China and the contiguous territories of the Qing empire during the 18th Century remind us that the positioning fundamental to ethnicity (as contrasted to cultural change generally) is strongly associated with the ideological, historicizing, legitimating, and establishing powers of the state. At both the central and local levels, the Qing empire's agents had the options of revising or reviving earlier identities, but not surprisingly, the choices were shaped in large part by perceptions of who was where and who did what in the imperial narrative.
But local subjects often eagerly subscribed to its authoritative cultural language in order to establish their respective places in an expanding empire. In the Pearl River delta, those identified as Dan fishermen eagerly shed their ethnic labels as the political economy of the sands' reclamation allowed them to rapidly accumulate land and cultural capital. Their ability to do so was closely tied to material circumstances occurring at distinct points in time. There is some parallel to the case of the begs of the Western Frontier, whose ethnicity made them ideal commercial brokers-and leads the historian or anthropologist toward the chronological and conceptual frontiers of urban identities. These traders maintained monopolies with strong networks reinforced by personal, linguistic, religious, and community ties that not only bound them to each other but also distinguished them from possible commercial rivals in the Qing cities. Although to be ethnic is not necessarily to be economically subordinated, the mate brought by Han migrants. In the more remote and hilly areas of southeast China, peoples of many backgrounds (Yi, Miao, and Dai, among others) have adapted to Han inmigration and now practice a mix of extensive and intensive agriculture, or hunting and gathering. In north China, cultural fluidity is characteristic of the edges of the sown lands, across which peoples of Inner Asian origins have repeatedly been forced to migrate by political, economic, or environmental circumstances, or lured by China's agricultural wealth or opportunities for trade. Cultural diversity reflects not just a legacy of particular traditions or the attenuation of Chinese influence in remote areas; it is probably also the result of adaptation to different ecological settings and the emergence of new dialects and cultural practices.
In the Tang, Liao,Jin, and Yuan periods, diverse, historically defined groups were loosely united (though not made equals) through their special relationships to the rulership. Nevertheless strong ideas of a phenomenal boundary to civilization persisted- though, in the case of the Miao boundary region (Miaojiang) in the Southwest, it was conceived as transitional to civilization. In addition to external frontiers like the northern transmural steppe/sown zone, the oases of the Northwest, and the hilly Southwest, we can speak of internal frontiers, thinking of such remote regions as northern Lingnan in Ming times, west Hunan up to the eighteenth century, and the reclaimed sands of the Pearl River delta.
In case of the Taiping rebellion: a novel combination of economic stresses and political anxieties permitted ambitious rebels to exploit latent resentments in the minority group. The initial success of the movement created new reinforcement for playing the "ethnic" card, and though it was eventually dropped in favor of more cosmopolitan propaganda, by then it had left a deep enough impression on events to perpetually recommend itself to the historian as an explanation for the Taiping appeal. Anthropologists, in particular, have been able to rework this scenario, with an understanding that ostensibly "ethnic" identities can actually be generated by conflict and competition.!
The search for affiliation in struggles for resources or status leads to the conscious reification of differences that previously had been subtle, negligible, or ambiguous. Along with this come symbols, genealogies, and narratives. While such ethnic differentiation is by no means exclusively a modern phenomenon, as, it may have occurred more freely as the empire's authority shriveled, especially in much of the periphery, which state institutions barely reached. The explanation, then, may not be one of deep and enduring differences out of imperial control, but rather one of newly generated differences springing from the empire's inability to stem rising inequality and social friction. Moreover, the absence of organized state power could trigger other forms of ‘state-making.’ In much of the historical Pearl River delta, where state institutions barely reached, local populations joined the empire through cultural ingenuity, by borrowing the empire's language to create niches of social mobility.
To question the obverse aspect of the state intervention in identity dynamics: how did groups such as the Manchu and Hanjun banner people survive the demise of imperial authority and become ethnic groups? No identity can be wholly artificial, if ubiquitously represented in historical narrative and reinforced by administrative practice. In other words, no individual can fully control his or her "ethnic" status. There are some choices to be made, but in the end a good deal of ethnicity is in the eye of the beholder. Banner people of the mid-nineteenth century who received no material support from the state and lived in communities that shared economic activities, public festivals, and social solidarity with civilian neighbors may have considered their banner affiliations to be only nominal. Indeed, the Qing court in the later nineteenth century did all it could to alienate a majority of banner men-to drive them off the salary rolls and when possible out of the garrisons, encouraging them to take up new trades and become civilians (min). It is possible that in an economy with more opportunities, the Manchus would have dispersed and disappeared as an identifiable group. This is what many fam ilies did, despite the economic hardships of relocation and persisting unemployment. But the record suggests that many banner people of the later nineteenth century, particularly after the Taiping War, consciously chose to either abandon their communities or rebuild them. Attachment to the historical meaning of "Manchu" identity and its association with the history of the empire was not unimportant, but the communities that rebuilt themselves-and the literate men who designated themselves Manchu rather than just ‘Bannerman’-were involved in building a new identity that was not exclusively delimited by the prescriptions of the Qianlong and earlier courts. The Manchu identity that emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century derived from the multiple sources of the surviving banner communities, the Qing imperial historical narrative, and the counterexample of Chinese nationalism. For all that, it might have faltered had the Chinese revolutionaries of 1911-12 not decided to fuel their own libertion through the targeting and in many cases literal extermination of Manchus. Once targeted, former banner people were not only reinforced in their self-definition as Manchus, but also acquired a history of victimization and grievance that is common to ethnic conceptualizations, both early modern and modern.
Manchus and some Mongol groups of the very late Qing period found themselves shifted to the cultural, economic, and ideological periphery that other groups in Qing society had occupied for centuries. Outside the zone of state definitions, historicization, and incentivization, individuals and communities had greater latitude to choose or simply to drift toward-more crystallized "ethnic" identification, or else back toward the cultural center. In few instances were there indelible physical markers (what in other societies would constitute the social phenomenon of ‘race’) or insuperable barriers to assimilation. The presence of ethnic identity and vivid cultural differentiation in China today, and the historical record of cultural variability there, is a testament to the complex dynamics at work in the periphery. Not all individuals or communities were propelled there or toward the center. The influences affecting convergence and divergence were vital through the Ming and Qing periods, and remain vital in the new century, when we see, despite the spread of literati traditions and better communications, not a homogenization of the peoples living in China, but new differentiations and fissures. The mosaic has largely to do with particular historical conjunctures of "becoming" for China's populations.
The marked variety of Muslim life and identity in the Qing empire suggests another zone of ethnic invention in late imperial China, that of the urban centers. Though China is famous in comparative history for the size of a few of its urban centers before modern times, China was nevertheless overwhelmingly rural, and remains so today.3 Nevertheless, Chinese urban centers had long histories as crucibles of the social and cultural change that accompanied the long-distance trade patterns of Eurasia. The Muslim communities of Kaifeng, Nanjing, Guangzhu, Hangzhou, and Beijing had long histories documen ted by travelers as well as officials. They were in many ways the antecedents of the sojourner, landsmann, or ‘subethnic’ communities that have attracted so much attention recently. Such communities, occupying nexuses among class, culture, lineage, communications, and commerce, have flourished and multiplied with the explosion of transport and trade since 1800. These urban ethnicities are regarded by most scholars as emblematically modern, and the urbanization of "traditional" identities-best known among the Manchus and the Uyghursis seen as the threshold where conventional ethnography ends and cultural studies begins. The flourishing of urban cultural enclaves since 1800 clearly represents certain continuities with the more multifaceted, porous, negotiated, ambiguous, and dynamic local identity processes of earlier times, like the Siu and Liu for example, and Chan studies of definition and redefinition beyond the proscriptions of the state.
In this respect, the history of Qing China's transformative cultural communities is an index of the dramatic changes in identity criteria and "ethnic" conceptions from the imperial to the republican periods. Mter the destruction of the empire in 1911, the definition of "China" and the criteria for inclusion moved from the focal point of emperorship to the contiguities stretching out to the new boundaries of the nation. National legitimacy was now to be sought in aspirations toward a common political culture, one perplexingly posited on criteria of being "Chinese" and wishing justice for "Chinese" on the international stage. Did this mean all were to be subordinated or assimilated to the Han Chinese?
In those parts of China where Guomindang writ ran by the 1930’s, ethnic groups had to cope with the Nanjing government's uncomfortable mix of culturalist and racist ideology. The sense of these two notions of political community’s is analogous to the twin strands of imperial ethnic policy in regard to the eighteenthcentury Miao and Li,mentioned above. In the face of this ideology, Manchu and Mongol leaders of the early twentieth century, who had professed that it was possible to be committed to strength, integrity, and justice for China without being Chinese, were succeeded by men who preferred secession for the ethnic ("national") homelands, if possible. In practice, Tibet and Xinjiang achieved a substantial degree of autonomy between 1911 and 1950, a portion of Mongolia became the foundation of the current state of Mongolia, and Manchuria became the Japan-created "Manchukuo" from 1932 and 1945. For other ethnic groups, the inability of the Nationalist government to truly unify the country was the key to communal viability. Nationalism was on the state's agenda, but transformation of every culturally variant community into a model of standardized Chineseness was not practicable.
In several ways, the Communist revolution of 1949 transformed the possibilities of ethnic inclusion, but in ways that recalled patterns described. For one thing, a state dedicated to socialist transformation saw no logical contradiction in a non-Chinese dedicated to the realization of socialism in China. Figures such as the Mongol party leader Ulanfu and the Uyghur historian Jian Bozan became icons of the supracultural struggle to make China a land where all peoples could live free of imperialism, feudalism, and superstition. In the era of the universal Qing emperorship, an inclusive model was, theoretically at least, available for all ethnies within the state. Second, in its administrative arrangements, the People's Republic over the course of the 1950’s enacted a new version of the successive Qing-style indirect rule evienced in the Southwest, by allowing autonomous zones and ethnically defined cooperative units to function within the socialist state. This accommodation, however, went along with central intervention-as in Qing times-in family organization, extended social structure, and household registration. The difference was the substantially greater political resources at the disposal of the PRC.
The PRC effort at classification also resonated with Qing efforts but went a good deal further. Like Qing officials (following the early efforts by wartime refugee writers in the Nationalist Southwest), PRC leaders set to work to describe and classify the non-Han populations, the great majority of which are concentrated in the Southwest. The fifty-five non-Han minority nationalities defined by a variety of criteria in the 1950’s, generally with the participation of minority representatives, have been little modified in spite of many inconsistencies and complaints. In some cases local officials have dragooned people into adopting particular identities. Nevertheless, official pressure and arbitrary categorization have not been able to suppress the much greater number of self-conscious ethnic groups that persist (through the official perquisites accruing to a minzu) within large multidialectal and territorially noncontiguous nationalities like the Yi and Miao. In another form oflocal response, imposed ethnic categories have taken on a life of their own, notably through the creation of self-dignifying ethnic histories receding to prehistoric times for such groups as the Miao, the Qiang, and the Yi. At the individual level there has been considerable fluidity in ethnic identification within the fifty-five nationalities, as people classified as Han have taken advantage of the favorable treatment of minzu and adopted minority designation. It is clear, then, that people, as communities and individuals, continue to show the ingenuity in earlier periods, as they pursue their interests in particular local conditions.
There has been a marked oscillation in ethnic policy, before and after 1949, as alternative rhetorical orthodoxies succeeded each other, much as they did among Qianlong officials dealing with Miao, Li, and Sino-Muslim policy. Should ethnies be treated differently, for instance in birth control? Should there be assimilation, or separation and favorable treatment for their own protection? Should they be protected? The period of tolerance in the 1950’s was followed by vigorous efforts to suppress ethnic and religious customs in many parts of China (during the Cultural Revolution, hand-copied Tibetan scriptures in northern Sichuan were systematically searched out and burned), and to integrate minorities under Han control (the floating population of Dan was formed into land-based brigades). From the 1980s the policy of forced assimilation gave way to liberal policies that allowed minorities more generous birth-limitation rules than local Han, and permitted local Han to cross over and change their ethnic registration, an opportunity that many took. Flexibility and variation are the hallmarks of recent decades. Except in the Maoist period, PRC policies may have been as dependent on local variation as under the Qing, and have allowed as much agency.
The role of images of ethnic minorities on Han self-identity also recalls Qing patterns. The old, self-serving sense of Han superiority to minorities persists as postsocialist ethnic tourists seek out the sights of the backward interior, but now the ethnic periphery appears as a nostalgic older China fast forgotten in the industrialized East, as a place where they can participate vicariously in China's ancient traditional culture and define their own modernity. The same optimism persists in the Han view of the non-Han periphery, but the goals have shifted. While eighteenth-century Qing officials classified the southwestern peoples by their customs and arranged them along a scale from barbarian to civilized, the leaders of postsocialist reform use the new binary of traditional and modern; this follows the rhetoric of the Republican era, except now it aims at a Chinese way to modernize. These ambiguities and breaks, which draw attention to the special nature not only of China's minorities but of characteristic rhetorical and political methods of coping with them, demand further exploration.
The dwindling commitment to socialist transformation has brought much relief to many quarters, but those familiar with the content of this book will quickly notice several ominous developments for culturally diverse communities or ethnically identified individuals. Lacking the universalist pretensions of the early PRC, the national political culture often reverts to Han chauvinism, or more precisely to narrowly nationalistic, culturalist, and perhaps even racialist criteria. Since the early 1980s, popular slogans on village walls no longer extol the revolution, but call for revitalization of the "Chinese nation. How to define membership is once again challenged and negotiated. Another trend is the resumption oflarge-scale movements ofHan from the East, not to the Southwest as in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but to Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia. Whether by design or not, the results have been similar: economic ascendancy ofHan merchants and friction, growing Chinese cultural influence, and easier central control, but at the expense of some local resentment. The prevailing tendency, as in Qing times, though uneven, is toward Chinese cultural influence; even when local languages are permitted in the schools, they are secondary to Chinese, and the younger generation, anxious to get ahead, is likely to turn away from traditional folk arts. The growth of ethnic tourism offers a stimulus to some folk arts but channels them away from community significance and mingles them with the dance and costume styles adopted by other minority nationalities.
This does not imply a drift toward the extinction of self-conscious ethnic groups. Cultural impoverishment and assimilation need not lead to loss of identity at a time when minority identification continues to be advantageous in many regions. New types of identity may even be appearing in the interstices between wealth and poverty, between internationally connected and locally isolated communities, generating new lines of affiliation and hardening them into practices of exclusion, rejection, or even eradication.
When the organizational machinery of the empire was thin in the late imperial period, cultural languages of inclusion and exclusion were most powerful in the face of economic and cultural change that had blurred boundaries. In the final analysis, difference must have a value for living communities in the competitive struggle for survival. Interesting questions follow: Have the language of class and revolution in the Maoist period and the language of reform and liberalization in recent decades added other layers of complexity in local identity formation?
Where are the internal frontiers and peripheries in contemporary China? Commerce and consumerism are certainly among the factors generating new dynamics of identity-whether "ethnic" or "gendered" or ‘cultural’ or ‘religious’ in the still distinct spheres of the city and the countryside. More than in the early modern period, laborers and other migrants (now estimated to number more than a hundred million) moving between these spheres demonstrate an awareness of difference that recalls the underlying mechanisms of more traditional forms of identity. In an era of unprecedented change, given local agents' eagerness to position themselves advantageously, what cultural capital is at their disposal?
While the concept of ethnicity is certainly modern, it is clear that, empire wide, Chinese cultural and local identities have undergone repeated shifts and transformations in recent centuries. The authors of this volume do not see immutable cultural differences behind ethnic conflict and coexistence. Nor do we see preexisting ethnic identities as simply muted or subsumed by empire. Imperial policies, we have shown, could simultaneously promote cultural diversity and assimilation, and the different strands in imperial discourse, or the spaces beyond the imperial gaze, allowed many individuals and groups the flexibility to redefine and relocate themselves. There is much evidence, while China's leaders continue the search for a unity that is as inclusive as empire yet as integrated as the nation-state, and while its diverse population responds to the opportunities and pressures of postsocialism and globalization, that all these uncertainties and spaces persist.
While taking the opportunity to provide an study of the inner workings o the Qing empire, during the time the 18th century map fraudulantly picturing America, I also could not think of a better introduction to help understand modern China as such:
