A Wartime Stampede
Renewing a Social Contract After the Great Tunnel Disaster of Chongqing
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20210396 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Y K Chan (0000-0002-7516-1218, Princeton University, corresponding author), Ying-Kit Chan |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 47-75 |
| Publication date | 2017-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Journal of Asian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1479-5914 • E-ISSN: 1479-5922 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s1479591416000218 |
| OpenAlex | W2579482188 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 29 |
Although the Second Sino-Japanese War (the “War”) ended many decades ago, hostilities between China and Japan are still raw in the memory of many Chinese people, even though most of them did not directly experience the War. In particular, the Great Bombing of Chongqing—the indiscriminate, sustained bombing of the Nationalist provisional capital by Japanese warplanes from 1938 to 1943—has been retrieved from the archives as a significant event. Subsumed under the narrative of the Great Bombing, Chongqing's Great Tunnel Disaster (the “Disaster”), following a prolonged Japanese air raid on June 5, 1941, resulted in some of Nationalist China's heaviest civilian casualties. This article discusses the Disaster in detail, suggesting that at the time, it was viewed more as a human-induced “stampede” than as a Japanese “war atrocity” when the Chinese public took to the press and condemned the Nationalist government for its inability to prevent, manage, and mitigate the Disaster's effects. Chinese civilians were attempting to renew and revise a traditional social contract of disaster, according to which the state was responsible for providing adequate relief to victims, by accusing the Nationalist government of callousness, incompetence, and negligence
China · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Public Administration · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
Cultures of Disaster
Remaking the Chinese City
The Making of "The Rape of Nanking"
The Problem of China
The Ecology of War in China
The Yellow River
Fighting Famine in North China
Tears from Iron
The Chinese People at War
Troubled Apologies Among Japan, Korea, and the United States
There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster
News as a Weapon
What Is a Disaster
Research Note Changed by War
Drowned Earth
Shanghai-Madrid Axis’? Comparing British Responses to the Conflicts in Spain and China, 1936–39
Air Raid Shelter Policy and its Critics in Britain before the Second World War
Barren Soil, Fertile Minds’
Living Underground
From “Nourish the People” to “Sacrifice for the Nation”
Flooding and schools
Changing disaster relief regimes in China
Thunder Out of China
Bureaucracy and Famine in Eighteenth-Century China
Szechwan and the Chinese Republic. Provincial Militarism and Central Power, 1911-1938
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |