Chinese Modernity and the Peasant Path

This ambitious work traces a social history of semicolonialism in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century China. It takes as its central concern the intertwining of two antagonistic forces: elite constructions of modernity shaped globally, and an alternate line of peasant resistance and development. Nantong county and the northern portion of the commercially advanced Yangzi Delta form its focal points. Lying in the hinterland of and connected in myriad ways with the treaty port of Shanghai, which in the late nineteenth century became the center of imperialist activity in China, the northern delta is an ideal locale for examining how the acquisition, transmission, and contestation of power may have changed during the extended moment of semicolonial encounter. The author s specific project is to unravel the multiple strands of the semicolonial process and thereby the dominant and alternative histories it embodied. In emphasizing semicolonialism as a structural context shaping events, the book opens up a pivotal but silent area in the history of modern China. In confronting the development of capitalism as a historical phenomenon and suggesting that its consequences for land and labor on a global scale need greater theoretical and historical scrutiny, the book forces a new understanding of China s modernity.