#315 - Qing 46: Tripping Toward Taiping - Tribes, Triads, & Theology

You're listening to an Air Wave Media Podcast. Hello and welcome to the history of China. Episode 315. Tipping toward Taipei.

Tribes, Triads and Theology. In ancient times, people were few and goods were plenty, and therefore no men quarreled. But now, people are many and goods are few, and men must work hard for a mere return. Hence, the people fall into strife.

Hanfei Zhe, the Five Vermin, 3rd century BCE A monk asked Da Sui. When the great Kalpa fire rages through and the whole universe is destroyed, is it destroyed or not?

Da Sui said, destroyed. The monk said, then it goes along with that? Da Sui said, it goes along with that. The blue cliff record, 1125 CE.

The vitality of our lands depends on wind and thunder. It is a tragedy that 10,000 horses have all fallen silent. I beg the Lord of Heaven to rouse himself once more, and, breaking every mold, send down men of talent.

Guangze Zhen, the Ji Hai Kua trains, 1839. Last time, we looked at the major pressure points internal to the Empire as of the early 19th century. Chief among them, China's ballooning population running up against the structural limitations

of both the imperial physical and bureaucratic outlets, namely new open land to migrate to, and a scholar official class paradoxically tightening down in the face of unprecedented levels of demand to be let into their hallowed roles. We were still mostly talk back then, but today all that pressure built up by the

big squeeze will start to breach the last lines of containment with shockingly violent results. One of the notable details of this early period of anti-government rebellion is that, in spite of the undeniable centrality of population explosion as it's driving force when viewed from a historical distance, it did not initially spark in the massive city centers of Great

Qing's urban hearts. Rather, it had flowed, along with the population over pressure itself, along the arteries and biways of the empire, out towards the frontiers and underdeveloped regions, many of which we've already covered. And it would be there, in the jungled backwaters and mountain borderlands, that the ever-building friction between indigenous peoples and Han

settler migrants would initially flare up into rebellion and bloodshed. I'm talking about places like the island of Taiwan, the mountainous borders of Sichuan, the that country of Guangxi, and the strongholds of the aboriginal Miao along the Hunan-Guizhou borders, to name but a few. This is not to try to lump each or

any of these into some single causal basket. Each was particular to its own time, place, and circumstance. But there are clear common ingredients shared in the growth and outbreak of each of these early rebellions. From Susan man, quote, an intense community or sub-ethnic consciousness sharpened by the heterogeneous

origins of the border region populations and often reinforced by linguistic differences, and a high degree of militarization made necessary by banditry or communal strife in the unstable border region, end quote. These conditions would prove, time and again, to be potent kindling for the sparks

of rebellion to catch and then spread back to the more settled populations of the plains in Deltas, with varying degrees of success and failure, as the late Qing cascade of social crises yawned ever wider. We begin today with the early rebellions of the Miao peoples of south-central and western

China, especially the border regions between Hunan and Guizhou. Now, to be clear from the outset, because this is a detail that tripped me up for a long time as well, the term Miao Peoples is not a single ethnic self-identifying term. There is no Miao tribe or Miao nation, and there never was.

It is instead a Qing administrative term set upon many groups of indigenous peoples and tribes within a given zone that might most usefully be understood as non-Han, non-assimilated hill and mountain people. They include a multitude of distinct identities within that government-stamped umbrella term,

including Hmong, Hoshiong, Mu, and many others beside. It's not terribly dissimilar from the broad categorization of all North American tribal peoples as Indians, or maybe even more appropriately, calling everyone who lives in the Ozarks hillbillies.

The problem here wasn't a unified ethnic or cultural clash, but instead, and in keeping with this narrative's larger thesis, administrative friction reaching a flashpoint. The friction was generated, largely, by a policy known as Gaitu Guilio, which translates more or less literally to abolish the native chieftains and replace them with regular

imperial bureaucrats. Which man, talk about saying the quiet part out loud. What had once been semi-atonymous frontier rule was now direct Qing sovereignty, with new courts, new taxes, and new laws. And it turned out that maybe a little more subtlety on the part

of the Qing officialdom might have served them better, as the Gaitu Guilio system sparked outrage and fierce resistance from the very Miao people it was meant to pacify and bring into the fold, who saw it, very correctly, as an attack on their very sovereignty, autonomy, and identity. What would follow were a series of Miao uprisings that continued through the 18th century and

much of the 19th, and in response the grinding gears of government inexorably began to turn. Regional insurrection led, predictably, to government response, reprisals, and strictures. Qing coercions led to yet further resentment and popular anger from the Aborigines, and to further acts of defiance.

confiscations ensued, and then even the building of garrisoned forts to buttress government power in Miao areas, as well as to ostensibly protect both the influx of Han farmer settlers and the officiates, military officers, and often less than scrupulous prophet seekers who followed along with them. Crucially, many of these settlers were not prosperous colonists, but Khamin, guest people

in Qing administrative parlance, which largely consisted of surplus populations expelled from