백족(白族)과 '백만(白蠻)' - 『백족간사(白族簡史)』의 백족 계보 구성 비판

Bai people (Baizu) and their ancestors in Yunnan, China: A critical study on the "Ethnic History" in PRC

In this paper, I examined the history of Baizu that the Brief History presented. PRC created Baizu as one the 55 ethnic minority nations, as it "nationalized" all the people living within its territorial boundary. And it constructed the narrative of the "ethnic history" of Baizu, while it constructed the grand narrative of the history of the unified, multinational "zhonghua minzu." There are two major problems in the historical narrative of Baizu, thus constructed. First, the genealogy of the ancestors of Baizu constructed by PRC lacks sufficient historical evidence to prove it. Second, the politically-driven ethnic classification project by PRC produced ethnic minority nation, which does not have their own territory and Baizu was one of them. Because of this, the history of Baizu, who historically lived mixed with other ethnic groups together in Yunnan, cannot help but becoming a part of the larger Yunnan history, rather than constituting a history of an ethnic group. Then, what would be a historically sensible way to write a history of ethnic minorities in Yunnan, who have not transformed themselves into a modern nation? What I would like to suggest is, first, to abandon the construction of the history of Baizu as an ethnic group. I also suggest to distinguish Yunnan from China (zhongguo) as a unit of historical writing, and thus to cut the relationship between the Baizu history and the larger history of the unified, multitethnic "zhonghua minzu." The narrative of the Chinese history (history of Zhongguo), which takes the PRC's current territorial boundary as the unit of historical narrative, lacks historical objectivity. Names for historical communities survive, because they have been used by those who have lived in the communities as well as by other historical communities. Members of a certain historical community occupy distinctive historical space and share common historical experience. And their historical experience is mainly informed by political changes that affected the space that the historical community occupies. If one constructs the history of "Yunnan" as a distinctive historical space and community, which could be distinguished from the historical "China" (zhongguo), one may be able to construct the history of the people of Yunnan in its fullest sense.