Christian Daniels - The Transformation of Yunnan in Ming China

This book examines how the Ming state transformed the multi-ethnic society of Yunnan into a province. Yunnan had remained outside the ambit of central government when ruled by the Dali kingdom, 9371253, and its foundation as a province by the Yuan regime in 1276 did not disrupt Dali kingdom-style political, social and religious institutions. It was the Ming state in the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries, through its institutions for military and civilian control, which brought about profound changes and truly transformed local society into a province. In their investigation of the incorporation of ethnic peoples into Chinese administrative systems, authors demonstrate how diverse ethnic communities negotiated with the Ming state. In contrast to other studies which have portrayed Yunnan as a non-Han frontier region waiting to be colonised, this book, by focusing on changes in local society, casts off the idea of Yunnan as a border area far from civilisation.

Christian Daniels is Professor and Head of the Division of Humanities at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Jianxiong Ma is an Associate Professor in the Division of Humanities at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Series editor: David Faure

Chinese University of Hong Kong

Historians are being increasingly attracted by the methodology of historical anthropology, an approach which combines observations in the field with documentary analysis, both of official documents and of documents collected from local society. In China, historians have been pursuing such local historical research for a generation, with very little of this work being available in English hitherto. This series makes available in English research undertaken by the Historical Anthropology of Chinese Society project based at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and related work. The books argue that top-heavy, dynasty-centred history is incomplete without an understanding of how local communities were involved in the government process and in the creation of their own historical narratives. The books argue that Chinese social history needs to be rewritten from the bottom up.

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/The-Historical-Anthropology-of-Chinese-Society-Series/book-series/HISTANTHCH INSOC

From the Dali Kingdom to Imperial Province

Edited by Christian Daniels and Jianxiong Ma

First published 2020

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2020 selection and editorial matter, Christian Daniels and Jianxiong Ma; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of Christian Daniels and Jianxiong Ma to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ISBN: 978-0-367-35336-0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-33078-0 (ebk)

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Christian Daniels was Professor of Chinese history at the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan from 1996 to 2014. He is now Head and Professor in the Humanities Division, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He has published extensively in Chinese, Japanese and English about the history of Southwest China and northern mainland Southeast Asia. He guest edited the Special Issue: Upland Peoples in the Making of History in Northern Continental Southeast Asia for the international journal, Southeast Asian Studies (Vol. 2, No. 1, April 2013) published by Kyoto University. His two most recent English publications include The Mongol-Yuan in Yunnan and ProtoTai/Tai Polities during the 13th-14th Centuries, Journal of the Siam Society (Vol. 106, 2018, pp. 201243), and Upland Peoples and the 1729 Qing Annexation of the Tai Polity of Sipsong Panna, Yunnan: Disintegration from the Periphery, in China and Southeast Asia: Historical Interactions edited by Geoff Wade (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), pp. 188217.

HUANG Caiwen is Professor and Vice Dean at Nationalities Research Institute of Yunnan (Faculty of Ethnology and History), Yunnan Minzu University in Kunming, China. He researches the historical anthropology of Yunnan, and he has published in Chinese on northwest Yunnan.

Jianxiong MA is Associate Professor in the Division of Humanities at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. As an anthropologist, he has done long-term field work on ethnic groups in Southwest China, especially on the frontier between Yunnan and Myanmar. His books include The Lahu Minority in Southwest China: A Response to Ethnic Marginalization on the Frontier (Routledge, 2013) and Reinventing Ancestors: Ethnic Mobilization in Chinas Southwest Frontier and the Historical Construction of Lahu (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, in Chinese). His present research focuses on the historical formation of the Sino-Myanmar frontier and ecological conditions of cultural diversity and ethnicity in Southwest China. His publications on these topics include Salt and Revenue in the Frontier Formation: State Mobilized Ethnic Politics in Yunnan-Burma Borderland since the 1720s in Modern Asian Studies (Vol. 48, No. 6, 2014, pp. 16371669); The Rise of Gentry Power on the China-Burma Frontier since the 1870s: The Case of the Peng Family in Mianning, Southwest Yunnan in International Journal of Asian Studies (Vol. 11, No. 1, 2014); The Mule Caravans as Cross-Border Networks: Local Bands and Their Stretch on the Frontier between Yunnan and Burma, co-authored with MA Cunzhao, in Myanmars Mountain and Maritime Borderscapes: Local Practices, Boundary-making and Figured Worlds