Ethnic Revolts

Aboriginals, or ethnic minorities, constituted an entirely different kind of threat. Viewed from the perspective of the central government, the various aboriginal peoples of south-west China were uncivilised and superstitious, not to mention savage and warlike.

Thus, not unlike other empires throughout history, the Ming and Qing sought to co-opt and channel the supposedly violent elements of their populace and use them to advance their imperial aims. In doing so they realised and extended the emperor's claims of universal rule, for it meant that the ‘barbarian' elements were being used for positive purposes. Interestingly enough, the Ming appear to have made more extensive use of minority groups as shock troops than the more consciously multi-ethnic Qing, who from a relatively early point emphasised the innate savagery of such peoples and eagerly adopted the Han civilising mission used by their predecessors to incorporate minority lands more formally into the empire, a process known as gaitu guiliu, or ‘making regular offices out of aborginal lands'.

For most of the Ming period the empire was content to let local aboriginal leaders rule as practically independent chieftains in exchange for pledges of loyalty, coupled with payment of ‘tribute taxes' and occasional military service.

But as much as standard accounts of aboriginal rebellions seek to portray the instigators of these movements as antisocial malcontents, one can still see these peoples as more passive-aggressive than anything else. While they certainly tended to distrust the central government and did what they could to maintain a measure of autonomy, they were rarely threats that could overthrow the empire. It seems as if most aboriginal uprisings were sparked by Han Chinese encroachment on traditional aboriginal lands and the empire-building efforts of Ming-Qing policymakers who sought to find outlets for the empire's expanding population. And the ways in which the imperial state sought to play local interests against one another and vice versa attests to the simmering levels of violence along the ever-expanding frontier. Local peoples were encouraged to cast aside their traditional ways in favour of those of the colonisers.^[208] When they resisted, they were branded as rebels. Moreover, efforts to suppress one rebellion often sparked others as local economies were disrupted by military campaigns.

From the perspective of the central government these measures were necessary as there were great concerns over the lawlessness of the south­western border areas. Not only was the state actively encouraging Han Chinese to settle in the area to acculturate the locals; they were also apparently hoping to strengthen their hold on the area vis-à-vis the Burmese and Tibetans. In addition to the multiple Jinchuan Wars of the eighteenth century in western Sichuan, which pitted the expanding Qing state against tribal leaders who had ‘revolted' against their local appointees, Ming and Qing records are replete with accounts of border clashes between government forces and Burmese and Tibetan ‘bandits'. Nevertheless, on the whole these tactics were effective and Chinese control over the south-west steadily increased throughout the late imperial period as the combination of superior technology, use of local allies and demography facilitated the con­tinued expansion of the empire.