transformations. Moreover, these complex relations continue to mani-
fest elusive combinations of change and continuity. Yet complexity is
by no means limited to the present. Its Qing version constituted a
fundamental challenge to the organization and perpetuation of imper-
ial relations unifying the immense diversity of China proper and its
Inner Asian and Southeast Asian borderlands. The embodiments of
these imperial spaces, Han farmers, banner Mongols, borderland
Manchus, and chieftainship“tribals”naturally draw the attention of
historians as the human manifestations of Qing imperial relations. The
full view, however, should plainlyrange all across forest, steppe, and
mountain.
Notes
1 “Mongolian Herder Brutally Killed by Chinese Coal Truck Driver.”
2 “Mongolian Herder Brutally Killed”; “Energy Base Needed in Inner
Mongolia.”
3 Pomeranz,Making of a Hinterland, 275.
4 For a nonequilibrium reevaluation, see Zimmerer,“The Reworking of Con-
servation Geographies,” 356 – 69.
5 For the distinction of Chinese agriculture in this regard, see Elvin,“Why
Intensify?” 275 , 295 – 96.
6 Yongzhengchao Manwen zhupi,# 3872 , 2 : 2037 ,# 3461 , 2 : 1837 – 38. Regulations
proposed by Nigguta General Cangde to deal with the 1731 dispute in document
3872 appear as precedents cited to punish subsequent Hunting Solon-Ewenki
trespass into Jilin for sable poaching in documents from the 1750 s;Lifanyuan
Man-Meng wen tiben,QL 19 / 7 / 16 , 5 : 345 – 50 ,QL 23 / 7 / 25 , 7 : 291 – 95 .Seealso,
Qingdai E-lun-chun zu dang’an,# 26 , 538 ,# 27 , 539.
7 QSL,JQ 6 / 10 / 13 , 29 : 167 b– 68 a, cited in Zhao,Ziyuan, huangjing yu guojia
quanli, 57.
8 Scott,Art of Not Being Governed, 191.
9 Agrawal,Greener Pastures, 23.
10 Agrawal,“Environmentality,” 166. My analysis here is a modification of
insights in Agrawal’s work on environmental subject formation under modern
conditions of state-locality interaction enabled through new conceptual struc-
tures; Agrawal,Environmentality, 201 – 06.
11 Horkheimer and Adorno,Dialectic of Enlightenment, 39 ; Roberts,“Dialectic
of Enlightenment,” 68. Roberts’s reading of theDialectic‘s critique of an
“animal attempt to create instruments to master the outside”world’s“cha-
otic”and“formless”condition accords well with some of the ideas of Geertz
and Hale previously cited.
12 Crossley et al., eds.,Empire at the Margins, 2 – 3.
13 Brown et al.,Sustainable Development in Western China, 7.
14 Benedict,Bubonic Plague, 156.
15 Cited in Yan Shaomei and Zhang Xinchang,“Yizu diqu senlin shengtai,” 38.