The Hometown Consciousness Of Zhejiang Esquire In The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Period

The scholars have been in the ascendant on the research of Chinese esquire for many years. Not only Chinese but also foreigners have deeply discoursed upon Chinese esquire from different aspects and have obtained great achievements. Especially in recent years, the researches of Chinese esquire have been much more thorough and concrete. Basing on the great achievements made by the former scholars, the Hometown Consciousness of Zhejiang Esquire in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Period had been chosen as the object of my research.This dissertation contains introduction, body and conclusion these three parts. The great achievements made by the former scholars and the reasons that I chose it as the object of my research are mainly expounded in the introduction part. The esquires are classified into three classes at that time:the superstratum esquire, the topper esquire and the lower esquire; furthermore ,the treatise of these three classes' responds to the benefits of their hometowns in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Period are made in the body part .There are counterwork and cooperation between the superstratum esquire and the local governments of Qing dynasty. The cooperation is the mainstream and the counterwork is in the next place because the two sides have the basically common benefit. The officials employing the esquires recommended by the superstratrum esquires to hold training corps to train soldiers and to assist protecting the two sides. For the superstratum esquires, much more attention was paid to their hometown'gain and loss. So the superstratum esquire founded cooperative defensive committee in their own hometowns; they set themselves against the heavily imposed tallage and firmly rejected thesoldiers to enter Shao xing; they would firstly rescue their own hometowns when some towns and cities were in danger at the same time. In a word, the superstratum esquires always put their hometown benefit primarily. Comparing with the superstratum esquires, the topper esquires were lack of capitals to confront with local higher officials but they could protect their hometowns' benefit with their long-term official-associated network. At the same time, they also impeached the corrupt local higher officials and seek the intrepid generals from other provinces to protect their hometown's benefit. Moreover, the superstratum esquires deluded the people to join the training corps and they also conducted training corps and arranged the soldier's pay and previsions. The superstratum esquires kept the local people from uprising and joining the Taiping army and squashed the rebeldom cruelly; some of them ran away Shanghai to build up armies of China and foreign countries and employed foreigners to impeach the Taiping army and reoccupy many important towns and cities. In order to lasso the people, the superstratum esquires relieved the people in disaster, appeased the people in difficulty, dealt with problems arising from an accident and so on. The lower esquires were more complex and they protected their benefits with different ways. Some of the lower esquires joined the Taiping army to confront the governments of Qing dynasty but some of them pretended to join and become agent provocateurs in the Taiping army. The lower esquires gained advantages from the Taiping army and the governments of Qing dynasty because they didn't have abundant finance and powerful forces. The characteristics of Zhejiang Esquires are analyzed in the conclusion part.