Re-remembering the War Dead: The Wuwei Han shi zhongjie lu and Communities of Sentiment in Nineteenth Century China (1799, 1802, 1843)

• In Event: Hagiographic Discourses and Communities of Belonging: Digital Approaches to Martyrdom in 19th and 20th Century China and Vietnam

Abstract

More than forty years after the deaths of Green Standard officers and brothers Han Jiaye (d. 1799) and Han Zichang (d. 1802) in the White Lotus War, their fellow Wuwei native, Zhang Shu, commemorated their deaths with a compilation titled Wuwei Han shi zhongjie lu (ca. 1843). On its surface, the Zhongjie lu is akin to many other nineteenth century commemorative compilations. It consists of a preface followed by three different types of materials: official documents pertaining to the subjects’ deaths; epitaphs and other biographical materials; and poems commissioned by the compiler. However, the lengthy gap between the brothers’ deaths and the creation of the Zhongjie lu also makes the work an important record of the changing significance of the war dead over time.

The Zhongjie lu provides a window onto two distinct moments: the flurry of official activity and biographical writing immediately following the brothers’ deaths at the turn of the century and the much later efforts of Zhang Shu to commission and collect writings (mostly poetry) for the compilation. Looking at these two moments through textual analysis and GIS mapping, my paper suggests a shift taking place in the relation between the war dead and the formation of communities of sentiment in nineteenth century China. Where the first moment consisted of efforts to consolidate the nexus of family, county, and imperial identities, the later moment saw the deaths transmuted into sources for a transregional, culturalist community of sentiment.

Author

• James Bonk, The College of Wooster