The Cause of the Riots in the Yangtse Valley. A "Complete Picture Gallery."

Sole edition of this collection of 32 images used by anti-Christian agitators in central China to whip up anti-foreign sentiment. They "appeal directly to the folk and elite traditions of China's classical past. In vivid colours, they depict graphic violence. and show graphically the growing conflict between western missionary views of China and Chinese views of the Western presence" (Perdue). The treaties signed at the end of the Opium War authorized western missionaries to proselytise in the Chinese hinterland. During the late 19th century, when Chinese agriculture and rural life faced steep decline, missionaries became popular scapegoats. "The original causes might be a dispute over land or water rights, or an inappropriate marriage, or an illicit love affair, but the conflict could easily metastasize into large scale violence" (Perdue). During the 1891 riots, hundreds of Chinese Christians and two western missionaries were killed. The editor, the missionary John Griffith, based this publication on a pamphlet attributed to the Hunanese official Zhou Han (1842-1911), who used a publishing outfit in Changsha to disseminate a large quantity of anti-foreign literature. Zhou's images employ colour, allegory, and popular folk custom to "attack religious heterodoxy and sexual deviance with violent rhetoric. They portray the Christians as animals, who know nothing of the moral codes that define humanity. The pictures portray the Western missionaries as goats and their Chinese followers as pigs. The play on words linking 'Jesus' as 'master' (zhu) with 'hog' (zhu), or 'Westerner' (yang) with 'goat' (yang), reduced the Christian believers to a bestial level. The use of the color green, indicating 'cuckold,' in the characters referring to Christians signified the undermining of the family by the alien believers. In a number of these images, the animalistic Christians are brought before a god or magistrate, who sits in judgement and offers them as sacrifices by having their throats slit" (Purdue). Peter Perdue, "The Cause of the Riots in the Yantgse Valley (1891) - Introduction", available online. Landscape quarto. With 32 full-page colour woodblocks, colour Chinese title page. Original printed wrappers, recent purple thread xianzhuang stitching, front cover lettered in black, rear cover with decoration and Chinese text in red, black, and green. Housed in custom burgundy quarter morocco box. Contemporary manuscript notation on front cover. Wrappers and edges of leaves creased and bumped, rear cover rather worn, recent adhesive tape repair to Chinese title page, verso of final folded leaf sometime laid down onto rear wrapper, illustrations bright, stab-holes from original binding visible in gutter: a very good copy of a fragile work.…