Tusi
were hereditary tribal leaders recognized as imperial officials by the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties of China, and the Later Lê and Nguyễn dynasties of Vietnam. They ruled certain ethnic minorities in central China, western China, southwestern China, and the Indochinese peninsula nominally on behalf of the central government. As succession to the Tusi position was hereditary, these regimes effectively formed numerous autonomous petty dynasties under the suzerainty of the central court. This arrangement is known as the Tusi System or the Native Chieftain System. It should not be confused with the Chinese tributary system or the Jimi system.
Tusi regimes were located primarily in Yunnan, Guizhou, Tibet, Sichuan, Chongqing, the Xiangxi Prefecture of Hunan, and the Enshi Prefecture of Hubei. Tusi entities were also established in the historical dependencies and frontier regions of China in what is today northern Myanmar, Laos, and northern Thailand. The Vietnamese Later Lê and Nguyễn dynasties also implemented the Tusi system.
In 2015, UNESCO designated three Tusi castles as part of the "Tusi Sites" World Heritage Site in China, owing to the unique system of governance. It has been described on at least one occasion as sharing similarities with the "U.S. federal government's recognition of some Native American tribes as in some ways sovereign entities."
History
Yuan dynasty
The tusi system was inspired by the Jimi system implemented in regions of ethnic minorities groups during the Tang dynasty. It was established as a specific political term during the Yuan dynasty and was used as a political institution to administer newly acquired territories following their conquest of the Dali Kingdom in 1253.Members of the former Duan imperial clan of the Dali Kingdom were appointed as governors-general with nominal authority using the title "Dali chief steward", and local leaders were co-opted under a variety of titles as administrators of the region. Some credit the Turkoman governor Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar with introducing the system into China. Duan Xingzhi, the last emperor of Dali, was appointed as the first local ruler, and he accepted the stationing of a pacification commissioner there. Duan Xingzhi offered the Yuan maps of Yunnan and led a considerable army to serve as guides for the Yuan army. By the end of 1256, Yunnan was considered to have been pacified.
Under the Yuan dynasty, the native officials, or tusi, were the clients of a patron-client relationship. The patron, the Yuan emperors, exercised jurisdictional control over the client, but not his/her territory itself.
The tusi chieftains and local tribe leaders and kingdoms in Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan submitted to Yuan rule and were allowed to keep their titles. The Han Chinese Yang family ruling the Chiefdom of Bozhou which was recognized by the Song and Tang dynasties also received recognition by the subsequent Yuan and Ming dynasties. The Luo clan in Shuixi led by Ahua were recognized by the Yuan emperors, as they were by the Song emperors when led by Pugui and Tang emperors when led by Apei. They descended from the Shu Han era king Huoji who helped Zhuge Liang against Meng Huo. They were also recognized by the Ming dynasty.
Ming dynasty
In 1364, Zhu Yuanzhang conquered Huguang. Rather than building a bureaucratic system of his own in Huguang, Zhu chose to keep the native chieftaincy system implemented by the Yuan dynasty. He reappointed many tusi to the same posts as they had during the Yuan dynasty. After reunifying China under the Ming dynasty and becoming the Hongwu Emperor, he brought this practice to the entire southern border zone of the empire.In 1381, Hongwu sent a force against the last remnant of the forces of the Yuan dynasty, led by the Prince of Liang Basalawarmi, who committed suicide. This left Duan Gong, a successor of Duan Xingzhi, as the last representative of the remaining Yuan forces. He refused to surrender and attempted to have the former realm of the Dali Kingdom recognized as a tributary state. When he was defeated in battle, the surviving Duan brothers were taken captive and escorted to the capital. There they were given an insignificant office in the interior. From then on, "permanent chieftains were replaced by transferable officials," formally appointed by the Ming court.
Local leaders were obliged to provide troops, suppress local rebellions, and pay tribute to Beijing annually, biennially, or triennially according to their distance. The post was hereditary as opposed to the examination system in China proper, but succession, promotion, and demotion were all controlled by the Ming administration which required each tusi to use a seal and an official charter. To establish legitimate successions, tusi were ordered to list their sons and nephews in AD 1436, to redo the list in quadruplicate in 1441, and to renew the list triennially in 1441 and again in 1485. The Ming dynasty also took over regencies of children younger than 15 in 1489.
Tusi chiefs could sometimes be female according to local customs and had full authority over their own tribesmen, but were kept under supervision by the Ming Ministry of Personnel or the Ministry of War. Areas of tusi administration tended to explode into violence or turmoil intermittently and would invariably provoke Ming military intervention. However, these incidents are generally attributed to provocations by Chinese settlers or corrupt officials and not the fault of the tribes themselves.
The native chieftain system was a mutual-beneficial cooperation between the central government and native chieftains. For a quite long time after the foundation of Ming, the rulers knew that the central government could only use limited amount of resources. Having a large number of armies stationed in southern borderland, an area with harsh natural environment and large number of Non-Han people, was too costly for Ming rulers. Thus, they decided to transfer part of ruling power to those local political rulers in exchange for their defense of the border zone.
Civil and military tusis
The Ming tusi were categorized into civil and military ranks. The civilian tusi were given the titles of Tu Zhifu, Tu Zhizhou and Tu Zhixian according to the size and population of their domains. Nominally, they had the same rank as their counterparts in the regular administration system. The central government gave more autonomy to those military tusi who controlled areas with fewer Han Chinese people and had underdeveloped infrastructure. They pledged loyalty to the Ming emperor but had almost unfettered power within their domains.All the native chieftains were nominally subordinate to Pacification Commissioners. The Pacification Commissioners were also native chieftains who received their title from the Ming court. As a way of checking their power, Pacification Commissioners were put under the supervision of the Ministry of War.
Throughout its 276-year history, the Ming dynasty bestowed a total of 1608 tusi titles, 960 of which were military-rank and 648 were civilian-rank, the majority of which were in Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan. In Tibet, Qinghai and Sichuan, the Ming court sometimes gave both tusi titles and religious titles to leaders. As a result, those tusi had double identities. They played both the role of political leaders and religious leaders within their domains. For example, during the reign of the Yongle Emperor, the leader of the Jinchuan monastery assisted the Ming army in a battle against the Mongols. The leader was later given the title Yanhua Chanshi, or "Evolved Chan Master", and the power to rule 15 villages as his domain as a reward.
Power and privileges of Tusi
After a chieftain was recognized by the central government as a tusi, he would receive a patent of appointment, a bronze official seal, a belt decorated with gold, and a formal attire as uniform. The title of tusi was hereditary and passed down to an heir.The entire clan of a tusi enjoyed privileges within the domain. In Ming China, the clan of a tusi was called Guanzu. Members of the official clan had higher social ranks than commoners and slaves. Only members of official clan, Han Chinese, and descendants of former officials were allowed to receive education and take examinations.
Each tusi could build and live in a yamen. A yamen was the headquarter of local officials that contained infrastructures, such as the courtroom, sacrificial altar, ancestral hall, granary, offices, and the living quarters of official's family.
The structure of government and way of adjudication varied in each domain because of the diversity of tusi's cultural backgrounds. Normally, there were no statute law in the domain. The will of the tusi was the law. A tusi had court and jail in his yamen and could imprison or punish his subjects as long as he thought it was necessary. For instance, Li Depu, the native official of Anping subprefecture in Guangxi province, brutally punished a serf for wearing white stockings because according to his dress rule only official clans were allowed to do so. Commoners ruled by tusi often called them Tu Huangdi. This analogy between tusi and emperors in some way reflected the almost unfettered judicial power of a tusi in his domain.
Tusi were given the power of collecting tax in their domain. For seasonal religious rituals or sacrifices, tusi had rights to collect rice and copper coins from each local household. As the head of clan, each tusi had right to disposal the property of his clan.
Apart from bodyguards, tusi were allowed to maintain a private military, the size of which depended on their domain's resources, to better defend the borderland and suppress rebellion.