ann
(Ann)
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for this paradise. However, variation in disease and cultivation
inhibited incorporation of Yunnan borderlands via the concentrated
multiplication of Han agrarian identity. Plans such as Gao’s notwith-
standing, indigenous peoples like the “wild bandits” of 1724 and
indigenous disease continued, separately and jointly, to maintain a
diversity that the imperial order could not fully amalgamate within
its arablist agenda. Like swiddening, malaria staked out boundaries
that the Qing state found difficult to cross without local assistance
organized under a regime of imperial indigenism.
malaria: an endemic arbiter of borderland space
It is not always possible to linkzhangqiand related terms to malaria
over centuries throughout China. Yet it is also unwarranted to read
every such reference as a Han cultural construct of an impenetrable
miasma of febrile diseases pervading Chinese records.^60 Cultural reifica-
tion and essentialization of disease often ignores more complex eco-
logical dimensions. Malaria can, for example, cause an immune system
to“go into overdrive in its attempts to kill the [blood] parasites.”The
host is left vulnerable to other febrile diseases such as blackwater fever, a
lethal complication arising from falciparum malarial infection likely
related to an autoimmune response.^61 Other implausible suspects for
zhangqi, such as lymphaticfilariasis, are asymptomatic in most people
infected and appear only years later in a minority of cases. The main
issue is not how many diseases vectors transmit, but which diseases so
transmitted are pertinent to the inquiry.^62
An environmental analysis must consider the combination of eco-
logical and cultural factors, including climate, elevation, water, haemato-
zoa, mosquitoes, human physiology, social relations, and printed
materials interacting to form zhangqi. Scale, however, qualifies these
elements. It is not necessary here to demonstrate that every manifestation
ofzhangqiacross hundreds of years and square kilometers was malarial.
It is simply sufficient to show that the disease environment centered in
southwestern Yunnan during the Qing was primarily malarial, especially
in terms of mortality rates, for the development of a borderland imperial
indigenism. It is inarguable that a number of social, political, and eco-
nomic factors contributed to the construction of the Qing regional order.
Yet it is equally clear that specific environmental factors, such as malaria,
limited this enterprise considerably. Dynastic officials themselves noted
quite explicitly the administrative constraints created by disease, which
190 Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain
