Miao people
Nation | Active
909 BCE to 2057 CE
The Miaopeople comrprise an ethnic group recognized by the government of China as one of the fifty-five official minority groups.
Miao is a Chinese term and does not reflect the self-designations of the component groups of people, which include (with some variant spellings) Hmong, Hmub, Xong (Qo-Xiong), and A-Hmao.The Chinese government has grouped these people and other non-Miao peoples together as one group, whose members may not necessarily be either linguistically or culturally related, though the majority are members of Miao-Yao language family, which includes the Hmong, Hmub, Xong, and A-Hmao and the majority do share cultural similarities.
Because of the previous given reasons, many Miao peoples cannot communicate with each other in their mother tongues, and have different histories and cultures.
A few groups designated as Miao by the PRC do not even agree that they belong to the ethnic group, though most Miao groups, such as the Hmong and Hmub, do agree with the collective grouping as a single ethnic group: Miao.The Miao live primarily in southern China's mountains, in the provinces of Guizhou, Hunan, Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi, Hainan, Guangdong, and Hubei.
Some members of the Miao sub-groups, most notably the Hmong people, have migrated out of China into Southeast Asia (northern Vietnam, Laos, Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand).
Following the communist takeover of Laos in 1975, a large group of Hmong refugees resettled in several Western nations, mainly in the United States, France, and Australia.
Related Events
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A small rebellion occurs in China's interior province of Huguang during the Ming Dynasty; …
…a subsequent rebellion springs up in Guangxi, where the Ming Dynasty had early annexed the areas of the southwest that had once been part of the Kingdom of Dali, and where more than half of the roughly three nillion inhabitants had then been non-Han peoples.
By the end of the fourteenth century, some two hundred thousand military colonists had settled some three hundred and fifty thousand acres of land in what is now Yunnan and Guizhou.
Roughly half a million more Chinese settlers are to follow; these migrations are causing a major shift in the ethnic make-up of the region, for which the Ming government has adopted a policy of dual administration.
Areas with majority ethnic Chinese are governed according to Ming laws and policies; areas where native tribal groups dominate have their own set of laws while tribal chiefs promise to maintain order and send tribute to the Ming court in return for needed goods.
In 1464, a rebellion of the Miao people and Yao people against what they see as oppressive government rule forces the Ming throne to respond by sending thirty thousand troops (including one thousand Mongol cavalry) to aid the one hundred and sixty thousand local troops stationed in the region to crush the rebellion; they will do so within two years.
The Chinese seek to expand their military control and tax system over the hill peoples in southern China, beginning in the 1840s.
Lao Sung people including the Hmong and Meo begin to move into the mountainous uplands of Xiangkhoang.
The migration of these first peoples is relatively peaceful, as the peoples prefer to maintain their own communities in the upland territories, which are not farmed by the Lao Theung or Lao Loum in the area.