Negotiating Empire on China's Miao Frontier, 1597-1919

Abstract

Between the sixteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, the “Miao Frontier” (Miaojiang) was transformed from territory beyond the pale of Ming (1368-1644) “civilization” to a center of commercial forestry in the Qing (1644-1911). The Miao Frontier was a mountainous “internal frontier” in the empire’s southwest, named for local populations whom imperial officials designated “Miao.” Imperial expansion on the Miao Frontier, like the Southwest more generally, involved violent military campaigns against local communities. Yet the imperial state gained firmer control only as migration from the eastern provinces, expansion of the forestry trade, and the registration of local communities for imperial taxes remade frontier society. This study focuses on Tianzhu County, a former Ming battalion on the border of present-day Guizhou and Hunan provinces where Miao and imperial subjects (min) lived “mixed up together.” By following families in Tianzhu over the course of three hundred years through documents written in their own hand, this study examines how imperial markets, the fiscal state, and local kinship organizations transformed the Miao Frontier and the empire at large. It finds that families and communities aligned themselves with imperial authority to protect their own interests. At the same time, these communities maintained cultural difference through marriage and livelihood practices and through networks of affinal kin.