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The Empire Strikes Back: Adaptation and Resistance at Qing Imperial Peripheries
Organizer: Daniel M. McMahon, Ching Yun University, Republic of China
Chair: Donald S. Sutton, Carnegie Mellon University
Discussant: Nicola Di Cosmo, Institute for Advanced Studies
Recent work on early-modern states reveals programs of rationalization, representation, and expansion that anticipate twentieth-century efficiencies but also contain hidden vulnerabilities. In the case of Qing China, the extensive incorporation of outlying territories and vigorous responses of local societies suggest dynamism in state and society that could not overcome the precariousness of empire.
The panelists examine four regional efforts to expand state presence in ethnically-mixed western peripheries, seeking common patterns in policy and investigating how local institutions and practices, as well as global economic developments, affected frontier change. Pat Giersch discusses the 18th century drive to extend copper mines in Yunnan and the resulting transformation of indigene society. Don Sutton examines the Qianlong Emperor's role in the suppression of the late-18th-century Miao revolt in west Hunan. Dan McMahon evaluates early 19th century efforts to integrate and assimilate the ecologically-marginal southern Shaanxi highlands. Xiuyu Wang studies the incorporation of eastern Tibet by late-Qing regional leaders exploiting local divisions and playing the Great Game. Each panelist will present a twelve-minute summary followed by commentary from Nicola Di Cosmo. Open discussion will be prompted by queries from audience members, several of whom will have read prior drafts.
Copper, Commerce, and Empire in Qing China’s Southwest
C. Pat Giersch, Wellesley College
Eastern Asia’s explosive commercial growth in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries led to multiple, complex transformations, including increasing demand for coins. Previous works have assessed how the Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese states managed metals and money; particularly well-documented is Qing China’s regulation of copper mining and the minting of coins. Nevertheless, we still do not fully understand the connections between commerce, mining, and the colonization of Southwest China, where many of the mines were established.
This paper examines how Asia’s bullion shortages spurred the growth of mining in southeast Yunnan and western Guangxi provinces, regions dominated by non-Chinese indigenous communities. Demand for minerals induced thousands of Chinese to migrate to remote areas, open mines, and forge transport routes through Guangxi to Guangdong and the Yangzi basin. Mining transformed local economic and political power. Miners monopolized metallurgical technologies and created secret societies to empower themselves. Merchants created networks and businesses to facilitate purchase and transport, thus seeking to discipline space in return for profit. And officials brought the state’s military and legal powers to bear on copper production in order to increase imperial oversight. How did indigenous political and economic institutions adapt to these new hierarchies? Did indigenes prosper? Or were they excluded from the emerging economic and political spaces?
These questions are designed to explore how Qing empire-building reflected regional economic transformations, how state and migrants relied on strategies for controlling natural resources and commerce, and how indigenous communities confronted such challenges.
Seeing Like an Empire: The Qianlong Emperor, Regional Officials and the Suppression of the Miao Revolt, 1795-97
Donald S. Sutton, Carnegie Mellon University
The suppression of the Miao Uprising of 1795-97, a turning point in Qing history, was the final act of the Qianlong reign. Undertaken at the cost of vast expenditures and legendary corruption, the campaign was directed at the first of the far-flung disturbances that would sorely strain the Qing empire. If we follow James C. Scott and try to “see like a state,” we can grasp much about the Miao region’s incorporation that led to revolt and about the manner of its suppression, but we are left wondering if this imperial state did have a single perspective.
The paper’s principal focus is on the emperor's personal role, which is vividly illuminated in almost daily memorial annotations, edicts and celebratory verses. These express a view of Miao assimilability and tractability differing from those of some officials. How did generals and court historians respond to Qianlong’s expectations and instructions? My intention is not to offer a “great-man” view of 18th century history but to reveal that diverse state perspectives and aims at court, in the field, among Manchus and Han, affected both the outcome and the way the revolt was represented.
This paper depends on analysis of the records as texts, adding a portrait of Qianlong in his eighties that can be compared with better-known episodes in his reign, and with emperors of other times and places. But like other papers in this panel, it is rooted in the local context of a polyethnic society at the edge of empire.
Imperial Integration: Reconstruction in the Southern Shaanxi Highlands, 1799-1820
Daniel M. McMahon, Ching Yun University, Republic of China
Reconstruction following China’s 1796-1804 White Lotus revolt provides insight into key historical narratives of 18th century expansion and 19th century decline. This study focuses on regional government efforts to shape the southern Shaanxi highlands, with an eye to how the area, and strategies for it, fit within the larger framework of Qing frontier rule. The argument advanced is that the highlands, although regarded as a frontier, were unusual. Their close proximity to Chinese centers of power, historical ties, and Han residents engendered stricter efforts to create conditions of orthodox imperial life. That is, most intensively via a small group of regional administrators, plans were laid not only to better link the highlands to the heartland, but also to more precisely mirror heartland practices and values. This was a goal of integration, in which environmental and cultural obstacles were to be circumvented via transfer of new technology, exploitation of natural resources, imposition on markets, enlistment of elite, and refashioned subjects. The aim was not fully realized: terrain constrained and attention flagged. The project, however, provides an important example of how the state flexibly adapted strategies to restore control over one periphery devastated by trends of imperial expansion, focusing on this site in an early endeavor to turn the tide of decline. Its strategies fit firmly within broader frontier and high Qing administrative traditions, but marked a shift toward local initiative, elite involvement, reliance on commerce and industry, and environmental degradation.
State Pressure and Local Fissure: How Dege Fell to Qing Incorporation in the 1900s
Xiuyu Wang, Washington State University Vancouver
Late Qing administrative incorporation of the ethnic Kham region involved more than just frontier expansionism championed by rigorous provincial officials. It was possible also because of local factionalist infighting, which affected the way in which state forces entered and exploited local society. The incorporation of Dege in northern Kham, on which this study focuses, shows that the intersection of state expansionism and local factionalism was a key process of frontier administration, but neither the center nor the locality could control it entirely, subject, as they were, to changing priorities and capabilities. For instance, when Sichuan in 1897 intervened in a succession dispute within the Dege ruling family, it possessed advantages in force, divide-and-rule tactics and local factional support but did not attain an easy incorporation of the region as anticipated by the expansionist governor. Oppositions from Dege? neighboring officials and the Lhasa government proved enough to make the Qing court nervous of frontier instability. But the divided Dege family did not remain safe for long. When the second threat came in the 1900s, one faction was weakened beyond recovery, Lhasa? support failed to come in time, and an indecisive Qing court was maneuvered into consenting to incorporation by a new group of expansionist officials, who covertly went beyond the scope of court instruction. As a result, Dege was administratively severed from local rule, which provided an incident that would be seized upon by Kham succeeding incorporators. Local fissure and state pressure significantly affected the Dege frontier in both incorporation attempts.