connections brought the West Hunan uprising into a broader national political context, the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war also provided uprising leaders with an opportunity to put a patriotic spin on their revolt. Thus, as Liang Mingyuan reunited his forces he argued that since the entire nation was united in its resistance to Japan they should also show their support by naming their army the West Hunan Miao People's Resist-Japan Abolish-Military-Land Army (Xiangxi Miaomin kangri getunjun).Footnote 95 In a meeting re-establishing his forces, Wu Hengliang made a similar appeal, adopting the name the Guizhou-Hunan Miao People's Abolish-Military-Land Resist-Japan Army (Qian-Xiang Miaomin getun kangrijun).Footnote 96 Likewise, Long Yunfei first named his army the West Hunan Resist-Japan Oust-He Volunteer Army (Xiangxi kangri tao-He yiyongjun), and then the West Hunan Miao People's Abolish-Military-Land Resist-Japan National-Construction Army (Xiangxi Miaomin getun kanri jianguojun).Footnote 97 The names used by other forces were all variations on the same themes, but every variation included the phrase ‘resist Japan’.
This patriotic re-labelling of uprising forces was not simply an empty gesture. In assuming the ‘resist-Japan’ slogan, the getun forces proclaimed their desire to be incorporated into national armies to be sent to fight the Japanese once their demands for the eradication of the military land system were met.Footnote 98 Of course, turning this proposal of military service into a bargaining chip in support of economic demands obviously fell somewhat short of redefining the goals of the uprising in purely patriotic terms. What the adoption of the resist-Japan slogan really sought to achieve was recognition that the uprising was not unpatriotic. It was to be seen, in other words, not as an ethnic rebellion against the nation but as the actions of aggrieved citizens of the nation. Thus in his speech proclaiming the establishment of his ‘resist-Japan’ army, Wu Hengliang emphasized He Jian's forceful suppression of the peaceful petition movement and the perfidy of the tactics He employed to delay fulfilment of his own pledge to abolish the tuntian system.Footnote 99 As such, the adoption of the resist-Japan slogan was first of all an attempt to claim legitimacy for the uprising in the eyes of the broader public. At the same time, the ability to make this claim was also closely tied to an effort to show that support for their movement existed inside the Nationalist Party and central government itself. Thus Wu rallied his followers with the news of the contacts Long Yunfei had made in Hankou and the assurance he had also received that high-level Nationalist Party leaders considered them a ‘friendly army’.Footnote 100 It was likewise Long Yunfei's assurance of behind-the-scenes support from Chen Quzhen and other Hunan generals that convinced Long Jie to lend his support to the uprising.Footnote 101 Thus a second purpose behind the adoption of the resist-Japan slogan was to assure their own followers of the legitimacy of their struggle, even within a time of national crisis, and its potential for success.
The steady expansion of the uprising, the loss of several important towns to uprising forces, and the appeal to patriotic goals combined to put He Jian in a very difficult position. On the one hand, he continued his efforts to suppress the uprising, gaining Chiang Kai-shek's approval to shift some military units back to West Hunan, whilst on the other, he opened negotiations with some uprising leaders where he ultimately conceded to the main demands for the abolition of the military land system and the incorporation of uprising forces into national armies. Efforts at a negotiated settlement were made difficult, however, by suspicion of He's previous use of similar promises as a delaying tactic, and by Long Yunfei's insistence on making He's removal a condition of the struggle.Footnote 102
In the end, He Jian's inability to resolve the crisis in West Hunan played into the hands of centralizers in National government who sought his removal. In late November 1937, the leaders of the CC clique, allied with anti-He Hunan military commanders, convinced Chiang Kai-shek to remove He from his post (bumping him upstairs to a new post as Minister of the Interior). Chiang then appointed one of his own confidants and a former dean of the Central Military Academy, Zhang Zhizhong, as He's replacement.Footnote 103 Thus, in this case as elsewhere, even as the Nationalist government faced its greatest external challenge from Japan Chiang pursued every opportunity to strengthen central control over the provinces.
In accepting the appointment to replace He Jian, Zhang Zhizhong realized that resolving West Hunan's conflict would be one of his most pressing tasks. In early December Zhang opened negotiations with uprising leaders. Initial offers of a reduction in military land rents (without actually abolishing the tuntian system) and the incorporation of uprising forces into local militia were rejected out of hand. Uprising negotiators meanwhile continued their efforts to deploy the government's rhetoric to their own advantage. They stressed that their armies not only served the common good by maintaining local order (unlike the bandits He Jian tried to portray them as) but also were loyal to the government and its principles. First, they argued that only the abolition of the tuntian system would provide West Hunan's Miao with the full equality promised by Sun Yat-sen. Second, they reiterated their ultimate desire, once this was done, to do their duty as citizens by the incorporation of their forces into national armies fighting Japan.Footnote 104 Zhang meanwhile was also receiving encouragement from no less a figure than Chen Quzhen to accept these terms. Before Zhang set out for his new position, the anti-He Hunan commanders had advised Zhang that his best chance of reaching a speedy settlement was to work through Chen, since many uprising participants were his former subordinates. Meeting with Zhang in Hunan, Chen confirmed that the best basis for a settlement was the abolition of the tuntian system and the reorganization of uprising forces into national armies.Footnote 105 Without a doubt, though, the patriotic framework constructed by uprising leaders for their demands eased the way for a resolution on this basis.
Beginning in January 1938, a basic settlement began to take shape. First Zhang cancelled He's arrest orders for uprising leaders. Second, representatives from the seven tuntian counties were called to Changsha to propose concrete means for the elimination of the tuntian system and its replacement with regular land taxes. The general settlement they proposed, approved first by Zhang and then by the Provincial Standing Committee, called for the reduction of rent/tax obligations on tuntian lands by 50 per cent. The provincial Military Land Rent Collection Bureau would also be abolished, allowing county governments to collect and retain the new ‘land tax’ that would replace former military land rents.Footnote 106
The transition from military land rents to land taxes was left in the hands of the counties, and this resulted in some inconsistencies in how the process was implemented. In most cases, however, the new tax was, as agreed upon, 50 per cent of the original rent assessment, and there was a transition from collection in grain to collection in cash, consistent with the regular land tax system. Finally all the miscellaneous fees that had accompanied the administration of the military land system were banned.Footnote 107 While most of the grievances over the military land system were resolved at this point, it was not until 1944 that a land survey was finally conducted to establish land ownership (military land tenants were given ownership of the lands they farmed).Footnote 108 This was the last nail in the coffin of the military land system.
An equally important part of the settlement of the West Hunan uprising was the incorporation of uprising forces into regular army units. This provision actually provided Chen Quzhen with a short comeback on the West Hunan stage. Because of Chen's close relationship with many uprising participants, Zhang Zhizhong asked Chen's assistance in the incorporation process. In April 1938, Zhang appointed Chen to a new supervisory administrative office over West Hunan, from which he began negotiations with specific uprising leaders for the reorganization of their forces. Uprising commanders were given military appointments based on their relative ranking within uprising forces as well as the number of armed men they brought to the table. Thus, Long Yunfei became a brigade commander, Wu Hengliang was appointed to regiment commander, while Liang Mingyuan and Shi Weizhen became battalion commanders. In some cases, individual commanders (mainly those who had previously led independent local gangs) refused these new positions and either returned to their homes or led their men back into banditryFootnote 109 Nonetheless, the end result was still the dissolution of the uprising armies as a real military presence in West Hunan. At the same time, once the process of reorganization was completed, Chen Quzhen's position was eliminated, leaving him no basis on which to restore his power in West Hunan.
While the incorporation of uprising forces into regular army units met the resist-Japan principle they had proclaimed, not all the uprising participants ultimately fought the Japanese. Some uprising soldiers were, in the end, reluctant to leave their homes to fight on distant battlefields. Many Miao soldiers, as well as some officers, faced discrimination when placed in contact with larger bodies of Han troops. Some also found it difficult to accept the stricter discipline of the regular army. So some refused mobilization into their new units; others later deserted or, in the case of officers, resigned their commissions. Others were disappointed when, instead of being sent to the front, they were used to replace regular troops in bandit-suppression campaigns inside Hunan.Footnote 110 These exceptions aside, many uprising officers and soldiers did fulfil their resist-Japan commitment. Wu Hengliang, for example, rose through a number of military posts during the war, serving as a vice brigade commander and a military advisor on the staff of the 73rd Army.Footnote 111 Long Yunfei rose even higher, attaining the position of division commander.Footnote 112 More importantly, of course, were the number of common soldiers drawn from uprising forces, estimated at around 8,000 men, who ended up fighting, and dying in large numbers, in battles with the Japanese in several major campaigns.Footnote 113 Their sacrifices helped to maintain the memory of the West Hunan anti-military land uprising in Chinese history as a patriotic movement.
Conclusion
The lengthy titles assumed by the 1937 West Hunan uprising forces actually highlight the difficulty in categorizing the uprising in any simple way. The explicit reference to the Miao people (Miaomin) in the names of these armies suggests that the uprising had an ethnic basis. Most of its leaders and participants were indeed Miao and its target was a system of military land rents that primarily affected Miao households. As noted above, though, the uprising was never purely an ethnic conflict that it pitted one ethnic group against another, and a good number of non-Miao could be found in uprising ranks. Thus, ethnicity per se was not the defining feature for the uprising.
The unifying focal point of the uprising was of course opposition to military land rents. It is, nonetheless, also misleading to follow some Communist-inspired accounts in portraying the uprising simply as an act of resistance by oppressed tenants against greedy landlords and rapacious officials. After all, leaders of the uprising included major landholders (and landlords) like Long Ziyong, and even township heads from prominent families.Footnote 114 And, many uprising participants, such as the armed bands who joined the uprising from neighbouring Miao districts in Guizhou and Sichuan, were not even from tuntian tenant families. While it might be assumed that some participants joined out of sympathy for long-suffering tuntian tenants, other motivations were just as clearly involved, not all of which were completely altruistic. Thus, while He Jian's gun-confiscation policy may have been the tipping point that provoked Long Yunfei into resistance, many of the former soldiers he recruited were no doubt looking for a chance to restart their military careers. The possibility that a resolution of the uprising might involve the incorporation of uprising forces into regular military units could have served as an inducement to many of these recruits. Buried in the accounts of the uprising, one also finds evidence of more personal motivations, where sides were taken and lines were drawn based on family ties, personal relations, and local feuds. While not discounting the widespread popular opposition to the tuntian system that provided a broad unifying justification for the uprising, under a historian's gaze, the actual uprising itself appears as a palimpsest upon which the multiple motivations and desires of its participants, in their broad social, political and personal contexts, were written and overwritten.
What makes this uprising stand out was the final overlay of patriotism reflected in the ‘resist-Japan’ slogan attached to uprising armies. Even here, though, this patriotic recasting of the uprising was by no means a simple popular reaction to Japan's invasion. Instead, this patriotic appeal was one part of a more complex response to Republican state-building projects that were steadily challenging West Hunan's long-standing isolation as an internal frontier zone,
The anachronistic tuntian system, which in many ways symbolized West Hunan's unique isolation, ironically emerged as a target for competing visions of expanding state power. The military land system had been imposed by the Qing state as a means of consolidating its control over the region. Under the Republic the state's interest in the tuntian system shifted as the tuntian rents themselves were seen by a range of political competitors as a potential economic resource. Thus, while eager to deprive Chen Quzhen of this resource, and thus undercut a major holdout of independent warlordism, He Jian also saw the addition of military land rents to provincial coffers as fitting his broader state-building objectives. Insofar as his efforts to collect these rents provoked Miao resistance, He opened the way for a central intervention that was aimed, in turn, at eliminating the relative autonomy of provincial governors. Thus uprising leaders found themselves both courted and encouraged by national-level political strategists who sought to use this local uprising as leverage to promote their own centralizing objectives.
The ideology of nationalism ultimately provided a useful, and perhaps even necessary, ‘cover’ for these odd bedfellows. From the beginning, anti-tuntian leaders had insisted that their goal was simply the redress of grievances not rebellion. The demands of the original petition movement had thus been carefully grounded in the dominant rhetoric of the Nationalist Party, expressing the desire of West Hunan's Miao for the equal treatment promised by Sun Yat-sen. While the exact meaning of this equality for ethnic groups was still contested (whether one saw equality as allowing ethnic groups to retain their own identity or as a condition to be achieved through assimilation), the demand for equal treatment as national citizens provided a framework under which Miao grievances could be negotiated. At the same time, the claim to be patriotic citizens provided the basis for political alliances within the Nationalist polity that would ultimately prove to be the key to the movement's success. The serendipitous outbreak of the war with Japan not only gave uprising participants a new opportunity to declare their patriotism but a way to show it by committing the uprising army itself to the anti-Japanese cause. The usefulness of this recasting of the anti-tuntian uprising in nationalist terms did not end with the conclusion of the uprising. In a post-war account that sought to enshrine a positive interpretation of the uprising, Wu Hengliang both praised Nationalist Party leaders for their perspicacious response to Miao grievances and highlighted Miao contributions to the War of Resistance.Footnote 115 While unwilling to give any credit to the Nationalist Party, accounts published in the People's Republic nonetheless conventionally also cite the uprising as a positive example of Miao patriotism and as a model of ethnic unity.Footnote 116
The final settlement of the West Hunan anti-tuntian uprising realigned the relationship between West Hunan's Miao communities and the state in ways that, in the end, brought advantages to both. In the face of continued resistance to the tuntian system, military land rents became less an asset than a liability for the new centrally-appointed governor, Zhang Zhizhong. In accepting demands for the abolition of the tuntian system, Zhang finally resolved long-standing Miao grievances against this system with taxes lower than the rents they replaced. At the same time, administrative integration, crucial to the government's state-building project, was actually furthered by bringing military lands, and their Miao tenants, under the regular tax system. Likewise, in a time of military crisis, Zhang had no problem conceding to demands for the incorporation of uprising forces into national armies. Their dispatch to the anti-Japanese front meanwhile furthered the process of undermining independent military forces in West Hunan that had begun under He Jian. The victory of the Miao anti-tuntian uprising, in achieving its demands, was therefore equally a victory for the broader modern state-building project.
There has long been an interpretive stream within some accounts of the 1937 anti-tuntian uprising that sees the uprising in terms of local resistance to external intrusion, or as Jeffrey Kinkley noted, a ‘rebellion against national’ (or really provincial) integration.Footnote 117 This paper argues the opposite. Whilst certainly reacting against intrusions from the Hunan capital that aggravated the growing inequities of the tuntian system, the main demands of the anti-tuntian movement, and its resolution, were inclusionary rather than exclusionary. The final metamorphosis of the anti-tuntian uprising into a patriotic anti-Japanese movement also signified a triumph for the state in terms of the identification of Miao interests in West Hunan with the Chinese nation. Whether the anti-Japanese slogans of the uprising really reflected a spread of nationalist sentiment among West Hunan Miao, let alone whether individual uprising participants were actually motivated by patriotism, is, in the end, less significant than the extent to which adoption of these slogans shows how the discourse of nationalism, and its legitimizing power, had penetrated even remote regions such as West Hunan. At the same time, behind the façade of national unity the 1937 West Hunan uprising is also a reminder of how the discourse of nationalism in this period provided a useful framework, and a cover for, the assertion and negotiation of particularistic interests.
