ann
(Ann)
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related differently to regional ecology, resulting in the relative autonomy
enjoyed by many indigenous peoples. The core of such autonomy, as
Qing authorities recognized, was inextricable from this same ecology.
Disease environments did not always ensure indigenous autonomy
in Qing lands, particularly in the period of dynastic subordination to
western colonialism. Ignorance of epidemiological factors such as animal
vectors could translate into a racialized anthropocentric origination
theory for diseases like plague. Subjective western responses to China’s
“filthy”living conditions and social hygienic deficiencies informed Treaty
Port space. The resulting Han identity was a Chinese version of a wider
pattern of ethnic interpretations of disease environments under western-
influenced colonialism, also visible in the Tokugawa state’s vaccination of
Ainu for smallpox.^20
Smallpox was one of the most important diseases on the steppe
and accordingly contributed to the formation of space and ethnicity in
the Qing northern borderlands. It could mortally devastate indigenous
populations and even played a “critical” role in the Qing defeat of
the Zunghars.^21 Smallpox, however, conditioned disease environmental
relations that were not colonial in the same racially polarized way as in
Treaty Ports, and that did not promote indigenous autonomy. These
effects were more equitably, if still hierarchically, expressed in Muran,
as a venery space that enabled social interaction between people“who
had not had smallpox”and metropolitan officials from China proper.
Potentially susceptible Mongols from throughout Inner Asia were
expressly allowed in this way to attend the Qianlong emperor’s
1752 birthday celebrations at Muran.^22
Inner Asian, like Native American and Ainu, vulnerability was directly
related to contrasting environments. Like all epidemic diseases smallpox,
usually in the strain ofvariola major, is transmitted by highly evolved
microbes. These organisms depend directly and exclusively on vulnerable
humans, ideally in large numbers, for reproduction presenting as mass
outbreaks that either kill or immunize their hosts. Microbes then wait
for the next human reproductive cycle to propagate again. This interde-
pendency of microbe and human reproductive cycles is directly related, so
that the more humans there are, the more opportunities for microbe
reproduction there will be. Sparsely populated regions like Inner Asia,
where conditions that formed pastoral and foraging practices limited the
number of people, presented far fewer opportunities for smallpox
microbe reproduction. Transhumance, unlike sedentary agriculture and
urbanization, also inhibited epidemics by both minimizing the
176 Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain
