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The Origins of the Tinndihui. The Chinese Triads in Legend and History. By DIAN H. MURRAY, in collaboration with Qin Baoqi. Stanford: STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1994. Pp. lx + 3S0. $45.
This book is by far the best, most complete, and up-to-date study of the most important Chinese sworn-brotherhood association or "secret society." It is based throughout on primary sources, particularly historical archives in Beijing and Taibei, and includes detailed discussions of the historiography of its topic in China and the West as well as two comprehensive bibliographies, and translations of confessions of arrested leaders, founding legends, membership oaths, and a chronological list of "secret societies" founded between 1728 and 1850. The book was written in collaboration with Professor Qin Baoqi of the Qing History Institute of People's University in Beijing, who has continued the pioneering archival research of Cai Shaoqing of Nanjing University, echoed in Taiwan by Dai Xuanzhi and Zhuang Jifa. The consensus of this new stage of research that began with Professor Cai in 1961 is that "The Tiandihui, as we know it today, was founded in the Guanyinting (Goddess of Mercy pavilion), Gaoxi township, in Zhangpu county, Zhangzhou prefecture, Fujian province, sometime in 1761 or 1762" (p. 5). This was an area of social turmoil and lineage feuds where sworn-brotherhood associations had flourished since the seventeenth century. The first such group called a hui (society or association), appeared in 1728, the Fu-mu hui (Father-Mother Society); others soon arose, with names like "One-Piece-of-Money Association" (a reference to membership dues), "Small Knife" and "Son of the Dragon" (pp. 15-16). Members of these groups were from "the lowest and most marginal ranks of Chinese society": hired laborers, peasants, peddlers, Buddhist monks, healers, fortunetellers, local opera singers, etc. (p. 32). They were organized primarily for mutual aid and protection, as a source of income for their leaders, and to carry out organized robbery. Though there is evidence of two small sworn-brotherhood associations in Taiwan with slogans advocating restoring the Ming dynasty in 1696 and 1721, the first hui activities with similar proclamations did not appear until 1800-1807, in Guangdong (pp. 14, 85). The well-known Lin Shuangwen hui uprising in Taiwan in 1787 did not make...