Rethinking the Decline of China's Qing Dynasty: Imperial Activism and Borderland Management at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century (Asian States and Empires) by Daniel McMahon

Author:Daniel McMahon [McMahon, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317650416
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2014-08-21T04:00:00+00:00

Part 3

Management of the southern Shaanxi highlands

5

Qing reconstruction in the southern Shaanxi highlands

State perceptions and plans, 1799–1820

Early challenges to China’s late Qing order emerged at the edges of empire. Borderland conflicts with Taiwan Han settlers, Jinchuan Qiang, Hunan Miao, Shaanxi sectarians, Guangdong pirates, and Kashgarian Khwajas all indicated that the administration’s grip on its “remote regions” had loosened.1 Officialdom at the turn of the nineteenth century feared a fractured and deteriorating realm, and its actions to avoid one – open to the lessons of frontier rule, fixated on resources and polity – set the stage for crisis management in the dynasty’s final century.2

This essay considers the logic and measures of late Qing planning as seen in one important early project: reconstruction in southern Shaanxi in the wake of the 1796–1804 White Lotus revolt. Much like the 1795–7 Miao revolt in western Hunan – but in a more profound manner– this conflict is often taken as a sign of emerging Qing dynastic decline. However, again like the Miao revolt, relatively scant scholarly attention has been paid to the region’s aftermath and long-term management as a means to ascertain if in fact subsequent conditions either reflected or contributed to broader imperial disability.

Accordingly, this essay poses two general questions. First, how did early nineteenth-century Qing planners see the southern Shaanxi highlands? 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 on leading provincial field officials such as Yan Ruyi (1759–1826).3

The reports of concerned officials of the Jiaqing reign (1796–1820) reveal that Shaannan (southern Shaanxi) was understood as a distinctive settlement frontier. 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 reforms to arrest imperial decline 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 the 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 a 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 rebuilding of the Shaannan highlands was a state priority, and regional officials drew flexibly from both frontier and heartland precedents for solutions. The results were uneven but discernible, indicative of a continuing vitality to Qing planning and of institutions that challenge assumptions of sustained regional deterioration.4

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