The Manchu
History
The Manchu are an ethnic minority in China, and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. They form the largest branch of the Tungusic peoples. The Qing Dynasty was founded by ethnic Manchus who took over China.
Geography and Climate
The Manchu lived in the northeastern region of what is now China, in the modern provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning. Heilongjiang is a land of varied topography. Much of the province is dominated by mountain ranges such as the Greater Khingan Range and Lesser Khingan Range, Zhangguangcai Mountains, Laoye Mountains, and Wanda Mountains. The highest peak is Mount Datudingzi at 1,690 metres (5,540 ft), located on the border with Jilin province. The Greater Khingan Range contains China's largest remaining virgin forest and is an important area for China's forestry industry. The east and southwest of the province, which are relatively flat and low in altitude, contain the Muling River, the Naoli River, the Songhua River, the Nen River, and the Mudan River, all tributaries of the Amur, while the northern border forms part of the Amur valley. Xingkai Lake (or Khanka Lake) is found on the border with Russia's Primorsky Krai. A humid continental climate predominates in the province, though areas in the far north are subarctic. Winters are long and bitter, with an average of −31 to −15 °C (−24 to 5 °F) in January, and summers are short and warm to very warm with an average of 18 to 23 °C (64 to 73 °F) in July. The annual average rainfall is 400 to 700 millimetres (16 to 28 in), concentrated heavily in summer. Clear weather is prevalent throughout the year, and in the spring, the Songnen Plain and the Sanpingjiang Plain provide abundant sources of wind energy. Jilin is highest in altitude in the southeast and drops gently towards the northwest. The Changbai Mountains run through its southeastern regions and contains the highest peak of the province, Paektu Mountain at 2744 m. Other ranges include the Jilinhada Mountains, Zhang Guangcai Mountains, and Longgang Mountains. Jilin is drained by the Yalu and Tumen rivers in the extreme southeast, by tributaries of the Liao River in the southwest, and by the Songhua and Nen rivers in the north, both eventually flowing into the Amur. Jilin has a northerly continental monsoon climate, with long, cold winters and short, warm summers. Average January temperatures range from -20 to -14°C. Rainfall averages at 350 to 1000 mm. It is possible to think of Liaoning as three approximate geographical regions: the highlands in the west, plains in the middle, and hills in the east. The highlands in the west are dominated by the Nulu'erhu Mountains, which roughly follow the border between Liaoning and Inner Mongolia. The entire region is dominated by low hills. The central part of Liaoning consists of a basin drained by rivers such as the Liao, Daliao, and their tributaries. This region is mostly flat and low-lying. The eastern part of Liaoning is dominated by the Changbai Shan and Qianshan ranges, which extend into the sea to form the Liaodong Peninsula. The highest point in Liaoning, Mount Huabozi (1336 m), is found in this region. Liaoning has a continental monsoon climate, and rainfall averages to about 440 to 1130 mm annually. Summer is rainy while the other seasons are dry.
Origins and Early History
The Manchus are descended from the Jurchen people who earlier established the Jin dynasty (11151234) in China, but as early as the semi-mythological chronicles of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors there is mention of the Sushen, a Tungusic people from the northern Manchurian region of northeast Asia, who paid bows and arrows as tribute to Emperor Shun and later to the Zhou dynasty. The Sushen reportedly used flint-headed wooden arrows, farmed, hunted and fished, and lived in caves and trees. The cognates Sushen or Jichen again appear in the Shan Hai Jing and Book of Wei during the dynastic era referring to Tungusic Mohe tribes of the far northeast. The Mohe practiced pig farming extensively and were mainly sedentary, and also used both pig and dog skins for coats. They were predominantly farmers and grew soybeans, wheat, millet and rice, in addition to hunting.
Medieval Period: The Jurchens
In the 10th century CE, the term Jurchen first appeared in documents of the late Tang dynasty in reference to the state of Balhae in present-day northeastern China. Following the fall of Balhae, the Jurchens became vassals of the Khitan-led Liao dynasty. In the year 1114, Wanyan Aguda united the Jurchen tribes and established the Jin dynasty (11151234). His brother and successor, Wanyan Wuqimai defeated the Liao dynasty. After the fall of the Liao dynasty, the Jurchens went to war with the Northern Song dynasty, and captured most of northern China in the JinSong wars. During the Jin dynasty, the first Jurchen script came into use in the 1120s. It was mainly derived from the Khitan script. The Jurchens extorted gifts and rewards from the Korean kingdom Goryeo by threatening them militarily. The Jurchens were sedentary, settled farmers with advanced agriculture. They farmed grain and millet as their cereal crops, grew flax, and raised oxen, pigs, sheep and horses. Their farming way of life was very different from the pastoral nomadism of the Mongols and the Khitans on the steppes.
Mongols Rise to Power
In 1206, the Mongols who were vassals to the Jurchens rose in Mongolia. Their leader, Genghis Khan, led Mongol troops against the Jurchens who were finally defeated by Ögedei Khan in 1234. Under the Mongols' control, the Jurchens were divided into two groups and treated differently: the ones who were born and raised in North China and fluent in Chinese were considered to be Chinese (Han), but the people who were born and raised in the Jurchen homeland (Manchuria) without Chinese-speaking abilities were treated as Mongols politically. From that time, the Jurchens of North China increasingly merged with the Han Chinese while those living in their homeland started to be Mongolized. They adopted Mongolian customs, names and the Mongolian language. As time went on, fewer and fewer Jurchens could recognize their own script.
Ming Dynasty Period
The Mongol-led Yuan dynasty was replaced by the Ming dynasty in 1368. In 1387, Ming forces defeated the Mongol commander Naghachu's resisting forces who settled in the Haixi area and began to summon the Jurchen tribes to pay tribute. At the time, some Jurchen clans were vassals to the Joseon dynasty of Korea such as Odoli and Huligai. Their elites served in the Korean royal bodyguard. The Joseon Koreans tried to deal with the military threat posed by the Jurchen by using both forceful means and incentives, and by launching military attacks. At the same time, they tried to appease them with titles and degrees, traded with them, and sought to acculturate them by having Korean women marry Jurchens and integrating them into Korean culture. Despite these measures, however, fighting continued between the Jurchen and the Koreans. Their relationship was eventually stopped by the Ming dynasty government who wanted the Jurchens to protect the border. In 1403, Ahacu, chieftain of Huligai, paid tribute to the Yongle Emperor of the Ming dynasty. Soon after that, Möngke Temür, chieftain of the Odoli clan of the Jianzhou Jurchens, defected from paying tribute to Korea, becoming a tributary state to China instead. Yi Seong-gye, the Taejo of Joseon, asked the Ming Empire to send Möngke Temür back but was refused. The Yongle Emperor was determined to wrest the Jurchens out of Korean influence and have China dominate them instead. Korea tried to persuade Möngke Temür to reject the Ming overtures, but was unsuccessful since Möngke Temür submitted to the Ming Empire. Since then, more and more Jurchen tribes presented tribute to the Ming Empire in succession. They were divided into 384 guards by Ming, and the Jurchen became vassals to the Ming Empire. During the Ming dynasty, the name for the Jurchen land was Nurgan. The Jurchens became part of the Ming dynasty's Nurgan Regional Military Commission under the Yongle Emperor, with Ming forces erecting the Yongning Temple Stele in 1413, at the headquarters of Nurgan. The stele was inscribed in Chinese, Jurchen, Mongolian, and Tibetan. In 1449, Mongol taishi Esen attacked the Ming Empire and captured the Zhengtong Emperor in Tumu. Some Jurchen guards in Jianzhou and Haixi cooperated with Esen's action, but more were attacked by the Mongol invasion. Many Jurchen chieftains lost their hereditary certificates granted by the Ming government.They had to present tribute as secretariats with less reward from the Ming court than in the time when they were heads of guards an unpopular development. Subsequently, more and more Jurchens recognized the Ming Empire's declining power due to Esen's invasion. The Zhengtong Emperor's capture directly caused Jurchen guards to go out of control. Tribal leaders, such as Cungan and Wang Gao, brazenly plundered Ming territory. At about this time, the Jurchen script was officially abandoned. More Jurchens adopted Mongolian as their writing language and fewer used Chinese. 1526 was the year in which the final remaining recorded Jurchen writing was dated to.
Manchu Lifestyle
The Manchus are sometimes mistaken as nomadic people while they are not nomads. The Manchu way of life (economy) was described as agricultural, farming crops and raising animals on farms. Manchus practiced Slash-and-burn agriculture in the areas north of Shenyang. The Haixi Jurchens were "semi-agricultural, the Jianzhou Jurchens and Maolian Jurchens were sedentary, while hunting and fishing was the way of life of the "Wild Jurchens". Han Chinese society resembled that of the sedentary Jianzhou and Maolian, who were farmers. Hunting, archery on horseback, horsemanship, livestock raising, and sedentary agriculture were all practiced by the Jianzhou Jurchens as part of their culture. In spite of the fact that the Manchus practiced archery on horseback and equestrianism, the Manchus' immediate progenitors practiced sedentary agriculture. Although the Manchus also partook in hunting, they were sedentary. Although their Mohe ancestors did not respect dogs, the Jurchens began to respect dogs around the time of the Ming dynasty, and passed this tradition on to the Manchus. It was prohibited in Jurchen culture to use dog skin, and forbidden for Jurchens to harm, kill, or eat dogs. For political reasons, the Jurchen leader Nurhaci chose variously to emphasize either differences or similarities in lifestyles with other peoples like the Mongols. Nurhaci said to the Mongols that "The languages of the Chinese and Koreans are different, but their clothing and way of life is the same. It is the same with us Manchus and Mongols. Our languages are different, but our clothing and way of life is the same." Later Nurhaci indicated that the bond with the Mongols was not based in any real shared culture. It was for pragmatic reasons of "mutual opportunism", since Nurhaci said to the Mongols: "You Mongols raise livestock, eat meat and wear pelts. My people till the fields and live on grain. We two are not one country and we have different languages.
Manchu Rule Over China
A century after the chaos started in the Jurchen lands, Nurhaci, a chieftain of the Jianzhou Left Guard, began a campaign against the Ming Empire in revenge for their manslaughter of his grandfather and father in 1583. He reunified the Jurchen tribes, established a military system called the "Eight Banners", which organized Jurchen soldiers into groups of "Bannermen", and ordered his scholar Erdeni and minister Gagai to create a new Jurchen script (later known as Manchu script) using the traditional Mongolian alphabet as a reference. In 1603, Nurhaci gained recognition as the Sure Kundulen Khan ("wise and respected khan") from his Khalkha Mongol allies, then in 1616 he publicly enthroned himself and issued a proclamation naming himself Genggiyen Khan ("bright khan") of the Later Jin dynasty. Nurhaci then launched his attack on the Ming dynasty and moved the capital to Mukden after his conquest of Liaodong. In 1635, his son and successor Huangtaiji changed the name of the Jurchen ethnic group to the Manchu. A year later, Huangtaiji proclaimed himself the emperor of the Qing dynasty. Factors for the change of name of these people from Jurchen to Manchu include the fact that the term "Jurchen" had negative connotations associated with it, since the Jurchens had been in a servile position to the Ming dynasty for several hundred years and it also referred to people of the "dependent class". In 1644, the Ming capital, Beijing, was sacked by a peasant revolt led by Li Zicheng, a former minor Ming official who became the leader of the peasant revolt, who then proclaimed the establishment of the Shun dynasty. The last Ming ruler, the Chongzhen Emperor, committed suicide by hanging himself when the city fell. When Li Zicheng moved against the Ming general Wu Sangui, the latter made an alliance with the Manchus and opened the Shanhai Pass to the Manchu army. After the Manchus defeated Li Zicheng, they moved the capital of their new Qing Empire to Beijing in the same year. The Qing government differentiated between Han Bannermen and ordinary Han civilians. Han Bannermen were made out of Han Chinese who defected to the Qing Empire up to 1644 and joined the Eight Banners, giving them social and legal privileges in addition to being acculturated to Manchu culture. So many Han defected to the Qing Empire and swelled up the ranks of the Eight Banners that ethnic Manchus became a minority within the Banners, making up only 16% in 1648, with Han Bannermen dominating at 75% and Mongol Bannermen making up the rest. It was this multi-ethnic, majority Han force in which Manchus were a minority, which conquered China for the Qing Empire. A mass marriage of Han Chinese officers and officials to Manchu women numbering 1,000 couples was arranged by Prince Yoto and Hong Taiji in 1632 to promote harmony between the two ethnic groups. To promote ethnic harmony, a 1648 decree from the Shunzhi Emperor allowed Han Chinese civilian men to marry Manchu women from the Banners with the permission of the Board of Revenue if they were registered daughters of officials or commoners or the permission of their banner company captain if they were unregistered commoners. It was only later in the dynasty that these policies allowing intermarriage were done away with. As a result of their conquest of China, almost all the Manchus followed the prince regent Dorgon and the Shunzhi Emperor to Beijing and mainly settled there. A few of them were sent to other places such as Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet to serve as garrison troops. There were only 1524 Bannermen left in Manchuria at the time of the initial Manchu conquest. After a series of border conflicts began with the Russians, the Qing emperors started to realize the strategic importance of Manchuria and gradually sent Manchus back to where they originally came from. However, throughout the Qing dynasty, Beijing was the only focal point of the ruling Manchus in the political, economic and cultural spheres of this era of Chinese civilization. The Yongzheng Emperor noted: "Garrisons are the places of stationed works, Beijing is their homeland." While the Manchu ruling elite at the Qing imperial court in Beijing and posts of authority throughout China increasingly adopted Han culture, the Qing imperial government viewed the Manchu communities (as well as those of various tribal people) in Manchuria as a place where traditional Manchu virtues could be preserved, and as a vital reservoir of military manpower fully dedicated to the regime. The Qing emperors tried to protect the traditional way of life of the Manchus (as well as various other tribal peoples) in central and northern Manchuria by a variety of means. In particular, they restricted the migration of Han settlers to the region. This ideal, however, had to be balanced with practical needs, such as maintaining the defense of northern China against the Russians and the Mongols, supplying government farms with a skilled work force, and conducting trade in the region's products, which resulted in a continuous trickle of Han convicts, workers, and merchants to the northeast. However, this policy of artificially isolating the Manchus of the northeast from the rest of China could not last forever. In the 1850s, large numbers of Manchu bannermen were sent to central China to fight the Taiping rebels. (For example, just the Heilongjiang province - which at the time included only the northern part of today's Heilongjiang - contributed 67,730 bannermen to the campaign, of which only 10-20% survived). Those few who returned were demoralized and often disposed to opium addiction. In 1860, in the aftermath of the loss of the "Outer Manchuria", and with the imperial and provincial governments in deep financial trouble, parts of Manchuria became officially open to Chinese settlement; within a few decades, the Manchus became a minority in most of Manchuria's districts.
End of Qing Dynasty
Many Manchu Bannermen in Beijing supported the Boxers in the Boxer Rebellion and shared their anti-foreign sentiment. The Manchu Bannermen were devastated by the fighting during the First Sino-Japanese War and the Boxer Rebellion, sustaining massive casualties sustained during the wars and subsequently being driven into extreme suffering and hardship. Much of the fighting in the Boxer Rebellion against the foreigners in defense of Beijing and Manchuria was done by Manchu Banner armies which were destroyed while resisting the invasion, the German Minister Clemens von Ketteler was assassinated by a Manchu. Thousands of Manchus fled south from Aigun during the fighting in the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, their cattle and horses were then stolen by Russian Cossacks who then burned their villages and homes until only ashes were left. The clan system of the Manchus in Aigun was obliterated by the despoliation of the area at the hands of the Russian invaders. By the 19th century, most Manchus in the city garrisons no longer spoke Manchu, instead they spoke the Beijing dialect of Mandarin Chinese or Standard Chinese- which still marked them out as distinctive compared to their Han neighbors in southern China who spoke non-Mandarin dialects. The fact that they spoke Beijing dialect (but not Manchu) made recognizing Manchus relatively easy. It was northern Standard Chinese which the Manchu Bannermen spoke instead of the local dialect which the Han people around the garrison spoke, so that Manchus in the garrisons at Jingzhou and Guangzhou both spoke Mandarin despite the fact that Cantonese was spoken at Guangzhou, and the Beijing dialect marked out the Manchu bannermen at the Xi'an garrison apart from other people. Many Manchu Bannermen got jobs as Mandarin teachers, writing textbooks for learning Mandarin and instructing people in Mandarin. In Guangdong, the Manchu Mandarin teacher Sun Yizun advised that the Yinyun Chanwei and Kangxi Zidian, dictionaries issued by the Qing government, were the correct guides to Mandarin pronunciation, rather than the pronunciation of the Beijing and Nanjing dialects. For teaching the Beijing dialect, Kyugaigo, the Japanese foreign language school, hired a Manchu in 1876. As the end of the Qing dynasty approached, Manchus were portrayed as outside colonizers by Chinese nationalists such as Sun Yat-sen, even though the Republican revolution he brought about was supported by many reform-minded Manchu officials and military officers. This portrayal dissipated somewhat after the 1911 revolution as the new Republic of China now sought to include Manchus within its national identity. In order to blend in, some Manchus switched to speaking the local dialect instead of Standard Chinese. By the early years of the Republic of China, very few areas of China still had traditional Manchu populations. Among the few regions where such comparatively traditional communities could be found, and where the Manchu language was still widely spoken, were the Aigun District and the Qiqihar District of Heilongjiang Province.
20th Century
Until 1924, the Chinese government continued to pay stipends to Manchu bannermen; however, many cut their links with their banners and took on Han-style names in shame to avoid persecution. The official total of Manchus fell by more than half during this period, as they refused to admit to their ethnicity when asked by government officials or other outsiders. On the other hand, in warlord Zhang Zuolin's reign in Manchuria, a much better treatment than the situation of Manchus in mainland China was reported. There were not any particular persecutions towards Manchus. Even the mausoleums of Qing's emperors were still allowed to be managed by Manchu guardsmen like it was in the past. In this case, many Manchus joined the Fengtian clique, such as Xi Qia who was a member of the Qing dynasty's imperial clan. As a follow-up action to the Mukden Incident, Manchukuo, a puppet state in Manchuria, was created by the Empire of Japan which was nominally ruled by the deposed Last Emperor, Puyi, in 1932. Although the nation's name was related to Manchus, it was actually a completely new country for all the ethnicities in Manchuria, which had a majority Han population and was opposed by many Manchus like people of other ethnicities who fought against Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War, too. The Japanese Ueda Kyōsuke labelled all 30 million people in Manchuria as "Manchus", including Han Chinese, despite the fact that most of them were not ethnic Manchu, and the Japanese-written "Great Manchukuo" built upon Ueda's argument to claim that all 30 million "Manchus" in Manchukuo had the right to independence to justify splitting Manchukuo from China. In 1942 the Japanese-written "Ten Year History of the Construction of Manchukuo" attempted to emphasize the right of ethnic Japanese to the land of Manchukuo while attempting to de-legitimize the Manchus' claim to Manchukuo as their native land, noting that most Manchus moved out during the Qing dynasty and only returned later. In 1952, after the failure of both Manchukuo and the Nationalist Government (KMT), the newborn People's Republic of China officially recognized the Manchu as one of the ethnic minorities in 1952. In the 1953 census, 2.5 million people identified themselves as Manchu. The Communist government also attempted to improve the treatment of Manchu people; some Manchu people who had hidden their ancestry during the period of KMT rule thus became more comfortable to reveal their ancestry, such as the writer Lao She, who began to include Manchu characters in his fictional works in the 1950s. Between 1982 and 1990, the official count of Manchu people more than doubled from 4,299,159 to 9,821,180, making them China's fastest-growing ethnic minority. In fact, however, this growth was not due to natural increase, but instead people formerly registered as Han applying for official recognition as Manchu. Since the 1980s, thirteen Manchu autonomous counties have been created in Liaoning, Jilin, Hebei and Heilongjiang. The Eight Banners system is one of the most important ethnic identity of today's Manchu people. So nowadays, Manchus are more like an ethnic community which not only contains the descendants of Manchu bannermen, also has a large number of Manchu-assimilated Chinese and Mongol bannermen. However, five ethnic groups which were considered as Manchu bannermen under the Qing dynasty (the Solon, Xibe, Daur, Evenki, Oroqen, and Hezhe) were registered as independent ethnic groups by the PRC government. Since the 1980s, the reform after Cultural Revolution, there has been a renaissance of Manchu culture and language among the government, scholars and social activities with remarkable achievements. It was also reported that the resurgence of interest also spread among Han Chinese.
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