淸 제국의 게토(ghetto) ‘苗疆’의 서사 ― 18-19세기 지리서를 중심으로

Abstract

The thesis aims to examine how ‘Miaojiang’ is reenacted and signified in the documents from 18th-19th century. ‘Miaojiang’ is an expression that indicates that residential areas of ‘Shengmiao(生苗)’, which was one of the minority groups in southwest of China. It emerged during the early 18th century when Qing dynasty started to control the southwest areas of China. This thesis focused on how Qing dynasty described Miaojiang to reenact and organize them into certain space by examination of two types of geographical documents, ‘Qiannanshilüe(黔南識略)’ and ‘Miaofangbeilan(苗防備覽)’. The writer of ‘Qiannanshilüe’, ‘Aibida(愛必達)’ described in detail regarding the process of Qing dynasty conquered Shengmiao areas of Guizhou(貴州) with force. In this book, he used highly patternized descriptions. He described Miaojiang as uninhabited, rugged and dangerous areas and repeats narrating ‘Description of pioneer’. This type of reproduction is very similar to the logic of ‘appropriation’, which was frequently used when Western civilization described the third-world colonies. In this composition, the desires of conquerors are changed to the desires of the conquered. The cause for conquerors to occupy the areas is because the barbarians should be civilized. Therefore, The ‘Description of pioneer’ is often finished with ‘Description of Xianghua(向化)’. In fact, ‘Geography of morality’ is shown which asserts that not only human beings but also the nature could be civilized. However, their reproduction of Miaojiang lacks specific sense of space. Similar depiction and monotonous description cannot deliver the identity of the areas and space. This is because the space lacks human beings. The native people appear as a group rather than individuals. They are the detrimental enemies to be eliminated or a vague group to show the difference between the Chinese civilization. Some conquerors link biological characteristics of the native people with moral and cultural inferiority to imply that they cannot be changed. They are described as fossilized beings that do not change nor exist. Therefore, the native people should be completely segregated from the certain environment of the areas. And placeness cannot be found in the description without individual human beings.