Rode a bull named fu manchu

The Manchus

3

THE PEOPLES OF ASIA

General Editor

Morris Rossabi

Each volume in this series comprises a complete history, from origins to the present, of the people under consideration. Written by leading archaeologists, historians and anthropologists, the books are addressed to a wide, multidisciplinary readership, as well as to the general reader.

PUBLISHED

The Manchus

Pamela Kyle Crossley

The Afghans

Willem Vogelsang

IN PREPARATION

The Persians

Gene Garthwaite

The Turks

Colin Heywood

The Phoenicians

James Muhly

The Peoples of Mughal India

4

Harbans Mukhia

The Japanese

Irwin Scheiner

The Sinhalese

Jonathan Spencer

John Rogers

Charles Hallisey

The Chinese

Arthur Waldron

5

The Manchus

Pamela Kyle Crossley

6

For Joseph Francis Fletcher, Jr, who should have written it

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Contents

List of Plates ix

List of Maps xi

Preface xiii

i The Paradox of the Manchus z

Ethnicity and Causation in the "Manchu" Dynasty 4

The Qing Empire as a Historical Idea 8

New Windows on Qing History io

2 Shamans and "Clans": The Origins of the Manchus 14

Prelude to the Manchus 15

Distinctive Manchu Institutions 24

The Manchu Language and the Altaic Idea 33

The Ethnographer from Seoul: Sin Chung-il among the Jurchens 39

3 The Enigma of Nurgaci 47

The Myth of the Avenger 48

The Myth of Individual Supremacy 53

The Myth of the Great Enterprise 65

The Nurgaci State 71

4 The Qing Expansion 75

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The Birth of the Empire 78

The Conquest Elite 81

Consolidation under the Kangxi Emperor 87

New Conquerors and Old: The Manchus and the Mongols 95

Titanic Competitors: The Qing and the Romanov Empires 101

World Trade and the Qing Court 104

5 The Gilded Age of Qianlong ro9

The New Imperial Style 112

Tibet and Mongolia under Qing Dominion 117

The Formalization of the Manchu Heritage 112Z

Glory and Decay in the Universal Empire 130

The Fall of the Philosopher-King 137

6 The Lingering Death of the Empire 150

The Princes of Disorder 151

Opium and Foreign Privilege 154

The Taiping War and the End of the Qing Empire 157

Qing Territory and Hungry Empires 165

Illusions of Revival 169

The Pregnant Carcasses of the Eurasian Land Empires 177

7 Epilogue: The Manchus in the Twentieth Century 189

Appendix I Reign Periods of the Aisin Gioro Rulers 202

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Appendix II Cherished Soldiers Z03

Appendix III A Glossary of Names and Terms zo6

Notes z16

Bibligraphy Z2o

Index 233

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Plates

Plate i Cover to Martino Martini's account of the Qing conquest of China z

Plate z Indoor boots, illustrating the legacy of the Manchus from the Tungusic peoples of Northeastern Asia 16

Plate 3 Bows, arrows, and quivers from the ceremonial armor of the Qianlong emperor 66

Plate 4 Cast bronze cannon of the type used by the Kangxi emperor in his campaigns against Galdan 68

Plate 5 Borjigid-shi, later known as Xiaozhuang Wen (1613-87) 76

Plate 6 The young Kangxi emperior, probably not long after destroying his regency and assuming personal rule 88

Plate 7 The Kangxi emperor in full court dress, and in the pose commonly used in portraits for posthumous veneration 89

Plate 8 Gate inscription from the Forbidden City in Chinese, Manchu, and Mongolian 96

Plate 9 Suit of padded silk armor of the Qianlong emperor's 114

Plate io The Qianlong emperor's tomb at the Eastern Mausoleum (Dongling) complex at Malanyu 115

Plate i i Guns from the private collection of the Qianlong emperor 12.2

Plate z z Painting by Giuseppe Castiglione, showing the Qianlong emperor taking aim at a deer 123

Plate 13 The great ceremonial yurt in the summer retreat at Rehe 131

Plate 14 Representation at the summer retreat at Rehe of the palace of the

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Dalai Lama at Lhasa 134

Plate 15 Summer palace for the Qianlong emperor, designed on the model of the Trianon in the Yuanming gardens near Peking 136

Plate 16 Detail from a silk scroll painting, showing the Qianlong emperor bringing drink to his mother 138

Plate 17 The Qianlong emperor with wives and children, letting off fire- crackers on the eve of the lunar New Year 141

Plate 18 The meeting of the Qianlong emperor and the Macartney party 144

Plate 19 A ruyi of the sort given to Macartney and the elder Staunton by the Qianlong emperor 145

Plate zo The American Frederick Townsend Ward shortly before his death 158

Plate z1 The robe, Manchu cap, and boots in which Ward was buried 158

Plates zz-3 Charles Gordon and Florence Nightingale 184

Plates Z4-6 Illustrations from the early Fu Manchu stories 19o

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Maps

Map r The Qing empire c. z 7 5 o, as it ceased its era of expansion xvi

Map z The Romanov-Qing boundaries in Northeast Asia as amended by the treaty of 1186o 166

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Preface

It is probably not usual for a writer in this series to have to alert readers to the dangers of reading her book. But as readers who continue beyond this page will discover, the frontier of knowledge of Manchu history and culture is receding so quickly that it is hazardous indeed to pretend to write down anything about it for a general audience, or for any member of that audience to be willing to believe what she or he reads. On the other hand the Manchus are so important - and in one form or another have been on our minds so long - that it really is time to proceed. My fellow specialists will feel, as I have, that many complex points have been simplified here, though I would maintain that the result has not been misrepresentation. Those who are not specialists may find themselves hacking through apparently hindering detail, but I hope they will find a clearing at the end of the trail.

At first glance it might be difficult to distinguish the Manchus from Chinese history in general, but I must rush to alert the reader that what is enclosed in these pages is not in any way a history of China (of which many excellent accounts have now been written). A portion of it is devoted to the history of the Qing empire, of which China was a part, but which, as I suggest, might really be better understood through a comparison with its contemporary Eurasian land empires, particularly those of the Romanovs and the Ottomans. Still, the Qing empire is only a passage in the history of a people - really, a set of peoples - with whom most of us are more familiar than we realize.

The inspiration for this book was not my own, but that of Morris Rossabi, who probably imagined something slightly differ ent and must not be considered co-conspirator in any of my misdeeds. Nor indeed can John Davey, who with Morris checked the manuscript for readability and basic sense. Fiona Sewell has snared an astonishing number of silly errors, though some may have escaped even her wily eye, while Brigitte Lee, Sarah McNamee and Emma Gotch have shepherded the book through

14

production. Yu Chen, Elizabeth Mawn, Gary Jan, and Nancy Toth have helped with some tedious tasks necessary to prepare the final manuscript, and I hope they are satisfied with the final product.

This has been part of a small flock of projects that have been completed - when they have been completed - during a personal crisis. There will never be pages enough allowed me to display the names of all those who, on different occasions and in different forms, provided the help that quite literally made it possible for things to be done, including but not limited to the writing of books. But at a minimum I must publish the following: Lillian M. Li, Margaret Hennigan Bloom (and A.H.B. III), Yeeleng Rothman (and Joshua), Fae Myenne Ng, Susan Naquin, Kandice Hauf, Odile Hourani, Paula Harris, Evelyn Rawski, Johanna Waley- Cohen, Jonathan D. Spence, Charles and Susan Wood, Susan Blader, Yan Peng, and those I should identify only as P.N. and G.B. I owe a very particular debt to Susan Reynolds, and as a satellite of that to her guests at La Bergerie in 1995, who showed me so many kindnesses and still have me ruminating on the hypothesized phenomenon of "holiday." And I am mindful of the editors from various presses who, to my advantage, have shown more patience than sense: Sean Wakeley, Beth Welch, John Davey, and Sheila Levine.

So many friends and colleagues at Dartmouth have provided personal and professional aid beyond any call of duty: Gail Vernazza (and Thomas) who makes all things possible, Marysa Navarro, Gene Garthwaite, Mary Kelley, James and Susan Wright, Paphanh Sithavady, and Jon M. Holbrook are among those to whom this book, specifically, is due.

Finally, for distractions, demands, emergency management skills, support while I've been at home and while I've been away, and miscellaneous kindesses I am grateful to those living in or about the mystical Kedron Valley, of whom only a few can be cited: Deborah Donahue, Constance Dowse, Paul Kendall, Chip Kendall, Annah Abbott, Charlene A. Shepard, and most especially two who will never understand that they have helped make the book, never read it, never care that it exists, and would only bolt away if presented with it: Aisha and Rosie.

Note on Transliteration

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This book is written for those who are not specialists in Manchu, Chinese, or Mongolian studies, but for all readers the following should be noted regarding transliteration and style: Most Chinese names and terms are in pinyin romanization, which has been conventional in many English- language publications since 1979. Where words and terms are likely to be familiar to readers, they are kept in the familiar form: Genghis Khan, Peking, and so on. Reign periods and emperors as individuals are as far as possible kept distinct. I have spared readers the chore of dealing with the personal names of the emperors (except in appendix I, for crossreferencing with other works), but the rulers are referred to by the formula of, for instance, "the Kangxi emperor," meaning the emperor of the Kangxi period (in this case, 166z-172z). In many publications readers will find this individual referred to as "Kangxi" (or "K'ang-hsi"), as if this were his personal name (which in reality was Xuanye). This convention, in my view, obscures a vitally important aspect of the Qing (and earlier) rulers' contemporary identities, and clashes far too much with the usage of the original documents. This is one point on which I would prefer to change rather than cheerfully adopt popular usage. Another is the usual "Taiping Rebellion," which appears to trivialize a civil disorder of the highest magnitude. Here, as elsewhere, I have referred to it in English as the "Taiping War," which strikes me as a starker and more accurate description.

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1

The Paradox of the Manchus

The confusion of Mongols and Manchus under the name of "Tartar" is a handy starting point for consideration of the Manchus as a people and the Qing [Ch'ing]' as the empire they founded. "Tartar" (tatar, dada, and variations) was the name of a Turkicspeaking medieval people of Central Eurasia. They became a significant element in the early Mongol federations of the twelfth century, and in the later middle ages Europeans commonly referred to the Mongols as "Tartars." Because the Turkic peoples settled in Crimea and near parts of the Caucasus were in fact called Tatars (and many writers correctly and strictly reserved the terms for this group), the corruption "Tartar" remained familiar in Europe. It was later applied to Timur ("Tamerlane") and his followers, and by the seventeenth century it was bestowed upon the newly-powerful Manchus, who were in the process of adding China to their Qing empire of Manchuria. In one form or another the practice of calling Manchus "Tartars" persisted at least until the destruction of the Qing empire in r 9 i 2, and in some quarters lingered even afterward.

"Tartar," then, was evidently a European and American commonplace for free-spirited, horse-riding Eurasian peoples who harassed and in select instances conquered sedentary cultures of sober repute. But it is interesting that even those who became well acquainted with the Qing empire, who visited it and came to understand well the culture of the ruling class, often continued to invoke the "Tartar" label.' Qing provincial military governors were called "Tartar generals," and the portion of the city of Peking reserved for Qing bannermen was known as the "Tartar City." Partly this is to be explained by an antiquarian impulse, a belief - or wish - that "civilized" people of modern times could still have access to the life of the great Mongols who ruled Eurasia in the middle ages by studying their modern reflection in the Manchus. Edward Gibbon, who never visited

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China, was clearly enchanted by such an idea, and used accounts from his own time of Manchu battue to reconstruct the hunt culture of the medieval Mongols.' The charm of this conceit could not have been completely unrelated to the romanticization in European popular culture of nomadic Tartars as "noble savages." Indeed, at the same time that popular theater in nineteenth-century America was capitalizing upon the stereotyping of native Americans as unspoiled foils for the satirizing of "civilized" pretensions, European theater was doing the same with the "trapping the Tartar" theme.

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Plate r This cover to Martino Martini's account of the Qing conquest of China bears little relation to its contents, which describe the Mongol-style

robes and hoots of the Manchus and claim that in "their manners they resemble our Tartars of Europe, though they may be nothing so barbarous.

" (Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana)

Eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century Western misapprehensions are not all that lie behind this connection of Manchus

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with "Tartars," however. Though the Manchus and the Mongols were very distinct as historical peoples - and as historical topics - their political histories and cultures were intertwined. Prior to the early z boos, the ancestors of the people later known as Manchus were not called Manchus. A majority were known by some variation on the name of "Jurchen" (see chapter z), but many who lived in close proximity to or in assimilation with the Mongols of eastern Manchuria were indeed known to the Ming Chinese as dazi, or "Tartars." Among the Jurchens themselves, a Mongol connection became increasingly important, and the early Qing emperors were inclined, as we consider in a later portion of the book, to declare their inheritance of the right to rule established by Genghis Khan and transmitted through successive Mongol regimes to the Manchus themselves.

This is not, however, to excuse modern historians who - most commonly out of a wish to simplify, and less commonly out of real ignorance - confuse Mongols and Manchus to the extent of referring to the early Manchus as "nomads." The forms of economic life among the Jurchens and the Manchus will be explored in later chapters. What is important to note here is that the Qing empire led by the Manchus was not nomadic in economic impulsion, in political organization, or in style. Comprehensive theories of nomadic conquest which attempt to include the Manchus inevitably go rather wrong. The problem of the Qing conquest regime and its evolution into a stable, long-lived empire is much more complex. When viewed as an empire and not as a dynasty, the Qing yields a more coherent picture and the possibility of illuminating comparisons with other great land-based empires of the early modern period - particularly the Ottoman, with which the Qing shared the ignominious distinction of being lampooned by the European press as the "sick man" of a continent in the early twentieth century.

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Ethnicity and Causation in the "Manchu" Dynasty

In Chinese history writing of the first half of the twentieth century, the characterization of the Qing dynasty as "Manchu" was connected to the many misfortunes which China and its peoples suffered in the nineteenth century. The Qing was a regime of conquest, a result of the invasion of China and the destruction of the Ming empire in the middle i boos. Many historians influenced by Chinese nationalists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries argued that because the Manchus were foreign to China, they precipitated a series of social and political crises that in the nineteenth century resulted in China's impoverishment and quasicolonization by the powers of Europe and the United States of America.' In this argument, the failure of the Manchus enflamed Chinese nationalism, leading first to the revolution which destroyed the empire in i 9 111/1 z, and second to the revolution which established the People's Republic of China in 11949.

More precisely, Chinese historians have pointed to the fact that in the 16oos and 17oos the laws of the Qing granted privileges to Manchu aristocrats and commoners, displacing Chinese from their lands and creating hatred of the foreign occupiers. In the nineteenth century, because the Manchus were themselves foreigners they were thought not to have had the will to resist foreign aggression. In such a view it would be predictable that after ignominious defeat in the first Opium War of 1839- 42 the Manchus allowed a cascade of "unequal treaties" which left China helpless to control its borders, its revenues, or the increasing number of legal and economic privileges accruing to European and American residents in the country. Frustration over this situation was seen to have combined with local immiseration to incite the Taiping War, the stupendous civil war which wracked China from 185o to 1864 and resulted in permanent political restructuring and demographic dislocation.' Indeed, the Taipings were distin guished for their vehement racial rhetoric against the Manchus, and when possible practiced a sort of "ethnic cleansing" which they associated with a patriotic wish to establish a Chinese government, serving Chinese interests. Nationalist historians considered

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the Taipings the precursors of Sun Yatsen and others who later established the Chinese republics.

Given this tendency to reason from the fact that the Manchus were foreign conquerors to the misfortunes of China in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it is not surprising that the earliest modern studies of the Manchus occurred in the context of the history of China since i 8oo. Indeed it was the Communist Revolution of 1946-9 in China that spurred historians to examine the Qing period for evidence of tendencies toward political or social radicalism, particularly those associated with nationalism. Under the terms of scholarship inspired by these ideas, China before exposure to the West had been in "decline." It was not capable of generating transformative energies. The road to epochal change in China, in this view, had been opened through the country's "response" to the West.' More precisely, a series of responses was perceived, in the earlier of which (response to the Opium Wars, suppression of the Taipings) reactionary forces had prevailed and in the later of which (the nationalist and Communist revolutions) revolutionary forces had prevailed. Through this entire saga, the forces of reaction, repression, and obscurantism had been represented not exclusively, but most vividly, by "the Manchus" - particularly the Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-19o8), whose shortsightedness and corruption have become legendary throughout the modern world.

It is important to note in examining the historical treatment of the Manchus that a logical contradiction was happily tolerated. On the one hand, the Manchus were characterized as foreign to China and uninterested in its fortunes once the productivity of the country began to fall after i 8oo. On the other hand, the Manchus were described as having no important identity of their own remaining after conquering and settling in China. They were regarded as yet another example of what is reputedly China's ability to "conquer its conquerors." The "sinicization," or "sinification," as it is often called, of the Manchus was regarded as so inevitable and complete that it has been assumed that by i8oo the Manchu language was dead, the military vocation of Manchu men persisted only as a self-parody, and the Manchu elite had been so "Confucianized" that they could be neatly assigned the roles of primary defenders of everything regarded as "Confucian" in this historical view - the suppression of the Taiping armies, the rejection of contact with the West, and the maintenance in China of an

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archaic social and political system. As we shall see, none of these simplistic and still conventional assumptions can be shown, by the historical evidence, to be true.

There was, in fact, no traditional "Manchu" culture or identity. Both were created simultaneously with the Qing empire in the 163os. This does not mean that Manchu identity was inauthentic or illusory. It means that, like many peoples', Manchus' sense of themselves as a distinct nationality, with a history, language, and culture, could not be separated from the growth of the state which institutionalized the components of that identity. The primary institutional component in this case was what in English are normally called the "Eight Banners."' The banners in some form were organized long before the Qing state - certainly as early as 16o1, and possibly earlier - and persisted, in some form, until 1924. They allowed registration of the early followers of the putative Qing founder, Nurgaci, to be categorized as "Manchu," "Mongol," or "Han" ("Chinese"), recorded all members of their households and what could be known of their ancestors, organized them into command hierarchies, granted educational opportunities, and allowed the distribution of wages, supplies, and land to the armies.

Most important, the Eight Banners became the foundation for the unified cultural identity of the conquest elite - not of Manchus exclusively - in the early Qing period. This is the key to understanding the role in the conquest and early occupation of a group usually called in English the "Chinese bannermen," but who would be better distinguished by a word that would not identify them with the Chinese. Elsewhere, I have suggested the term "Chinese-martial bannermen" (see appendix II). The origins of this group, who are identifiable in Manchuria from the late i Soos, are unclear, and were probably diverse. Some certainly originated in northern China, and via the Ming province of Liaodong8 migrated to the Jurchen territories. Others were probably of Korean origin. But a large number were evidently of Jurchen ancestry, who were either the children of parents who had adopted many or all elements of Chinese or Korean culture, or were assimilated themselves. To contemporary observers, and to the forerunner of the Qing state, their outstanding characteristics were fluency in Chinese, strong personal associations with the Chinese towns of Liaodong, and, in a small number of cases, literacy. By the time of the Qing conquest of China in the middle r boos, the numbers and the power of the Chinese-martial

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within the conquest elite had magnified tremendously. Though the early civil war known as the "Rebellion of the Three Feudatories" (1673-811) ended the political threat to the Qing throne of a group of Chinese-martial leaders, the remaining Chinese-martial bannermen maintained a degree of cultural identity with the other bannermen (giren), and by the end of the Qing period were seen as indistinguishable from "Manchus."9

Also prominent among the conquest elite - and difficult at many junctures to distinguish from "Manchus" of various periods - were groups which were at one time or another called Mongols. This included not only Mongolian-speaking Mongol descendants living in Manchuria during the Ming period who were early recruits to Nurgaci's forces, but also descendants of early Jurchens, living in northern Manchuria, who spoke a distinct dialect, organized themselves politically in the Mongol fashion, and were called "Mongols" by Nurgaci and his followers - these included but were not limited to the famous Hulun confederacy that dominated Manchuria before Nurgaci's rise. Finally, there were Mongols of Mongolia who submitted to Nurgaci or to his Qing successors, usually contributing potent new political titles and ideological ideas to Qing rule, while dramatically changing the strategic leverage of the empire. Many of these peoples were progressively enrolled in the Mongol divisions of the Eight Banners. Those earliest enrolled, including the Khorchins and the Kharachins, were most closely woven into the conquest elite, and to the end of the imperial period were most closely identified with the Manchus.

After establishment of the Eight Banners, all bannermen were born into the banner affiliation of their fathers, and women changed banner affiliation as they changed family affiliation, at the time of marriage. Though the term "bannerman" might be used most correctly to indicate a man actually serving in the military and receiving a monthly wage, in general social practice under the Qing empire all Manchus, Mongols, and Chinese-martial were referred to as "bannermen" if they had been born with a banner affiliation - whether or not they were actively serving, and whether or not they were receiving a wage. Thus "bannerman," a political status in the seventeenth century, became an ethnic identity by the nineteenth century.

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The Qing Empire as a Historical Idea

There are several points to be made in dismantling established views of the Manchus, and framing the history presented in this book. First of all, though the Manchus certainly had a dynasty, it is a misleading - if quaint - feature of European writing on the Qing period to refer to the political regime as a "dynasty" exclusively. In fact, Qing was an empire, one of the largest, most powerful and influential of the early modern period. Along with the Romanov empire based in Russia, the Ottoman empire based in Turkey, and the Mogul empires of India, the Qing was one of the land- based empires which ruled Eurasia when Western Europe was a small and not obviously important outcropping of the greater continent. The Qing shared with the Ottoman empire a partial political inheritance from the Eurasian empire of the Mongols, and many trade contacts besides.

To the great empire of the Romanovs in Russia, however, the Qing was a formidable enemy. Beginning in the middle 16oos the Qing threatened to stop Russian expansion eastward toward the Pacific Ocean and North America, and two hundred years later, when the naval and marine forces of the British empire had created an international impression of the Qing armies as all but helpless, Qing forces were still effectively blocking Russian attempts to take territory south of the Amur river. In Central and Inner Asia, the Russian and Qing empires were at loggerheads until the completion of a border negotiation process that began in 1689 and was completed in 1727. Thereafter, the Qing continued to resist Russian penetration of Turkestan until they were displaced there by British agents in the nineteenth century.

As we shall see, the Qing empire was not only a formidable military presence throughout eastern Asia, but also a global cultural actor. It was in the Qing period that European enthusiasm for Chinese styles in porcelain, textiles, furniture, and wallpaper reached its height. Also during the Qing, Europeans and Americans developed a taste for and a huge trade in tea from China, creating the economic imbalances that drove the opium trade and led to the Opium War between the British and Qing empires in 1839.

Prior to these conflicts of the nineteenth century, relations between the

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Qing empire and Europe had not been acrimonious. Indeed European Jesuits, who had become familiar with the Chinese elite under the Ming, were instrumental in the establishment of Qing power in China, and continued to be influential advisors to the Qing emperors into the early eighteenth century. The Vatican welcomed the opportunity to establish Catholicism in China and other parts of Asia at a time when Western Europe was increasingly hostile to many of the church's ideas. But it was disturbed by the willingness of many Jesuits to become sympathetic to the religious ideas of the Qing elite and to attempt to reconcile Confucian and European beliefs. This created some debate between the Kangxi emperor and the popes, and with the decline of Jesuit influence worldwide in the eighteenth century the role of Jesuits at the Qing court changed. Many continued to live quietly in Peking, and a few distinguished themselves not as advisors to the emperors but as painters and designers in the imperial service.

A number of Jesuits became putative scholars of the Manchu language, and in addition to seeking to translate Christian scripture into Manchu, also presented European translations - or at least paraphrases - of Manchu works. One of these, in particular, was influential in the creation of an impression in eighteenthcentury Europe of the Qing empire as a wealthy, enlightened, secular society ruled by a gentle philosopher-king. After the early 17o0s, however, very few new Jesuits arrived in China, and in the i8oos European religious activists in China were almost exclusively Protestant missionaries attempting to succor and convert large numbers of commoners. Unlike the Jesuits, whose skills and sharp attention to the interests and culture of the elite had made them useful to both the Ming and Qing courts, the Protestant missionaries were met with hostility by the Qing rulers.

Understanding Qing as an empire also underscores its cultural diversity and political complexities. The ruling lineage may indeed have been Manchu - giving due consideration to the elusiveness of this as an ethnic title - but the conquest elite comprised peoples of many origins, including Chinese, Koreans, Mongols, the Turkic and Tungusic peoples of Manchuria, and, later, Central Asians. As early as the 1640s, when northern China was conquered by Qing forces, the composition of the invading armies can be shown to have included only a small minority of Manchus, and increasing numbers of people of Chinese descent or birth.

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Describing the Qing empire and polity as "Manchu" is in every way misleading, and tends to reinforce the simplistic interpretations of China's troubles in the nineteenth century.

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New Windows on Qing History

Recent revisions in the overview of the Qing period have been inspired by and have in turn inspired a much wider exploration of documentation of the early Qing period in particular. Korean records - previously known but infrequently consulted - are increasingly used by scholars of the Qing to augment the narratives previously provided by the Chinese-language documents of the Qing state. Korean documents of the Yi period (11392- 1910) and earlier are written in the Chinese script, and so those able to read classical Chinese may with slight additional training use them. Not only state annals of the Yi kingdom, but also the private narratives of ambassadors, students, merchants, and other travelers to the Qing empire, have been consulted with profit to understand matters often completely neglected by the official documents of the Qing.

One of the most compelling and immediate of these records is the memoir of Sin Chung-11 recounting his visit in the winter of 1595/6 to Nurgaci's headquarters at Fe Ala. The manuscript was discovered in 1938 by the Korean Yi Yinsong, when Manchuria was under the rule of the "puppet state" - dominated by the Japanese military - of Manchukuo. Japanese scholars working in Manchukuo were great curators of Qing documents and architecture, and the next year Sin's report was published by the "Manchukuo University" in the capital, Mukden. It afterwards was reproduced under the title Konju jichong dorok, in Korea.10 Sin's account is used extensively in the first part of this book.

The Qing used three state languages - Manchu, Mongolian, and Chinese - and before 118oo Manchu was given pride of place. Until twenty years ago it was supposed by Qing specialists that all government documentation was produced simultaneously in Chinese and in Manchu (as well, sometimes, as Mongolian), and that reading the Chinese versions was sufficient. It is now known that this is not always the case. Many edicts, regulations, and compendia and some memorials indeed were completely rendered in two or three languages. But there are also instances of error, omission, and deliberate censorship in materials written in Manchu that were later translated into Chinese.

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The training of scholars around the world in Manchu and in exploitation of these documents has not yet reached a point where Qing specialists as a community may claim easy command of the knowledge contained within them. This situation pertains despite the fact that Joseph Fletcher (1934- 84) - the scholar of Mongolian history, early Manchu history, and Islamic history - strenuously urged Qing specialists to learn the national language of the empire, and not to rely on Chinese alone for their research." Though the number of those reading Manchu in the West has increased since the time of Fletcher's admonitions, it is still small. As a consequence, the Qing is perhaps the last of the great empires for which vast stretches of central documents remain unreviewed, and for which major discoveries may yet be made.

There is evidence that emperors deliberately removed portions of the Chinese-language record from general access while leaving the Manchu- language documents in the files. As part of their normal procedures some departments - such as the State Historical Archives - were required to prevent documents from passing to related organs of the bureaucracy. The deliberate alteration of Manchu-language texts permitted to proceed to other departments was established by Mo Dongyin, who in 1958 pointed out that Nurgaci's original war oaths against the Ming were accompanied by a shamanic ceremony which was deliberately obscured when the passages were translated into Chinese. Certainly, to the end of the eighteenth century, emperors gave priority in their daily schedules to the perusal of edicts and other communications translated from Manchu into Chinese, so important to them was management of the transferal of information, ideas, and sentiments from one language to the other.

Just as the first access to palace memorials enabled scholars to realize through comparison how earlier documentary collections had been altered for political or ideological reasons, so the comparison of Manchu-language palace memorials with their Chinese counterparts can reveal the extent to which certain types of information were reserved for officials who could read Manchu. The use of Manchu as a security language applied routinely to military affairs. As late as the Taiping War (1850-64), banner officers used the language to communicate with the central government through a medium that was not widely understood by civilians or foreigners. This was perhaps a generalization of its use for secret communications that dated from the earliest period of the state. Manchu was also the primary

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language of the leaders of the Eight Banners, who were responsible for expanding the empire to its largest historical boundaries in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.12

The early Qing emperors, as we shall see, encouraged translations into Manchu from Chinese histories and philosophical texts. They also sanctioned the translation of certain Chinese novels of the Ming period, most famously Romance of the Three Kingdoms,'; thinking that the dramatic battle narratives would improve the strategic acumen of the nobles and bannermen. But there was clearly an independent, private world of Manchu literature, in which sexually explicit - and officially banned - novels such as The Golden Lotus14 were also translated. Moreover, Manchu literature did not consist entirely of translations from Chinese. There were original Manchu prose works, poetry eulogies, memorial inscriptions, folk songs, and ballads. Part of the provenance of these forms can be found in traditional Jurchen/Manchu oral literature, which was not well documented before the end of the nineteenth century. Poems alternating Manchu and Chinese lines, as in the "drum-song" genre, testify to the profound and extensive Manchu impact on Peking's popular performing arts." Although the court repeatedly promulgated regulations against the participation of bannermen in either street or more formal theater, it is well known that these regulations were disregarded not only by banner commoners but also by noblemen and imperial clansmen, some of whom dissipated their fortunes on the support of theatrical troupes and the commissioning of entertainments. What is often overlooked in this famous tradition, however, is that it provided an environment for the continued nurturing of Manchu in the folk arts.

Seen as an empire of world stature that endured for nearly three hundred years, expressed itself in half a dozen languages, and radically affected the fortunes of industrializing Europe and America, the Qing presents a very different profile to recent scholars than did the apparently ossified, denatured, paralyzed, and parasitic "dynasty" with which specialists of the later nineteenth century had made many readers familiar. It is part of the ongoing reassessment of the Qing period to seek a new understanding of how and why "Manchu" culture and identity are woven into the imperial history. Certainly, the traditional cultures of Manchuria had their reflection in the imperial culture of the Qing. On the other hand, to characterize the inner culture of the Qing court as an unmodified survival of ancient

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cultures of unconquered Manchuria would be a serious mistake - as bad a mistake as the previous depiction of the Manchus as "Confucianized," "sinicized," empty epigones of the great Chinese empires that had gone before them. "Manchu" identity and the Qing state revolved around one another, in a mutual gravitational pattern that was not broken until the late decades of the empire. This book is an exploration of both those histories, the ways in which their paths intersected, and the ways they finally diverged.

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2

Shamans and "Clans": The Origins of the Manchus

What is known to us in the West as "Manchuria" is more or less what the Chinese call the "northeast" (Dongbei), and encompasses the modern provinces of Liaoning (normally called Liaodong prior to the seventeenth century), Jilin, and Heilongjiang.' But to reconstruct traditional Manchuria these provinces must be augmented by northern Korea about as far south as Hamhung (which was not within the boundaries of a Korean state until the end of the fourteenth century) and to the east by the Russian "Maritime Province" (Primorskii Krai). From the time of the Puyo people in about the first century BCE to about the fourteenth century CE, these were culturally coherent; Heilongjiang and the Maritime Province remained of a piece well into the nineteenth century.

The special geographical features of Manchuria have determined much of the pattern of its social development. It is essentially a system of lowlands stretching from Liaodong Bay on the Gulf of Bohai in a jagged pattern northeastward toward Khabarovsk. The modern Chinese cities of Shuangliao, Qiqihar, and Harbin roughly mark the triangular center of these lowlands, which continue eastward with the Songari river through Yilan and Jiamuse before expanding into another broad plain. From here they reach northward to the Russian city of Blagovescensk, and due south to Vladivostok, embracing Lake Khanka, which is today divided by the Sino-Russian border. On four sides this lowland system is bounded by mountains. To the west the Greater Xing'an Range and its southern extension divides Manchuria from Mongolia and northern China. To the north the Lesser Xing'an Range stands between the central lowlands of Manchuria and the Amur river. Far to the east, the Sichote Range cuts the valley of Lake Khanka from the Sea of Japan. And to the south lie the

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massive highlands which virtually cover northern Korea, topped at their northern end by Changbaishan - a sacred site in Qing imperial lore (see appendix III) - from which the Yalu river flows westward and the Tumen eastward to form the modern border with the Korean People's Democratic Republic.

Strictly speaking, there were no Manchus before 11635, which was the year the nascent Qing empire announced that a large portion of its followers would be known by a new national name. Most of those who were renamed as "Manchus" in that year had ancestors among earlier peoples of Manchuria, particularly the Jurchens, who had been known to the empires based in China since the time of the Tang empire (6118-907). "Jurchen" in various forms may bear a more ancient connection to the "Wuji" name of the Northern Wei period (465-535). Certainly the Jurchens were related to or descended from the Heishui Mohe people of the Tang period, who in turn shared ancestry with the Parhae people of southern Jilin and northern Korea. A portion of the medieval Jurchens founded the Jin empire (11121-12.34) that controlled Manchuria and northern China. In recognition of that early Jurchen empire, the later Jurchens under Nurgaci revived the Jin dynastic name in 116118, and historians today refer to the Nurgaci state as the "Later" or "Latter" Jin.

In the middle r boos, the Later Jin state evolved into- the Qing empire. "Manchus" were given a new identity by that state, in a clear program to distinguish them from the Jurchens who had lived in Manchuria for centuries. Political considerations aside, there was some justification in the new nationality. Jurchens were by this time so widely spread in geographical terms and so disparate in culture that the old name no longer had any real meaning. Nevertheless, Manchu culture showed in the early period, and continued to show, marked fundamental continuities with traditional life in northeastern Asia.

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Prelude to the Manchus

The cultures of the Tungusic peoples have been very diverse in historical times. Settlement occurred first in the lowlands, and movement followed their outlines. The earliest settlers in the re gions were immigrants from as far as Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, who made their way by sea northward, reaching Manchuria in later Paleolithic times. They first settled the islands and piedmonts of the Liaodong peninsula, later following the Liao River into the central lowlands. Beginning perhaps 2500 years ago, many of the peoples of what are now Manchuria and northern Korea began to be influenced by Chinese culture. They became farmers, and began raising livestock and working in ceramics. Many where traders, bringing the furs, pine seeds, and other products collected by the more traditional Tungusic peoples to China, and returning with silk, cash, and other Chinese goods. The ancestors of the Manchus were relatively late in arriving, following the Amur river southward into the eastern lowlands of present-day Khabarovsk in the last century BCE. The result was not the refinement of a homogeneous people and culture from heterogeneous sources, but the settlement of the uneven terrain of the region by culturally diverse groups who on occasion wove their lineages and federations together.

Plate 2 These indoor boots illustrate the legacy of the Manchus from the

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Tungusic peoples of Northeastern Asia. They favored padded robes, caps, and leggings against the brutal winter temperatures. Bright colors were highly valued in the dress of both men and women, and border patterns

depicting animals and birds were common. These imperial stockings differ from those used by commoners only in that they are silk instead of cotton.

Outdoors, they would be exchanged for felt or leather boots with thick soles for protection against muddy or icy ground. (National Palace

Museum, Peking)

The empires based in China began to establish military colonies in Korea as early as the third century BCE, which intensified the cultural and commercial exchange between China and Northeastern Asia. It was partly by these routes that Confucianism and Buddhism became influential in Korea by the third century CE, and from there were later transmitted southward to Japan. The "Four Choson Commandaries," established in northern Korea by emperor Wu of the Han empire in the second century BCE, extended that influence into southern Manchuria.

The division of the peoples of Manchuria between sedentary and nomadic economies has never been clear. As early as the Paleolithic, there is confirmation that at least some of these northerly peoples had become accustomed to riding reindeer, which suggests at least a partly nomadic life. The Wuji, and later the Mohe and Parhae, all exported reindeer. But until the Tang period horses in the Manchuria were rare, as were cattle, and there is no evidence of large-scale pastoralism before the domination of the region by the empire of the nomadic Kitans in the tenth century. Instead, hunting, fishing, and gathering were the mainstays of the earliest economies, and agriculture was haltingly introduced into southern Manchuria from the Korean peninsula in the early centuries CE.

Slavery was an ancient institution among the Tungusic peoples. There is some evidence for the existence of slaves in the villages, particularly the agricultural villages, of the Mohe of Tang times. They were taken in battle against local peoples, and later in raids on Chinese and Korean towns established on the perimeters of Jurchen territory. By Jurchen times, slaves played a critical role in the hunt, since they did the surrounding of the prey's territory and the beating of drums which drove the animals into the shooting sights of their overlords (a universal form of Eurasian hunt, the battue). Over the centuries, the amassing of slaves as agricultural workers

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and household managers transformed the economic and social foundations of Manchuria. It even provided the primary political conceit, that of the master-slave relationship between headmen (who sometimes were and sometimes were not "khans") and their followers.

Korea was organized into small kingdoms in the second century, and not long afterward a larger society covered northern Korea and southern Manchuria. This Puyo state would later be considered the ancestor of many of the kingdoms of Korea and Manchuria. It combined some elements of Central Asian culture - primarily a knowledge of Buddhism and the breeding of horses - with elements of Chinese culture such as Confucianism, and many of the economic and religious traditions of the Tungusic peoples. Puyo maintained relations with both the Korean kingdoms and the Chinese empires, until it dissolved in the fifth century. The name continued to be reflected in the federations of medieval times (the Fuyu, for instance, were closely associated with the Uriangkha), and in place names of the modern Chinese provinces of Manchuria.

After the evaporation of the Puyo domination in Manchuria, the Mohe peoples become prominent in the records. The most powerful of the northern Mohe groups were the Heishui (that is, Heilongjiang, for the Amur river), and the most powerful of the southern Mohe groups was the Sumo (that is, Songmo, for the Songari), whose territories reached as far south as Changbaishan. During the seventh century, the Sumo were subjected to constant military pressure from both the Koguryo state of Korea and the Tang empire. Around 70o a leader of the Sumo Mohes found a way to alleviate these pressures by cooperating with Tang forces in the suppression of a rebellion among the Kitans of northern Manchuria. As a reward, his lineage was recognized as local hegemons by the Tang, and permitted to establish a demi-state - a sort of principality within the empire. A few years later it assumed the name of Parhae (in Chinese, Bohai).

The Parhae were the first to develop urban centers and a political system recognized by their neighbors. Artisanal skills flourished among them. They were known for iron mining and smithing (skills they certainly learned from the Turks), and many of the local names of Manchuria retain the word for iron in memory of the Parhae industries. Tang records mention many other settlements among the Parhae that were famous for their vegetables and grains, or manufactured goods, or husbanded animals.

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Many of these - including pigs, horses, exotic long-haired rabbits, preserved vegetables (not unlike Korean kimchee), copper, falcons, pelts, pearls, and ginseng - would remain the foundation of the Manchurian economy for centuries.

Ruins of Parhae towns are still to be found in northeastern China and in maritime Russia, particularly in the vicinity of Khabarovsk. By the standards of China or southern Korea they were modest establishments in size, but employed sophisticated work with brick, wood, and metal in their construction. The housing of common people shows a feature that is characteristic of the Tungusic peoples from their earliest appearance in the Chinese records. All-season houses, whether made of wood, bark, brick, or earth, tended to be semi-subterranean, which allowed them to retain warmth in the harsh climate of the region. The houses were normally round, with a central chimney hole. This style of house was very widespread throughout northern Eurasia. The Wuji had such houses, which they entered by a ladder through the chimney hole. Persians observed the medieval Turks building such dwellings, and into the twentieth century the Samoyeds were described as living in "half-subterranean caverns." These were not unlike many of the styles of housing found among the earliest settlers of North America, where evidence of round, semi-subterranean houses exists as far south as the Anasazi sites of Arizona.

Parhae had a bureaucracy which used Chinese characters to write the native language, distributed among a set of five cities which functioned as its capitals. The prince of Parhae and his large following of aristocrats inhabited these capitals in series each year, reinforcing their relations with the local magnates and collecting tribute. Both Buddhism and Confucianism were influential among the Parhae elite, many of whom traveled regularly to the Tang capital at Chang'an as ambassadors or students.

The Parhae class system, like those of the related kingdoms of Korea, was extremely rigid. Elites tended to be affiliated with large extended families and to have surnames (no evidence exists that this was the practice among commoners). This pattern had pertained in northern China, too, in very early times, but had virtually disappeared by the creation of the first Chinese empire in 221 BCE. In Manchuria, however, it persisted, and the power and cohesiveness of the aristocracy generally kept the power of rulers and their families in check. The system required a caste

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system of rank by birth, in which upward mobility for the common people was virtually impossible.

After the fall of the Tang in 907 the Kitans immediately established their Liao empire in Manchuria and Mongolia, and lost no time in moving against their old enemies, the Parhae. In 9z6 the Parhae principality was abolished, and Liao princes were given dominion over Manchuria. Parhae and many others of the south ern Mohe descendants were resettled elsewhere or conscripted into the army. At first the Liao empire indicated no wish to conquer and administer the northern Manchurian territories, but frequent skirmishing with the northern Mohe forced the Liao empire into a carrot-and-stick policy that depended upon fierce military reprisals in combination with rewards and political recognition for Heishui Mohe willing to declare themselves neutrals - or, better, accomplices - in the Liao imperial enterprise. In this scenario, the Mohe, the forest-dwelling peoples north of Parhae, increased their influence, and gained some recognition from the Liao empire which continued to rule Central Asia and Manchuria in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

In the early i i oos a group called the Jurchens had emerged from among the Heishui Mohe, and their leader, Aguda, was invited to the Kitan court. Aguda was generally suspicious that the Liao intended to suppress the Jurchens, and was particularly outraged to discover that the Kitans expected him to dance for them as after-dinner entertainment (by tradition the function of a captive, degraded enemy). He refused, and later raised troops to rebel against Kitan rule in Manchuria. His war to unify the Jurchens and then to break the hold of the Liao empire was successful. In z i z i the Jurchens captured the Kitan capital and established a new empire, the Jin ("Gold") empire of their own.

The material culture of the Jurchens before the rise of their empire demonstrated their origins among the hunting and gathering peoples who came to occupy the banks of the Amur and Songari rivers. The round tent used in summer residence was common to the peoples of this region. So was the peculiar style of dress, based upon thick leather boots, knee-length tunics of felt or hide with bright appliques of colored silk, cotton, or hemp, and the decorated apron, which up to the present has persisted as the costume of the shaman. The Jurchens were known for their consumption of raw meat and fish, and their liking for a strong liquor made from millet (gaoliang). Boats, sleds, and weapons of these peoples have shown marked

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similarities, as have certain household goods. One item has been regarded as unique: The curved, hanging cradle of the Manchus and Evenks, which often flattened the backs of infants' heads (later imagined to be a "genetic" quality of the Manchus). In spite of the occasional singular implement or style, the traditional peoples of Manchuria had remarkably similar cultures, and were not themselves inclined to distinguish one peo ple from another on the basis of national names or concepts. Until the rise of the Qing empire, for instance, those peoples called by outsiders - including modern historians -Golds (in Chinese, Hezhe), Orochons, and Oroks all called themselves Nani, the name of the local tributary of the Songari river.

The Jurchens borrowed some elements of their empire from the Kitans. One was distillation of the society into national divisions, so that people living in the northern part of China (which the Jurchens, like the Kitans before them, ruled) were governed in Chinese and according to Chinese political tradition, while Jurchens lived in distinct territories, and were governed according to their own traditions. The emperors, in the fashion of the Kitans before them, transcended the regional divisions by legitimating themselves in all traditions, including Confucianism, Buddhism, and shamanic ritual.

As already noted, the Jurchens adapted Kitan script for the writing of their own language. Using this script as a medium, an entire educational and bureaucratic system in Jurchen was constructed, and major works of Chinese philosophy and history were translated into Jurchen. This permitted the introduction of a number of concepts that the earlier language would have found difficult to express - among them the word for "emperor" (huwangdi, from Chinese huangdi), a notion of power concentrated in a single individual that was foreign to the decentralized political culture of Manchuria.

The Jin empire shared with its Liao and Parhae predecessors a system of multiple capitals. Chinese empires of earlier times had never considered Peking an imperial site, placing their imperial cities in the Wei river valley of Shaanxi province, far to the west. The Liao had first used Peking as an imperial capital, but, because of its position at the southern extreme of their empire, had called it not Peking ("northern capital") but Nanjing ("southern capital"). The Jin, whose territory eventually included China north of the Yangzi river, considered the city their central capital

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(Zhongdu), and probably built the earliest imperial complex from which the Forbidden City known in modern times evolved. They elaborated the pond built by the Liao into a small artificial lake (now part of the three artificial lakes of the Forbidden City) and a small islet that still exists. They constructed, late in the eleventh century, the Marco Polo Bridge (Lugou qiao), which has been considered one of the world's engineering marvels since it was described in the Travels. They also built the first observatory in the city. The Mongols, the Ming, and finally the Qing all elaborated upon the Jin foundation, their efforts resulting in the enormous architectural treasure that now exists.

The Jurchens, like the Kitans before them and the Mongols after, faced the problems of formalizing folk cultures, authorizing and enforcing orthographic practices, and familiarizing some critical portion of their population with the necessary Chinese knowledges to govern. A critical choice before these regimes was whether or not to use the system of written examinations established in China during the Tang empire for the selection of government officials. In each case, choices were made respecting not only the style of education to which nobles and elites would be subjected, but also whether the examinations would be used to raise those perceived as "commoners" to the ruling class, or to limit access to the highest office to the hereditary elites.

The imperial bureaucracy of the Jin empire bore little similarity to that of the Kitans, and part of the reason is to be found in the basic socio- economic differences between nomadic and sedentary societies. The Kitans and Mongols retained, at least in official policy, a strong attachment to the principles of nomadic life among their peoples and a toleration for traditional segmented political structures. They appear to have been disinclined to effect drastic changes in their economic and social lives by linking status or achievement to time-consuming attainments in civil or literary pursuits. For this reason, they largely eschewed the Chinese institution of using written examinations to select and promote bureaucrats. Kitans were by edict barred from participating in the examinations held under the Liao, and the suspension of the examinations for the greater part of the Yuan empire left the question of Mongol achievement in the examinations moot.

In the case of the Jurchens, however, the establishment of bilingual examinations and official attempts to encourage participation in the

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examinations by the peoples in question are evidence of a very different state posture. Unlike the Kitans or the Mongols, the Jurchens were not given land grants in China proper, nor were they committed to cultural precepts or political structures that were characteristic of nomadism. Attempts to use the examinations for the promotion of commoners or for restricting aristocratic access to high office were consistent, in the Jin empire, with aggressive state programs to limit the privileges and the influence of the nobility, to centralize the state, and to prepare the dynastic constituency for a very broad role in the maintenance of a civil system. These practices were all forerunners of the bureaucracy of the Qing empire.

The cosmopolitan culture of Jurchen officials strengthened the early empire, but by the middle i ioos the Jin emperor Shizong (r. 1161-89) became concerned that the Jurchens were losing their distinct identities as conquerors and as soldiers. He instituted a program for the retraining of Jurchen elites in warfare, hunting, and the harsher life of Manchuria. Aristocrats were compelled to leave Peking and literally go to camp in Inner Mongolia or Manchuria, where constant hunting was supposed to develop their skills in riding, shooting, and generally becoming less dainty. His experiment, which was not a success, was considered both a model and a warning by the Manchu emperors who later ruled China. They were avid readers of the history of the Jin empire, and repeatedly referred to the dilemma of Shizong, who could neither force the Jurchens to return to their old ways, nor sanction the new culture they were developing for themselves in China.

Both the Liao and Jin had a hostile relationship to the Chinese empire of the Song (980-122-7, Southern Song 122.7-79), which was much smaller than the Tang. The Liao and the Song had reached an uneasy peace which required the Song to render heavy tribute to the Liao in order to avoid war. Once the Jurchens had destroyed the Liao empire, however, the Song refused to enter into a similar agreement with them. The continuous warfare and threat of warfare between the two states resulted not only in the stimulation of Song defensive technology, leading to major strides in the uses of iron and gunpowder, but also in the fatigue of the Song economy due to its enormous military expenditures. Despite the Song effort, in 1227 they lost control of territory north of the Yangzi river to the Jurchens.

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When, in 1234, the Jin empire fell to the Mongols, a variety of fates befell the Jurchen people. Many Jurchens had remained in Manchuria during the Jin period, and continued to live in the traditional manner. Others had migrated to northern China as part of the conquest forces of the Jin empire. Of these, some had become acculturated, and were considered by the Mongols as Chinese. Still others were identified by the Mongols as Jurchens, whether they stayed in China - where many served as Confucian officials - or returned to Manchuria. The result was that the Jurchens of Manchuria were alienated from the imperial culture and institutions of the Jin, and lived according to the older customs of Manchuria, with a superficial political influence from the Mongol Yuan empire.

The Yuan was destroyed in 11368, but Mongol influence among the peoples of Manchuria continued in many forms. Since even after the decline and fall of the Mongol empires the Mongolian language continued to function as a lingua franca in Eastern Asia, the Jurchens continued formal communications with both the Ming court in China and the Yi court in Korea. Certain forms of Buddhism, particularly that of the Sa-skya pa lamaist sect, became familiar to the Jurchens of Manchuria in the 15oos because of Mongol contacts. The result was a complex, multi-layered cultural milieu in which Mongolian political and cultural influences mixed with traditional Jurchen economic life and the radiating attractions of the Chinese trading towns of the Ming province of Liaodong. This was the world observed and described by the Korean bureaucrat Sin Chung-11 at the end of the sixteenth century.

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Distinctive Manchu Institutions

For most of the twentieth century, "clan" has been the normal English term for the lineage organizations of the Manchus, and indeed of the Tungusic peoples of which they are a part. The term has not only been used comfortably to describe Manchu social organization, but has been used famously in this fashion, for it was S.M. Shirokogoroff's seminal Social Organization of the Manchus: A Study of the Manchu Clan Organization (Shanghai, 1924), which - following earlier terminology used by Lewis Henry Morgan to describe native American societies - legitimated "clans" as critical generic social units. Not long afterward, the Chinese anthropologist Ling Chunsheng used Shirokogoroff's basic concepts in his exhaustively detailed and well-illustrated study of the Tungusic peoples in the region of the Songari River.

Despite its antiquity and peculiarities of method and expression, Shirokogroff's study has remained an indispensable source for anyone curious about the Manchu people. He defined the clan - proximately among the Manchus, but generally among all "tribal" peoples - as "a group of persons united by the consciousness of descent from a male ancestor and through male ancestors, also united by recognition of their blood relationship, having common clan spirits and recognizing a series of taboos, the principle of which is the interdiction of marriage between members of a clan, i.e. exogamy."2 In practice, he noted "clan" members living, or attempting to live, within some proximity of one another; meeting together at least annually to mediate intra-clan disputes, sacrifice to clan spirits, and manage common property; and identifying themselves under a single clan name. This last characteristic was definitive, as Shirokogoroff reiterated in italics: "The clan cannot exist without a name and this is an important character of the clan."3

Today there is resistance to generalizing a peculiar Scottish social institution to widely spaced and chronologically divergent peoples, as well as to the abstract notion of "clans" or "tribes" as marking types of human societies. Nevertheless Shirokogoroff's empirical complex of ideas associated with "clans" among the Manchus must be noted, for it is affirmed not only by anthropological studies in Manchuria since his time,

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but also in the social, cultural, and political history of the Qing: He associated clan identities with a "consciousness" of mutual descent, with regular meetings to conduct mutual property business, with worship of mutual spiritual patrons, and with the willing acknowledgment of a name. At no point did he say that those bound together by clan ties were actually descended from a real ancestor, or indeed that any proof of blood ties determined much at all about members of a clan, apart from whom they could not marry.

As envisioned by Shirokogoroff, Ling, and other anthropologists, the comprehensive nature of the clan was the salient aspect of the traditional life in Manchuria. It facilitated all economic activities. It mediated the spiritual and physical well-being of each individual. Intermarriage between clans ranked with trade and conquest as a means of cultural transmission. Cross-marriages were also a mechanism for the creation of new clans and, in some cases, new peoples. Clan alliance was the only institution of political amalgamation, and what we would recognize as a "tribe" was, in Manchuria, an extension of the clan. Using this concept, Shirokogoroff captured well the dynamism and discontinuities that had been evident in Manchu social life.

Nevertheless, it is probably best to think of Manchu social organization in the terms provided by the Manchu language itself, and to briefly examine the history of the words. Certainly as early as the twelfth century, when the Jurchens of the Jin empire ruled Manchuria and northern China, a word ancestral to the modern Manchu word mukun was used to describe social cooperatives that appear to have been very much like extended lineages (see appendix III). Biographical entries, for instance, in the imperial history of the Jin with few exceptions indicate the mukun to which an individual belonged, traced through his or her father, and it is clear that by this time the mukun was regarded as a descent group. The earliest connotations of the word, however, had nothing to do with descent, or blood relationships; it was instead related to words meaning to live together (as in a village) or to move together (as in a herd of animals, a fleet of boats, or groups organized for hunting or warfare).

The associated meanings make sense. Brief descriptions of the Jurchens and their ancestors in the Chinese and Korean records indicate the preference for living together in fairly stable villages, and also that any village was a functioning cooperative that moved with a degree of