ann
(Ann)
#1
The line has also been found to delineate an ecotone zone. This transi-
tion area is uniquely defined by scales of space, time, and degree of
interaction between adjacent ecosystems that can be broadly described
as pastoral to the northwest and agrarian to the southeast.^38 In contrast
to more rigid notions of separation between“steppe and sown”arising
from steady-state ecological assumptions, it is precisely the ecological
malleability of this ecotone that enabled a transformation of borderland
environmental relations embodied in Han migrants.^39
Many Han moved across the line into the most arable parts of Inner
Mongolia, primarily, and Manchuria, secondarily, during the eighteenth
century. Yunnan’s mineral wealth was also attractive during this period,
while more of its fertile spaces began tofill up as well. Han settlers,
however, were hardly roaming into vast tracts of empty wilderness. The
Qing state had already become deeply involved in its own schemes
to coordinate the environmental relations of indigenous peoples to con-
struct borderlands in all three areas before Han arrived on the scene to
complicate operations further. Forage and, especially in Mongolia,
livestock received particular state attention north of the passes. In con-
trast, coping with an incompletely understood disease environment
substantially influenced Qing operations in Yunnan.
Such marginal space under construction has been variously defined
in terms of a“middle ground,” frontier, or borderland and is often
considered a product of“creative misunderstandings”between human
actors, when not more conventionally seen as an outcome of one domin-
ant actor’s orchestrated design.^40 While rightly emphasizing both the
constructed nature and ambiguity of such areas, these concepts tend to
underestimate the necessity for human adaptation to prevailing and
uncertain ecological conditions as a prerequisite for borderland forma-
tion.^41 Although ecological conditions are certainly subject to human
manipulation, this manipulation is limited by these same conditions.
Relations between humans and the ecology are recursive, and, for all its
marginality, borderland space cannot lie beyond them.^42
Borderland space, however, by definition did lie beyond the influence
of the empire’s core that was fundamentally configured in agro-urban
terms, while including considerable patchy zones. So my three case studies
from northern Manchuria, south-central Inner Mongolia, and southwes-
tern Yunnan together are all territories of far less spatial and social
centralization. They contain fewer settlement hierarchies patterned by
urbanization and intensive agriculture than the corresponding space of
the empire’s ethnic Han majority.^43
12 Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain
