The Imperial Projects of Civilianizing Borderlands

• In Event: 305 - Regular Session. Comparative Sociology: Historical Processes

Abstract

Territoriality has been a Weberian marker of political sovereigns. Most sociological researches of territoriality have analyzed various boundary works between adjoining political entities. Much less intellectual works have been devoted to the linkages between the political disposition of border areas and the scenarios of the territorial governance in the heartland. This paper addresses this missing link between the frontier and heartland first theoretically and then with an empirical case from late imperial China. In the empirical case, I will tackle how the Qing Empire during the long eighteenth century (1650 – 1799) civilianized two border provinces at northwest, Shaanxi and Gansu, which used to be the core frontier between Chinese and the Mongols (1360 -1645). By “civilianization” I mean the process of substituting the civilian government as practiced in the heartland for the frontier governance characterized by garrisons and military rules. The transformation from frontier to province was complicated and incomplete primarily because the Qing Empire was reconfiguring the territorial rule both at the frontier and in the heartland in its premium days. The variability of adopting the province as the supreme civilian government outside the capital compounded the difficulty of de-militarizing the frontier. Resultantly the net effect of civilianization at this region was a compromise between civilian and military modes of territorial rules. Such a hybrid rule, especially in Gansu, became increasingly partitioned after Qing’s marches to the far west were concluded. The late 19th century crisis in this region was largely derived from this deferred “civilianization” process.

Author

• Geng of Tian, University of Chicago