In the Ming Dynasty the term “cooked,” referring to assimilating barbarians, meant, in practice, those who had settled, had been registered on the tax rolls, and who were in principle governed by Han magistrates—in short, those who were said to have “entered the map.” A group that was identical in language and culture would often be divided into “raw” and “cooked” fractions entirely on the basis of whether they were outside or inside state administration. For the Chinese as for the Roman, the barbarians and tribes began precisely where taxes and sovereignty stopped. Let’s understand, then,
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