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resistant to malaria than Han Chinese, Mongols, or Manchus. The
Qianlong emperor was sufficiently concerned about the disease environ-
ment’s anticipated effects on his forces moving into Myanmar that he
sent magic charms against miasmato be distributed throughout the
army.^81 As a result of the interaction between these ecological and
cultural elements, malaria fundamentally conditioned the adaptive
response of differentially immune administrative space in Yunnan.
Accounts generally characterized Yongchang chieftainships, for
example, as areas of intense malaria, in contrast tojunxiandistricts
such as Yongping notably free of the disease. One account is quite
explicit about connections between terrain, chieftainships, and malarial
conditions, stating that“the climate in chieftainship areas is generally
insalubrious, with conditions in theflatlands being much worse than
those in the mountains.”Thefifteenmuongin the Lin’an prefectural
jurisdiction; ten in Pu’er; Shunning’s Gengma and Mengmeng;
Yongchang’s Mengding, Lujiang, Wandian, and Denggeng; and Ten-
gyue’s Mangshi, Zhefang, Mengmao, and Longchuan chieftainships
were“all famous malarial (yanzhang)areas,”through which anyone
from“the interior”(neidi)wouldbeafraidtotraverseinsummer.^82
Table 9 lists areas recorded as unambiguously, if not uniformly, malar-
ial. Native chieftainships predominate.
These dangerous paths also restricted Qing forays into the outer
frontier, as demonstrated by the Qing military reports during the Myan-
mar campaigns, as well as prevented units from maintaining the inner
frontier garrisons established in their wake. Another Manchu military
report from 1769 concerns the shift of garrison troops from chieftain-
ship areas of Zhefang, Zhanda, and Longchuan“in the season when
foul vapors rose”in early February to areas in Tengyue that remained
unaffected. Still another report reveals that locals considered malarial
conditions in 1769 to be much less severe than in previous years,
permitting shifts to relatively nearby areas that would otherwise have
been insalubrious. Nevertheless, even in such a comparatively mild year,
certain areas, such as Mangshi and Zhefang that were singled out in this
report, remained off-limits and still required troop rotations.^83
The regional disease environment affected both active military oper-
ations and passive garrison duties. Malariafigured prominently in Yun-
Gui Governor-General Yin-ji-shan’s reconstruction proposal in the wake
of the costly Pu(‘er)-Si(mao)-Yuan(jiang)-Xin(ping) uprising that rocked
northern Pu’er and central Yuanjiang prefectures from 1732 to 1735 in
response to oppressive postconversion conditions. Conversion and its
198 Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain
