Six
Local Military Power and Elite Formation: the Liu Family of Xingyi County, Guizhou

Edward A. McCord

In his path-breaking study of militarization in nineteenth-century China, Philip Kuhn identified the control of local military forces, specifically militia, as a key component of local-elite power in the late Qing and early Republican periods.^[1] There is, however, a paucity of supporting studies showing how militia leadership functioned in practice for specific elite families in the establishment, maintenance, or expansion of local power.^[2] In this article I attempt to meet this deficiency with a case study of the role of local military power in the rise of one family, the Lius of Xingyi county in Guizhou province, to a position of local, and eventually provincial, dominance.

The most renowned member of Xingyi county's Liu family was Liu Xianshi, military governor of Guizhou province from 1913 to 1920 and again from 1923 to 1925. As Guizhou's preeminent warlord, Liu Xianshi played a leading role in the political struggles and civil wars that ravaged southwest China in the early Republican period. Contemporary and historical accounts of Liu Xianshi's rise unfailingly note one distinguishing feature of his background: the militia base of his family's power. Both Liu Xianshi's grandfather and father, as well as three of his uncles, were actively involved in militia organization in the mid-nineteenth century; through militia leadership the Liu family originally established itself in a position of importance in Guizhou society. Heir to this family tradition, Liu Xianshi also led militia in Xingyi county in the last decade of the Qing and used this local force as the military base for his climb to provincial power.

One advantage to Liu Xianshi's notoriety as a warlord is that it has increased available historical materials on his family. With these materials it is possible to trace the family's use of local military power for a period extending from the mid-nineteenth century through the early twentieth. This

history shows not only that military power played an essential role in determining and advancing the social and political power of the Liu family but also that the control of local military force was most effective as a medium for expanding elite power within specific contexts. The successful upward mobility of the Liu family depended, in the long run, on a family strategy that adjusted to both military and civil opportunities in the changing social and political milieu of nineteenth- and twentieth-century China.

The Setting: Xingyi county and the Liu Family

Xingyi county is located in the southwest corner of Guizhou province precisely at the point where the province's border meets Yunnan and Guangxi provinces (map 6.1). To a certain extent, the county resembles the rugged, underdeveloped frontier areas often found along the borders of Chinese provinces. In terms of the core-periphery paradigm applied to China by G. William Skinner, Xingyi falls within the periphery of the Yun-Gui macroregion. Because the Yun-Gui macroregion was one of the most backward and least integrated in China, many of Xingyi's frontier features actually characterize the entire region.^[3]

Although most of Xingyi, like most of Guizhou, is covered by mountains, the terrain here is particularly rugged even by Guizhou standards.^[4] The rivers of southwestern Guizhou flow southeast into the West River system, which enters the sea at Canton, but they are not navigable until well into Guangxi province. Therefore, until the twentieth century, all transport to and from Xingyi went by human bearers or pack animals along well-worn paths. As for much of the Yunnan-Guizhou region, Xingyi county has only a small amount of level, arable land. Nonetheless, rich soil and plentiful rainfall make this land extremely fertile. Xingyi's county seat is located on a rich, irrigated plateau, one of the larger stretches of level ground in the province.^[5]

Despite its location, Xingyi county was not as isolated as many peripheral areas. Xingyi city was established at the site of a preexisting market town, Huangcaoba, that marked the juncture of two important interprovincial trade routes: one, with Huangcaoba at its center, linked Guizhou's provincial capital, Guiyang, with Kunming, the capital of Yunnan; the second went southeast from Huangcaoba into Guangxi where it tied into river transport systems ending in Canton. In the eighteenth century, Huangcaoba was already a well-established marketing center for local products from the forests and mines of southwestern Guizhou and eastern Yunnan. Raw domestic cotton imported into Xingyi in exchange for these products helped supply a local weaving industry. During the nineteenth century, the content of this interprovincial trade underwent some important changes. Opium was introduced to southwestern Guizhou at the end of the eighteenth century and

Map 6.1.
Xingyi County in Relation to the Provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Guangxi.

eventually became the main product exported out of Huangcaoba. Penetration of foreign goods also increased in this period, and by the end of the nineteenth century foreign yarn from Canton steadily replaced domestic cotton as a main import into the Xingyi area.^[6]

Despite the large volume of trade carried along these interprovincial routes, the level of commercial organization in Xingyi county remained relatively low. In the 1890s, a visiting British consul described the bustling market at Huangcaoba as a rather wild and unregulated "free mart." According to his report, Huangcaoba had no banks, and very little money actually changed hands in the market. Most commercial transactions were conducted by barter, with opium serving as the most frequent medium of exchange.^[7] This low-level monetization reveals the relatively underdeveloped and peripheral character of Xingyi's economy.

Until the late eighteenth century most of southwestern Guizhou's inhabitants were members of non-Chinese, primarily Miao, ethnic groups. As in many parts of Guizhou, these ethnic groups came under increasing pressure from Han Chinese immigration in the eighteenth century. Because of its important trade routes, the Xingyi area was a particular target for Han settlement.^[8] The ethnic balance in the Xingyi area began to swing in favor of the Han Chinese following the harsh suppression of a major Miao rebellion in the late 1790s. As Miao and other ethnic groups involved in the rebellion in southwestern Guizhou were pushed into more remote areas, a new wave of Han immigration flowed into the Xingyi area. By the mid-nineteenth century, Han Chinese guest people (kemin ) were estimated to make up 70 to 80 percent of Xingyi county's forty thousand inhabitants.^[9]

One characteristic Xingyi shared with much of the Yun-Gui region was a low level of social and political integration. In fact, only after the defeat of the Miao rebellion in 1797 was Xingyi county officially established as an administrative unit as part of a larger reorganization designed to strengthen bureaucratic control over Guizhou's southwestern border.^[10] Nonetheless, the county retained a reputation for independence as a place "where the room [distance] of officials has been preferred to their efforts at government."^[11] The Xingyi area also had relatively few of the higher-degree holders or retired officials that formed the upper social elite in more settled areas of the country. One mid-nineteenth-century source noted that because of Xingyi county's position on the "Miao frontier," it was only beginning to produce degree graduates qualified for assignment to official posts.^[12] For the entire period from 1796 until 1854, Xingyi prefecture as a whole produced only fourteen provincial degree holders (juren ) and one metropolitan degree holder (jinshi ); of these, only one provincial degree holder came from Xingyi county.^[13] Although no exact correlation can be made, the comparative weakness of the state and the thinness of traditional gentry elites may have contri-

buted to the extraordinary rise of the Liu family to a position of local power in Xingyi county.

Although the arrival of the Liu family in Xingyi county cannot be precisely dated, it appears that they were part of the wave of Chinese immigration entering Xingyi at the end of the eighteenth century. Liu Xianshi's great-great-grandfather, Liu Taiyuan, a traveling peddler of literary supplies from Hunan, made the move to Xingyi county (figure 6.1). Liu Taiyuan settled in Nitang, a remote village on Xingyi's southern border, where he gave up his previous occupation to establish a tung oil extraction business. Thus, like many other immigrants into southwestern Guizhou, Liu Taiyuan had been attracted not by land but by commercial opportunities. Under Liu Taiyuan's son, Liu Wenxiu, the family oil business expanded to the point of hiring nonfamily labor. Real prosperity, however, was only achieved when Liu Wenxiu's son, Liu Yanshan, moved the family business from remote Nitang to Xiawutun, a village in a fertile irrigated valley only a few miles from Xingyi city. With greater access to the Huangcaoba market and the assistance of four able sons, Liu Yanshan's business flourished. In a short time, the Lius had become one of Xiawutun's richest families.^[14]

The Liu family's prosperity was accompanied by a shift in their economic interests. After moving to Xiawutun, Liu Yanshan began to use his commercial profits to acquire agricultural land. In the end, he and his sons abandoned the oil trade entirely to concentrate on managing their landholdings. By the mid-nineteenth century, the Lius had gone from being a leading merchant family to one of richest landlord families in Xingyi county.^[15] Given the success of the Lius' oil business, it seems unlikely that this shift to agriculture was simply economic. Although the sources are silent on this matter, one can assume that the family may have been responding to traditional values that emphasized the prestige and security of landholding over commercial activity.

Within traditional Chinese society the next logical step for the Lius might have been to seek advancement into the ranks of the scholar-gentry by competing for degrees in the state-sponsored examination system. In some regards, the Lius were already poised for such a step. According to one account, the Liu family established a private school at their original home in Nitang.^[16] Liu Yanshan's four sons, and most likely Liu Yanshan himself, were literate and well versed in the classics on which the examination system was based.^[17] Whether or not the Lius intended to pursue this route to educational advancement, they were soon distracted by more pressing concerns. Beginning in the 1850s, a number of increasingly serious rebellions began to erupt in different parts of the province. When the Lius stepped forward to organize local defenses against these rebellions, they embarked on a path that would bring them greater rewards than they could have hoped to gain through the examination system.

Figure 6.1.
The Lius of Xingyi

The Military Base of Elite Power

Although coinciding somewhat with the outbreak of the Taiping Rebellion in neighboring Guangxi in 1851, Guizhou's rebellions had indigenous roots in increasing ethnic tensions and economic inequities. From 1850 to 1875 there was always at least one, and usually more than one, rebellion active in some part of the province. Before the end of this twenty-five-year period over 90 percent of Guizhou's administrative cities would fall at some point to rebel forces, and at the height of the rebellions more than 60 percent of the province would be under rebel control.^[18]

For the first half of this period, Xingyi county, apparently escaping much disorder of these rebellions, may have even prospered. According to one account, the market at Huangcaoba flourished during the rebellions, "keeping the peace in its own streets and selling opium, arms, and foreign goods to all who could pay for them."^[19] War finally came to Xingyi with an ethnic Hui (Muslim) rebellion that arose along the Yunnan-Guizhou border in 1858 and sparked other local ethnic and secret society uprisings. In 1860 the county seat of Pu'an directly north of Xingyi county became the first in a chain of administrative cities to fall to the rebels. By 1862 the rebels had advanced to take Xingyifu, the administrative seat of the Xingyi prefecture, less than sixty miles from Xingyi city. As the rebellion spread, local officials, following precedents established elsewhere in Guizhou and other provinces, encouraged local communities to organize militia for their own self-defense.^[20]

The Lius were one of many families in southwestern Guizhou who stepped forward to manage local self-defense when they saw their own localities threatened. In 1860 Liu Yanshan and his four sons led local residents in constructing a stone fortress and then began to train local residents as militiamen. The Lius' defensive efforts at Xiawutun came none too soon. Six months after the fall of Xingyifu, Xingyi city also fell to rebel forces. The fortress at Xiawutun, which became a place of sanctuary for the local refugees, was soon besieged. After seven desperate months, the Lius were finally forced to negotiate a token surrender to the rebels.^[21] Despite this questionable tactic, by successfully guiding Xiawutun through this particularly difficult period, Liu Yanshan and his sons established their reputations as local military and community leaders.

The Liu family's militia leadership provides a case in point for Philip Kuhn's observation on the inadequacy of defining the local elite solely in terms of degree-holding gentry; not only local degree holders but also many wealthy or influential commoners assumed militia leadership, clearly an elite function.^[22] In a study of Sichuan province in the 1850s and 1860s, Keith Schoppa has also shown that the majority of the men who performed conventional elite functions in local defense, education, and philanthropy were not degree holders.^[23] Thus attention to elite activities instead of status categories

both provides a-more accurate picture of local elites and particularly identifies nondegree-holding elites such as the Lius of Xingyi county.

Once degree holding is no longer the sole criterion for elite status, an examination of elite activities presents a more dynamic picture of change within the structure of local-elite power. The Lius, emerging as a wealthy landlord family, must at least be considered members of the village elite of Xiawutun, but prior to the 1860s the scope of their influence was limited. Before this time, for example, there is no sign that the Lius had assumed any community leadership roles. Likewise there is no indication that the Lius functioned as power holders in the tradition of "local strongmen" often seen in frontier areas.^[24] The Lius' landholdings, after all, were located in one of the county's more settled areas and did not require private armed retainers for their protection. Only in their organization of local defenses in the 1860s did the Lius begin to act as community leaders and become local strongmen; also as militia leaders the Lius extended their influence beyond the borders of their own village. Militia leadership therefore provided the Lius with a means for upward mobility unavailable to them in more peaceful times. Thus, militia organization served as an arena for not only elite activity but also elite formation.

In the years following the siege of Xiawutun, the Liu family became involved in local defense and militia activities on an ever wider scale. While Liu Yanshan guarded the family's base at Xiawutun, his sons led militia in campaigns against various rebel strongholds in both Xingyi and neighboring counties. There are no exact records on the size or organization of Liu family forces, but at different times estimates of the Liu brothers' command ranged from several thousand to more than ten thousand men. Three times (1864, 1866, 1868) militia led by the Lius helped retake Xingyi city from rebel forces. Subsequently, the Lius also participated in recovering other important cities in southwestern Guizhou, including Xingyifu and Xincheng. The Lius' militia activities were not pursued without some family losses. Liu Yanshan's second son, Liu Guanlin, was killed in an assault on Xingyi city in 1863, and his first son, Liu Guanzhen, was killed in a feud with neighboring militia leaders in 1865. Liu Yanshan himself died, apparently of natural causes, in 1867. After this, Liu Yanshan's third son, Liu Guanli, assumed primary leadership of the family's military forces, assisted by his younger brother, Liu Guande.^[25]

The activities of the Liu family in this period, however, were not limited to commanding militia forces; to support their forces, the Lius were also active in collecting funds and provisions. No doubt benefiting from Xingyi's wealth as a commercial center, the Lius not only supplied their own forces but also supported regular army units campaigning in southwestern Guizhou and provided funds to obtain the services of militia from neighboring areas to assist in their own campaigns. Liu family leadership and fund-raising skills

were also applied to community construction projects, primarily defensive. Besides the stone fortress they built at Xiawutun, the Lius aided in constructing ten other forts in neighboring areas. After the third recovery of Xingyi city, Liu Guanli and Liu Guande led efforts to rebuild and strengthen the walls of the county seat. Finally, after the death of Liu Guanzhen, the Lius directed the construction of a loyalty temple (zhongyi ci ) to commemorate him and other local "martyrs." When this temple burned in 1875, the Lius again contributed to its reconstruction.^[26] The Lius' attention to this temple no doubt reflected its symbolic importance to the family, a concrete reminder of their community leadership.

The position of local leadership attained by the Liu family in suppressing rebel forces of the 1860s and early 1870s was enhanced by the receipt of official titles and brevet offices. Liu Guanzhen was awarded an army rank of major (youji ) for his role in the first recovery of Xingyi city. After his death, this title was passed on to his younger brother, Liu Guande. Liu Guanli received the honorary rank of subprefect (tongzhi ) for his role in the second recovery of Xingyi city. His military abilities were also recognized by appointing him with official authority over all militia in Xingyi prefecture. After the recovery of Xingyifu, Liu Guanli was further rewarded with a prefect's rank (zhifu ) and the right to wear a peacock feather.^[27] In a society where the state had always claimed the right to determine the criteria for social status, such titles and awards were not considered empty honors. Indeed, the paucity of regular upper-degree holders in Guizhou made these awards even more valued, something officials sponsoring militia realized and used to their advantage.^[28] The titles received by the Lius were important, then, because they both legitimated their positions as local leaders and considerably advanced their community status. In the eyes of the state and society, the Lius' official titles removed them from the category of commoners and placed them within the ranks of the gentry.

The Lius also found ways to translate their newly acquired local power as militia leaders into more material benefits. First, the family no doubt gained from the plunder of territories recovered from rebel hands.^[29] Second, the Lius were not above using their new authority to consolidate their family landholdings by intimidating other landowners into selling or ceding to them prime lands around Xiawutun.^[30] Finally, the Lius benefited from their access to funds and provisions collected for support of their military forces. Sources sympathetic to the Lius attributed their effectiveness in obtaining contributions to the high esteem in which they were held by the public.^[31] But charges brought against the family for illegal exactions and embezzlement suggest that these contributions were often more coerced than voluntary and that the Lius were not averse to pocketing part of the proceeds for their own gain.^[32]

Although the original purpose in raising militia had been to aid in sup-

pressing rebellion, the Lius also used their military power to better the family's position in struggles with other "loyal" forces. Contrary to views of elite solidarity in the face of rebellion, conflicts over manpower, funds, or the command of military operations often led to feuds and even open warfare among various militia leaders. The death of Liu Guanzhen in 1865 was the result of one such feud between the Lius and another group of Xingyi militia leaders.^[33] Such conflicts with militia rivals intensified after 1866 when Liu Guanli attempted to assert his authority as general militia head for Xingyi prefecture. Sometimes these power struggles even brought the Lius into conflict with local officials and regular army units. One such case occurred in 1866 when Liu Guanli initiated an attack on the forces of a neighboring militia leader who refused to accept his authority. Liu's adversary, however, received the support of Xingyi's prefect and a local brigade-general who sent official troops to repel Liu's assault. Only after a new prefect, a previous military ally of the Liu family, was appointed, was Liu Guanli able to defeat this opponent.^[34] In another instance, the Lius reportedly attacked Xingyi city to force the flight of a magistrate who had sought to curtail their growing local power. After gaining access to the city, the Lius proceeded to massacre a number of gentry families who had supported the fallen magistrate.^[35] Although eagerly accepting official recognition for their role in the suppression of rebel forces, the Lius could and did use their military power to challenge official authority when their own interests were at stake.

In these local power struggles expedient alliances with rebel forces could also blur the distinction between orthodox and heterodox forces. For example, one weak militia leader caught between powerful rebel forces on one side and aggrandizing militia leaders, including the Lius, on the other, changed sides no less than five times within a three-year period.^[36] Despite their own questionable surrender to rebel forces during the first siege of Xiawutun, Lius were not reluctant to use charges of rebel collaboration, true or not, against their enemies; thus Liu Guanli finally avenged his brother's murder. Labeling these enemies rebel collaborators, Liu attacked their forces, pillaged their villages, and massacred their families.^[37] Through such tactics, the Lius eliminated possible militia competitors while expanding their own military power by absorbing rival forces into their own.

As can be seen from these cases, the military conflicts of this period were hardly limited to the war between elite forces of order and armies of rebellion. The organization of militia, although meant to combat rebellion, also introduced military force as a new element in determining elite power, and elite power structures had to be reconstituted to incorporate this new element. To some extent, then, the conflicts between militia leaders, and between militia leaders and officials, were the violent manifestations of readjustments in the hierarchy of local-elite power.

Abuses of power and disregard for authority by militia leaders were natu-

rally matters of official concern.^[38] While rebellions still flourished, however, the government was often willing to overlook the transgressions of important militia leaders such as the Lius in exchange for their support. Nonetheless, in the early 1870S the Qing court finally felt compelled to respond to the accumulating charges and complaints against the Lius and ordered Guizhou's governor to investigate officially the family's activities. Because military resistance to a court order would have placed the family irrevocably in rebellion, this challenge demanded a political rather than a military solution. Liu Guanli immediately departed for the capital of Yunnan to seek higher-level protection from the governor general. Liu Guande, meanwhile, remained in Guizhou to oversee the bribery of local officials. In the end, the governor general interceded on the Lius' behalf, and the investigation was dropped. Furthermore, on the recommendation of his new benefactor, Liu Guanli was even appointed expectant intendant (dao ) and was retained for a time on the governor general's staff.^[39] The generous application of wealth and the careful cultivation of official patronage enabled the Lius to emerge from this affair not only unpunished but also even more secure in their position.

Although the Lius of Xingyi may have originally assumed militia leadership as a matter of self-defense, militia power helped the family do more than simply survive. Before the rebellion the Lius were already a prominent and wealthy landlord family, but by commanding local militia the Lius gained new status and influence as community leaders and local strongmen. By applying military force, the Lius increased their family wealth and eliminated local rivals. As a result of their military achievements, the Lius gained official honors that gave them status equivalent to the degree-holding gentry and established valuable official contacts that extended as far as the governor general's office in Kunming. In the course of their military campaigns their influence grew beyond the confines of their own village; by the end of the rebellions they were considered the most powerful family in Xingyi county and one of the most important families in all southwestern Guizhou. For the Lius, then, militia leadership served as a medium for a remarkable leap in local status and power. However, the family's escape from official prosecution also attests to limits on the uses of military power. Ultimately, maintaining the Liu family's elite position would depend on the extent to which they could be more than military strongmen.

Giving Up the Gun

Conditions in southwest Guizhou had changed considerably when Liu Guanli returned from Yunnan in 1875. The previous year, the last of the Hui rebel strongholds had been taken by government forces, and the Muslim rebellion had ended. Although scattered bands of ethnic or secret society rebels continued to trouble parts of Guizhou until 1880, by and large the

major rebellions had by this time been defeated. Liu Guanli responded to the restoration of peace by announcing that he would retire from government service to devote himself to the care of his ailing mother. After fifteen years of almost continual fighting, Liu then proceeded to disband all his family's military forces.^[40]

Given the importance of militia leadership to the expansion of Liu family power, Liu Guanli's willingness to dissolve his family's military forces appears at first glance almost quixotic. Nonetheless, Liu's response to restoring peace was not all that unusual. There is considerable evidence that most elite-led militias raised throughout China to combat midcentury rebellions were disbanded in the more peaceful postrebellion period.^[41] The only question that requires further examination is why militia leaders such as the Lius abandoned so willingly the control of local military power that had been for a time so essential to their elite positions.

One of the most important reasons for Liu Guanli's decision to disband his family's militia was certainly his recognition of the risks in attempting to maintain military power after the rebellions ended. As the government's military strength recovered, officials were better positioned to curb the excesses of militia leaders, especially those whose activities had been too blatantly illegal or whose loyalty had been too inconsistent. The Lius had participated in enough campaigns against "rebellious" militia commanders to know how easily this label might be applied to themselves.^[42] There was also a lesson to be gained from the family's costly struggle to defend itself from prosecution in the early 1870s. Their strong-armed self-aggrandizement had antagonized local officials and many members of the local elite. Continuing to behave as local military strongmen would allow these antagonisms to fester and might make the government more attentive to their enemies' complaints. With the restoration of peace, the best hope for maintaining the family's position lay in abandoning, not preserving, their militia power.

Liu Guanli was perhaps also willing to give up militia leadership with few hesitations because to do so by this time detracted little from his family's local power. Through militia leadership the family had gained new power "resources" that, once acquired, did not depend on military force to be maintained. One resource was Liu Guanli's expectant intendant rank, which gave him both community status and access to high officials. Another hidden strength was Liu's former position as general militia head for Xingyi prefecture. Through this position Liu could claim a superior-subordinate relationship to most militia commanders of southwestern Guizhou who, like the Lius, emerged from the period as important local community leaders.^[43] Marriage ties also helped solidify these relations. Liu Guanli married his daughter to the son of Wang Peixian, who, after the Lius, was perhaps the most important militia leader in Xingyi county and one of the Lius' closest allies.^[44] The Lius' influence with such men helped balance the enemies they

had made among other members of the local elite. Finally, the Liu family had emerged with more wealth and property than they had had before the rebellions. The political advantages of wealth were readily evident in the bribery that helped the family avoid prosecution in the early 1870s. In the years to come, the Lius continued to use their wealth to cultivate official goodwill by generous "gifts" to local and provincial officials and their staffs.^[45]

The dissolution of the Lius' military forces thus had little effect on the Lius' local power. Indeed, in the postrebellion period they continued to be recognized as the dominant family in Xingyi county, and to a certain extent in southwestern Guizhou as a whole.^[46] The Xingyi magistrate reportedly would not act on any issue without first consulting with Liu Guanli, and Liu's opinion generally settled any local affair, big or small. As a result of his far-reaching power following the rebellion, Liu Guanli was pictured as heading a "small court" in Xingyi with influence over the entire Pan River watershed of southwestern Guizhou.^[47]

From the case of the Liu family alone it is impossible to determine the extent to which state power may generally have devolved into hands of local elites in the postrebellion period. In the 1890s the British consul Frederick Bourne reported that the Xingyi county magistrate had candidly acknowledged that he had little authority in the county.^[48] But Bourne saw this as merely continuing government weakness inherent in the region. Nonetheless, the relative scarcity of upper gentry in southwestern Guizhou through the mid-nineteenth century suggests that the rise of the Lius to a position of such influence was an elaboration of elite power that, at the very least, changed the structure of Xingyi society. Although the state's position may not have been any weaker than it had been before the rebellion, the power of the Liu family in Xingyi county may have helped thwart any attempt to strengthen government authority.

The Liu family's continued domination of Xingyi local society was not, however, simply the result of its achievements from the period of militia leadership. Viewed over time, elite power in local society appears not as a static construct but as a set of relationships in a constant process of formation and reformation. The Lius' activities in the postrebellion period seem to show an awareness that the maintenance, let alone enhancement, of their position and influence required that they seek out new means of renewing their power as local elites. The particular strength of the Lius as elites was their flexible response to changing circumstances and opportunities. Just as they adapted to possibilities for elite power found in militia leadership during the period of rebellion, the Lius turned their attention to civil potentialities for elite power in the peaceful period that followed.

Traditionally, education served as the main channel for status enhancement in Chinese society; and in the last quarter of the nineteenth century Liu Guanli focused his public efforts in this field. Although the titles Liu had

received as a militia leader placed him officially at a level equal to the upper-degree holding gentry, ranks attained through military achievement were viewed in practice as inferior to those acquired through education. The power the Liu family wielded in local affairs would not necessarily translate directly into social acceptance within the ranks of the scholarly elite. Thus, Liu's attention to education at this time not only revived family interests that had been interrupted by their military activities but also initiated a strategy to transform his family's social status for more peaceful times. As a militia leader Liu had made many enemies among the local elite by his bullying, but in his new guise as educational patron he presented a more cultivated image by being "courteous to the wise and condescending toward the scholarly."^[49] Personal behavior and public activity thus combined to reflect the Liu family's gentrification along more socially acceptable lines.

Liu Guanli's educational pursuits involved many traditionally approved activities. He established an academy in Xingyi county and filled it with the books needed for a classical education. He also provided financial assistance for the education of promising local students. Finally, to raise the quality of local education he provided generous stipends to bring prominent scholars from the provincial capital to Xingyi either to supervise the county's educational programs or to lecture in its schools.^[50] Largely through Liu's efforts, Xingyi county became, despite its peripheral location, something of a regional educational center.

Besides the reputation Liu Guanli gained as a patron of local education, his activities had even more concrete benefits. His assistance to young local scholars established patron-client relationships with the men most likely to emerge as the next generation's social elite. Likewise, Liu established social contacts with the provincial elite through the scholars he brought to Xingyi to assist in his education projects. This same end was achieved by generous gifts sent to promising scholars in Guiyang.^[51] By assuming the role of a patron of men of talent, Liu solidified his social influence within the Xingyi area and extended it to the provincial capital.

Liu Guanli's goals in promoting local education were not, however, simply limited to enhancing his own reputation. Liu was also providing for the educational advancement of his own sons and nephews. While he and his brothers had their educations interrupted, Liu Guanli could hope that the younger generation might contribute to the family fortunes by succeeding in the traditional examination system. In the mid-1880s the family achieved some success when Liu Guanli's elder son, the future warlord Liu Xianshi, and his nephew, Liu Xianqian (the son of Liu Guanzhen), both earned the lowest level degree (shengyuan ).^[52]

The year 1875 therefore was a turning point in the history of the Liu family whereupon they shed the military power that had made them southwestern Guizhou's preeminent strongman family in favor of pursuing civil

status through educational promotion and advancement. For the Lius, military and civil activities were not exclusive categories of community leadership; rather, the sharp contrast between the family's activities before and after 1875 appears determined primarily by the different contexts of the two periods. Indeed, when changing conditions at the turn of the century offered new opportunities for community leadership in both military and civil fields the Lius responded with alacrity in both areas.

The Revival of Family Military Power

After a quarter of a century of relative peace, Guizhou in the first decade of the twentieth century was again beset by periodic local disturbances and ethnic rebellions. By one account, a total of seventy-three separate uprisings occurred in the province in this period.^[53] With official approval, Guizhou's local elites again responded by raising militia for local self-defense.

For Xingyi, the main threat came not so much from local uprisings as from a series of secret society rebellions that began in neighboring Guangxi in 1898 and produced roving rebel and bandit bands that harassed Guizhou's southern border.^[54] In the face of this threat, Liu Xianshi gave up his studies to devote himself to militia work, accepting a position as manager of Xingyi county's General Militia Bureau (tuanfang zongju ).^[55] The greatest danger to Xingyi came in 1902 when a large rebel army crossed the river that formed the county's border with Guangxi. At this point Liu Guanli also stepped forward in response to official appeals to help organize the county's defenses. Because the county's own garrison troops had been called away to quell rebel forces in Yunnan, the Lius first attempted to use their militia to defend Xingyi city. They soon found themselves outnumbered and abandoned the city to defend their own fortress at Xiawutun. For six days Xiawutun itself was then besieged by the rebel army. Before they could be forced to surrender, though, government troops fought their way back into the county, and the Lius reemerged from their fortress to join the offensive. The Lius then helped government armies recapture Xingyi city and push the rebels back into Guangxi.^[56]

As a result of this action, the Lius revived their military reputation and gained new official rewards for their military services. First, in the course of the campaign the militia units led by the Lius were officially given an irregular army designation as the Border Pacification Battalions (Jingbian ying). Liu Guanli was appointed general commander (tongling ), and both his son, Liu Xianshi, and his nephew, Liu Xianqian, were given battalion commander (guandai ) posts.^[57] According to one source, Liu Xianshi was also rewarded with the honorary rank of a county magistrate.^[58] Later, in recognition of his military abilities, Liu Xianqian became the commander of the Guangxi governor's personal guard.^[59] Thus, militia leadership again rein-

forced the Liu family's standing by helping its members acquire new official titles and posts.

Although the original rebel problem had been handled, the unsettled conditions in Guizhou as a whole argued against the complete disbandment of the Liu's militia. With Liu Xianqian's departure for Guangxi, the Border Pacification Battalions were reduced from two to one. But, Guizhou officials continued to see the Lius' forces as an important element in southwestern Guizhou's defenses and encouraged their maintenance. Thus, Liu's battalion was not included in a 1906 reduction of old-style irregular military forces carried out by Guizhou's governor in order to provide funds for a modern new army. Instead his unit was one of twenty battalions of these old-style forces retained for incorporation into a new standardized patrol and defense force system (xunfangying ). Liu Xianshi's battalion was renamed the second battalion of the West Route Patrol and Defense Forces, and Liu Xianshi retained his position as its commander.^[60] It should be noted, however, that as one of the poorest provinces in China, Guizhou had no funds for the extensive reorganization and retraining required by national orders establishing the patrol and defense force system. Thus, to some extent recognizing Liu's force as a patrol and defense battalion was merely an attempt to create the appearance of compliance with military reform requirements at minimal cost to the provincial treasury. For all practical purposes, Liu's battalion remained a militia unit under Liu's personal control. In this instance, the patrol and defense force reorganization simply provided further legitimation for the Liu's local military forces.

Prior to assuming militia leadership Liu Xianshi appeared prepared to seek advancement through the degree system, but, as a result of his role in suppressing the Guangxi rebels, he obtained a military office and established a military reputation. Because of his later emergence as a warlord, Liu Xianshi's military activities are often seen as the most salient feature in his background. But, in fact, despite his retention of this military post, much of Liu Xianshi's attention after suppressing the rebel army was taken up with civil not military matters. Proceeding naturally from Liu Guanli's previous educational work, the Liu family became actively involved in the new educational and reform programs that were among the most important features of elite activity in the years immediately preceding the 1911 Revolution. These civil activities in the end proved as important as the Lius' renewed military power in Liu Xianshi's eventual emergence as a warlord.

Late Qing Reforms and Expanding Elite Power

The Liu family's connections to late Qing educational reforms had early beginnings. In 1897, Yan Xiu, an eminent scholar with ties to Kang Youwei's reform party, was appointed as Guizhou's educational commissioner.

Arriving in Guiyang, Yan established the Statecraft School (Jingshi xuetang), the first Guizhou educational institution to introduce Western elements into its curriculum.^[61] Only a select group of forty talented students was enrolled in the new school; among them was Liu Xianzhi, Liu Xianshi's younger brother. In the following years, Liu Guanli's program of inviting prominent scholars to lecture in Xingyi schools also brought leading reformers into contact with the Liu family.^[62] Despite Xingyi's peripheral location, these educational contacts kept the Lius well informed of the reform programs emerging in the provincial capital. The Lius quickly realized that these programs were creating new arenas for expanding elite power, and they moved to confirm and enhance their own local leadership by introducing these reforms into the Xingyi area.

The Lius' own participation in reform activities began with locally implementing the modern educational system mandated by the court to replace the civil service examination system in 1905. Liu Guanli actively promoted educational reform, but due to his ill health (he died in 1908) his son, Liu Xianshi, acted as the effective head of the family in these matters. Thus, although Liu Guanli supported the establishment of a Xingyi educational promotion office (quanxuesuo ) to oversee the county's educational revitalization, Liu Xianshi actually took the lead by serving as its general manager. Many of Liu Xianshi's efforts in this post were directed toward setting up modern schools in accordance with new educational directives. The private academy originally founded by the Lius was converted into an upper-level primary school (gaodeng xiaoxue ). At the same time, Liu assisted in establishing about twenty lower-level primary schools within Xingyi and others in surrounding counties. Finally, Liu Xianshi was also involved in founding other educational institutions, such as a girls' school, a teacher training institute, a military school, and a public reading room.^[63]

The Lius also continued to foster their patron-client relations with other Xingyi families by encouraging and supporting the education of their sons. The Lius paid special attention to promising students, helping them attend the higher-level professional or technical schools that were beginning to be established in Guiyang, and the family even provided stipends to help more than twenty students seek advanced education in Japan.^[64] Among these students was He Yingqin, the scion of a prominent Xingyi family who would later gain fame as a Guomindang general and Nationalist China's minister of war. He's military education in Japan was supported by Liu Xianshi, and his tics to the Liu family were later enhanced by marriage to Liu Xianshi's niece.^[65] Naturally, as in their previous efforts, the Lius did not fail to insure that the younger generation of their own family would also benefit from these new educational opportunities. For example, Liu Xianshi's younger brother Liu Xianzhi, his eldest son Liu Gangwu, and a nephew

Wang Boqun (the grandson of Wang Peixian) were among a number of family members sent to pursue higher education in Japan.^[66]

Although concentrating on education, Liu Guanli and Liu Xianshi also responded quickly to other types of elite reform. In the economic field, Liu Guanli supported a proposal for constructing a Yunnan-Guizhou-Sichuan railroad and encouraged Liu Xianshi to set up forestry companies. In politics, Liu Xianshi headed a Xingyi association to prepare for local self-government. In support of social reforms, Liu Xianshi even helped establish a society for the elimination of footbinding.^[67] In regard to the content of their activities, the Lius remained imitators rather than innovators. All the reforms the Lius introduced into Xingyi followed precedents established in the provincial capital. Still, their role in diffusing reform programs belies the usual perception that late Qing reforms were the preserve of urban elites in more advanced core areas.

One important result of the Lius' participation in reform activities was the enhancement of their reputation with and connections to members of the emerging provincial, and even national, reformist elite. The Lius' efforts to bring eminent scholars from Guiyang to Xingyi continued, in this period, to help the Lius establish personal relations with members of the provincial elite. Liu Guanli's reputation in educational affairs had already been established, and Liu Xianshi's assumption of leadership in reform activities helped him gain the respect of Guizhou's educational and constitutionalist leaders in his own right. Equally important were the contacts made by the younger members of the Liu family while attending new schools in Guiyang or higher institutions abroad. For example, while attending the Statecraft School in Guiyang, Liu Xianzhi's teachers were Guizhou's most prominent educators, and many of his classmates were the children of Guiyang's eminent families. After going to Japan, Liu Xianzhi entered the circle of reformers that gathered around Liang Qichao, and he even served for a time as Liang's aide. Upon completing his education in Japan, Liu was invited to take up a position on the Yunnan governor-general's staff.^[68] By achieving this post Liu Xianzhi illustrates the opportunities for elite advancement that many found in the new educational system. At the same time, the contacts he made while pursuing his education also contributed to his family's broader social connections at provincial and national levels.

The most telling sign of the social standing the Liu family had achieved in the first decade of the twentieth century was the marriage of Liu Xianshi's daughter to the son of Tang Eryong, a provincial degree holder (juren ) and the scion of one of Guizhou's eminent families.^[69] As the founder and head of Guizhou's provincial educational association, Tang Eryong was the single most powerful man in Guizhou educational circles and a leading member of the provincial reformist elite. The matchmaker who arranged the Tang-

Liu marriage had some reason to boast that it marked "the reach of Tang Eryong's power out into the province and the advance of Liu Xianshi's power toward the center."^[70]

Even though reform programs became the main focus of the Lius' public activities in the last years of the Qing, they did not abandon their local military concerns. Indeed one of the Lius' educational projects, their military school at Xingyi, helped bolster the family's military power by training a cadre of officers for Liu Xianshi's local military force. No matter how pressing his other activities, Liu Xianshi also continued to inspect his troops regularly and insure their loyalty by personal attention to their needs.^[71] Even after the death of his father in 1908 Liu Xianshi did not give up his military post but rather moved his battalion headquarters into the family residence so he could continue to oversee its affairs while in mourning.^[72] In terms of the Lius' total influence, however, their educational and other reform activities, not their military power, projected the family into a wider social and political arena. Although Xingyi county remained the Lius' main power base, this base stood at the center of an emerging network of elite relations that prepared the family for a new outward extension of power during the 1911 Revolution.

The Making of a Provincial Warlord

One of the most important factors influencing the course of the 1911 Revolution in Guizhou was an antagonistic split in the province's reformist elite over the control of Guizhou's public organizations. One faction, organized as the Self-Government Study Society (Zizhi xueshe) under the leadership of Zhang Bailin, successfully won a majority in the first Provincial Assembly elected in 1909. Their opponents, the Constitutional Preparation Association (Xianzheng yubei hui) led by Tang Eryong and Ren Kecheng, based their power on control of the province's educational institutions.^[73] At the beginning, the division between the two factions was primarily personal and political not ideological. Over the course of their struggle, however, Zhang Bailin's group slowly became more inclined toward a revolutionary republican program. When news of Hubei province's successful revolutionary uprising against the Qing dynasty reached Guizhou in mid-October 1911, Zhang's "revolutionary" faction, not their more conservative "constitutionalist" (i.e., constitutional monarchist) opponents, set about plotting a similar uprising in Guizhou.^[74]

The outbreak of the 1911 Revolution in Hubei found Guizhou's governor, Shen Yuqing, in a precarious position. Although new to his office (he had only arrived in Guizhou in April 1911), Shen was well aware of growing revolutionary sentiment in the province. He was particularly concerned, quite rightly as it turned out, that Guizhou's modern New Army, which

served as his capital's main garrison, might follow the lead of Hubei and other provinces and carry out a revolutionary coup. In the face of this danger, Shen turned for advice to Ren Kecheng, head of the constitutionalist faction. Besides suggesting that the leaders of the Self-Government Society be rounded up and executed, advice Shen declined to follow, Ren proposed that Liu Xianshi be called upon to lead a force of local troops to Guiyang to defend the capital against a possible New Army uprising. With his personal military experience and his family's long history of loyal military service, Liu Xianshi was a logical candidate for this assignment. At the same time, given his family's strong ties to the constitutionalist faction through Tang Eryong, political considerations no doubt also influenced Ren's recommendation. In any event, Shen accepted Ren's advice and sent an urgent message to Liu Xianshi asking him to lead five hundred men to Guiyang. As a "sweetener" to insure Liu's speedy compliance, Shen offered to supply Liu's men with new guns from the provincial arsenal. Upon receiving this message Liu showed no hesitation and immediately set out for Guiyang at the head of five hundred men.^[75]

Guizhou's revolutionary plotters, meanwhile, were emboldened by the news that a successful New Army uprising had taken place on October 30 in neighboring Yunnan. At the same time, they learned of Liu Xianshi's advance toward Guiyang and decided their own plans could no longer be delayed. On the evening of November 2, New Army soldiers and military students rose in support of the Revolution. With no reliable military forces at hand, the governor was forced to surrender to the provincial assembly, and on November 3 the assembly declared Guizhou's independence. While a Japanese-educated new army instructor, Yang Jincheng, was elected military governor, the real power in Guizhou's revolutionary regime was a policy-making cabinet (shumi yuan ) headed by Zhang Bailin.^[76]

Liu Xianshi and his army had only marched halfway to Guiyang when they received news of the uprising. Although Liu's chance to be a counterrevolutionary hero had been snatched from his grasp, he was unwilling to miss an opportunity to play some role in the events at Guiyang; therefore, instead of retreating to Xingyi, he sent a bold message to the new regime proclaiming, "Although I have approached the capital this time under the orders of Governor Shen, for a long time my heart has inclined toward the revolution you gentlemen have supported."^[77] Liu then asked that he be allowed to proceed to Guiyang to bolster revolutionary military power. Because his own contacts had been strongest with the constitutionalist faction, he sent this message in the hands of a young nephew, Wang Wenhua (Wang Boqun's brother), who had become close to several members of the Self-Government Study Society while studying in Guiyang and was known to have revolutionary sympathies.^[78]

Neither Liu's message nor his messenger was sufficient to allay the doubts

of some revolutionaries over his supposed change of heart. Zhang Bailin called a meeting of revolutionary leaders to discuss Liu's offer; some felt that Liu should be ordered to return to Xingyi with his men, and others argued that the only safe course would be to arrest and execute him. In the end, though, the decisive factor in this issue was Zhang Bailin's conviction that the strength of the new regime required healing the antagonism between Guizhou's two reformist factions. In pursuit of this goal, several prominent constitutionalists, including Ren Kecheng, had been offered posts in the revolutionary cabinet. These men supported Liu Xianshi's entry into Guiyang and argued that his military experience could be useful to the new regime. As a sign of conciliation, Zhang overrode the objections of his colleagues and welcomed Liu Xianshi into Guiyang.^[79]

Liu Xianshi's opportunistic jump from counterrevolutionary to revolutionary ranks paid off handsomely. Upon arriving in Guiyang, his unarmed band of five hundred men received the new guns originally promised by Governor Shen. Liu's men were then recognized as a regiment (biao ) in Guizhou's new revolutionary army, and Liu himself was allowed to retain his command. Finally, Liu was also given a place on the revolutionary cabinet and was appointed head of the new government's military affairs section.^[80] Thus Liu was allowed to combine actual military command with an active role in the regime's military administration and policy making.

Zhang Bailin's attempts to reconcile Guizhou's competing elite factions proved a failure. After his entry into Guiyang, Liu Xianshi became the constitutionalist faction's main military ally in an ongoing and increasingly bitter struggle with revolutionary leaders for control of the provincial government. The revolutionaries were weakened by the departure of Yang Jincheng, with most of Guizhou's best troops, for the revolutionary front in central China. On February 2, 1912, Liu and his allies incited a dissatisfied military commander to lead an attack on revolutionary leaders in Guiyang. Liu's main military opponent, the head of a revolutionary force organized from secret society followers, was killed, and Zhang Bailin was forced to flee the city. When Zhang attempted to gather a military following in west Guizhou to fight his way back to Guiyang, Liu ordered his cousin Liu Xianqian, who had returned to Xingyi after Guangxi joined the Revolution, to lead a militia unit from Xingyi to attack Zhang's rear. Zhang was defeated and forced to flee the province.^[81] Even at this point, however, revolutionary forces in Guiyang remained sufficiently powerful to prevent Liu from eliminating them. To achieve this end, Liu and his allies sought military assistance from the Yunnan army, an action in which Liu family connections again played an important role.

From the beginning of the 1911 Revolution, Liu Xianzhi, from his position on the governor-general's staff in Yunnan, had been alert to the Revolution's opportunities for extending his family's power. When news of the

Hubei uprising reached Yunnan, he had urged the governor-general to have Liu Xianshi lead a force from Xingyi to Kunming to help defend the city from revolutionaries. Before anything could come of this, however, Yunnan's new army had successfully seized Kunming in the name of the revolution. Despite his original opposition to the revolution, Liu Xianzhi was protected by Cai E, Yunnan's new military governor, because of Liu's strong ties to Cai's mentor, Liang Qichao. On the basis of this connection, Liu was even given a staff position in Yunnan's new government. Unaware that Liu Xianshi had already set out for Guiyang at the request of Guizhou's loyalist governor, Liu Xianzhi then proposed that a detachment of Yunnan troops be despatched to join up with Liu's troops in Xingyi in order to march on Guiyang in the name of the revolution. This plan was also abandoned once the news was received of the successful uprising of Guizhou's New Army.^[82] After Guizhou's revolutionary government was established, Liu Xianzhi, along with other Guizhou men connected to the Liu family on Cai's staff, became a secret channel of communication between Liu Xianshi and the Yunnan government.^[83] Following long negotiations, Cai was finally convinced to send a military force led by Tang Jiyao to seize control of the Guizhou government.

On February 29, 1912, Tang's forces arrived in Guiyang where they were welcomed by the revolutionary government, which had been deceived into believing they were simply passing through to relieve other revolutionary forces in central China. On March 2, Tang Jiyao joined with Lu Xianshi to carry out a military coup. Revolutionary military forces were surrounded and disbanded or in some cases disarmed and massacred. The military governor who had replaced Yang Jincheng was forced to flee. Other revolutionary leaders who still held military or civil posts were killed or forced to flee the province.^[84] Thus, with Tang's aid, Liu and his allies were finally able to defeat their revolutionary rivals.

The price for Tang's military assistance was his assuming Guizhou's military governorship. At the same time, Tang recognized that he required an internal base of support to rule in Guizhou. Thus, Liu Xianshi's civil allies were allowed to control the province's civil administration. Liu himself was rewarded with the post of provincial minister of war, placing him even more firmly in administrative control of Guizhou's military forces. Besides his own original unit, which he was now allowed to expand, Liu was also placed in command of a new Citizens' Army consisting of reorganized patrol and defense force units. Certainly, the Yunnan occupation to some extent limited Liu's military power. Nonetheless, with Tang's assistance, Liu completed the elimination of revolutionary or otherwise unreliable military forces, effectively removing all his Guizhou military rivals.^[85] Although Liu's army remained small in relation to Tang's army, Liu had become, by default, Guizhou's most important military leader.

The final reward from Liu Xianshi's Yunnan alliance came in October 1913 when Tang Jiyao returned to Yunnan to succeed Cai E as Yunnan's military governor. Having proven himself a useful ally, Liu was allowed to take over Guizhou's military governorship. Liu quickly undertook a large-scale expansion of his army to insure his military control of the province. As was often the case with Republican military governors, Liu also dominated Guizhou's civil administration, using the same civil elites who had been his political allies since 1911. Finally in 1916 he ended any pretense of a division between civil and military powers and directly assumed the post of civil governor. By establishing his control over Guizhou's military and civil administrations, Liu Xianshi joined the ranks of China's Republican warlords.

The political upheaval of the 1911 Revolution provided an ambitious Liu Xianshi with the opportunity to transform local into provincial power. There was no question that his rise to become Guizhou's preeminent warlord would have been impossible without his family's local military base and his experience as a local military commander. At the same time, this local military power alone does not explain Liu's success. The crucial points of Liu's advance—Governor Shen's request for Liu's military assistance, Liu's admission into Guizhou's revolutionary government, and the procurement of Yunnan's military assistance—all depended not so much on Liu's own military power as on the broader network of social and political influence established by Liu Xianshi and other family members in the decade before the 1911 Revolution. The civil as much as the military aspects of Liu family power helped Liu Xianshi exceed the limits of his family's original local power base.

The Liu Family in the Republican Period

After Liu Xianshi's 1911 march from Xingyi county to Guiyang he no longer functioned as a member of the local elite. From this point on, Liu Xianshi's attention was not focused on Xingyi's local affairs but on the broader struggle for provincial and national power. Only in 1925 did he finally retire to Xingyi after being forced from power by a military rival, and less than two years later he was dead. Although Liu's career as a warlord is beyond the scope of this study, it is perhaps fitting to look briefly at the effects of Liu's political success on his family and its Xingyi power base.

One of the most obvious effects of Liu Xianshi's rise was the opportunity it gave him to obtain official posts for other family members. The loss of effective central control over local and provincial appointments after the 1911 Revolution opened the way for a degree of nepotism by Republican period power holders that would have been unimaginable under the imperial system. Liu Xianzhi, on his brother's insistence, was "elected" as a Guizhou national assemblyman and served for many years as his brother's political

representative in Beijing.^[86] Liu Xianqian held a series of high Guizhou military posts as well as important civil positions including a circuit intendancy and even, for a time, Guizhou's civil governorship.^[87] Wang Wenhua, the nephew who acted as Liu's intermediary during the 1911 Revolution, rose under Liu's patronage to the position of division commander in the Guizhou army.^[88] Wang's brother-in-law, He Yingqin, also held a number of posts in the Guizhou army including brigade commander and chief of staff.^[89] Wang Wenhua's older brother, Wang Boqun, held a circuit intendancy in Guizhou after the 1911 Revolution and then served as Liu's official emissary on a number of political missions.^[90]

Although Liu Xianshi's patronage was essential for the initial posts received by his relatives, many of them used these positions as stepping stones for official careers independent of Liu's direct influence. Liu Xianshi's son, Liu Gangwu, made contacts within the Nationalist Party while serving as his father's emissary to Sun Yatsen, and, after his father's death, obtained a series of posts in the Nationalist government.^[91] After leading a Guizhou expeditionary force into Sichuan, Wang Wenhua emerged as an autonomous warlord in his own right. He Yingqin eventually left the Guizhou army to take a post as an instructor at the Whampoa Academy in Canton and then became a leading Nationalist general. As a result of extensive social and political contacts made early in his career, Wang Boqun obtained many posts from the Nationalist government in the 1920s, culminating in an appointment as minister of communications.^[92] It is highly unlikely, however, that any of these men would have achieved these positions without the original impetus of their relationship to Liu Xianshi.

In traditional Chinese society, elite families saw official posts as a means to replenish family wealth and status. Under the imperial system, however, the direct combination of official and local family power was prevented by the "law of avoidance" that kept an official from holding an office in his home province. This principle was abandoned after the 1911 Revolution, as exemplified in Liu's own rise to provincial power, and this change added an extra dimension to the benefits of officeholding in the Republican period. In the late Qing, the Lius had to apply much money and effort to cultivate relationships with provincial officials to protect their local position. Once Liu Xianshi assumed control over provincial administration, however, his family's local interests were not only freed from official interference but also placed under official protection. Indeed, to watch over the family's power base, Liu Xianqian often held west Guizhou military or civil posts, which gave him direct authority over the Xingyi area.^[93] While Liu Xianshi remained in power, his family's dominant position in Xingyi was unchallengeable.

The manner in which Liu Xianshi's official position could be used to protect local family interests, however, suggests a subtle change in the importance of the Lius' local base to their family power. In the late Qing, the Lius'

Xingyi base was the family's main source of both military and economic power. After 1911, more important sources of power came from outside Xingyi. For example, the family's military power originally came solely from its Xingyi-recruited forces. In the Republican period, family members in Xingyi still maintained their local military power, at times using this power to bolster the family's broader political interests; for instance, Liu Xianqian's 1912 attack on Zhang Bailin with Xingyi militia forces. Another example can be seen in 1923 when Liu Xianshi recovered Guizhou's governorship with Yunnan assistance after a two-year fall from power: a local force from Xingyi, led by one of Liu's nephews, joined the vanguard of Yunnan troops escorting Liu back to Guiyang.^[94] Nonetheless, while Liu Xianshi ruled as governor he had the military resources of the whole province at his disposal. In this period, this greater military power, not the family's local militia, contributed more to the family's overall position.

A similar change in the sources of Liu family wealth can also be seen in the Republic period. By 1911 the Liu family was already one of the wealthiest landlord families in southwestern Guizhou. In the Republican period, however, the family's total landholdings exceeded four thousand mu , making the Lius possibly the largest landlord family in all of Guizhou. Given the extravagant life-style of the Liu family in Xingyi, reported in the Republican period, it is unlikely that this leap in landed wealth came solely from the frugal reinvestment of the profits from previous holdings.^[95] Rather, it suggests new external sources of wealth that no doubt also derived largely from office holding. In the Republic, as under the empire, official wealth came not from salaries, which remained quite low, but from graft. For warlords like Liu Xianshi, authorities unto themselves, the opportunities for personal profit were in general limited only by the size of the public treasury. Although records on this type of graft were seldom kept or made public, some reports reveal the sums the Lius were able to extract from their public offices: During a 1916 political crisis, Liu Xianshi sent more than four hundred thousand yuan , reportedly taken from the Guizhou treasury, to Shanghai to serve as a personal emergency fund in case he lost power.^[96] In two separate cases, Liu Xianzhi and Liu Xianqian were each accused of embezzling two hundred thousand yuan in public funds.^[97] Even granting some bias in these reports, they suggest the amount of wealth the Lius were able to acquire from their positions. There is no question that much of his wealth eventually found it way back to Xingyi, where it was invested in the family's growing estates.

Liu Xianshi's fall from power in 1925 did have some impact on the Lius' local power base in Xingyi because it removed the political shield of invulnerability that his position had provided for family interests. There had been no such danger to the family's Xingyi base in his earlier loss of power from late 1920 to 1923 because in that case he had been ousted by troops loyal to his nephew, Wang Wenhua, in what was to some extent an intrafamily

conflict.^[98] In 1925, however, Liu was forced out by an unfriendly rival who decided to establish a military presence in Xingyi county under the guise of a bandit pacification campaign. The Liu family tried to resist this intrusion into their base with disastrous results. The Xiawutun fortress fell to the invading army, and the Lius' military forces were disarmed and disbanded. A large store of weapons the Lius had hoarded at Xiawutun (enough to arm two regiments) was also confiscated, along with a large quantity of the family's accumulated "loot." ^[99] Liu Xianshi's 1925 fall thus meant the decline of not only the family's provincial political influence but also its local base.

In the end, however, the Liu family landholdings were so extensive and its social status so high that even the 1925 disaster was only a temporary setback that could not undermine the family's dominant position in Xingyi county. Of course, some members of Liu family, such as Liu Gangwu (who never returned home after his father's death), had official careers that drew them more or less permanently away from the Xingyi area. But other members of the family remained in the county to husband the family's interests and continue the family's tradition of local leadership. For example, several of Liu Xianshi's nephews later held district head (quzhang ) posts in Xingyi and thus maintained the family's influence over local administration. In the 1930s and 1940s, Liu family leadership in Xingyi was primarily assumed by one of Liu Xianshi's nephews, Liu Gongliang, who had become Liu Xianshi's trusted secretary in his last years as governor and had followed his uncle back to Xingyi after his fall. There he upheld family traditions by his involvement in many local affairs, including a special emphasis on local defense. During the Red Army's passage through the area in 1934, Liu Gongliang helped organize an anticommunist defense committee, directed the construction of fortifications throughout the county, collected arms and funds for local defense, and trained local militiamen. Much like descriptions of the Liu family's "small court" in the late Qing, Liu Gongliang came to be seen as Xingyi county's "de facto magistrate."^[100] Only the coming of the Communist revolution in 1949 ended the Liu family's century of local power.

Conclusion

The history of the Liu family of Xingyi illustrates the manner in which local military force could function in Chinese society, forming and enhancing local-elite power. Through the organization of militia in the mid-nineteenth century the Lius rose from the ranks of village landlords to become a dominant elite family in southwestern Guizhou. Likewise, the family's local military power later provided the base for Liu Xianshi's emergence as provincial warlord. Nonetheless, the Lius as local elites were never simply military strongmen. Indeed, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century the Lius gave up their militia leadership with no appreciable loss in elite status. In-

stead the family concentrated on enhancing their social position by more traditionally approved forms of elite behavior, notably educational patronage and network building. Although they revived a local military base at the turn of the century, in the following decade they also 'sought to perpetuate and expand their local power by introducing reform programs into the Xingyi area. The long-term maintenance of the Lius' position as local elites ultimately depended on both military and civil activities.

The case of the Liu family suggests that the real key to understanding the role of military power in local elite formation is to identify the context in which it was applied. In the mid-nineteenth century, militia leadership served as the agency for the Liu family's remarkable rise to a position of local dominance, but the condition of widespread rebellion and social disorder ultimately made this rise possible. Likewise only the special conditions of the 1911 Revolution in Guizhou gave Liu Xianshi the chance to parlay his family's local military power into provincial military domination. For the Lius, then, extraordinary times had presented extraordinary opportunities to benefit from local military power; in peaceful times the Lius switched just as easily to civil means of enhancing their social position. The Lius' particular success lay in the ability to adjust their social strategies to new conditions and to employ their military and civil resources in ways that took best advantage of changing circumstances.