The Ming Conquest of Yunnan and the Transformation of the Tuguan System, c. 1382–1450s

In 1382, fifteen years after the establishment of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), Ming armies completed their conquest of Yunnan, the last stronghold of the Mongol-Yuan Empire (1260–1368/88) south of the steppe. Yet after this victory, they faced the more difficult task of establishing imperial governance in the region—a mountainous borderland populated by diverse peoples and political traditions poorly understood by Han Chinese from the interior. Over the previous century, Yuan administrators had governed the region together with the former ruling strata of the Dali Kingdom (937–1253), a hybrid Sinitic-Southeast Asian state that had surrendered to the Mongols in 1253. Local collaboration had formed a key tenet of Mongol imperial strategy in Yunnan: re-cast as “native officials” (tuguan), the Dali ruling strata continued to govern local society as before, staffing imperial administration and styling themselves as loyal servants of the Yuan. In their effort to eradicate Yuan loyalists, Ming generals deposed many of these elite indigenous collaborators, uprooting the foundations of governance in Yunnan local society. In their place, the Ming throne sought out new collaborators––especially figures that once had been subordinate to the Dali elite. Though today identified as belonging to the Bai, Tai, Hani, Achang, Naxi and other nationalities (minzu), in the fourteenth century, these local strongmen governed multi-ethnic populations and leveraged their cooperation with the Ming to further entrench their control in local society. In the end, willingness to collaborate became the most important criterion for appointment as a Ming “native official” (tuguan), with many local non-Han collaborators appointed to rule communities to which they were not actually “native” at all. The 1382 Ming conquest thus re-shaped the contours of local society in Yunnan, creating the foundations of the “native official system” that would last throughout China’s Late Imperial era.