Voices of Manchu Identity, 1635—1935

Shelley Rigger

Three centuries after its triumphant conquest of the Chinese empire, the Qing court fled back to the land whence it had come. The Aisin Gioro chief who staggered into Northeast China under Japanese protection in 1932 was a powerless figurehead. Yet for some, Henry Pu Yi symbolized a people that once had been the preeminent military and political force in Asia. The Japanese and their collaborators spared no effort to convince the world that Pu Yi and his Manchu followers were a sovereign nation entitled to secede from the corrupt and oppressive Chinese administrations that had misruled them since the fall of the Qing. George Bronson Rea, an American who collaborated with the Japanese in Manchukuo, wrote:

Foreign judges of Manchukuo were severely critical of the selection of Pu-Yi as Chief Executive of the new state, and now that he has been elevated to his rightful position as Emperor, they ridicule him as a “Japanese puppet,” arraign him as a “traitor to China” and sneer at him as a “weakling” who dares not call his soul his own. No thought seems to be given to the fact that Pu-Yi is not a Chinese, that he owes no allegiance to China, that he and his forebears were Manchus, and that the Chinese Republic entered into a solemn treaty with his family to recognize and respect his status as a “Foreign Sovereign.” (Rea 1935:186–87)

In 1935 assertions of this kind were brushed aside as nothing more than cynical Japanese propaganda. In fact, however, Rea’s words—whatever their motivation—raise a fundamental question in Manchu history. Were the Manchus Chinese, or did they constitute a separate ethnic group?

The Manchus, like many communities that have been labeled “ethnic,” cannot be assigned a consistent, unitary history or identity. On the contrary, to get at the truths of the Manchu experience we must listen to a variety of voices. What they tell us ultimately calls into question the usefulness of our definitions and guides us toward a new understanding of ethnicity in general and Manchu identity in particular.

MANCHU VOICES: HONG TAIJI

The first Manchu voice belonged to Hong Taiji, the leader of the Jianzhou Jurchen federation, heir to Nurgaci, and inventor of the term Manchu.¹ In 1635 Hong Taiji declared that all those under his command should henceforth be known as Manchus, and he prohibited the use of all previous designations (Lee 1970:7). Thus, with a word he abolished all the existing categories among his subjects and created a new, purely political designation for the people loyal to him, without regard for their ancestry or custom. Even the word itself was new; no one has ever conclusively linked it to any existing group, individual, place, or idea. Indeed, Hong Taiji seems consciously to have created an entirely new entity to carry out his ambitions of conquest.

But if the Manchus became Manchus only in 1635, who were they before? Who were the individual subjects whom Hong Taiji forged into a single people?

At the core of the Manchus were members of the Jianzhou Jurchen federation. The Jurchens were a collection of tribes living in northeastern China. They had migrated to the region together hundreds of years earlier, but their recent history had created important divisions. Beginning in the tenth century the Jurchen developed tactics of mounted warfare that allowed them to conquer neighboring tribes and, ultimately, much of China proper. In 1115, they established the Jin dynasty. The Jin rulers quickly adopted traditional Chinese governing techniques and other aspects of Han Chinese culture: a civil service examination system based on the Chinese classics, a legal code similar to that of the Tang dynasty, salt and iron monopolies, Chinese language, and Chinese surnames (Tao 1977:153–54). When the dynasty collapsed in 1234, they continued to live in settled agricultural communities, which separated them from their nomadic Jurchen cousins (Tao 1970:121).

When the Jin dynasty’s conquest elite entered China, other Jurchen tribes remained in the Northeast, primarily in the mountainous regions along the Yalu River. They retained the nomadic hunting economy that had characterized the group before the conquest (Crossley 1983a:89). After the fall of the Jin, the tribal Jurchen fell under the Yuan dynasty’s frontier government in an administrative unit known as Nurgan. The land occupied by the descendants of the Jin conquerors was organized as the province of Liaodong. Liaodong also had thousands of non-Jurchen residents, including Han Chinese (Lee and Eng 1984:8).

In Nurgan, two groups of tribal Jurchens settled on opposite slopes of the Changbai Mountains. The eastern group rose to prominence in the early 1400s under the leadership of Mongke Temur, who attained official recognition from the Ming court and extended the influence of his group across the mountains. From 1400 until 1600, the eastern Jurchen gradually increased their influence over Jurchen and other tribal groups in Nurgan, forging the Jianzhou Federation.

The gradual expansion of Jianzhou power received an enormous boost with the rise of the brilliant leader Nurgaci in the late 1500s. Nurgaci knitted together the various Jianzhou Jurchen tribes by reorganizing scattered clans and cementing them under his personal leadership. At the same time, he celebrated the Jin dynastic period as exemplary of a Jurchen tradition he and his followers were determined to restore. The revitalized clan organizations helped formalize the link between the Jianzhou present and the Jin past (Crossley 1987:768).

But the link between the Jianzhou federation and the Jin dynasty was more mythological than biological; Nurgaci’s followers in Nurgan were but distant blood relatives to the Jin ruling house. The actual Jin descendants lived as detribalized farmers in Liaodong (Tao 1970:121); they were not part of the Jianzhou Federation. In fact, as Nurgaci’s armies began conquering Liaodong, they classified all of its residents as Han, even those of Mongol, Korean, and Jurchen ancestry. The criteria for classification were economic practice, lifestyle, and political status, not descent. To Nurgaci, a Han was someone who lived in or near the Chinese border and was not a nomad (Crossley 1983b:39).

Once his power over the Jianzhou federation was solid, Nurgaci began to reshape the peoples under his control in a form that concentrated power in his own hands and stifled diversity among his followers. The result was a new unity that made political affiliation the most basic category of identity. Nurgaci pressured his followers to reject any identity other than that of membership in the Jianzhou federation (Roth 1979:6; Li Chi 1932:38).

Nurgaci’s skill as a conqueror extended beyond the military. He was a cunning diplomat as well, one who recognized the propaganda value of treating conquered people humanely and exploiting superstitions to legitimate his rule. He insisted on strict discipline on the part of soldiers and administrators to avoid offending reluctant subjects and he was known for his generous economic policies. Thus, his historians boasted, “There is no precedent to Chinese going over to another country but [because] they have heard that we take good care of our people, they have come to us to submit” (Roth 1979:10).

In 1601 Nurgaci reorganized his followers into military detachments known as banners (qi). Although they initially were based on the existing clan structure, banners ultimately replaced clans as the fundamental units of social organization of the Jianzhou federation. The functions traditionally ascribed to clan headmen were taken over by military officials, while individual banner members increasingly gave up all other activities in favor of military service. By taking power away from the local chiefs and headmen, Nurgaci tightened his own grip (Ch’en 1981:45). In 1615 he fixed the number of banners at eight and placed each one under the control of a member of his family.

From 1601 until 1623 anyone who surrendered to the banner forces was enrolled in a banner. Those who had Han Chinese surnames and customs traded them in for Manchu names and the banner life. From the perspective of the leadership, they were indistinguishable from those who had joined Nurgaci’s army in the sixteenth century (Lee 1970:34; Lee and Eng 1984:8). But harmony did not reign long. When they captured Mukden (Shenyang) and Liaoyang—two large Ming towns in Liaodong—in 1623, the banners found it difficult to digest the sudden influx of Han. Conflicts between long-time banner members and newly surrendered subjects of the Ming forced Nurgaci to create special Hanjun (Han banners) (Liu 1981:53). The Hanjun included not only those who called themselves Han, but those members of Jurchen clans who lived among them as well. The Hanjun were considered an inseparable part of the banner force, and Hong Taiji included them in the Manchu designation twelve years later (Shirokogoroff 1924:12).

In 1626 Hong Taiji succeeded Nurgaci as leader of the Jianzhou federation. From the beginning, he recognized that the population under his command was something new in the world. He notified the Ming empire:

. . . you Ming nobles are not the scions of the Song emperors, and we are not the scions of the previous Jin emperors. That was one season, and this is another. This heavenly season and the mind of man have become completely distinct [from the past]. (Quoted in Crossley 1987:773–74)

Hong Taiji’s subjects were not the Later Jin dynasty Nurgaci had once claimed to be, nor were they the Jianzhou federation of the distant past in Nurgan. Instead, Hong Taiji declared, the diverse and disciplined fighting force he and his ancestors had constructed were Manchus.

Hong Taiji, along with Nurgaci and the Qing emperors from the Shunzhi emperor to Henry Pu Yi, belonged to the Jurchen clan Aisin Gioro. Their mythical clan history provided a charter myth for Hong Taiji’s newly named Manchus. The story of the Aisin Gioro does not purport to explain the Manchus’ origins in antiquity; rather, it reinforces the idea that they were a political entity born out of the union of groups that had existed before. The purpose of the myth is to explain and justify the joining of those groups in obedience to the Aisin Gioro ruling house.²

According to the myth, a magically conceived Aisin Gioro ancestor named Bukuri Yongson unified warring tribes in the Northeast and was rewarded by being elected leader of the Jurchen east of the Changbai Mountains. He invented the term Manchu to describe his people. Later, the historical figure Mongke Temur was born into the clan, as was Fanca, another documented historical person. Although these two people play different roles in the myth than they did in history, they are credited with helping to unify and enlarge the Manchu population, which is, in a general sense, accurate. Thus, the myth defines the Manchus as a creation of the Aisin Gioro clan and as a fundamentally political entity whose existence is inseparable from Aisin Gioro leadership. In practice, the charter myth also reinforced the top clan’s authority by defining certain Manchu sacred sites and totems (especially the crow) as having special connections to the Aisin Gioro clan.

On the eve of the Qing dynasty, as the Manchus under Hong Taiji planned their final attack on the Chinese heartland and its crumbling Ming government, Manchu was a political designation. To be a Manchu was to be a loyal subject of the Aisin Gioro clan, living and fighting as a member of the banner force. Practicing the shamanistic rituals of the Northeast, speaking the dialect of Jurchen called Manchu, eschewing footbinding, practicing archery and horse riding, wearing side-buttoned clothing, and belonging to a clan with a Manchu name—these were cultural options most Manchus practiced. But they were not obligatory. The definitive symbolic and practical tie that bound individuals to the Manchus was loyalty.

OBOI

In 1644 Manchu forces under the regent Dorgon entered Beijing. The next few decades represented the consolidation of Manchu rule in China, and were characterized by the most fervent Manchuization efforts of the Qing dynasty.³ To the newly installed Qing rulers, Manchu identity was rooted in the experience of conquest. Manchus were those who had taken part in the conquest, and a Manchu government was one that rested on the traditions that had propelled the Aisin Gioro clan into the Forbidden City. For example, the early leaders, Dorgon and the Oboi regents (Oboi, Ebilun, Suksaha, and Soni), insisted upon military supremacy over civilian government. The military was, by definition, entirely Manchu at the time of the conquest, so giving the military the leading role in politics meant that Manchus would occupy all the most important positions. (One of the Shunzhi emperor’s most egregious offenses, in the minds of the Oboi regents, was that he consulted with Han advisers on military matters [Oxnam 1975:59].)

Not all Manchu institutions were military, of course, and the early Qing rulers maintained Manchu civil institutions alongside the banner system. Administration in the first years of the dynasty rested on Hong Taiji’s “majestic example”: careful balancing of northeastern and Chinese institutions, judicious use of Han officials and soldiers, and dogged pursuit of the Manchus’ historical mission (ibid.:30). The most important northeastern institutions, which the regents imported into China, were the Council of Deliberative Officials and the Lifan Yuan (Court of Colonial Affairs). In particular, the Council was a uniquely Manchu institution in that it was rooted in the communal decision-making of the banner heads under Nurgaci. The Lifan Yuan allowed the Manchus to continue their relations with Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang along the same lines they had followed before the conquest, without the interference of the traditional Chinese agency for foreign affairs, the Board of Rites (ibid.:31).

The early rulers also followed Hong Taiji’s example in regulating the role of Han in the government. Hong Taiji recognized early in his career that the Manchus would have to make concessions to the Chinese political tradition if the conquest was to succeed (Roth 1979:24). Not only were the Han unlikely to submit willingly to a radically unfamiliar political system; in addition, the number of qualified Manchus (including the Hanjun) would fill only a fraction of the administrative posts required to rule China. Thus, he and his successors made extensive use of the Han banner members as administrators after the conquest and allowed lower-ranking Han officeholders to retain their positions (Oxnam 1975:passim).

Dorgon scored a tremendous political victory upon entering Beijing when he repudiated Li Zicheng’s cruel and humiliating treatment of the Ming scholar-officials and invited them to take part in the new regime (Wakeman 1979:76). But, as the requirement that they wear the queue reminded the Han, there was never any doubt that the Manchus were the conquerors.

In sum, the new Qing rulers defined Manchu administration as a government based on the martial values of toughness and loyalty and on the institutions of the conquest, and these were still the defining characteristics of Manchu identity. The idea of a Manchu historical mission sprang, in part, from the belief that China was weak and corrupt. Hong Taiji left to his successors a responsibility to purge China of the decadent institutions and culture of the late Ming period. Robert B. Oxnam argues that the choice of Qing (Pure) for the dynastic name expresses this drive for purification:

Whether or not Abahai [Hong Taiji] took this purification mission seriously is a moot point, for he died before the conquest was complete and never had the opportunity to develop policies from the throne in Peking. But the regents of the 1660s, and many of the Manchu conquest elite, were fervently committed to this mission and would often justify their actions as efforts to “eradicate the vile legacies of the Ming.” (Oxnam 1975:35)

So far, the picture I have drawn of Manchu identity lends itself to a circumstantialist view of ethnicity. There were no ubiquitous “primordial” characteristics among the original Manchus; they shared neither heredity, language, nor custom. What they did share during this period was a willingness to become part of a conquering army. The fact that all but the core of the early Manchu population gained their identity from submission to military force reinforces the circumstantialist view.

According to Fredrik Barth’s theory of boundary maintenance, what is important about ethnic groups is not what they include (their cultural content, linguistic patterns, etc.), but how they determine whom to include and exclude (Barth 1969:passim). Barth criticizes primordialist definitions of ethnicity for relying on conditional ethnic traits and cultural forms that are not definitive in terms of the social understanding of ethnicity among members of an ethnic group. Thus, he defines an ethnic ascription as one that “classifies a person in terms of his basic, most general identity, presumptively determined by his origin and background” (ibid.:13). Barth would reject the idea that a list of Manchu traits could be developed that would distinguish accurately between Manchus and non-Manchus. Instead, he would argue that the way to understand the difference between the two is to look at how each group defined the boundary between them.

The Barthian approach to ethnicity is useful in looking at Manchus in the early Qing dynasty because it doesn’t require the members of the Manchu group to share any specific characteristics; rather, the fact that the Manchus maintained a consistent division between themselves and others is adequate to qualify them as an ethnic group. Barth’s understanding of ethnic boundaries as plastic and functional accommodates the Manchus. Also, his theory is not hampered by the Manchus’ tendency to change the content of their culture over time. He writes: “. . . the human material that is organized in an ethnic group is not immutable, and though the social mechanisms discussed so far tend to maintain dichotomies and boundaries, they do not imply ‘stasis’ for the human material they organize: boundaries may persist despite what may figuratively be called the ‘osmosis’ of personnel through them” (ibid.:21).

The weakness of Barth’s theory in this case is that, while it is inclusive enough to allow for the definition of the Manchus as an ethnic group, it is not particularly informative; it does not add much to our understanding of Manchu identity. In fact, it may make more sense to argue that the boundaries surrounding the Manchus in the mid-seventeenth century were political, not ethnic. The Manchus’ very inclusiveness suggests that considerations of political efficacy were the foundation of their boundaries. For them, the most basic, general ascription that Barth would describe as ethnic was banner affiliation, which was clearly a political (and economic) category.

THE QIANLONG EMPEROR

The Qing dynasty reached its apex during the extraordinary reigns of the Kangxi (r. 1662–1722), Yongzheng (r. 1723–1736), and Qianlong (r. 1736–1795) emperors. The Kangxi emperor broke free of the Oboi regents in the late 1660s and at once began to prove himself a highly capable leader. During his reign he consolidated not only the dynasty’s power and legitimacy, but the authority of the emperor as well. At the same time, he introduced a broad range of traditional Chinese institutions into the Manchu political order. As the Qing leadership opened itself to more and more ideas and practices from outside the Manchu conquest tradition, a new understanding of Manchu identity arose. The new definition centered on descent; it replaced the Qing founders’ inclusive, politically based conception with an exclusive, formalized notion that sought to define the Manchu people in terms of heredity and culture. It originated in the innermost circles of government and was motivated by the drive to consolidate imperial power.

The Qianlong emperor completed two important projects designed to formalize and standardize Manchu identity. The first was the reregistration of Hanjun as Manchus.⁴ Traditionally, the Hanjun were considered part of the Manchu population; membership in a banner defined a clan as Manchu. But beginning under the Kangxi emperor, the court began changing the registration of some clans from Han banners to Manchu banners (Crossley 1983b:38) if they could show biological connections to banner members from Nurgan (Crossley 1990a:228). This implies that the Hanjun affiliation extended to banner members recruited in the Ming-administered province of Liaodong was no longer considered adequate qualification for full Manchu status. If it had been, reregistration would not have been necessary. Even some Jurchen clans that traced their origins to the Jin dynasty but happened to have been living in Liaodong when they joined the banners no longer felt satisfied with the Hanjun designation and searched for (and in some cases invented) hereditary links to the Jianzhou federation. The re-enrollment process initiated during the Kangxi reign gained momentum under the Qianlong emperor; in effect, it reversed the pattern of assimilation that had prevailed up to that time. Before, the Manchu designation had absorbed Han Chinese. Now, the Manchus were beginning to push some clans back into the Han category (Lee and Eng 1984:8).⁵

The second project completed during the Qianlong period was the compilation of Researches on Manchu Origins (Manzhou yuanliao kao). As Crossley points out, the works included “. . . reveal at least as much about the eighteenth-century attitudes of the Qianlong emperor and his court as of the truths of Manchu origins” (Crossley 1987:762). They formalized and codified clan histories and genealogies, standardized Manchu mythology and shamanistic practices, and elevated the (fictitious) link between the Qing and Jin dynasties to the level of official dogma. The goals of the project included bringing the clans, with their individualized rituals and mythology, into an official, bureaucratic system; increasing the historical status of the Aisin Gioro house; and standardizing the Manchus’ social and historical role in order to tie them into the imperial order.

The Confucian emphasis on the emperor-subject relationship, a central feature of the Chinese tradition and one of the Qing imperial clan’s favorite notions, was missing from the Manchu political tradition forged during the conquest. Manchu politics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were characterized by joint decision-making, power sharing, and factionalism—not the imperial authoritarianism the Qing emperors preferred. The Researches project, therefore, was in part an effort to impose the Chinese concept of authority on the Manchu tradition. At the same time, the Qianlong emperor used the project to satisfy the traditional Chinese need for the “rectification of names,” the orderly placement of individuals and groups in appropriate, clearly defined social roles. But the results were “rigid” and “artificial” (Crossley 1987:779).

Two important concerns motivated the search for a new understanding of Manchu identity under the Qianlong emperor. First, a century had passed since the conquest, and the link between the original conquerors and the administration in Peking had become attenuated. Moreover, through its steady adoption of Chinese traditions, the imperial court was losing its claim to the cultural inheritance of the conquest. In response, the court intensified its efforts to formalize its ties to the original historical mission that had legitimized the conquest. Lacking strong cultural and political connections, the court emphasized its hereditary links to Nurgaci and Hong Taiji (ibid.:77).

The passage of time alone probably would have been a surmountable obstacle for the Aisin Gioro clan, but the loss of uniqueness of the Manchu administration posed a serious threat to Qing legitimacy. This blending of Manchu and Chinese culture demanded a noncultural definition of Manchu identity if the separation between Manchus and Han was to remain coherent. Beginning with the fall of the Oboi regency, the Qing rulers increasingly absorbed aspects of Chinese tradition into their life in the Forbidden City. The Manchu language was rarely heard in Beijing by 1800, and even the traditional Manchu pursuits identified in the Researches on Manchu Origins no longer commanded much interest. The influence of Han at court is also reflected in imperial marriage patterns. Although officially the Manchu emperors practiced marital endogamy, taking only Manchu women as their primary wives, they were perfectly willing to accept Han women as concubines and to promote their offspring as heirs; apparently, the mothers of the Kangxi, Jiaqing (1796–1820), and Daoguang (1820–1850) emperors all were Han women.

Manchu political life also integrated many aspects of Chinese tradition by the end of the Qianlong reign. Hong Taiji’s Council of Deliberative Officials lost influence during the Kangxi reign, and the Qianlong emperor abolished it altogether. He established the Grand Council to advise him. At the same time, the number of Han officials serving the dynasty was increasing, until by the end of the Qianlong reign more than 80 percent of provincial officials were Han (Kessler 1969:498). These officials were selected through the traditional Confucian examination system, one of the bulwarks of the Chinese political tradition. As the Han gained power in the civilian administration they also began to expand their military role. The banner troops decreased in importance while the Chinese regular army, known as the Army of the Green Standard, gained in stature (Feuerwerker 1976:54).

Given the degree to which the culture of the Manchu elite had come to resemble that of the Han, the idea of Manchuness had to get its significance from a noncultural source if it was to mean anything at all. The push to define Manchu identity in terms of descent was one way the court tried to resolve this dilemma. Another was the formalization of Manchu culture—a kind of cultural taxidermy that stifled cultural growth and gave the Manchu elite a static “tradition” to which it could pay lip service while ignoring contemporary developments in Manchu life.

Standardizing Manchu culture meant choosing symbolic elements and treating them as definitive Manchu traits. The Researches project formalized the shamanistic rituals of the early Jurchen and removed them from the influence of living religious practice. At the same time, the court adopted a policy of preserving the martial tradition—the essence of Manchu identity prior to the Kangxi reign—by mandating for the emperor and his Manchu advisers occasional ceremonial and recreational hunts. The banner forces were also preserved, but in an equally distorted form. They were forbidden to take part in any economic activity other than military and government service. Thus, the ordinary Manchus were locked into stereotypically “traditional” roles.

Nowhere was the effort to freeze Manchu culture more apparent than on the frontier. The Oboi regents opened the frontier to Han immigration in the hope of strengthening and repopulating it, but the Kangxi emperor closed it again in 1668 (Lee 1970:78–79). From then on, the frontier was maintained as a preserve or reservoir of “pure” Manchu culture. According to Lee, “The imperial policy was to keep the frontier unchanged. . . .” (ibid.:77), even though doing so meant condemning the frontier Manchus to a life of backwardness and poverty. Cultural purity was not the only objective of the policy. The Aisin Gioro remembered their own history and took pains to insure that the frontier did not develop independent power that could threaten their authority. Thus,

. . . the material and cultural primitiveness of the frontier region became a political asset rather than a liability. The frontier Manchus, in the eyes of their imperial masters, should be isolated from the corrupting influence of Chinese culture and be content to serve in the frontier banner force all their lives. The privilege of delving into the Chinese classics and becoming members of the civil bureaucracy was to be reserved for the sophisticated Manchus in China proper. (Ibid.:21)

Paradoxically, the Qianlong emperor’s efforts to clarify Manchu ethnicity ended up confusing it. The Qing elite undermined those aspects of their heritage that actually held some promise as meaningful, unified cultural traits (such as a political tradition built on the example of the conquest). What they preserved were little more than quaint artifacts, empty rituals, and stereotypical social roles.

In effect, the Qianlong emperor was trying to transform a group forged by circumstance into one held together by primordial attachments. He sought to create a Manchu identity based on hereditary links to the Jianzhou Jurchen federation. He defined the federation territorially and linguistically, as the Jurchen-speaking banner members in Nurgan, rather than culturally (which would have included non-Jurchen banner members and Jurchen in Liaodong). In forcing Manchu identity to conform to such a model, the Qing scholars encountered many of the same obstacles that plague the primordialist school of ethnicity theory. They sought to identify constellations of cultural traits—what Clifford Geertz called “ ‘givens’ of place, tongue, blood, looks, and way-of-life” (Geertz 1973:277)—to define the Manchu identity. But this model established arbitrary categories; it excluded people for whom there was no other coherent identity. Above all, it provided too static a picture. The “slice of life” that the Researches portrayed, with its permanently fixed array of clans and rituals, was so contrived as to betray reality altogether.

But the arbitrary, artificial aspects of the new definition did not prevent it from becoming an important touchstone of Manchu identity in the nineteenth century, because the Qing court’s sponsorship gave it the force of law. As Gladney’s studies of contemporary Hui ethnicity have shown, official endorsement of certain traits can actually make those traits more prominent in practice and enhance group members’ attachment to them (Gladney 1991:passim). Among the Manchus, the officially recognized characteristics became accepted as accurate markers of identity. Still, ordinary Manchus were not merely passive recipients of the Qing elite’s ideology. They had their own conceptions of Manchu identity, which were influenced, but not dictated, by the official policy. It is in the intersection of these popular understandings with the Qing definition and the realities of Manchu life that the essence of Manchu ethnicity is to be found.

THE FRONTIER MANCHUS

The Qing leadership pointed to Manchus living in the northeastern frontier—the Manchu place of origin—as the true, pure Manchus. Yet those Manchus were the most invisible and most silent of all. They were also the least aware of the meanings and conditions of Manchu identity that were being defined at court. By the end of the Qing period, the “Manchu preserve” in the Northeast had become an ocean of Han immigrants in which the tiny, impoverished Manchu banner population was not merely submerged, but drowning. The misfortunes these Manchus faced were in no small part the result of deliberate policies designed at the center to promote the interests of the dynastic elite.

During the conquest, the majority of Manchu banner troops entered China proper, leaving the Northeast largely depopulated (Li Chi 1932:37; Shirokogoroff 1924:15). Soon thereafter, the frontier was legally closed to Han immigration, leaving the Manchus who remained there on their own. In order to preserve their way of life, the court denied them access to education, opportunities to develop with the rest of the Qing state, and self-government (Lee 1970:22,66). It also segregated them from other groups living in the Northeast.

Economically, the frontier Manchus had few opportunities other than military service. Efforts to develop agriculture in the Northeast had little success. Unlike the Hanjun of Liaodong, most banner members on the frontier were descendants of tribal Jurchen whose livelihood was based on hunting (Crossley 1983a:89) and trade (Crossley 1983b:30). These Jurchen began to develop agriculture only under Nurgaci, and then only because he recognized the need for a food surplus to sustain the conquest (Liu Chia-chu 1981:49). Usually, the Jurchen themselves did not perform agricultural labor, but used Chinese and Korean captives as slaves (Oxnam 1975:24). This arrangement benefited the Jurchens in two ways: the slaves provided both agricultural labor and know-how.

The Nurgan banner members’ economic weakness was apparent even during the early part of the conquest. For example, when the rate at which their territory increased slackened in the 1620s and 1630s, there were famines. The soldiers could not support themselves without a constantly expanding land base.

The policy of forcing Manchu banner members to adopt stereotypical roles exacerbated their economic problems. After the conquest, Manchus were forbidden to practice trades or take part in commerce (Crossley 1990a:51), and the court established monopolies over the traditional luxury products of the Northeast (furs, ginseng, and pearls). Thus, there were few economic niches left open for them outside of government service and agriculture. Given their record as farmers, the frontier Manchus were truly at a loss.

Even with these disadvantages, the frontier Manchus might have learned to exploit the rich resources of the Northeast successfully had it not been for the competition provided by the thousands of illegal immigrants who flooded into the area over the course of the dynasty. Unable to compete with the Han in trade or agriculture, most banner members retreated into towns, where they lived as absentee landlords. Although the Manchus initially owned all the farmland in the Northeast, they often lost it to savvy Chinese tenants and merchants (University of Washington 1956:113). Often the Han exiles confined in the region’s towns had more education than frontier Manchus could hope to achieve, and they soon set the tone for the whole community. Within 150 years after the conquest, even the Manchu language was dying out in Jilin (Lee 1970:82).

One consequence of their failure to develop an independent economic base was that the frontier Manchus came to depend on government handouts for survival. Beginning in 1656, the Qing court paid stipends to banner soldiers throughout the empire. Few banner members had any other income. By the twentieth century, there were virtually no frontier Manchus who practiced the Jurchen economic traditions of hunting, ginseng gathering, and pearl collecting. Those who were farmers mostly occupied marginal niches in the northeastern agricultural economy, raising pigs and horses for a dying market (Shirokogoroff 1924:128–30). The Manchus’ sad economic situation prompted an early twentieth-century scholar to lament:

Intellectually . . . the Manchu is no match for the Chinese. The former lacks the intelligence and capacity which are characteristic of the latter. . . . As a merchant or farmer, too, the Manchu lacks the business qualities and industry of the Chinese. This intellectual inferiority is due, in the main, to the grant by the State to the majority of Manchus of mature age of a monthly subsidy which, while keeping them from actual want, precludes that stimulus to earn a living and better their condition which goes to make men and nations. . . . (Hosie 1904:157–58)

The economic crisis facing frontier Manchus illustrates the superficial nature of the Qing court’s concern for the Northeast. While it is true that there was enormous pressure within China to allow immigration into the frontier, the dynasty did not exhaust its options for reducing immigration or softening its impact on the frontier Manchus. In fact, for economic and strategic reasons (at the time, Russian incursions into the Northeast threatened Qing security), the court began in the mid-nineteenth century to encourage immigration (Lee 1970:103).

The contradiction in Qing frontier policy between celebrating the Northeast as the Manchu homeland and allowing the conditions of life there to deteriorate seems to have confused frontier banner members’ sense of identity. Even after the fall of the Qing dynasty they continued to believe in their special status and proudly asserted their Manchu identity, but they had little understanding of its history or official definition. For example, when the ethnographer S. M. Shirokogoroff visited members of an isolated Manchu community in the Northeast in the 1920s, he found that:

Several purely Chinese institutions they now consider to be their own and some Manchu institutions and customs they ascribe to the Chinese. For example, as soon as the revolution broke out the Manchus of the Aigun District cut off their long plait. They seriously asserted that this is a “Chinese fashion.” But at the same time they were sure that the Chinese spirits, Confucianism, and so on are purely Manchu ancient ideas. (Shirokogoroff 1924:148)

On the frontier, being Manchu meant being part of the banner organization, serving in the military, and receiving a military stipend. The cultural manifestations of ethnicity so important to the Qing court were meaningless on the frontier, ostensibly the source of Manchu culture but in fact heavily influenced by Chinese customs and ideas. The standardized Manchu culture promulgated in Beijing was irrelevant to frontier Manchus whose material culture and educational deprivation left them at the mercy of the Han dominating the frontier. The Beijing version of Manchu identity simply was not salient to the Manchus of the Northeast, so they did not absorb it in any consistent way. Meanwhile, their evolving experience of Manchu life failed to capture the attention of the court “ethnographers” and gained little recognition in the official canon. But the court’s enthusiasm for maintaining a unique Manchu identity—manifested both in its codification of Manchu culture at the center and its policy on the frontier—reinforced the frontier Manchus’ own feelings of uniqueness and prevented them from assimilating altogether.

IN THE MANCHU GARRISONS

The Manchus who entered China proper during the conquest were quartered in banner garrisons (known as Tatar cities) until the twilight years of the dynasty. Within the garrisons, legally and physically segregated from the Han and from their frontier cousins (Crossley 1990a:47–49; Feuerwerker 1976:55), the garrison Manchus constructed a culture and way of life different from both the “pure” and the “official” traditions. In a sense, theirs was the most authentic Manchu experience because it was shared by the majority of Manchus during most of the group’s history (267 out of 354 years).

Lao She’s final, unfinished, autobiographical novel, Under the Red Banner (Zheng hong qi xia) opens a window on the Manchu community in the last decades of the Qing dynasty. His protagonists are his neighbors and relatives, a proud but destitute circle of bannermembers living in Beijing in the 1890s. The novel reveals the ambivalence, uncertainty, and pathos of garrison life. What comes through most clearly, however, is the centrality of Manchu identity to the lives of the Beijing bannermen. As we compare the insights of this extraordinary book with other accounts, the nature of Manchu identity within the garrison communities emerges.

The garrison system, like many aspects of Manchu life, had its roots in the conquest. When they conquered Ming cities, the Qing rulers attempted to provide a livelihood for the banner troops stationed in them by confiscating nearby farmland and giving it to the soldiers. Some of the land had been part of Ming imperial estates, but much of it belonged to Han farmers who were relocated in other parts of North China. Before long, however, the same conditions that were displacing the Manchu farmers on the frontier forced most of the Manchus in conquered China to give up their agricultural efforts and lease or sell their plots.

While economic factors made farming unfruitful for the garrison Manchus, legal restrictions kept them out of most other vocations. At first, they were forbidden by law to engage in trade or manufacturing. Later, most found it impossible to break into the competitive Chinese commercial life in the garrison cities; moreover, they tended to see such activities as unworthy of imperial bannermen (Shirokogoroff 1924:129). Lao She illustrates this point in his description of his much-admired cousin, Fuhai:

This experienced bannerman was actually only half of one; you could even say only a third. This had nothing to do with blood. . . . But the thing that most surprised people was this: he was a housepainter! My uncle was a third ranked colonel. . . . but since his son learned to paint houses, one could hardly argue that he was anything but a half a bannerman. (Lao She 1987:31–32)

Denied access to agriculture, trade, and commerce, garrison Manchus without high official posts or large landholdings were forced to rely on their subsidy payments for survival. As Lao She puts it, “By then, buying on credit was our system” (ibid.:22). The garrison Manchus’ dependence on subsidies from Beijing enhanced the court’s power over them (Crossley 1983a:10–11) and eroded their incentive to find an economic niche outside the garrison walls. Writes Lao She: “Under this system [the Manchus] swept the South and cleared out the North, beating down everything in their path. It was under this same system that the bannermen gradually lost their freedom and their self-confidence and under it many spent their whole lives unemployed “(Lao She 1987:33). Eventually, with the rise of the Army of the Green Standard, even the garrisons’ military functions lost their importance (Feuerwerker 1976:54). Similarly, the dynasty phased out its policy of preferentially hiring Manchus for government posts, making that professional avenue more difficult.

The economic hardships of life in the Manchu garrisons were supportable because of the status afforded by Manchu identity, at least within the community. Lao She leaves no doubt that the divisions among Manchus, Han, and other ethnic groups were clearly drawn, although individual Han might be welcomed into the Manchu community. The garrison troops were devoted to the idea of Manchu identity (Crossley 1983a:138, 273). They saw themselves as heirs to the conquest tradition and relatives of the Qing elite. Many who retreated to the Northeast after 1911 considered the trip a return to their ancestral homeland (Crossley 1990a:186). But this sense of connection to the Manchu past (and to the imperial and frontier present) was based almost entirely on notions received from history and the state:

The garrisoning of the Manchus is an enigmatic feature of Qing life. On the one hand, it destroyed completely the traditional economic and social contexts of Manchu life; on the other hand, it demanded that Manchu life continue, segregated from the Chinese and with few cultural resources apart from the Court and history. (Ibid.:270)

Despite their self-identification as Manchus, the garrison troops were heavily influenced by the Han communities around them. Many bannermen studied the Confucian classics and took part in the civil service examination system, while others studied Chinese arts and culture for their personal enjoyment. The fact that legislation regulating almost every area of garrison life was necessary to maintain segregation suggests that most Manchus were open to outside influences. The dynasty outlawed intermarriage of Han and bannermembers, required Manchus to live within the Tatar cities, prohibited them from learning trades or engaging in commerce outside the garrisons, and forbade bannermen to own property. With the cultural differences between the two groups fading and de jure segregation persisting, the difference between Han and Manchus came to be understood in terms of descent (Crossley 1983a:271). (For example, Lao She’s characters have no trouble recognizing that Fuhai, the “half-bannerman” housepainter, is still a Manchu and that the Hui butcher who buys himself an imperial post is still a Hui.)

The conventional wisdom among scholars of the Qing dynasty once held that the Manchus were completely assimilated by the turn of the twentieth century. Crossley has shown that this assumption was inaccurate, that in fact the Manchus in many ways preserved both an independent way of life and a unique culture within the garrison communities (Crossley 1990a:71, 91). Lao She’s work reinforces this conclusion. Clearly, the Manchus were different from their Han neighbors. But were the differences ethnic ones?

In many ways, the characteristics of ordinary Manchus in the postconquest generations appear to fit the primordialist definition of ethnicity. The Manchus felt as if they were part of an elite, hereditary group, and they clung to that status even when it was to their economic disadvantage to do so. In other words, they felt attachments that defied circumstantialist logic. G. Carter Bentley’s theory of ethnicity as an interactive phenomenon including elements of “habitus” (unconscious “schemes and dispositions” common to all members of a group) and domination offers an explanation of this situation (1987:29). Bentley argues that neither “circumstantial” nor “primordial” describes this kind of attachment adequately. Instead, he looks to the shared experiences of people living in evolving groups set in real political and social contexts. Members’ ethnic identity can change in such settings, yet remain coherent throughout the group. Moreover, Bentley’s theory acknowledges the role played by the state in molding members’ experiences, and therefore the group’s habitus.

Part of the value of the Manchu case to the study of ethnicity lies in the fact that, while it appears to satisfy conventional primordialist and (in the pre-Kangxi period) circumstantialist criteria, a close examination produces reservations that call those criteria themselves into question. The group began as a pragmatic coalition formed to accomplish a particular task, and later the state redefined it in terms of primordial traits. But the traits the Qing leaders put forth as “ethnically Manchu”—such as horsemanship, speaking Manchu, hunting, and the appreciation of martial skill—had little resonance within Manchu communities, where few of these traits could be practiced. Bentley rightly argues that elements of habitus are coherent only if they touch a chord in the common experience of group members; state-sponsored ethnic traits will not necessarily penetrate.

It is true that many of the traits defined in the Forbidden City as Manchu did not “take” in the garrisons and on the frontier, and those traits that were salient could well be said to have been nonethnic. Once we remove from the description of Manchu life the results of the Qing dynasty’s political and economic policies, most of the obvious visible differences between Manchus and Han disappear. The idea that differences in political and economic function are inadequate to define ethnicity is explored theoretically in Judith Nagata’s work. She argues that both primordial and circumstantialist criteria can be satisfied by associations that are clearly nonethnic, such as kinship and gender groups. In order to differentiate ethnic divisions fully, she suggests that

the final factor seems to lie in the institutional self-sufficiency and self-reproducing capacity of the ethnic community, in its ability to cater to the needs of both sexes, all ages and stages of the life cycle, which makes them [sic] potential “candidates for nationhood. . . .” (Nagata 1981:97)

In a fundamental way, the Manchus were neither self-sufficient nor self-reproducing. Their identity as a group depended upon performing particular functions: first that of the conquering army, then those of military occupation and political leadership. Those Manchus who learned to play other social roles—as farmers, tradesmen, or merchants—could be expelled from the community. Moreover, Manchu values denigrated social and economic roles outside military and political life, so that full status as a bannerman required eschewing such roles. Given that so many differences between Manchus and Han were political and economic, must we reject the idea of Manchu ethnicity altogether?

We can pile up evidence against the Manchu claim to ethnic status, but we will ultimately fail to extinguish the spark of self-awareness and community cohesion that united Manchus in the garrisons, on the frontier, and in the Forbidden City. The clarity with which Lao She’s characters categorize themselves and their neighbors, the pride with which Manchus throughout China spoke of their imperial connections, and the construction of unique Manchu goals and values point to a Manchu habitus and ethnicity. Over the course of three centuries, the descendants of the diverse tribes united under Nurgaci came to view their relationship to one another as the definitive category in their understanding of self. Their contradictory positions as the ruling political organization and a minority people conspired to hold them apart from other groups—and in the process, welded them together.

Ultimately, any definition of ethnicity that does not rest on this combination of sociopolitical recognition and self-awareness cannot make sense of the Manchus. One definition that does recognize the interaction of social and political factors with group members’ understanding of self is what Dru Gladney has called a “dialogical” definition.⁶ Such a definition acknowledges that Manchu was, for many years, a fundamentally political category. Thus, it allows us to include people of widely divergent origins in the group, just as Nurgaci did when he organized the banners of the 1500s. It allows us to recognize the Hanjun as full members of the Manchu community, whatever their ancestral origins, language, lifestyle, or customs. It allows us to interpret the fundamentally political nature of Manchu “tradition” (the tradition of conquest) as an adequate description of Manchu culture, regardless of the diversity of belief, custom, and language within the original group. Finally, the notion of Manchu as a political category that gradually took on an ethnic character explains how the group could continue to exist long after the uneven adoption of Chinese ways had opened wide gaps between those living in different places and times.

The Qing dynasty certainly strove to create the impression that the Manchus were a descent-based community. What were the results of their efforts? Did their political distinctiveness and internal cohesion convince outsiders of their ethnic uniqueness? To answer these questions we must listen to voices from outside the Manchu community.

HAN VOICES

The first 150 years of the Qing dynasty were marked by a mostly cooperative relationship between Han and Manchus. During that period, the Han generally subscribed to the axiom “Use Chinese methods to transform barbarians” (YongXia bian yi) (Wiens 1969: 2, 7). The traditional Confucian definition of barbarianism stressed cultural factors, not hereditary ones (ibid.:2, 6) and most scholar-officials believed that the Manchus generally met those cultural requirements. The late Ming period was a disaster in the eyes of Confucian moralists, and the Qing emperors exploited its weaknesses to enhance their dynasty’s prestige (Oxnam 1975:35). Leaders such as Dorgon and the Shunzhi, Kangxi, and Qianlong emperors consciously courted Han favor by stressing Confucian virtue in their administrations (Oxnam 1975:34). Indeed, late-nineteenth-century protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, the harsh, discriminatory treatment meted out by the Oboi regent clique was the exception in Qing history, not the rule (ibid.:8), as the widespread willingness and ability of Han scholars to serve the dynasty attest.

Of course, the Manchus did not meet with automatic or universal approval when they invaded China and took over its government. Immediately after the conquest of Beijing they battled Ming restorationists; later, the rebellions by the Three Feudatories in the Southwest and pro-Ming pirates along the Fujian coast challenged their legitimacy as well. But as a rule, these rebellions were political rather than racial or ethnic. Wiens has shown that race-based anti-Manchu ideas existed in the early Qing period, but argues they had little influence, both because they were suppressed and because they did not resonate with most Han at the time (Wiens 1969:passim). Still, anti-Manchu sentiments continued to surface from time to time throughout the dynasty, and repressing them was a regular feature of Qing policy. Anti-Manchu thinkers rejected the Manchus as outsiders and usurpers. According to R. Kent Guy, “Almost constant Manchu efforts to suppress the racist idiom of political protest make it difficult to tell how widespread such thought was or what end it served, but there is no question that it represented an extremely powerful political weapon” (Guy 1987:17).

As Qing power began to decline in the nineteenth century, more and more Han sought to tap the potential of that weapon. Several factors combined to nourish a flowering of ideas rejecting Qing legitimacy and defining the Manchus as a foreign, alien people. The Qing elite’s decision to emphasize descent in its self-definition reinforced the notion of racial differentiation by the Han. In addition, the declining power of the dynasty undermined its authority and promoted dissent.

A major premise of Taiping ideology was a virulent hatred of the Manchus which included both political and ethnic dimensions. An early Taiping manifesto stated:

All the bamboo groves in the Nanshan Mountains . . . would not suffice to recount their dirty deeds on our land. The turbulent waters of the Eastern Sea would not suffice to wash away the traces of their enormous crimes and evil deeds that shut out the sky. . . . A campaign is beginning that will bring the barbarians inevitable extermination. The Manzhou scum, which have ruled for two hundred years, are doomed, their fate is sealed. (Quoted in Ilyushechkin 1983:260)

The Taiping rebels’ wrath was not limited to the Qing leadership; rather, their race-based hatred extended to all Manchus, regardless of their station. A British missionary made this point in his description of the Manchu garrison in Nanjing after a Taiping attack in 1863: “A walk in the Manchu city helped us appreciate the intense hatred of the Tartar rulers felt by the Taipings. Only one house was left standing in a city of 25,000 inhabitants” (Rev. Joseph Edkins, quoted in Clarke and Gregory 1982:293).

Late in the nineteenth century Western influences came to play a prominent part in anti-Manchu agitation: with the idea of modern nationalism came the thought that China, too, could and should become a modern nation with a unitary ethnic composition. Nationalists such as Sun Yat-sen combined elements of Chinese tradition, including the early anti-Qing racial critiques, with Western concepts of nationalism to create anti-Manchu justifications for their own revolutionary ambitions (Wiens 1969:17).

In general, these critics did not attack the Manchus on the grounds of Manchu culture or specifically Manchu behavior. The confession of Lu Haodong, one of Sun’s coconspirators in the early Revolutionary party, the Xingzhonghui, illustrates the kinds of objections the rebels had against Manchu rule:

It is common knowledge that the Manzhou dynasty of Qing, the bandit spawn from Jianzhou, established itself in China, seized our lands, killed our ancestors, took our children, and the gems and silks of our wives. Ponder, who lives on whose land, and who eats whose fruits? The ten days of Yangzhou, the three massacres in Jiaqing, the invasion of two Wangs in Guangdong—history contains innumerable instances of the killing of our countrymen. We know and remember this. Can all this be called virtuous? It must be understood that today, without exterminating the Manzhou Qings, the Han nation can under no circumstances be restored. (Quoted in Borokh 1983:298)

Clearly, Lu’s hatred of the Manchus was racial. Rather than objecting to the behavior and policies of the current rulers, he attacked the Qing founders, then demanded the extermination of living Manchus as retribution. This mentality, which blamed China’s problems on alien rule and traced them to the beginning of the dynasty, pervaded the anti-Qing rhetoric of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

One consequence of the racialism of these attacks was that—like the Taiping Rebellion—they failed to differentiate between the Qing elite and ordinary Manchus. As a result, revolutionaries often directed their violence at the garrison residents, who by that time were intimately tied to the Chinese communities surrounding them and virtually defenseless. Thus, in Xi’an alone, as many as twenty thousand Manchus were massacred during the 1911 Revolution (Crossley 1990a:197).

Throughout most of the dynasty, the prevailing Han conception of Manchu identity was based on the Manchus’ political role and conduct, but the suspicion that the dynasty was illegitimate and foreign simmered below the surface, held in check by repression and relative satisfaction with Manchu rule (Guy 1987:6). But as the Qing’s ability to minimize anti-Manchu sentiment disintegrated in the dynasty’s last years, political aspirants jumped at the chance to exploit ethnic tension to justify political rebellion and a nationalist strategy for the Chinese state. The idea that race served as a cover for other motives for opposing the Manchus gains strength from the fact that the racial attacks had little resonance for those Han who were not disadvantaged under the Qing. It is also instructive to note how quickly the Chinese reversed their position on the issue when Japan began to use the idea of a Manchu-Chinese schism to justify their Manchukuo policy. Suddenly the Northeast was an inalienable part of China, and the Manchus were once again full-fledged members of the Chinese nation (Li Chi 1932:passim). Yet appeals to ethnic divisions would have been far less successful had they not resonated with a genuine perception of ethnic difference between Han and Manchus.

CONCLUSION

After the 1911 Revolution, some Manchus attempted to revitalize the group’s identity. They organized schools and clubs to promote the Manchu language and traditions. But, as one commentator put it, “They were never in danger of being effectual” (University of Washington 1956:193). The language was too long neglected to be revived and even the teachers of Manchuness were at a loss to define it. The Japanese, too, tried to breathe new life into the Manchus in Manchukuo, since their puppet state’s legitimacy rested on the idea of a Manchu nation. But Manchukuo, like the earlier Manchu revival movement, didn’t take hold. The search for a Manchu identity linked to traits the Qing court had promoted turned up little enthusiasm among ordinary Manchus.

The Manchus existed as a group only because of their experience as conquerors. In the beginning, all they had in common was that experience. As they became generations removed from the events that had brought them together, their original identity lost relevance. Had the Qing followed different policies, Manchus might well have taken the path of their Jurchen Jin relatives, settling into the Han communities around them and gradually assimilating. But the Qing goverment aborted this process by enforcing the legal segregation of Manchus and Han. Why? The best explanation seems to be that they needed to preserve ethnic differentiation in order to sustain their legitimacy as the ruling house. But the Aisin Gioro and their cronies in Beijing did not want to play the part of traditional Manchus. Instead, they used their cousins in the banners to create the illusion of a connection to the original Manchu historical mission.

Thus the Qing leadership entered into a dialogue with the Manchu people. It forcibly prevented them from becoming Han, but at the same time it provided them with a justification for their separate status. Manchus outside the Forbidden City, for their part, answered by constructing a group identity centered on their common history as conquerors and their current fate as servants of the regime. Had they not been segregated, the Manchu people might well have lost their cohesion, tenuous as it was. Had they not looked to their common history and life together to understand themselves, they might not have defined their identity in terms of their Manchu heritage. It was these two factors—political influences and a unique, shared experience of life—that, acting in concert, created the Manchu people.

EPILOGUE

The dialogue between the Manchu people’s shared experience and the Chinese state continues to shape Manchu identity to this day. During the Republican period anti-Manchu sentiment prevailed, and many Manchus “went underground” to protect themselves. Adding to their insecurity was the Nationalist policy of encouraging minority-group assimilation. Even today, self-identified Manchus living under the Nationalist government on Taiwan long for acknowledgment. In 1981, a group of such Manchus founded the Manchu Association (Manzu Xiehui) (see Crossley 1990a:216–18). Their purpose was to work toward achieving recognition both as Manchus and as full members of the Chinese nation. They also wanted to lift the shroud of secrecy and shame in which many of their older relatives had hidden their Manchu identity.

The decision to organize the Manchu Association in Taiwan coincided with a period of heightened ethnic awareness throughout Taiwanese society. Since the mid-1970s, opposition politicians in Taiwan have stressed ethnic difference in their political appeals, shattering the Nationalist Party’s insistence that all Chinese are one. Their calls for a renovation of Taiwan’s political institutions (and in some cases for Taiwan’s independence) are based on the distinction between the “native” Taiwanese majority and the Mainlanders (Waishengren, or those who came to Taiwan with the Nationalists after 1945), who have held political power. In response to the mainly Minnan-speaking opposition movement, members of other ethnic communities—the Hakka (Kejiaren) and Aboriginal people (Yuanzhumin)—began staking out their own cultural (and political) territory. It is not surprising, then, that Manchus living in Taiwan in the early 1980s, who were almost certainly fed up with being thrown into the unpopular Mainlander category, wanted to define their experience on their own terms.

In the People’s Republic of China, too, the political context has interacted with Manchus’ own experiences to shape ethnic identity. Chinese Communist Party ideology teaches toleration for minority groups. In the long run, national distinctions will disappear with the birth of a new, communist society. But before national differences fade away, class barriers must be broken down. The Party took the position that antagonisms between nationalities should be muted in order to concentrate on eliminating class differences. The result was a policy that included space for minorities to continue their distinctive ways of life, as well as efforts to win them over gradually to the socialist cause.⁷ It was a policy of integration (or amalgamation), as opposed to assimilation.

Although nationalities policy in the People’s Republic has vacillated considerably, being at times favorable to minorities and at other times less so, certain aspects of the policy clearly increased the salience of ethnic identification. For example, the government instituted an elaborate program of ethnic labelling. Groups were invited to apply for status as minority nationalities. They were then examined by ethnographers to see whether they met the criteria for minority status.⁸ Those whose status was upheld were eligible for certain privileges and exempted from a number of regulations, including the one-child rule. Individual membership is largely a matter of personal choice, but once a person wears an ethnic label, his or her political status changes in subtle ways. For example, programs to encourage minority students and cadres make it easier to gain admission to schools and institutes.

As of 1965, 2.43 million persons in the People’s Republic were registered as members of the Manchu nationality (Dreyer 1976:145); by 1989, the number had grown to approximately 4.3 million (Ma Yin 1989:41). June Teufel Dreyer speculates that the Manchus may have been granted recognition to repudiate the Nationalists’ assimilationist agenda (Dreyer 1976:145–46). As the Manchus’ garrison experience amply illustrates, ethnic labeling—the official acknowledgment of ethnic difference—can intensify group identification. For example, Lao She, the “voice” of the Manchu garrisons, revealed little awareness of his Manchu roots in his early novels. Yet after he was “labeled,” he “was designated chief spokesman for [the Manchus]” (ibid.:271) and went on to write the story of the Beijing garrison in Under the Red Banner. Part of recognition is legitimation. In 1987 a school for the study of the Manchu language opened in Beijing. Its goal was to train readers to translate old Qing documents before the documents disintegrated. Pamela Kyle Crossley describes Manchu reaction to the school:

Its faculty of eleven—ten Manchus and one Mongol—expected to have to recruit students for the school, but instead they ended up accepting 90 of 150 applicants. Of those accepted, more than half were formally registered as Manchus, but it is clear that only a small minority of the students saw themselves as without Manchu ancestral affiliation. . . . “The school helps to boost the sense of pride for an entire people,” said the founder. “[Since the end of the Qing] many Manchus, though they had nothing to do with the toppled ruling class, have hidden their origin. Today we are excited that our Manchu culture is beginning to be well recognized and our Manchu descendants enjoy equal status in our motherland.” (Crossley 1990a:218–19)

As Crossley eloquently explains in the conclusion to Orphan Warriors, defining Manchu identity in the modern states of the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan is extremely difficult. Most of what non-Manchus view as “characteristically Manchu” is arbitrary and unauthentic. Yet what remains, now that the frontier and garrison communties have been dissolved, their populations scattered? What is left is habitus, a worldview learned at the knee of parents and grandparents who can never expunge the memory of garrison life, and the recognition of the state. In Taiwan, where the state is silent, Manchus join the chorus of voices pleading for acknowledgment. In the People’s Republic, those who feel their Manchu identity welcome each new piece of evidence that the dialogue between habitus and power has not been broken off.

Many thanks to Dru Gladney, Kent Guy, and David Boraks for their many suggestions.

1. Traditionally, Hong Taiji was called Abahai in English, but recent scholarship questions the authenticity of that name. Hong Taiji is a more standard transliteration from Manchu-language sources. Similarly, Nurgaci is a contemporary transliteration of the traditional Nurhaci.

2. For a discussion of the Aisin Gioro myth and its role in establishing the power of the imperial clan and reorganizing the clan system, see Crossley (1985).

3. The period following the Dorgon regency (1643–1650) is an exception to this generalization. The Shunzhi emperor encouraged sinification and seemed uninterested in promoting Manchu identity. But he was an aberration, and his effective reign was brief (1650–1661). The subsequent leaders (the Oboi regent clique, which ruled from 1661 to 1669) quickly reversed his policies.

4. See Crossley (1983b) for a description of the experiences of a representative Hanjun family that sought registration as Manchus.

5. The source for this discussion of the banner re-enrollment program is Crossley (1987).

6. Gladney developed the idea of dialogically defined ethnicity in a series of seminars at Harvard University, in the spring of 1989.

7. Dreyer (1976) gives a thorough account of minorities policy in the People’s Republic. This summary is based on her work.

8. The definition of a nationality, which is based on Stalin’s criteria for nationhood, is as follows: “A nation is a stabilized community, formed by man in history, which has a common language, a common territory, a common economic life, and a common psychological make-up that find expression in a common culture” (quoted in Hsieh Jiann 1984:4). The integrity of the evaluation process is open to debate. Obviously, it is difficult to see how the Manchus could have achieved nationality status under this definition, strictly applied. For a thorough discussion of Chinese Communist views of ethnicity, see Heberer (1989).