The Qing Invention of Nature: Environment and Identity in Northeast China and Mongolia, 1750-1850
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The Qing Invention of Nature: Environment and Identity in Northeast China and Mongolia, 1750-1850 The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Schlesinger, Jonathan. 2012. The Qing Invention of Nature: Environment and Identity in Northeast China and Mongolia, 1750-1850. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:9773744 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA © 2012 – Jonathan Schlesinger All rights reserved. Mark C. Elliott Jonathan Schlesinger! The Qing Invention of Nature: Environment and Identity in Northeast China and Mongolia, 1750-1850 Abstract This dissertation studies the nexus of empire, environment, and market that defined Qing China in 1750-1850, when unprecedented commercial expansion and a rush for natural resources – including furs, pharmaceuticals, and precious minerals – transformed the ecology of China and its borderlands. That boom, no less than today’s, had profound institutional, ideological, and environmental causes and consequences. Nature itself was redefined. In this thesis, I show that it was the activism, not the atavism, of early modern empire that produced “nature.” Wilderness as such was not a state of nature: it reflected the nature of the state. Imperial efforts to elaborate and preserve “pure” ethnic homelands during the boom were at the center of this process. Using archival materials from Northeast China and Mongolia as case studies, the dissertation reassesses the view that homesteaders transformed China’s frontiers from wilderness to breadbasket after 1850. I argue instead that, like the Russian East and American West, the Qing empire’s North was never a “primitive wilderness” – it only seemed so to late 19th century observers. Manchuria and Mongolia, in fact, had served local and global markets. The boom years of the 1700s in particular witnessed a surge in poaching, commercial licensing, and violent “purification” campaigns to restore the environment, stem migration, and promote “traditional” land-use patterns. Results were mixed; conservation succeeded in some territories, while others suffered dramatic environmental change: emptied of fur-bearing animals, stripped of wild pharmaceuticals, left bare around abandoned worker camps. Beginning with changes in iii material culture in the metropole, the dissertation follows the commodity chain to production sites in the frontier, providing a fresh look at the politics of resource production and nature protection in the Qing empire. iv Table of Contents Maps & Figures................................................................................................................. vii! Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ ix! Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1! Environmental History: From Empire to Nation!.........................................................................................!4! From Nation Back to Empire: The New Qing History!...........................................................................!11! Environment and Economy: the Materiality of Qing Frontiers!...........................................................!16! Rethinking the Nature of Frontiers: the Purity of Place, People, and Production!.........................!24! Chapter Summary!................................................................................................................................................!30! Chapter 1: Marketing the Frontier ............................................................................... 33! The Manchu Suite & Gift-Giving at Court!.................................................................................................!36! Classical Traditions: Gaps in Chinese and Manchu Material Culture!...............................................!51! Sumptuary Laws and the Material Culture of Early Qing Court!.........................................................!58! The New Imperial Cosmopolitanism: From Manchu to Qing Fashions!...........................................!75! Appraising Fur!......................................................................................................................................................!88! Conclusion!.............................................................................................................................................................!96! Chapter 2: Tribute and the Conservation Order in Manchuria .............................. 100! Introduction!.........................................................................................................................................................!100! Pearls!.....................................................................................................................................................................!102! Working the Rivers: Tribute as Corvée!................................................................................................!103! The Rivers Rest!.............................................................................................................................................!114! Ginseng!.................................................................................................................................................................!123! Working the Mountains: “Tribute Farming”!.....................................................................................!124! The Mountains Rest!.....................................................................................................................................!130! Sable: Tribute, Culgan, and Sustainability!...............................................................................................!142! Conclusion!...........................................................................................................................................................!156! Chapter 3: Licensing Frontier Markets ...................................................................... 158! Introduction!.........................................................................................................................................................!158! Boundaries and Boundary Crossing: Licensing Travel in Qing Mongolia!....................................!159! Empire at the Interstices: Keeping Merchants in Line!..........................................................................!168! Commercial Expansion: Pulls from the Metropole, Pushes from the Frontier!.............................!182! Empire Building at Production Sites: Farms, Fuel, and Pharmaceuticals!......................................!192! Farmland!........................................................................................................................................................!192! Fuel!...................................................................................................................................................................!198! Deer Horn!.......................................................................................................................................................!204! Conclusion!...........................................................................................................................................................!210! Chapter 4: Purity and Mongolia: The Mushroom Crisis.......................................... 212! Introduction: In Pursuit of Purity!.................................................................................................................!212! Mushrooms!..........................................................................................................................................................!219! Pure Places: Precedents!...................................................................................................................................!235! Conclusion!...........................................................................................................................................................!255! Chapter 5: Purity and the Qing Borderlands: Fur and Lake Khovsgol in the Early 19th Century ................................................................................................................... 259! Introduction!.........................................................................................................................................................!259! v Pure Wilderness of the Outermost Reaches: the Borderland!..............................................................!262! Between Borderland and Bannerland: Urianghai Territory!................................................................!276! Fur Tribute: the Mechanics of Homeland Conservation!......................................................................!283! Sustaining Purity: The Depletion Crisis!....................................................................................................!289! From Environmental Crisis to Jurisdiction Building: the 1837 Boundary Dispute!....................!301! Conclusion!...........................................................................................................................................................!304!