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The throne’s evaluation of its two basic strategies for providing virtually
annual disaster relief for Inner Mongolia reveals a potential identity crisis
among the region’s pastoralists that arises not just from human interrela-
tions, but from networked relations connecting humans and their ecol-
ogy. The emperor is clear that livestock relief is preferable to silver and
rice to preserve a pastoral identity. The only practical source of that
livestock, however, are the droves of Mongols farther to the north and
west whose southern ties are already under great tension, especially in the
midst of contemporary Qing-Zunghar diplomatic maneuverings. These
fragile relations with the outerjasag would be put under potentially
catastrophic stress by dynastic exactions of extra livestock to relieve the
innerjasag. Furthermore, increasing Inner Mongolian dependency on
Qing state relief in a form that erodes their pastoral identity by acclimat-
ing them to an arablist consumption of silver and rice would denature the
hoshuubanner Mongol as embodiment of the steppe borderland. In sum,
disaster and its relief constrained imperial pastoralism.
Indeed, in many respects imperial pastoralism was disaster relief,
which one study has identified as the major check onhoshuubanner
economic self-sufficiency.^66 Grain dependency, however, was not effected
through coercive commercial manipulation that, for example, used Jap-
anese cultivated cereals to undermine Ainu foraging.^67 Mongol grain
dependency was a result of Manchu concern for banner integrity and
traditions. Although this type of dependency did not arise by dynastic
design, the Qing did deploy relief quite deliberately to maintain the
imperial steppe in a relatively steady state.
To this end, relief could be distributed to preserve or even restore
Mongol pastoral identity. This generally happened when Mongols
unaffiliated with the dynasty turned up in Qing lands or when large
numbers of impoverished herders were discovered among state subjects.
In 1732 Qing officials were concerned to discover that 86 households of
170 men and their dependents led by a lama had negligently lost their
livestock and were trying to get through the winter by itinerant trade just
north of Zhangjiakou. Officials eventually rounded up 275 households
and 54 single men wandering unauthorized between Zhangjiakou
and Xinping on the Shanxi-Zhili border. Some had been driven onto
banner pastures because of famine; others had been apprehended with
1 , 463 horses, 215 cattle, and 3 , 200 sheep that they had probably rustled.
Altogether around 650 of these men were put in service with various local
nobles, 550 of them in 3 banner companies. Officials noted that“since
these sort of people depend on livestock to live on the Mongol steppe,”
The Nature of Imperial Pastoralism in Southern Inner Mongolia 137
