The socio-geographical context of the Monguor and Chinese communities in

Whilst in West African fort creolization the local populations at large were altogether beyond the control of the colonizers (essentially once they were beyond the range of gunshot from the forts; cf. Huber 1999: 11), the Tusi ‘tribal chieftain’ system in Chinese colonial expansion into areas like Qinghai-Gansu gave the Chinese an indirect form of control over the substrate population (via the authority of the tribal chieftain). However, as far as the daily lives of the common people among the local tribes were concerned, they still retained considerable independence from the Chinese, forming what Schram (2006: 520) describes as a Monguor ‘enclave’ on the edge of the Chinese empire. That is, with regard to the level of integration, to a large extent, a fundamental socio-geographical division seems to have initially existed

5 _{On the Tusi, Herman’s (1997: 50) remark is informative concerning the nature of this system, and represents}

the case in Qinghai well:

The Native Chieftain system (tusi zhidu) was a unique subbureaucratic institution created during the early Ming to extend nominal Chinese state control over the non-Han peoples located just beyond Beijing's administrative reach. When Beijing conferred native chieftain status upon a tribal leader, it classified him as a civilian native chieftain (tuguan) or a military native chieftain (tusi) and placed him under the direct supervision of either the Ministry of Personnel or the Ministry of War, respectively ... Military Native Chieftains (tusi), on the other hand, enjoyed a higher degree of institutional and spatial autonomy from China. As a general rule, a military native chieftain's area of jurisdiction was located along or just beyond China's recognized political borders, and he was expected to command a sizable military force in order to assist in the protection of China (cited in Roche 2011: 236-7).

between the Monguor and the Chinese, such that the communities were not characterized by Monguor-Chinese population-mixing (below, it will be discussed how this scenario emerged later, chiefly during the Qing dynasty). Geographically, after surrendering to the Ming emperor, the Monguor clans were assigned to fixed territories positioned so as to guard the passes of valleys by which the Chinese colonies could be attacked. Thus Schram writes that,

While the Monguors were thus allocated to the valleys leading up to the frontier passes, the Chinese planted colonies of their own people in the vicinity of the main towns (155)

In other words, the geographical position of the Monguor was not immediately among the Chinese. The Monguor occupied a relatively dangerous position as buffer communities exposed to attack, which might mean that Chinese farmers would have preferred not to move there when they could remain in their Chinese colonies shielded by the Monguor. In addition, the Monguor were given land that was poorly irrigated in comparison to that occupied by the Han Chinese colonies, and so not as good for farming:

grasslands in the extensive side valleys were assigned to each of the T’u-ssu groups for the pasturing of their herds and for the cultivation of cereals, without

irrigation…(130)

This can be assumed to have been a factor that would have discouraged the Chinese from settling among the Monguor, though in some places this may have changed with time. This lack of population-mixing probably did not change very quickly, though over time it did change in some locations. As for when population-mixing did come about, Qin (1985: 92) cites Qinbian ji lüe ‘A brief account of the Qin frontier’ (written by a Qing dynasty geographer) observing that the Han and Monguor in the Sanchuan area of modern Minhe county lived amongst each other from as early as the late Ming (emphasis added; i.e. from roughly the early 17th century). There is no reason, as far as I can tell, to assume that

population-mixing would have come about much earlier than in Sanchuan in other locations. Meanwhile, the Monguor clans remained intact as social institutions with a psychological and cultural unity which would have hindered large numbers of them from shifting their cultural identity or language to Chinese. This is seen in the fact that it was a tenet of their Mongolic culture, enforced by the Chinese-instituted Tusi system, that the ordinary Monguor could not wander off and leave their tribal leader to settle in Chinese territory (Ibid. 171-2). Schram (2006: 172) writes:

This conviction of being chained [to their lord] was deeply rooted in the social

consciousness of the Monguors and was considered by them to be natural. (Ibid., 171) The individual Monguor had the freedom of movement within the limited territory of the tribal chieftain, assigned by the Ming court, but,

If he [the individual Monguor] tried to leave his village and settle in Chinese territory, the Chinese officials would return him to the jurisdiction of his hereditary T’u-ssu. (Ibid., 274)

The reason for this was that, since the function of the Tusi system was largely to enable the Monguor clans to furnish troops to fight for the Chinese empire, the Chinese officials upheld the authority of the tribal chieftain as the ‘owner’ of the common Monguor in his clan, who constituted the chieftain’s manpower for the frontier defence force (in surrendering to the Ming court, the tribal chieftain and his family line were established in their position of lordship in their clan by the authority of the Ming empire; Ibid. 171).

Another factor contributing to their social cohesion was that the Monguor were engaged in border defence against ‘recurrent forays and invasions of Mongols and Tibetans’ (Tuttle 2006: 41), and at times also went far beyond Qinghai on military missions, being deployed as units of fighting men (Schram 2006: 155, 682ff.). In such circumstances the Monguor

concerned can be assumed to have retained their language in order to communicate with their fellow clansmen (cf. Schram 2006: 520), even though they probably learned a variety of Chinese to communicate with Chinese-speakers outside their clans. Meanwhile, with regard to the overall number of Chinese settling among the Monguor, Schram’s (2006: 163-4) assessment, discussed further below, was that this was minimal pre-1723, and most numerous later in the 19th century.

In summary, therefore, the geographical separation of the Monguor and the Chinese, as well the Mongolic clan psyche, were factors which would have worked to prevent Monguor- Chinese population-mixing in the early period of contact, as well as hindering absorption into/identification with Chinese culture among the common people. The general pattern, in the beginning at least, seems to have been that, in Schram’s (2006: 520) words, ‘The

Monguors… lived their own lives in their own organized world, under powerful chiefs’. Yet as time passed and the Ming dynasty gave way to the Qing period social integration with the Chinese gradually increased (cf. Section 2.5.4.6 below), and with it bilingualism can be expected to have increased as knowledge of the emerging contact variety of Chinese spread among the common Monguor people (cf. Section 2.5.4.5.2).