| The remote frontier regions of southwest China had always been the key regions which had been attached great importance by the central government of the ancient China's dynasties to develop.Particularly,during the periods of Ming and Qing dynasties,the central government not only developed those regions,but also promoted its political,economic and cultural progress.In this grand historical context,the Guizhou,as a provincial district,had been established,and then achieved rapid and farreaching developments.Comparing to the progresses achieved by other regions of the ancient China,the far-reaching developments gained by Gui zhou during the periods of Ming-Qing dynasties were realized basically under the forcing implementation of the dynasties' systems.The reasons why Guizhou can be regarded as a district should be interpreted from the times when it was established as a provincial administrative area,and it was the establishment of the Gui zhou Du-si(i.e.the Guizhou military district and its commander)that became the foundation of the formation of the local administrative district system of Guizhou.The establishment and reformation of the Wei-Suo system in the Ming dynasty were the vital factors that contributed to the gradual formation of various distinctive regional societies in Guizhou,under which this dissertation will focus on the historical process of the gradual formation of these regional societies in Guizhou from the aspects of the administrative districts,counties and towns,cultural areas and the immigration and ethnic distributions.Wei-Suo was widely established in Guizhou at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty,which became the main institutions of the territory-governing and brought most of the territories of Guizhou under the direct control of the Ming dynasty central government.On this basis,in the 11 th year of the Yongle emperor,the Guizhou Province was set up,ending her main history of being governed by the appeasing-control policy and brought her a new governing and administrative mode.This new mode was composed of two paralleling frontier-governing systems,i.e.the Wei-Suo system and the state-county system,in which the former played a main role.It was during the Qing dynasty when the Wei-suo system was replaced by the state-county system that this two paralleling frontier-governing mode ended.Nevertheless,it is worth noting that from its establishment in the early Ming Dynasty in Guizhou,the Wei-suo system obviously carried with some flexibilities according to the local conditions and circumstances.In other words,the Wei-Suo system was adjustable.Specifically,in the course of governing and administrating Guizhou,considering the local practices and needs,some Wei-suo were reformed into military and civil Weisuo.This reformation authorized Weisuo the constitutional powers of not only governing and administrating the military affairs and but also the civil affairs,changing it into a veritable ‘administrative district of military style'.When these new style Wei-suo operated to the extent of highly effective,they then walked into the historical processes of countilization in the forms of subdividing the jurisdiction areas and establishing counties,the course of which completed in the late Ming Dynasty.It was after the large-scale of abolishing the WeiSuo and then emerging them into or replacing them by the new established states or counties in the early Qing Dynasty when the course of formation of the local three ranks of province-state-county administrative system in Guizhou generally finished.During the years of Yongzheng emperor,Xiu-cuo,the Hu-Kuang Dusi,abolished all the Weisuo remained in the southeastern part of Guizhou,establishing many new counties and changing the provincial boundaries.As a result of these actions,the structure of the local administrative districts in Guizhou Province finally formed.The implementation of the Wei-Suo system and the buildup of the Wei-Suo city during the Ming Dynasty had no doubt had an important role in the integration of the local communities,especially the Wei-suo city was not only the symbol of a regional socio-economic prosperity,but also a sign of social progress.Before the Ming Dynasty,except some village forts,there were no cities in Guizhou Province.With its distinctive military functions and high walls,the large number of veritable cities of Wei-Suo built up during the Ming Dynasty differed from those commercial cities.However,facing with the situations of there are numerous ethnic minorities who lives Guizhou and the frequently broken-up social accidents,Wei-Suo's duties of guarding and defending the states and counties were extremely arduous.In order to solve this problem,the states or counties governments all moved into or located in the Wei-suo cites,forming a special phenomenon of “State and Wei-suo in the same city”,which made the Wei-suo city at the same of remaining its main military Function played a role and had a function of the center city of a county or a state.More importantly,with the Weisuo personalities' family continually migrating in and with numerous other foreign populations settling near with and engaging in production or commercial activities,many Weisuo cities gradually gained the commercial function.As a result,the Wei-Suo city became a center city that integrating all the functions of military,political,commercial and cultural.It was with these multiplying functions that the Weisuo city transferred into the state or county city when the Weisuo were abolished and the new states or counties were established.These state or county cities constituted the foundations of the nowadays cities in Guizhou.In addition,except for the walls of Wei-Suo city,many defensive military facilities such as mountain fastness,transfer posts,forts,army farms were built up,which in its' historical evolution process became the predecessors of the nowadays towns and gradually formed the town systems in the local societies of Guizhou.It is also noteworthy that,because of almost all the Wei-Suo Cities were set up or located along the main roads,the majority of towns in Guizhou also distributed along the main roads.This is not conducive to the comprehensive developments of Guizhou's regional societies,especially to the remote regions that were far from the main roads and with few inhabitants and undeveloped society and economy,but it was just because of this character that made the Guizhou famous with its cultural diversity,the abundance of its economical patterns,the complexity in its social composition of the ethnics.School education is one of the important ruling tools that was used by the Ming Dynasty,which has important relationship with the Confucian school,political education,talents cultivation and social enlightenment.In view of this consideration,various schools or institutions with different names were established all through the Ming Dynasty,so as to realize the goals of enjoying “a vast orderly world”.Guizhou,with “barbarians” everywhere then,was one of the most concentrated areas of ethnic minorities.School education had become one of the important strategies which the Ming dynasty chosen to govern Guizhou.So changing the uncivilized customs of these “barbarians” and enlightening them also became the political goals of the elites and lords who governed Guizhou directly.Of the various schools established in Guizhou during the Ming dynasty,the number of schools run by Weisuo accounted to 22,which occupied the position of top one in number in the whole country.In the educational history of Guizhou,the Weisuo School had played a very important role.The children of the Weisuo officers and soldiers naturally had the priority rights of studying in this kind of school and accounted most of its students,therefore were more well-educated and always enjoyed more advantages in the competition of Ke-jv test(the national test for selecting outstanding officials in ancient China)than those who lived in other ethnic minorities areas where were far from Weisuo and called the “culture desert” in Guizhou.It can be seen that the Ming dynasty had set up various kinds of schools in Guizhou and despite it harbored much good will and worked hard,but because the these schools got different types of students,so its consequential effects should not be measured by the same standard.The differences existing different regions and different groups of different educating degrees affected directly the formation of different cultural and customs areas.The activities of human beings are obviously the most important factors for the the formation of a regional society,so The migration of the populations driven by the Weisuo system in the Ming Dynasty had a great impact on shaping the local society in Guizhou.Before the Ming Dynasty was founded,Guizhou was an so called “barbarous land” and because of lacking sufficient specific historical records to provide its detail information,so left an general impression of that it was a society whose most majority members were various native ethnic groups and governed by the central governments' appeasing policies in different dynasties.The Wei-suo system and the followed Weisuo immigration in Ming Dynasty not only changed the local population structure but also promoted the formation of a multicultural society in Guizhou.Those military personalities who were conscripted from all over the country were sent to different WeiSuo with their families,not only defending and guarding the territories and the frontiers,but also engaging in various production activities.In the course of the evolution of history,the descendants of those Weisuo personalities gradually divided along two different directions.Some lived in the Wei-Suo stations generation by generation with their Han national identities and cultural traditions,gradually forming numerous “garrison villages” in dot-liked distribution;others who were not able to inherit the military posts and could be supported by the Wei suo because of the population increase were gradually forced to migrate into the ethnic minorities gathering areas and amalgamated into them,formatting many different types of village society.Although the villages of the latter kind had been identified in latter periods' ethnic identifications as ethnic minority villages,such as Hmong Villages or Dong stockades,but they still maintain many of their ‘Han' characters and nationalities,many villages still remain many features of Wei-Suo,showing cultural landscapes of ‘half Han half Hmong'.To sum up,this dissertation will come to the conclusions bellow: the Wei-Suo system has a direct and closed relationships with the regional societies in Guizhou that formed since the Ming and Qing dynasties;it was the implementation and evolution of the WeiSuo system that created the foundations of multicultural coexistence in Guizhou;those Weisuo cities and its facilities that only had military functions at its establishment gradually evolved into many center cities or towns that gradually got the comprehensive functions of political,economic,military,educational and cultural;the Weisuo schools enlightened the local people,spread the civilized customs and subsequently became the culture centers of those regions where they located;the Weisuo immigrations and the army families groups formed followed not only defended and guarded the frontiers and territories,but also along with the ethnic minorities together developed a diversity landscape in the regional communities in Guizhou,in which the Han cultures and the minority ethnics' cultures integrated,forming an inseparable multi-cultural landscape of multi-ethnics. |
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