Entire Volume 17 issue 1 - Journal of World-Systems Research ...

261 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH
population in Yunnan. In short, this is a detailed description of the development of a hybrid
society. Yang begins with an overview of the various ethnic groups, then reviews the waves of
Chinese immigration into Yunnan. Sinicization grows through bureaucratic administration and
education of sons of local indigenous leaders into Confucian practices (Yang notes that
Confucian practices are not identical with Han culture which includes many other aspects).
Indigenization refers to the introduction of many “barbarian” customs and goods into Chinese
culture such as some types of clothes, dances, chairs, and so on. Local climatic conditions forced
changes in introduced agricultural practices. The existence of extensive mining communities led
to different types of urbanization. Also coweries (shell money) continued in use longer than any
other part of China, the topic of the succeeding chapter. Gender imbalances in immigration led to
extensive intermarriage. But intermarriage also gave traders and others better access into local
networks. This seems to be the main path by which different sexual practices and sexual tools
from Yunnan were introduced into Chinese culture. All of these changes contributed to the
emergence of a distinctive Yunnanese identity. Yang traces the roots of the minzu system
(officially recognized minority groups) which is still in operation today: “In essence, the
incorporation of Yunnan helped build China as a multiethnic entity” (Ch. 5, para 144; p. 182
cloth). What is clear in the book, but not is this brief summary is Yang’s careful exploration and
use of various concepts of ethnicity, and his detailed descriptions of how these changes actually
worked.
The penultimate chapter is concerned with money, the redirection of the economy to
China, and the increasing, if slow, shift from cowries to copper. Key to these changes was
production of silver in Yunnan. By mid nineteenth century Han population outnumbered all non-
Han peoples. Copper production reveals how Yunnan was connected to the Chinese worldeconomy
and was incorporated into its administrative hierarchy.
Silver was so abundant that many Buddhist statues were made of it. By the end of the
Ming Yunnan produced seventy-five per cent of China’s silver, a scale comparable to New World
silver imports. Thus, China became partially dependent on frontier and peripheral production.
Cowries were useful for local small scale trade, and used extensively in slave trade. They were
useful along the southern Silk Road routes because no one state could implement a currency
policy. While cowries began to disappear from China about two millennia ago, they remained
important in Yunnan. Cowries disappeared for a while during Han times, but when Han authority
waned they returned. As late as the Ming Dynasty cowries were used to pay taxes, and used by
the Ming to pay local salaries, and even for large transactions, including donations to
monasteries.
By mid seventeenth century copper and silver began to replace cowries. The conventional
internal explanation is that as trade increased cowries became less valuable than copper and so
fell out of use. The conventional external explanation is that trade with coastal areas was
disrupted by arrival of Europeans in Southeast Asia which dried up the source of cowries. Others
argued that European commercial capitalism increased the cost of cowries so that Yunnan could
no longer afford them. Yang combines these somewhat contradictory explanations and ties long
persistence of cowry use to southern Silk Road trade, and their subsequent disappearance was due
expansion of the European world-system into Southeast Asia. All in all Yunnan remained a
frontier connecting multiple civilizations – China, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. He further
notes this is grist for the debates about whether there was one or many world-systems and how
they connected and merged.