Managing Borders
The Mongols and Jurchens who settled in Kaiyuan acted as brokers between the Ming state and groups unallied to the Ming. Local authorities permitted them to move freely beyond the border and, even after they had established residences in Kaiyuan, they were allowed to present “tribute” of horses and other goods to the Ming state, sometimes at the capital and sometimes locally, on a regular basis, which was a valued opportunity to generate wealth.[1419] This policy contrasts with a strain of Ming rhetoric and policy that insisted on strict separation of Chinese and alien populations.
Several laws in the Ming Code limited contact between Chinese Ming subjects and “barbarians” in the borderlands, and the early Ming government famously prohibited subjects from overseas travel (with uneven follow-through).Apropos the Ming Code’s harsh penalties for unauthorized border-crossings, Timothy Brook argues, “since the border marked the extent of the space within which the emperor enjoyed sovereignty... to step beyond was to step outside that sovereignty.” Brook's characterization, based on the Ming-Vietnam border, does not sit entirely comfortably with the evidence from Liaodong. “Ming Chinese had a clear understanding that a border was a hard break on the field of sovereignty,” observes Brook.[1420] Administrative structures such as Anle and Zizai exercised influence beyond the border through a capillary-like movement of people across a porous borderland. Brook's comments remind us that the Ming was surrounded by widely diverse polities and that Ming perceptions of their relations with such neighbors, including the nature of borders, varied correspondingly.
As was true in most empires, borders generated anxiety and contention. Part of the unease arose from the perception that imperial control and the march of civilization weakened far from centers of political and cultural authority such as the capital or the hinterlands.[1421] As the site of direct interaction with the Other, borders could also act as a lightning rod for wider questions of political and cultural loyalty.
The same porosity that the Ming state exploited to achieve its ends also engendered fears of collusion between Chinese subjects and populations beyond the border. “Traitors,” from senior court ministers in the capital to imperial princes, “heterodox” religious groups, and garrison commanders along the frontier, were accused of secret alliances with Mongols, Jurchen, Tibetans, and Japanese individuals and groups. Although such charges were generally false and seem to support the characterization of the Ming state and ruling elite as xenophobic, they also suggest contemporary awareness that whatever dynastic law or policy might indicate, borders did not halt the flow of people and goods unless extraordinary measures were taken. In fact, the Ming state itself had a deep institutional commitment to the flow of goods and people between the border and the hinterlands, regularly moving large amounts of grain, silver, and manpower to the border and acquiring horses and warriors from Tibet, Mongolia, and Jurchens lands.