Good Barbarians

The Good Barbarians or Guoyi was an official term used by successive Daxian dynasties to refer to outside peoples who paid tribute but were considered to have no true civilization as the Daxians understood it. Classical studies of Imperial Daxia and its interactions with foreigners by western historians tended to think that Daxian imperial authorities classified all outsiders under the same category of barbarians but more recently discovered imperial historical records and translations of scholarly texts from the Zhong dynasty onwards make clear the distinction of the Guoyi from other foreigners. Some recently recovered imperial tallies include the term alongside the names of Kochok Khan and Desai Khan, the twelfth and sixteenth rulers respectivelly of the Degei Confederation who were known to be vassals of the Zhong dynasty. From this it can be concluded that Daxia not only used the term in its internal communications but also bestowed it as a title or reward to some of its tributaries. It could also be withdrawn during times of tumult, Li Xian's Chronicle of Hunyu recounts the history of the Degei after the death of Darukh Khan and notably in his successors titles, Guoyi is omitted and they are simply mentioned as uncultured barbarians outside of imperial munificence.

Historical context

Ancient Daxians saw their civilization as an island among a sea of lesser things, this notion of superiority was rooted in the efficiency of their bureaucratized state that allowed them to operate at a higher level than their neighbors who had different administrative and organizational traditions. In their immediate vicinity, Daxian culture, language and dress came to be emulated to varying degrees and yet those who mimicked them were still seen as ultimately inferior; further proof of the inadequacy of their own cultures. There are even scattered sources of an ancient ranking system used for non-Daxians, that might today be considered little more than a list of slurs. The 'good barbarian' term first emerges in Xie dynasty accounts of their interactions with the Qifu people, these are described as 'very much unlike the cultured Daxian but still these good barbarians are eminently honorable, cordial and of beneficent nature'; importantly a separate document describes in exacting detail the amounts of tribute the Qifu submitted to the imperial court. Conversely the local Tuang people get no such glowing praise and are simply described as a 'morally destitute people, of small minds, weak limbs and treacherous notions', there are no surviving records indicating the Tuang people ever gave tribute or submitted to imperial authority. It follows then that the label of a 'Good Barbarian' during the Xie dynasty was simply a differentiator between those who gave tribute and submitted to Daxia's rule and those who resisted doing so.

The scope of the term was narrowed down during the Zhong dynasty; it was only applied to peoples who were principally nomadic in their lifestyle, settled tributary peoples were no longer considered barbarians. Chief among these nomads were the Degei, the Mangids and the Hurch; these nations held the title of Guoyi for only a few short decades at a time before commencing hostilities or kidnapping imperial officials. There were attempts to 'uplift' the elites of the nomadic peoples by allowing them to intermarry with Daxian nobility and giving them gifts to entice them to settle down. These attempts proved fruitless in the long term as the tribes chafed at being penned in and controlled, only catastrophic military defeat and near ethnic cleansing brought about the imperial desire of changing the 'good barbarians' into more 'civilized' people.

Zhong Dynasty

The Zhong dynasty expanded the use of the term beyond the Degei in their dealings with nomadic peoples to their north. After the defeat of Darukh Khan, the depletion of Degei military power left a vacuum on the steppe that the Hurch sought to exploit by moving into the lands of their former overlords. The surviving Degei clans sought help from the empire and submitted to it and were termed Guoyi, in a 'provisional' capacity and would not be attacked. The crisis was ended by Zhong envoys paying the Hurch to instead march west and attack the Myanga Ayil Khanate.