This study examines the emergence and evolution in China of a tradition of popular organization generally known under the rubric of "secret society." The author suggests that the secret society is properly understood as one variety of the "brotherhood association," a category that encompasses a range of popular fraternal organizations that flourished in the early and mid-Qing period.
>

David Ownby is Assistant Research Fellow at the Université de Montréal. He is the co-editor, with Mary Somers Heidhues, of "Secret Societies" Reconsidered: Perspectives on the Social History of Early Modern South China and Southeast Asia.