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Nature and Nurture on Imperial China's Frontiers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2009

PETER C. PERDUE
PETER C. PERDUE*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Ecologies of production and state classifications shaped Chinese imperial frontier policies. In Chinese classical debates about the effect of environment on human character, the dominant view held that all peoples could become civilised, but a dissenting view held that barbarians could never change their ways. Nomadic pastoralists likewise debated whether to adopt certain Han cultural practices or reject them. Chinese dynasties often accepted diversity, but at certain times tried to eliminate difference by persuasion or by force. Three cases illustrate these processes during the Qing period: the relationship between Manchus and Mongols, Qing policies towards aboriginal peoples and the settlement of Taiwan, and Qing policies towards southwestern mountain peoples. In each case, policies came out of the interaction of ethnic categorization, views on cultural transformation and frontier environments. When Qing rulers lost the ability to recognise such cultural distinctions, they lost a key to the endurance of the empire.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 245 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

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2 Ibid. 17.

3 Ibid. 12–13.

4 Ibid. 55.

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6 Articles by Lieberman and myself forthcoming in the journal Social Science History will provide some comparative perspectives on China.

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13 Jonathan N. Lipman, ‘“A Fierce and Brutal People”: On Islam and Muslims in Qing Law’ in Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity, and Frontier in Early Modern China, eds., Pamela Kyle Crossley, Helen F. Siu and Donald S. Sutton (2006).

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21 For further discussion, see Perdue, Peter C., ‘From Turfan to Taiwan: Trade and War on Two Chinese Frontiers’, in Untaming the Frontier: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Frontier Studies, eds., Parker, Bradley J. and Rodseth, Lars (Tucson, 2005)Google Scholar.

22 Maier, Among empires, p. 102.

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24 Major studies include Rubinstein, Murray A., Taiwan: A New History (Armonk, NY, M. E. Sharpe, 1999)Google Scholar, Shepherd, Taiwan Frontier, Teng, Travel Writing. See also the excellent summary in Richards, The Unending Frontier, pp. 89–111.

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27 Ibid., 216.

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