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2020 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

10. Imperial Chinese Relations with Nomadic Groups

Author : Joseph MacKay

Published in: Nomad-State Relationships in International Relations

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

This chapter assesses the nomad-sedentary interface in the long-run context of Imperial China. I focus on the late imperial Ming and Qing dynasties. I identify three distinct ideal-type forms of nomadic groups. The first comprises the nomadic peoples of the Inner Asian Steppe, which confronted China on its non-Western frontier, and which occasionally constituted themselves as rival empires. The second comprises the smaller upland nomadic and migratory peoples, chiefly on China’s southern peripheries. These were not threats per se, but were still habitually constructed as “others” by the Chinese state. The third group, not traditionally, parsed as nomads, were pirates: seagoing social groupings on China’s southeastern coastlines that occasionally organized themselves at scale, controlling territory, levying taxes, and praying on the rural margins of the Chinese state. By degrees, successive dynasties proved adept at regulating relations with all three—likely doing so with greater flexibility than modern states.

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For a general review of the late imperial dynasties in IR, see MacKay (2019b).

See also Motyl (2001), McConaughey, Musgrave, and Nexon (2018). For postcolonial accounts in IR, see Chowdhry and Nair (2004), Barkawi and Laffey (2006).

I refer to “Imperial China” and things “Chinese” for simplicity’s sake, doing so only when characterizing the dynasties taken together. In practice, a historically persistent China is an anachronism—I thus refer to specific dynasties wherever I can.

That said, the Ming and Qing dynasties themselves had some features of modern states—for example, a formal bureaucracy (Woodside, 2009).

Even then, among East Asian societies, Korea recognized Chinese authority habitually (Clark, 1998), and Vietnam often (G. Wang, 1998; Womack, 2006), but Japan did so only intermittently (Fogel, 2009).

See also Honeychurch and Amartuvshin (2005), Houle, Honeychurch (2015), review in Frachetti (2012). For a recent review with IR in mind, see MacKay (2016, 482–487).

Because steppe nomads did not generally have written languages, recorded history on the steppe begins with contact between steppe societies and sedentary ones. That said, archaeological evidence increasingly suggests that relatively complex social organization arose independently on the steppe before this (Frachetti, 2012; Houle, 2009; Rogers, 2012).

How the empire or confederacy was built was itself a matter of debate. For example, Honeychurch (2013, 313–314) suggests it may have been confederated relatively peacefully, rather than by conquest. On steppe confederacy generally, see Sneath (2007).

In contrast, Han China had a population of more than 50 million; Tang China had doubled that again (Barfield, 2001a, 236).

Many accounts dispute the “Confucian peace” thesis. Kang, Shaw, and Fu (2016) quantify the reduced level of war in East Asia proper relative to the frontier.

There is no single “Great Wall”. Rather, Chinese wall building along its northern frontiers dates back at least to the Qing Dynasty (Sima Qian, 1993a, 12). Wall building peaked during the mid and late Ming Dynasty (Waldron, 1990).

On “others” in international politics, see Neumann (1996), Tsygankov (2008). On the steppe as other in the European tradition, see Neumann and Wigen (2013).

The walls’ purpose likely varied over time, and is itself an object of controversy. While it may have kept foreign forces out, Lattimore suggests that it also served the broader purpose of demarcating China’s conceptual or cultural edges. It thus defined what was in China as much as keeping others out (Lattimore, 1937, 1962, 58). During the Qing period it lost military salience, as the Chinese frontier pressed north, but gained symbolic value (Perdue, 2005, 42–43).

The practical distinction between Yuan and Ming rule is, nonetheless, easy to overstate. What mattered was the legitimate appearance of a restoration of Chinese home rule, and thus a rejection of a political tradition perceived to be foreign. See Brook (2010).

On the ethnology and ethnohistory of the highland peoples of southern China and Southeast Asia, see Lim (1984), and chapters in Michaud (2000).

For an introduction to China and Central Asia, see Rossabi (1998). For more general introductions to the region, see Beckwith (2009), Golden (2011).

See also Fletcher (1968) on Chinese relations with the Timurid Empire. Kokand is now in eastern Uzbekistan. In Tibet, likely owing to extreme elevation, dynastic Chinese authority was limited to symbolic arrangements, the significance of which remains contested today (Sperling, 2004). On the resulting inter-imperial contestations, see Cheney (2017).

Scott’s book has been subject to a wide range of positive and negative attention. See, for example, Michaud (2010), Jonsson (2010), and Krasner (2011). Importantly, Scott does not systematically distinguish between modern states and empires or other large premodern political assemblages.

For an extended treatment of Chinese pirate politics on these terms, see MacKay (2013).

Zheng Yi Sao outlived the band by decades, and died running a gambling house in Canton, in 1844 (MacKay, 2013, 570, n17).

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Title: Imperial Chinese Relations with Nomadic Groups
Author: Joseph MacKay
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Nomad-State Relationships in International Relations
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-28052-9

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-28053-6

Copyright Year: 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28053-6_10