ann
(Ann)
#1
malarial locales, in favor of a limited and meager tax on indigenous
producers.^84 Indigenous peoples and disease prevented full Chinese
incorporation of the region as conflict continued over control of its special
resources.
The abortive uprising three years later necessitated shifts in local
garrisons to bring them closer to prefectural cores, but this also meant
their withdrawal from the main tea and salt regions. To this end a
garrison was redeployed from Youle to Simao seventy kilometers to the
north to reduce its isolation from main administrative centers. The disease
environment, however, was also a critical factor. Malaria in Youle was so
“extreme”and its soil and water so“foul”that the majority of troops
stationed there died, and the remainder were so debilitated that“it was
difficult to employ them to keep the area suppressed.”The proposed site
in Simao for redeployment was, in contrast, on high ground with fresh air
and good soil and water. Another garrison was shifted from malarial
Weiyuan to Zhenyuan for similar reasons. Yin-ji-shan actually considered
virtually the whole region of Pu’er prefecture east of the Mekong and
south of Simao to be so vast, mountainous, and malarial that“it is
impossible to station troops anywhere...So if native headmen [tumu]
are not ordered to control their individual locales...the region will be
difficult to keep quiet.”He still paradoxically asserted this would not roll
conversion back to indigenous rule since“the natives can still be con-
trolled by headmen, who in turn remain under the supervision of regular
officials. So there will be no barren hill, remote border or dangerously
malarial area that is not under some authority and restraint.”^85
Such posturing aside, malaria was plainly a determining factor in the
deployment of frontier garrisons and could determine their ethnic com-
position as well. Indigenous garrisons figure prominently during the
Jiaqing and Daoguang reigns when militia from various chieftainships
occupied posts in malarial areas that troops from Yunnan proper could
not man.
As Ortai opined, however, native chieftainships themselves were
administrative spaces substantiallyfilled by the variable effects of malaria
on different human populations. In fact, malaria was the only reason that
the native chieftain system should have been preserved in southwestern
Yunnan, in the view of Ni Tui. His experience as a private secretary and
local historian active in Yunnan between 1716 and 1737 prompted him
to join the general calls for chieftainship conversion in the early eighteenth
century. His opposition to chieftainships was strong enough for him to
outline a plan whereby hereditary chieftains could be eliminated“within
200 Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain
