"Between Social Control and Popular Power: The Circulation of Private Guns and Control Policies during the mid to late Qing, 1781-1911" American Journal of Chinese Studies 25(2017), pp. 121-140. (original) (raw)
The Qing government promulgated the new version of the criminal law in 1910, which, unlike the Great Qing Code, loosened the state's grip on private firearms, proposing that any ordinary individuals were permitted to own either bird guns or foreign guns for self-defense purpose as long as they had their weapons registered. This article examines the manifold ways in which the Qing state was gradually impotent to maintain the monopoly on violence and made an adjustment to the new social and political situation. Before the promulgation of this law, most ordinary people were strictly forbidden to carry bird guns. Only a small number of people were allowed to be armed with less sophisticated guns, which not only would not challenge the state authority, but also assisted the state to maintain local order. In the midst of the late Qing chaotic social and political order and the pouring of foreign weapons, the government found it difficult to restrict the diffusion of firearms in local society. The officials gradually recognized the potential of armed civilians in its efforts to combat rebels. This article argues that the Qing's policy on private weapons was determined by the stance between two ideologies: the reliance on social power to defend the localities, and the resolute maintenance of their monopoly of the deadliest forms of weapons. The state's regulation and control over its armed civilians appeared as a dynamic process, hovering between the two ideologies until the end of the dynasty.
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