2 The Western Scholar | Spring 2003 Western Kentucky University 3

ROBERT ANTONY CAN TRACE HIS

FASCINATION WITH CHINA BACK TO

HIS FATHER, A MERCHANT MARINE.

“HE WOULD ALWAYS COME HOME

WITH STORIES ABOUT EVERYWHERE

HE’D BEEN — EUROPE, ASIA AND CHINA.

I THINK WHAT ATTRACTED MY ATTENTION

RIGHT AWAY WERE THE INTERESTING

STORIES HE TOLD ME ABOUT CHINA,” THE

HISTORY PROFESSOR AT WESTERN

KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY

SAID.

Those storiesare the impetus of afascination with aculture that has in-cluded fourFulbright fellow-ships to China andTaiwan, a forth-coming book onChinese pirates,and a series ofother projectsawaiting time andopportunity forstudy.

“In the early1930s, during oneof my father’s earlyvoyages, he had shipped out to theOrient as an ordinary seaman aboardan old freighter,” Dr. Antony writes inthe opening of his manuscript. “I re-member one story he told me aboutShanghai. The waters around the portwere infested with pirate craft, fishingboats, and a myriad of other Chinesejunks, all indistinguishable from one

another. At night pirates would sneakup alongside their prey, and using longbamboo poles with hooks on their endswould shimmy up the side of the ship tosteal cargo and anything else that wasnot secured.”

Dr. Antony studies the pirates formore than their criminal exploits. “I amprimarily interested in understandingpiracy for what it can tell us about thenature of socioeconomic change inmaritime South China during the lateimperial age,” he writes.

His work illustrates a differentapproach to historical

research. Callinghimself a combina-tion historian andanthropologist,Dr. Antony says helooks at history“from the bottomup,” looking at his-tory from the per-spective of ordinarypeople.

“I’m a strong be-liever that you needto go to a country inorder to study it, andso I’ve traveled backand forth to China,Taiwan, Hong Kong,or somewhere inthat region just

about every summer,” he said. “Andwhen I get a grant of some sort, I spendthe time there.”

Dr. Antony’s style of research is notwithout its difficulties. Most of the writ-ings of the late 18th and early 19th cen-turies were by the elite or governmentofficials. Those viewpoints don’t oftenreflect the perspectives of the ordinarycitizen.

B Y B O B S K I P P E R

Pirates and Brigandsin Late imperial south ChinaCutthroats!

Illustrations from The Pirates Own Book, 1837,Boston. Left, pirates collect a bounty by taking theheads of villagers. Above, a Chinese pirate vessel.

4 The Western Scholar | Spring 2003 Western Kentucky University 5

For example, Dr. Antony recentlyreturned from a year-long sabbatical inTaiwan on his fourth Fulbright re-search grant. While there, he was aVisiting Research Fellow at the Insti-tute of Taiwan History at AcademiaSinica and a Visiting Scholar at theCenter for Chinese Studies at Taiwan’sNational Library.

His research was on “Passion, Sexand Violence on the Taiwan Frontier inthe Qing Dynasty,” a look at the impactof frontier culture on sexuality andgender relations. His topic was a com-bination of women’s studies and a lookat the frontier culture in 18th centuryTaiwan.

The idea came from a study of theAmerican West and its frontier culture.While some researchers have beenstudying the impact that American

frontier culture had on gender rela-tions, no one was looking at the Chi-nese frontier and its impact on gen-der relations.

“So I thought that would be a re-ally interesting topic. As it turns out itwas an interesting topic,” Dr. Antonysaid. “After I got to Taiwan, however,I found there were not that many pri-mary materials on the topic. No onehad really written about it. I foundthings about women, but nothing re-ally explaining how the frontier af-fected the gender relationship.”

“None of the officials, the peoplewho were writing back in the 18thcentury, were writing about women’sproblems,” he said. “That wasn’t con-sidered important to them.”

Violence, however, was a majortopic. Officials were concerned with

violence on the frontier, especially inthe “civilizing” of the native Aborigi-nes. “I found a lot of information onthe conflicts between the Chinese set-tlers or frontiersmen and those indig-enous people,” he said. “So what be-gan as a study of passion, sex andviolence, turned out to be more of astudy of violence.”

And while the study of gender re-lationships is still a viable topic thatwill take more time, Dr. Antony refo-cused his attention on violence, look-ing at bandits, secret societies, rebel-lions and, once again, pirates.

“As I was getting into it, I wasdrawn further and further into Chi-nese popular religion and the rela-tionship between religion, popular re-ligion or folk religion, and some ofthese rebellious movements in

A pirate attack from the illustrated journal Renjing Huabao, 1907, Shanghai

Western Kentucky University 5

Dr. Robert Antony

An incense burner in the Mazu Temple in Danshui, northern Taiwan. Mazu, afemale deity, is the patron deity of sailors , and one of the most popular in Taiwan.

A depiction of the sea goddess Mazu from apirate flag of the late 19th–early 20th century.

A Taoist Exorcist Sword Dance, witnessed byDr. Antony February 2002 in Shalun village,northern Taiwan. It was performed by two“barefoot Taoist masters” as part of the birth-day celebration for the community’s patrondeity named “Patriarch of the Clear Stream,”a Taoist cosmic warrior god.

6 The Western Scholar | Spring 2003 Western Kentucky University 7

Taiwan and South China,” he said. “My studies haveevolved over time according to the sources I have hadaccess to there.”

This also fits well with research Dr. Antony has beguninto secret societies, such as the Triads. These societieswere involved in a number of activities from banditry toprostitution to gambling, and were the source of rebellionsagainst the Chinese leadership.

“In a number of these movements, I found that therewere these ‘preachers’ or shamans who went around thecountryside stirring up people to follow them,” he said. “Insome cases they were nothing more than charlatans, andother times they were genuine magicians or wizards orshamans who said they could cure illnesses by theircharms. One of the things that upset the government wasthat sometimes they stirred up uprisings and rebellions.”

Many of these shamans preached the coming of de-mons or another Buddha. “What they were preaching wasthe destruction of the world,” he said. “Of course this upsetthe government very much because they were a part of

the world order and many of the aims of these shamans,these wizards, were against the government. This is whywe have lots of records about them in the archives be-cause the government paid a lot of attention to thesepeople. I’m interested in what they were preaching andwhy people were following them.”

Dr. Antony said most people study the three great reli-gions: Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. “But there’salso a fourth religion in China, the folk religion, which theordinary people follow,” he said.

Many of the rebel movements that tried to overthrowgovernments in China throughout history were led bythese folk religion leaders, or shamans, and there aresome parallels with the government’s handling of religionstoday, he said. “There’s the sense that the government hasto be careful with these movements.”

Take the Yi Guan Dao, a religious movement that goesback to the beginning of the 20th century and earlier. It isconsidered an illegal religion in Mainland China and sup-pressed. “In Taiwan, on the other hand, it was looked

upon earlier as a secret religion and also suppressed,” hesaid, “but in recent years because the membership has ex-panded and become a more powerful institution in Tai-wan, it has become legalized and has built up close con-nections within the government and community andwithin the economic structure of Taiwan. Now it’s aboveground, a legal religion on Taiwan.”

Of particular interest to Dr. Antony is a Triad rebellionin 1802 lead by the Hakka, a group of late-comers inGuangdong province in South China. Often settling thepoorer regions, the Hakka have maintained their own cul-ture and dialect. Working with a professor in Guangdongprovince and local officials, Dr. Antony set out to locatethe areas involved in this rebellion.

“In a poorer area, they [local Chinese officials] were soexcited to have a foreigner there to do research and inter-ested in their county. They took us in,” he said. “Theydidn’t know the places that I was interested in because Ihad only late 18th to early 19th century names for them.The names have changed. I had some general idea wherethey were, and also there were some similar names onmodern maps, so we had a general idea. They took us upinto the mountains into some of the villages, and we wereable to find two of the areas that were important to thisTriad uprising.”

The researcher was even able to locate the descen-dants of the rebel leader. “By chance I stumbled on themwithout having to really do a lot of running around and re-search,” he said. “They were very nice. I was able to talk tothem, interview them about what they remembered abouttheir forefather who was a rebel leader.” The familyalso produced a written genealogy that they allowedDr. Antony to photocopy.

Another field trip took Dr. Antony to Rat Mountain, aformer bandit haunt now located in the suburbs of Canton.In the late 18th century, the government cracked downon the bandits, passing harsh laws and erecting an ironcat outside the village to symbolize the government’ssuperiority. The religious overtones were further enhancedbecause the cat was placed on a hill important to thevillage’s fengshui or geomancy.

“I wouldn’t have known anything about that unless I hadgone there and done this research,” he said. “This is why Isay I combine history and anthropology.”

While doing his field research, Dr. Antony has to relyon a variety of interpreters. While he can speak and readMandarin, many of the villagers speak their own dialects.His wife, Lanshin, is a native of Taiwan and she often ac-companies him to translate. Sometimes Dr. Antony has tospeak in Mandarin to an interpreter who then translates.He also has someone who can take notes in Chinese forlater translation.

While he waits for his next opportunity to study in China,Dr. Antony will stay busy with the 15 boxes of research ma-terials he brought back from this trip. He hopes to write acouple of articles, and already has four invitations topresent his findings at major international conferences.

He also is working on “Cats, Rats, Wizards and Gang-sters: Crime and Popular Culture in Late Imperial SouthChina,” a look at folk religion, symbols, and their impor-tance. “I want to tie all of this into a cultural history of thesebandits and gangsters in South China rather than look atthem strictly as criminals per se, and look at the culturalcontext of the crimes that they did, or how laws were en-acted against them and how they were persecuted,” he said.

What [these shamans] were preaching was the destruction of the world.This is why we have lots of records about them in the archives because

the government paid a lot of attention to these people.

A pirate battle from the Illustrated journal Dianshi Zhai Huabao, 1884, Shanghai

Lanshin Antony, a native of Taiwan, often accompanies her husband on field research and acts as a translator.