Paradoxes and Pitfalls of Ethnicity in Military History: Understanding the Miao in Fenghuang Through Official Gazetteers

Abstract This article uses the 1988 gazetteer for Fenghuang County, Hunan Province, to examine several Chinese depictions of ethnic rebellion by the Miao minority against the Han majority. While this analysis complicates the Han-centric racial nationalism and the civilizational discourse commonly found in the People’s Republic of China today, it concludes that ethnicity matters more in 1988, and clearly in 2024, than it did in 1795 and 1936.