ann
(Ann)
#1
susceptibility to tropical disease,”ecological factors substantially condi-
tioned these cultural relationships.^4 Consideration of connections
between malaria and ethnic identity in Qing Yunnan expands the two-
dimensional representation of Han-indigenous relations as a cultural
product to include biological processes such as differential resistance.
Residence in southwestern Yunnan meant intimate involvement in the
life cycles of both mosquitoes and haematozoa with malaria a common
result. The most spatially significant human adaptive response produced
chieftainships. In this way the disease environment created political as
well as biological boundaries that complicated borderland construction of
imperial indigenism.
Pertinent and forbidding ecological boundaries commence amid the
river systems that cut through Yunnan’s mountains. These make up about
84 percent of a province that is part of larger geographical systems such as
the Greater Mekong Subregion and the Southeast Asian massif. They
extend millions of square kilometers beyond the boundaries of any single
state past or present. Wide divergences in elevation, ranging from well
under one hundred to well over six thousand meters, can occur over
comparatively short distances covering tropical to frigid zones. The pro-
vince is also a meeting point for monsoon systems from both the Pacific
and Indian oceans. These widely varying conditions permit year-round
malaria transmission at lower altitudes, generally belowfifteen hundred
meters and south of 25 N, while usually, but not always, precluding it at
higher elevations.^5 The resulting ecological diversity created many envir-
onmental obstacles, especially disease, to a direct, sustained dynastic
presence. The Qing solution was a reliance on native chieftainships
despite the problems they caused.^6
These problems were numerous and complex but generally stemmed
from the considerable indigenous autonomy enjoyed by these“native
chieftainships”as well as by free-range“wild tribals”(yeyi). In large
degree, these Qing administrative terms were another variation on the
traditional imperial binary of“civilized”(shu) and“savage”(sheng), or,
as in the discourse of smallpox,“raw”and“cooked.”Yet differences
between wild and chieftainship peoples were often indistinct and even
imaginary, as some officials recognized. Liu Bin, a provincial private
secretary in the 1710 s, wrote that in Yongchang and Shunning prefectures
there was no practical difference between wild and chieftainship groups.
Both were actually subject to the dynasty“in name only”because they
resided in areas such as Gengma where dynastic“law did not reach.”
One frustrated Yun-Gui governor-general in 1766 even recommended
172 Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain
