Abstract:

This study explores the question of how ethnic groups were assimilated by the imperial state to be placed under the administration of the central government and how their ethnicity changed during this process of nationalization. The Yi ethnic group in Bai Luying of Mianning county, Sichuan province is the case study of this paper. The ancestors of Yi people in Bai Luying used to live in Mountain Daliang before the Wanli reign of Ming dynasty. In the early period of Ming Dynasty, the government had set up Ningfan Garrison on the river valley of the west side of Mountain Daliang. By the late Wanli period, the garrison was consistently attacked by the indigenous people in the area. In order to quell the resistance, the imperial court recruited the Yi people as soldiers to guard the garrison. Afterwards a new settlement of the Yi tribe on the river valley Bai Luying emerged and in its process the Yi people's livelihood was transformed from herding and fishing to agriculture. In the early Qing, the Yi people in Bai Luying were further integrated into the imperial system with the inclusion of chieftains to the imperial governing body. However, up until the late part of Qianlong reign, the Yi kept a relative autonomy of its tribal settlement, power structure and cultural integrity. Late on with the arrival of new migrants, the introduction of "baojia" system and the promotion of new culture and education, the Yi group in Bai Luying gradually lost its independence and began assimilating into the national identity, leading to the formation of "Shuitian" (rice field) Yi ethnicity. The case of "Shuitian" Yi shows that the survival strategy of tribal minorities from hills did not necessarily follow the description of "avoiding becoming part of empires" as suggested by James C. Scott, nor were these ethnic people always slow and passive in integrating with empires. On the contrary the acceptance of the imperial rule had been a survival strategy that helped creating new ethnic groups and at meantime consolidating frontiers for the Ming and Qing empires as well.

Key words: Yi, the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the process of nationalization, ethnicity, "Shuitian", Bai Luying