ann
(Ann)
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shack people to have moved in from Hunan, Hubei, Sichuan, Guizhou,
and Liangguang to clear land in southeastern Yunnan’s two southeast-
ern boundary prefectures of Kaihua and Guangnan. Pu’er was also
mentioned as a destination, but the prefecture had comparatively
“few”migrants because of its distance and many “malarial locales.”
Although some of this large provincial influx had become regular tenants
on existing farmlands,“many”of these households had“raised shacks,
cut down trees andfired the hillsides in secluded and distant forested
valleys.” Kaihua’s gazetteer states that half the prefecture,“with its
many mountains,”had been swiddened. These“migrant”(liumin) activ-
ities, which Ilibu did not associate with the explicit term“shack people,”
were nevertheless the basis of latter’s distinct identity, which also had
put down some roots in the cultivar-based“anarchy”of Zomia. Ilibu
noted that the dispersed nature of these migrants precluded standard
baojiahousehold registration that was the norm in core regions. He also
said that uneven soil conditions necessitated the scattered planting of
“maize-type” (baogu zhi lei) cultivars and other “coarse grains”
(zaliang) he found difficult to assess for taxation.^57 As with glutinous
rice and tubers, maize, a major nineteenth-century Yunnan crop, was
creating“potato-like” obstacles to regional legibility in the province’s
marginal soils.
Shack people and their coarse grains were at any rate welcome in
Yunnan’s mountains, even if they ignored Bao Shichen’s provisions. The
problems for state control that these migrants created did not turn pro-
vincial or central government officials against them as had generally been
the contemporary case in the lower Yangzi highlands. Ilibu’s joint deliber-
ation with provincial governor He Xuan concerning registration of his
new hillside swiddeners was a response to an 1836 imperial decree that
said nothing about timbering or burning prohibitions, lack of riziculture,
or scattered residence. Some security concerns were expressed to little
effect. Ecological worries, especially those that could spread to other
provinces and macroregions downstream, are entirely absent.
Stark contrasts between shack people policies in Yun-Gui and
Liangjiang indicate an administrative disjuncture between provincial jur-
isdictions of serious environmental consequence transcending a regional
administration or particular macroregion. Change across administrative
boundaries explains many of the complications produced by new variants
of Han arablist identity. Environmental diversity required regionalflexi-
bility in imperial arablist adaptations to fully incorporate the many
patchy areas throughout the Han core. This interconnected diversity also
Borderland Hanspace in the Nineteenth Century 245
