殖民话语与土司形象:晚清时期英国人眼中的云南土司

Colonial Discourse and Image of Chieftain: Yunnan Chieftain in The Eyes of British in Late Qing Dynasty

英国的土司书写启于1868年斯莱登使团在云南的探路活动。当时使团的任务决定了英国人对土司的描写少有偏见和歧视,他们与土司之间虽因中西文化相遇而产生误解,但相处颇为和谐。英国占领缅甸后,开始侵占云南土司村寨,边界冲突不断。他们对土司的描写和评价带有明显的偏见、歧视和诋毁。在土司的书写过程中,英国人掌握着话语权,土司被边缘化,处于失语状态。这种土司书写是一种权力话语的表达,是殖民话语与异域想象的结合,是英国殖民历史的缩影,与英国殖民话语体系和评价标准密切相关,既能成为解读英国侵略中国及其殖民霸权主义的重要视窗,亦能深化对英国殖民话语和历史书写的认识,丰富后殖民史学的内涵。

The British writing of chieftain started from the exploration of Yunnan by the Sladen mission in 1868.The mission of the Sladen corps determined that the British had little prejudice and discrimination in the description of the chieftain.Although they had misunderstandings due to the encounter of Chinese and Western cultures,they were relatively harmonious.After the British occupation of Burma,they began to occupy the Tusi’s village in Yunnan Province,the border conflict continued.Their descriptions and evaluations of chieftain had been obviously biased,discriminated and denigrated.In the process of British writing of chieftain,the British hold the right to speak,and chieftain is marginalized and in a state of aphasia.It is an expression of power discourse,a combination of colonial discourse and alien imagination,a microcosm of British colonial history,closely related to the British colonial discourse system and evaluation criteria,which can not only be an important window to interpret the British invasion of China and its colonial hegemonism,but also deepen the understanding of British colonial discourse and historical writing,enrich the theory of post-colonialist historiography.