Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain_ Environment, Identity, and Empire in Qing China\'s Borderlands

to the major Qing competitor for regional hegemony, the Konbaung.

Some of the stimulating and inhibiting effects of this rivalry on the south-

western borderland were similar to those achieved by Konbaung Myan-

mar’s northern counterpart, Romanov Russia.

Subversion of indigenous Qing subjects was one such effect. The

immediate cause of the 1766 – 69 war itself concerned Qing and Kon-

baung wrangling over the territorial implications of indigenous alle-

giance.^61 The Konbaung court was able to split the allegiance of at least

some Qing chieftainships, which in Myanmar’s view formed the trans-

Irawaddy and trans-Salween Shan States. The ambiguous relations main-

tained by native chieftainships with both powers enabled Myanmar to

claim joint territorial sovereignty with the Qing. The Konbaung made

such a claim regarding the Cheli native chieftainship in the wake of a

major conflict from 1807 to 1808 in the area between Myanmar and the

Siamese client state of Lanna (Chiangmai).^62

Despite the throne’s outraged declaration that a“fixed boundary”

(dingjie) already existed that precluded any kind of joint jurisdiction

between“the Celestial court and foreign tribals”in Cheli, Qing officials

were quite aware of the divided loyalties of native chieftainships.^63 Some

admitted that Gengma and“all dynastic chieftainships near Myanmar”

maintained an“unofficial,” if regular, political relationship with the

Konbaung until at least the mid–eighteenth century. Such contacts

remained an ongoing concern after the turn of the century. At that time

Belin affirmed that a primary task of frontier defense was to prevent

“collusion” between native chieftainships and either Myanmar or

Lanna.^64 Transborder political ties incompatible with their status as

dynastic client states could make chieftainships more a burden than a

bulwark for the province.

One important spatial condition of the ambiguity of chieftainship

allegiance was that southwestern provincial borders wereoperationally

synonymous withjunxianand not chieftainshipboundaries. This dis-

tinction was occasionally, and inconsistently, expressed through the use

of different terms forjunxianboundaries (bianorjiao) and chieftainship

boundaries (jing). The operational limits of direct dynastic control

indicated by these terms explain why“Yunnan” chieftainships such

as Menglian and Gengma could be considered“beyond the border”

(bianwai) of the prefecture itself.^65

Qing frontier policy reinforced this ethnic administrative divide by

generally discouraging“reckless”official interference in chieftainships

“along the border.”These off-limits border polities included Gengma,

Borderland Hanspace in the Nineteenth Century 247