Popular Movements and Violence in East Asia in the Nineteenth Century: Comparing the Ideological Foundations of their Legitimation

Abstract

In the nineteenth century, people in China, Korea, and Japan actively participated in popular protests. The rebellions in those countries had much in common, but one of the most striking differences is the degree of violence inflicted by these popular movements on their opponents. Chinese popular rebels were much more likely to kill or injure others than their counterparts in Korea and Japan. Such differences seem to be closely associated with the question of whether the rebel forces fought due to conflicting interests within the polity, or were seeking to build a new kingdom by pursuing a newly-risen religion while rejecting the existing ruling system and ideology that legitimized it. This paper will examine how the rebel forces based the legitimacy of their actions in relation to each country's "political culture." While popular movements in the West or the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom were based on the idea that God was more powerful than the secular ruler, popular movements in Korea or Japan did not have a transcendent source of authority that was superior to the monarch. This paper argues that this made a crucial difference to how people thought and behaved, influencing the degree of violence they employed.