Manchuria under Qing rule was the rule of the Qing dynasty of China (and its predecessor the Later Jin dynasty) over the greater region of Manchuria, including today's Northeast China and Outer Manchuria, although Outer Manchuria was lost to the Russian Empire after the Amur Annexation. The Qing dynasty itself was established by the Manchus, a Tungusic people from Manchuria, who later replaced the Ming dynasty as the ruling dynasty of China. Thus, the region is often seen to have had a special status during the Qing and was not governed as regular provinces until the late Qing dynasty, although the name "Manchuria" itself is an exonym of Japanese origin and was not used by the Qing dynasty in Chinese or Manchu.[1]
Map of Northeast part Qing Empire circa 1730s.Shengjing General's Gate Front Gate
The Qing dynasty was founded not by Han Chinese, who form the majority of the Chinese population, but by a sedentary farming people known as the Jurchen, a Tungusic people who lived around the region now comprising the Chinese provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang. Although the Ming dynasty held control over Manchuria since the late 1380s, Ming political existence in the region waned considerably after the death of the Yongle Emperor. What was to become the Manchu state was founded by Nurhaci, the chieftain of a minor Jurchen tribe in Jianzhou in the early 17th century. Originally a vassal of the Ming emperors, Nurhaci started to take actual control of most of Manchuria over the next several decades. In 1616, he declared himself the "Bright Khan" of the Later Jin state. Two years later he announced the "Seven Grievances" and openly renounced the sovereignty of Ming overlordship to complete the unification of those Jurchen tribes still allied with the Ming emperor. After a series of successful battles against both the Ming and various tribes in Outer Manchuria, he and his son Hong Taiji eventually controlled the whole of Manchuria. Soon after the establishment of the Qing dynasty, the territory of today's Primorsky Kray was made part of the Government-general of Jilin, and along with the lower Amur area was controlled from Ninguta (a garrison town south of today's Mudanjiang).[2][3]
However, during the Qing conquest of the Ming in the later decades, the Tsardom of Russia tried to gain the land north of the Amur River. The Russian conquest of Siberia was accompanied by massacres due to indigenous resistance to colonization by the Russian Cossacks, who savagely crushed the natives. At the hands of people like Vasilii Poyarkov in 1645 and Yerofei Khabarov in 1650 some peoples like the Daur were slaughtered by the Russians to the extent that it is considered genocide.[4] The Daurs initially deserted their villages since they heard about the cruelty of the Russians the first time Khabarov came.[5] The second time he came, the Daurs decided to do battle against the Russians instead but were slaughtered by Russian guns.[6] The indigenous peoples of the Amur region were attacked by Russians who came to be known as "red-beards".[7] The Russian Cossacks were named luocha (羅剎), after demons found in Buddhist mythology, by the Amur natives because of their cruelty towards the Amur tribes people, who were subjects of the Qing.[8] The Russian proselytization of Orthodox Christianity to the indigenous peoples along the Amur River was viewed as a threat by the Qing.[9] This was eventually rebutted by the Qing during the Sino-Russian border conflicts in the 1680s, resulting in the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689 which gave the land to China.
Since the region was considered the homeland of the Manchus, Han Chinese citizens were banned from settling in this region by the early Qing government but the rule was openly violated and Han Chinese became a majority in urban areas by the early 19th century. During Qing rule there was a massively increasing amount of Han Chinese both illegally and legally streaming into Manchuria and settling down to cultivate land as Manchu landlords desired Han Chinese peasants to rent on their land and grow grain, most Han Chinese migrants were not evicted as they went over the Great Wall and Willow Palisade, during the eighteenth century Han Chinese farmed 500,000 hectares of privately owned land in Manchuria and 203,583 hectares of lands which were part of courier stations, noble estates, and Banner lands, in garrisons and towns in Manchuria Han Chinese made up 80% of the population.[10] Although those areas did not appear similar to the provinces in China proper before they were converted into regular provinces in 1907, the Qing dynasty also called them “Eastern three provinces“ (ᡩᡝᡵᡤᡳ ᡳᠯᠠᠨ ᡤᠣᠯᠣdergi ilan golo; simplified Chinese:东三省; traditional Chinese:東三省; pinyin:Dōng Sānshěng).[11]
Han Chinese farmers were resettled from North China by the Qing to the area along the Liao River in order to restore the land to cultivation.[12] Wasteland was reclaimed by Han Chinese squatters in addition to other Han who rented land from Manchu landlords.[13] Despite officially prohibiting Han Chinese settlement on the Manchu and Mongol lands, by the 18th century the Qing decided to settle Han refugees from northern China who were suffering from famine, floods, and drought into Manchuria and Inner Mongolia so that Han Chinese farmed 500,000 hectares in Manchuria and tens of thousands of hectares in Inner Mongolia by the 1780s.[14] The Qianlong Emperor allowed Han Chinese peasants suffering from drought to move into Manchuria despite him issuing edicts in favor of banning them from 1740 to 1776.[15] Chinese tenant farmers rented or even claimed title to land from the "imperial estates" and Manchu Bannerlands in the area.[16] Besides moving into the Liao area in southern Manchuria, the path linking Jinzhou, Fengtian, Tieling, Changchun, Hulun, and Ningguta was settled by Han Chinese during the Qianlong Emperor's reign, and Han Chinese were the majority in urban areas of Manchuria by 1800.[17] To increase the Imperial Treasury's revenue, the Qing sold formerly Manchu only lands along the Sungari to Han Chinese at the beginning of the Daoguang Emperor's reign, and Han Chinese filled up most of Manchuria's towns by the 1840s according to Abbe Huc.[18] However, the policy for banning the Han Chinese citizens from moving to northern part of Manchuria was not officially lifted until 1860, when Outer Manchuria was lost to the Russians during the Amur Annexation by the Russian Empire. After that, the Qing court started to encourage immigration of Han Chinese into the region, which began the period of Chuang Guandong.
After conquering the Ming, the Qing identified their state as Zhongguo ("中國", the term for "China" in modern Chinese), and referred to it as "Dulimbai Gurun" in Manchu.[19][20][21] "China" thus referred to the Qing in official documents, international treaties, and foreign affairs. The lands in Manchuria were explicitly stated by the Qing to belong to "China" (Zhongguo, Dulimbai gurun) in Qing edicts and in the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk.[22]
In Manchuria in 1800, wealthy Han Chinese merchants stood at the top of the social ladder, just below the high-ranking banner officers, with whom they had many social, cultural and business relationships —merchant and officers often meeting one another on terms of equality. Han Chinese society in Manchuria was an uprooted society of immigrants, most of whom, except in Fengtian (Liaoning), had lived where they were for only a number of decades. Although the settlers had come mainly from Zhili, Shandong and Shanxi and had brought with them many of the social patterns of those provinces, the immigrants derived from the poorer and less educated elements of society, with the result that at the beginning of the nineteenth century a "gentry" class of the type known in China proper - families of education, wealth and prestige who had exercised social leadership in a given locality for generations - had only recently come into being in Fengtian province and cannot be said to have existed in the Manchurian frontier at all. At the bottom of the society were the unskilled workmen, domestic servants, prostitutes and exiled convicts, including slaves. One of the capacities in which Manchuria, especially Jilin and Heilongjiang, had served the Qing Empire was as a place of exile, not only for disgraced officials but also for convicted criminals. The worse the crimes and the more hardened the offenders, the farther north the Qing judicial system generally sent them. Many of these criminals took up crafts or small businesses, eventually becoming dependable members of society, but their presence in increasing numbers added to the lawless, rough-and-ready character of Manchurian frontier society.[23]
Manchuria from the early to middle Qing period was governed by the military governors of Fengtian, Jilin and Heilongjiang. In both Jilin and Heilongjiang, most of whose territories were not easily accessible, there lived a considerable Han Chinese outlaw population. The number of these outlaws had grown rapidly in the eighteenth century and continued to rise in the nineteenth. Some of them, especially the goldminers and bandits, formed organized communities with rudimentary local governments. Groups of outlaw ginseng-diggers, known as "blackmen", in the forests and mountains beyond the reach of the Manchurian authorities, so disturbed the tribal frontier areas that in 1811 the military governor of Jilin had to send troops into the mountains to drive them out. By the opening decade of the nineteenth century the sinicization of Manchuria was already irreversibly advanced. Fengtian province had for some time been essentially Han Chinese and part of China, and the military governors of Jilin and Heilongjiang, though charged with the duty of upholding the supremacy of the banner element in society, had failed to preserve the status quo. The bannermen, who lacked the industry and technical skills of the Han Chinese settlers, were concerned only with holding on to what they had. Despite repeated government measures, the bannermen were rapidly becoming pauperized, and they grew increasingly dependent upon subsidies from the Qing government. The culturally dynamic example, which more and more of them began to emulate, was that of the Han Chinese. As time went on, not only the bannermen but also many of the tribal peoples began to adopt Chinese culture and fall into the orbit of Han tastes, Han markets and Han ways of doing things. Only the cold and sparsely populated Amur basin, which had not attracted settlers from China, remained essentially outside the Chinese sphere.[24]
At the end of the 19th century and turn of the 20th century, to counteract increasing Russian influence, the Qing dynasty abolished the existing administrative system in Manchuria (created by the bannermen) and reclassified all immigrants to the region as Han (Chinese) instead of minren (民人, civilians, non-bannermen), while replacing provincial generals with provincial governors. This reform occurred when Manchuria was a battleground between Russia and Japan. From 1902 to 1911, seventy civil administrations were created due to the increasing population of Manchuria.[25]
After the loss of the Outer Manchuria to the Russians and the Russo-Japanese War, Manchuria was eventually turned into provinces by the late Qing government in the early 20th century, similar to Xinjiang which was converted into a province earlier. Manchuria became officially known as the "Three Northeast Provinces" (東三省), and the Qing established the post of Viceroy of the Three Northeast Provinces to oversee these provinces, which was the only Qing viceroy that had jurisdiction outside China proper.
The Qing dynasty, officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last imperial dynasty in Chinese history. The dynasty, proclaimed in Shenyang in 1636, seized control of Beijing in 1644, which is considered the start of the dynasty's rule. The dynasty lasted until the Xinhai Revolution of October 1911 led to the abdication of the last emperor, February 12, 1912. In Chinese historiography, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of China. The multi-ethnic Qing dynasty assembled the territorial base for modern China. It was the largest imperial dynasty in the history of China and in 1790 the fourth-largest empire in world history in terms of territorial size. With over 426 million citizens in 1907, it was the most populous country in the world at the time.
Manchuria is a term that refers to a region in northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day northeast China, and historically parts of the modern-day Russian Far East, often referred to as Outer Manchuria. Its definition may refer to varying geographical extents as follows: in the narrow sense, the area constituted by three Chinese provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning but broadly also including the eastern Inner Mongolian prefectures of Hulunbuir, Hinggan, Tongliao, and Chifeng, collectively known as Northeast China; in a broader sense, the area of historical Manchuria includes the aforementioned regions plus the Amur river basin, parts of which were ceded to the Russian Empire by the Manchu-led Qing dynasty during the Amur Annexation of 1858–1860. The parts of Manchuria ceded to Russia are collectively known as Outer Manchuria or Russian Manchuria, which include present-day Amur Oblast, Primorsky Krai, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, the southern part of Khabarovsk Krai, and the eastern edge of Zabaykalsky Krai.
China proper, also called Inner China, are terms used primarily in the West in reference to the traditional "core" regions of China centered in the southeast. The term was first used by Westerners during the Manchu-led Qing dynasty to describe the distinction between the historical "Han lands" (漢地)—i.e. regions long dominated by the majority Han population—and the "frontier" regions of China where more non-Han ethnic groups and new foreign immigrants reside, sometimes known as "Outer China". There is no fixed extent for China proper, as many administrative, cultural, and linguistic shifts have occurred in Chinese history. One definition refers to the original area of Chinese civilization, the Central Plain ; another to the Eighteen Provinces of the Qing dynasty. There was no direct translation for "China proper" in the Chinese language at the time due to differences in terminology used by the Qing to refer to the regions. Even to today, the expression is controversial among scholars, particularly in mainland China, due to issues pertaining to contemporary territorial claim and ethnic politics.
The Manchus are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) and Qing (1636–1912) dynasties of China were established and ruled by the Manchus, who are descended from the Jurchen people who earlier established the Jin dynasty (1115–1234) in northern China. Manchus form the largest branch of the Tungusic peoples and are distributed throughout China, forming the fourth largest ethnic group in the country. They are found in 31 Chinese provincial regions. Among them, Liaoning has the largest population and Hebei, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Inner Mongolia and Beijing have over 100,000 Manchu residents. About half of the population live in Liaoning and one-fifth in Hebei. There are a number of Manchu autonomous counties in China, such as Xinbin, Xiuyan, Qinglong, Fengning, Yitong, Qingyuan, Weichang, Kuancheng, Benxi, Kuandian, Huanren, Fengcheng, Beizhen and over 300 Manchu towns and townships. Manchus are the largest minority group in China without an autonomous region.
Jurchen is a term used to collectively describe a number of East Asian Tungusic-speaking people. They lived in northeastern China, also known as Manchuria, before the 18th century. The Jurchens were renamed Manchus in 1635 by Hong Taiji. Different Jurchen groups lived as hunter-gatherers, pastoralist semi-nomads, or sedentary agriculturists. Generally lacking a central authority, and having little communication with each other, many Jurchen groups fell under the influence of neighbouring dynasties, their chiefs paying tribute and holding nominal posts as effectively hereditary commanders of border guards.
The Eight Banners were administrative and military divisions under the Later Jin and Qing dynasties of China into which all Manchu households were placed. In war, the Eight Banners functioned as armies, but the banner system was also the basic organizational framework of all of Manchu society. Created in the early 17th century by Nurhaci, the banner armies played an instrumental role in his unification of the fragmented Jurchen people and in the Qing dynasty's conquest of the Ming dynasty.
Manchuria is a region in East Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria can refer either to a region falling entirely within present-day China, or to a larger region today divided between Northeast China and the Russian Far East. To differentiate between the two parts following the latter definition, the Russian part is also known as Outer Manchuria, while the Chinese part is known as Northeast China.
Northeast China is a region of the People's Republic of China. It consists of three provinces, namely Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang.
Willow Palisade was a system of ditches and embankments that was planted with willows, was intended to restrict movement into Manchuria, and was built by the Qing dynasty of China during the late 17th century. It is often conveniently divided into three connected sections: the western and eastern sections, forming the Inner Willow Palisade around Liaodong Peninsula, and the northern section, also known as the Outer Willow Palisade, separating the traditionally Manchu areas from the traditionally-Mongol area north of the Inner Palisade.
Ning'an is a city located approximately 20 km (12 mi) southwest of Mudanjiang, in the southeast of Heilongjiang province, China, bordering Jilin province to the south. It is located on the Mudanjiang River, which flows north, eventually falling into the Sungari River near Sanxing.
The Sino-Russian border conflicts (1652–1689) were a series of intermittent skirmishes between the Qing dynasty of China, with assistance from the Joseon dynasty of Korea, and the Tsardom of Russia by the Cossacks in which the latter tried and failed to gain the land north of the Amur River with disputes over the Amur region. The hostilities culminated in the Qing siege of the Cossack fort of Albazin in 1686 and resulted in the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689 which gave the land to China.
Mongolia under Qing rule was the rule of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty of China over the Mongolian Plateau, including the four Outer Mongolian aimags and the six Inner Mongolian aimags from the 17th century to the end of the dynasty. The term "Mongolia" is used here in the broader historical sense, and includes an area much larger than the modern-day state of Mongolia. By the early 1630s Ligdan Khan saw much of his power weakened due to the disunity of the Mongol tribes. He was subsequently defeated by the Later Jin dynasty and died soon afterwards. His son Ejei handed the Yuan imperial seal over to Hong Taiji in 1635, thus ending the rule of the Northern Yuan dynasty in Inner Mongolia. However, the Khalkha Mongols in Outer Mongolia continued to rule until they were overrun by the Dzungar Khanate in 1690, and they submitted to the Qing dynasty in 1691.
Chuang Guandong is descriptive of the rush of Han people into Manchuria, mainly from the Shandong Peninsula and Zhili, during the hundred-year period beginning in the last half of the 19th century. During the first two centuries of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, this part of China, the traditional homeland of the ruling Manchus, was, with few exceptions, closed to settlement by Han civilians, with only certain Manchu bannermen, Mongol bannermen, and Han bannermen allowed in. As a result of the Chuang Guandong, the Han Chinese now form the overwhelming majority of the population of Manchuria/Northeast China.
The Viceroy of the Three Eastern Provinces, fully in Chinese as the Governor-General of the Three Eastern Provinces and Other Local Areas, and in Charge of Managing the Generals of the Three Provinces and the Governor of Fengtian, was one of eight regional Viceroys during the Qing dynasty. The Viceroy of the Three Eastern Provinces had jurisdiction of military, civil, and political affairs over then Fengtian Province, Jilin Province, and Heilongjiang Province.
The history of the Qing dynasty began in the first half of the 17th century, when the Qing dynasty was established and became the last imperial dynasty of China, succeeding the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). The Manchu leader Hong Taiji renamed the Later Jin established by his father Nurhaci to "Great Qing" in 1636, sometimes referred to as the Predynastic Qing in historiography. By 1644 the Shunzhi Emperor and his prince regent seized control of the Ming capital Beijing, and the year 1644 is generally considered the start of the dynasty's rule. The Qing dynasty lasted until 1912, when Puyi abdicated the throne in response to the 1911 Revolution. As the final imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty reached heights of power unlike any of the Chinese dynasties which preceded it, engaging in large-scale territorial expansion which ended with embarrassing defeat and humiliation to the foreign powers whom they believe to be inferior to them. The Qing dynasty's inability to successfully counter Western and Japanese imperialism ultimately led to its downfall, and the instability which emerged in China during the final years of the dynasty ultimately paved the way for the Warlord Era.
The transition from Ming to Qing or the Manchu conquest of China from 1618 to 1683 saw the transition between two major dynasties in Chinese history. It was a decades-long conflict between the emerging Qing dynasty, the incumbent Ming dynasty, and several smaller factions. It ended with the consolidation of Qing rule, and the fall of the Ming and several other factions.
Identity in China was strongly dependent on the Eight Banner system during the Manchu-led Qing dynasty (1644–1912). China consisted of multiple ethnic groups, of which the Han, Mongols and Manchus participated in the banner system. Identity, however, was defined much more by culture, language and participation in the military until the Qianlong Emperor resurrected the ethnic classifications.
The Qing dynasty in Inner Asia was the expansion of the Qing dynasty's realm in Inner Asia in the 17th and the 18th century AD, including both Inner Mongolia and Outer Mongolia, both Manchuria and Outer Manchuria, Tibet, Qinghai and Xinjiang.
Manchuria under Ming rule refers to the domination of the Ming dynasty of China over the greater region of Manchuria, including today's Northeast China and Outer Manchuria. The Ming rule of Manchuria began with its conquest of Manchuria in the late 1380s after the fall of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty, and reached its peak in the early 15th century with the establishment of the Nurgan Regional Military Commission. With the dissolution of the Nurgan Regional Military Commission the Ming power waned considerably in Manchuria. Starting in the 1580s, Nurhaci, the Jianzhou Jurchen chieftain who had been a Ming vassal, began to take control of most of Manchuria over the next several decades, and in 1616 he established the Later Jin and openly renounced Ming overlordship with the Seven Grievances. The Qing dynasty established by his son Hong Taiji would eventually conquer the Ming and take control of China proper.
The Qing dynasty (1644–1912) was the last imperial dynasty of China. The early Qing emperors adopted the bureaucratic structures and institutions from the preceding Ming dynasty but split rule between the Han and Manchus with some positions also given to Mongols. Like previous dynasties, the Qing recruited officials via the imperial examination system until the system was abolished in 1905. The Qing divided the positions into civil and military positions, each having nine grades or ranks, each subdivided into a and b categories. Civil appointments ranged from an attendant to the emperor or a grand secretary in the Forbidden City (highest) to being a prefectural tax collector, deputy jail warden, deputy police commissioner, or tax examiner. Military appointments ranged from being a field marshal or chamberlain of the imperial bodyguard to a third class sergeant, corporal or a first or second class private.
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