Taxonomies of Hui: Household Registrations and the Making of a Minority in the Late Qing

This paper explores the ramifications of the administrative techniques enacted against Hui (Chinese Muslims) in Shaanxi, Gansu and Qinghai in the wake of the devastating mid-century civil wars (1850s-1870s) of the late Qing. As Hui had been defined as the antagonists in the northwest, post-war rhetoric focused on making the region 'safe' through measures specifically targeting Hui population intended to reshape Hui communities and observances: first through mass resettlements, secondly through legal restrictions and an intended programme of cultural transformation. Here, I argue that in the post-bellum late-Qing order, household registrations (baojia) functioned as a form of ‘colonial body count’ in which Han and Hui were sharply distinguished in a manner that elided previous ambiguities of place and practice. Such administrative measures served to reinforce the racialisation of Islam in late Qing China, reshaping definitions of Han and Hui in ways that would echo across the 20th and into 21st centuries.