Amid the Clouds and Mist: China's Colonization of Guizhou, 1200-1700 (review)

China's southwest has received increasing more attention since the 1990s, especially from the younger generation of Chinese history scholars in the West. John E. Herman, who has built his reputation on the studies of the tusi (native chieftain) system in southwest China, is surely one of the most well-known. This book revisits China's march towards the tropics by bringing the Nasu Yi of Guizhou, a periphery of a periphery, to our attention.

With a time span of half a millennium (1200-1700), the book is divided into six main chapters. Chapter 1 provides the historical background of the Mu'ege Yi people in the Shuixi region (Guizhou); Chapter 2 discusses the brief supremacy of the Mongol Yuan dynasty in Shuixi, and the subsequent return of the Azhe patriclan at the end of the thirteenth century; Chapter 3 outlines the political economy of the Mu'ege before the Ming conquest; Chapter 4 analyzes the tusi system in the region under Ming colonization; Chapter 5 moves from the imperial colonial enterprises to the indigenous creative response; Chapter 6 describes how the chaotic Ming-Qing transition and the early Qing reduced the autonomy of tusi and eventually brought an end to the indigenous kingdom.

The book sheds some important light on the Chinese frontier studies, especially in terms of the following themes or issues. First of all, the book balances the New Qing School, which examines the Great Wall frontier and Central Asian connections by highlighting late imperial China's southern colonization. As such, the role of the Ming dynasty has been singled out for its contribution to modern China's southern territorial establishment. Sharply contrasted with its defensive strategy and inability in the north, and sharply contrasted with its retreat from the South China Sea after the Zheng He Voyage (1405-1433), Ming China was very aggressive in the southwest. Indeed, the whole southwest frontier (Yunnan and Guizhou) were mostly, if not entirely, controlled and consolidated by the Ming state. Consequently, by the late Ming, Chinese literati had seen the southeast not as a distant frontier "but as an integral part of China" (236). Such a pattern and mentality has basically been the foundation for modern geographical demarcation.

Secondly, the book joins the critique of Chinese rhetoric on frontier writings (both imperial and modern) that are filled with the tone of Veni, vidi, vici. By revealing and interpreting indigenous sources produced by the Nasu Yi people, Herman is able to provide an alternative that illustrates how the indigenous people responded to Chinese colonization, and made good use of Chinese systems, customs and language to suit their own purposes. New Chinese agricultural methods introduced by Han migrants were adopted (as horses would be utilized by the indigenous in the New World), Chinese scholars and talents were employed for political and military affairs, and roads and bridges, often very challenging projects in this mountain-ridden area, were constructed to promote trade and communication. Thus, the Nasu Yi in Shuixi was "the most economically advanced region" in sixteenth century Guizhou (145), as acknowledged even by Chinese officials. This empirical study has reversed the Chinese image of frontier and ethnic people as children (if not barbarians), awaiting the virtues and grace of the Son of Heaven. In so doing, the frontier process is shown to be much more than a conquest, and its legacy is revealed as more of a dynamic matrix.

While the book successfully presents the two sides of the coin, namely, the Chinese and the indigenous versions, Herman could have paid more attention to the ecological narrative of the frontier process in which both the Chinese and the indigenous peoples played a part. The change in the landscape, for example, deforestation partially caused by the introduction of crops from the New World, occurred from the late sixteenth century onwards. Environmental changes during the Ming-Qing period, just like demographic, political, economical, and cultural changes, had laid...