Metal mining in early modern and modern transformations of highland Southwest China and Southeast Asia

• Applicant: Dr. Nanny Kim
• Subject Area: Early Modern History ; Human Geography ; Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 539656970

The exploitation of mineral riches in the highland region of southwest China and northern Southeast Asia decisively shaped its history. Specifically, large scale metal mining played a major role in Chinese in-migration, the formation of communities and networks. This process began in the medieval period and greatly intensified during the Ming and Qing and was ruptured in the mid-nineteenth centuries civil wars. Due to systematic underrepresentation in late imperial Chinese records, the role of this this sector and of Chinese non-state actors in the region’s history has been underassessed. To test this hypothesis and pursue its implications, the proposed project employs empirical, inter-disciplinary methodology that combines history, geography and anthropology. It pursues two research strategies: The first consists in fieldwork-based micro-historical explorations on mining areas to collect data on historic trajectories from their formation to socioeconomic strategies following the end of mining and down to the present. Research will reconstruct village ethno-histories and land use and landscape transformations, embedded in regional and over-regional networks and connectivities. The second strategy uses a WebMapServer of historic transport routes and mines. Data consists of geodata of sites and routes as well as overviews of the history of major mines, most of which has been produced by the applicant in previous projects. The WMS allows systematic historico-geographical analysis of local data and thus constitutes an important tool for developing and testing interpretations. For example, measured distances in conjunction with average values on day stages and costs of transport allow assessing durations and costs of shipping supplies into a mining area. In addition, the WMS will facilitate academic exchange and collaboration as well as accessibility of results for heritage projects, education and the interested public. The exploration of Chinese borderland mining communities will contribute to understanding transformations that were driven by resource hunger, induced migration and settlement, and eventually to the expansion of imperial power. Although resembling colonialism, the process differed in a fundamental aspect: Chinese migrants, who set up their communities in contravention of imperial restrictions on migration and mining, operated in a precarious zone of usually tolerated but potentially illicit existence, both in the societies and polities into which they inserted themselves and with the Chinese imperial state. Results are expected to throw new light on structures in history and present-day societies in the studied region.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants