新书：《白莲战争:中华帝国晚期的叛乱与镇压》

The White Lotus War (1796-1804) in central China marked the end of the Qing dynasty's golden age and the fatal weakening of the imperial system itself. What started as a local rebellion grew into a serious political crisis, as the central government was no longer able to operate its military machine.
Yingcong Dai's comprehensive investigation reveals that the White Lotus rebels would have remained a relatively minor threat, if not for the Qing's ill-managed response. Dai shows that the officials in charge of the suppression campaign were half-hearted about the fight and took advantage of the campaign to pursue personal gains. She challenges assumptions that the Qing relied upon local militias to exterminate the rebels, showing instead that the hiring of civilians became a pretext for misappropriation of war funds, resulting in the devastatingly high cost of the war. The mishandled demilitarization of the militiamen prolonged the hostilities when many of the dismissed troops turned into rebels themselves. The war's long-term impact presaged the beginning of the disintegration of the Qing in the mid-nineteenth century and eruptions of the Taiping Rebellion and other uprisings.

Yingcong Dai is professor of history at William Paterson University.Yingcong Dai received her doctorate in history from the University of Washington. She has authored two books, The Sichuan Frontier and Tibet: Imperial Strategy in the Early Qing, and The White Lotus War in Late Imperial China. She has also published articles on empire-building and the military institutions of the Qing dynasty. Currently she works on a monograph on the military elites in late imperial China. She is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Chinese Military History and Brill’s book series, “Rulers & Elites: Comparative Studies in Governance.”