From the mid-19^<th> century onwards, China was obliged under the pressure of unequal treaties with Western powers to permit the free movement of non-Chinese nationals such as missionaries, travellers, and employees of overseas companies in the country's interior. At the same time, political unrest and economic decline were making China's rural areas more and more unstable, and those foreigners became the natural targets of the bandits that were created by those unsettled conditions. While the sufferings of those 'foreign tickets' were not inconsiderable, there was one consolation for those who wish to know more about the lives of bandits and of the people who lived through this 'Dark Night' of Chinese history. This was that some of the former captives were ready to relive their experiences by writing out their memoirs. Having actually listened to what the bandits wanted to say, they were able to record the 'intimate' aspects of banditry; at the same time, having lived among the poor peasants of China's countryside, they were able to gain a perspective on Chinese conditions that was not available to the foreigners who formed a privileged elite in the treaty ports like Shanghai. A glance through the writings of these former bandit captives reveals a world quite inaccessible to the scholar who relies on official sources. We learn what it was like to live the lives of hunted and despised bandits; we learn of the strange relationship of curiosity and mutual sympathy that sprang up between the captives and the villagers, who were equally the bandits' victims; and we discover the existence of a delicate three-way relationship between the bandits, the Chinese authorities, and the captives' diplomatic representatives. Although the voices that speak to us from the lines of these memoirs are those of the once-mighty foreigner, the cries that leap out from between those lines are from the mouths of the long-ignored Chinese peasant, making these materials a precious source for historians of rural China.

13

KJ00004276300

論文

Article