A History of the Manchus

The Manchus are one of the 56 officially recognised ethnic groups in China; as of the 1990 census, there are approximately 9.8 million, mainly in Liaoning Province. There are, however, small numbers of Manchus living in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and Hebei and Shangdong provinces. The main area where the Manchus are found was named Manchuria.

The origins of the Manchus are somewhat difficult to trace. However, scholars are confident that the Manchu people derived from the Jurchen culture (10th – 17th centuries) which was primarily a folk culture in which oral tradition, shamanic ritual, and clan custom were the foundations of an organized social existence. The Jurchen people themselves were related to or descended from the Heishui Mohe people of the Tang period, who in turn shared lineage with the Bohai people of southern Manchuria. The Manchus today are descended from several small groups of people from the northeast of China, making them a very unique and fascinating ethnic group.

One of the earliest sources of our knowledge on the Manchus is from the’ History of the [Jurchen] Jin [Jin shi), an anthology on the Jin dynasty (1115- 1234) that had been translated into Manchu under Hung Taiji (1592- 1643), the man who had succeeded his father as second khan of the Later Jin in 1627 and later created himself emperor of the Qing dynasty. He states that the location where the Manchus rose was Changbaishan, and the Black River the Heilongjiang and that one of the peoples who came to be known as the Manchus were called zhushe.

These zhushe were said to practice a tradition where a baby’s head was flattened using a stone; this is reminiscent of a custom that the Manchus used to practice. This shows a common ancestry with the zhushe, emphasising their ancient lineage. Unfortunately, no records of other zhushe traditions survive today.

The Manchus are most commonly recognised for the rise to power in the 17th century CE when they founded the Qing Dynasty, the last dynastic era in Chinese history. However, they made an appearance in early Ming Chinese records (the Manchus were seen as barbarians and were a non-Chinese race), where they were "propagandists of the most scandalous inclinations picked over every word, every line, every paragraph, with no object other than to defame”.

The Qing Dynasty began in 1644 under Nurgaci who had been given the title Dragon-Tiger General (longhu jiang] during the Ming dynasty and it was hoped that this would appease him. “The wrath of Nurgaci was provoked by the Seven Great Grievances, and it was to avenge them that the defeats were visited on the Ming armies in the early battles in Liaodong. The Ming sued for peace, but the Qing were not so easily placated”. Eventually, the Ming dynasty collapsed, the Qing hunted down the last Ming ruler who had fled to Burma and had him killed. The Qing took complete control.

In the first two decades of the Manchu rule was overseen by four regents who acted on behalf of the young king K'ang-hsi who was still in his minority. After attaining his majority in 1667 and annuled the regency in 1669, K'ang-hsi led China resolutely and intelligently for another half-century. But his key achievements and the essence of his rule are easily perceived in a fifteen-year determining phase from 1669 to 1684 when he succeeded in establishing Manchu rule over China. By the end of this episode, K'ang-hsi had upturned the general course of government policy, applied sensible decisions in political calamities, suppressed a powerful enemy on land and another at sea, protected China's northern boundaries against foreign advancement, utilized both Manchu and Chinese abilities for government benefits, opened China to Western scientific knowledge, supported literary compilations, and dissipated the anti-Manchu hostility of a large group of Chinese scholars.

Even under the rule of K'ang-hsi, the peak of the Qing Dynasty had already passed; it was not surprising that it began its slow and eventually fatal decline after K'ang-hsi’s death. Until the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912 under the rule of Emperor Puyi, China was subjected to several rebellions and wars, such as the Taiping Rebellion, the Japanese-Sino War and the two Opium Wars. The fall of the Qing Dynasty paved the way for the Chinese Revolution.

Today, the Manchus are an ethnic group that boasts some of the highest numbers. Although they were seen as non-Chinese, the Manchus and the Han Chinese basically shares the same festivals although there are still some elements which difficult. Like with many of the ethnic groups in China, they have their own language which is as unique and as old as the Manchu people themselves.

Bibliography:

Crossley, Pamela Kyle (1987) Manzhou Yuanliu Kao and the Formalization of the Manchu Heritage, The Journal of Asian Studies, Association for Asian Studies.

Kessler, Lawrence D. (1971) Chinese Scholars and the Early Chinese State, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Harvard-Yenching Institute.