The Heaven and Earth Society and the Red Turban Rebellion in ...

failed, and much of the violence of the rebellion pitted the Punti rebel against the Hakka militias. In this
sense, ethnicity was central to both the recruitment success and eventual failure of the rebellion. 113
Qing Forces
As far as that the initial failure of the Qing forces against the Red Turban rebels was concerned, the
important factor was the failure at this point of the methods of rural control which the Qing government had
employed. The baojia 保 甲 was intended to prevent the development of disorder in rural areas. 114 But to deal
with more serious threats to security, the Qing government had at its command a large standing army. This
was organized into two great divisions, Banner troops and troops of the Green Standard. Western
missionary reports from the China Repository show that in Guangdong the Banner troops, nominally
numbering about 5,000, were under the command of the Manchurian General and all stationed at
Guangzhou. The Green Standard troops, numbering approximately 70,000, were distributed throughout the
province. 115 The system of military control had remained largely unchanged since the Manchu conquest, and
the disinclination of the Manchus to place complete trust in the Green Standard forces was displayed by the
practice of dividing the army into separate commands. The greater part of the forces were under the
provincial Commander-in-Chief ( 提 督 ), and were stationed in Huizhou. Under him also were the naval forces.
But both the Governor-General and the Governor had separate forces under their command, the former
largely stationed at Zhaoqing 肇 慶 , and the latter at Guangzhou. 116 The situation was further complicated by
the fact that, although the military headquarters of the various commands were territorially separate, there
was no territorial division of military responsibility, and the forces of each command were distributed
throughout the province.
Military garrisons were distributed in most of rural areas of Guangdong; however, there was
insufficient protection from the local officials against the threat. While the magistrate had overall
responsibility for the security of his district, the forces at his disposal were extremely limited. Military
garrisons were not under his command. In order to make arrests, he could use the yamen-runner, who in
some ways served as a police force. But if there were any disorder in the district, the magistrate had either
to find local aid to deal with it, or to call for assistance from outside, and lay himself open to a charge of
incompetence. This problem is rooted in the absence of central government structure below the county level,
coupled with laws prohibiting magistrates from serving in their home districts. During the Qing at the village
level there were local constables, headmen, and gentry families, and even government units for purposes of
taxation, but “no formal government of any sort existed below the zhou [department] and xian [county]
levels.” 117 In this period, the average county population was 100,000-250,000, a number very difficult to keep
under close surveillance. 118 To be sure, the district magistrate had subordinates charged with collecting
113 The Hakkas formed a gentry-led militia similar to the militia around Guangzhou and defeated the rebel
forces at the gate of Xin’ning district town that eventually stemmed the rebel tide in this area. See Xin’ning
Xianzhi, 14.18b-21b.
114 To prevent the development of local disorder, the Qing had continued and improved the subadministrative
apparatus of control that had existed under the Ming. The most important of these was the
baojia. For Qing government, the baojia had two purposes. Under the system all households and
individuals were compelled to register and to be formed into groups of households, the bao and jia. In this
respect it resembled a form of census, but at the same time singling out persons responsible for carrying out
the system. Its other function, which was probably considered the more important, was the duty imposed on
baojia heads to report the occurrence of crimes of the existence of criminals in their neighborhood. See
Kung-chuan Hsiao, Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century. (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1960), 43-83.
115 The commander-in-chief of the land forces was stationed at Huizhou. His troops consisted of four
brigades (zhen 鎭 ), namely, Shaozhou 韶 州 , Chaozhou 潮 州 , Gaozhou and Qiongzhou 瓊 州 . Humen 虎 門 ,
on the other hand, was the headquarters of the marine forces, which consisted of four squadrons, two on
each side of Humen along the coast. For details on the distribution of military forces in Guangdong, See
China Repository, Vol. 4 (1835-6), 284, and Vol. 20 (1851), 54, 254.
116 Ibid.
117 Ch’u T’ung-tsu, Local Government in China under the Ch’ing (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1962), 1.
118 Hsiao, Rural China, 5.
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