Debary, Theodore and Lutrano, Richard. “Moderate Reform and the Self-strengthening Movement” p. 233-249 in Sources of Chinese Tradition: From 1600 through the 20th Century (2000)

 

In chapter 30 of Debary and Lutrano’s work, the authors offer several excerpts from primary sources to introduce the debate over whether China should embrace Western learning and modernization. Arguments for the self-strengthening movement come from officials who witnessed the Taiping Rebellion first-hand or leaders of provisional armies that brought the revolution down, such as Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang. These men saw the weakness of the Qing state during that rebellion, other revolts, and throughout two Opium wars; it was logical they would feel the need for reforms to bring China back to glory. Opposition arose from orthodox Confucians in the Qing court like Grand Secretary Woren, who argued that learning Western ideas of mathematics and astronomy would corrupt the Chinese people and would fail to strengthen the state. Though the courts knew as well as the generals how badly European powers could outgun them, they were more hesitant to modernize because Western education might replace traditional studies.

However, it seems to me that Woren, in his “Principle Versus Practicality” opposition to the self-strengthening movement, omitted that Westernizing threatens the power of men of the courts like him more than it might threaten traditional Confucian learning. Woren’s arguments come across as muddled, incoherent, and unconvincing. He begins by claiming mathematics itself is a noble subject, but turns around and says two sentences later that if Westerners teach it to the Chinese, the damage will be great. Is not math the same no matter who teaches it? He claims that there is no way mathematics can strengthen a nation during a period of weakness.

He then immediately and inexplicably jumps to Christianity and declares that his people are ignorant if they believe in Christ. His argument is weak and disjointed, which stands in stark contrast to the logic and reasonable tone of Feng Guifen, who suggests making Confucianism the foundation and building upon it using the example of foreign powers. Does Woren honestly believe that mathematics cannot benefit China? Does he bring up Christianity just to use a hated group to prompt sympathy from his audience? He is trying to link Christians with the self-strengtheners, make them one enemy, when they are not. Perhaps the subtext of Woren’s speech is that Woren sees Western teachings a threat to his power, as leader of the Confucian court. Perhaps, like a sorcerer might do, a Westerner could just as easily disrupt the government’s mandate to rule. Woren claims that nontraditional teachings will prompt the Chinese to ally with foreigners, barbarians. Woren might fear that what begins in education, a slow seeping-in of the West’s influence, might just spread upwards and infect administration and government. So he stands against reform. Those with power will usually try to maintain the status quo.

What struck me as especially odd about Woren’s opposition is when he claims that Christianity has fooled half the people. If I recall correctly, Christianity did not see conversion in such numbers in China. Is Woren simply exaggerating for effect, or is he misinformed?

Overall, an intriguing read. I have a bit of background knowledge on the industrialization of Britain, the rest of Europe, Russia, and the United States. I was aware that China began to fall behind in the nineteenth century, and I had been very curious as to why. This battle over whether or not modernization meant turning against Confucian teachings and traditions provides the answer.

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Kuhn, Philip. “The Roots of Sorcery Fear” p. 94-118 in Kuhn’s “Soulstealers – The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768”

 

In chapter five of his book, Philip Kuhn aims to examine the fears that existed in ancient China that preceded the panic of 1768. He describes the chapter as an exploration of Chinese sorcery in connection with the soulstealing crisis. Kuhn’s thesis is that two distinct fears existed that ensured chaos would stem from both the upper classes and lower classes of society simultaneously. The first fear, experienced by the common man, was that evil sorcerers would steal one’s soul. A natural event such as trauma could also sever the fragile bond between body and soul, but it was the terror of the supernatural that would be the spark for the great panic. The second fear, held by the imperial elites, was that sorcerers would disrupt the bond between the elites and the heavenly powers, weakening or destroying their mandate to rule. Like the popular fears, natural events could also bring about such things, but were not the primary concern.

Kuhn’s argument seeks to explain the coming crisis. These fears are the roots of the crazed witch-hunt and mass lynching in 1768. According to him, there is yet no detailed study of Chinese sorcery, so Kuhn is truly blazing his own trail in this book, rather than arguing against other scholars or building on previous research. Indeed, the reader will note no reference to other modern scholars within this text. Kuhn builds a convincing case from the ground up, detailing Chinese beliefs in the biodynamic powers of sorcerers, rituals of soul-calling, the use of charms and amulets to save one’s soul, and preexisting suspicions that builders, beggars, the clergy, and strangers in general were involved in black magic. He then dives into how these beliefs formed the two structures of fear than drove people to paranoia. He uses direct quotes from Dutch sinologue J. J. M. de Groot, Henri DorÈ, and writings of Chinese charms and counter-charms from the period. The exhaustive evidence presented powerfully supports Kuhn’s argument.

I had some knowledge of Chinese beliefs on the severability of body and soul, as it has been a basis for their religious beliefs involving honoring and worshiping ancestors for centuries. I found the stories at the beginning of the chapter most interesting; they served as an excellent hook and introduction to the topic. He also weaved those stories into his work here and there, making connections I had not considered. I was very interested in the body-soul connection to the well-known belief of yin and yang.

I was most surprised by the concept of involuntary soul-loss. That was unexpected. The idea that a sudden fright could make one’s soul break from its body was fascinating. Heavenly spirits and vengeful ghosts, along with the results of soul-loss (illness, sleeplessness, madness, death, etc.) were also aspects of this topic that captured my attention. The concept of involuntary soul-loss was not the main fear that led to the panic of 1768, but its belief was just as strong as the idea that evil men would steal one’s soul. It served to support and exacerbate the approaching chaos.

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On May 16, 1916, French and British diplomats put the finishing touches on the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divided up the terminated Ottoman state into territorial zones controlled by the British, French, and Russians.

Negotiators George Picot of France and Sir Mark Sykes of Britain drafted the original document from November 1915 to February 1916, but Sir Edward Grey of Britain and M. Paul Cambon of France hammered out the portion that detailed the fate of the Arabs and their place in the British and French empires. The British aimed to carve up Arabian land that could bridge its European and Asian territories, allowing easy transportation from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf, and thus the crown jewel of the empire, India. The British further desired a French buffer zone between themselves and Russia, and wanted Palestine controlled by international forces to prevent a French takeover. France wanted a land bridge to Persia and the Mosul oil fields, as well as control of the Mediterranean coast and southern Turkey.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement reflected the British and French policy of partition adopted during World War I aiming to dismantle the Ottoman Empire. While they previously wished to maintain the “sick man of Europe” to recover debts, the war provided an opportunity to gain strategic advantages and vast amounts of territory and resources. The Agreement also exemplified the British policy of making assurances concerning Arabs it never intended to keep. It hints at preparing Arabia for one independent state, an empty promise already made by the British government to the Sharif of Mecca as justification for the ensuing land grab; the Anglo-French section begins by declaring: “France and Great Britain are prepared to recognize and uphold an independent Arab State or a Confederation of Arab States.”

Of course, the rest of the document made it plain the aim was actually to increase European imperialism in the region, as the powers outlined their right to “establish direct or indirect administration or control as they may desire” in their zones. Rights were given in the form of “priority of enterprises” such as commerce and shipping, control over ports, management of water, restrictions on railroad construction, freedom of troop transportation and goods movement, management of tariffs and custom barriers, control of weapons, and a ban on granting any other imperialist nation power in the Middle East. In the weak guise of fulfilling Arab hopes, the Sykes-Picot Agreement declared the heart of the Ottoman Empire belonged to France and Britain. The Arabs were outraged when the document was leaked by the Russians.

This was not a formal treaty, but rather a policy statement: a simple clarification of France and Britain’s goals and an arrangement that could satisfy both while keeping the other in check. Sir Mark Sykes was not even an official diplomat (he was a Member of Parliament), and while the negotiators had the backing of their respective governments, national leaders did not sign it. Its intended secrecy and the later embarrassment over its exposure suggests it was never meant to be anything more than a quiet, unofficial plan between two untrusting allies.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement changed the face of the Middle East. The Ottoman Empire disappeared, replaced by European-controlled spheres of influence. Britain gained territory in the modern regions of Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait, and benefited more from their acquisitions than did the French. France occupied Syria, Lebanon, and parts of Turkey. Palestine was placed under international rule.

The spheres of influence were later the basis for the mandate system, wherein a foreign nation developed (occupied) another until self-government was possible (yet in practice never granted). The development of the mandate system in the early 1920s would lead to the creation of the Middle East’s modern-day national borders, most determined without much consideration of the religious and ethnic animosities that would be suddenly thrown into a country together. However, the fight for Arabian independence would be long and hard, as foreign occupation would continue for decades after the borders were drawn.

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Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen

A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn

The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X and Alex Haley

The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould

Punished by Rewards: The Problem with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes, Alfie Kohn

The Bomb, Howard Zinn

Terrorism and War, Howard Zinn

Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope, Jonathon Kozol

The Historic Unfulfilled Promise, Howard Zinn

Give Me Liberty!, Eric Foner

Who Owns History?, Eric Foner

The Future of History, Howard Zinn

Liberty Defined, Ron Paul

The Revolution, Ron Paul

A History of Knowledge, Charles Van Doren

23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, Ha-Joon Chang

What Does it Mean to be Well-Educated? And Other Essays on Standards, Grading, and Other Follies, Alfie Kohn

A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, Ronald Takaki

A Power Governments Cannot Suppress, Howard Zinn

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell

Teaching What Really Happened, James Loewen

The Slave Community, John Blassingame

Black Boy, Richard Wright

Sundown Towns, James Loewen

The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, Vijay Prashad

Communism and the Negro, Max Shachtman

Savage Inequalities, Jonathon Kozol

Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, Noam Chomsky

How Marxism Works, Chris Harman

The Seventeen Solutions, Ralph Nader

Declarations of Independence, Howard Zinn

Socialism: Past and Future, Michael Harrington

The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire, Noam Chomsky

Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World, Noam Chomsky

What We Say Goes, Noam Chomsky

A People’s History of Poverty in America, Stephen Pimpare

A People’s History of the World, Chris Harman

9-11, Noam Chomsky

Economics of the Madhouse, Chris Harman

The Chomsky-Foucault Debate on Human Nature, Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault

God is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens

The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine

Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, Bart Ehrman

The Greatest Show on Earth, Richard Dawkins

The Lessons of History, Will and Ariel Durant

Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity, Tim Wise

Occupy the Economy, Richard Wolff

Wage-Labour and Capital, Karl Marx

Value, Price, and Profit, Karl Marx

The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins

Agrarian Justice, Thomas Paine

Anarchism, Daniel Guerin

Race Matters, Cornel West

All About Adam and Eve: How We Came to Believe in Gods, Demons, Miracles, and Magical Rites, Robert J. Gillooly

Why I am Not a Christian, Bertrand Russell

The Case for Socialism, Alan Maass

Why Not Socialism?, G. A. Cohen

Essential Works of Socialism, Irving Howe (editor)

The “S” Word: A Brief History of an American Tradition…Socialism, John Nichols

The Evidence for Evolution, Alan Rogers

Envisioning Real Utopias, Erik Olin Wright

Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA, Goldin, Smith, & Smith

The Common Good, Noam Chomsky

Edutopia, Winston Apple

The Godless Constitution, Kramnick and Moore

Climbing Mount Improbable, Richard Dawkins

You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train, Howard Zinn

Questioning the Millennium, Stephen Jay Gould

Social Studies for Secondary Schools, Alan Singer

Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris

The End of Faith, Sam Harris

Hopes and Prospects, Noam Chomsky

The Politics of History, Howard Zinn

Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Russell

Godless, Dan Barker

On Anarchism, Noam Chomsky

Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, Randall Kennedy

Malcolm X Speaks, Malcolm X

What’s the Matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank

Life Driven Purpose, Dan Barker

The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. du Bois

Looking Backward, 2000-1887, Edward Bellamy

Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky

Dear White America, Tim Wise

Who Rules the World?, Noam Chomsky

Guild Socialism, G.D.H. Cole

The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander

Because We Say So, Noam Chomsky

Democracy Matters, Cornel West

Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond

Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau

How Jesus Became God, Bart Ehrman

David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, Malcolm Gladwell

Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now, Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell

Free Will, Sam Harris

Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates

Letters to a Young Contrarian, Christopher Hitchens

The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris

Arguably, Christopher Hitchens

On Prejudice, Daniela Gioseffi

Requiem for the American Dream, Noam Chomsky

God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction, Dan Barker

Mad in America, Robert Whitaker

The Moral Arc, Michael Shermer

Things That Can and Cannot Be Said, Arundhati Roy and John Cusack

The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium, Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger

Intuition Pumps and Other Tools For Thinking, Daniel C. Dennett

Why Evolution is True, Jerry Coyne

Global Discontents, Noam Chomsky

Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, Michael Wolff

Understanding Power, Noam Chomsky

The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan

A Short History of Progress, Ronald Wright

Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell

Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen

Inside Animal Hearts and Minds, Belinda Recio

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, Frans de Waal

The Four Horsemen, Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Dennett

Outgrowing God, Richard Dawkins (for young people)

The History of the World, J.M. Roberts and O.A. Westad

Truth Has a Power of Its Own, Howard Zinn and Ray Suarez

Mortality, Christopher Hitchens

Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Breaking the Spell, Daniel Dennett

Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit

Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari

Is This the End of the Liberal International Order?, Fareed Zakaria v. Niall Ferguson

Superfreakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Hitchens vs. Blair, Christopher Hitchens and Tony Blair

Original Zinn, Howard Zinn

This Idea is Brilliant, John Brockman (editor)

Language and Politics, Noam Chomsky

Making Sense, Sam Harris

Love in the Time of Victoria, Françoise Barret-Ducrocq

The Inner Life of Animals, Peter Wohlleben

A History of the American People, Paul Johnson (review)

Jesus, Interrupted, Bart Ehrman

The History of Philosophy, A.C. Grayling

Thinking About History, Sarah Maza

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Writing History in the Global Era, Lynn Hunt (review)

The Great Divergence, Kenneth Pomeranz

Women’s Rights Emerges within the Antislavery Movement, 1830-1870, Kathryn Kish Sklar

On the Future, Martin Rees

Rationality, Steven Pinker

Ignorance, Stuart Firestein

Eastern Philosophy, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad

The Devil in the Shape of a Woman, Carol Karlsen (review)

Liberty’s Daughters, Mary Beth Norton (review)

Ar’n’t I a Woman?, Deborah Gray White (review)

Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign, Katherine Adams and Michael Keene (review)

Not June Cleaver, Joanne Meyerowitz (review)

Pauli Murray: A Personal and Political Life, Troy Saxby (review)

Daring to Be Bad, Alice Echols (review)

Revolutionary Backlash, Rosemarie Zagarri (review)

Seeds of Empire, Andrew Torget 

The Chinese Question, Mae Ngai (review) 

What This Cruel War Was Over, Chandra Manning (review)

The Half Has Never Been Told, Edward Baptist

Confederate Reckoning, Stephanie McCurry

Power, Politics, and Culture, Edward Said

Freedom, Sebastian Junger

The Nobel Lecture, Bob Dylan

The Houses of History, Anna Green and Kathleen Troup

What?, Mark Kurlansky

On Decline, Andrew Potter

A Beginner’s Guide to Philosophy, Dominique Janicaud 

Intimations, Zadie Smith

This Idea Must Die, John Brockman (editor)

Why You Should Be a Socialist, Nathan J. Robinson

Warriors Don’t Cry, Melba Beals

The World America Made, Robert Kagan

People Change, Vivek Shraya

All That Happiness Is, Adam Gopnik 

Free, Alfred Mele

The Human Predicament, David Benatar

Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed, Howard Gardner

The Socialist Manifesto, Bhaskar Sunkara

The Art of Thinking Clearly, Rolf Dobelli

Culture Counts, Roger Scruton

Why I Became an Atheist, John Loftus

What Does It All Mean?, Thomas Nagel

Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari

Shadow Over Athens, Phokion Demetriades

Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers, Philip Stokes

The Good Book of Human Nature, Carel van Schaik and Kai Michel

In Praise of Doubt, Peter Berger and Anton Zijderveld

A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning, Robert Zaretsky

The Future of History, John Lukacs

Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens

Reason, Faith, and Revolution, Terry Eagleton 

The Labyrinth, Philip Appleman

Should We Go Extinct?, Todd May

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Cathay Williams became William Cathay
And no one was to know
The secret of her identity
As a soldier she did grow.

So wrote Linda Kirkpatrick in her 1999 poem “Cathay Williams,” about the first black woman (that historians know of) to enlist in the U.S. Army — in the guise of a man.

Williams was born a slave in Independence, Missouri, in 1842. A grown woman enslaved in Jefferson City at the time the Civil War broke out in 1861, she was taken by a Union regiment and put to work, like many other slaves “freed” by the Army. She told the St. Louis Daily Times in January 1876:

[When] United States soldiers came to Jefferson City they took me and other colored folks with them to Little Rock. Col. Benton of the 13th army corps was the officer that carried us off. I did not want to go. He wanted me to cook for the officers, but I had always been a house girl and did not know how to cook. I learned to cook after going to Little Rock…

Williams traveled through Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, Iowa, and other places, serving as a cook and laundress. The war ended in 1865, but Williams was not done with the military.

Female soldiers being unlawful, she disguised herself as a male (she was tall, at five foot nine) and enlisted in St. Louis. She called herself “William Cathay” (at times spelled “Cathey”). An Army surgeon, whose job seemingly did not entail a thorough physical examination, declared her fit for duty. She joined the 38th U.S. Infantry, a black regiment (“Buffalo Soldiers”), on November 15, 1866. She remembered:

Only two persons, a cousin and a particular friend, members of the regiment, knew that I was a woman. They never ‘blowed’ on me. They were partly the cause of my joining the army. Another reason was I wanted to make my own living and not be dependent on relations or friends.

What followed is believed to be an uneventful two years in the military. Williams marched from Missouri to Kansas to New Mexico, but likely did not see combat. She was hospitalized five times for various medical problems — joint pain, nerve pain, severe itching — but somehow was not discovered immediately. According to her, some ailments were faked:

I carried my musket and did guard and other duties while in the army, but finally I got tired and wanted to get off. I played sick, complained of pains in my side, and rheumatism in my knees.

Then a doctor had the surprise of his life: “The post surgeon found out I was a woman and I got my discharge.”

That was at Fort Bayard, New Mexico. Interestingly, neither her commander nor the surgeon mentioned anything about her gender in the discharge papers. The commander said Williams “has been since feeble both physically and mentally, and much of the time quite unfit for duty. The origin of his infirmities is unknown to me.” The surgeon said Williams was of “…a feeble habit. He is continually on sick report without benefit. He is unable to do military duty… This condition dates prior to enlistment.”

Whether these men were too embarrassed to admit a woman had pulled the wool over their eyes is a matter of speculation (though her “condition” dating “prior to enlistment” seems a wonderfully humorous comment on her gender; otherwise, one might ask just how a surgeon at a New Mexico fort knew her “feeble habit” dated prior to enlistment in St. Louis, where a surgeon declared her fit for duty).

In any case, Williams faced immediate harassment: “The men all wanted to get rid of me after they found out I was a woman. Some of them acted real bad to me.”

She served as an army cook in New Mexico for a time, then spent the rest of her days in Colorado and St. Louis. She was hospitalized again, and applied for a disability pension based on her military service. Her application was rejected. She died in 1892.

A monument for Williams can be found in Leavenworth, Kansas.

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