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Book
Review |
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Pamela Kyle Crossley, Helen F.
Siu, and Donald S. Sutton, eds. Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity,
and Frontier in Early Modern China. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University
of California Press, 2006. Pp. xi + 388. $54.95 (hardcover); $15.95 (Adobe
Reader).
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Among
the many recent anthropological and historical studies of the frontier and
ethnicity in imperial and twentieth-century China, Empire at the
Margins
stands out. Pamela Crossley and her colleagues have produced a collection
notable for its broad coverage of northern, western and southern borderlands
in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) Empires, its attention to ethnic
others within the imperial heartland and its juxtaposition of comparable case
studies. |
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Starting from Manchu and
Mongol groups at the core of the Qing imperial power structure, the volume's
essays move among new and old frontiers in the west, southwest, and south,
before concluding with two essays on the construction of ethnicity in China's
internal frontier zones. The
essays illustrate a continuum of state versus local agency in the construction
of ethnic identities
ranging from the very direct state fashioning of ethnic categories in the
heartland, the competition between state and local agents in the frontier
periphery, to the weak presence of the center in internal peripheries where
local constituencies adopted symbols associated with the state and its elites
in order to create, sustain, and also cross ethnic distinctions.In the heartland,
the state directly defined ethnic categories. At the frontier periphery, the
state competed, often unsuccessfully, to impose these distinctions. Between,
in China's internal peripheries, local constituencies adopted symbols associated
with the state and its elites in order to create, sustain, and also cross
ethnic distinctions. Empire at the Margins suggests that the Ming
and Qing imperial governments strategically defined and redefined ethnic identity
to control their diverse populations. However, these imperial constructs and
their effects were always informed by "the dynamism between central and
local that is the essence of history" (14). The geographical arrangement
of the chapters also reinforces the interactive model advocated here for the
study of ethnic categorization. Ongoing redefinitions of Manchu, Mongol, and
Han ethnic identity depended on one other, as did southern ethnic boundaries
drawn for instance around the Yao, She, Hakka, and Dan. |
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The essays by Pamela Kyle
Crossley and Mark Elliott show how imperial institutions such as the Eight
Banners and the Court of Colonial Affairs were instrumental in the forging
of Manchu and Mongol identities. Crossley attributes the Qing success in forging
unity among the Mongols out of fragmented federations that included Turkic-speaking
groups as well as Mongolian-speaking groups to the Qing government's replication
of Chinggis Khan's own strategy of using loyalty or followership to define
Mongol identity. David Faure writes that the Yao survived in Guangxi after
disappearing elsewhere because the state differentiated between those whose
names appeared in government registers (and were thus transformed into subjects)
and those whose names did not (and who the state categorized under ethnic
labels). |
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Ambiguity
characterized the state's efforts to govern its ethnic others. This resulted
from negotiation between the imperial desire for expansion and control and
the complex dynamics of local practice in the borderlands. James Millward
argues that the Qing government refrained from assimilationist policies in
governing Islamic subjects in eighteenth and early nineteenth century Xinjiang
but, at the same time, policed the distinctions between Chinese or Sino-Muslim
immigrants and local Turkic Muslims, forbidding the former from adopting the
practices of the latter. In an essay on local government institutions in the
southwest, John Herman shows that, despite policies aimed at dissolving formerly
autonomous leadership positions into the regular administrative structure,
the Ming court confirmed the dominance of local powerbrokers. |
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Beyond ambiguity, the dialectical
relationship between center and periphery translated into competing discourses
in officialdom. Jonathan Lipman analyzes two competing official discourses
on Sino-Muslims who were theoretically considered Chinese. One, derived from
Confucian models and adopted by emperor Yongzheng, portrayed them as objects
for moral reformation. Another, a racial discourse influential among local
officials, described them as inherently violent and, on this basis, discriminated
against them. Focusing on the Miao frontierland in Guizhou and Hunan province,
Donald Sutton reaches similar conclusions. In this case, the Emperor Qianlong
and non-Han officials both promoted policies of quarantine while Han officials
urged assimilation. On Hainan island, as in Anne Csete shows, economic tensions
between immigrant traders and the indigenous Li resulted in one set of policies
intended to protect Li territory and another designed to suppress Li resistance.
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The last two essays foreground
local agency. Wing-hoi Chan traces the original meaning and transformation
of the ethnic label "She". Chan argues that "She" originally
denoted a group of vagrants. By Ming times it had become an ethnic category;
the She remain an official ethnic minority in the People's Republic of China.
While he sees state intervention as crucial to this transformation, Chan emphasizes
that individuals claimed She identity as a symbol of resistance against state
intervention. She identity exerted such an appeal that it occasionally led
to "reverse sinicization" (278). The assertion of common descent
from the mythical creature Panhu created ties between She and Yao peoples
(who shared the same belief) and thus cemented alliances between groups resisting
state control. Helen Siu and Liu Zhiwei propose that in the Pearl River Delta
the state intervened in ethnic categorization only virtually. Local
populations who adopted symbols of imperial orthodoxy (education, examination
degrees, genealogies, and community rituals) understood themselves as Han;
they defined the floating population who did not as the Dan. As in the case
of the She and the Yao, these distinctions were, to an extent, permeable. |
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Clearly,
the authors Empire at the Margins embrace a constructivist interpretation
of ethnicity. They propose that this interpretation be applied not only
to ethnic classification in the modern nation-state but equally to pre-twentieth
century world: "Ethnic phenomena are not only dynamic across time,
but are produced by intertwining acts of naming others and naming oneself,
using distinctly "ethnic" institutions of language, religion,
economic activity, or family organization—or using no external markers
at all and relying solely on consciousness of difference and similarity"
(1). In doing so, Empire at the Margins challenges unreflective use
of ethnic designations and thus poses crucial questions about the creation,
adoption, and contestation of ethnic distinctions as well as the purposes
these distinctions served for individuals, local groups, and the state.
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These questions are answered in different ways in the essays, but they are indicative
of a paradigm shift. Empire at the
Margins
demonstrates that historians of imperial China have moved beyond the grand
imperial narrative which stresses the opposition of Chinese to non-Chinese
and the inevitable pull of Chinese civilization. Yet these authors also go
well beyond mere rejection of the sinicization/sinification model. The authors
invite us to enter a debate animated by a different set of questions, a set
of questions bound to bring the history of ethnicity in China back from the
exclusivism of sinicization to a new engagement with world and comparative
history. |
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Empire at the
Margins
will appeal to world and comparative historians interested in frontier and
ethnic studies or in state-building. The essays, originally presented at a
conference in 1996, are remarkably cohesive and read like chapters that transport
the reader to different regions and locations but resonate with each other
throughout. I would assign it in graduate or undergraduate seminars that address
the topics central to it. Excerpts will enrich world history survey classes.
I dream of supplementing such excerpts with translated documentary sources
illustrating the complexities so carefully teased out in this remarkable volume. |
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Hilde
De Weerdt
University of Tennessee, Knoxville |
