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Across Zomia with merchants, monks, and musk: process geographies, trade networks, and the Inner-East–Southeast Asian borderlands*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2010

C. Patterson Giersch
C. Patterson Giersch
Affiliation:
History Department, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02481, USA E-mail: cgiersch@wellesley.edu
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Abstract

For several decades, theorists have challenged notions of geographical space as fixed, instead arguing that spatial scales and regional configurations respond to transformations in politics and economies. This has raised questions about permanent regional studies configurations (such as Southeast Asia), sparking the proposal of ‘Zomia’, an alternative region focusing on Asia’s highland borderlands. Building on these developments, this article employs ‘process geography’ methodologies to reconstruct trading networks through the mountains and river valleys of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Inner Asia’s Kham, East Asia’s Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces, and Southeast Asia. In doing so, it reveals who traded commodities, on what scales they operated, and how their increasingly complex networks were imbricated with state and local power. These networks linked Zomian communities to Chinese and global transformations and influenced local cultural and political changes, suggesting that studies of mobility can uncover hidden geographies of social, political, and cultural change.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , July 2010 , pp. 215 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © London School of Economics and Political Science 2010

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References

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2 The inspiration is Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the age of Philip II, trans. Siân Reynolds, 2 vols., New York: Harper & Row, 1973.

3 For the Braudelian influence, see Markus P. M. Vink, ‘Indian Ocean studies and the “new thassology”’, Journal of Global History, 2, 1, 2007, p. 43; Heather Sutherland, ‘Southeast Asia and the Mediterranean analogy’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 34, 1, 2003, pp. 1–20; Wim van Spengen, Tibetan border worlds: a geohistorical analysis of trade and traders, London: Kegan Paul International, 2000.

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7 Van Schendel, ‘Geographies’, pp. 660–1.

8 Inner Asia includes Mongolia, Xinjiang, Qinghai, and Tibet – areas sometimes included in Central Asia.

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12 In particular, see ibid., pp. 94–7, 104.

13 James C. Scott, The art of not being governed: an anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009, pp. x, 8; see also James C. Scott, ‘Zomia as a “state-repelling space”’, unpublished paper for Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, 3–6 April 2008, pp. 14–16, 33–4.

14 Scott, Art, pp. 4–5, 11.

15 Ibid., pp. 19, 22.

16 See, for example, Paul J. Smith, Taxing heaven’s storehouse: horses, bureaucrats, and the destruction of the Sichuan tea industry, 1074–1224, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Council on East Asian Studies, 1991.

17 Lu Ren, Yunnan dui wai jiaotong shi (A history of Yunnan’s foreign communications), Kunming: Yunnan minzu, 1997, pp. 136–42, 240; Tu Yaojun and Lu Minsheng. ‘Qingdai Zhong Yue maoyi tongdao tanxi (An investigation into China–Vietnam trade routes during the Qing dynasty)’, Guangxi Difangzhi (Guangxi gazetteer), 4, 2004, pp. 38–40.

18 Van Spengen, Tibetan border worlds, pp. 72–3.

19 Chen Chongkai, ‘Shaan shang zai kaituo “xixi” Han-Zang maoyi zhong de lishi zuoyong (History of the impact of Shaanxi merchants on the opening of “north-west–south-west” Han–Tibetan trade)’, Xinan minzu xueyuan xuebao, zhexue shuhui kexue ban (Journal of the Southwest Nationalities Institute, philosophy and social sciences edition), 19, 4, 1998, p. 44.

20 Palace memorials (Zhupi zouzhe), Beijing Number One Archives, 112–7, QL 31 03 29, Yang Yingju; 1733–2, QL 11 05 09, Zhangbao; 142–1 QL 34 01 19, Fuheng.

21 Lu, Yunnan, pp. 213–16, 240–4.

22 Alexander Woodside, ‘Central Vietnam’s trading world in the eighteenth century as seen in Lê Quý Đôn’s “Frontier chronicles”’, in K. W. Taylor and John K. Whitmore, eds., Essays into Vietnamese pasts, Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1995, pp. 168–9.

23 Victor B. Lieberman, Strange parallels: Southeast Asia in global context, c. 800–1830, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 421–2, 435.

24 C. Patterson Giersch, ‘Cotton, copper, and caravans: trade and the transformation of southwest China, ca 1600–1900’, unpublished paper for ‘Chinese traders in the Nanyang: capital, commodities and networks’ conference, Taipei, 18–19 January 2007.

25 Chen, ‘Shaan shang’, pp. 44–6.

26 Roger Greatrex, ‘A brief introduction to the first Jinchuan war’, in P. Kvaerne, ed., Tibetan studies, Oslo: The Institute for Comparative Studies in Human Culture, 1994, vol. 1, pp. 247–63; Yingcong Dai, ‘The Qing state, merchants, and the military labor force in the Jinchuan campaigns’, Late Imperial China, 22, 2, 2001, pp. 37–40.

27 Dai, ‘Qing state’, pp. 79–80.

28 William Gill, The river of golden sand: the narrative of a journey through China and eastern Tibet to Burmah, London: John Murray, 1880, vol. 2, p. 125; William Woodville Rockhill, Diary of a journey through Mongolia and Tibet in 1891 and 1892, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1894, pp. 357–8, 368–71; Alexander Hosie, Mr. Hosie’s journey to Tibet, 1904: a report by Mr. A. Hosie, His Majesty’s Consul at Chengtu, on a journey from Chengtu to the eastern frontier of Tibet, London: Harrison and Sons, 1905 (reprinted London: The Stationery Office, 2001), p. 104.

29 James A. Millward, ‘The Chinese border wool trade of 1880–1937’, web-published article, 1994 (revised 1999), http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/millwarj/#WEB-PUBLISHED_ARTICLES (consulted 14 September, 2009), p. 5; Rockhill, Diary, p. 64.

30 Jiang Rusu, Yunnan Gejiu xiye diaocha (A survey of the tin industry in Yunnan’s Gejiu region), Beijing: Guoli Qinghua daxue Guoqing pucha yanjiu suo, 1940, pp. 41–4.

31 Van Spengen, Tibetan border worlds, pp. 82–3.

32 Shen Xu, ‘Dali Baizu mabang yu shangbang de xingcheng yu fazhan (Emergence and development of the Dali Bai nationality’s caravan and commercial groups)’, in Na Qi, ed., Zhongguo Xinan wenhua yanjiu (Research in the culture of south-west China), Kunming: Yunnan minzu, 2004, pp. 266–9.

33 William Woodville Rockhill, The land of the lamas: notes of a journey through China, Mongolia and Tibet, New York: The Century Company, 1891, p. 285, n. 1.

34 See, for example, Report on the mission to China of the Blackburn Chamber of Commerce, 1896–1897, Blackburn: The North-east Lancashire Press Company, 1898, Bourne report, pp. 76, 85–90; Chiranan Prasertkul, Yunnan trade in the nineteenth century: southwest China’s cross-boundaries functional system, Bangkok: Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, 1989, p. 51; Jie Lesan, ‘Qingzhengyu shanghao huiyi lu (Recollections of the Qingzhengyu business firm)’, in Zhongguo renmin zhengzhi xieshanghuiyi Yunnansheng weiyuanhui, wenshi ziliao weiyuanhui, ed., Yunnan wenshi ziliao xuanji (Selected sources for Yunnan literature and history), Kunming: Yunnan renmin, 1989, vol. 9, pp. 28–45; Qin Shucai, Yunling jinjiang huahuo zhi: Yunnan minzu shangmao (Commodities of the Yun mountain range and Jinsha river: Yunnan nationalities’ trade), Kunming: Yunnan jiaoyu, 2000, pp. 70–1.

35 Gill, River, vol. 2, pp. 108, 349; C. P. Fitzgerald, The tower of five glories: a study of the Min Chia of Ta Li, Yunnan, London: Cresset Press, 1941 (reprinted Westport, CT: Hyperion Press, 1973), pp. 56–64; Qin, Yunling jinjiang hua huozhi, p. 50.

36 For details on manufacturing, see Arthur de Rosthorn, On the tea cultivation in western Ssuch’uan and the trade with Tibet via Tachienlu, London: Luzac & Co., 1895, pp. 25–6.

37 Desgodins estimated at least 6 million livres of tea imported each year; Rockhill estimated 10–13 million lb through Dajianlu alone, with another million lb each via Lijiang and Songpan; Hosie estimated over 11 million lb through Dajianlu. See C. H. Desgodins, La mission du Thibet de 1855 à 1870, Verdun: Ch. Laurent, 1872, pp. 298–300; Rockhill, Land, p. 277; Hosie, Mr. Hosie’s journey, pp. 211–22.

38 John Pickrell, ‘Poachers target musk deer for perfumes, medicines’, National Geographic News, 7 September 2004, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/09/0907_040907_muskdeer.html (consulted 29 June 2009).

39 Qisen Yang, Xiuxiang Meng, Lin Xia, and Zuojian Feng, ‘Conservation status and causes of decline of musk deer (Moschus spp.) in China’, Biological Conservation, 109, 3, 2003, pp. 333–42.

40 C. Deite, A practical treatise on the manufacture of perfumery: directions for making all kinds of perfumes, sachet powders, fumigating materials, dentifrices, cosmetics, etc., etc., trans. William T. Brannt, Philadelphia, PA: Henry Carey Baird & Co., 1892, p. 178.

41 J. R. Morrison, Chinese commercial guide, 3rd rev. edn, Canton: Chinese Repository, 1848, pp. 176–7.

42 Austin J. Clements, ‘Musk: its origin and export’, North China Daily News, June 1919, reprinted Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Libraries, 2006, http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B34850375 (consulted 30 March 2010); ‘Notes on trade and industry abroad’, New York Times, 31 July 1921, p. 87, retrieved 24 November 2009 from ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The New York Times (1851–2006).

43 Desgodins, Mission du Thibet, pp. 304–306; Clements, ‘Musk’.

44 Rockhill, Land, p. 283; see also Hosie, Mr. Hosie’s journey, pp. 211–22; Clements, ‘Musk’.

45 Rockhill, Diary, pp. 368–71. Exchange rate based on the 1889 rate reported in China Imperial Maritime Customs, Returns of trade and trade reports for the year 1889, Shanghai: Statistical Department of the IGC, 1890, part 2, H. B. Morse, ‘Pakhoi trade report for the year 1889’, pp. 510–15.

46 Desgodins, Mission, pp. 304–6.

47 Gill, River, vol. 2, pp. 77–8.

48 Rockhill, Land, pp. 206–9, 282. On arbitrage, see the articles by Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez, including ‘Cycles of silver: global economic unity through the mid-eighteenth century,’ Journal of World History, 13, 2, 2002, pp. 391–427.

49 Oliver Coales, ‘Economic notes on eastern Tibet’, Geographical Journal, 54, 4, October 1919, p. 244.

50 Hosie, Mr. Hosie’s journey, pp. 106–7.

51 Giersch, Asian borderlands: the transformation of Qing China’s Yunnan frontier, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006, ch. 6, esp. p. 184; idem, ‘Cotton’.

52 Luo Qun, Jindai Yunnan shangren yu shangren ziben (Modern Yunnanese merchants and merchant capital), Kunming: Yunnan daxue, 2004, pp. 39–41; Gu Yongji, ‘Ming-Qing shi Dian Gui diqu yu Yuenan guanxi shulun (Yunnan and Guangxi regions’ relations with Vietnam during the Ming and Qing periods)’, Yunnan shifan daxue xuebao (Journal of Yunnan Normal University), 37, 2, 2005, p. 80.

53 Francis Hsu found Xizhou inhabitants adamant about their Han identity, though they spoke Bai at home. After 1949, the state classified them as Bai. Francis L. K. Hsu, Under the ancestors’ shadow: Chinese culture and personality, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949, pp. 18–19; Colin Mackerras, ‘Aspects of Bai culture: change and continuity in a Yunnan nationality’, Modern China, 14, 1, 1988, p. 53.

54 Rockhill, Land, pp. 250–2; Eric Teichman, Travels of a consular official in eastern Tibet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922, pp. 76–7.

55 Rockhill, Land, pp. 277, 310–11; Hosie, Mr. Hosie’s journey, pp. 56–7.

56 Chengdu shi Yisilanjiao xiehui (The Chengdu City Islamic Association), ‘Huixun’, 22, p. 23, cited in Duan Jinlu and Yao Jide, eds., Zhongguo nanfang Huizu jingji shangmao ziliao xuanbian (Southern China Hui economics and trade: selected sources), Kunming: Yunnan minzu, 2002, p. 277.

57 Ma Zeru interview, cited in Duan and Yao, Zhongguo nanfang Huizu, p. 370.

58 Shen, ‘Dali Baizu mabang’, pp. 260–2.

59 Rockhill, Land, pp. 206–9; Hosie, Mr. Hosie’s journey, p. 104.

60 Van Spengen, Tibetan border worlds, pp. 70, 80.

61 Rockhill, Diary, p. 357.

62 Ibid., pp. 344–5.

63 Hosie, Mr. Hosie’s journey, pp. 122–3.

64 Ibid., p. 79; Rockhill, Land, pp. 284–5.

65 Rockhill, Diary, p. 67.

66 Coales, ‘Economic notes’, pp. 244–5.

67 Clements, ‘Musk’; Coales, ‘Economic notes’, p. 245. Millward nicely describes the guozhuang’s role in ‘Chinese border’, pp. 21–2.

68 Millward, ‘Chinese border’, p. 6.

69 Rockhill, Land, p. 51.

70 Peter Goullart, Forgotten kingdom, London: John Murray, 1955, pp. 46–8.

71 Xiuyu Wang, ‘China’s last imperial frontier: statecraft and locality in Qing Kham Tibet, 1890–1911’, PhD thesis, Carnegie Mellon University, 2006, p. 73.

72 For expert insight into Kham politics, see ibid., pp. 81–116. For Lhasa influence in Kham monasteries, see Rockhill, Diary, p. 359.

73 Rockhill, Land, pp. 52–3.

74 Sarat Chandra Das, Journey to Lhasa and central Tibet, London: John Murray, 1902, pp. 182–3, 193.

75 Melvyn C. Goldstein, A history of modern Tibet, volume 2: the calm before the storm, 1951–1955, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007, pp. 263–4.

76 Rockhill, Diary, pp. 346–7.

77 Rockhill, Land, pp. 256–8.

78 Ma Jiakui, ‘Huiyi xianfu Ma Zhucai jingying Zhong-Yin maoyi (Recollections of my late father Ma Zhucai’s engagement in China–India trade)’, in Duan and Yao, Zhongguo nanfang Huizu, pp. 398–406.

79 See, for example, Zhou Zhisheng, Shangren yu jindai Zhongguo xinan bianjiang shehui (Merchants and modern China’s south-western frontier society), Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue, 2006.

80 Ma Yunhe, ‘Qingmo Huizu jushang Ma Qixiang (Ma Qixiang: a major Hui merchant in the late Qing)’, in Duan and Yao, Zhongguo nanfang Huizu, pp. 331–334.

81 Yunnan Provincial Archives, Kunming, Yunnan siying jinchukou shang (Yunnanese privately managed import–export firms) (henceforth YPA, YSJS), 132-4-99, Yongchangxiang de qiyue (Yongchangxiang’s deeds), pp. 32–7.

82 YPA, YSJS, 132-4-99, pp. 8–17.

83 The allegedly closed nature of Chinese business networks has long been studied. For two recent discussions from different perspectives, see Sherman Cochran, Chinese medicine men: consumer culture in China and Southeast Asia, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006, pp. 5–7; Kris Olds and Henry Wai-chung Yeung, ‘(Re)shaping “Chinese” business networks in a globalising era’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 17, 1999, pp. 535–55.

84 Shen, ‘Dali Baizu mabang’, p. 263.

85 YPA, YSJS, 132-3-1, Dian-Mian shengsi gongsi Sichuan caiban bu (Purchasing department of the Yunnan–Burma Raw Silk Company), pp. 106–10 and 132 3–3, pp. 2–3.

86 YPA YSJS, 132-2-35, Yongchangxiang zongli Yan Xiecheng siren xin (Private letters of the Yongchangxiang director Yan Xiecheng), pp. 38–9, 95.

87 YPA YSJS ,132-2-10.

88 The dissemination of accounting and communications practices can be deduced from Jie, ‘Qingzhengyu shanghao’, pp. 28–9; Yang Kecheng, ‘Yongchangxiang jianshi (A basic history of Yongchangxiang)’, in Yunnan wenshi, vol. 9, pp. 50–2; and Shi Cilu, ‘Fuchunheng de xingqi fazhan ji qi yanluo (The origin, development, and decline of Fuchungheng)’, in Yunnan wenshi, vol. 8, pp. 3–23.

89 YPA, YSJS, 132-2-35, pp. 87–8.

90 YPA, YSJS, 132-4-71 Hengsheng Lijiang zhuang suoshou gehuo qingce (Inventory of sales from Hengsheng’s Lijiang branch), pp. 43–51.

91 Giersch, ‘“Grieving for Tibet”: conceiving the modern state in late-Qing Inner Asia’, China Perspectives, 3, 2008, pp. 4–18.

92 Wang, ‘China’s last’, pp. 118–19, 127, 188–202, 210–12.

93 Francis Kingdon Ward, The land of the blue poppy: travels of a naturalist in eastern Tibet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913, p. 59.

94 Oliver Coales, ‘Economic notes’, p. 235.

95 Ibid., p. 245.

96 Goullart witnessed the Tibet caravans come through Lijiang: Forgotten kingdom, pp. 86–7.

97 Millward, ‘Chinese border’, p. 13.

98 Zhou, Shangren yu jindai Zhongguo.

99 Rockhill, Land, pp. 284–5.

100 Giersch, Asian borderlands, pp. 143–4, 165.

101 Rockhill, Diary, pp. 336–7.

102 Ibid., pp. 328–9.

103 Teichman, Travels, p. 77.

104 Giersch, Asian borderlands, pp. 189–99; John R. Shepherd, Statecraft and political economy on the Taiwan frontier, 1600–1800, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993, pp. 362–3, 377; Edmund R. Leach, Political systems of highland Burma: a study of Kachin social structure, London: G. Bell and Sons, 1954.

105 Quote from Vink, ‘Indian Ocean studies’, p. 52; see also Clare Anderson, ‘“Process geographies” of mobility and movement in the Indian Ocean: a review essay’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 8, 3, 2007, http://muse.uq.edu.au/login?uri=/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v008/8.3anderson.html (consulted 30 March 2010).

106 Eric Tagliacozzo, Secret trades, porous borders: smuggling and states along a Southeast Asian frontier, 1865–1915, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005, p. 362.

107 For Yan’s lifestyle and his son’s travels, see Yang Kecheng, ‘Yongchangxiang jianshi’, pp. 56–7.

108 Rong Sheng, ‘Jingying Meng Zang yi baozun Zhongguo lun (shang) (Managing Mongolia and Tibet in order to preserve China)’, (Tokyo) Da tong bao (Da tong newspaper), 7, 28 June 1908, in Lu Xiuzhang, ed., Qingmo Minchu Zang shi ziliao xuanbian 1877–1919 (Selected sources on Tibetan affairs during the late Qing and early Republic, 1877–1919), Beijing: Zhongguo Zangxue, 2005, pp. 48–64.

109 I cover the origins of modern Chinese images of Tibet in ‘Grieving’, pp. 15–17.