In this paper, I will argue that a close examination of the historical documents does not support the view that the Hmong ethnic group was from the beginning a distinctive unity from other ancient Southern ethnic groups, but suggests that the people known as the Hmong today started to distinguish their ethnicity from the others only since around the 14th century. Furthermore, I also propose that the crystallization of the Hmong ethnic identity and the concept of nation was catalyzed by a series of wars in Ming and Qing dynasties (from the 14th to the 19th century) between central government and local communities.
Map 1. Location of West Hunan (yellow) within Hunan Province of China
In this paper, when the term ‘the Han’ is referred to, it does not denote the current Han ethnic group (or Han Zu 汉族) in the modern Chinese nation. It refers to a vaguely defined criterion in differentiating ancient Chinese people. Before the twentieth century, in the very long imperial history, ‘the Han’ roughly refers to those who conformed to Confucian morality and at the same time traced their sovereignty to the ancient Huaxia Chinese (华夏)[121]. Other ethnic groups, including the Hmong, are regarded as different from the Han. This Hmong ethnicity research also gives us a perspective about the construction of current Chinese nationalism. The current Chinese nationalist ideology traces its legitimacy to the ancient Han identity. And 'the Han’ had never been a well-defined community; they were defined by their relations with non-Han people. In other words, we only know the meaning of being 'the Han’ by looking into the demarcation and categorization of non-Han people in every historical epoch, and how these people are imagined today through historical narratives[122]. In some dynasties the sovereignty went to non-Han rulers. For example, in the Qing dynasty, the rulers were Manchu. However, the expansion of central government’s power to the Southern area was still justified by Confucian politico-moral theory. The Hmong s ethnic identity was constructed both by the central government and by local South-western communities, signifying both sides’ political and economic interests[123].
In the next part I will give a very brief introduction about the earliest historical narratives.
As early as Han and Jin Dynasties (202 BC–420 AD), the peoples living along the vales and glens of areas in south-western China around today’s Hunan Province (see Map 1) were already designated by the mainstream Huaxia Chinese people as Ba or Man (巴人, 蛮人). It was thought by the Huaxia Chinese that among these alien tribes, those who inhabited the northern half were descendents of Lin Jun (廪君, a heroic ancestor), while those in the southern half descended from Pan Hu (盘瓠). Pan Hu was a mythological figure with canine features, or being a divine hound himself. Ancient Chinese myths tell that he was given the hand of the daughter of Emperor Gao Xin (高辛帝), who belongs to the mainstream Huaxia Chinese, and from that couple were derived all the barbarian tribes in the mountains. After the 3-rd century AD, the success of expansion of Han culture ensured the Han authority in economic, political and cultural aspects in the South[124]; and the pattern of expansion was formed: Non-Han people were assimilated into the Han culture mainly through the acknowledgement of political administration of central imperial government, leaving the mountainous areas and settling in plains; while the resistants were forced to move to deeper mountains[125]. During the Nanbei Dynasties period (420–589 AD), many Huaxia Chinese fled southward from their homeland in Northern China and occupied the plains; and the ‘descendents of Pan Hu’ at this time referred more clearly to the mountain tribes in Western Hunan[126]. Researchers generally considered them to be speakers of language(s) mainly of the Miao-Yao (Hmong-Mien) language family and a few of the Tai-Kadai family and the Tibetan-Burmese branch of Sino-Tibetan.
Western Hunan locals living amid Huaxia Chinese during Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD) had already been assimilated to Huaxia in all aspects of life. Yet those inhabiting the vales and mountains kept their own languages, distinct customs and communities[127]. After Tang Dynasty, the range of ‘Descendents of Pan Hu’ in the mind of mainstream Huaxia gradually expanded to include indigenous populations of more southern and south-eastern regions.
In the above historical documentations we can see that before the 10th century, 'the Hmong in classical Chinese archives designates either one or several southern ethnic groups known as ‘the descendants of Panhu\ These mountain tribes were not assimilated into Confucian culture, or to put it the other way, not being under direct control of the sovereignty of Chinese dynasties. It is not until the 14th century that the military expansion of the central government demanded direct political control of the South-western area including today’s West Hunan.
In the next section I am going to summarise the historical narratives in regard to the Hmong from the 14th to the 19th century. To my mind, this is the period when the ethnic identity was gradually constructed:
In many areas of China where local people formed considerable resistance against the spread of the power of the central government, a certain degree of autonomy remained while the local governing heads paid allegiance to the central government. It is called the Tusi Institution (Tusi zhidu 土司制度, lit. native chieftain institution). The local chieftainship was similar to the feudal lordship in Medieval Western Europe. Since the Tusi institution was established in West Hunan, the people under Tusi administration were thus indirectly governed by the central government, but the majority of the Hmong remained Taw barbarians’ outside the dynasty’s jurisdiction. Since the 14th century, Hmong people had appeared as a threatening local power. In the periods when the Han or the other ruling ethnic groups had evident economic development and population boom, or had to migrate and expand their settlements as dictated by the development policies of the central government, their confrontation with Hmong people usually led to fierce warfare. The military blockade line which was intended for the whole Hmong territory gradually advanced into the Hmong heartland during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), and finally formed a military defence line against the Hmong in the Wanli period (1573–1620). Later, the famous Hmong Frontier Wall (Miao jiang bianqiang 苗疆边墙, currently known as The South Great Wall) was built along this defence line[128]. The construction of the South Great Wall took over four centuries, through the process of which the central imperial government ideologically claimed that Raw Hmong beyond the wall to be an ungovernable population unworthy of including into the local autonomy governance connected to the central bureaucratic system. However, Tusi also had subtle but solid relationships with Raw Hmong, especially in economic and military communications. Some local chieftains developed military skills and improved their weapon manufactory through learning from Raw Hmong[129]. West Hunan had the longest surviving local chieftainship in Chinese history. In the mean time, the Nation in the mind of the Hmong was almost identical to the Tusi administration. Tusi were allowed by the central government to have their own army, which were not part of the imperial army and had no military obligation towards the government except on occasions of foreign invasion, when they should follow the central government's commandments. The Tusi army was civilian at time of peace but enlisted when wars broke out. Some Hmong people joined the Tusi army and fought against invasions under central commandership as well, such as in the battles against the Japanese pirates (wokou 倭寇) who plundered the coastline of South-eastern China during the 14th to 16th century.
West Hunan entered the central government’s consideration only during Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). The first formal government set up here was the Guardianship (shoubei 守备) established in 1513. Afterwards, as the geographic and strategic importance of this place increased, accompanied by the more frequent riots and conflicts between different ethnic groups, the level of administrative institution became ever higher accordingly. The Tusi institution was abolished in 1707, and the government of Fenghuang Ting, which belonged to the hierarchy of centralised administration, was established two years