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Late Imperial China 23.2 (2002) 53-86



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Identity And Conflict On A Chinese Borderland:
Yan Ruyi And The Recruitment Of The Gelao During The 1795-97 Miao Revolt*

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Daniel McMahon


In early 1795, revolt flared in western Hunan as bands of Miao indigenes attacked highland Chinese settlements. Relying on guerrilla tactics and mountain terrain, these ethnic insurgents traversed the Hunan-Guizhou-Sichuan border region—the so-called "Hunan Miao frontier" (Hunan Miaojiang)—striking out in pursuit of land, wealth, and autonomy from Qing government control.

Responding to a call for strategies to combat the Miao threat, a western Hunan scholar from Xupu county, Yan Ruyi (1759-1826), proposed the covert recruitment of local indigenes known as the "Greater and Lesser Zhang Gelao" (Da Xiao Zhang Gelao). The Hunan governor Jiang Sheng (1725-1811) and Huguang governor-general Bi Yuan (1739-97) embraced Yan's plan in the fall of 1795, charging Yan Ruyi to oversee implementation. 1 The scholar's adaptation of the time-honored frontier strategy of "using barbarians to control barbarians," however, failed to proceed according to plan. He successfully organized the Gelao against the Miao only to face violent opposition from fellow dynastic supporters. The Manchu general Fukang'an (d. 1796) castigated his initiative. Local garrison forces massacred his troops. Local officials impugned his loyalty. And Bi Yuan, fearing censure, withdrew support. Indeed, circumstances became so dire by December of 1795 that Yan Ruyi was forced to disband the Gelao and retreat home in disgrace. 2

Here was a curiosity: government allies attacking and killing other government allies while a major revolt raged. How could this occur? This essay [End Page 53] finds one answer in the amorphous nature of identity on the Miao frontier, especially identity as government observers perceived it. The representatives of the Qing regime viewed borderland natives, particularly the Greater and Lesser Zhang Gelao, with profound ambivalence. The Gelao were traditional state allies and resided within the orbit of direct Qing administration. Nevertheless, their ethnic difference, regional ties, and relations with rebels made them politically and culturally suspect. In the eyes of some observers (Jiang Sheng, Yan Ruyi), they were subjects deserving protection; in the eyes of others (Fukang'an), they were savages deserving punishment. The Gelao's ambiguous status became even more vague during the revolt, as the natives shifted their loyalties from Qing garrison forces, to Miao rebels, to regional Han gentry.

The Qing pacification forces lacked a definite social vision of the Miao frontier. They recognized local groups such as the Gelao, Miao, and Han, but without consensus concerning these groups' character and position vis-à-vis China's government and civilization. The pacification forces did, however, fight—with borderland residents and with each other—to establish representations suited to their particular needs and ambitions. During the Miao revolt, the local war for land was linked to a more encompassing war for advantageous definition. Frontier groups invoked flexible forms of identity (ethnic, regional, and cultural) to promote solidarity and political interest: some in defiance of, and some in deference to, imperial authority. At the same time, competing observers drew on imperial rhetoric to assert their own (contrasting/co-opting) representations of the local social order. The tempestuous history of the recruitment of the Gelao, including Yan Ruyi's personal efforts to realize his plans for the Miao frontier indigenes, exemplifies the clash and consequences of conflicting social visions in late eighteenth-century China. 3

The Miao Frontier during the Eighteenth Century

The eighteenth-century Hunan Miao frontier was a region of dense mountains and steep valleys overlapping the common borders of Hunan, Guizhou, and Sichuan provinces. It was not only a provincial borderland, but also a macroregional borderland joining the Yun-Gui, Upper Yangzi, and Middle Yangzi macroregions—a physically harsh land cut by "rugged cliffs, coiled mountain rivers, and ubiquitous narrow passes." 4 [End Page 54]

The homeland of the Greater and Lesser Zhang Gelao, Luxi County in Hunan, was located approximately one hundred kilometers east...

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