ann
(Ann)
#1
Similar dependencies are implied in Gao Qizhuo’s deliberations on the
supply of proposed garrisons for the restive Lukuishan region in the mid-
1720 s. After calling Weiyuan a“malarial extremity of the frontier,”Gao
proposed that its rice production areas, along with those of Yuanjiang
and Pu’er, be used to feed troops stationed to maintain order in
Lukuishan.^97 Differences in cultivation practices previously referenced
may be latent factors in this arrangement, but records demonstrate that
Qing officials needed malaria-free mountainous terrain to establish direct
junxian control. This control also required active cooperation of the
native chieftainships situated in malarial and arable reaches of the inner
frontier. Southwestern Hanspace was, in this way, literally dependent on
imperial indigenism and kept patchy by the regional disease environment.
The dynasty soon had evidence that its assumptions about the seasonal
and ethnic limits to local mobility imposed by malaria were not entirely
accurate. There was an incursion of dozens of hungry“wild tribals”into
the Menglian native chieftainship in May 1774 just after the malaria
season commenced. The return of a Han emissary to Yunnan from
Myanmar at what was regarded as the height of the malaria season in
the summer of 1778 prompted the Acting Governor-General of Yun-Gui
to observe that the disease had not rendered the frontier entirely impass-
able. Despite the emperor’s personal vermilion endorsement of this“cor-
rect statement,”he decreed that no further transborder contacts were
possible until the malarial season ended in winter. It is as difficult to
explain this example of the Qianlong era’s central indifference to local
experience as it is to account for the Kangxi emperor’s conviction,
expressed to an approving courtier in 1717 , that malaria had been elim-
inated from Yunnan except for“a bit”in Yuanjiang prefecture.^98 Some of
the confusion over when the disease could be contracted is attributable to
the habits ofAn. minimusitself, which did not hibernate in winter and so
could spread malaria year-round. Some studiesfind that the malaria
transmission season can vary from nine to twelve months in Yunnan.
There were two peak seasons, however–from May to June and, with
higher rates of infection, from October to November–that were found in
1949 to correspond to increases in theAn. minimuspopulation.^99
These seasons roughly coincide with some Myanmar campaign mili-
tary reports associating disease outbreaks with a wide range of tempera-
turefluctuations and precipitation. One report asserted that the“region’s
insalubrious environmental conditions”(Ma:ba na i muke boihon ehe)
were stimulated by random and sudden shifts in temperature. Cooler
periods, which could include frost, effectively stopped major outbreaks,
204 Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain
