Helen F. Siu & Donald S. Sutton 
Empire at the Margins 
Culture, Ethnicity, and Frontier in Early Modern China

Focusing on the Ming (1368-1644) and (especially) the Qing (1364-1912) eras, this book analyzes crucial moments in the formation of cultural, regional, and religious identities. The contributors examine the role of the state in a variety of environments on China’s ‘peripheries, ‘ paying attention to shifts in law, trade, social stratification, and cultural dialogue. They find that local communities were critical participants in the shaping of their own identities and consciousness as well as the character and behavior of the state. At certain times the state was institutionally definitive, but it could also be symbolic and contingent. They demonstrate how the imperial discourse is many-faceted, rather than a monolithic agent of cultural assimilation.

Tabla de materias

Acknowledgments

Notes to Readers

Introduction

I. Identity at the Heart of Empire

1. Ethnicity in the Qing Eight Banners

Mark C. Elliott

2. Making Mongols

Pamela Kyle Crossley

3. ‘A Fierce and Brutal People’: On Islam and Muslims in Qing Law

Jonathan N. Lipman

II. Narrative Wars at the New Frontiers

4. The Qing and Islam on the Western Frontier

James A. Millward and Laura J. Newby

5. The Cant of Conquest: Tusi Offices and China’s Political Incorporation of the Southwest Frontier

John E. Herman

III. Old Contests of the South and Southwest

6. The Yao Wars in the Mid-Ming and their Impact on Yao Ethnicity

David Faure

7. Ethnicity and the Miao Frontier in the Eighteenth Century

Donald S. Sutton

8. Ethnicity, Conflict, and the State in the Early to Mid-Qing: The Hainan Highlands, 1644–1800

Anne Csete

IV. Uncharted Boundaries

9. Ethnic Labels in a Mountainous Region: The Case of She ‘Bandits’

Wing-hoi Chan

10. Lineage, Market, Pirate, and Dan: Ethnicity in the Pearl River Delta of South China

Helen F. Siu and Liu Zhiwei

Conclusion

Notes on Contributors

Bibliography

Glossary of Characters

Index

Sobre el autor

Pamela Kyle Crossley is Professor of History at Dartmouth College. Helen Siu is Professor of Anthropology at Yale University. Donald Sutton is Professor of History and Anthropology at Carnegie Mellon University.