Land, trade, and the law on the Sino-Tibetan border, 1723-1911
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This study centers on the intersection of environment, society, and the law along the northwestern frontiers of the Qing Empire, particularly the area known as "Hehuang" straddling the modern-day Gansu-Qinghai border. Through an analysis of central and local legal case records, this work traces the ground-level changes that both bound Hehuang to the empire and triggered increasingly ethnicized explosions of violence that culminated in the Great Muslim Rebellion (1862-1873). In a region of altitudinal extremes and great ethnic diversity, I find that socio-demographic change occurred primarily in mid-altitude slope zones that were sites of overlapping jurisdictions and multiple landholding regimes. Concentrating on the lives of individual peddlers, smallholders, laborers, and herders, Part I shows how migration and the extraction of resources connected mid-slope settlements to regional networks. Over the course of the nineteenth century these changes eventually threatened both the environment and the village-level customary practices that had previously bound communities together. Behind the more proximate causes of violence and rebellion lies this deeper story of ecological crisis and growing communal struggle. Based on the local archives of Xunhua Subprefecture, Part II reveals how official reconstruction policies in the aftermath of the Great Rebellion froze in place resentments between Muslim, Tibetan, and Han Chinese populations. Despite occasional official orders to the contrary, reconstruction efforts did not return mid-slope communities to the status quo ante bellum. Rather, in a wave of post-rebellion disputes and fights over resources, Muslim cultivators often won official title for and recognition of their war-era gains. Official recovery efforts were ambitious. Implementation, however, was foiled by ground-level dynamics that officials did not fully understand. Beyond empowering local elites, reconstruction regulations, which centered primarily on rebuilding a tax base, demanded increased state intrusion into the village and the extraction of reconstruction expenses squeezed from war-torn populations. These policies bred resistance in mid-slope villages. Official efforts in the wake of the rebellion, therefore, froze ethno-religious hatreds in place, amplified the competition over land and resources, and increased tensions between local populations and the state. The legacy of these conflicts echoed in repeated rounds of strife over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Though faded by the passage of time, memories of the inter-communal violence continue to haunt these villages.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2016 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Chaney, Wesley Byron |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of History. |
| Primary advisor | Sommer, Matthew Harvey, 1961- |
| Thesis advisor | Sommer, Matthew Harvey, 1961- |
| Thesis advisor | Millward, James A, 1961- |
| Thesis advisor | Mullaney, Thomas S. (Thomas Shawn) |
| Thesis advisor | Wigen, Kären, 1958- |
| Advisor | Millward, James A, 1961- |
| Advisor | Mullaney, Thomas S. (Thomas Shawn) |
| Advisor | Wigen, Kären, 1958- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Wesley Byron Chaney. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of History. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2016. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2016 by Wesley Byron Chaney
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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