ann
(Ann)
#1
by the state or even modified beyond certain limits. Some of those limits
were drawn in milk.
Other limits were both ineffectively drawn, and effectively violated,
by people. Perhaps the most dramatic and ironic of these was the
restriction the dynasty attemptedto place on Han agrarian migrants,
whose 1644 “defeat”afforded them unprecedented access to the untilled
pastures of the Sino-Mongolian steppe ecotone. Significantly, Han
migrants did not consciously seek todirectly alter Mongol identity,
but simply to use steppe resources in a comparatively unrestricted
fashion. Moreover, Han migration alone did not undermine Mongol
herding, already under pressure from the internal contradictions of
imperial pastoralism. Given the environmental interdependencies, it
was nevertheless inevitable that shifts in relations between peoples and
resources would effect commensurate changes in the identity of those
same peoples.
mongol-han resource competition:
grassland and its produce
Most standard Chinese accounts of Han steppe migration stress the
ensuing agricultural development as socioeconomically progressive. An
emerging critical view, skeptical of agrarian sustainability, is probably
informed by many current evaluations of the causes of Inner Mongolian
desertification and grassland degradation.^88
The Qing state faced many of these same issues, and much of the
record exhibits a similarly equivocal character. Divergence is particularly
evident in the dynasty’s almost continuous stream of edicts and regula-
tions. These sought to limit or entirely restrict northward Han agrarian
migration in principle while acquiescing to Han resident farmers beyond
the Great Wall in practice and attempting to adapt pastoralism accord-
ingly. Numerous studies take different positions on the chronology and
character of this migration.^89 Nevertheless, it is possible to state generally
that the Kangxi to Yongzheng regnal transition in 1722 – 23 was probably
the watershed for eighteenth-century Han migration, and mid-Qianlong
constitutes a similar divide for the corresponding development of agricul-
ture in southern Inner Mongolia. Junxiansubprefectures to manage
Han populations were regionally established between these two periods.
The subprefectures were intended to handle legal andfinancial matters
associated with Han urban-agrarian society as well as assist in handling
interethnic disputes.^90 They were the primary units of ethnic
144 Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain
