Lineage Society on the Southeastern Coast of China

Sixteenth-century China experienced an economic transformation which saw the spread of commercialization and a consumerist material culture that pervaded all aspects of life. As society began to respond to the economic transformation, the ideology and culture of patriarchal descent-line ethics, hitherto an urban, literati trend, began to find resonance among up-and-coming literati families within rural communities. By the end of the sixteenth century, Chinese society, especially in the Jiangnan region and along the southeastern coast, had began to make the transition from the lijia system of household registration into corporate groups overtly organized by kinship relations and unified by the common symbols of the ancestral hall, lineage trust estates, compilation of lineage genealogies and in the symbolic performance of ancestral sacrificial rituals.

This is the first study that takes the innovative and unique approach of linking the rise of lineage organization in Haining, Zhejiang province, to wokou activity. By using Haining as the geographical focus of research, this study provides a good comparative study to published works on Chinese lineage organization which had focused largely on Guangdong, Fujian and Anhui provinces. Through the use of previously un-utilized genealogical records of the lineages resident in Haining, the story of how the local groups in Haining responded to the wokou raids through adopting imperially sanctioned ritual practices and cultural symbols to negotiate the transformation of their local communities into the Neo-Confucian model of corporate family organization emerges. The impact of this transitional process within the local community is extrapolated in the case studies of inter-lineage and intra-lineage conflicts. At the same time, the true extent and impact of the wokou crisis, long held by scholars to be of devastating effect on the Ming polity, is also re-examined.

Lineage Society on the Southeastern Coast of China is an important book for Asian studies and history collections.