The En-Rice-ification of Yunnan

You see, stretching all the way back to the Tang dynasty, difficult-to-administer mountainous and border regions used to be organized a bit differently than the rest of the empire. The system was first referred to as the Jimi (羁縻) system and later the Tusi (土司) or “chiefdom” system, and it’s a kind of political organization almost as old as… political organization is. After conquest, instead of being wholly absorbed into the Chinese state, local hereditary chieftains maintained most of their local autonomy – responsible for paying taxes, raising levees when needed, following along with the Chinese state’s foreign policy… and that’s pretty much it. Much of these Tusi were centered around the Chinese southwest, in particular the non-Han areas of Yunnan and Guizhou. And of course, within these Tusi there’d be all the drama that you’d expect from heredity political structures – there’d be succession struggles, families would splinter, families would fight wars with each other, etc etc. And

You see, stretching all the way back to the Tang dynasty, difficult-to-administer mountainous and border regions used to be organized a bit differently than the rest of the empire. The system was first referred to as the Jimi (羁縻) system and later the Tusi (土司) or “chiefdom” system, and it’s a kind of political organization almost as old as… political organization is. After conquest, instead of being wholly absorbed into the Chinese state, local hereditary chieftains maintained most of their local autonomy – responsible for paying taxes, raising levees when needed, following along with the Chi