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Last night I finished reading Soul Stealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 by Philip A. Kuhn. I have to say for a book published by Harvard and written by a Harvard professor it was a remarkably easy read. The writing style was very straightforward, delegating most of the more scholarly aspects and references to footnotes and focusing on telling more of a story. His writing style reminded me of Jonathon Spence a little, it was obvious he knew what he was talking about but tried to make it as interesting and accessible as possible.
This book however was not really about the sorcery scare, rather it was about bureaucratic politics of the time and to that end I found it rather disappointing. Having read Ter Har's White Lotus I was hoping for an equaly interesting account of the lives and beliefs of the people involved in the sorcery scare, it's roots, what and why it happened and what this showed about beliefs. While looking into this a little Kuhn focused almost entirely on the Imperial and Bureaucratic implications of the event. When discussing the acts of the soul stealers he focused entirely on the clipping of the queues as a purely physical and political event rather than anything spiritual. He was also very dismissive it seemed of any "superstitious" beliefs or "ghost stories" of the common people. In his mind the bureaucrats and the Emperor were both a step above the common folk in their skepticism of sorcery. He clearly had in his mind a firm separation between beliefs of the local and the elite, which has been brought into question by many of the historians that I have been reading lately.
His focus for the event was how it reflected the distribution of power between the Emperor and his bureaucrats. Which, while informative, was really not what I wanted to read about. He did have one chapter looking at the religious side, and the lives of the people affected. Reading through his footnotes I found myself familiar with all his secoundary sources, except for one Steven Harrell article which I will have to track down as it sounded quite interesting.
His conclusion about the "scare" seemed to be that it was a bureaucratic fear that was simply a "witch hunt" for lack of a better term. The Emperors fear of revolt and of his own bureaucrats initiating a cover up brought on much longer and intense persecution than the actual events warranted. While a notion he supported well it did not really answer the question of why the peasants were thinking these things in the first place. He did spend a little time looking at the role of begging monks and other outsiders and how they were viewed negatively by society. But these things were not really the reason for his writing. He wrote the book to show the relationship between the Emperor and his bureaucrats and how it was full of mistrust and how the balance of power fell. With that in mind I would say it is definitely a book recommended for late political historians, but not so much for people who are interested in sorcery or religious beliefs.
This book however was not really about the sorcery scare, rather it was about bureaucratic politics of the time and to that end I found it rather disappointing. Having read Ter Har's White Lotus I was hoping for an equaly interesting account of the lives and beliefs of the people involved in the sorcery scare, it's roots, what and why it happened and what this showed about beliefs. While looking into this a little Kuhn focused almost entirely on the Imperial and Bureaucratic implications of the event. When discussing the acts of the soul stealers he focused entirely on the clipping of the queues as a purely physical and political event rather than anything spiritual. He was also very dismissive it seemed of any "superstitious" beliefs or "ghost stories" of the common people. In his mind the bureaucrats and the Emperor were both a step above the common folk in their skepticism of sorcery. He clearly had in his mind a firm separation between beliefs of the local and the elite, which has been brought into question by many of the historians that I have been reading lately.
His focus for the event was how it reflected the distribution of power between the Emperor and his bureaucrats. Which, while informative, was really not what I wanted to read about. He did have one chapter looking at the religious side, and the lives of the people affected. Reading through his footnotes I found myself familiar with all his secoundary sources, except for one Steven Harrell article which I will have to track down as it sounded quite interesting.
His conclusion about the "scare" seemed to be that it was a bureaucratic fear that was simply a "witch hunt" for lack of a better term. The Emperors fear of revolt and of his own bureaucrats initiating a cover up brought on much longer and intense persecution than the actual events warranted. While a notion he supported well it did not really answer the question of why the peasants were thinking these things in the first place. He did spend a little time looking at the role of begging monks and other outsiders and how they were viewed negatively by society. But these things were not really the reason for his writing. He wrote the book to show the relationship between the Emperor and his bureaucrats and how it was full of mistrust and how the balance of power fell. With that in mind I would say it is definitely a book recommended for late political historians, but not so much for people who are interested in sorcery or religious beliefs.