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71 LATE CH'ING RESPONSE TO IMPERIALISM: THE CASE OF CANTON By Edward J. M. Rhoads A characteristic response to imperialism is nationalism, particularly mass -based nationalism. In China, the May Fourth movement of 1919 is generally regarded as the first major mani2 festation of mass nationalism. Its roots, however, reach back 3 to the late Ch'ing, to the post-Boxer decade. I propose to demonstrate this contention with reference to Canton in Kwangtung. The first mass nationalist demonstration in Canton was the 4 anti -American boycott of 1905-06. (The anti-Russian movement in the spring of 1903 had practically no support in Canton. The campaign to redeem the Canton -Hankow railway in 1904-05, while nationalist, was not a mass movement; it was largely conducted by the officials, notably Chang Chih-tung, and did not involve the people of Canton to any significant degree. ) The boycott was part of a nation-wide protest, initiated in Shanghai in the spring of 1905, to force the United States government to reform or abandon its discriminatory policy toward Chinese immigrants, many of whom were Cantonese, In Canton the boycott was organized by the merchants and gentry of the Nine Charitable Institutions, the Seventy- - 72 two Guilds and the newly-organized Chamber of Commerce: it had the vigorous support of the newspapers and the students of the "new schools. " Thus, while the merchant guilds secured pledges from their member shops not to deal in American goods, the press and the students publicized the aims of the boycott as well as the trademarks of the goods to be boycotted. They also placarded shops and homes all over the city with signs affirming their intention not to sell or buy American products. The boycott, though originating in Shanghai, had the greatest effect in Canton. It persisted, in disregard of an imperial edict issued on 3 1 August, long after it had died out elsewhere, including Shanghai. As the American consulate noted in December, The agency of the Standard Oil Company in Canton reports their sales to have steadily decreased from an average of 90,000 cases monthly before the establishment of the boycott to the minimum of 19, 000 cases for the month of November, 1905. . . . These present sales are simply deliveries made on orders placed with the Company before the boycott was declared . No new orders have been placed for the past five months and the same can be said of the flour interests in South China. However, the boycott began to die out in late January 1906, in part because of a split among its leaders regarding the acceptability of possible American concessions and in part because of a new and distracting struggle between the governor -general and the local - 73 gentry and merchants over control of the provincial railways. The boycott did not, in the end, result in the United States abandoning its policy of excluding Chinese "coolies;" it did, however , prompt a reformation of American immigration practices . Furthermore, there were some desultory attempts to replace the boycotted items, like flour, with products of local manufacture, though the general practice was simply to replace them with other imports, like Sumatran oil for American oil. After the anti -American boycott, there was a lull of almost two years when there were no further large-scale nationalist demonstrations . Then, at the end of 1907, they were resumed abruptly and with increased vigor. There were two major reasons for the renewal of the nationalist movement at this time. One was the creation of the Quadruple Alliance through a series of bilateral treaties linking France, Japan, Russia and Britain that appeared to be directed in part against China; this revived fears among the Chinese of the partitioning of the empire. The other was the announcement of the Court's commitment to a definite program of constitutional reform, including local self-government; this tended to encourage and sanction new and greater social activism among the politicised masses. The immediate occasion for the resurgence of mass 74 nationalism in Canton was the British naval intervention in the West River at the end of November 1907. Exasperated by the alleged inability of the Kwangtung river police to...

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