UC Berkeley

This dissertation examines the expansion of the Mongol-Yuan (1206–1368/88) and Ming (1368–1644/61) empires into Yunnan, a region long seen as beyond the political and cultural boundaries of China. Beginning with the Mongol conquest of the kingdom of Dali (937–1253), I trace how Mongol-Yuan and Ming rulers and officials enlisted the cooperation of local elites to build the beginnings of imperial administration in the region. From 1253 to 1382, the Mongols co-opted the personnel, institutions, and politico-religious ideology of Dali to mobilize local resources for campaigns deeper in upper mainland Southeast Asia––a patchwork of highland basin polities stretching from southwestern China to the northern reaches of modern-day Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. Though the Ming invasion of Yunnan in 1382 brought an end to the Yuan Empire in Southeast Asia, I argue that the dynamics of local collaboration and hybrid institutions created over the century of Mongol-Yuan rule laid the groundwork for Ming administration in Yunnan, and similarly facilitated Ming expansion in upper mainland Southeast Asia. The Ming campaigns against the Tai polities of the Upper Ayeyarwady River valley in the fifteenth century drew upon human and material support from Southeast Asian allies, and the local administration in Yunnan was staffed in part by lineages that traced their roots back to the Dali period, many of whom had once served the Yuan. In turn, imperial expansion spurred both imperial and local actors to re-cast Yunnan as a core part of the historical Chinese Empire––a perspective that Dali literati increasingly began to adopt by the mid-Ming. Drawing on newly discovered and previously overlooked sources––such as epigraphic material from Yunnan, correspondence between imperial envoys and Southeast Asian rulers, and materials in Southeast Asian languages such as Burmese inscriptions and Tai chronicles––I thus demonstrate how imperial frontier policy in upper mainland Southeast Asia developed in response to local conditions rather than as a top-down agenda of expansion. This dissertation further makes a new contribution to the study of China’s frontiers by exploring how Mongol and Ming imperial expansion was experienced in local society. I argue that Southeast Asian rulers often decided the terms of engagement with the Mongol-Yuan and Ming empires, leveraging imperial support to further entrench and expand their authority. At the same time, imperial collaboration also reshaped local elite identity, as Southeast Asian rulers––from the Dali ruling strata to the Tai sovereigns of the Upper Ayeyarwady––began to mobilize their association with the Mongol and Ming empires as markers of local status and legitimacy.