Sectarian Rebels
Sectarian rebels occupy yet another contradictory place in the annals of Ming-Qing history.[215] As the Ming founder himself had relied heavily on sectarian support, he was quick to recognise the potential danger of such groups.
Instigators of sectarian uprisings are consistently referred to as sorcerers who duped the people with false claims of magical prowess and millenarian visions. They were also typically associated with the notorious White Lotus sect, a millenarian Buddhist sect committed to the return of the Buddha of the Future, Maitreya, almost by definition a source of violence and instability from the perspective of the state. The late Ming witnessed two major uprisings attributed to the White Lotus sect: the uprising of Li Fuda in 1512, and the more serious uprising of Xu Hongru in 1622. These uprisings involved thousands of followers and spread across multiple provinces at their height, though the state suppressed them expeditiously once it turned its military attention their way.A huge empire with a bewildering array of religious beliefs and practices, it was impossible for the state to legislate every aspect of religious life. Practising Daoist and Buddhist priests and monks were expected to register with government authorities. The government also cast a suspicious eye on lay practitioners and those who used martial arts in conjunction with religious practices. Government authorities detained suspected sectarian leaders and conducted periodic suppression campaigns. These campaigns certainly did not eradicate religious beliefs from the countryside, but they nipped potential insurrections in the bud and probably convinced most people to confine their religious pursuits to less threatening practices. The only time such movements could really get out of hand was when the government was preoccupied with other problems or in times of extreme hardship.
Such was the case in 1622 when Xu Hongru's uprising began in the north-eastern coastal province of Shandong.This rebellion is seen as one of the first major domestic uprisings that signalled the beginning of the end for the Ming, even though it was quelled relatively quickly. What made it threatening was the pervasiveness of White Lotus's teachings and the fact that the rebellion's leader declared himself an emperor, presenting himself as an alternative to the Ming. Like most domestic rebels, Xu Hongru was publicly executed in the marketplace in Beijing so as to set an example for others - yet another way in which state-sanctioned violence operated to proclaim and ensure legitimacy.
The Qing dynasty was similarly plagued by secret societies, some of which were lent an additionally subversive taint by virtue of their association with Ming loyalist sentiments. Most notable in this respect was the Tiandihui, or Heaven and Earth Society, popularly known in the West as the Triads, though recent scholarship has concluded that there is no definitive evidence of the Triads as a viable organisation in China prior to the 1760s.[216]
The White Lotus sect also reappeared as a threat in the mid-Qing, most notably in the Wang Lun Uprising of 1774 in Shandong, an area that was a stronghold of White Lotus beliefs, and in the massive White Lotus Rebellion at the end of the eighteenth century in north-west China.[217] In dealing with the former uprising, the Qing government adopted the general imperial practice of executing ringleaders and banishing lesser offenders. And though militarily outclassed in some of the initial engagements, the Qing eventually responded with a multi-pronged offensive that crushed the rebels and brought order to the countryside.
The White Lotus Rebellion of 1796-1805, however, was quite different, as significant levels of corruption contributed to extending the scope and duration of the uprising.
The Qing proved ultimately effective in suppressing this challenge to their authority by relying upon hired local civilian militia organisations to battle the rebels, and some have suggested that this practice contributed to the general militarisation and increased violence of late Qing society at the local level.[218] The government also adopted a practice somewhat akin to what certain late Ming officials had done against peasant rebels operating in the same region of China, employing the strategy of ‘strengthening the walls and clearing the fields' (jianbi qingye) to isolate rebel groups and deny them local resources.[219] People and resources would be concentrated in fortified bastions or stockades and then the surrounding lands would be denuded. This cost-effective method had been used in various guises since at least the Tang dynasty. The policy could also have negative local repercussions as peasant fields and homes were destroyed in the interest of denying supplies to enemies of the state.