This dissertation explores the collection and categorization of knowledge exemplified in illustrated ethnographic texts on eighteenth-century China's southwestern frontier populations. These documents, known as "Miao albums," were initially designed to educate officialdom as to the habits and customs of different minority ethnic groups, thereby allowing them to govern more effectively. The dissertation contextualizes these Chinese ethnographic documents in the historical, political, and social milieu in which they were created; explores their genesis and development over time; compares them with other, imperially commissioned representations of the Qing (1644-1911) empire; and finally considers them in light of scholarship on the development of ethnographic representation in the West. Altogether I have examined eighty-two albums housed in museums and libraries in Asia, the United States, and Europe. Sixty-five of these albums concerned peoples living in Guizhou province. Albums also exist for Yunnan, Guangdong, Hunan, and Taiwan. An appendix contains full bibliographical information on each.

Although the Miao albums are a product of the eighteenth century, they have roots in earlier pictorial and textual representations including imperially commissioned illustrations of tributary peoples and relevant sections of the standard histories of China's dynasties. Yet, the Miao albums and contemporaneous textual accounts differ in quality and substance from earlier accounts in their emphasis on direct observation, increasingly complex system of categorization and naming, and level of detail regarding social customs and geographic location.

I propose there is a link between the Qing Dynasty's "visualization" of minority peoples on paper, and the will to understand, define, and control its subjects and territory. In their manner of collecting, organizing, and conveying information, the albums suggest a degree of familiarity with political technologies that harness the acquisition of "scientific" knowledge to the goals of the state. In the epilogue I raise the question of whether a shift in epistemology may have accounted for the development of eighteenth-century Chinese ethnography, and whether this shift may have been catalyzed by the presence of European Jesuit missionaries at the Qing court.