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Book Review
Asia
| C. Patterson Giersch. Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China's Yunnan Frontier. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 2006. Pp. xvi, 308. $49.95.
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| Early modern states fought to extend their power over societies on their borders, it is well known, but the process has been mostly examined at the center or at least from its perspective. How the peripheral societies responded to encroachment, and contributed to state consolidation, remains somewhat mysterious. Exploring these issues through a historical study of the borderlands between China and Southeast Asia, C. Patterson Giersch has written a fascinating and original book. |
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Recent works by James Millward, Nicola Di Cosmo, and Peter Perdue shed new light on China's late imperial age by treating the Inner Asia "periphery" as a place with its own history—by no means a backwater, but a center in its own right. In much the same spirit, Giersch pioneers the study of the borderlands spanning the upper Mekong, Salween, and Irrawaddy valleys. Rejecting a parallel with Frederick Jackson Turner's view of the American West as a frontier where civilization collided with savagery (although some Qing imperial officials, whose ideas are the focus of chapter three, tended to such a view), he sees the southwestern frontier as a complex zone of interaction for many peoples, whether Han Chinese intruders or indigenes. It was a "middle ground" (p. 3) of mutual adaptation, a place of economic and cultural exchange lacking clear political borders. Far from the nearest Qing provincial city (Kunming, capital of Yunnan) and from the rival political centers of Burma and Siam, Tai aristocrats and other indigenes and Chinese migrants found considerable freedom of action. Giersch's use of some Tai written materials, and a quantity of Qing documents, which he reads against the grain, enables him to demonstrate their agency. |
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Disputing the idea that "Chinese culture washed over the frontier like a giant wave" (p. 11), Giersch offers rich evidence on the ambiguous identifications and selective cultural borrowings of the borderlands (see especially chapters five and seven). He clearly grasps the often missed distinction between acculturation and assimilation: local rulers and their subjects borrowed selective cultural traits but rarely assimilated in the sense of identifying with the cultural lenders, and characteristically preserved relations with two or more outside powers. Thus a Wa headman might have a Chinese surname and a monastic Tai education; the son of a Chinese father and a "barbarian" might identify with Chinese heritage but still maintain close contact with maternal kin; and a Tai noble holding a Chinese title and using imperial etiquette and Confucian ritual might conduct ritual and diplomacy with other Tai polities in Theravada temples, with agreements sealed by a sacred drink of water. Despite the borrowings, the trend was not toward cultural uniformity. Borderland micro-societies preserved their differences, each eclectically combining indigenous and imperial institutions, even architecture, in its own way. Some Chinese practices, for example foot-binding and arranged marriages, made no headway even among people who adopted Chinese dress. Local hierarchies of prestige, varying in time and place but more often Tai than Chinese, tended to dictate acculturation patterns. |
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