颜神镇何以设县:明清华北山区社会的政治选择与地域认同

Why Yanshen Town Became Boshan County: Political Choice and Regional Identity in the Mountainous Region of North China in the Ming and Qing Dynasties

在以往围绕“山地史视角”展开的讨论中,研究者大多把注意力聚焦于地理位置属于国家版图“边缘”的边疆地区,而本文着重关注以华北山区为主的腹心地区的“边缘”社会,重新审视族群性话语的适用性以及明清时期国家形成路径的区域差异。明代至清前期位于山东中部山区的颜神镇属于帝国腹心地区的“边缘”,它最终于清雍正十二年(1734)改为博山县,这一过程横跨明清两代200余年。颜神镇的个案说明,腹心地区“边缘”社会的国家化进程不仅是山区人文化身份改变以及新的地域认同形成的结果,也是他们在国家体系下主动的制度创造和政治选择。

In the past,the discussion from the“mountain history perspective”has mostly focused on the frontier areas located at the edge of the national territory.In contrast,this paper focuses on the“marginal”society in the hinterland,especially in the mountainous region of North China,and re-examines the applicability of the“ethnicity”and the state formation of Ming and Qing in different regions.Yanshen had been a periphery mountain town in the heartland of central Shandong since the Ming dynasty.It was not until two hundred years later during the early Qing period that Yanshan was incorporated into the state administrative structure and became Boshan County.According to the early Ming lijia(里甲)records,population in Yanshen and its surrounding areas was categorized between“min”(民)and“unregistered”.The former was considered as the locals(xiangmin乡民)by the officials.Some of their descendants became scholars and achieved social status through the Civil Examination during the middle and late Ming.The latter often appeared in the official records as miners(kuangtu or kuangzei).With the development and integration of the mountain market in the early Qing dynasty,Yanshen town became not just a geographical name but a new regional identity and it was eventually made into a new county.The case study of Yanshen town shows that the nationalization process of the“marginal”society in the hinterland is not only the result of the cultural identity change of the mountain population and the formation of new regional identity,but also the active institutional creation and political choice of local people under the national system.Compared with the frontier regions,even though there was no similar predicament of“joining in”of“escaping from”the national territory,under its unique local conditions,people in the marginal areas of the heartland experienced equally the complexity of dynamic competition and cooperation among different groups about the national system and the imperial orthodox rituals.