Ethnic and Status Identity in Qing China: The Hanjun Eight Banners The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:40050122 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 Ethnic and Status Identity in Qing China: The Hanjun Eight Banners A dissertation presented by David Campbell Porter to The Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of History and East Asian Languages Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts April, 2018 © 2018 – David Campbell Porter All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Professor Mark C. Elliott David Campbell Porter Ethnic and Status Identity in Qing China: The Hanjun Eight Banners Abstract This dissertation is focused on the Hanjun, the ethnically Han component of the Qing dynasty’s Eight Banner System. The liminal status of the Hanjun – part of the banner system, which was closely associated with a Manchu ruling house, and yet marked as ethnically Han – makes their history a valuable window into Qing ideas about identity. This dissertation traces how the Qing court managed the Hanjun over the course of the dynasty, finding that though Han ethnicity was central to official conceptions of Hanjun identity, it was secondary to their status identity as banner people prior to the 1750s. Though scholarship on the banners often describes them as a fundamentally Manchu organization that served to reinforce a shared Manchu ethnic identity, careful study of the Hanjun reveals that for much of the Qing the banners were an inherently multiethnic institution. Banner people, I argue, constituted a “service elite,” like the samurai of Edo Japan or dvorianstvo of imperial Russia, a common early modern technology of rule that used legal privilege to maintain the loyalty of a large hereditary class of soldiers and administrators. A mid-eighteenth-century policy of expelling much of the Hanjun population from the banners represented an attempt to change the Qing service elite from a status-based category to an ethnic one, but this attempt was abandoned by the early nineteenth century, and the multi-ethnic Qing service elite persisted until the end of the dynasty. iii Table of Contents List of Tables and Figures……………………………………………………….……………….vi Acknowledgments………………………………..…………………………………….…...…...vii A Note on Transcription of Names………..…………………………………………….………..xi Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..1 The Formation of the Eight Banners and the Origins of the Hanjun……………………...3 Status and Ethnicity in the Eight Banners………………………………………………..10 The Hanjun in Scholarship on the Qing………………………………………………….19 Argument and Dissertation Outline…………………………………………………...…25 Chapter One: A Multiethnic Service Elite: Hanjun and the Banners, 1644-c.1750………….….32 Banner Status and Descent Following the Qing Conquest………………………………36 The “Banner Way”…………………………………………………………………….…40 Ethnicity in the Banners………………………………………………………………….52 Marriage Patterns and the Banner Ethnic Hierarchy…………………………………….60 Hanjun and Green Standards…………………………………………………………….68 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….86 Chapter Two: Two Precursors to Hanjun Expulsion: the Household Selected Soldiers and Voluntary Renunciation of Banner Status……………………………………………………….90 The Hanjun Expulsion in Scholarship on the Eight Banners…………………………….92 The Household Selected Soldiers………………………………………………....……101 Allowing Hanjun to Leave the Banners………………………………………………...126 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...134 Chapter Three: The Expulsion of the Garrison Hanjun and the Transformation of Banner Status, 1754-1780………………………………………………………………………………………137 The First Expulsions: Fuzhou and Guangzhou…………………………………………140 The Expulsion of Secondary-Status Bannermen……………………………………….157 The Second Wave of Hanjun Expulsion: Hangzhou, Jingkou, and the Northwest…….161 The Conclusion of Hanjun Expulsion in Xi’an…………………………………………164 Experiencing Expulsion: Hanjun Reactions to the Expulsion Policy…………………..167 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...174 Chapter Four: Administrative Equality and Social Inequality: Hanjun Identity from Expulsion to the End of Qing Rule………………………………………………………………………...…183 Post-expulsion Population Changes………………………………………………….…187 Administrative Reforms in the Post-Expulsion Period….……….………….………….190 Banner Garrison Society after Hanjun Expulsion………………………………………217 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...240 Chapter Five: The Translator Caste: Manchu Language Education in the Hanjun Banners...…243 Manchu Education in the Early Qing…………………………………………………...247 The Flourishing of Manchu Training and Testing in the Eighteenth Century………….250 iv Hanjun Manchu Schools in Beijing…………………………………………………….251 Manchu Education in Provincial Garrisons…………………………………………….263 Western Language Schooling in Nineteenth-Century Guangzhou: The Legacy of Manchu Education……………………………………………………………………………….278 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...291 Conclusion: Service Elites in Early Modern Eurasia: the Qing Banners in Comparative Perspective…………………………………………………………………………………...…296 Rethinking the Banners…………………………………………………………………298 The Eight Banners as “Service Elite”…………………………………………………..300 Bureaucracy and Loyalty……………………………………………………………….318 Reign Names, Dates, and Abbreviations……………………………….………………………325 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………326 v List of Tables and Figures Tables Table 3.1: Number of Expelled Hanjun Choosing to Enter Green Standards or Become Civilians………………………………………………………………………………...169 Table 4.1: Population of Military-age Bannermen (男丁 nanding), 1720-1887…………….…187 Table 4.2: Number of Manchus and Hanjun in Each Type of Garrison Post, 1884……………208 Figures Figure 1.1: Percentage of Men in Each Banner Category Married to Women of Each Ethnic Background, 1672-1792………………………………………………………………….64 Figure 1.2: Percentage of Manchus among Women Receiving Chastity Awards in Each Banner Group…………………………………………………………………………………….66 Figure 1.3: Percentage of Han among Women Receiving Chastity Awards in Each Banner Group…………………………………………………………………………………….66 Figure 4.1: Populations of Banner Groups, 1720-1887…………………………………...……189 vi Acknowledgments This dissertation is only possible due to the many people who have offered me advice and support over the years I spent of this project, as well as the scholars, many of whom I have never met, whose work has been essential to helping me understand the Hanjun, the nature of identity in the Qing, and the role of service elites in state-making across early modern Eurasia. Though I will not be able to thank more than a fraction of those who have helped me, I hope to acknowledge those who have made the most important contributions to this project, both intellectually and personally. My advisor, Mark Elliott, has been an essential part of my research and writing. From the conceptualization of my project through to the final revisions of the dissertation, he has helped me develop my ideas and refine my arguments, identifying weaknesses, answering questions, and pointing me toward valuable source material. During my archival work in Beijing, when I encountered documents that I couldn’t quite make sense of, he was quick to respond with what he knew. Though he has disagreed with substantial portions of my argument, and I imagine that there remains much with which he disagrees, he has nonetheless encouraged me to keep pushing forward. And though this work challenges some of what he argues in The Manchu Way, without his book and his knowledge, my dissertation would never have been possible. The rest of my committee has also been an invaluable source of support. Michael Szonyi has given me quick, consistent, and straightforward feedback on chapters as I have sent them to him. The general exam fields that I did with David Howell and Kelly O’Neill were crucial not only to my ability to write the comparative portions of this dissertation but to my recognition that there even was an important comparative angle to the project. Moreover, all three, along with vii Mark Elliott, have written letters of support for me at various points during my time in graduate school that have helped me to receive the funding I needed to carry out my research. The principal funding for this project came from the State Department’s Fulbright program and Harvard’s Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship. My research year in Beijing and Taipei would not have been possible without this support. In addition, I have received smaller amounts of funding for research and language study from both the Harvard University Asia Center and the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. I appreciate the support I have received from the various staff working with all these programs, particularly Serena Han with the Fulbright office in Beijing, who helped me deal with logistical difficulties caused by my early arrival in China. I am also very grateful to the entire Fairbank Center staff, particularly Nick Drake and Julia Cai, who have been valuable sources of assistance and tea during my two years as a Graduate Student Associate. The entire staff at Harvard’s Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, including Gus Espada, Alison Howe, and Susan