Aleph, UCLA Undergraduate Research Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences

With the aid of Chinese primary sources and supplementary secondary sources, this essay seeks to analyze the 1782 Taiwan “subethnic feud” between the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou communities of Zhanghua County, which began with a personal dispute but soon escalated into a lethal rural conflict. The term “subethnic feud (分类械斗),” widely referring to early modern conflicts between different Chinese communities, emphasizes the dominant role of local identity conflicts. However, I argue that such outbursts of violence were complicated phenomena. Instead of the maturation of supposed “ethnic rivalries,” the escalation of the conflict from a personal dispute to a full-scale “rural war” is more likely the joint consequence of three contributing factors: the strong patterns of Taiwanese social organization along subethnic lines, mercenary and thug activities, and the inactivity of the local government.