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Abstract

During the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) periods, China implemented the “native official system” on its southwestern frontier. The imperial court bestowed official titles on native chieftains and empowered them to govern indigenous non-Han peoples. A rich body of scholarship has recognized the role of kinship as a structural basis for the operation of the native officialdom. This thesis further emphasizes the agency of native chieftains in making a kinship framework grounded in their own logic of sustaining status in response to the requirements of the native official system—a framework that positioned them in relation to the broader world and diverged significantly from what the imperial court sought to recognize. This thesis takes Tai chieftains in Dehong as a case to examine the operation of the native official system. By using genealogies, official documents, local gazetteers, and epitaphs, this thesis unravels how Tai native officials adopted diverse kinship practices accordingly for their own benefits in the context of China’s colonization of its southwest. First, they made ancestral claims to justify their authority and superiority in local societies. Second, they relied on the management of patrilineal ties to continually grow under the native officialdom. Third, they pursued a gender order that used women’s productive yet vulnerable bodies to maintain the stability and persistence of the family. As such, they promoted a kin-based power structure that allowed them to secure elite status amid shifting local conditions. The case of the Tai chieftains’ success serves to discuss how diverse forms of indigenous governance operated within the imperial framework of the native official system.