Heterodoxy in Late Imperial China

by Kwang-ching Liu (Editor), Richard Shek (Editor)

Ten international academics explore heterodoxy dissent challenging the beliefs and meanings of the established norm in late Imperial China. In this process, they trace the origins of the cultural and intellectual protests to aspects of Daoism and Buddhism in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911)

544 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2004

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The articles collected in this volume explore the efforts of successive Chinese dynasties to delineate religious heterodoxy so as to make its referents isomorphic with political dissidence. While not every non-Confucian sect was actually politically subversive, and not every revolutionary party actually entertained a heterodox creed, we find that there was nonetheless sufficient borrowing, overlap, and ideological sympathy among messianic cults, radical utopians, and opportunistic warlords to lend some justification to the authorities' condemnations across some six hundred years, until, at the turn of the twentieth century, disaffected reformists and revolutionaries within the intellectual elite began looking to sectarian and para-state societies for a model of anti-imperial action and a radicalized base to be appropriated.