Literacy, Sovereignty, Bondage: a Native Hereditary Chieftainship in Qing China

FAIN: FT-264551-19

Erik Mueggler
Regents of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1382)

Research and writing leading to publication of a book on social and political relations on the frontier of the Chinese Qing empire, based on analysis of an archive in two languages: Nasu and bureaucratic Chinese.

This book project explores a unique archive retained by a lineage of native hereditary chiefs during the Qing dynasty (1644-1912) in southwest China. The archive is in two languages: bureaucratic Chinese and Nasu, one of four closely related Ne (or Yi) written languages. Its documents afford an unparalleled opportunity to work out a description of local relations and forms of subjugation in this periphery of the Qing empire. My inquiry begins with basic questions. What systems of ideas, conventions and practices surrounded each class of administrative, legal, personal, and ritual document in this archive? How did different practices of writing, copying, reading and reciting mediate the subjugation of ancestors, chiefs, wives, concubines, heirs, ministers, bonded tenants, and domestic slaves? Methodologically, how might attention to discrepancies and resonances across forms of writing usually kept separate illuminate social relations otherwise obscured?

Associated Products

Lady Qu's Inscriptions: Literacy and Sovereignty in a Native Domain, Southwest China (Article)
Title: Lady Qu's Inscriptions: Literacy and Sovereignty in a Native Domain, Southwest China
Author: Erik Mueggler
Abstract: In 1533, Lady Qu, native prefect of Wuding Prefecture in northern Yunnan, sponsored the inscription of two texts on a cliff face at the center of her domain. One was in Nasu, the language of the ruling lineage; the other was in Chinese. Both commemorated the long, powerful line of Ne´ (or Yi) native chieftains to which Lady Qu was heir. Yet they gave contradictory accounts of the forms of chiefly succession, sources of political authority, and geopolitical position of the native domain. The inscriptions show that chiefly sovereignty was neither merely embodied in ancestral authority nor simply endowed by the emperor. Sovereignty—particularly that of a female chieftain—was the capacity to master both modes of self-description while embodying their incompatibility. While we often understand colonialism through power-laden projects of translation, Lady Qu’s inscriptions give evidence that Ming colonization of the southwest might require a different approach. Native chieftains were often the “imperial intermediaries” in encounters between indigenous peoples and imperial agents, garrisoned soldiers, and other migrants. Yet rather than merely understanding these elites as the translators and mediators of colonialism, we might also ask how they emphasized and strategically deployed cultural and linguistic differences to achieve ends of their own.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-asian-studies
Primary URL Description: This is the primary website for the Journal of Asian Studies
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of Asian Studies
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Rewriting Bondage: Literacy and Slavery in a Qing Native Domain (Article)
Title: Rewriting Bondage: Literacy and Slavery in a Qing Native Domain
Author: Erik Mueggler
Abstract: Abstract: The article examines legal plaints authored by the household slaves, bondsmen, bonded tenants, concubine, wife, sisters, and affines of the chieftain of a native domain in northern Yunnan Province, China in 1760. These kin and enslaved persons of the chiefly house were struggling over whether a slave baby should become the chieftain of this sprawling realm. The documents were preserved in the hereditary house of the native chieftain along with some 500 manuscripts in an indigenous script now called Nasu, which carried its own assumptions about what writing was and what it could do. I read the Chinese-language legal documents with an eye to the tradition of Nasu ritual writing. I argue that a group of bondsmen accused of rebelling against the chiefly household were actually seeking to preserve it by extending the ritualized tasks of writing ancestry and descent into the realm of Qing legal practice. This allows me to extend the first of two methodological suggestions: that the kinship of bondage and the bondage of kinship are best seen as participating reciprocally in a single field of relations. I then follow a group of domestic slaves as they travel to the administrative city and search for a litigation master to write up their own legal plaint. With this exercise, I propose a second methodological argument: that reading and writing are complex human skills, often partly available even to those who cannot use pen and paper, and involving the coordination of forms of textuality across different planes of inscription.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/comparative-studies-in-society-and-history/article/rewriting-bondage-literacy-and-slavery-in-a-qing-native-domain/5C43878837DCA48FFF50B6C58175C152
Primary URL Description: Link to article in Comparative Studies in Society and History, published by Cambridge University Press.
Secondary URL: https://www.academia.edu/45118979/Rewriting_Bondage_Literacy_and_Slavery_in_a_Qing_Native_Domain
Secondary URL Description: Link to Academia.edu account
Access Model: Open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Comparative Studies in Society and History
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Rewriting Bondage: Literacy and Slavery in a Native Domain, Southwest China. (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Rewriting Bondage: Literacy and Slavery in a Native Domain, Southwest China.
Author: Erik Mueggler
Abstract: How can we excavate experiences of enslaved people from archives that systematically exclude enslaved voices, while negotiating the demands of a liberal sensibility that requires subjects to speak for themselves? In 1760, six slaves submitted a confession and plea for mercy to the magistrate of Wuding Prefecture, Yunnan. They had been caught, terrifyingly, between two factions struggling over who would succeed their dead master, a Né (or Yi) native hereditary chieftain, as the sovereign of his extensive domain. Their plaint, which named the slaves as its collective author, was written in Chinese, a language they could neither speak nor write. This paper traces their footsteps as they accompanied their master’s widow to the prefectural capital, found a cut-rate litigation master to fashion their plaint, then dispersed through the city on errands for their master’s widow. I think about how the slaves’ own form of spatial literacy, developed through their service in their master’s house and participation in his rituals, might have helped them read and navigate the unfamiliar city. Thinking through the specificities of how slaves became writers and readers also helps better delineate the shape of slavery in Né places, which have served as China’s designated “slave societies,” despite widespread slavery in every region and economic sector of the Empire. I argue that the native chieftain system itself became a system of bondage in Qing society, confining Né and other ‘non-Chinese’ to mountain enclaves while extracting their wealth and using their lives in military actions.
Date: 03/24/2021
Primary URL: https://www.asianstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2021_AAS_Program_0324.pdf
Primary URL Description: Conference program
Secondary URL: https://www.asianstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2021_AAS_Program_0324.pdf
Secondary URL Description: Conference program
Conference Name: Association for Asian Studies annual conference, 2021

Rewriting Bondage: Literacy and Slavery in a Qing Native Domain (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Rewriting Bondage: Literacy and Slavery in a Qing Native Domain
Abstract: How can we excavate experiences of enslaved people from archives that systematically exclude enslaved voices, while negotiating the demands of a liberal sensibility that requires subjects to speak for themselves? In 1760, six slaves submitted a confession and plea for mercy to the magistrate of Wuding Prefecture, Yunnan. They had been caught, terrifyingly, between two factions struggling over who would succeed their dead master, a Né (or Yi) native hereditary chieftain, as the sovereign of his extensive domain. Their plaint, which named the slaves as its collective author, was written in Chinese, a language they could neither speak nor write. This paper traces their footsteps as they accompanied their master’s widow to the prefectural capital, found a cut-rate litigation master to fashion their plaint, then dispersed through the city on errands for their master’s widow. I think about how the slaves’ own form of spatial literacy, developed through their service in their master’s house and participation in his rituals, might have helped them read and navigate the unfamiliar city. Thinking through the specificities of how slaves became writers and readers also helps better delineate the shape of slavery in Né places, which have served as China’s designated “slave societies,” despite widespread slavery in every region and economic sector of the Empire. I argue that the native chieftain system itself became a system of bondage in Qing society, confining Né and other ‘non-Chinese’ to mountain enclaves while extracting their wealth and using their lives in military actions.
Author: Erik Mueggler
Date: 07/31/2021
Location: Xiamen University Department of Anthropology Colloquium (virtual)
Primary URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKoX0vhks5s
Primary URL Description: Youtube video of virtual presentation

Rewriting Bondage: Literacy and Slavery in a Qing Native Domain (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Rewriting Bondage: Literacy and Slavery in a Qing Native Domain
Abstract: In 1760, six slaves submitted a confession and plea for mercy to the magistrate of Wuding Prefecture, Yunnan, the immediate superior of their dead master, Nuo Jiayou, a Né (or Yi) native chieftain. They had been caught between two factions struggling over who would succeed their master as the sole owner of all the lands and peoples within his extensive domain. Their plaint was written in Chinese, which they could neither speak nor write. This paper traces their footsteps as they traveled to the prefectural capital and found a translator and litigation master to fashion their plaint. I show how the slaves’ own form of spatial literacy, developed through participation their master’s rituals, may have helped them read and navigate the unfamiliar city. Thinking through the specificities of how slaves became writers and readers also helps better delineate the shape of slavery in Né places, which became the designated “slave societies” of Chinese social science despite ubiquitous slavery in every region and economic sector of the empire. I argue that the native chieftain system itself became a system of bondage in Qing society, confining Né and other indigenous peoples to mountain enclaves while extracting their wealth and using their lives in military actions.
Author: Erik Mueggler
Date: 11/01/2019
Location: Ohio State University East Asian Studies Center Colloquium
Primary URL: https://easc.osu.edu/events/ics/e-mueggler
Primary URL Description: online flyer for public lecture

Literacy and Bondage in a Qing Dynasty Native Domain (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Literacy and Bondage in a Qing Dynasty Native Domain
Abstract: How can we excavate the experiences of enslaved people from archives that systematically exclude enslaved voices, while negotiating the demands of a liberal sensibility that requires subjects to speak for themselves? In 1760, six slaves submitted a confession and plea for mercy to the magistrate of Wuding Prefecture, Yunnan, the immediate superior of their dead master, Nuo Jiayou, a Né (or Yi) native chieftain. The slaves had been caught, terrifyingly, between two factions struggling over who would succeed their master as the sole owner of all the lands and peoples within his extensive domain. Their plaint, which named the slaves as its collective author, was written in Chinese, a language they could neither speak nor write. This paper traces their footsteps as they followed their master’s widow to the prefectural capital and found a translator and a cut-rate litigation master to fashion their plaint. I show how the slaves’ own form of spatial literacy, developed through service in their master’s house and participation in his rituals, may have helped them read and navigate the unfamiliar city. Thinking through the specificities of how slaves became writers and readers also helps better delineate the shape of slavery in Né places, which became the designated “slave societies” of Chinese social science despite ubiquitous slavery in every region and economic sector of the Empire. I argue that the native chieftain system itself became a system of bondage in Qing society, confining Né and other ‘non-Chinese’ to mountain enclaves while extracting their wealth and using their lives in military actions.
Author: Erik Mueggler
Date: 10/17/2019
Location: University of Pennsylvania East Asian Languages and Cultures Colloquium
Primary URL: https://ealc.sas.upenn.edu/events/literacy-and-bondage-qing-dynasty-native-domain-southwest-china
Primary URL Description: flyer for public lecture

Lady Qu’s Inscriptions: Literacy and Sovereignty in a Nasu Chiefly Lineage, Southwest China (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Lady Qu’s Inscriptions: Literacy and Sovereignty in a Nasu Chiefly Lineage, Southwest China
Abstract: In 1533, Lady Qu, native prefect of Wuding Prefecture in northern Yunnan, sponsored the inscription of two texts on a cliff face at the center of her domain. One was in Nasu, the language of the ruling lineage; the other was in Chinese. Both commemorated the long, powerful line of Né (or Yi) native chieftains to which Lady Qu was heir. Yet they gave contradictory accounts of the forms of chiefly succession, sources of political authority, and geopolitical position of the native domain. The inscriptions show that chiefly sovereignty was neither merely embodied in ancestral authority nor simply endowed by the emperor. Sovereignty—particularly that of a female chieftain—was the capacity to master both modes of self-description while embodying their incompatibility. While we often understand colonialism through power-laden projects of translation, Lady Qu's inscriptions give evidence that Ming colonization of the southwest might require a different approach. Native chieftains were often intermediaries in encounters between indigenous peoples and imperial agents, garrisoned soldiers, and other migrants. Rather than merely understanding these elites as translators and mediators of colonialism, we might also ask how they emphasized and strategically deployed cultural and linguistic differences to achieve ends of their own.
Author: Erik Mueggler
Date: 05/20/2019
Location: Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, Humanities Workshop. Ciudad de México

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