Bandit

Causes and opportunities

Ming China was largely an agricultural society and contemporary observers remarked that famine and subsequent hardship often gave rise to banditry. In his 1991 book Disorder under Heaven: Collective Violence in the Ming Dynasty, James W. Tong uses data from provincial and prefectural gazetteers of the Ming and the Qing Dynasties to analyze patterns of violence during the Ming Dynasty. Tong analyzes that the peasants had to make a "rational choice" between surviving harsh conditions and surviving through illegal activities of banditry. He identifies multiple important factors in peasants' calculation of whether to become bandits or not, such as the government's ability to punish bandits. Tong concludes that his "rational choice model predicts that there would be more rebellions and banditry where the likelihood of surviving hardship is minimal but the likelihood of surviving as an outlaw is maximal." As a result, Tong finds that banditry, like other types of collective violence, had a spatial and temporal pattern. Banditry was especially pervasive in the southern provinces (most notably Guangdong and Fujian) and the second half of the dynasty (1506-1644).