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human intervention such as industrial-scale Han migration or agriculture.
Under the relatively unmitigated steppe conditions before this time, attempts
to assemble networks of human, animal, plant, and water resources into
Qing state herds were constrained by extreme conditions that could produce
drought, snowstorms, and sandstorms within a few months of each other.^40
This was the weather patternflowing through the Chakhar Plain White
Banner horse herds from winter into spring of 1748 – 49 , a few months after
Dasungga’s general report offine pasture conditions. Plain White herds
were hit by a month-long snowstorm, probably adzud, in mid-December
of 1748 just after suffering a drought of indeterminate length. A sandstorm
then struck the already damaged herds in mid-April, transitioning to
another snowfall on the 3 rd of May. By this time only 30 – 40 percent of
the horses were left alive, and some sheep had actually been buried in the
sand. As of mid-May livestock were still dropping in the pastures, probably
because they could not easily get to the sand-choked grass after their long
winter and spring of little or no fodder. Six months of steppe weather that
gyrated between drought and snowstorms left the Plain White Banner
herds unable to sustain themselves without a state grant of a year’sworth
of provisions as well as funds for the replacement of livestock losses.^41
Such grants were the main form of human adaptation to extreme
steppe conditions under the dynastic system of pastoral management.
Although similar in many respects to the system of disaster relief
operating in the farmfields of China proper, disaster relief in the Mongo-
lian grasslands was further complicated by cultural differences. Inter-
action with the same conditions of climate and topography, often
exacerbated by military conflict that made relief necessary in thefirst
place, spawned many such differences.^42
Even relief for Mongols largely dependent on agriculture posed a
distinctive challenge because theirfields were located in the wide expanse
of the steppe, far from sources of supply. The July 1733 plight of agrarian
Dörbed Banner Mongols is a comprehensive, detailed saga of these chal-
lenges. Snowstorms and then crop failure had deprived the Dörbed of
plow oxen and seed grain. Frozen rivers had delayed transport of 1 , 840
hule(shi) of relief seed grain needed by 3 , 057 distressed households until
spring thawed supply routes from neighboring Heilongjiangfields. Dis-
tance prevented the timely purchase and safe delivery from zones beyond
the disaster area of almost 45 percent of the 1 , 409 oxen needed by 2 , 817
households for spring sowing. Even selling off penalty livestock, held by
neighboring Khorchin bannerjasag, to add to thefive thousand taels
granted for replacement oxen was deemed more practical than driving
The Nature of Imperial Pastoralism in Southern Inner Mongolia 131
