While the cover of this nicely designed book highlights “protest” in bold letters, in truth Ho-fung Hung brings new meanings to the phrase “with Chinese characteristics” in his wide-ranging study of collective action and resistance in Qing China. A comparison between traditional modes of protest in early modern China and modern protest repertoires in Europe provides the foundation for the key questions of this work. Ultimately, Hung presents the Chinese case not only as an alternative to the supposedly universal Western European model but also as an instructive example of how one might periodize histories of modern protest more generally. In addition, he makes a strong argument for appreciating early modern forms of Chinese protest as the font of a “cultural reservoir” (p. 199) from which subsequent generations of revolutionaries, student demonstrators, and local protestors have drawn inspiration.
Hung isolates three factors to serve as comparative measures in his evaluation...
