Revolution, Religion and the Poppy: Opium and the Rebellion of the "Sixteenth Emperor" in Early Republican Fujian

Revolution, Religion and the Poppy: Opium and the Rebellion of the "Sixteenth Emperor" in Early Republican Fujian* by Joyce A. Madancy INTRODUCTION The 1911 Revolution was embraced by many Chinese across the economic spectrum, largely because it promised a change in the status quo. That status quo often included corrupt local government, exhorbitant taxation, the threat of imperialist aggression, and disruptive reforms. Discontent with each and all of these factors spawned rural unrest during the final decade of the Qing era. Disappointment with the.reality of the early Republic would spark more. One of the most well-known but least studied of the late Qing/ early Republican reforms is the official campaign against opium that began in 1906 and continued into the early Republican era. The suppression campaign seemed to enjoy a good deal of popular support that sprung largely from the incipient nationalism fueling other late Qing reforms, but it also trampled powerful vested interests, particularly in China's opium-growing regions. Ultimately, the success of opium reform hinged on the ability of the Chinese state to locate *Manythanks to Ernest Young, Stephen Averill, Paul Howard, Carol Benedict, Lucien Bianco and the anonymous reviewer for comments on the first draft of this paper, to Diane Scherer for helping me track down relevant documents from the U. S. Department of State, and to the staffs at Methodist Archives at Drew University and the Institute of Modem China at Taiwan's Academia Sinica. This reasearch was aided by grants from the Joint Committee on Chinese Studies of the American Council ofLeamed Socie~ ties and the Social Science Research Council with funds provided by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation; and the Center for Chinese Studies and Rackham Graduate School, both at the University of Michigan. Very ' special thanks to Judy Wyman for her valued academic advice and moral support, and to my husband Jack Kennedy for his love and encouragement, his patience when I was discouraged, and his impatience when I needed a push. REPUBLICAN CHINA 21.1 (Nov. 1995): 1-41 2 REPUBLICAN CHINA substitute revenue sources, but popular resistance to taxes levied for that purpose endangered that success ..The rebellion of the "Sixteenth Emperor" in early Republican Fujian Province was one such case. In the midst·ofthe political confusion that followed the 1911 Revolution, several areas along the coast ofFujian took advantage of the temporary freedom from state control to defy central and provincial authorities by planting opium poppies. Yet only in the Xinghua region did popular resistance acquire the dimensions of an international incident. The escalation and lengthy duration of hostilities was the result of Chinese social and political tensions, as well as heavyhanded diplomacy by foreign powers. The settlement of the affair illustrated the complexities involved in the implementation and enforcement of opium reform, and revealed the real, but tenuous, hold of the fledgling Republican state on the province of Fujian. When the first reports of the so-called "opium revolt" in the Xinghua region reached the American consulate in Xi amen [Amoy] in June 1912, the situation was not viewed as serious by foreign diplomats. But by the time the conflict sputtered to a conclusion in the spring of 1914, the uprising had cost hundreds of lives; resulted in the burning and looting of numerous properties-many of them owned by Christian churches and church members; and contributed to the sacking of Fujian' s governor, a host of lesser Chinese officials, and the American consul at the provincial capital of Fuzhou. The insurgents were initially led by a man named Huang Lian, who was also known as the Sixteenth Emperor. Huang's alleged imperial pretensions, as well as his protection of local opium fields and his anti -Christian bent, convinced foreign observers that the rebellion deserved national-level attention and intervention. Rural collective uprisings in the late Qing and early Republic have been the subject of a great deal of scholarly debate, and some of the conclusions contained in that body of literature help to place this incident in the proper historical and analytical context. Huang Lian' s uprising had its origins in a variety of rural complaints that were typical of that time period, so it...