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The narrative of the "French Revolution" in late Qing China and its ideological implications
Written by丨Gu Shaohua
Gu Shaohua is an associate professor in the Department of History, Suzhou University of Science and Technology.
The French Revolution had a profound impact on the Xinhai Revolution at the ideological and cultural level. In the first half of the 19th century, it was an ordinary popular uprising during the reign of successive French monarchs, and in the second half of the 19th century, it was attached with the democratic connotation of a revolutionary form of government. After 1899, it gradually took on the image of a revolutionary event, and was recognized as a new type of revolution that sought power rather than violence. In 1906, Kang Youwei published "The History of the French Revolution", reshaping it with the theme of the Tang Wu Revolution, emphasizing that it was only the story of Tang Wu that took place in France, and belonged to the category of violence of the ancient Chinese revolution rather than seeking power. Behind the debate over whether the French Revolution was a revolution of violence or a revolution for power was the transformation of the concept of revolutionary legitimacy in the last decade or so of the Qing Dynasty: the punishment of violence was no longer a necessary prerequisite for revolutionaries to become famous, and the pursuit of power was also a sufficient condition for launching a legitimate revolution. The virtuous monarch and benevolent government, which were beautiful political images in the traditional political culture, could no longer truly and effectively silence the voice of the revolution, and the Qing court lost its original talisman that could capture people's hearts. This change in the concept of revolutionary legitimacy is an important dimension in understanding why the Xinhai Revolution took place.
[Keywords] French Revolution, Tangwu Revolution, Xinhai Revolution, Kang Youwei
The French Revolution was an epoch-making event in the course of modern world history, which had a profound impact on the shaping of world politics and culture after that. Since the beginning of the 19th century, more and more information about the French Revolution has entered China, which has had a profound influence on the modern Chinese revolution at the ideological and cultural level. The spread and influence of the French Revolution in China has been given great importance to the academic community. In the early eighties and nineties of the 20th century, the analysis was mainly based on the analysis of intellectual elites with different political positions in modern China, especially focusing on the two groups of "revolution" and "reform", focusing on their positive or negative perceptions and the confrontation with each other. [1] In recent years, under the influence of the "linguistic turn", some scholars have discussed the creation process of the Chinese word French Revolution from the perspective of revolutionary discourse, thus examining the initial historical aspects of the intersection of Chinese and Western revolutionary concepts. [２]
As far as the spread and influence of the French Revolution in modern China is concerned, the late Qing Dynasty is the initial stereotyped stage and the core of understanding the issue, but there are still key cruxes that have not yet been clarified in previous research. First, the formation of the revolutionary image of the French event in late Qing China was a diachronic process. How it was gradually incorporated into the category of revolution and became a revolutionary event,[3] is the first question that should be answered, but still unclear. Second, because there is a revolutionary lineage in China that takes the Tangwu Revolution as a model, how the French incident was classified after it was identified as a revolution was the focus of discussion at the time. The underlying phenomenon behind this was the struggle for the definition of revolutionary legitimacy in the context of the rising revolutionary atmosphere in China at that time, and the existing research on this was not sufficiently discussed. Therefore, this paper will return to the historical context, explore the process of forming a revolutionary image around the evolution of the narrative of the French Revolution in late Qing China, explore the different theories of the nature of its category after it became a revolutionary event, and explore the deep issues related to the transformation of the concept of legitimacy of the Chinese Revolution behind it, in order to deepen the understanding of the influence of the French Revolution on the Xinhai Revolution. [４]
1. The evolution of the image from "people's change" to "change".
The French Revolution was naturally an important revolutionary event in today's view, but if we put aside this hindsight and return to the specific historical context, the first half of the 19th century can be regarded as the first stage of the event's imagery, which was hidden in the homogeneous narrative of the rotation of French kings as an ordinary popular revolt with no special meaning.
This imagery is more common in the missionary's longer narratives of French history. In 1837, the "Chronicles of the Kingdom of France" published in the "Monthly Biography of the Eastern and Western Examinations" used the French kings as a time scale to describe the situation during the reign of each king, and presented the history of the successive reigns of different kings. In such texts, the so-called "French Revolution" was merely an ordinary rebellion caused by the injustice of the reigns of the kings before and after, and there were no significant new changes in French society before and after this event. [5] The Compendium of Ancient and Modern Nations, A Brief History of Foreign Countries, the New Geography Exam, and the Geography Encyclopedia, which were published later, also present this period of French history in this narrative mode. [6] Moreover, the Napoleon biography, although not a longer period of history, is in fact a microcosm of this narrative, which is seen in France as a foreshadowing of Napoléon I's ascension to the throne. [７]
There were also missionaries at the time who tried to highlight the significance of the event and put it at the heart of the narrative, but the narrative mode did not change its imagery substantially. For example, in the 1819 edition of the Geography of the Child, this incident was specifically recounted, but the appearance it presented, apart from the wars between countries, is still a story of the succession of kings. [8] The 1856 edition of The Globe begins its narrative with its importance in French history, but the event is still in the middle of the narrative of the change of kings. [９]
It can be said that in the first half of the 19th century, in the writings of missionaries, the events in France, whether they were in a longer period of French historical narrative, Napoleon's personal biography, or as a special story, were far from showing the far-reaching significance that people are familiar with today, and only showed an ordinary popular uprising interspersed with the change of the reign of successive kings. And this image was also accepted by the Chinese intellectual elite who "opened their eyes to the world" such as Xu Jiji and Wei Yuan at that time. [１０]
The second half of the 19th century can be used as the second stage of the image presentation of this event in France. Roughly from the 70s of the 19th century, it gradually broke away from the narrative of the change of the reign of successive kings, and was no longer an ordinary popular uprising interspersed with it, but a special event with modern democratic implications. For example, the Chronology of the Four Descents uses the Common Era, tying events to a specific year, and the events in France are located in the corresponding year. The author emphasizes that France has since changed from a "monarchy" to a "democracy". [11] The narrative time threads here, especially the chronological approach, give the reader a sense of time that no longer exists in the cycle of reign of successive kings. In other words, it has been detached from the chronological interlayer of succession of kings before and after, and symbolizes the transformation of France from a "monarchy" to a "democracy".
In contrast, Joseph Edkins focused more on shaping the political implications of the transition from a "monarchy" to a "democracy" attached to this event. There is a section in the "Outline of Western Studies" entitled "The French New Deal". This event serves as both the beginning of the history of the New Deal and the main body of the section. "A Brief History of Europe" named the 12th volume after "The Abolition of the Monarchy in France as the World of Civil Affairs", and directly used this event as a time node to write Western history to highlight its importance in Western history. [12] In contrast to Joseph's affirmative view of the writing, Devello Zolotos Sheffield is more critical in his Chronicle of the Kingdoms. However, he also believes that this is a major event in the "modern West", emphasizing that this matter is the core link of "the great change of the old French system". [13] There may have been differences in the positive and negative stances of Joseph and Xie Weilou on the incident, but both acknowledged its importance for political change in France.
In the seventies and eighties of the 19th century, the history of France was redefined as a crucial stage in France's transition from a "monarchy" to a "democracy". In the second half of the 19th century, this kind of imagery gradually became more and more abundant in China, mainly in the following three aspects: First, in addition to the texts compiled by missionaries, there were also intellectual imports from Japan, among which the influential "Chronicles of the Worlds" was imported from Japan and reprinted in many copies. [14] The book also emphasizes that this was the event that triggered the great change in the French political system. [15] Second, the Chinese intellectual elite compiled foreign historical works, most of which were directly taken from the texts of missionaries or Japanese scholars, so that such an account of the event could also be reproduced. Third, the genres and carriers of recording this event are no longer limited to historical and geographical works, but have been expanded to include literary novels and news newspapers. [１６]
It can be said that in China in the late 19th century, the French incident had formed an image of political change with democratic implications, and was described as an important stage in France's transition from a "monarchy" to a "democratic state", and this image has become a relatively common way to write about this event. At that time, China's intellectual elite also began to actively appropriate this. On the one hand, they proceeded from Confucian people-oriented thought, took the French incident as an example, expounded the people's feelings and opinions, and emphasized the concept of people-oriented and the unity of the monarch and the people. [17] On the other hand, they were influenced by Timoihy Richard's translation of the New History of Ctesi, focusing on the transformative imagery of the events in France, in order to advocate the French Restoration. [18] It is worth noting that, under the control of this imagery, although the French event was not officially named "revolution", the content of the story of the pursuit of democratic political change is actually basically close to the content of the story with the name of "revolution" in the early 20th century. In other words, the story of change at this time is relatively similar in content to the narrative of revolution that follows, but the nature of the event has not yet been characterized as revolutionary. This similarity in content also laid a cognitive foundation for the rapid popularity of subsequent revolutionary imagery.
It should be noted that in China in the late 19th century, there were indeed individual phenomena in which the word revolution was used to express the French matter: first, there were related works imported from Japan, such as "The Chronicles of the World". But roughly before 1899, the events in France were described as a revolutionary phenomenon in such writings, and did not attract much attention from the domestic intellectual elite. The second is the existence of related texts that exist after the Chinese people have copied Japanese works, such as "Japanese Bibliography" and "Revising the French Chronicles". The fact that such texts directly reproduce the relevant Japanese sentences does not mean that the domestic intellectual elite has taken the initiative to include them in the revolutionary category. Shen Guowei has pointed out that the compilation method of the "Japanese Bibliography" is "to take it as it is". [19] The Reformulation of the French Chronicles is prone to excessive ideological elaboration, and Chen Jianhua and Su Menglin once believed that Wang Tao had creatively used revolutionary discourse. [20] Chen and Su's misunderstanding stems from the failure to clarify the historical origin and writing process of the Reformulation of the French Chronicles, which was actually only copied by Wang Tao. [２１]
2. The shaping of a new model of revolution
The Chinese intellectual elite took the initiative to refer to the events in France as a revolution and to use it for political expression, roughly beginning in 1898-1899. Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao and others once used a work called "The French Revolution" to say that if the ruler blindly suppressed the people, his rule would be overthrown, so as to emphasize the importance of timely reform of the law. For example, "The Coup d'état of Wuxu" describes: "(Kang Youwei) is a compilation of books such as "The French Revolution" and "The Fall of Poland", which is extremely conservative and unchanged, suppressing its people, and will lead to the destruction of the country. [22] Here, the "revolution" in the French Revolution is more of an ancient semantic, and Kang Youwei and others used the image of the death of the revolutionaries in the Yi Dynasty Ding Revolution to alert the rulers. [２３]
After about 1899, due to the increasing exposure to foreign information, especially Japan, the Chinese intellectual elite's understanding of the French incident soon overflowed the scope of the ancient Chinese revolution, and realized that it was a revolution of unusual significance. For example, after the failure of the Wuxu Reform, Liang Qichao, whose political stance turned radical, repeatedly said that this was a new type of revolution that had never been seen before. He described the French Revolution as "a great event unprecedented on the whole earth", "a great revolution unprecedented in ancient times", and "a great cause unprecedented in ancient times". [24] For example, in 1903, the World of Boys also wrote that the French Revolution was "unseen since ancient times". [２５]
Such "unprecedented" rhetoric suggests that the Chinese intellectual elite recognized that the French Revolution was different from the ancient Chinese revolution, and that its story was less about the Tang Wu Revolution's rebellion against tyranny,[26] but more about the people fighting for and defending their rights. In 1899, Liang Qichao pointed out in "National Power and Civil Rights" published in the "Qing Yi Bao" that the French Revolution occurred because the French people pursued the "right to freedom". [27] On April 29, 1900, Liang Qichao also sent a special letter to Kang Youwei to explain the new meaning of the French Revolution. [28] It should be said that after 1899, this image of the French Revolution gradually became more and more common in public opinion,[29] and was not confined to the revolutionary press, but even newspapers and periodicals such as the Xinmin Cong Bao, which mainly advocated reform. [３０]
The writing of this imagery of the French Revolution, although inconsistent in detail, has a similar narrative framework, that is, the Enlightenment thinkers preached the doctrine of rights, and the people realized the importance of rights, fought for them in a revolutionary form, and eventually succeeded. [31] It is worth noting that in the writings on the causes of the French Revolution, in addition to the ideas of "liberty" and "equality" propagated by Enlightenment thinkers, there were also episodes of tyranny. But in such a narrative, the importance of the two types of causes is not equal, and the former is more critical. For example, in 1901, the article "Speaking of the Nationals" said that although the French people were "emaciated by the abusive government", the main reason for the success of the revolution was that the Enlightenment thinkers used the "theory of freedom and equality" to shape the ordinary people into "citizens" with a sense of rights. [３２]
As we all know, the French Revolution took place far from being as simple as the intellectual elite of the late Qing Dynasty. In terms of the relationship between Enlightenment ideas and the French Revolution, the American scholar Robert Darnton found that the classics of Enlightenment thinkers were not bestsellers on the eve of the Revolution from the perspective of books and reading history, and questioned the simple linear relationship between the Enlightenment and revolution. [33] However, in the writings of the Chinese intellectual elite at the time, the French Revolution was greatly reduced, and the symbolic plot of the Enlightenment thinkers propagating the idea of rights constituted a linear story of causal connection with the revolution that followed.
For this French Revolution, which was based on rights demands, the intellectual elite of the late Qing Dynasty also focused on its exemplary significance, emphasizing that it opened a precedent for such revolutions in modern Europe and even the world. In 1903, Yang Yulin used "first revolution", "second revolution", "third revolution" and other chronological terms to present the genealogy of modern European revolutions starting with the French Revolution. [34] The theory that the French Revolution was the source of such revolutions in modern Europe and even the world was widely spread in the late Qing Dynasty. There is a more explicit view that the French Revolution is the "mother of revolutions" in modern Europe. [35] This narrative evolved further to the point that France was the birthplace of modern European revolutions. [３６]
The significance of the French Revolution as a new paradigm of revolution was that it provided another model of revolution that could be emulated and legitimate. In ancient China, due to the influence of Confucian political culture, the actual situation of the revolution was different, but in order to gain political legitimacy, the construction of revolutionary stories was generally based on the "Tang Wu Zhengzhu". Even in the late Qing Dynasty, the Tangwu Revolution remained the foundational knowledge of the Confucian education system. [37] As commented at the time, "Confucius is the only one who has admired faith for thousands of years, and Confucius is the only disciple of Confucius". [38] However, after 1899, the intellectual elite of the late Qing Dynasty gradually realized that the revolutionary model was not only the Tangwu Revolution, nor was the revolutionary lineage only the Tangwu Revolution. In 1906, Tian Tong wrote in a poem: "A glimpse of the global revolutionary field, Western Europe won the war and the East. ”[３９]
In order to further promote the realization that the right to appeal can also be revolutionary, the revolutionary-leaning intellectual elite took advantage of the difference between the ancient and the modern to define the concept of violence contained in the Tangwu Revolution as a thing of the past, emphasizing that it is no longer a necessary principle for judging whether the revolution should take place at present. In 1907, an article in the New Century directly compared the French Revolution with the Tangwu Revolution, holding that the former was "the era of revolution in the new century" and the latter was "the revolution of the old century". [40] Lu Xin's Revolutionary Truth: A Message to the Chinese, written in the summer and autumn of 1910, also clearly pointed out that the Tangwu Revolution was "the old doctrine of our people." He explained that the premise of the Tangwu Revolution was the emergence of tyrants such as Ji and Xu, but the monarch above the people was the crux of the problem. If we look at it in terms of the "principle of equality and freedom", the king is "the public enemy of the people", and the existence of the monarch is the justification for the revolution. The revolutions in the West, including in France, were precisely "righteous acts against the monarchy". Moreover, the legitimacy of this revolution has been recognized all over the world, and "it has been praised and commemorated by people all over the world, and it has not been usurped in the name of usurpation." [４１]
In addition, in order to further break the monopoly of Tang Wu's interpretation of the revolution, the pro-revolution intellectuals also rewrote the story of the ancient Chinese revolution with the theme of rights appeal, showing that it also has its roots in Chinese history. In 1904, Liu Yazi wrote Chen's "Biography of Chen She, the First Chinese Revolutionary", because he was shocked by the European revolution, and asked whether there was a similar revolution in Chinese history, and gave the answer to Chen She's armed uprising at the end of the Qin Dynasty. In the following description, he explained in detail the reasons for the revolution, pointing out that the Qin Dynasty's autocratic politics reached its extreme, and the suppression of civil power by the monarchy was the key to the outbreak of the revolution. He places Chen Shi's story in the narrative framework of claiming rights, and constructs a revolution in seeking rights that took place in Chinese history. In the text, Liu Yazi directly compares the ruler of the Qin Dynasty to the French king Louis XVI. [42] This is not so much a comparison of the events of the Sino-French Revolution as it is the French Revolution as a model of the power-seeking revolution, which provided a template for his story to write about the Chen Shi uprising.
Liu Yazi reconstructed a separate revolutionary event, and in 1906 the "Troubled Chapter" published in the "Minbao" attempted to classify the revolutionary unity in Chinese history into the category of the power-seeking revolution. The article pointed out that with the exception of "the usurpation of the throne by the magnates, the dominance of feudal towns, and the invasion of foreign tribes", the Dingge of all Chinese dynasties was a "people's revolution" based on the "idea of human rights". The revolution that took place in the last years of the dynasty seems to be the result of "the lord is faint from above, and the officials are violent from below", but the root cause is that the Chinese people have the idea of rights, and the people do not want to resist the shackles of the monarchy's autocracy. Therefore, this article uses the concept of "people's revolution" to redefine the revolution in Chinese history, emphasizing that under the appearance of resistance to tyranny, its essence is a power-seeking revolution triggered by the fundamental contradiction between civil power and monarchical power. [４３]
This new revolutionary narrative expands the source of revolutionary legitimacy from the original single opposition to tyranny to the level of pursuing one's own rights, providing a new basis for revolutionary practice and is extremely effective in ideological agitation. Just as Yang Yulin appealed in "New Hunan" in 1902: "If you don't see France, France, the birthplace of the "Treatise on the People's Covenant", the martial arts arena of the right to freedom, and its actions are only riots. [44] But this was clearly a serious ideological crisis for the anti-revolutionary intellectual community, which had tried to reconstruct the Tangwu Revolution as the only revolutionary model.
3. The French Revolution as a reproduction of Tang Wu's story
When the French Revolution, with its new revolutionary image, gradually spread in the late Qing Dynasty and was widely used by revolutionary-inclined groups, the opponents of the revolution re-raised the Tangwu Revolution in an attempt to consolidate the principle of the Tangwu Revolution and achieve the goal of eliminating revolutionary public opinion with the propaganda of the benevolent image of the Qing court. In 1903, the "Revolutionary Rebuttal" published in the "Zhongwai Daily" caused quite a stir. Although the article acknowledges the existence of power-seeking revolutions in Western countries, it points out that this revolutionary concept is not suitable for China, opposes transplanting it into China, and affirms the principle that tyranny can be carried out before revolution can be carried out. The author of the article also reverted the Qing court's reversing of the current situation and the absence of harsh government, benchmarked this set of conditions for the revolution to occur, and emphasized that the revolution "has not yet come to the time." [45] The 1904 "Declaration" also sometimes commented that the revolution should follow the logic of behavior determined by the Tangwu Revolution, and that a necessary condition for launching a revolution was that "its ruler is the king of the Emperor, who is a blessing and a prestige, and a remnant of the people can succeed". [46] Even after the Wuchang Uprising, Song Yuren wrote to Tang Shouqian that the political principle that the Chinese revolution should follow was "to prosper if there is virtue, and to perish if there is no virtue", rather than "the idea of civil affairs". [４７]
The opponents of the revolution not only emphasized that the political ethics of the Tang Wu Revolution were the only basis for judging whether the revolution should have taken place, but also propagated that the so-called revolution at that time did not meet this criterion and was only under the guise of "revolution". In 1907, the Qing court officially stated that "bandits plotting rebellion" "often use revolutionary terms to confuse people's hearts" and that they should "expose their crimes of rebellion" and "not let the borrowed words of revolution be used as instigation". [48] In 1908, Nanyang Hui Xinpao, the mouthpiece of the royalist party, pointed out that the revolutionary banner erected by the revolutionaries was not justified. [４９]
Compared with blindly advocating and advocating the Tangwu Revolution alone, Kang Youwei's approach is more clever. He chose the French Revolution, which was regarded as a typical power-seeking revolution in public opinion at the time, as the object of his writing, and reshaped it with the "righteousness of violence", emphasizing that this was the inherent type of revolution in China, and that both Chinese and foreign revolutions followed the same political ethics of violence. After 1899, the French Revolution gradually appeared in China as a power-seeking revolution, and Kang Youwei also noticed this phenomenon and was once affected by it. In 1902, he clearly defined the French Revolution as a revolution for power, which was distinguished from the ancient Chinese Revolution of Violence. He said that the modern Western revolution was a "struggle for power", while the ancient Chinese revolution exemplified by the Tangwu Revolution pursued the "righteousness of violence". [50] This was his clear positioning of the French Revolution category at the time. However, his opposition to the imitation of the French Revolution was still very firm, and he mainly discussed it from two levels: reform instead of revolution in order to seek power, and the different historical circumstances of each country. [51] In other words, at that time he did not directly deny the existence of the Revolution, let alone the French Revolution.
Kang Youwei's acknowledgment of this image of the French Revolution did not last long. Soon he changed his attitude and directly denied the existence of a power-seeking revolution. The change in his concept and new argument are embodied in the "History of the French Revolution" published in the newspaper "Xinmin Cong" in 1906. This article is the part of "Journey to France" devoted to the French Revolution, and it was specially excerpted and published under a new title. Liang Qichao once wrote a special introduction to "On the History of the French Revolution", explaining that its "most profound and clear" part is "the last paragraph on the reasons why France had to revolutionize". [52] Liang Qichao has actually pointed out the good intentions of his teacher's creation, but it has not attracted the attention of later researchers. [53] The arguments for the two types of revolutions, violence and power-seeking, are constructed on the basis of the different causes of the revolution. The explanation of the causes of revolution is actually to construct the category of revolution and to shape the source of revolutionary legitimacy. In "On the History of the French Revolution", Kang Youwei tried to redefine the nature of the revolution by explaining the causes of the French Revolution, and determine the criteria for judging whether the revolution was justified or not.
Kang Youwei summarized the reasons for the revolution in the article, "What caused the Great Revolution in France, the greed of the French feudal monks and monasteries, the harshness of taxation and criminal law, and the hardship of the people, which is appalling and pathetic." [54] In a questioning way, he attributed the main cause of the revolution to the oppression of the elite and the harsh taxation and criminal laws that led to the misery of the people. The expression in the manuscript is slightly different, and it is written that "there are many reasons for the French Revolution, but the greed of the French feudal monasteries, the harshness of taxation and criminal law, and the hardship of the people, which are appalling and pathetic." [55] From the phrase "there are many reasons" here, it can be seen that Kang Youwei actually knew that the French Revolution was caused by a variety of reasons. See the contents of the published and manuscript editions to better understand his narrative intentions. The brutality of the elite, the heavy taxation and the harsh criminal law were clearly his deliberate choices.
In Kang Youwei's writing, the French people have to bear the "feudal conquest" in their region. On the one hand, the French fiefdoms were sparsely populated and had low total output, and on the other hand, the feudal elites depended on them for food, and the total demand was high. In this situation where the contradiction between supply and demand is prominent, the rentier class is even more desperate, and the common people are unbearable, abandoning their homes and begging, and are full of desolation. In addition, people also have to bear the "national tax", which makes the living situation even worse. Regarding the situation of the people who suffered from the harsh government, Kang Youwei summed it up: "The French people are dressed in rags, live in houses, eat grass roots or black bread, and their livelihood is like cattle and horses, and they are hungry and hungry. [56] According to him, the revolution was something that the people had to do to survive because they could not bear the weight of taxes, thus establishing the causal relationship between the harsh taxes and the revolution, and the image of the revolution attached to the revolution as the people rebelled against the tyranny of the rulers.
The same narrative element can play different roles in different writing strategies, and the whole story can take on different meanings. At that time, the press also discussed the relationship between the French Revolution and taxation. In 1906, "The Three Doctrines of Modern Europeans" signed "Yuchenzi" talked about the relationship between the two. The article argues not from the perspective of onerous taxation but from the perspective of rights, arguing that the concern of Europeans is whether they can enjoy the corresponding rights after paying taxes. The French Revolution was the embodiment of this idea, not the "revolutionaries who rose up because of heavy taxes". [57] In this narrative of the relationship between revolution and taxation, the French Revolution was naturally a revolution of power-seeking. In contrast to Kangwen, both depict the French tax problem, but the revolutionary imagery presented is markedly different. One is in the context of tyranny and abuse of the people, showing the story of the revolution that eventually led to the harsh taxation, and the other is unfolding in the context of the demand for rights, telling the story of the French people who pay attention to the reciprocity of taxes and rights, and put into revolution in order to claim the corresponding rights.
On the question of discussing the causes of the French Revolution, Kang Youwei also explained the position of the power factor in this revolution. He did not blindly deny the relationship between the "theory of equality and freedom" and the revolution, but emphasized the social phenomenon of tyranny first, and then the emergence of the demand for rights by placing the priority of violence and seeking power in the sequence of revolutionary causes. Thus, Kang Youwei responded to the argument that the search for power was directly related to the French Revolution at that time, not only dissolving the causal relationship between the two successive ones, but also further identifying the violence as the main cause of the French Revolution. It can be said that Kang Youwei rewrote the French Revolution based on the Tangwu Revolution and put it in the category of violence in ancient China, the so-called "story of our country is the oldest and the most",[58] in an attempt to re-establish the violence as the only source of revolutionary legitimacy, so as to eliminate the voice of seeking power to advocate revolution. [59] However, the French Revolution did objectively have a distinct democratic color, which was significantly different from the ancient Chinese Yi Dynasty Ding Revolution. At that time, the relevant information was able to clearly outline the main features and democratic features of the French Revolution. [60] It can be seen that Kang Youwei's efforts were unsuccessful and failed to change the understanding of the French Revolution at the time. In 1908, he wrote to Shanqi, Prince Su of the Qing Dynasty, about the growing influence of the French Revolution and expressed his deep concern. [６１]
Kang Youwei and others re-elevated the Tangwu Revolution in response to the restructuring of the cultural order in the late Qing Dynasty, which was the legitimacy of the revolution. [62] At present, most scholars regard the popularity of democratic ideas and the darkness of Qing rule as the common cause of the late Qing Revolution, which is reasonable as an afterthought, but returning to the historical context, the democratic idea of seeking power did not become the source of revolutionary legitimacy as a matter of course, and the Tangwu Revolution was even appropriated as an ideological tool to oppose the revolution. In addition, in terms of the overall trend of the transformation of the concept of legitimacy of the revolution in the late Qing Dynasty, the judgment of the legitimacy of the revolution gradually shifted from punishment of violence to seeking power, which can be further understood from the observations and comments of the contemporaries.
The first is Sun Baoxuan's observation in 1903. On November 28 of that year, he kept his diary entries on excerpts from Western studies, one of which was about the European Enlightenment thinker John Locke's theory on the causes and legitimacy of revolutions. On the one hand, new ideas of revolutionary legitimacy were entering Sun Baoxuan's knowledge system, and on the other hand, he also sensed that such new ideas had had a negative impact on Confucianism, and some people began to question the value of the latter. [63] It is not difficult to see that the new conception of the legitimacy of the revolution gradually crowded out the space for the explanation of the causes of the revolution not only in his personal mind, but also at the social level.
This is followed by the comments of Lo Nai-xuan in 1911. At this time, the degree of recognition of the Tangwu Revolution was significantly different from what Sun Baoxuan had observed. Lao Naixuan said that Confucianism established the prerequisites for later generations to launch revolutions through the Tangwu Revolution, one of which was that "the violence of the lord of the world will be like a ruin." In his view, the Qing rulers did not "commit violence", and according to the principle of violence, revolution should not and will not happen, but the reality is the opposite. He believed that the key to the rise of the revolution at that time was the change of revolutionary concepts, and the Tangwu Revolution was no longer respected. [64] Although this is a rhetoric with a strong personal emotion, what he refers to is actually the idea of violence behind the Tangwu Revolution that has lost its original status at the ideological level.
IV. Conclusion
Although the French Revolution took place more than 100 years before the Xinhai Revolution, it still had an important impact on the latter. Returning to the historical scene, the French incident did not take on a revolutionary face in China from the beginning. In the first half of the 19th century, it had no special significance as an ordinary popular uprising in the time of the change of rule of the French monarchs. In the second half of the 19th century, it gradually attached the democratic connotation of a transformative form of government, and was an important stage in France's transition from a "monarchy" to a "democracy". It was genuinely regarded as a revolutionary event by the Chinese intellectual elite at its own initiative, and was first first introduced roughly between 1898 and 1899, when the Kang Party used the name French Revolution from the perspective of the people who died in the Yi Dynasty Revolution to warn the Qing rulers to change the law in time. After 1899, the French Revolution gradually showed more and more new images of power-seeking revolutions, and was recognized as not belonging to the type of ancient Chinese revolutions, and was the representative of such revolutions in modern Europe and even the world. Mutually supportive of this imagery is a revolutionary narrative, and the whole story framework is linearly related to the proclamation of Enlightenment ideas and the outbreak of revolution.
In the early years of the Republic of China, Yan Fu once said: "In the revolutionary world, there is no need for tyrants. [65] This is very different from the "righteousness of punishment" advocated by ancient Confucian political culture. Resistance to tyranny or the demand for rights is not only the reason for the revolutionary story, but also the element that shapes the legitimacy of the revolution. The last decade or so of the Qing Dynasty was an important period in which the concept of legitimacy of the Chinese Revolution was transformed, and the different narratives of the French Revolution were actually exposed signs of the restructuring of this cultural order. The impact of this conceptual transformation on revolutionary practice is that it broke the monopoly of the Tang Wu Revolution on the interpretation of revolutionary legitimacy,[66] and the original set of political ethics of tyranny and abuse of the people and then feasible revolutionary things is no longer the law that revolutionaries must follow when they become famous. In order to preserve rights, the revolution can also be carried out in a bright and bright way.
The transformation of the concept of revolutionary legitimacy also contains a layer of "reverse" ideological connotation, and the reverse dimension of the violent revolution is the affirmation of virtuous monarchs and benevolent government. However, after this conceptual change, the virtuous monarch and benevolent government, which were originally used as a beautiful political image in Confucian political culture, are no longer able to restrain the development of revolutionary practice, because the monarch himself has become the target of public criticism. After the revolution in 1911, Wang Xianqian's poem "Feelings" wrote: "My monarch has no mistakes, and the reed drum is upside down. [67] He did not realize that the existence of a monarch, whether benevolent or not, had become a justification for revolution. Wang Xianqian's question was just the emotion of the person concerned. Luo Zhitian argues from a theoretical perspective: "The Qing court did not have too many particularly obvious acts of tyranny and 'unrighteousness', at least not to the extent of the absurdity of the actions of the emperors of the past dynasties; how could a revolution occur when the imperial court did not act excessively perversely"[68] There are naturally multiple explanations for what he regarded as the "most important question to be answered" in the last decade of the Qing Dynasty, but the transformation of the concept of revolutionary legitimacy should be an important part of understanding this issue and why the Xinhai Revolution occurred.
exegesis
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[1] For representative results, see Essays on French History, edited by the Chinese Society for the Study of French History, Beijing: Life, Reading, and New Knowledge, 1984, pp. 1-46; Liu Zongxu, ed., Essays on the Bicentenary of the French Revolution, Beijing: Life, Reading, and New Knowledge, Beijing, 1990, pp. 1-11, 29-95; Sun Longji, The Historian's Meridian: Historical and Psychological Anthology, Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2004, pp. 28-31; Shinichi Sato, Intellectuals and Civilization in Modern China, trans. Liu Yuebing, Nanjing: Jiangsu People's Publishing House, 2008, pp. 213-223.
[2] For representative results, see Chen Jianhua, "The Modernity of "Revolution": An Examination of Chinese Revolutionary Discourse", Shanghai: Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 2000, pp. 30-36, and Gu Shaohua, "From "French Revolution" to "French Revolution": The Determination of the Translation of an Important Historiographical Term", Historical Theory Research, No. 4, 2019.
[3] In addition to the objective reality itself, the formation of "events" is closely related to people's acceptance at different times thereafter. See [French] Georges Dubie, "Sunday in Bouwen: July 27, 1214", "Preface", trans. Liang Shuang and Tian Meng, Beijing: Peking University Press, 2017, p. 3.
[4] Regarding the influence of the French Revolution on the Xinhai Revolution, although previous studies have pointed out the positive role of the democratic concept contained in the former at the ideological level, it is relatively general and fails to clarify the specific relationship between this democratic idea and the revolutionary concept, that is, it has not paid sufficient attention to the legitimacy of the revolution.
[5] Aihan et al., eds., edited by Huang Shijian, "The Biography of the Monthly Tongji of the Eastern and Western Examinations", Daoguang Ding Younian, November, Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1997, pp. 292-294.
[6] Guo Shilie, "Compendium of Ancient and Modern Nations", vol. 15, 1838, Journal of Jian Xia College, Singapore, pp. 49a-50b. Wei Yuan's Atlas of the Sea contains the now-lost Outline of Foreign History, see Wei Yuan, Atlas of the Sea Kingdom, vol. 42, edited by the Editorial Committee of The Complete Works of Wei Yuan, vol. 6, Changsha: Yuelu Books, 2004, pp. 1203-1204. Translated by Magis, The New Interpretation of the Geography Preparation Encyclopedia, vol. 5, Volume 97 of the New Series of Books, Taipei: Taiwan Xinwenfeng Publishing Co., Ltd., 1985, p. 754. Mu Weilian, Geographical Encyclopedia, vol. 2, Shuang Kuai Lou Collection, Anzheng 6 years (1859), p. 46b. The Encyclopedia of Geography was originally published by the Shanghai Mohai Book House between 1853 and 1854. Since I have not seen this edition, I will use a Japanese copy of 1859 for the time being.
[7] Aihan et al., eds., compiled by Huang Shijian, "The Biography of the Eastern and Western Examination Monthly Tongji", October of the Year of Daoguang Ding You, p. 281.
[8] Maddox, A Brief Biography of a Geographical Child, vol. 5, no. 56, p. 13b, Oxford University Library, title page of this book without author or publication information. According to Xiong Yuezhi's research, the book was edited by Maddox and printed in Malacca in 1819, see Xiong Yuezhi, "Western Learning and Late Qing Society", Shanghai: Shanghai People's Publishing House, 1994, p. 115.
[9] [美] 袆理哲:《地球说略》,宁波华花圣经书房刊本,1856,第50a-50b页。
[10] Xu Jiji, Yinghuan Zhiluo, vol. 7, Shanghai: Shanghai Bookstore Publishing House, 2001, p. 203, Wei Yuan, Haiguo Tuzhi, vol. 42, edited by the Editorial Committee of Wei Yuan's Complete Works, vol. 6, p. 1208.
[１１] Translated by Lin Lezhi and Yan Liangxun, compiled by Li Fengbao: Chronology of the Four Descendants, compiled by Shanghai Library: Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau Translation Book Series: Political History, Vol. 3, Shanghai: Shanghai Scientific and Technical Literature Publishing House, 2012, pp. 420-422.
[１２] Freeman, edited and edited by Joseph Edjoen, edited by Wang Juan and Chen Dezheng, Proofnotes on 'A Brief History of Europe' and 'A Brief Introduction to Western Studies', Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2018, pp. 303-304, 176.
[１３] Xie Weilou, "Wanguo Tongjian", vol. 4, Shanghai Meihua Books, 1882, pp. 1a-6b.
[14] See Wang Yanjuan, "The Spread and Influence of the 'Records of the World' in China in the Late Qing Dynasty", Qing History Research, No. 3, 2016.
[１５] Okamoto Kansuke, "Chronicles of the World", vol. 10, Okamoto Collection, Meiji 11 (1878), p. 23a.
[16] Zou Tao, Fang Xingbian and Zhao Minghua, Chapter 15 of the first volume of Shadow of the Dust on the Sea, Beijing: Minzu Publishing House, 1995, p. 174;
[17] Tang Caichang, "General Theory of the Axioms of Politics and Religion in Various Countries", edited by the editorial department of Zhonghua Book Company, edited by Liu Yangyang: Tang Caichang Collection, Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2013, pp. 30-31, 34, Su Yu, ed., Yijiao Cong Ed., vol. 3, Shanghai: Shanghai Bookstore Publishing House, 2002, p. 57.
[18] Liang Qichao: "On the Harm of Immutable Law", edited by Tang Zhijun and Tang Renze: The Complete Works of Liang Qichao, Volume 1, Beijing: Chinese University Press, 2018, p. 26.
[19] Sanzhao Shen Guowei: "Kang Yuwei and His Japan Calligraphy," Question, No. 5, 2003.
[20] See Chen Jianhua, "The Modernity of 'Revolution': An Examination of Chinese Revolutionary Discourse", pp. 30-32, and Su Menglin, "The Understanding and Rejection of the 'French Revolution' by Chinese Intellectuals (1840-1919)", Ph.D. dissertation, Hunan Normal University, 2014.
[21] See Gu Shaohua, "From "French Revolution" to "French Revolution": The Determination of the Translation of an Important Historiographical Term", Theoretical Studies in Historiography, No. 4, 2019.
[22] Liang Qichao, "The Wuxu Coup d'état", Tang Zhijun and Tang Renze, eds., The Complete Works of Liang Qichao, vol. 1, p. 495.
[23] Scholars generally believe that the Preface to the History of the French Revolution in the Wuxu Manuscript is a forgery during the Xuantong period, while Chen Jianhua believes that the article was written during the Wuxu Reform, and based on this, it is judged that Kang Youwei already had a "modern stance of 'revolution'" at that time. Chen Wen's views are debatable, first, he failed to confirm the authenticity of the "Preface to the History of the French Revolution"; second, Mao Haijian pointed out that the background of Kang and Liang's political thought at that time was still middle school. See Chen Jianhua, "Wuxu Reform and World Revolution: Kang Youwei and the Dilemma of the "Revolution" in Modern Literature and Classics", Nanguo Academic, No. 4, 2018, and Mao Haijian, "The Thoughts of Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao in the Wuxu Period", Beijing: Life, Reading, and New Knowledge, 2021, pp. 3-205.
[24] Liang Qichao, "On the Relationship between the United States and Africa and the War between Britain and Dudu in China", "Shangyue Governor Li Fuxiangshu", "On the Similarities and Differences of National Ideological Changes", edited by Tang Zhijun and Tang Renze: The Complete Works of Liang Qichao, Vol. 2, Beijing: Chinese Renmin University Press, 2018, pp. 211, 242, 324.
[25] "Napoleon's Biography," Boy World No. 26, May 6, 1903.
[26] For the core of the story of the Tang Wu Revolution, see Yang Bojun's Commentary, Mencius, Volume I, Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1960, p. 42.
[27] Liang Qichao, "National Power and Civil Rights", edited by Tang Zhijun and Tang Renze, The Complete Works of Liang Qichao, vol. 2, p. 70.
[28] Ding Wenjiang and Zhao Fengfeng, eds., Liang Qichao's Annals, April 1, Guangxu 26, Shanghai: Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2009, p. 153.
[29] "The Painful Dark World," Hubei Student Circle, No. 4, April 27, 1903. There are many such expressions, so I will not repeat them.
[30] Yu Chenzi, "The Three Doctrines of Europeans in Modern Times", Xinmin Cong Bao No. 28, March 27, 1903.
[31] Specifically, it directly shows that the French Revolution was instigated by Enlightenment thinkers, second, it highlights the plot of the French people reading the writings of Enlightenment thinkers, and third, it portrays the relationship between Enlightenment thinkers and Napoleon as one after the other. See Liu Shipei, "On the Benefits of Intense Intensity", Li Miaogen, ed., Liu Shipei on Learning and Politics, Shanghai: Fudan University Press, 1990, p. 337, Guan An, "On the Benefits of Reading Newsprint", Chinese Cultural Studies Collection, vol. 4, Shanghai: Fudan University Press, 1987, p. 393, and Shen Zhaoyi, "Outline of Xinxue Bibliography", Xiong Yuezhi, ed., Outline of Late Xinxue Bibliography, Shanghai: Shanghai Bookstore Publishing House, 2007, p. 463.
[32] "Speaking of the National", in Zhang Fang and Wang Renzhi, eds., Selected Essays on the First Ten Years of the Xinhai Revolution, Vol. 1, Volume I, Beijing: Life, Reading, and New Knowledge, 1960, p. 77.
[33] See Robert Darnton, The Best-Selling Banned Books Before the French Revolution, trans. Zheng Guoqiang, Shanghai: East China Normal University Press, 2012.
[34] Yang Yulin, "The French Rebellion at the End of the Eighteenth Century", edited by Rao Huaimin, Yang Yulin Collection, Changsha: Yuelu Books, 2008, p. 410. For a similar statement, see "The Grandeur of the History of Europa in the Nineteenth Century," Translation of the Study Tour, vol. 12, November 3, 1903.
[35] Yang Du, "The Problem of Education in China", "The Translation and Compilation of Study Tours", edited by Liu Qingbo, Yang Du Ji, Volume I, Changsha: Hunan People's Publishing House, 1986, pp. 59, 83.
[36] "China in the Twentieth Century", in Zhang Qi and Wang Renzhi, eds., Selected Essays on the Ten Years Before the Xinhai Revolution, Vol. 1, p. 71.
[37] Wenzhou Municipal Library, edited by Shen Hongbao, Lin Jun's Diary, Volume II, March 19 and 25, 1903, Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1998, pp. 462-463.
[38] Shen Tongfang, "Draft Discussion on Reading the Bible and Teaching the Bible in the Adaptation of Primary Schools", Declaration, July 31, 1911, 1st and 3rd edition.
[39] Tian Tong, "Reading the Revolutionary Commentary", Wang Jie and Zhang Jinchao (eds.), Tian Tong Collection, Wuhan: Central China Normal University Press, 2011, p. 15.
[40] "Revolution in the New Century," New Century No. 1, June 22, 1907.
[41] Lu Xin, "Revolutionary Truth: A Message to the Chinese", edited by Zhang Kaiyuan, Luo Fuhui and Yan Changhong, New Editions of Xinhai Revolutionary Historical Materials, Vol. 1, Wuhan: Hubei People's Publishing House, 2006, p. 2.
[42] Liu Yazi, "The Biography of Chen She, the First Chinese Revolutionary", in Wang Jingyao, Wang Xuezhuang, Sun Caixia (eds.), Selected Works of Liu Yazi, Volume I, Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1989, pp. 33-34, 39.
[43] Pu Man, "The Difficulties of Trouble", in Zhang Qi and Wang Renzhi (eds.), Selected Essays on the Decade Before the Xinhai Revolution, Vol. 2, Vol. I, Beijing: Life, Reading, and New Knowledge, 1963, pp. 387-388.
[44] Yang Yulin, "New Hunan", in Rao Huaimin, ed., Yang Yulin Collection, p. 57.
[45] "Revolutionary Refutation", edited by Zhang Qi and Wang Renzhi, Selected Essays on the Ten Years Before the Xinhai Revolution, vol. 1, vol. 2, pp. 694-695.
[46] "The Theory of Revolutionary Revenge," Declaration, No. 11349, November 19, 1904.
[47] Su Yu: Xinhai Splashed Tears Collection, vol. 1, Hu Ruhong, ed., Su Yuji, Changsha: Hunan People's Publishing House, 2008, p. 224.
[48] "Nursing Henan Governor Yuan Dahua Plays Yu Province Has Not Yet Proposed the Revolution to Comply with the Decree and Properly Prepare for Prevention", August 5, 33rd year of Guangxu, edited by the First Historical Archives of China: Archives and Historical Materials of the People's Revolution in the First Ten Years of the Xinhai Revolution, Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1985, p. 216.
[49] Ping Shi, "The Truth of the Revolutionary Party", Zhang Kaiyuan, Luo Fuhui, Yan Changhong, eds., Xinhai Revolutionary Historical Materials, Vol. 5, Wuhan: Hubei People's Publishing House, 2006, p. 35.
[50] Kang Youwei, "A Reply to the Chinese Merchants of North and South America on China's Only Feasible Constitution and Not Revolutionary Book", edited by Jiang Yihua and Zhang Ronghua, The Complete Works of Kang Youwei, vol. 6, Beijing: Chinese University Press, 2007, p. 315.
[51] Kang Youwei, "Please Establish a Punishment of Thieves and Ministers, Eliminate the Eunuch Temple, Return to the Government, and the Emperor Establishes a Constitution to Give the People Rights to Save the Peril", "After Telling the Compatriots to Seal the Book", edited by Jiang Yihua and Zhang Ronghua, The Complete Works of Kang Youwei, vol. 6, pp. 364-365, 368.
[52] Liang Qichao, "Kang Changsu's 'On the History of the French Revolution'", edited by Tang Zhijun and Tang Renze: The Complete Works of Liang Qichao, Vol. 17, Beijing: Chinese Renmin University Press, 2018, p. 534.
[53] Earlier studies of this article generally started from Kang Youwei's anti-revolutionary stance and focused on his performance in discrediting the French Revolution, such as Zhang Zhilian's essay; although Su Menglin has classified and summarized the content of the article, he still failed to grasp the key points prompted by Liang Qichao and failed to reveal Kang Youwei's attempt to rebuild the legitimacy of the revolution hidden behind the writing of the article. See Zhang Zhilian, "Commentaries on the French Revolution in the Political Circles of the Late Qing Dynasty and the Early Republic of China", edited by the Chinese Society for the Study of French History, Collected Essays on French History, Beijing: Life, Reading, and New Knowledge, 1984, pp. 7-9, and Su Menglin, "The Understanding and Rejection of the 'French Revolution' by Chinese Intellectuals (1840-1919)", Ph.D. dissertation, Hunan Normal University, 2014.
[54] Kang Youwei, "On the History of the French Revolution", Xinmin Cong Bao No. 87, September 18, 1906. As the content of "Journey to France", this article was included in the 8th episode of "The Complete Works of Kang Youwei".
[55] Kang Youwei, "Journey to France", edited by Jiang Yihua and Zhang Ronghua: The Complete Works of Kang Youwei, Vol. 8, Beijing: Chinese Renmin University Press, 2007, p. 195, note 1.
[56] Kang Youwei, "On the History of the French Revolution", Xinmin Cong Bao No. 87, September 18, 1906.
[57] Yu Chenzi, "The Three Doctrines of Europeans in Modern Times," Xinmin Cong Bao No. 28, March 27, 1903.
[58] Kang Youwei, "On the History of the French Revolution", Xinmin Cong Bao No. 87, September 18, 1906.
[59] In order to refute Kang Youwei's "On the History of the French Revolution", Wang Dong published an article of the same name in the "Minbao", but Wang Dong did not grasp Kang Youwei's attempt to shape the French Revolution as "the story of our country", and was even brought into the discussion of tyranny by Kang Youwei. See parasitism, "Zheng Mingyi, On the History of the French Revolution", Minbao No. 11, January 30, 1907.
[60] See Yu Danchu, Patriotism and Modern Chinese Historiography, Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 1996, pp. 183-201.
[61] Kang Youwei, "To Prince Su Shanqishu", The Complete Works of Kang Youwei, vol. 8, p. 379.
[62] For the phenomenon of the structural process of cultural order, see Zhao Shiyu, "Structural Process, Ritual Identification, and Backward Deduction: Three Concepts of Chinese Historical Anthropological Research", Journal of Tsinghua University (Philosophy and Social Science Edition), No. 1, 2018.
[63] Edited by the Editorial Department of Zhonghua Book Company, edited by Tong Yang: The Diary of Sun Baoxuan, November 28, 1903, Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2015, p. 827.
[64] Lao Naixuan, "The Book of Shi'er", in Yu Heping, ed., Manuscripts of Qing Dynasty Celebrity Manuscripts in the Collection of Modern History, Vol. 3, Vol. 5, Zhengzhou: Elephant Publishing House, 2017, pp. 346-347.
[65] Yan Fu, "Commenting on the Zhuangzi", Wang Zhenglu, Fang Baochuan, Ma Yong (eds.), The Complete Works of Yan Fu, Vol. 9, Fuzhou: Fujian Education Press, 2014, p. 110.
[66] It should be noted that the main point of view of the revolutionary-leaning intellectual elite was not to deny the Tangwu Revolution itself, but to deny its uniqueness as an explanation of revolutionary legitimacy, in order to seek broader theoretical support for revolutionary practice.
[67] Wang Xianqian, "Feelings", by Wang Xianqian, Mei Ji Proofreading: Wang Xianqian's Poetry Collection, Changsha: Yuelu Publishing House, 2008, p. 647.
[68] Luo Zhitian, "The Formation of the Revolution: The Turning Point of the Ten Years of the Qing Dynasty (Part I)", Modern History Research, No. 3, 2012.
The above article was originally published in Academic Research, Issue 1, 2024, and does not represent the position of Academic Research. The article has been cut down for reasons of length and may not be reproduced without authorization.
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