Qing Reconstruction in the Southern Shaanxi Highlands: State Perceptions and Plans, 1799–1820

Abstract

Qing Reconstruction in the Southern Shaanxi Highlands:State Perceptions and Plans, 1799–1820 Daniel McMahon (bio) Qing dynasty (1644–1911) decline began at the edges of empire. Borderland conflicts with Taiwan Han settlers, Jinchuan Qiang, Hunan Miao, southern Shaanxi sectarians, Guangdong pirates, and Kashgarian Khwajas all indicated that the Qing's grip on its "remote regions" had loosened.1 Qing officialdom feared a fractured realm and its actions to avoid one—open to the lessons of frontier rule, fixated on resources and polity—set the stage for China's nineteenth-century crisis management.2 This essay considers the logic and measures of late Qing policy as seen in one important early project: reconstruction in southern Shaanxi in the wake of the 1796–1804 White Lotus revolt. The paper addresses two general questions. First, how did early-nineteenth-century Qing planners see this highland region? And second, what manner of plans arose in response to their perception? In considering these questions, a range of views will be discussed, albeit with the greatest focus upon leading southern Shaanxi field officials such as Yan Ruyi (1759–1826).3 [End Page 85] The reports of concerned officials of the Jiaqing reign (1796–1820) reveal that Shaannan (southern Shaanxi) was understood as a distinctive settlement frontier.4 These mountains were a site of defining events of imperial history, at the center of the Qing realm, and peopled by Han Chinese, albeit infamous for cycles of cultural degeneration, heretical dissent, and violent revolt. The White Lotus rebellion seemed the latest case of cyclical deterioration in the region, a concern that connected directly with an emerging project of imperial reforms advanced under the Jiaqing emperor from 1799. Official views of polity and place framed the possibilities of postwar reconstruction. Confucian-defined ills of rootlessness and revolt underlay conventional bureaucratic measures for order, settlement, livelihood, and education. The proximity of the hills and cultural sophistication of the local Han people oriented these plans toward greater integration with the Qing heartland—pursued via revitalized infrastructure, production, commercial circulation, inculcation, and state oversight. Frontier-like conditions of harsh environment and "confused" people yielded a concurrent (and somewhat contradictory) focus on security, seen in administrative restructuring, empowered officials, military redeployment, and transformative education. The reordering of the Shaannan highlands was a state priority and regional officials drew flexibly from both frontier and heartland precedent for solutions. The results were discernable but uneven.5 The Southern Shaanxi Highlands In a study of Burma, E.R. Leach observed that Burmese land existed not as a smooth contiguous expanse, but as a patchwork of controlled territories interspersed by obstructing "non-state spaces." Within the realm lay highlands that, in intensity proportionate to elevation, resisted agricultural production and governmental intervention.6 The southern Shaanxi highlands were a similar non-state space. The Hubei-Shaanxi-Sichuan border region, part of the vast Central Mountain Belt, was classic hostile terrain. One regional official, Yan Ruyi, likened it to a "vile beast" (e shou). Its head lay in northeastern Sichuan's Kuizhou prefecture and Taiping subprefecture: a land of "steep cliffs and treacherous, winding paths" in which bandits hid and the worst gangs formed. Its belly lay [End Page 86] in western Hubei's Yunyang prefecture: a poorly-controlled region of "high mountains and deep valleys that stretched for thousands of li." Its back lay in southern Shaanxi's Hanzhong and Xing'an prefectures: a "land of celestial peril (tian xian)" with mountains that "jut like teeth into the air," deep valleys, and inaccessible peaks.7 The heights of this borderland loomed seven thousand feet above sea level, blanketed by a dense "Old Forest" (laolin) of bamboo and timber: a mat of highland wilderness more than ten thousand square miles in extent that sheltered bandits, migrants, fugitives, and rebels.8 This discussion examines the "back of the beast": southern Shaanxi's Shaan'an circuit (Hanzhong and Xing'an prefectures). Here lay a "sea" of dense mountains divided between the Qinling Range, to the north of the east-running Han River, and the Daba Shan Range9, to its south. These highlands were largely inimical to intensive agriculture, although by Qing times had proved adaptable to maize, Irish potato...