Jiangsu And Zhejiang Provinces In The Late Qing Dynasty, Villagers Destroyed Phenomena Research

From 1901 to 1911, when China society was full of change and uncertainty, the Qing dynasty government looked forwards to reforming the society eagerly. Within these ten years, the Qing government initiated new-style schools, police stations, local autonomy, etc. Among these phenomena, this thesis focuses on villagers' anti-new-style-school behaviors to analyze the education system reform late Qing dynasty. This kind of anti-new-style-school behavior reflects the confliction and combination between the tradition and modernization within these ten years, when China' s society are much more complicated than before.Based on related news of Zhejiang province and Jiangsu province from original newspapers, including Shenbao, Oriental Magazine and Educational Journal, this thesis conducts multi-aspect analysis on the anti-new-style-school behavior. The main task of this paper is to give the answers to the question that why it were in these two provinces that there are the fiercest anti-new-style-school behavior, whose people were famous for paying attention on education.This thesis is made of four major parts:The first part gives a brief description of the anti-new-style-school behavior in these two provinces. The tide of school destroying waved up and down during year 1901 to 1911, sometimes it spread to several provinces, and sometimes it took place only in one or two villages. All this became a special sight of school destroying. There were a few cases before year 1905, and there were a lot of cases after the government aboI ished the imperial examination system. The tide of schooI destroying reached its peak in year 1910 (Year Geng Xu in Chinese calendar), after that it slowly ceased down. The reasons, which caused these cases, are different, such as exorbitant taxes and levies, surveying registered permanent residences, disaster and wars, and so on. If we dig the deep social reason, we can put these reasons into two items, one is that people cannot accept the new-style schools and the other is interest contest In the following parts of the dissertation, I have analyzed the two i terns i n detail.The second part introduces the first main reason of anti-new-style-school behavior: the villagers' attitude towards education reform. In real ity, the school ing, course schedule and the content taught in the new schools were far different to the life of the residents; and the image of the students, tutors and supervisors in the new schools were also much differ from the traditional image in the villagers' mind. Frequently campus upheavals itself reflect that the new schools were not ease. So the traditional old imperial examination system still remains much prestige among common people. The old system of talent selecting was still used in many areas, sometime was just like the old imperial examination. Private schools, which shouldbe the complementarily for the new style schools, shared half of the school students in reality. Under such kind of situation we can understand the reason why people do not like new schools.The third part introduces the second main reason of anti-new-style-school behavior: the interest conflicts between different parties. During the subrogation of the two educational systems, there were combats for powers. The gap between scholars and villagers became wider and wider when the towns stood facing the villages. The esqu i res had got so much power that they can challenge the governmental officials. In many cases of destroying schools, which actually were making trouble by mobs, the schools were victims of power contest.The fourth part discusses anti-new-style-school behavior' s influence to the society. In the circumstance of school destroying, it was hard to set up a new style school. There are various rumors, irrational attacks by the villagers, which was especial ly popular in Jiang Su and Zhe Jiang prov i nces. Including the influences of wars, investigation of self-government, the esquires changing their dwelling house into towns, the chain of traditional educational system and the com...