AAS-in-Asia, Seoul

Memory of Mongol Rule and Lineage Building in Ming-Qing North China

• In Event: Transcending Boundaries of Identity, Religion and Dynasties in the Local Societies during the Song(Jin)-Yuan-Ming transition (1100 to 1400)

Abstract

This paper explores the reformation of kinship organization in Ming and Qing North China using stele inscriptions from the Jin and Yuan, and Ming-Qing genealogical texts. The Ming conquest of North China and consequent implementation of a new administrative system brought about a sea change in imagining and constructing descent groups. As Michael Szonyi and Liu Zhiwei have persuasively shown, under the Lijia system, descent groups in Fujian and Guangdong ardently weaved centrifugal collateral descent lines into a cohesive kin group allegedly originating from an apical ancestor in order to manage Corvée labor or military service by rotation among the lines. The Yuan and Ming stele inscriptions appear to be evidence that this was an empire-wide phenomenon in Ming China. This paper illustrates how, during the political and social vicissitudes after the demise of Mongol rule, the descendants of the Yuan office-holding households utilized their ancestral relic, the genealogical steles, in fostering and maintaining kinship solidarity. The Jin-Yuan genealogical steles formed the core of their ancestral narrative and a new kinship organization that would eventually evolve into a multi-branched lineage during the Qing and Republican periods. Indeed, the Jin and Yuan stele inscriptions were read, interpreted, and even occasionally fabricated by the descendants of the original installers (and by those who claimed spurious descent) in the Ming dynasty that followed. Altogether, this paper presents not only the transition of kinship organization in Yuan-Ming North China, but also a new way to analyze Jin-Yuan steles in understanding social change in the North across the centuries.

Author

• Tomoyasu Iiyama, Waseda University