Revisiting China’s southern frontiers in the Ming–Qing periods: Editors’ introduction

Abstract

In 1911, the revolution led by Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925) and his associates in the Revolutionary Alliance that overthrew the Manchu Qing dynasty was a landmark event in the history of Asia. It not only founded the first republic in Asia, but also ended the imperial rule of the country in the past two millennia. In other words, the 1911 Revolution marked the transition of empire to nation-state for China. While this change was consistent with worldwide historical developments, this was by no means an easy and smooth process for the Chinese. From the early 17th century, nation-state building began in Western Europe and gradually became a main trend of history around the world in the subsequent centuries. One of the major differences between empire and nation-state was shown in its policy toward outside regions. From ancient period, Chinese rulers entertained the notion of “All under Heaven” (tianxia 天下 ) in describing its imperial realm. Some scholars have considered such view as the “boundless world” (wubian tianxia 無邊天下). By contrast, a nation-state is built on a clearly defined border, or with the “limited boundary” (youxian jiangjie 有限疆界). From another perspective, an empire usually consisted of innerland and frontier, or center-periphery regions, whereas a nation-state hopes to control, indiscriminately, all regions within its territory. The changing meaning of the term Zhongguo 中國 underscored the transition of China from an empire to a nation-state in the early twentieth century. Over the long imperial period, Zhongguo usually referred to the core area under the reigning dynasty. As such, it was rendered as the “Middle Kingdom.” But in the process of nation-building, Zhongguo began to be used, by historians in particular, to describe China as a modern state. But the imperial legacy remained, particularly with respect to modern China’s territorial control. The Republic of China of 1911 and the subsequent People’s Republic of China founded in 1949 both inherited the Qing empire’s territory, consisting such frontier regions as Manchuria in the northeast, (Inner) Mongolia in the northwest, and Tibet in the southwest. In this issue of Chinese Studies in History, we present the studies of frontier regions in South China, including today’s Tibetan Buddhist regions in Sichuan, mountainous areas in Yunnan, and southeast coastal regions in Fujian, during the late imperial periods. Our purpose is to showcase how the Ming and Qing dynasties envisioned their territories, designed their frontier policies, and implemented them for exercising control. The field of frontier studies was dominated by a center-periphery discourse for a long time. That is, the idea of “All under Heaven” was a dominating concept for rulers in China, regardless their ethnicity, to entertain an all-encompassing notion of their world. Meanwhile, most rulers also had a full recognition that their imperial realm was composed of various zones, differentiated by levels of cultural development and characteristics of ethnicity. In early imperial China, for example, the policymakers had already developed the “five zone” concept in perceiving their territorial and demographic composition. For each zone, they designed different policies to best exercise control, ranging, as it were, from “free reign” to “acculturation” and “pacification.” In building modern China, needless to say, the Chinese government developed markedly different ruling policies toward frontier regions. But after founding of the People’s Republic of China in