The Great Manchurian Plague: An Event of Nation-Making and the Experiences Failed to be Captured

<a href="https://embed.stanford.edu/iframe/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpurl.stanford.edu%2Fns786pm3922" class="su-underline">Show Content</a>

Abstract/Contents

Abstract: A pneumonic plague stormed Manchuria at the turn of the year 1910-11. Soon after its outbreak in October, a nationalist discourse dominated both regional and national print media in China, where the Chinese elite and intellectuals treated the plague as a national rather than a medical crisis. Guarding the nation’s health was defending the state’s sovereignty, and overcoming the crisis embodied a national transformation. Such nationalist narrative of the plague fit in the progress of nation-making in modern China but failed to capture the experiences of the inarticulate masses. The vast majority of the people was struggling for survival at the society’s bottom. The fear and anxiety that they suffered were not only caused by the disease but the state with which they were supposed to ally. But however much the grass-roots experiences deviated from the elite’s discourse, writers and leaders found ways to force them back into a coherent nationalist narrative. When the plague finally passed, the Chinese nation was strengthened and preserved while some lives were forever lost and forgotten.

Type of resource	text
Date created	January 4, 2021

Author	Zhao, Xuehan (Shirley)
Primary advisor	Sommer, Matthew
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Stanford Global Studies, Center for East Asian Studies

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/ns786pm3922

Use and reproduction: User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

Preferred Citation: Zhao, Xuehan (Shirley). “The Great Manchurian Plague: An Event of Nation-Making and the Experiences Failed to be Captured.” MA thesis. Stanford University, 2021. https://purl.stanford.edu/ns786pm3922.

Stanford Center for East Asian Studies Thesis Collection

Loading usage metrics...