CHINA’S FARTHEST SOUTHWEST: THE TRANSFORMATION OF YUNNAN DURING THE REIGN OF YONGZHENG (r. 1722-1735) by JUE HOU A THESIS Presented to the Department of History and the Division of Graduate Studies of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts September 2021 THESIS APPROVAL PAGE Student: Jue Hou Title: China’s Farthest Southwest: The Transformation of Yunnan During the Regin of Yongzheng (r. 1722-1735) This thesis has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts degree in the Department of History by: Ina Asim Chair Marsha Weisiger Member Yugen Wang Member and Andy Karduna Interim Vice Provost for Graduate Studies Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Division of Graduate Studies. Degree awarded September 2021 ii © 2021 Jue Hou iii THESIS ABSTRACT Jue Hou Master of Arts Department of History September 2021 Title: China’s Farthest Southwest: The Transformation of Yunnan during the Reign of Yongzheng (r. 1722-1735) During the reign of Yongzheng (r. 1722-1735), the emperor initiated a radical frontier policy to consolidate and transform Yunnan, the province located in the far southwest of China that borders with the Southeast Asian countries of Vietnam, Laos, and Burma. The Qing expansion of Yunnan represented an intention to incorporate and dominate the population of Yunnan province. Shaped by the notion of cultural superiority in an area with a comparatively underdeveloped economy, the Han majority was viewed as representing the superior civilization capable of assimilating and civilizing the frontier communities. This thesis aims to challenge the myth of Han superiority by considering how ethnic communities and Han settlers equally contributed to Yunnan’s transformation. Although the tensions between the two groups were visible, they accommodated, acculturated, and influenced each other in constructing a new social order in Yunnan. iv CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Jue Hou GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon DEGRESS AWARD: Master of Arts, History, 2021, University of Oregon Bachelor of Arts, History, 2019, University of Oregon AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Early Modern China and China’s Southwestern Frontier Environmental History PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Graduate Teaching Fellow, Department of History, University of Oregon, 2019 to Present GRANTS, HONORS, AND AWARDS: Graduate Teaching Fellow, Department of History, University of Oregon, 2019 to Present Asian Studies Research Award, University of Oregon, 2021. 05 Southeast Asian Studies Award, University of Oregon, 2021.03 Richard M. Brown Summer Research Award, University of Oregon, 2020. 06 Clio Award, Department of History, University of Oregon, 2018.05 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deep gratitude to my family, teachers, and friends. Born and raised in Yunnan Province, China, I have always been told that we are “descendants of the mountains.” When I grew up, I was inspired to explore the story behind mountainous Yunnan and its fascinating nature and diverse cultural heritage. Then I had the opportunity to live in the United States as an exchange student at the age of thirteen. What I have learned from this experience has gone far beyond getting to know a different lifestyle, it was an encouragement to explore the world. The idea of pursuing a career as a historian did not occur to me until I took history classes and was fascinated by historians’ ability to frame vivid stories of an interconnected world while I attended the University of Oregon. Benefitting from courses I took with Profs. Steve Beda and Marsha Weisiger, I broadened my research and included thematic approaches from the perspective of environmental history and the history of the American West. Their feedback on how to compare aspects of China’s southwestern frontier to the American West encouraged me to read and write broadly. In my research, a wide source of records of imperial memorials and edicts are used. Translating of those texts from classical Chinese into decent and understandable English has been a challenge. For helping me to overcome it I owe many thanks to Prof. Yugen Wang, who offered me valuable reading and translation strategies. Finally, I appreciated the constant encouragement by my current advisor, Prof. Ina Asim, to explore my interests in the early modern history of China. Her relentless editing helped me to sharpen my ideas with logic and to express myself with proficiency. vi In finishing this thesis, I also owe a big thanks to my family, especially my parents who support my dreams and my research. Overcoming the physical and time difference between the United States and China was difficult, but my family consistently shared their warmest support whenever I felt depressed, especially during the pandemic. Writing a thesis during this unprecedented time was hard. My research was considerably constrained by travel limitations. But my father helped me to collect materials I needed from Yunnan museums and libraries. In this process, I not only felt my father’s love and support but also recognized his deep knowledge of China’s southwest and Southeast Asia. Even though my parents are unable to attend my graduation commencement, I hope they will cherish my achievements now and in the future. Two years of graduate studies were short, and I still remember clearly how stressful the course on historical methodology was in my first quarter. Looking back, I really appreciate all cross-field readings which allowed me to work step-by-step towards a more coherent knowledge in the discipline of history. And finally, I want to express my thanks to all those I’ve met in Eugene, Oregon. They enriched my life in the Emerald Valley. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I: INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 1 II: MAPPING YUNNAN AND ITS REGIONAL LANDSCAPE ................................ 16 III: COLONIALIZING YUNNAN DURING THE YONGZHENG ERA: ................... 33 IV: BORDERLAND RESETTLEMENT AND THE GROWTH OF THE BORDERLAND ECONOMY ........................................................................................ 52 V: CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................... 71 APPENDIX A: GLOSSARY ......................................................................................... 77 APPENDIX B: ABBREVIATIONS .............................................................................. 78 APPENDIX C: IMPERIAL AND DYNASTIES ........................................................... 79 APPENDIX D: EMPERORS OF THE QING DYNASTY ........................................... 80 REFERENCES CITED .................................................................................................. 81 viii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION “The mountains are high and the emperor is far away (山高皇帝遠).” This popular Chinese proverb declares that the emperor is as distant and far away as the sky, and so one may do what one pleases. It accurately summarizes the relationship between China’s imperial administration and its southwestern province of Yunnan from the perspective of Yunnan’s population. Its location in the far southwest of China and adjacent to the Southeast Asian countries of Vietnam, Laos, and Burma confines Yunnan’s interaction with the populated areas in the rest of China. Yunnan’s historical isolation meant that the central governments’ engagement remained limited, shaping Yunnan’s image to be one of regions largely “untouched” and shrouded in mystery to outsiders. Descriptions of Yunnan as a remote region were shaped in large part by the substantial physical distance from Beijing, the cultural and political center of the Qing empire. The picture of the region’s indigenous population was shaped by a perception of cultural superiority that viewed the Han majority as the superior civilization. This image held sway as early as Western Han dynasty (206 BCE- 8 CE). The historian Sima Qian (c.145-86 BCE司馬遷) called the indigenous populations in the southwest (Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan) “Southwestern Barbarians” (西南夷). This description of Yunnan places the Han Chinese population at the center of Yunnan’s story, displacing its native residents in the process. In this view, uncivilized barbarians should be pacified, transformed, and ultimately assimilated, in a process that historian Mary Wright has 1 termed “Sinicization.”1 The term “Sinicization” refers to the process of assimilation and absorption of non-Han populations into the influence-sphere of Chinese culture. Through acknowledging Han superiority, historian John Herman argues that the goal of consolidating the empire southwest could be achieved by imposing Han Chinese cultural institutions upon indigenous communities and Sinicizing their respective cultures.2 This definition stresses the necessity of civilizing non-Han populations through exposing them to Chinese customs, traditions and patterns of life. At the same time, it states that ethnic minorities were excluded from being recognized as ‘civilized’ until those minorities were integrated into the Chinese cultural sphere. The Sinicization theory is discussed about the success of the Qing empire, which was established and dominated by the Manchus. Ping-ti Ho argues that the key for the Qing Manchus to achieve such enormous success—in territorial expansion, a flourishing economy, and an unprecedented productivity and refinement in literature and material culture—was the adoption of a “policy of systematic sinicization.”3 Ho lists a trenchant example to show how the early Manchu rulers used systematic sinicization, including the adoption of the Ming government system with few Manchu innovations, and the utilization of Confucian orthodox principles in the education curriculum and in the legitimization of Manchu rule. Ho’s conviction of the importance of Sinicization ignores the fact that the Qing emperors did not fail to preserve Manchu customs and traditions. 1 Mary Wright, The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: The T’ung-Chih Restoration, 1862- 1874 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957). Wright calls the Qing dynasty as “conquest dynasty.” She believes that the key to success as a conquest dynasty was the adoption of Chinese ideology and bureaucratic system. 2 John E. Herman, “Empire in the Southwest: Early Qing Reforms to the Native Chieftain System,” The Journal of Asian Studies 56, no. 1 (Feb 1997): 69. 3 Ho Ping-ti, “The Significance of the Ch’ing Period in Chinese History,” The Journal of Asian Studies 26, No.2 (1967):191. 2 Hunting expeditions and traditional wrestling were Manchu traditions that had never been replaced by Chinese traditions. In addition, all male subjects of the Qing dynasty were required to shave their forehead and wear the queue4, a hairstyle which had only been worn by the Manchu men in the early Qing dynasty until Han-Chinese men were forced to adopt it in order to show their compliance to Manchu policy. The queue became a symbol of Manchu identity as well as of the subjugation of Han men. After a short-lived ethnic segregation, the Qing dynasty showed reliance on interethnic marriage to enhance Manchu-Han and Manchu-Mongol alliances and reduce tensions between the Manchu and other groups. But Ho argues that the interethnic marriage throughout the Qing period caused the Manchu men, especially those from the banner system, to suffer from “progressive impoverish” of their own traditions because of their extended mingling with the Han Chinese.5 The embracement of Chinese culture and language caused the Manchu language to be reduced to a mere dialect in the nineteenth century. Therefore, Ho believes that the so-called alien dynasty sacrificed Manchu identity and tradition in the process of assimilation into Chinese identity in exchange for enjoying a phase of “peace, prosperity, and contentment.”6 When the Manchus entered Beijing, they consented to a certain level of assimilation as the only choice to successfully govern the Han. David Honey does not claim that the Manchus took the initiative to embrace Confucianism, he argues that Sinicization as an unconscious cultural 4 The queue hairstyle required that men shaved the front of their head and braided the remaining hair at the back of their head into a single queue. 5 Ho, “The Significance of the Ch’ing Period,” 192. 6 Ho, “The Significance of the Ch’ing Period,” 193; Urandyn E. Bulag, “Twentieth-Century China: Ethnic Assimilation and Intergroup Violence,” in The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, ed. Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 429. 3 process transformed the conquest ruling classes in China.7 This perspective is linked to the emphasis of Han supremacy, distinguishing the ethnic characteristics including language, custom, religion, and lifestyle.8 By doing so, the Manchu lost their uniqueness and became merely the ruling class of the sinicized Qing dynasty. Ho’s sinicization thesis has been challenged by Evelyn Rawski and Mark Elliott, who have been associated with the New Qing History.9 Rawski agrees with Ho that the Qing was the most successful conquest dynasty in Chinese history, but she argues that the key to the Qing success in empire building was the ability to use cultural links to connect with the non-Han peoples of Inner Asia and to differentiate in the administration between the non-Han regions and the former Ming provinces.10 Rawski admits that Confucianism was universally applicable but insists that the core of the Qing policy was based on the submission of divergent groups who had been part of independent cultures.11 In this sense, the research should concentrate on the ability of the Manchus to consolidate multiethnic groups from a variety of cultural backgrounds. Rawski interprets the sinicization theory as “a twentieth-century Han nationalist interpretation of China’s past” after Sun Yat-sen declared the Confucian doctrine had 7 David Honey, “Sinification as Statecraft in Conquest Dynasties of China: Two Early Medieval Case Studies,” Journal of Asian History 30, no.2 (1996), 116. 8 Chih-yu Shih, Negotiating Ethnicity in China: Citizenship as a Response to the State (London and New York: Routledge, 2002),101. Shih calls this perspective the ‘Han perspective’, indicating that the Chinese consciousness would penetrate ethnic arenas. This social science paradigm dominates the mainstream historiography of China. 9 Scholars of New Qing History have analyzed a broad range of Manchu-language documents and archival materials, which had been largely ignored by scholars who focused on the Sinicization of the Manchu Qing rulers. 10 Evelyn S. Rawski, “Presidential Address: Reenvisioning the Qing: The Significance of the Qing Period in Chinese History,” The Journal of Asian Studies 55, no.4 (1996): 831. 11 Rawski, “Presidential Address,” 835. 4 defined Chinese identity on cultural grounds and had served to educate diverse people.12 In his “In Defense of Sinicization: A Rebuttal of Evelyn Rawski’s Reenvisioning the Qing,” Ho attacks Rawski’s analysis of the success of the Qing empire fails to explain how multiethnic measures of the Qing regime facilitated the Manchu government to be cast in a Han model. Ho contributes Rawski’s limitation to the lack of considering how the Qing ruled China by means of Confucian principles and institutions. Ho insists that Sinicization went far beyond the narrow confines of interethnic relations, but instead was a continuous process and that any diachronic study of Sinicization must end with a hypothesis of its future.13 Mark Elliott participated in the debate of the Sinicization theory with a measured response. In his Altaic School, Elliot emphasizes that “Manchuness” was as important as “Chineseness” in the resolution of the minority-rule question that downplayed the dynasty’s ethnic “otherness.”14 Elliott stresses the Manchu ability to adapt to Chinese political traditions while maintaining a separate identity as the first mode of Qing rule. He identifies their second mode of ruling as legitimating authority which he labels “ethnic sovereignty.” Ethnic sovereignty is articulated in three categories: the special position of the Manchu emperors at the apex of their multiethnic empire; their process of instilling fear in the Han; and the preservation of the integrity of Manchu culture.15 While the Manchu lost part of their cultural integrity along their adoption of “Chinese ways,” Elliott suggests that the term like Sinicization is insufficient in capturing the unique traits 12 Rawski, “Presidential Address,” 842. 13 Ho Ping-ti, “In Defense of Sinicization: A Rebuttal of Evelyn Rawski’s Reenvisioning the Qing,” The Journal of Asian Studies 57, no.1 (1998): 151-2. 14 Mark C. Elliott. The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press (2001),28, 31. 15 Elliott, The Manchu Way,6. 5 of Qing rule, and therefore, the term needs to be used in a constructive and cautious way. The concern of the Sinicization framework evokes is its failure to see the historical contributions of non-Han peoples to the construction of the multiethnic Qing empire. Yet the Sinicization theory is not the only limitation in the study of Yunnan. In the imperial era (221 BCE-1912 CE), the perception of Yunnan as ‘frontier’ was defined by the physical distance; in modern and contemporary China (1949-the present day), the lack of economic prosperity and governmental strategies define Yunnan as an inferior frontier. The connotation of backwardness (luohou落後) is applied in the discussion of the frontier, used especially for the areas of national minorities (shaoshu minzu少數民 族).16 General-Secretary Jiang Zemin proposed the Great Western Development Strategy (西部大開發) in 1999, identifying Yunnan as China’s western frontier on account of its comparatively underdeveloped economy. Influenced by this political agenda, different, and even contrasting meanings of frontier (bianjiang 邊疆) are applied. Scholars have highlighted backwardness and a culturally isolation when describing Yunnan as a frontier region. Chinese scholars use the term bianjiang to express and locate ‘borderland’ and ‘frontier.’ Such an approach in the study of Yunnan is problematic; for example, contemporary studies of Yunnan’s ethnic groups and the Ming and Qing governance in frontier areas largely concentrate on how the central government’s policies were informed by the conceptualization of the frontier region and the respective political needs of the empire.17 It reflects that the imperial administrations simply considered the 16 Po-Yi Hung. Tea Production, Land Use Politics, and Ethnic Minorities: Struggling over Dilemmas in China’s Southwest Frontier (New York, NY: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2015), 10. 17 Qian Bingyi 錢秉益, Ming-Qing shiqi dui Yunnan minzu renzhi de yanjin yu bianjiang zhili 明 清時期對雲南民族認知的演進與邊疆治理 (A Study of the Cognitive Evolution of Yunnan’s 6 borderlands as part of the territory meeting political interests and ignored the complexities of native communities. The discussions mentioned above related to the frontier framework. Scholars have applied the historian Frederick Jackson Turner’s ‘frontier’ thesis to define Yunnan as a frontier region, although Turner never wrote about China. In the geographic imagination, writes Turner, the frontier was a space peripheral to a nation’s core and a “meeting point between savagery and civilization.”18 Turner’s frontier thesis argues that American democracy was forged on the American frontier. Anti-Turnerians like Patricia Nelson Limerick challenge the limitation and the validity of ‘frontier’ by questioning its significance for American democratic institutions. Instead, Patricia Limerick believes that the frontier was a “place” and not a “process” because Indian Americans, Latin Americans, Anglo-Americans, and Asian Americans intersected and jointly constitute the diversity of languages, religions, and cultures in the US West.19 In the conquest of the West, European immigrants and American natives engaged in property and profit allocation, entangling ethnic diversity with economic competition and cultural dominance in Western history. Considering the West as a “place” with all these factors, says Limerick, gives Western America its own, intrinsic historical significance.20 Limerick’s innovative approach to deemphasize the ‘frontier’ offers a new intellectual paradigm. Turner’s ‘frontier’ was a process in which ‘civilization’ conquered ‘savagery.’ In the conquest, if not yet in transforming and assimilating, the frontier had Ethnic Groups in Ming and Qing Dynasties and the Governance of Frontier Areas in Southwestern China) (China: Social Sciences and Academic Press, 2019), 1-31. 18 Frederick J. Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York: Holt, 1921), 60. 19 Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York, Norton, 1987), 27. 20 Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest, 30. 7 always been inferior to the federal administration and to the East. It was a one-sided viewpoint because it obscured our—historians’ and later generations’—visions to see how the Natives saw and responded to the westward expansion. It also denied the barbaric culture as a persistent pattern of civilization. By adopting the term ‘frontier’ and Turner’s frontier thesis, one could easily forget the diversity and complexity of Western history. Turner’s frontier thesis proved its limitation to the new scholarship in US history, but his frontier hypothesis has been widely discussed in Chinese frontier histories. Some historians build a new interpretation of the Yunnan frontier upon his thesis, while some replace the term ‘frontier’ with the term ‘borderland.’ In his Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China’s Yunnan Frontier, historian Charles Patterson Giersch focuses on the intersections of imperial conquest, Han migration, and cultural encounters in China’s southwest frontier. He admits that Turner’s definition of ‘frontier’ resonates with the practices of Qing officials, who considered the Yunnan border region as a place where “imperial ethics and control competed with barbarian immorality and chaos.”21 Rather than praising the achievements of civilization, Giersch describes the Qing expansion as the Han majority’s invasion of the indigenous communities. He rejects the concept ‘frontier’ because it centers the role of the Han majority in transforming indigenous populations and reinforces the myth of Han superiority. Giersch labels Yunnan as a “middle ground” as well as a “borderlands” region from which the Qing, Burmese, Siamese, and in some cases, Vietnamese exported complex sets of religious beliefs and lifeways to increase their control over the region. 21 Charles Patterson Giersch, Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China’s Frontier (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006) 3. 8 Another scholar Po-Yi Hung who focuses on the cross-regional tea trade and changes in China’s southwest frontier environment, does not address Yunnan as a meeting ground. In a case study of the pu’er tea trade, Hung argues that frontiers are dilemmas as well as meeting points of inclusive and exclusive powers, center and periphery, modernity and primitivity.22 Hung summarizes these binaries as the “core- periphery division” that was constructed from the core of power. According to Hung, the frontier region was included in the state’s consideration only if the government aimed to mitigate the gap of development between the core and the periphery.23 He elaborates this argument in the Qing expansion to Yunnan, denoting that the Qing empire not only aimed to consolidate the southwestern provinces but also wished to balance the development between Yunnan and other areas, especially the southeastern coastal cities. Therefore, Hung takes the frontier to be a relational space with respect to a diverse national background rather than a general geographical location.24 Giersch and Hung both recognize the complexity of society and culture in the frontier regions and challenge the limitation of the established frontier concept. Present- day scholars expand the discussion with the inclusion of ‘borderlands.’ The concepts of ‘frontier’ and ‘borderland’ rely upon a comparison between a ‘civilized’ and an ‘savage’ society, but not all scholars pay enough attention to the differences between them. Giersch makes such distinction. His rejection of the ‘frontier’ thesis leads to the usage of two terminologies: ‘middle ground’ and ‘borderland.’ Giersch defines that borderlands as regions without clearly defined political boundaries where multiple 22 Hung, Tea Production, 7-10. 23 Hung, Tea Production, 9. 24 Hung, Tea Production, 8. 9 powers competed for resources and indigenous allies.25 Yunnan was a borderland because the Qing claimed the control over the indigenous territory within the province that never had a clear political boundary between the nation’s periphery and the nation’s core. In his environmental history of the Qing empire and its borderlands, David Anthony Bello applies the “central-local dichotomy” when defining borderland spaces as those that lied beyond the influence of the empire’s core and that experienced less spatial and social centralization.26 Bello’s definition emphasizes the differences in power and social order between the empire’s core and margins. This approach focuses on how the physical distance and natural landscape shaped Qing rule in southwest China, but it falls into the trap of Turner’s frontier thesis that denies the barbaric culture as a pattern of civilization. None of the scholars of early modern Chinese history constructs a systematic framework for ‘borderland’, but Western historiography provide essential components that can explain China’s southwest. Michiel Baud and Willem Van Schendel take a similar approach to Yunnan as Giersch who challenge the conventional state-centered history. Baud and Van Schendel emphasize how “border-making” shaped and transformed borderland livelihoods and how native tribes and racial groups narrated their histories. In their description, the creation of borders indeed presented the scene for new power relations in the borderland, allowing different social groups to confront and impact each other.27 Three major groups participated in the history of borderland: state, regional (native) elites, and local population. 25 Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 3-5. 26 David Anthony Bello, Across Forest, Steppe and Mountain: Environment, Identity and Empire in Qing China’s Borderlands: Studies in Environment and History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 12. 27 Michiel Baud and Willem Van Schendel, “Towards a Comparative Approach to Borderlands,” Journal of World History 8, no.2 (1997): 220. 10 During the conquest of a borderland, three social groups engaged in and responded to the power transition in three principal patterns. The response can be quiet, unruly, or rebellious which reveals the changing power relations between state, regional ruling class, and local community in the borderlands. According to these patterns, Yunnan was not the quiet borderland that experienced a peaceful and coherent power transfer, because the local resistance consistently challenged the imperial authority. Yunnan was the unruly and rebellious borderland, especially barbaric rebels massacred priests in temples and provoked the Qing troops stationed in the Simao region after Yongzheng had proposed a military plan to colonialize Yunnan. Those unruly and barbaric rebels posted real threats to the Qing expansion, boosting the advocation for the deployment of the military to stabilize the southwest and pacify native populations. The analysis above was generated from the perspective of the history of China. Scholars of Southeast Asian Studies have a better understanding of Yunnan because of the shorter geographic distance to its neighboring states. Instead of distinguishing borderlands from frontiers, Wen-Chin Chang associates the concept of “borderland” with more visible characteristics: periphery, wasteland, backwardness, and lawlessness.28 Similar to Giersch, Chang takes a trans-border and transnational perspective to narrate the stories of Yunnanese migrants of Burma. Chang’s immediate concern is not borderland study itself. Rather, she places indigenous agency at the center of her exploration of how marginal people, migrants, the natural landscape, and trade opportunities in Yunnan can illuminate the dynamics of the periphery.29 28 Wen-Chin Chang, Beyond Borders: Stories of Yunnanese Chinese Migrants of Burma (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2014), 12. 29 Chang, Beyond Borders, 13. 11 Both the frontier and borderland frameworks can help address certain aspects of Yunnan’s history, but the weakness of the ‘frontier’ concept lies in overemphasizing a single perspective. Scholars who borrow the concept of frontier easily fall into the trap of centering the roles of Han settlers and the Han majority in the histories of ethnic minorities. In my thesis, I refer Yunnan as the frontier because to indigenous groups at the time of the Qing expansion, bianjiang was an expression of locating their distance from the central government rather than a negative expression that distinguished them from the Han majority and discriminated against native populations.30 My research of Yunnan concentrates on analyzing the province as ‘borderland’ because of three focal points deemed essential: a distinctive natural environment and ethnic diversity, core- periphery division, and competition for natural resources. In short, Yunnan was a borderland where the geographic distance limited the reach of the central power, but geographic conditions nourished ethnic diversity, and natural resources attracted competition between the Qing empire and neighboring states. The central argument of this study is that Yunnan was not a meeting point where the Han majority transformed the non-Han minority and thus designed the frontier. Instead, this study focuses on the roles of Qing institutions and Han immigrants, native rulers, and local settlers alike in mutually adopting and exerting influences in the process of building a new social order in Yunnan. By situating Yunnan at the center of my thesis, I explore how Han settlers and Natives profoundly influenced one another, provoking 30 Limerick in her book The Legacy of the Conquest raises the same claim. She says, if we rethink the West a place, Natives who occupied many complicated environments considered their habitats to be at the center, not the edge. See page 26. 12 significant transformations in the wake of Yongzheng’s “new frontier militarism.”31 As multiple expansive powers competed for resources and allies in the frontier region, environmental historian Jonathan Schlesinger says we must evaluate the encounters between Han Chinese and indigenous people across the frontier because there is more to Chinese history than a story about China.32 To accomplish this goal, we must avoid the confining theory of Sinicization, which places the role of Han immigrants in building the frontier societies at the center. We have to reconsider the role of indigenous people in the history of the empire’s southwest because their voices revealed important aspects of the history of the multicultural society they helped to build. To achieve this goal, my thesis utilizes a broad array of sources, ranging from imperial records of memorials and emperor’s edicts to Qing officials’ descriptions of Yunnan in local gazetteers. To fully understand how Yongzheng’s officials transformed and governed Yunnan, I survey the Historical Gazetteer of Yunnan (雲南通志) by E’ertai, who was one of the most trusted of Yongzheng’s officials and who himself initiated a radical frontier policy to expand imperial control over Yunnan. His work captured how different imperial dynasties ruled Yunnan in accordance with the Qing empire’s institutional systems. By contrast, Chen Hongmou who was a Chinese official, scholar, and philosopher, did not radically discriminate against the ‘barbarians’ and their ‘savage’ customs. His attitude towards education and indigenous peoples has been 31 Giersch, Asian Borderlands,43. Giersch names the 1720s and 1730s as a time of aggressive Qing expansion throughout the southwest under the policy of Yongzheng’s “new frontier militarism.” 32 Jonathan Schlesinger, A World Trimmed with Fur: Wild Things, Pristine Places, and the Natural Fringe of Qing (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2017), 3. 13 recorded in The Regulations for Education and Political Career (Xueshi Yigui學仕遺 規). The thesis begins with examining the ways in which geography shaped Yunnan’s relation to the imperial dynasties. The region’s abundant natural resources and strategic positions had always inspired ambitious invaders from the Central Plain to subjugate Yunnan with its diverse non-Han population. It was not until the Mongol conquest in 1273 that Yunnan was incorporated as a province of the territory of China. The following dynasties—the Ming and the Qing—built upon the Yuan dynasty to colonialize the southwest and incorporate Yunnan as a permanent province of China. Chapter two concentrates on the Qing expansion throughout Yunnan during the Yongzheng era. Qing officials initiated a series of policies to secure salt revenues and replace native officials with Qing-appointed officials. To discuss the Qing expansion, I have relied on memorials by Yongzheng’s officials: Gao Qizhuo, Li Wei, E’ertai, and Chen Hongmou. Their frontier reforms not only reinforced the regime’s control over Yunnan, but also inspired Chinese immigrants who later became the population majority of the province to exploit resources and trade opportunities. Chapter three explores the legacy of Han immigration whose advanced agricultural technology caused the population to increase and gave rise to cities. Han settlers’ engagement in the local economy greatly forged a new urban culture. In the nineteenth century, the exploitation of Yunnan’s copper mines and the caravan trade connected the Qing empire to Southeast Asia, which signified the integration of regional trade into transregional trade. By exploring the contribution of the Qing regime, native officials, and local settlers in transforming Yunnan, the thesis concludes that Yunnan was less a meeting ground between savagery and civilization than 14 a region in which Han civilization and ethnic communities intersected, accommodated, and influenced each other. 15 CHAPTER II MAPPING YUNNAN AND ITS REGIONAL LANDSCAPE In the study of imperial Chinese history, southwest China and its residents were comparatively marginalized. Although both the coastal southeast and the inland southwest were distant from the imperial capital and the administrative centers in the interior of China, it was only the southwest that was continuously labeled “peripheral” by the Chinese state since the first encounters in the Qin dynasty.33 This was because the southeastern regions practiced state-oriented rituals and cultural practices and recognized the legitimacy of Chinese imperial rulers, both factors that counted as signs of subjugation to the Chinese centralized government. By contrast, the southwestern populations inherited different native cultural practices that Confucianism never replaced. More importantly, the southwest was not governed by state-appointed officials and institutions until the Ming regime directly governed the region of China. At times indigenes’ conflicts and disputes with Burma34 prompted Chinese imperial rulers to dispatch military forces to conquer and to stabilize the southwest. That region’s distinctive geographic, political, and cultural characteristics were nearly incomprehensible to the empire’s Han majority. This misunderstanding was the product of the concept that Chinese civilization was superior. Once Confucianism became 33 David Faure and Ho Ts’ui-p’ing, Chieftains into Ancestors: Imperial Expansion and Indigenous Society in Southwest China (Vancouver, Toronto: UBC Press, 2013), 19. 34 The ruling military junta changed the English name from “Burma” to “Myanmar” in 1989. Currently Myanmar’s official name in the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. I will still use the term Burma because my research concentrates on the period before the nineteenth century. 16 dominant in China during the Han dynasty, notions of hierarchy and benevolence constructed the social order of Chinese civilization. The Confucians believed that the selected Son of Heaven ruled on earth with the Mandate of Heaven. Those chosen for the throne should be strengthened by forming a “concentric hierarchy.”35 Confucianism defined the essential components for being a civilized Chinese and drew a distinction between civilized Han Chinese (hua華) and the barbarians (yi夷). Over the centuries, peoples of the borderlands had been conceived and described as wild, uncultured humans who lived in backward societies and used primitive agricultural technologies. The assumption of Sinocentrism naturally portrayed that Chinese civilization had the power to unify and transform the native population.36 Not surprisingly, the contemporary research of Chinese “minority histories” is not a part of the mainstream of research about Chinese history and has no overt political agenda. Two interesting features define the expression “minority histories.” First, the concepts of ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ are problematic because they are not solely determined by the statistics of each group. Instead, the idea of majority is made on the basis of a presumption of homogeneity while the notion of minority is designed to mark differences.37 With regard to Yunnan, the Han Chinese were—and still are—the statistical majority. Their presence transformed the original cultural values of the indigenous communities and gradually dominated mainstream culture and political power in the empire and China’s periphery. In the process of replacing non-Han Chinese culture 35 Yuan-Kang Wang, “Explaining the Tribute System: Power, Confucianism, and War in Medieval East Asia,” Journal of East Asian Studies 13, no.2 (2013): 211-3. 36 Leo K. Shin. The Making of Chinese States: Ethnicity and Expansion on the Ming Borderlands (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 1-2. 37 Shin, The Making of the Chinese State, 6. 17 with Chinese civilization, Han majority and non-Han minority encountered each other. As such, concludes Shin, the two categories—both the minority and majority—and the people they represent are interdependent.38 Second, the idea of Han superiority is promoted by political campaigns, propagating Chinese national unity formulated in the Ethnic Classification Project of 1954 that bonded both Han Chinese and ethnic minorities across the nation. The Mao- built Communist government recognized that the effective control over China’s minorities required the identification of representative ethnic groups in the multiethnic territories and the provision to all citizens the same status enjoyed by the nation’s ethnic Han majority (各民族平等).39 Accordingly, building a centralized education system and fostering Putonghua (普通話) or Standard Chinese (Mandarin) as the national language in the ethnic borderlands became effective ways to consolidate national identity. But practically, the history of the frontier has excluded remote regions and its ethnic minorities from the major narratives in the history of China. On account of the concepts of majority and minority and the equality of Han and non-Han, majorities and minorities play equal importance in the narrative of China’s frontier expansion. A more succinct understanding of the southwest requires not merely concentrating on geographical, cultural, and political specifics of the southwestern frontier. It also requires an analysis of the southwest from a transregional perspective, taking into consideration perspectives of Southeast Asia beginning with the shadows of the Mongol conquest and following Southeast Asian involvement until the end of Manchu rule. 38 Ibid, 6. 39 Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi, The Han: China’s Diverse Majority (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015), 38. 18 The history of Yunnan’s encounter with the imperial state and with foreign cultures, and the resulting transformations, topography and geography jointly shaped Yunnan’s relation to the imperial dynasties. By presenting an overview of the Yunnan landscape, this chapter explores the dynamic course of historical change along with the centralized rule’s incrementally expansion to the region and the invention of the term “Yunnan” to govern the local population and their land. Mapping Yunnan From ancient times to the present, the geographical description of Yunnan has been inseparable from the following key words: situated in the far southwest and bordering with the Southeast Asian countries. Yunnan is situated on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, the southern extension of the roof of the world, the so-called Tibetan Plateau. Mountains, rivers, gorges, plateaus, valleys, basins, forests, grasslands, and lakes encompass a wide variety of environmental conditions in Yunnan. In the Historical Gazetteer of Yunnan, E’ertai describes that Dian (滇)40 was located in the empire’s frontier that: …faces Fannan (蕃南) in the north and is adjacent to Burma in the west. [The region] is adjacent to foreign states, and it only borders with Guizhou, Sichuan, and Yue (in today’s autonomous region of Guangxi) in the northeast. Most inhabitants are aggressive barbarians. They also occupy the center of the region.41 In this statement, E’ertai not only highlights Yunnan’s geographic location but also discriminately views indigenous peoples as inferior and barbaric. Despite its proximity to 40 Dian(滇) is an official abbreviation of Yunnan. But Yang believes that Dian is more likely an indigenous word used as a name for themselves. Bin Yang, Between Wind and Clouds: The Making of Yunnan (Second Century BCE to Twentieth Century CE) (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 34. 41 YNTZ, juan 5. Fannan (蕃南)refers to south Xinjiang where is located in the south of the Tianshan. 19 long-held Chinese territory, Yunnan had closer ethnic and cultural ties to Southeast Asia. For example, in Xishuangbanna (西雙版納)—the extreme south of Yunnan province—its people, architectural styles, language, and religious practices closely resemble those of Thailand, Laos, and Burma.42 Theravada Buddhism, a Burmese export, influenced Dai (傣) political and religious ritual. Dai communities constructed Buddhist temples and other religious architecture with centers of diplomatic exchange in northern Burma and northern Thailand, such as Chiang Mai. In school, Yunnanese boys learned in their local Dai script rather than to write in Chinese characters; and the celebration of local festivals such as the Dai New Year in April is also celebrated in Burma and Thailand to the present day.43 This mixture of Southeast Asian cultural exports, tribal and indigenous cultural practices, and Chinese civilization is what made Yunnan unique. Yunnan’s historical location in the Sino-Southeast Asian borderland shaped the family metaphors that China became “father” and Burma became “mother.”44 Yunnan’s topography was another factor that isolated the region from the core of the Chinese empire. Compared with other provinces, Yunnan’s mountainous landscape had little arable land. Agricultural production in Yunnan was centered in small fertile basins and valleys called bazi (垻子). Although bazi occupied only six percent of Yunnan’s territory, this land played a significant role in the region’s agricultural economy. Rivers nurtured flat terrain and fertile soil, making it suitable for planting and fostering the development of urban centers. For example, the Dianchi region around 42 Xishuangbanna is well-known for its ethnic groups. The largest ethnic groups lived here were the Dai. Xishuangbanna is now an Autonomous Prefecture for Dai People. 43 Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 193-8. The Dai New Year is also known as the “Water Splashing Festival (潑水節).” 44 Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 87. 20 today’s provincial capital Kunming and the Erhai region, the location of the Nanzhao Kingdom in today’s Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, were the two largest bazi of Yunnan. Bazi facilitated the exchange of local and foreign products, providing food and housing for merchants engaged in cross-regional trade.45 Commerce in Yunnan benefited from the bazi which were situated throughout a range of altitudes in a variety of landscape and cultures. Bazi offered easily accessible farmland where the diverse ethnic groups, Han Chinese, and foreign merchants interacted, representing “the dynamic and diverse Yunnan society.”46 Bazi presented ideal and suitable land for settlement, agricultural productivity, commercial exchange, and human interaction, predominantly in low altitude regions of Yunnan. However, the significance of Bazi could not solve the shortage of arable land. In 1726, Zhang Yunsui (1692-1751 張允隨) reported that “In Yunnan, arable land is less than the mountainous area. Between high and steep cliffs and barren and infertile lands, the cultivation of buckwheat, corn, cereal, barely, and barnyard grass is life-saving.”47 Agricultural cultivation was also dependent on the seasonal climate. In the summer, the land was parched by drought; in the winter, the rivers flooded, turning the ground into untillable sludge. The construction of irrigation systems was difficult— together these factors prevented large-scale agricultural production. In his General History of Yunnan, E’ertai discusses different methods to prevent drought and mitigate 45 Yang, Between Winds and Clouds, 25-26; Huang Fei, “Between Hills and Valleys: Contesting the Bazi Landscape, Society, and Environment in Southwestern China (1700-1900),” Journal of Asian History 51, no. 2 (2017): 258. 46 Yang, Between Winds and Clouds, 26. 47 Ni Tui 倪蛻, Dianyun Linian Zhuan 滇雲歷年傳 (Chronicle of Dian and Yun).Yunnan University Press, 2018, juan 12. 21 the danger of floods, including water diversion, water gates, and water storage facilities.48 In regions other than the flood-prone lowlands, Yunnan’s mountainsides were exploited for sweet potato and corn cultivation. Different dynasties understood that Yunnan was occupied by indigenous peoples, but consideration of Yunnanese peoples as ethnic minorities is an invention of the mid- twentieth century. Only after Mao Zedong declared the Han majority as “the core of the Chinese nation” and “the creator of a superior cultural tradition” did the Chinese state officially recognize fifty-five ethnic minority groups in addition to the Han majority.49 Among China’s fifty-six recognized ethnic groups, twenty-five groups are found in Yunnan. It is unsurprising that the Qing empire did not even distinguish different ethnic groups with specific names. E’ertai defined natives by their customs: “Inhabitants in Yunnan do not practice rituals and Han principles in their daily customs. These barbarians live mixed among different ethnic groups, although their temper and customs are different.”50 Although describing indigenous peoples in general as ‘barbarians,’ the Qing rulers still relied upon geography to categorize Yunnanese peoples; for example, the inhabitants of Xishuangbanna were Dai people (傣人). However, this work’s use of specific ethnonyms is almost entirely informed by the ethnographic taxonomy composed from the first and second national census conducted in 1954 and in 1964 respectively. Understanding the geography topography, and ethnic distribution of Yunnan lays a solid foundation for examining livelihoods in the empire’s geographic and cultural periphery. Those who lived in regions where the imperial control could hardly reach, 48 YNTZ, juan 13. 49 Jonia-Lüthi. The Han,41-2. 50YNTZ, juan 8. 22 were simultaneously excluded from Han China. China’s emperors valued the existence of Yunnan due to its strategic location, natural resources, and distinctive cultures, but indigenous people did not accept being Yunnanese until the imperial Chinese administration expanded Chinese institutions to Yunnan during the Yuan and Ming periods.51 Governance Prior to the Mongol Conquest of 1273 Different from provinces that were permanent parts of the Chinese territory, Yunnan was not fully incorporated into the Chinese empire until the conquest of the Mongols. Yunnan encountered the administrative institutions, new settlers, and foreign polities in the region through the Ming-Qing colonialization. Records of Yunnan can be found as early as the Qin dynasty (221-206 BCE), at the time when Yunnan was called Dian (滇).The early Han dynasty historian Sima Qian in his Shi Ji (史記) reported about ‘southwestern barbarians’, which referred to both, a physical boundary and an ethnic diaspora: There are more than dozens of tribes that live in the southwestern regions. The Yelang (夜郎 in today’s Guizhou) is the most powerful among the minor tribes. The Dian tribe is the most powerful among dozens of tribes in the western part of Yelang. Those indigenous barbarians tie hair into a braid, wander across thousands of miles, but have neither a permanent residence nor general leader.52 This text describes the variety and distribution of “tribes” in the southwest, as well as their different customs and ways of life, but it leaves open whether and how the Qin empire governed its southwestern regions. The Qin dynasty paid attention to the southwest because of its strategic role in defeating the Chu Kingdom, a victory that had 51 Yang, Between Wind and Clouds,10. 52 Sima Qian 司馬遷. Shiji: Xinanyi lie zhuan 史记·西南夷列傳 (Records of the Grand Historian: The Southwestern Barbarians) vol. 116. 23 influenced the South (modern Guangdong), the East (the Yue kingdoms), and the West (the modern provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guizhou). When Qin defeated the Shu Kingdom (in modern Sichuan Province) in 316 BCE the Qin army surrounded them on land and water marching through Sichuan, Kunming, Yelang, and Dian.53 After the First Emperor had unified all of China in 221 BCE, he placed governors in the southwest. One of the effective methods for governing the southwest and reinforcing the presence of the central administration on the periphery was to construct roads to connect the frontier regions with the Qin capital of Xianyang.54 It was Yunnan’s first encounter with the imperial state. The collapse of the Qin in 207 BCE left behind chaos that lasted until Emperor Gaozu (r. 202-195 BCE) reunited China under the Han dynasty (202 BCE-220 CE). In 122 BCE, Emperor Wu (r.141-87 BCE) sent envoys to scout pathways “from the Shu through India to Daxia (Bactria)” which worked as an alternative route to Central Asia; the envoys returned with reports about the existence of early commercial trade between Yunnan and Daxia.55 This information no doubt attracted the attention of the Han rulers who wished to establish connections with the Yuezhi in Central Asia. Although the Han expedition to Yunnan was disrupted by the Xiongnu conflicts, the Han empire founded the Yizhou Commandery (益州郡) in Yunnan in 109 BCE and confirmed the king of Dian’s legitimacy and title. 53 YNTS, 15. 54 YNTS, vol, 2, 17; Yang, Between Winds and Clouds, 73-4. The first road was constructed by Li Bing (李冰), the governor (taishou 太守) of the Shu Prefecture, constructed the earliest roads, called five-foot-wide-roads (wuchidao 五尺道). 55 Yang, Between Winds and Clouds, 76; Yu Ying-Shih, “Han Foreign Relations” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 1: The Ch’in and Han Empires, 221 BC-AD 220, ed. Denis Twitchett and Michael Loewe (Cambridge University Press, 1986), 457-460. 24 Yunnan became a new commandery under the Han dynasty, but it was still ruled by native chieftains. The state of Shu governed the lands of the “southwestern barbarians” which were called Nanzhong (南中) during the Three Kingdom Period (220- 280 CE).56 In response to the threats of native chieftains and their tribal followers, Zhuge Liang (181-284 CE) waged a campaign to pacify those communities deemed disobedient. Zhuge’s success brought material wealth and valuable resources for northern expeditions, such as horses, silver, furs, other local products and monetary taxes.57 In 339, the local Cuan (爨) clan’s control over Nanzhong had gained them a level of relative independence, although they had to request Chinese recognition of their authority over Nanzhong.58 By the eighth century, the Meng (蒙) family established the Nanzhao Kingdom (738-902), which started a competitive relationship between the Nanzhao kingdom, the Tang empire, and the Tubo kingdom in Tibet. Had Tubo successfully expanded its power to southwestern China, the Tang could have been attacked in both front and rear on account of the Tubo kingdom’s geographic advantages in the east and northwest. Motivated by the Nanzhao kingdom’s trade relations with India, the Tang supported the unification of Nanzhao in the Erhai region. However, the Nanzhao kingdom alternated between enmity and alliance with both Tubo and Tang in order to contain their respective 56 The Three Kingdoms period (220-280 CE) followed the Eastern Han Dynasty in 220 CE, dividing China into the kingdoms of Shu in Sichuan, Wu in Southeast China, and Wei in North China. 57 Yang, Between Winds and Clouds, 78. 58 John E. Herman, “The Kingdoms of Nanzhong China’s Southwest Border Region Prior to the Eighth Century,” T’oung Pao 95, no. 4 (2009): 267. The year 339 was the overlap period of the Jin dynasty (266-42 晉朝) and the Northern and Southern dynasties (386-589 南北朝). 25 expansion attempts.59 This was a new role for Yunnan and its residents who had never been drawn in to sit spectator to military campaigns and territorial expansion. Even when long-term military campaigns against the Tang empire weakened the power of Nanzhao, the flourishing Tang dynasty had not incorporated Yunnan as a province. Instead, another independent kingdom, the short-lived Changhe State (長和国), overthrew the Nanzhao kingdom and dominated the region from 902-928.60 In 937, the rise of the Duan (段) clan and the Dali Kingdom (937-1253) opened a new relation with the contemporary Song dynasty (960-1279) that alternatingly made them allies or subjects.61 With the recognition of the Song-Dali relationship, the Dali Kingdom was not a subject to the Song, but a frontier regime that desired to trade with Song China. One of the major trading commodities was horses, which could better adapt to weather and performance in wars and transportation. The horse trade between the Dali Kingdom and the Song court had been a “major state project.”62 The Yuan-Ming Conquest Powerful warhorses would not save the Song dynasty, which fell to Kublai Khan in 1253. The newly established Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) was China’s first foreign- governed dynasty. Kublai Khan (1215-1294) did not stop his conquest after he achieved victory in the Yangzi River plain. His ultimate goal was to conquer Dali. Local leaders 59 Yang, Between Winds and Clouds, 81. In the book, Yang describes military campaigns against Yunnan in a cross-regional analysis from the Qin empire to the Ming’s military victory over Yunnan. 60 In western scholarship, the history of the Changhe state is rarely mentioned. 61 Yang, Between Winds and Clouds, 89; for more information about the Dali Kingdom and Erhai District, refer to Ruizhi Lian “Surviving Conquest in Dali: Chiefs, Deities, and Ancestors”, in Chieftains into Ancestors: Imperial Expansion and Indigenous Society in Southwest China, ed. David Faure and Ho Ts’ui-p’ing (Vancouver, Toronto: UBC Press, 2013), 86-110. 62 Bin Yang, “Horse, Silver, and Cowries: Yunnan and Global Perspective,” Journal of World History 15, no.3 (2004): 298. 26 throughout Yunnan reacted strongly against the invading Mongols, who challenged indigenous political and cultural pattern.63 To solve the resistance in Yunnan, Kublai Khan ordered his trusted minister Sayyid’Ajall Shams Al-Din (written in short: Shams Al-Din) to reorder Yunnan according to the principle of being “careful and magnanimous” in 1273.64 Culturally, although the Yuan regime was an “alien” dynasty, Shams Al-Din introduced Confucian rituals and Chinese traditions to Yunnan, including kneeling (kowtow) when greeting persons of authority or presenting petitions, matchmaking for marriage and marriage ceremonies, funerals, and ancestral worship, aiming to acculturate the natives according to Han-Chinese standards and thus increase the control over the indigenous communities.65 As the leader of a multiethnic population Kublai Khan intended to rule over the vast population of the Han Chinese by copying the bureaucratic structure of the Song dynasty on a large scale. Kublai Khan gradually took control over Mongols, Central Asians, Han Chinese (former subjects of the Southern Song dynasty), and Jurchen (the former Jin dynasty). But in the empire’s far southwest region, chiefs and local rulers of the Dali Kingdom and neighboring indigenous tribes resisted the Mongol occupation. By appointing Shams Al-Din as Grand Councilor of Yunnan, the establishment of Temporary Yunnan Province (xingsheng行省) reorganized systematic control over Yunnan. But it did not successfully diminish the resistance by the various ethnicities. Therefore, the Yuan government conferred military titles to local chiefs according to the 63 Laichen Sun, “Imperial Ideal Compromised: Northern and Southern Courts Across the New Frontier in the Early Yuan Era”. In China’s Encounters on the South and Southwest: Reforging the Fiery Frontier over Two Millennia, edited Anderson, James A & Whitmore, John K. (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 206. 64 YNTS, vol. 4, 19. 65 Yang, Between Winds and Clouds, 157. 27 number of households they controlled: Commander of Ten Thousand Households (wanhu 萬戶), Commander of One Thousand Households (qianhu千戶), and Commander of One Hundred Households (baihu百戶).66 This practice not only pacified the resistance of ethnic groups but also allowed the Yuan government to rule this multiethnic territory by using local worthies. In addition, the Mongols also conferred tusi titles upon indigenous rulers. The tusi system, therefore, emerged as a form of indirect rule that allowed the Chinese court to exercise imperial control over the empire’s indigenous frontier societies.67 While allowing the chieftains to maintain their traditions and autonomous rule over their territory and the local population, the Mongol empire used the tusi system as an “ideological tool” to sinicize the non-Han population and enhance its control over the tusi authority and local institutions.68 When Zhu Yuanzhang (r. 1368-1398) established the Ming dynasty in 1368, the Mongols still retained control over Yunnan. The Ming empire decided to conquer Yunnan for two main reasons: first, their inheritance of the Song Neo-Confucian ideology compelled them to spread their power and values to the remote regions; second, the Ming government felt vulnerable because the Mongol occupation of Dali increased the chances of an attack on China from the southwest.69 To resolve this vulnerability, Zhu Yuanzhang dispatched the Ming troops, and in 1381 successfully drove the Mongols out of the Ming territory and occupied Kunming and eastern Yunnan. The Duan clan no 66 Xiaolin Guo, State and Ethnicity in China's Southwest (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008), 23. 67 Jennifer Took, A Native Chieftaincy in Southwest China: Franchising a Tai Chieftaincy under the Tusi System of Late Imperial China (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2005), 1. 68 Took, A Native Chieftaincy, 1; John E. Herman, Amid the Clouds and Mist: China’s Colonization of Guizhou, 1200-1700 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 233. 69 Yang, Between Winds and Clouds, 94. 28 longer ruled Dali independently. Instead, the Ming governor of Yunnan Mu Ying (1345- 1392沐英) pacified the local rebels and established peaceful relationships with surrounding countries.70 The Ming dynasty adopted the native chieftain (tusi) system that the Mongols had introduced in Yunnan but pursued a further consolidation of the territory and legitimated their exploitation of the native population.71 Herman summarizes the Ming period relationship between the new frontier policy and the tusi office as a “patron-client- territory” relationship, in which the primary focus of institutional control moved from land to people.72 In order to introduce Chinese culture to the indigenous non-Han population, groups of Han settlers were given incentives or orders to migrate to Yunnan. These settlers later dominated economic development and exploited natural resources for the empire’s interests. The new immigrants self-identified as civilized and loyal subjects to the imperial government, creating a vertically segregated settlement pattern that placed Han below and non-Han above.73 The Ming’s establishment of new administrative institutions to oversee ethnic peoples had to rely on indigenous native officials (tuguan 土官). Given consideration to the complexities of the distribution of ethnic minorities, the Ming adopted different administrative approaches in the region. In lowland communities, all groups were 70 Mu Ying (1345-1392) was a Chinese general. Mu and his descendants guarded Yunnan until the fall of the Ming dynasty. Zhu Yuanzhang credited Mu Ying’s accomplishments by saying “Only Mu Ying could free me from worries about the Southwest.” 71 Yang, Between Winds and Clouds, 95; Herman, Amid the Clouds and Mist, 24. 72 Herman, Amid the Clouds and Mist, 11-2. 73 James Lee, “The Legacy of Immigration in Southwest China, 1250-1850,” Annales de demographic historique, no.1 (1982): 288, 291. 29 registered as tax-paying subjects (min 民).74 Those groups were under direct control by the Ming government. In ethnic communities, the Ming government appointed tuguan to govern ethnic peoples in customary laws and to register their population (bian hukou編 戶口) as ethnic households (yihu夷戶).75 To some extent, this approach solved the inability of the Ming to impose direct rule over ethnic communities and expand its jurisdiction. The native officials gained excessive power to challenge the authority of the central government, which eventually triggered the abolishment of native officials and placed the imperial officials to govern the region. But upland communities remained isolated from the state power. James Scott calls these upland communities ‘Zomia,’ referring to stateless mountainous areas which resisted lowland influences and state incorporation.76 The Ming government launched a campaign against those internal frontiers in western Yunnan in 1573 and later constructed administrative centers.77 The arrival of Han settlers accelerated the incorporation of upland communities. From the eighteenth century, the basin population outnumbered the population in the mountains, and new settlers moved to the uplands on a large scale. The arrival of new immigrants increased agricultural yields and connected the uplands to the lowlands through commodity exchange. From the Ming dynasty onward, imperial 74 Christian Daniels, “Upland Leaders of the Internal Frontier and Ming Governance of Western Yunnan, Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” in The Transformation of Yunnan in Ming China: From the Dali Kingdom to Imperial Province, ed. Christian Daniels and Jianxiong Ma (London and New York: Routledge), 138. 75 Christian Daniels and Jianxiong Ma, “Introduction: The Agency of Local Elites in the Transformation of Western Yunnan during the Ming Dynasty,” in The Transformation of Yunnan in Ming China: From the Dali Kingdom to Imperial Province, ed. Christian Daniels and Jianxiong Ma (London and New York: Routledge), 9. 76James C. Scott. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). 77 Daniels, “Upland Leaders,” 149-167. 30 administrations began its colonization of the southwest with an aim to incorporate Yunnan as a permanent part of its territory by means of transforming local populations and exposing them to Han culture. Conclusion Although centralized regimes reached the southwestern region since the Qin dynasty, the region maintained an independent kingdom until Kublai Khan conquered the Dali Kingdom and established Yunnan Province. It was the same time that the notion of Yunnan emerged for the purpose of imposing Chinese cultural and political institutions upon local communities. The invention of the term Yunnan was not a coincidence of historical development but was an effective way to consolidate the centralized control and construct a unified identity for Yunnanese. The influences and the legacies of Chinese immigrants reflected how central government institutions and Confucian ideology began to transform Yunnan and its residents. The lowland basins expanded its control to the uplands by measures of territory expansion, cross-ethnic marriage, and trade exchanges. Those connections were largely facilitated by Han immigrants and the Ming government. Although the centralized power sought firm control over the region, the Ming government still relied on local elites to govern ethnic communities. Local elites then became “agents of cultural transformation” and reshaped ethnic identity in contacting with Han soldiers and Han-appointed local officials.78 Indigenous people played dynamic roles in responding to the expansion and the formation of Yunnan. Under the “core-periphery division,” the Han civilization had the obligation to assimilate and sinicize non-Han ethnics. The indigenous communities of ethnically 78 Daniels and Ma, “Introduction: The Agency of Local Elites,” 6. 31 diverse backgrounds and the topographical diversity of the natural landscape promoted the development of policies of accommodation and acculturation. The narratives of accommodation and acculturation reflect both the tensions between the new Han-Chinese settlers and the indigenous population as well as both groups’ contributions to the creation of a new order and their profound mutual influences.79 It is hard to weigh the degree that peoples were sinicized and assimilated, but this one-sided perspective overshadows the narratives of how natives responded to imperial expectations. Economic breakdown, natural disasters, and massive rebellions eventually accelerated the collapse of the Ming. China was governed by another foreign ruling dynasty—the Qing. The Qing empire relied on its military forces to expand its territory to include Mongolia, Tibet, Dzungaria, Taiwan, and the southwestern regions. In those multicentered territories with diverse populations, the Qing faced dilemmas with regard to the complexity of cultural and ethnic groups that frequently engaged in borderland disputes. The Yongzheng emperor’s new official managed Yunnan by implementing radical policies. But were his frontier policies radical and aggressive? What significant transformations did the Qing expansion make to Yunnan? 79 Shin, The Making of the Chinese State, 2. 32 CHAPTER III COLONIALIZING YUNNAN DURING THE YONGZHENG REIGN The Qing dynasty was the second dynasty of foreign domination that controlled the entire territory of China. It was also the last dynasty of imperial China until the Republic of China (ROC) overthrew the Qing dynasty in 1912. The dynasty was founded by the Manchus in the territory known as Manchuria, before they conquered China proper. The dynasty reached its most flourishing age (1644-1800) after Qing military forces had suppressed internal conflicts that had continued from the founding of the Qing until the territorial conquest that was completed under the reign of Kangxi (r.1661-1722). The Manchu Aisin Gioro clan established the Qing dynasty. The Manchus had been classified into three groups by the Ming government: the Wild (野人) Jurchen who occupied northern Manchuria, the Haixi (海西) Jurchen who lived along the Songhua River (in modern Heilongjiang), and the Jianzhou (建州) Jurchen who lived along the Mudan River, the Changbai mountains, and Liaodong. In 1616, after Nurhaci reunified the three Jurchen tribes, he established the Later Jin Dynasty (後金 1616-1636), a dynastic khanate in Manchuria whose name indicates the descent from the Jin dynasty (1115-1234). Nurhaci formed banners— administrative and military divisions—to incorporate Jurchen, Han Chinese, and Mongols into military units that soon functioned as powerful armies against the Ming dynasty. The Eight Banners system, a term that refers to administrative and military units which structured Qing subjects of the three 33 main ethnicities—Manchu, Mongol and Han—into eight organizational groups.80 The banner system simultaneously functioned as a system of administration and confederation, allowing the Qing rulers to govern with their elite forces. Qing emperors relied on the Eight Banners in their military campaigns in the invasion of Korea, in the conquest of the Ming dynasty, in territorial expansion, and in quelling domestic revolts. Nurhaci declared war against the Ming dynasty as an answer to Ming crimes against the Jurchen.81 In order to strengthen centralized power and equalize economic distribution, Nurhaci curtailed the banner members’ economic power, increased the general food supply by raising livestock and economic crops, and conducted trade with neigboring countries under the guidance of the banner system.82 The Eight Banners and the powerful Manchu infantry were vulnerable to the Portuguese cannons, which were newly acquired by the Ming. Nurhaci’s defeat in the Battle of Ningyuan of 1726 (寧遠之 戰) resulted in his death in September 1626. His eighth son, Hong Taiji succeeded as the new khan. 80 The respective groups used military flags with specific colors and decorative borders that signified the ethnicity of their members. To this day the term banner (旗) has survived in the names of former Qing military garrisons in rural locations of Inner Mongolia. 81 Nurhaci announced Seven Grievances (七大恨), referring to crimes of the Ming dynasty: The Ming had murdered both Nurhaci’s grandfather and father; they had suppressed the Jianzhou clan; the Ming had violated the mutual agreement over territories; the Ming had allied with the Yehe clan against the Jianzhou Jurchen; the Ming had supported the Yehe thus breaking their promises to the Jianzhou; the Ming had forced Nurhaci to give up land; and Ming officials rode roughshod over the Jurchen. In the Battle of Sarhū, Nurhaci and his armies secured the Kaiyuan and Tieling garrisons and then subdued the Yehe-clan. Benefiting from these victories, the Later Jin extended to Liaodong when Nurhaci started a series of reforms. 82 Gertraude Roth Li, “State Building Before 1644”, in The Cambridge History of China: vol. 9, part one: The Ch’ing Empire to 1800, ed. Willard J. Peterson (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 44-51. 34 In a series of campaigns Hong Taiji conquered the region north of the Shanhai Pass (山海關). He defeated Ligdan Khan in Inner Mongolia, assumed leadership over Mongolia through taking Ligdan’s official seals, and allied with Korea in the years 1634/5.83 In 1636, Hong Taiji renamed the Later Jin as the Da Qing (大清), the empire of Great Clarity.84 The rebellion in western Shaanxi led by Li Zicheng (1606-1645 李自成), natural disasters and famines in northern China, and the rise of the Manchus accelerated the decline and the fall of the Ming dynasty. In 1643 Hong Taiji was succeeded by the Shunzhi emperor who was five years old at the time. Before his death, Hong Taiji had appointed his half-brother Dorgon (1612-1650多爾袞) as Prince-regent. Prince Dorgon joined forces with Wu Sangui, the Ming general who had fought against Li Zicheng’s rebel army. Together they defeated Li Zicheng in the Battle at the Shanhai Pass in May,1644. This victory opened access to China for the Qing army. In the following month, the Manchu army entered the capital Beijing and established a new dynasty: The Great Qing (1644-1912). Dorgon’s unexpected death in 1650 brought the Shunzhi emperor to power. At the time only thirteen years old, Shunzhi established the Hanlin Academy (Hanlin shuyuan 翰林書院) and the Grand Secretariat (neige內閣), two government institutions that were controlled by Han-Chinese scholar-officials, weakening the power of the Manchu elites. In February 1661, Shunzhi’s sudden death of smallpox at the age of twenty-two left the throne to his third son, Xuanye (玄燁) who reigned for sixty years under the reign title 83 The capture of Ligdan’s seal legitimated the rulership of Hong Taiji for the Mongols and secured the control of their economy. See Li Gertraude Roth, “State Building,” 56. 84 The name followed the new naming tradition begun by the Mongol Yuan dynasty, which used an abstract principle instead of a geographic name for the dynasty. 35 “Kangxi.” The Kangxi emperor (r. 1661-1722) spent nearly forty years to take control over China proper through military campaigns, including ordering the Great Evacuation campaign in 1661, the suppression of the Revolt of the Three Feudatories in 1681, and the defeat of the Taiwan-based rebel clan of the Zheng family, better known as the clan of Koxinga, in 1683.85 To govern the Han Chinese as a non-Han regime, the new Qing ruled over China as ‘Sons of Heaven’ assuming Confucian orthodoxy. They mitigated their “barbarians” ways, which were considered culturally inferior by the Han, in order to claim legitimacy for themselves and be recognized as part of the genealogy of Chinese dynasties.86 But in territories with a diverse population, such as Tibet, Xinjiang, and the southwestern tribal areas, the Qing faced complex cultural and ethnic groups who frequently engaged in borderland disputes. To govern groups of diverse ethnicities, the Qing established the Bureau of Frontier Affairs (Lifan Yuan理藩院) to supervise the Qing frontier in Inner Asia and the occupation of the southwest. To solve the problem of social unrest the Kangxi emperor followed the policy of “using barbarians to govern barbarians” (yi yi zhi yi以夷制夷) and relied on native officials (tusi土司) to extend the reach of the central administration. After the tusi system had fallen apart following military campaigns, the 85 These major campaigns occurred during the transition from the Ming to the Qing. It started with the collapse of the Ming and ended with the Qing unification of outer Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Taiwan. William Rowe summarizes these campaigns under the title “Dynastic Consolidation”. For more details about the individual campaigns, see William Rowe, China’s Last Empire: The Great Qing (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), 24-30; Pamela K. Crossley, “The Conquest Elite of the Ch’ing Empire”, in The Cambridge History of China: Volume 9, part one: The Ch’ing Empire to 1800, ed. Willard Peterson (Cambridge England; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 326-345. 86 Rowe, China’s Last Empire, 12; Wang Hui, China from Empire to Nation-State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), 116-7. 36 Qing government brought indigenous populations under state control by abolishing native chieftainship. The powerful military force was the key to expanding territory and conquering the leftover Ming forces and frontier regions. Kangxi’s successor, Emperor Yongzheng, still lacked authority over Yunnan’s frontier communities, a situation that stood in conflict with his goal to bring all areas of the empire under central control. To explore the Yongzheng emperor’s expansion to Yunnan, this chapter traces two reforms: one concerns the military suppression and imposition of institutional reform, and the other was using education in the process of civilizing the ethnic population. The Initial Expansion (1722-1726) The Yongzheng emperor favored using military force to preserve the Great Qing by relying on his loyal supporters and military commanders in stabilizing the dynasty. Yongzheng colonized the southwest by sending provincial officials to destroy indigenous control in several regions and to “force frontier military, political, and spatial realities” to fit Qing interests and political plans.87 To achieve his goal, Yongzheng sent his trusted officials Gao Qizhuo (1676-1738高其倬) and Li Wei (1687? -1738李衛) to lead the colonization process in Yunnan. The officials believed that through collecting taxes for land, salt, and other local resources, serious fiscal problems caused by the military expansion could be solved and new garrisons and new troops could be financed to strengthen imperial control in the southwest.88 87 Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 44-62; Guo, State and Ethnicity, 27-9. 88 Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 46-8. 37 Gao Qizhuo, who was a jinshi (進士) of 1694 and a baron of the third class (held from 1723-1738), was appointed governor-general of Yunnan in 1722. In his memorial to the emperor Yongzheng, Gao reported how he had changed Yunnan in the initial phase: Alongside the hundreds of miles of the river and on the open lands in valleys, indigenous people were encouraged to cultivate crops. In areas where old cultivation fields of Dian tea were located, we could use the experience of Kangding as an example for collecting salt revenues.89 In the extreme south of Yunnan Province, Gao stationed generals in Pu’er and garrisons in Weiyuan and Chashan (in the hills east of Simao). Gao achieved two major goals: first, he established imperial officials in Weiyuan and simultaneously relocated tuguan to the city and thus replaced the authority of local worthies with the authority of imperial officials; second, he secured the imperial oversight of the regional salt wells in Zhenyuan fu (鎮沅府). 90 The latter step helped to offset the serious fiscal burden caused by the dispatch of growing numbers of imperial soldiers, with the revenues gained from the salt monopoly. To prevent Gao from gaining excessive power in Yunnan, emperor Yongzheng sent Li Wei to supervise and cooperate with Gao Qizhuo, with the goal to manage Yunnan and expand the empire through military occupation.91 Early in 1723, Li was sent 89 QSG, liezhuan 79. 90 QSG, liezhuan 79; YZTZ, juan 11. Zhenyuan fu, a remote region which was surrounded by high hills and forests, located in the border region with Burma, adjacent to Yuanjiang and Jinghong. 91 Li Wei (李衛) was a prominent bureaucrat during the Yongzheng reign. Li Wei was trusted by the Yongzheng emperor. Unlike Gao Qizhuo, who was an official recruited through the civil service examination, Li Wei was not a bannerman and he even purchased the rank of an assistant department director. Li Wei’s most famous achievement was that he had transformed the “individual tax” into a land tax (分丁入畝) in Zhejiang in 1727. The abolition of the poll tax not only helped stabilize the feudal government’s taxation and fostered population growth, but also freed peasants from the privileges of landlords. The more land a landlord controlled, the higher the taxes which were procured from the peasants]. Although Li Wei was less educated, emperor Yongzheng appreciated his talent and skills. In turn, Li Wei in his memorial to Yongzheng, said “The recognition from your Majesty means a lot to your humble servant who is ordinary and has nothing special. I can only repay your kindness by serving you and the Qing empire with loyalty.” 38 to Yunnan at the rank of a provincial salt intendant (yanyidao鹽驛道) and was charged with organizing the chaotic structure of the salt industry, which was in the hands of local indigenous leaders. In 1724, Li became the financial commissioner (buzhengshi布政使) of Yunnan. To address the emperor’s concerns of administrative and fiscal reform, Li stationed troops in the salt-producing areas so that the indigenous leaders no longer managed salt production and salt transportation.92 Gao Qizhuo noticed that the sale of private salt was greater than the sale of government salt because the official salt bureaucracy purchased salt at a low price. Consequently, the more salt was smuggled from Yunnan into neighboring states, the higher the retail price tagged on Yunnan’s salt market became. Gao Qizhuo, therefore, banned the private salt trade and officially purchased the salt from the individual salt producers. The Qing government sold the salt based on the market price. Eliminating costs of labor and raw materials deposited additional profits into the local treasury. Gao Qizhuo listed the total surplus from salt sales of the year 1723 and its distribution: “the province’s annual salt revenue surplus was about 17,463 taels. At least 1,000 taels were deposited monthly, and bi-annual deposits reached 24,000 taels, which were used to reward soldiers and raise troops. The surplus of 6,436 taels was deposited for the provincial government for future annual costs.”93 After Li Wei assumed the position as salt intendant in 1723, the surplus from salt sales reached 55,315 taels in 1725.94 Although it remains unclear for which purposes and how the portion of salt surplus was 92 Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 46. 93 GZDYZ, vol. 2, 195. 94 GZDYZ, vol. 4, 421- 423. 39 allocated, it relieved the fiscal burdens on the Qing government in Beijing and also increased budget for the recruitment of troops. While the Qing regime increased its control over Yunnan step-by-step, the salt industry and agricultural production became equally important to support the local development. Gao Qizhuo turned his attention to stabilizing the grain prices and securing an equal price for the entire province. Because Yunnan is located in a mountainous area Gao Qizhuo noticed that grain circulation was limited locally because short- and long- distance transportation increased labor costs and thus increased the selling price. The grain price in the provincial capital was higher than in the prefectures. To solve this problem, Gao personally donated 500 taels to reclaim more than 3,000 acres of arable land, with 2,300 acres dedicated to barley cultivation and 1,000 acres to rice farming. For local people who were willing to plant but worried about the taxes, Gao determined that per acre of rice farming only one dou (斗= about 10 kilograms) of rice would be collected; one dou and two sheng (升=about 10.3 kilograms) of barley would be collected per acre of barley cultivation. The construction of dams along the water gates aimed to dimmish the dangers from floods and drought. When the gates were constructed, the water could flow freely into the fields and thus farming would facilitate normal harvests even in the drought seasons. By overcoming potential environmental threats and boosting agricultural cultivation, the common people achieved a reliable food supply. But military troops and households in the province’s northwest still relied on food transportation from inland China. In order to save labor and transportation costs, Gao Qizhuo planned to reclaim arable land alongside the river and flat areas. By providing farming tools and 40 cattle, local cultivation supported the local military instead of relying on inland transportation.95 Although Gao Qizhuo and Li Wei managed the provincial economy to solve the military expenditure through the empire’s administrative reforms, barbaric rebels had represented a threat to the locals for decades, especially in the southern part of the province. In November, 1723, Pu Youcai (普有才; precise dates unknown) was protected by local chieftain Dao Guanghuan (刀光煥; precise dates unknown); they further allied and became friends, and their sons became as close as brothers. They refused Gao Qizhuo’s attempt of pacification and fled to the forests. Therefore, Gao Qizhuo determined that only replacing native officials with imperial bureaucrats and stationed troops could solve the problems brought upon by the ‘wild rebels’ (yezei 野賊).96 In 1724, Gao Qizhuo admitted that hunting the bandits in hills and forests was much more difficult compared to chasing them in stockaded villages. Forceful military suppression could also lead to a great loss of soldiers. Compared to the Qing soldiers whose vulnerability to malaria limited their movements in the mountains, tribal rebels easily used the forest as a natural hideaway. Gao Qizhuo ordered Qing soldiers to round up the rebels on three sides and to block their access to the mountains. He also alerted the public to watch out for rebels and by publicizing awards for anyone who reliably reported rebel hideouts, who caught rebels, or who persuaded the rebels to surrender.97 The rebels were gradually controlled by the Qing officials and later were executed. This victory allowed 95 GZDYZ, vol. 2, 526 96 GZDYZ, vol.2, 710. 97 GZDYZ, vol. 3, 184-185. 41 the Qing empire to make a big step towards the control of Yunnan and its indigenous population. The Ensuing Expansion and the Gaitu Guiliu Policy Upon the arrival of E’ertai, Gao Qizhuo and Li Wei had already changed Yunnan: the former had conquered the salt-production regions and the latter had increased the salt revenues. Their initial expansion not only altered the economics of frontier communities but also laid the foundation for E’ertai to rely on extreme violence in this colonialization efforts and undermine the power of the indigenous elite in the southwest beginning in the1720s. E’ertai (1680-1745) received his degree as a juren (舉人) 98 in 1699. Four years later, in 1703, he was promoted to Senior Imperial Bodyguard of the third rank (三 等侍衛), and in 1722 he advanced to become an examiner for the civil service exams in Yunnan province (雲南鄉試考官). In 1725, he was appointed as governor-general of the southwestern provinces of Yunnan and Guizhou. By introducing Yunnan as a remote region bordering with Burma, E’ertai in his report demonstrates that only by replacing local and hereditary rulers with imperial bureaucrats and deploying the military could the empire stabilize and pacify native populations. The Qing officials called this policy gaitu guiliu (改土歸流), which indicated that the Qing aimed to consolidate the peripheral control under the central government. It largely diminished the autonomous leadership of native rulers, but it also earned E’ertai a promotion to Grand Chancellor (軍機大臣). 98 Imperial China recruited candidates for the state bureaucracy by selecting state officials who had passed the imperial civil service examinations. For men who were born into the lower classes, achieving good results in the civil service examination was the only way to become a bureaucrat as well as the chance to alter their own lives and those of their families. The merit- based appointment system mitigated aristocratic power and centralized power around the emperor . ‘Juren’ was a rank lower than the highest degree, jinshi but higher than the shengyuan. 42 The biggest challenge in E’ertai’s assignment was the resistance from the Miao (苗) tribe. He reported the situation of Yunnan and Guizhou and his solution for the local conflicts to the Yongzheng emperor by saying: Yunnan and Guizhou have no big concerns without the Miao and Man [tribes]. To pacify local populations means to deal with yi (barbarians); to govern the barbarians means that local hereditary rulers have to be replaced with imperial bureaucrats. […] I (your servant) believe the reason why the local population showed resistance to the imperial actions of the Ming [administration] was because the Ming officials did not learn about the local customs in remote frontier regions. Therefore, the local populations showed resistance against the imperial actions. […] The solution is to first capture the local leaders with a smart strategy and then attack the resisting population with military force; it is best to request that local leaders turn themselves in; forcing them to surrender is the second way. In order to attack the barbarians, we have to select generals who are able to train soldiers. If we can impartially dispense awards and punishment, the new soldiers will obey orders. Resisting foreign aggression after stabilizing the country is a long-term benefit in the frontier regions.99 E’ertai’s effective methods put down the Miao uprisings successfully, but also brought him the reputation of being ruthless. His vigorous land reforms and household registration for tax collection caused the indigenous inhabitants’ resistance. About 18,000 local people were massacred and more than 1000 villages were torched in the Guizhou rebellion of 1735-1736.100 In 1726, E’ertai arrived in Yunnan with the mission to transform the frontier, because the indigenous people had resisted the Qing pacification campaigns. The main challenge E’ertai faced in his early years was how to manage the indigenous people in Yunnan. E’ertai’s radical colonial policies were informed by stereotypes against the indigenous population, describing them as living “outside” of the state territory and being led by native officials labeled as “uncivilized rebels” and “frontier barbarians.”101 This 99 QSG, liezhuan 75. 100 Rowe, China’s Last Empire, 80. 101 Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 49-50. 43 language directly influenced the Qing emperor’s decisions. Later, E’ertai and his armies invaded Xishuangbanna to bring the “Pu’er” tea industry under imperial control and stationed imperial forces in Simao and Muong Ham (in today’s Vietnam), claiming “only strong armies of suppression could transform the heart of Xishuangbanna’s barbarians.”102 In order to stabilize the Yunnan-Sichuan border, E’ertai requested Yunnan’s jurisdiction to take charge of the Dongchuan (東川) region. Although Dongchuan had the fertile soil for agricultural production, nobody dared to reclaim the land because of the fear that Dongchuan’s indigenous people would abduct farmers and plunder livestock. E’ertai alerted that only supervising Dongchuan by the Yunnan provincial administration and its military garrisons could prevent further insurgencies and troubles made by local people in Dongchuan.103 The Yongzheng emperor responded to E’ertai by saying: if local chiefs from Wumeng, Sichuan, provoked troubles in the Dongchuan region, the Qing officials are allowed to punish them according to Qing law; the replacement of the tusi with Chinese officials would benefit the region in the future.104 Although E’ertai fiercely supported the military in suppressing ethnic insurgencies and securing the control of economic resources, non-human agents, such as climate and topography constituted impediments against the effectiveness of his frontier reforms. In his report about the observation of indigenous officials, E’ertai admitted that: … in the remote and uninhabited wilderness occupied by stubborn barbarians, the Qing local political institutions had to rely on indigenous officials in solving local rebellions. The government should replace native officials with Qing-appointed officials; native officials who cannot be replaced easily or should not be replaced, 102 Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 55. 103 GZDYZ, vol. 5, 742-743. 104 GZDYZ, vol. 5, 744. 44 should be allowed to maintain their old traditions, but the government needs to restrict their authority to prevent abuse of power. If native officials abuse their authority to loot property of the common people or jeopardize Qing authority in Yunnan, they will be punished severely.105 This edict points to the fact that the Qing frontier order in Yunnan was a compromise. 106 E’ertai’s recognition of the limits of the Qing expansion was aggravated by the local malaria infestation, which prevented the Green Standard Army of Han Chinese bannermen from being stationed in the garrisons. Prone to contracting malaria, the lack of Qing soldiers compelled the dynasty to maintain the positions of native chieftains, although indigenous leaders often challenged Qing control.107 Malaria and the tribal culture of Yunnan constrained the Qing expansion and territorial consolidation, which explains how the Qing had to find compromises between the frontier policies, indigenous agents, and the environmental challenges. If the Gaitu Guiliu policy achieved political integration, the Qing government then urgently needed cultural integration to construct a unified cultural system throughout the region. ‘Barbarians’ could become loyal subjects to the Qing empire only after they were civilized. Another Qing official arrived in Yunnan and intended to incorporate the indigenous population through the state-oriented education projects. Chen Hongmou and His Education Approach In 1733, Chen Hongmou (1696-1771陳宏謀) was granted the position of Yunnan treasurer, which credited him as an exemplary official. The position required him to conduct economic reforms and establish a public-school system. In Chen’s first tenure as 105 GZDYZ, vol. 6, 422-4. 106 David. A Bello, “To Go Where No Han Could Go for Long: Malaria and the Qing Construction of Ethnic Administrative Space in Frontier Yunnan,” Modern China 31, no. 3. (July 2005): 283-309. 107 Bello, “To Go Where No Han,” 288, 301. 45 the treasurer of Yunnan, he saw that the Yunnanese were unfairly targeted by economic and cultural changes when the southwest became a part of a military campaign that intended to make the non-Han minorities into servants of the Qing empire.108 Descriptions of southwest populations were always patronizing. Throughout his three- year tenure in Yunnan Chen Hongmou thought his duty and goal was to guide the natives to improve their material life by introducing advanced cropping systems and agricultural infrastructure and to lift the individual morale through cultivating popular religious practices and ritual ceremonies.109 Chen Hongmou’s civilizing projects were inspired by Zhang Yunsui, the governor of Yunnan since 1718. Although Zhang Yunsui agreed that indigenous people in Yunnan were cruel and barbaric, he still favored “policies of accommodation” to coopt indigenous leaders for managing indigenous populations in remote and tropical areas where no Qing officials could go.110 Zhang endorsed policies of accommodation with goals of moral transformation by exposing barbarians to imperial morality and the universal value of humaneness. Zhang Yunsui’s policies had obvious benefits for economic and social cooperation, but he confronted challenges from both indigenous communities and the Qing government. Even though indigenous aristocrats actively used the Qing political structure and new cultural forms as a resource, certain groups of native populations still retained a more intimate relationship with upland Southeast Asia. On the other hand, the Qing-appointed officials had problems in understanding the native 108 William Rowe, Saving the World, Chen Hongmou and Elite Consciousness in Eighteenth- century China (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001), 209. 109 Rowe, Saving the World, 407. 110 Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 88-90. This was the plan to “use barbarians to rule barbarians” (yiyizhiyi 以夷治夷). 46 customs. Consequently, the Qing emperors granted Qing titles and gifts to recognize local rulers’ legitimacy of power in the frontier on behalf of the empire and praise their abilities to spread the imperial value system to the remote and interior frontier. Accordingly, although the relationship between the Qing empire and native officials was integrated into the imperial hierarchy, the imperial government did not always have absolute power. Although Governor-General Zhang Yunsui appreciated the military presence as an important imperial institution to maintain peace throughout the empire’s southwest frontier, his policies of frontier accommodation mentored Chen Hongmou in seeking civilizing influences in the southwest. Chen’s recognition of cultural differences inspired him to proceed with his second mission: to civilize indigenous populations. In contrast to E’ertai’s progressive bias of ensuring the superiority of the Han Chinese, Chen equaled Han majority and ethnic minorities as subjects to the Qing empire. He insisted that all humans can be civilized (有教無類) because the philosopher Mencius’ doctrine about ‘human nature was good at birth’ was true for both Chinese and non-Chinese, and therefore, all cultural practices could be reformed.111 His goal of “turning the savages into Chinese (Yi bian wei Han夷變為漢)” and “the correction of moral errors (jiaohua 教 化)” was at the core of the curriculum in his free public schools (charity schools; yixue義 111 Li Wenlong 李文龍, “Frontier Education and National Identity Education in the Middle of Qing Dynasty—Chen Hongmou and the Development of Free School (清中期邊疆教化與國家 認同教育—陳宏謀與義學發展),”Journal of Research on Education for Ethnic Minorities 30, no.1 (2019):115. 47 學).112 In general, his yixue educational project had two goals: cultivating a shared identity and educating proper manners. The Qing political goal of conquest required the stabilized imperial rule in the frontier and the reinforcement of indigenous peoples’ shared identity, which had to be achieved by means of the regional correction of ‘moral errors.’113 Literacy training became one way to cultivate moral values. Selected textbooks included Zhu Xi’s Household Maxims (朱子治家格言)114, Reflection on Things at Hand (近思錄)115 and other collections of conversations of the classics of Chinese philosophy. Chen insisted on the naturalness (zhixing知行) of Confucian principles of social order, filial piety, moral characters, and loyalty in rational and ritually correct familial norms.116 The selection of teaching materials indicated that the Qing government attached great importance to social education and moral training, using the acceptance of Confucianism as a symbol of submission to the Qing. In the eyes of imperial dynasties, any civilized cultural identity had to resonate with the Confucian principles. In addition to training in literacy, Chen added regulation of behavior norms into his yixue curriculum. Chen applied Zhu Xi’s code of conduct to introduce the importance of dressing properly, speaking and walking in humble and appropriate ways, keeping the table and house neat, learning course content by heart, and obeying polite and respectful 112 Rowe, Saving the World, 423-6. 113 Li, “Frontier Education,” 116. 114 Household Maxim was written by Zhu Bolu (1627-1698 朱柏盧), an educator in the later Ming era. The book focuses on family ethics and outstanding characteristics of Chinese traditional culture, such as diligent housekeeping, harmonious relationships among neighbors, and respect for teachers. 115 Reflection on Things at Hand was compiled by the Neo-Confucian thinkers Zhu Xi and Lü Zuqian. 116 Rowe, Saving the World, 422. 48 manners.117 Those basic norms instructed students and children—who due to their young age still had little resistance to the Han—in the rules for being a proper civilized person who knew how to draw a line between savage behaviors and civilized norms. Similarly, Qing officials aimed to assimilate ethnic culture with Han Chinese culture by mandating Confucian wedding and burial rites as well as ancestor worship, ordering Chinese-style costume to cover the natives’ naked bodies, and introducing the cult of virtuous widowhood (jiexiao節孝) and the Confucian worship of Heaven (tiandao天道).118 Chen Hongmou’s goals to civilize indigenous peoples in Yunnan also witnessed a significant increase in the number of yixue schools. In 1733, when Chen Hongmou started his career in Yunnan, there were only two hundred local schools, some of which offered little education; at the time of his departure from Yunnan in 1738, roughly seven hundred schools had been built or revitalized.119 Chen Hongmou’s education project and yixue systems in Yunnan served as carriers of imperial doctrines and Confucian principles aiming to encourage economic prosperity and civilizing influences. Although Chen’s achievements were visible in motivating the construction of Han cultural and social modes in Yunnan, the ambitious goal of the Yongzheng emperor and his “new men” to assimilate indigenous populations ended in failure because of the enormous ethnic diversity. While selectively adopting certain practices such as learning Chinese 117 Zhu Xi, What Children Must Know (Tongmeng Xuzhi 童蒙須知). 118 Rowe, Saving the World, 422,424; Liao Guoqiang, “ ‘Civilizing the Ethnics by Han Culture’ and ‘Governing the Ethnics by Their Customs’: Two Governance Strategies and their Implementations in the Regions of Replacement of the Tribal Chieftains with Non-Hereditary Government-Dispatched Officials in Yunnan,(以漢化夷與因俗而治—清代雲南改土歸流地區 兩種文化治理方略及其關係),” Journal of Yunnan Normal University (Humanities and Social Sciences) 6 (2020): 25-31. 119 Rowe, Saving the World, 419. 49 and attending public elementary schools, the native population rejected the uniformity of the dress code and the practices of footbinding and arranged marriages. Conclusion The Yongzheng emperor further consolidated Yunnan and ethnic population under the control of the Qing government. In the early stage of expansion, Gao Qizhuo and Li Wei secured valuable industries in the hands of the Qing and collected taxes to support military expenses. Their efforts allowed E’ertai to initiate radical policies to suppress the armed rebels, to replace local officials with Qing bureaucrats, and to promote social change in Yunnan. The Yongzheng emperor took advantage of the military to colonialize Yunnan and impose a series of reforms that led to the incorporation of Yunnan into the Qing empire, but the education measures thoroughly consolidated Yunnan’s ethnic populations. Upon Chen Hongmou’s arrival, he advocated for a Confucian education through building a public elementary school system. In effect, indigenous communities began to accept being “Chinese” and show less resistance to imperial rule. During the process of settling in Yunnan, many new settlers married indigenous women. The child of a mixed marriage might have been taught in either or both of the parents’ ways which strengthened their position in relation to the Qing and impeded the distinction of natives from Han.120 In the fear of losing control over both, the Qing state considered that “Chinese cultural institutions could penetrate indigenous societies and peacefully erase the cultural barriers” between the Qing empire and the population in the southwestern frontier.121 Qing officials observed that Han residents in Yunnan were 120 Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 190. 121 Herman (1997), “Empire in the Southwest,”69. 50 weaving a new cultural tapestry, and they realized that a Chinese education system could be considered a peaceful but effective method to civilize the “savage customs” (yesu野 俗) of the indigenous, non-Han population and to prevent the “barbarization” of Han settlers.122 Throughout the Yongzheng reign, the emperor and the central government enhanced the state control over the southwest and erased the cultural barriers between the Qing empire and the non-Han population of the southwestern frontier. The initial stage of the Qing expansion provided relatively stable conditions for the future development in the eighteenth century. When a large influx of Han immigrants resettled in Yunnan to explore the vast unexploited but fertile land, the landscape and society had been transformed. The government-sponsored immigrants from 1726 not only reflect how natives and Han settlers jointly built Yunnan but also how they facilitated the integration of the local economy into transnational networks. 122 Herman (1997), “Empire in the Southwest,” 56. 51 CHAPTER IV BORDERLAND RESETTLEMENT AND THE GROWTH OF THE BORDERLAND ECONOMY The previous chapter addresses how the Manchus’ military strength enabled emperor Yongzheng and his trusted officials to colonize Yunnan by means of military suppression and economic reforms. Yongzheng’s “new frontier militarism” became the essential and effective approach to introducing colonialization policies and undermining the influence of indigenous leaders.123 By securing salt revenues and valuable agricultural production, the Qing empire increased the number of the Green Standard forces, which was mostly made up of Han-Chinese soldiers. Although the garrison system included soldiers of the Eight Banners from Manchu, Mongol, and Han armies, the Manchu rulers preferred deploying Han soldiers to suppress the rebellions and establish garrisons in Yunnan for two major reasons. First, the Manchu rulers desired to keep the non-Chinese banner forces insulated from contact with the overwhelming mass of the Chinese population to preserve Manchu identity.124 Second, they were convinced that Han soldiers were culturally and physically better suited to fight the ethnic minorities of the subtropical area to which Manchu soldiers had a hard time acclimatizing. Soon Yunnan witnessed an increasing number of Han immigrants from Jiangxi, Huguang (Hubei and Hunan), and the southeast coast who were attracted by mining 123 Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 43-6. 124 Nicola Di Cosmo. The Diary of a Manchu Soldier in Seventeenth-century China: My Service in the Army (London; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2006), 22. 52 resources and trade opportunities. They complemented the deployed Chinese soldiers of the Green Standard army until the steady influx of Han immigrants made them the population majority in the region, where they introduced the newly imported agricultural crops of maize, cotton, tobacco, and potatoes. This chapter will reflect upon the experiences and contributions by the native population and the Han settlers in building the new order. To illustrate the complexity of tensions between Han settlers and the indigenous population as well as the areas of their collaboration, the chapter focuses on how the transformation of commercial trade facilitated the emerging of a new Yunnan. The Arrival of Chinese Immigrants From 1726 through 1731, E’ertai occupied indigenous areas and enhanced Qing political control over the empire’s periphery. Native chieftains’ power was weakened by limiting their direct rule over the southwest and its ethnic communities. A series of tax reforms secured the imperial authority over the region, although the power transition was dominated by incidents of rebellions. The Qing government realized that violence and instability interfered with long-term strategies to transform frontier politics, culture, and economics. In order to build an orderly and civilized frontier, the reliance on education through a general elementary school system proved necessary. At a cultural level, China’s charitable schools offered Han-style curricula for natives who were expected to adopt Chinese culture and emulate a new Han identity and for the descendants of new Han settlers who were expected to maintain cultural ties to the Qing empire. It was the Han settlers who thoroughly transformed patterns across the landscape and the frontier society through expanding agricultural production and managing long- 53 distance trade.125 In chapter one, we saw the invention of Yunnan and the initial transformation through the imperial expansion, which later facilitated a massive human migration. The impact of immigration on Yunnan had a longer history. The Yuan conquest of Dali in 1273 and the Qing conquest of the Ming in 1673 brought the initial immigration, followed by a second wave from 1700 to the rebellions of the 1850s.126 Historian James Lee has defined the migration as two waves of immigration because each phase had distinct features and a profound impact on integrating the frontier and encouraging local development. The first wave of settlers was made up of the vast majority of military soldiers and their attached military households who were not predominantly of Han Chinese ethnicity, but consisted of Mongols, Manchus, and Muslims.127 Although those military immigrants had a diverse background, they commonly identified as belonging to the Chinese polity and distinguished them from the indigenous communities. The lack of imperial consolidation limited the initial interaction between new settlers and indigenous peoples when the former was responsible only for reclaiming wastelands to supply food for the imperial garrisons. The second wave of immigration introduced new, advanced agricultural technologies and crops with higher yields. Immigrants of the second wave predominantly came from the middle and upper Yangzi River, one of the most prosperous regions in China thanks to intense rice cultivation and a highly developed artisanal craft production. 125 Herman, “Empire in the Southwest,” 69. 126 Lee, “The Legacy of Immigration,” 283,297. 127 Ibid, 290. 54 In the following section I will analyze how the legacies of the second wave of immigration in agrarian expansion and its most visible consequence—frontier urbanization. The growth of population and commerce largely fueled further connection between the empire’s periphery and its neighboring states. Through the development of the caravan trade, we shall see how Yunnan retained its role as the central section of the transport routes for a vast array of commodities. Agrarian Expansion and Frontier Urbanization The large-scale settlement of Yunnan had flourished after the Yongzheng emperor’s incorporation of the southwest. Upon the arrival of the new settlers in Yunnan the shift to Han-style sedentary agriculture fostered the emergence of new markets and the development of cross-regional trade. The Chinese-style agriculture and its economic consequences of urbanization, market expansion, and luxury consumption characterized the “second commercial revolution” from the mid-sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century.128 The study of the Jiangnan region has been associated with the flourishing of material culture, which was a characteristic of the High Qing era. The salt monopoly allowed the salt merchants to accumulate wealth that led to their advanced economic status. Surplus profits were utilized to produce artifacts and handicrafts of excellent quality which were sent as tribute to the Qing court and the royal family. The salt merchants thus became “cultured and cosmopolitan men” (tongren 同人) who expanded their influence throughout the Qing realm and helped the empire build transregional networks with neighboring states.129 128 Yulian Wu, Luxurious Networks: Salt Merchants, Status, and Statecraft in Eighteenth-Century China (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2016), 200-1. 129 Wu, Luxurious Networks, 186-9. 55 The development of the Yunnan and Jiangnan regions was strikingly different during the High Qing period. In Yunnan slash-and-burn agriculture (daogeng huozhong 刀耕火種) was practiced by minority groups, especially by inhabitants in the hilly and mountainous areas.130 In Xishuangbanna, Jinuo (基諾) and Dai farmers burned the fields after harvesting upland rice between November and December and sowed upland rice in May.131 With this traditional production method, the daily demand for rice could barely be met. Hunting and gathering supplemented the basic food demand and shaped the special living mode--men hunted wild animals as a source of protein in the sub-tropical forests and women gathered mushrooms, edible wild plants, bamboo shoots, and nuts.132 These traditions were considered backward and barbaric by the new Han settlers. New immigrants who settled in the mountains and valleys confronted the shortage of arable farmland. In order to overcome these constraints, immigrants cultivated new and high yielding crops such as maize and sweet potatoes.133 Intensive cultivation in the remote hills and valleys encouraged people’s engagement in regional markets, leading to growth in transregional trade. Those living in mountainous or hilly terrain and villagers from remote regions and from the lowlands relied on the standard markets (gaizi 街子)134 for trade. Before the arrival of Han immigrants, gaizi functioned as local markets where highlanders and lowlanders exchanged local basic goods, such as grain, fruits, livestock, 130 Slash-and-burn agriculture is a type of shifting cultivation, involving cutting and burning plants and trees to create a field. 131 Shigeru Shirasaka, “Slash-and-Burn Cultivation in Xishuangbanna, Southwestern China,” Geographical Review of Japan 68, no.2 (1995): 110. 132 Shirasaka, “Slash-and-Burn,”112. 133 Maize and potatoes have become most important cash crops in the marginal farming lands in Yunnan until these days. 134 In Yunnanese dialects, the pronunciation of jie (街) is different from standard Mandarin Chinese. In most cases, jiezi refers to a street. By contrast, gaizi refers to a local general market. 56 and cloth. Agricultural expansion witnessed not only an increase in agricultural yield and crop diversity but also an increase in the diversity of exchange commodities. Vegetables, tobacco, raw cotton, salt, and agricultural tools became important commodities bartered between diverse indigenous populations. Local native Yunnanese traders brought goods like metal wares and needles from lowland markets to remote villages and hills, playing the role of local middlemen.135 The Yongzheng emperor’s expansion and consequent transformations brought by the large influx of immigrants since 1722 resulted in agrarian expansion and population growth. Before the 1750s, few towns had even 5,000 residents; most towns were the entrepôts distributed in rural regions and linked in commercial networks.136 James Lee estimates that the recovery of the southwest population from the Rebellion of the Three Feudatories in 1681 showed in the doubling of population numbers from 4 to 5 million in 1700 to 11 million by 1775.137 If agrarian expansion was the major driving force of population growth, participation in local markets encouraged the growth of frontier urbanization. Chinese immigrants supplied labor, capital, and organizational structures that built infrastructure and cities which contributed to the thriving of commercial, technical, clerical, and professional skills in the manufacturing sector.138 By cooperating with local Qing officials, government compounds (yamen 衙門) were constructed for officials and 135 Ann Maxwell Hill, Merchants and Migrants: Ethnicity and Trade Among Yunnanese Chinese in Southeast Asia. (Yale Southeast Asia Studies,1998), 46-7. 136 Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 145. 137James Lee, “Food Supply and Population Growth in Southwest China, 1250-1850,” The Journal of Asian Studies 41, no.4, 720. 138 Lee, “The Legacy of Immigration,” 297. 57 barracks were built for hundreds of soldiers.139 Chen Hongmou’s civilizing project in Yunnan also drove the process of urbanization, centralization, and identity-formation through familiarizing local peoples with Chinese identity. The region experienced the development of the regional economy and urbanization, breaking the geographical barriers towards transregional integration. Integration of Local Trade into Transregional Trade The engagement of migrants stimulated a broad commercial revolution in the Yunnan-Southeast Asia borderland.140 The emergence of cities boosted the rise of an urban merchant class consisting of immigrant merchants. Immigrant merchants from the same original native place bonded through native place associations (huiguan會館), which also served in tasks like managing prices and businesses.141 Temples usually housed the native place associations. Inside the association temples, altars were set up for ancestral worship and for deities that should preserve the merchants’ ties with their native place.142 In addition, Chinese merchant organizations maintained commercial networks linking the southwest with the metropolitan areas in China and Southeast Asia. Merchant organizations organized the caravan routes, mobilized capital, cooperated in transregional trade with the Qing state, and developed new patterns of businesses to overcome trade challenges brought by topography and environment.143 139 Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 146. 140 Yang, Between Winds and Clouds, 212. 141 Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 182. 142 Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 149. 143 Charles Patterson Giersch, “Cotton, Copper, and Caravans: Trade and the Tranformation of Southwest China,” In Chinese Circulation: Capital, Commodities, and Networks in Southeast Asia, ed. Eric Tagliacozzo and Chang Wen-chin (Durham: Duke University, 2011), 52. 58 To build their regional economic networks, Chinese merchants and Qing officials relied on the caravan trade to maintain long-distance trade networks between Yunnan and Southeast Asia. This Yunnan-Southeast Asia trade route was not new; it was well-known as the Silk Road of the Southwest. The major section of the route was the Sichuan- Yunnan-Burma-India Road (chuan dian mian yin dao川滇緬印道). Merchants were able to trade commodities in the markets of China and South- and Southeast Asian countries. Communications between inland China and the southwest and its neighbors increased and stabilized especially after Yunnan was integrated as a province in 1276. The establishment of postal stations (yizhan驛站) along the roads by the Mongols served military communication and also encouraged trade and cultural communication. In the eighteenth century, the growth of the Sino-Southeast Asian trade largely relied on Yunnan-based routes and markets for exchanging a wide variety of products. Xishuangbanna connected southern Yunnan with Burma and Laos. In western Yunnan, a major trade center was Tengchong (騰衝), which connected western and northern Yunnan with the Shan States (撣邦)144 and Yangon (仰光).145 The caravans leaving Yunnan carried a variety of commodities, including cotton, tea, silk, manufactured 144 The Shan States included ethnic minorities such as the Chin, the Kachin, the Lisu, and the Lahu. They were established after 1287 when the Pagan Kingdom fell to the Mongols. In 1885, the British captured Mandalay and thereafter the Shan States were ruled by the British crown until the Panglong Conference declared their independence in 1947. 145 Yangon also known as Rangoon, is the largest city of Burma. The British colonialized Yangon and secured it as the commercial center of British Burma. Compared with other colonial-era cities in Southeast Asia like Bangkok in Thailand and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, the Yangon region is still not well-developed. Since independence, major anti-government protests in 1974, 1988, 2007 and 2021 occurred in the city to bring about political change and a civil administration. 59 products and so forth. These commodities were traded in upland Southeast Asia and supplied domestic markets in Guizhou and Guangxi. The frequent tribute missions from mainland Southeast Asia facilitated different forms of material exchanges with the Qing empire. The Sino-Siamese commercial trade had flourished under the tributary system of China. For instance, in the eighteenth- century Siamese kings and nobility ordered that their tribute envoys purchase and return with Chinese silk, Chinese-style stone sculptures, ceramics, and high-quality luxuries and ornamental items from the Qing empire.146 Most Sino-Southeast Asian trade was conducted through the maritime junk system that operated between Bangkok and Guangzhou; jade and gems were an exception. The Mongol invasion of Burma in the thirteenth century laid the foundation for the development of the Chinese fascination with jadeite (different from the nephrite called jade that was revered in China since the Neolithic) that continued ever since. China’s growing demand for gems and jade gave life to Burmese gem mining and export.147 In the Qing-Myanmar borderland cities Ruili (瑞麗) and Tengchong, muleteers carried the raw jade (yuanshi原石) to Yunnan from where it was shipped to the capital Beijing. Royal court painters designed the décor for jade carvings with landscapes, human figures, and animals, accompanied by skilled calligraphy engravings.148 Creative 146 Erika Masuda. “Import of Prosperity: Luxurious Items Imported from China to Siam during the Thonburi and Early Rattanakosin Periods (1767-1854), In Chinese Circulations: Capital, Commodities, and Networks in Southeast Asia, ed. Eric Tagliacozzo and Wen-Chin Chang, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011),153-7. 147 Laichen Sun. “From Baoshi to Feicui: Qing-Burmese Gem Trade, c. 1644-1800”. In Chinese circulation, Chinese Circulations: Capital, Commodities, and Networks in Southeast Asia, edited by Eric Tagliacozzo and Wen-Chin Chang, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), 204-214. 148 Mingying Wang and Guanghai Shi, “The Evolution of Chinese Jade Carving Craftmanship,” Gems & Gemology 56, no.1 (2020): 43. 60 design and the carvers’ high degree of skill are visible in the peak of craftmanship in the High Qing era. Jade consumption became a driving force in the Qing-Burmese trade, which mingled with the caravan trade. As the caravan trade developed from the eighteenth century, the Yunnanese caravans had permanent stations in northern Thailand. Although the merchants from Yunnan spoke different languages, dressed differently, and worshiped different deities, they were not considered foreigners in the Kachin Hills of Burma or in Chiang Mai in Thailand; instead, they played the role of mediators in the tribute relations between the Burmese, Siamese, and Chinese courts.149 The old trading markets were integrated into large trade regions with the increased variety of commodities. Yunnan connected the Qing empire with the neighboring states in South and Southeast Asia. Imported and exported products shaped the history of material culture. Physical objects such as jade functioned as a strong tie to affirm the Sino-Burma commercial activities. Among categories of commodities, copper facilitated as a type of commodity as well as a source of taxes in the long-distance trade with Southeast Asia. Copper and Caravan Trade The rising attention to the mining of copper originated from the replacement of cowry money through cash during the Ming-Qing transition.150 The transformation of corvée services and taxes-in-kind into payments of silver brought tax silver to the central government of the Yuan and the Ming dynasty. But silver was not yet a major trade 149 Hill, Merchants and Migrants, 9. 150 It is generally believed that the Ming-Qing transition lasted from 1618 to 1683 when the Manchu clan Aisin Gioro established the Qing dynasty in the northeast and when various competing rebel powers appeared, one of them Li Zicheng and his short-lived Shun dynasty. The transition time ended with the rise of the Qing and its replacement of the Ming dynasty as well as the fall of other factions. 61 currency, due to its weight and limited access in daily life and economic transfers. In both maritime and overland commodity trade with regions in Africa and Asia, cowry money served as the standard currency.151 Cowry money was circulated along the Southwest Silk Road and was used in India, Laos, Siam, and Burma. The usage of the shells of cowry snails as money originated in the Maldives and was exported to Bengal, Pegu152 and Siam via maritime trade. In the early sixteenth century, Portuguese merchants noticed the circulation of cowry money in the trade between South and Southeast Asia with the Maldives. When the Dutch dominated the Indian Ocean trade from the mid-seventeenth century, the Dutch East India Company imported cowries from the Maldives. Yet scholars still debate the sources of the cowry supply for Yunnan. Some believe that Chinese merchants and maritime vessels involved in the Southeast Asian cowry trade brought the cowry to Yunnan.153 However, others believe that the cowry could have been imported from Siam and Burma through overland trade. Although no concrete evidence supports either of these hypotheses, cowry money became the major currency in monetary transactions along the Southwest Silk Routes. In the Yunnan economy, cowries functioned as a medium of exchange and for loans, as a measure of payment for mortgages and retail, as a measure for the price of rice, and as a savings resource.154 151 Hans Ulrich Vogel, “Cowry Trade and its Role in the Economy of Yunnan: From the Ninth to the Mid-Seventeenth Century. (Part I),” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 36, no. 3 (1993): 211. 152 Pegu, also known as Bago, is the capital of the Bago Region in Myanmar. 153 Vogel, “Cowry Trade,” 237. 154 Hans Ulrich Vogel, “Cowry Trade and its Role in the Economy of Yunnan: From the Ninth to the Mid-Seventeenth Century. (Part II)” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 36, no. 4 (1993): 312-9. 62 Cowry money began to collapse after the fourteenth century for two reasons. The first reason was related to bureaucratic management. In comparison to paper money and copper cash which were produced under the supervision of the government, the centralized monetary control did not work efficiently in the cowry trade because it was controlled by private and native hands.155 The second reason was that European imperialism and the expansion of the European world-system into the Indian Ocean trade networks disrupted the Maldives-Bengal maritime trade.156 Yunnan could no longer afford the booming price for cowries which had heated up due to the slave trade. More importantly, the Qing considered the replacement of cowry cash as a symbol of legitimating Chinese control over Yunnan and introducing Chinese culture and imperial rule to the southwest frontier region.157 Thus, the Ming and Qing governments both turned their attention to copper mining and constructed their monetary system in accordance with military interests and political intentions. From the second half of the sixteenth century, the Ming Ministry of Revenue made use of copper resources to supply the casting of copper cash. In 1576 and 1625, Dongchuan supplied copper for coinage in Jiangnan. In addition, copper became one of the major materials in architectural structures, such as Taihe Temple (Taihesi太和寺) in the Wudang Mountains (Wudangshan 武當山) and the Golden Temple (Jindian 金殿) in the Jinma Mountains (Jinmashan 金馬山).158 Adequate copper resources supplied the 155 Vogel, “Cowry Trade (Part II),” 329. 156 Yang, Between Winds and Clouds, 207; Vogel, “Cowry Trade (Part II),” 331. 157 Vogel, “Cowry Trade (Part II),” 335-7. 158 YNTS, vol. 4, 146-7. The Wudang Mountains located in Hubei Province, are home to a complex of Daoist temples and monasteries. Taihe Palace is part of an ancient building complex. The Golden Temple is located in Kunming, Yunnan, and is the largest bronze temple in China. It 63 raw material for coinage, and copper cash eventually replaced the cowry system. The Ming dynasty taxed copper mining to supply the military with the revenue from mining taxes. In the late Ming and Qing periods, demand for copper increased due to the growth in maritime trade activities and Qing marketing campaigns. In 1682, Governor-General Cai Yurong (?-1699 蔡毓榮) initiated four steps to pay the military after the Revolt of the Three Feudatories: exploit the mines, cast coins, sell landlords’ estates, and reclaim land. The Qing government recruited civilians to extract copper form the mines and cast coins; the government collected 20% of the total extractions and merchants were allowed to buy and sell copper. Local officials who managed to collect more than 10,000 taels in taxes became eligible for a promotion; merchants and miners who paid ca. 3000-5000 taels in taxes could be awarded an official position. All these measures stimulated the development of the mining industry in Yunnan. The taxation of mining increased tenfold by 1706, reaching 81,428 taels.159 In 1723, the Yongzheng emperor modified the copper monopoly and allowed that miners could freely trade any copper surplus in addition to the quota delivered to the government. The new policy encouraged the development of the mining industry: the copper production increased from 100 million jin to 300 million jin by the year 1728.160 In addition to establishing a public school system, Chen Hongmou understood the importance of copper circulation in Sino-Foreign trade. He adopted two approaches to was built in 1602. Due to the cancellation of bronze delivery to imperial’s capital the initial purpose of casting coinage was replaced by building a temple in Kunming. 159 YNTS, vol. 4, 258-259. 160 YNTS, vol. 4, 260. 64 meet the demand of money and stabilize the market price of copper. First, to solve the shortage of labor in the copper industry and to guarantee a fixed production quota, the news that individuals could keep the leftover copper from the smelting process attracted labors to work in newly established copper smelting facilities. Second, in order to secure the output from mines in the hand of the Qing empire, the copper quota that had to be sent to the Qing administration was increased and sold at a fixed price. Any surplus could be sold on the market for manufacturing purposes, such as kitchen utensils.161 Chen Hongmou’s economic thought and policy launched a thorough shift from command production to market driven state procurement, from payment at “official rates” (guanjia 官價) to payment at “people’s [market] rates” (minjia民價).162 By 1738, Yunnan had become the biggest supplier of copper coins to China’s metropolitan areas, preventing a shortage of coins in the trade between China, Europe, and Southeast Asia in the early modern period. The copper boom also reduced the demand for copper imports from Japan. To continue the copper mine extraction, a large number of Han immigrants, Muslims, and natives became miners and jointly worked together. Although the Qing government was in need of laborers in the coal mines, the empire remained cautious with regard to the mining industry and miners.163 In the eyes of rulers, the accumulation of local wealth was a potential threat, which might lead to the rise of a local power to compete with the imperial rule. Therefore, the imperial administration supervised the operation of copper mining and transportation, and the copper administration (tongzheng 161 Rowe, Saving the World, 208. 162 Rowe, Saving the World, 209. 163 Yang, Between Winds and Clouds, 213. 65 銅政) managed all affairs related to copper manufacturing.164 Similar to the fear of losing control over Chinese and natives when allowing mixed marriages, the Qing government was concerned over the alliance between Chinese and non-Han miners. But neither the alliance nor the rebellions proved to be a real challenge to the Qing administration. The tension between Muslim and Han miners and merchants led to the Panthay Rebellion (1856-1873), which almost overthrew Qing control over Yunnan. The bloody rebellion caused a million deaths and worsened anti-Hui attitudes, which reshaped the relationship between ethnic communities with the Qing government.165 The mining industry also created a visible transformation in the landscape. Two major mining complexes were located in Jinchai (金釵廠) and Gejiu (個舊). Old towns expanded their size and populations, and more towns emerged after the large influx of miners and merchants poured into these regions. The process of urbanization occurred in regions surrounding mines, bringing employment and commercial opportunities to local residents. But the mining operations resulted in a series of transformations of the landscape and of environmental conditions, including deforestation, loss of diversity, land erosion, and air pollution, among other relevant negative effects. Although environmental pollution became a potential threat for Yunnan, copper circulation witnessed the growth of the borderland economy and transregional commerce. In the fifteenth and sixteenth century, local traders transported local products and basic 164 Yang, Between Winds and Clouds, 225. 165 David G. Atwill, The Chinese Sultanate: Islam, Ethnicity, and the Panthay Rebellion in Southwest China, 1856-1873. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005): 188. The causes of the rebellion are still debated. Some scholars believe the rebellion started due to the conflicts over mining sources between Han and Hui; others argue the Chinese anti-Muslim attitude was the major cause. For more information, refer to Atwill’s book. 66 goods from lowland centers to upland remote regions, mostly limited to the Yun-Gui macro-regions and Southeast Asian highlands.166 The mountainous terrain and harsh natural landscape created physical barriers that compromised the commodity trade and market system in China’s southwest frontier which could not compare with the well- functioning mercantile exchanges in the southern coastal and metropolitan regions. The caravan trade as a market structure can be characterized as a treelike system, which branched out from Kunming and Dali into more remote areas.167 At the early stage of long-distance trade in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Chinese silver flowed into Tengyue because merchants and the Ming government purchased rubies, amber, and jade in “Eight Gem Market” Street.168 By the mid-nineteenth century, following the influence of commercialization and the growth of market demands, Yunnan-based caravans traveled far and wide to destinations in the Western Corridors including Bhamo, Katha, and the Bawdwin Mine, and to Southern Corridor markets including Kengtung and Chiangmai in Burma and Siam respectively.169 Han Chinese never replaced native traders and merchants in the caravan teams, but high-ranking Yunnan officials and Chinese merchants owned and dominated the so-called “mule teams” and “horse gangs” (mabang 166 Skinner identified nine macro-regions—Lingnan, Upper Yangtze, Middle Yangtze, Lower Yangtze, Northwest China, North China, Yun-Guizhou, Southeast Coast, and Manchuria—as the natural market regions of the major cities in the nineteenth century. His concept comprised marketing hierarchies, represented by the flow of commodities from the periphery to major cities. The most populated cities in China were located near advanced and convenient water transportation systems on rivers. Therefore, the Yun-Gui plateau (yungui gaoyuan 雲貴高原) had its obvious drawback in its riverine system and mountainous terrain. For details about the concept of “physiographic macro-regions,” see G. William Skinner’s essay “Regional Urbanization in nineteenth-century China,” in The City in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977): 211-49. 167 Hill, Merchants and Migrants, 35. 168 Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 169. 169 Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 170. 67 馬幫). The caravan trade continued to thrive from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Cotton was another major and most profitable commodity that the horse gangs transported. Although Yunnan did not cultivate cotton, the region’s advanced textile industry not only produced quality clothes and textile artifacts but also dyed colorful cloth.170 Chinese traders bought raw cotton and cloth from highland areas surrounding Kengtung, and caravans went to Luang Prabang to purchase cotton.171 In the cotton business, the Yunnanese caravans imported raw cotton from Burma and transported Chinese silk, finished dyed clothes, and porcelain to Burma; in return local textile products and cotton were transported to China. Another commodity that played roles in the caravan trade was the Pu’er tea, which began as early as the Tang dynasty when tea was exchanged for Tibetan horses, but the trade reached its peak after the Qing military and immigrants arrived and settled in Yunnan. At the early age of the tea trade, peddlers carried goods like tea and salt on their backs, until later the caravan teams were organized. In the eighteenth century, tea trade routes reached Beijing and the empire’s major cities, as well as Tibet, India, Southeast Asia, and in some cases, Eurasia. Pu’er tea was brought as tribute to Beijing. Domestic consumption concentrated in Chengdu. Departing from Xishuangbanna, Yunnanese muleteers and animals carried tea to Xiaguan (下關), from where it was transported to Lijiang (麗江), Tengchong, and Burma. When the caravan team reached Yangon, Burma, they sent tea to Tibet through the northern overland route and to India 170 YNTS, vol. 4, 268. 171 Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 172-3. 68 by sea. The maritime trade then transported tea to India, from where it was distributed to European countries. Therefore, Kolkata had gradually become a transit market for tea destined for the world market.172 Conclusion As Chinese migrants settled down in the region, a process of changes led to political, economic, and cultural transformations that assimilated indigenous communities into becoming “Chinese” and integrated Yunnan even more into the long-distance trade with the Southeast Asian borderlands. Those transformations built a new Yunnan, connecting the province to the Qing realm. Yunnan’s caravan trade and merchants became the “middle section” of the trade that connected the Qing with South and Southeast Asia. Chinese merchants played active roles in reshaping a commercialized Yunnan. Ethnic minorities also participated in the development of Yunnan’s economy. Their resettlements and constant interaction with Burmese and Siamese partners reflected both their close relationships with Southeast Asia and their acceptance of having become Chinese. In the process of economic development, a large number of natives and Han settlers incorporated to meet the state’s interests. In copper mining industry, ethnic tensions might be visible. But this visible tension also reflected how the natives and Han settlers managed to accommodate one another. The exploitation of the mines and the copper production caused significant environmental pollution and changes to the landscape. Unfortunately, today there are few if any accounts of the ecological conditions 172 YNTS, vol. 4, 269. 69 in the copper mining era that would allow us to assess how the landscape changed from the time before the mines opened to the time when copper extraction came to an end. 70 CHAPTER V CONCLUSION The transformation of Yunnan in Chinese history was dynamic and complex. Located in the borderland region adjacent to Southeast Asia, Yunnan was and still is exposed to multiple cultures and political centers. Even though the region’s strategic location and valuable resources attracted the imperial expansion, none of China’s imperial dynasties could fully transform Yunnan into a conventional Han-dominated province. For more than a millennium prior to the creation of Yunnan Province during the Mongol Yuan dynasty, Yunnan functioned as a “frontier” region where the indigenous population encountered various cultural influences and invasions from rulers who were inspired by the values and concepts of Confucian orthodoxy and regarded the indigenous locals as inferior. This “Chinese-barbarian binary” and the related “center- local dichotomy” cast a shadow over the truth that the centralized government did not unify Yunnan. This was especially true at the height of the Nanzhao and Dali Kingdoms, whose cultural values, transnational relations and military forces rivaled those of the Tang and the Song dynasties. It was only during the Mongol conquest of Dali that Yunnan’s native leaders and local elites received imperial recognition. The invention of the name Yunnan served the purpose of governing the local population under a centralized rule. To govern the multiethnic territory of Yunnan the Yuan dynasty granted local chieftains the title tusi and allowed them to continue to rule over the local population. This indirect influence of the Yuan enhanced the imperial rule in indigenous frontier 71 societies. The accomplishments of the Yuan paved the way for the Ming and Qing dynasties to set up an administration that began to civilize the local “barbarians” and to choose their methods to incorporate permanently the distant reaches of the empire. The Ming government inherited the native chieftain system, but they expanded their direct rule. In doing so, the Ming established administrative institutions in the province and encouraged immigrants to introduce Chinese culture to and to exploit the natural resources of their new homeland. A growing number of immigrants relocated to the upland regions that were previously isolated. The Qing expansion to Yunnan represented a turning point in policies towards an amalgamation of cultures for the purpose of incorporating and dominating the region. Upon the Han immigrants’ arrival in Yunnan, their population grew markedly, fueling the demand for valuable resources, arable land, and trade opportunities. Agrarian expansion facilitated urbanization and population growth, stimulating the development of the borderland economy. The exploitation of copper in Yunnan not only supplied copper for the Sino-Foreign trade but also connected Yunnan to Southeast Asian maritime and caravan trade. A wide range of commodities, such as cotton, tea, and jade, integrated Yunnan into a long-distance transregional trade. Together these transformations shaped Yunnan into the “intermediary region” linking China with Southeast Asia and Eurasia. All transformations described above occurred after the Yongzheng emperor replaced the native chieftain system with appointed Qing officials who governed Yunnan. The rationale of initiating the gaitu guiliu policy indicated the Qing empire’s demands in the expansion phase. Although military suppression also expanded imperial influences on the far southwest, the Qing frontier policy would not have been efficient without the help 72 of the local population due to the enormous natural and cultural barriers. Since the emergence of the Manchu, rulers had never been able to identify with non-Chinese peoples. Therefore, they chose to combine Chinese and non-Chinese institutional structures, a step that ultimately proved to be useful and effective in governing the new frontier region. State-sponsored ‘civilizing’ projects aimed to indoctrinate the indigenous population with Han culture and make them into subjects to the Qing empire. The triumph of Chen Hongmou’s civilization mission was embodied in the rise of educated groups who actively participated in facilitating the new Han-style social order in Yunnan. Yet the establishment of Qing authority over Yunnan was accompanied by accommodating indigenous communities and their customs. Yunnan had never been entirely Sinicized or assimilated by Han-Chinese civilization. Maybe the indigenous people resisted the transformation because they sensed that conforming their way of life to the occupying power’s demands could endanger their distinctiveness. Even the misunderstanding of and ignorance about Yunnan are the result of a geography and cultural diversity that repeatedly confounded the emperors, and thus the dynamic course of historical change was less defined by Han Chinese than by the participation in reforms by the local population itself. The ignorance about the history of the ethnic minority springs from their very categorization as minorities. In the case of imperial Yunnan, scholars have described the region as a backward frontier which was occupied by immature, uncivilized, wild, and savage ethnic minorities. After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the Yunnanese were no longer labeled as savages; rather, their definition as an ‘ethnic minority’ in the new state 73 distinguished them from the Han majority. Though they may very well constitute the majority in their home districts, they are a minority within China in statistical terms, and thus the new label reinforced the dominance of the Han Chinese which in conjunction with historians’ depictions of Yunnan as a ‘frontier’ obscures the indigenous population’s capability of having resisted the dominance of the imperial dynasties of the past. In the introduction, I discussed how the terms “frontier” and “borderland” overlap and are entangle in the label of bianjiang. Due to the lack of a precise definition for each term, scholars of Chinese history apply Western frameworks in the study of Yunnan. Although neither term is sufficient to encase the historical particularity of China’s southwest, frontier-borderland studies have helped to illustrate the specific experiences and influences of interethnic trade in early modern Yunnan, providing historians with a more nuanced framework for the study of historical change and continuity in southwestern China. The original interpretation of Sinicization involved two major groups: the Han Chinese who represented Han culture and its presumed superiority, and the Manchus who cultivated their own ethnic identity and culture. The conventional historical narratives of Sinicization and assimilation were generated by overemphasizing a cultural supremacy of the Han majority in transforming both the native populations and the military invaders, who belonged to an ethnic minority compared to the Han. These narratives disregard relations between the ruling class and the dominated subjects. Influenced by this deep- rooted framework, historians often overemphasized the assimilating force of Chinese civilization in transforming the empire’s southwestern periphery and its native inhabitants. It implicitly argues that the frontier policy adopted by emperor Yongzheng 74 and his officials consisted of the integration of Chinese culture and administrative institutions, thus spreading the influence of Chinese civilization rather than Manchu supremacy. But the reality is that the militarization of Yunnan and the relocation of Han Chinese immigrants to Yunnan determined the success of enforcing the power of the state. The Han brought their beliefs and customs along during their resettlement, serving the empire’s purpose to consolidate the region. I argue that the significant contributions made by the Han immigrants in the southwest did not reduce the importance of the native people. Instead of becoming Sinicized they were able to maintain and preserve the variety and diversity in culture and ethnicity through their contact with upland Southeast Asian communities, in spite of the intense attempts to assimilate them by the Qing government. My research has shown that Yunnan was never a well-developed province of China. Though the Ming and Qing integration made the region part of the state, it temporarily but not sustainably accelerated the regional development. Only in recent years has the province’s cultural diversity become a major attraction for tourists. Tourism has brought revenue and job opportunities for Yunnan’s neglected economic development. Ethno-tourism presents marginal ethnic cultures and pristine landscapes to visitors. Minorities who were cut off from China’s economic boom in the past decades due to the remote locations of their residential regions take advantage of the tourism that has reached their homes and manufacture handicrafts as a seasonal source of income. Xi Jinping’s new foreign policy program, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), outlines a vision of increased Eurasian economic integration. The main components of the BRI are to invest in the construction of infrastructure, transportation, and communication projects in Central and Southeast Asia. BRI economic corridors reach 75 different regions with a variety of projects. For instance, the China-Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor program covers Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam and aims to extend the newly built Baoshan-Tengchong highway to Myitkyina, the capital of Myanmar’s Kachin state. Although the strategic role Yunnan played historically has lasted from ancient times to the present-day, the development opportunities and the incomes of its multi- ethnic residents to this day lag behind their neighbors in other areas. The question of why Yunnan’s development level still trails behind compared to other provinces remains unanswered. Is Yunnan’s future still confined by the limited vision of those in power, who want to collect their profits while bypassing the local population? When will Yunnan receive the attention it deserves by scholars and policy makers who jointly develop a vision for a future in which Yunnan’s unique resources are used in a sustainable way that enhances economic opportunities for its multiethnic local residents? 76 APPENDIX A: GLOSSARY Sima Qian司馬遷 Southwestern Barbarians西南夷 Xishuangbanna西雙版納 Water Splashing Festival潑水節 Dai 傣 bazi垻子 Dian滇 Cuan爨 Nanzhao Kingdom南詔國 Changhe State長和国 Dali Kingdom大理國 Yunnan Temporary Province 雲南省 tusi 土司 tuguan土官 Eight Banners八旗 Shanhai Pass山海關 Wu Sangui吳三桂 Gao Qizhuo高其倬 Li Wei李衛 salt intendent 鹽驛道 E’ertai 鄂爾泰 gaitu guiliu改土歸流 grain intendant糧驛道 Chen Hongmou陳宏謀 gaizi街子 postal stations驛站 Silk Road of the Southwest西南絲綢之路 Ancient Tea Horse Road茶馬古道 horse gang馬幫 Pu’er tea普洱茶 77 APPENDIX B: ABBREVIATIONS QSG Qing Shi Gao 清史稿 (Draft for a History of the Qing). Compiled and written by a team of historians led by Zhao Erxun. Zhonghua Publishing House, 1998. YNTZ Yunnan Tongzhi 雲南通志 (Yunnan Gazetteer). Written by E’ertai. Kunming: Yunnan renmin chubanshe, 2007. YNTS Yunnan Tongshi 雲南通史 (The General History of Yunnan). Compiled by He Yaohua. Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 2011. GZDYZ Gongzhongdan Yongzheng chao zouzhe 宮中檔雍正朝奏摺 (Secret Palace Memorials of the Yung-Cheng period). Compiled by the National Palace Museum, 32 volumes. Taipei: National Palace Museum Press, 1977-1980. 78 APPENDIX C: IMPERIAL DYNASTIES Qin 221-206 B.C.E Western (Former) Han 106 B.C.E-8 C.E Eastern (Later) Han 23-220 Three Kingdom (Wei, Shu, Wu) 220-280 Jin 265-317 Northern and Southern Dynasties 317-589 Sui 589-618 Tang 618-907 Five Dynasties 907-960 Northern Song 960-1127 Southern Song 1127-1279 Yuan 1279-1368 Ming 1368-1644 Qing 1644-1912 79 APPENDIX D: EMPERORS OF THE QING DYNASTY Years of Reign Personal Name Reign Title 1636-1643 Hong Taiji皇太極 Tiancong天聰 1644-1661 Fulin福臨 Shunzhi順治 1661-1722 Xuanye玄燁 Kangxi康熙 1722-1735 Yinzhen胤禛 Yongzheng雍正 1736-1796 Hongli弘歷 Qianlong乾隆 1796-1820 Yongyan永琰 Jiaqing嘉慶 1820-1850 Minning旻寧 Daoguang道光 1850-1861 Yizhu奕詝 Xianfeng咸豐 1861-1875 Zaichun載淳 Tongzhi同治 1875-1908 Zaitian 載湉 Guangxu光緒 1909-1912 Puyi溥儀 Xuantong宣統 80 REFERENCES CITED Primary Sources: E’ertai鄂爾泰, Yunnan Tongzhi雲南通志 ( Yunnan Gazetteer), Kunming: Yunnan Renmin chubanshe, 2007. 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