ABSTRACT
One of the longest-held and most widely circulated beliefs about the Tiandihui (Heaven and Earth Society) is that it was a "secret society" dating from the late Ming or early Qing dynasty. According to this view, the Tiandihui "secret society" was a clandestine political organization, created by members of the Chinese elite (either Ming loyalists, Han "nationalist" scholars, or members of the Zheng family of pirate-loyalists) for the specific purpose of "Overthrowing the Qing and restoring the Ming" dynasties (fanQing fuMing). This view of the Tiandihui as an anti-Manchu society was embraced by Sun Yat-sen and his colleagues in their endeavors to generate support for the anti-Qing uprisings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the period since the 1911 Revolution, scholarship on the Tiandihui has been largely devoted to searching out historical evidence in support of Sun's views. This perception of the Tiandihui as a nationalist political organization is still deeply cherished by scholars on both Taiwan and the Chinese mainland (Murray 1993, Chapter 4).
