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1769 , troops were being ordered to move along high ground to avoid
malaria-infested areas. The throne’s decision was a concession to condi-
tions produced by the effects of different elevations on the distribution of
malaria, which in turn made Qing reliance on auxiliaries essential. Locals
had already informed Qing troops in 1681 during closing operations of
the Three Feudatories campaign nearly a century earlier that “foul
vapors”could be avoided by constructing dwellings on mountaintops.
These conditions were “the reason as the army advanced it had to
simultaneously deploy native auxiliaries because they were thoroughly
familiar with the mountain passes and able to stand malaria.”^93
When the Qing army was moving westward through Yongchang
toward its jumping-off point at Longling, it crossed the Salween into“a
land that was a chieftainship frontier zone already sweltering with mal-
aria.”Marching farther west toward Tengyue, the army moved into the
“refreshing alpine climate”of Longling, considered the gateway to Myan-
mar. Little more than thirty kilometers south of Longling, the troops
again encountered “particularly sweltering malaria” as they marched
through chieftainship territory in Mangshi, which like all local chieftain-
ships was ridden with the disease.^94 Malarial patchiness hampered these
operations.
The postwar order established by the Qing in the wake of its defeats by
Myanmar was also deeply affected by the presence of malaria and by
official perceptions of the disease’s seasonal fluctuations. The main
administrative innovation, the trade embargo against Myanmar that
lasted from 1770 through 1789 , was no exception. The more than three
thousand Green Standard Army troops earmarked to help enforce the
embargo were deployed quite selectively beyond theirjunxianbases,
despite initial imperial ambitions. Patrols in frontier zones were envi-
sioned only for the fall and winter trading season, when malaria subsided.
For the rest of the year, the troops would be pulled back to garrisons
within the healthier fringes ofjunxianadministration.^95
One such fallback location was Longling, which had been converted to
a subprefecture in 1770 to better accommodate its new six hundred–
strong garrison. These men were to guard a virtually unimpeded route
from Myanmar into Yunnan whose loss could cut Tengyue off from the
rest of the province. The subprefecture was viable in part because of its
elevation, which kept it relatively free of malaria. Officials explicitly
emphasized another critical factor. Longling, whose mountainous terrain
was unsuited to agriculture, was so dependent on food supplies from
nearby Mangshi that“Longling would not exist without Mangshi.”^96
The Nature of Imperial Indigenism in Southwestern Yunnan 203
