The 'feminization of famine', the feminization of nationalism: famine and social activism in treaty-port Shanghai, 1876-9

The North China Famine of 1876-9 was a major blow in a series of catastrophic events in nineteenth-century China that eventually led to a collapse of confidence in the Qing Dynasty and China's Confucian tradition. In both the hinterland epicentre of the disaster and in the culturally hybrid tre...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social history (London) 2005-11, Vol.30 (4), p.421-443
Main Author: Edgerton-Tarpley, Kathryn
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Activism
Case studies
China
Chinese culture
Chinese nationalism
Famine
Females
Femininity
Feminization
Historical Sociology
History
Merchants
Nationalism
Nineteenth Century
Philanthropy
Sales personnel
Shanghai, Peoples Republic of China
Social history
Social mobilization
Women
Womens songs
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Summary:The North China Famine of 1876-9 was a major blow in a series of catastrophic events in nineteenth-century China that eventually led to a collapse of confidence in the Qing Dynasty and China's Confucian tradition. In both the hinterland epicentre of the disaster and in the culturally hybrid treaty-port of Shanghai, the horror of the famine was expressed largely with feminized images. While local-level observers in north China placed starving women in a narrative that aimed to reinforce cultural norms during a time of great upheaval, in Shanghai the sale of famished women became an issue around which critical debates about Chinese state and society coalesced. Images of women sold to brutal human traders spurred treaty-port activists to broaden their philanthropic efforts to include starving strangers in the north, to criticize the Qing government's relief efforts and to question traditional assumptions about the value of women. Members of Shanghai's treaty-port elite used feminized images of the famine to motivate their compatriots to rescue women in order to save China from national humiliation, thus prefiguring the connection between the liberation of women and the salvation of the Chinese nation put forth by Chinese nationalists in the decades after the famine.
ISSN:0307-1022
1470-1200
DOI:10.1080/03071020500304593