Between Native Chieftaincy and Direct Dynastic Rule: Overlapping Governance in Qing Southern Yunnan

This paper reexamines the Qing dynasty’s gai-tu gui-liu reforms (改土归流) in southern Yunnan during the Yongzheng Reign (1723–1735), focusing on the Cheli (Tai: Mueang Lü or Sipsong Panna) native chieftain (车里土司) in the Lancang River (the Upper Mekong) basin. It questions the conventional interpretation that gai-tu gui-liu produced a clear-cut spatial and institutional division between the direct dynastic administration on the left bank of the Lancang River (Jiangnei 江内) and the native chieftaincy on the right bank (Jiangwai 江外). This paper argues that Qing rule in southern Yunnan resulted not in the complete replacement of the tusi system but in a layered configuration of frontier governance. Although Qing policy formally placed the left bank of the Lancang River under newly established prefectural administrations while leaving the right bank under the Cheli native chieftain, this arrangement did not correspond to two fundamentally distinct modes of rule. Instead, Qing rule was superimposed upon a preexisting mandala polity centered on Cheli, within which political authority was organized through multiple Mueang and sustained by ritual practices, corvée obligations, and negotiated hierarchies. By enfeoffing Mueang leaders as native officials of varying ranks and elevating subordinate chieftains to counterbalance Cheli authority, the Qing sought to restructure local power without dismantling existing political institutions. In practice, Mueang on both banks of the river remained embedded in the political and ritual life of the Cheli polity. The primary distinction between the two banks lay in fiscal mediation rather than political subordination. This study concludes that Qing rule in southern Yunnan depended on the Cheli chieftaincy system for its operation, even as it embedded dynamics that gradually undermined and fragmented that very system.