Blood and History in China: The Donglin Faction and its Repression, 1620-1627 (review)

The rise and fall of the Donglin and Fushe movements in the late Ming were subjects of an important article, two book chapters, and (more obliquely) a weighty monograph in English published from the 1950s to the 1980s. The movements were also treated in substantial monographs in Chinese and Japanese in the 1960s and 1990s. Until the publication of Blood and History, however, we had no monograph in English devoted solely to the Donglin. Now we have a book that captures the drama and assesses the significance of an enterprise that was designed to rescue the Ming state but that actually contributed to its demise.

The author, who has published two highly regarded books on earlier Ming intellectual and local history, eschews the usual tiresome complaints about the limitations of Chinese sources and draws on a wealth of late-Ming collected works, notes, letters, diaries, gazetteers, and informal histories to provide a detailed and gripping narrative of the rise and fall of the Donglin political party during the penultimate reign of the Ming dynasty. This slim volume does not attempt a comprehensive account of the Donglin, which is more nearly attempted in the Chinese- and Japanese-language studies, but it does offer a penetrating and absorbing narrative of the 1620s and begins to locate that era in the larger pattern of Chinese history.

The Introduction immediately sparks interest by comparing and contrasting the Donglin challenge to the Ming state in the 1620s with the demonstrations in the People's Republic in the 1980s. In both cases, it argues, "the intention was to communicate sincere moral feelings to the rulers and to the public at large." The movement involved an imprecise agenda, ad hoc organization, and intolerance to compromise, and the results included an "elitist storm of absolute self-righteousness," harsh but sanctimonious opposition, "glorious commemoration for the dead and imprisoned participants," and "eternal infamy for those who unleashed the dogs of repression." In both cases we can find demonstrations of sympathy from the common people, the failure of radical protesters "to gauge the effect their unlimited and unconditional claims to moral righteousness may have upon those in power," and the acceptance of bloodshed by radicals on both sides as necessary to awaken the consciousness of the people and shape the course of history. The main difference is that the Donglin radicals were government officials who suffered martyrdoms while the Tiananmen protesters were young students who largely escaped the violent crackdown.

Chapter 1 lays bare the roots of the late-Ming confrontation. Controversy began over the succession to the Wanli ruler, who had long failed to provide effective leadership and who was suspected by the Donglin officials of wanting to replace the heir apparent with the son of his favorite concubine. Conflict continued over three cases: an attack by a stick-wielding commoner on the palace, which the heir apparent himself dismissed as the act of an idiot but the Donglin interpreted as part of a conspiracy to alter the succession; the death of Taichang one month after assuming the throne, which many attributed to illness but the Donglin understood as the result of the prescription of a poisonous red pill; and the removal from the royal palace of Lady Li, the favorite concubine of the just-deceased ruler, advocated by the Donglin as necessary to protect the authority of the adolescent sovereign, Tianqi, but regarded by their opponents as an unfilial act imposed on the new ruler.

Chapter 2 introduces the key players at court. On the Donglin side were Wang An, a eunuch tutor to Taichang, and Wang Wenyan, no relative but a minor official and political operator, who, upon Taichang's accession in August 1620 and during his month-long reign, brought many Donglin scholar-officials back into the government after years in...