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pastures that they were soon converted to agriculture. Seventy-two
percent of Hangzhou’s vast pasturage tracts were converted in
1769 and 50 percent of the remainder in 1782 as herds were cut. Such
mortal conditions form the empirical context of views such as the Yongz-
heng emperor’s.^105 Ecological diversity thus obstructed imperial spatial
and identity constructs. By sapping soldier-equine interactions, ecology
knocked Manchu and Hanjun cavalry out of the saddle in south China
more effectively than armed Han resistance had done.
Managing eitherfields or pastures outside of their normal constructs
was particularly complicated. It was hard just keeping track of cultivators
and their produce beyond the passes and, so, beyond the China proper’s
highly developed system of agricultural surveillance. This problem tended
to erode Han steppe agriculture’s utility to the state. A 1733 investigation
into the condition of Hanfields in the jurisdiction of the Pastoral Chakar
Right Wing reveals some of these problems. Manchu officers found that
36 percent ( 1 , 365 households) of the 3 , 745 Han households engaged in
cultivation were unregistered in violation of statute. Seventy-two percent
( 2 , 714 households) were illicitly harboring women and children, who had
been there for six years although their residence in Mongol areas was
strictly prohibited to avoid“incidents.”There were also crimes of theft
and campfires that could start ethnic and grassland conflagrations. The
supervising Zhangjiakou magistrate could not even verify hisfigures for
fields or cultivators.^106
State supervision was also vital to ensure the integrity of pastures,
which in practice meant keeping Mongols and Han apart. In 1730 the
Yongzheng emperor had decreed investigations to ensure this separation,
because Han migrant agriculture in and around Mongol herds would
“hem in pastoral areas.”An ensuing 1732 inspection in the Pastoral
Chakhar Bordered Blue Banner area, for example, unearthed“a large
number”of Han cultivators workingfifteen thousandmuof land produ-
cing six hundredshiof glutinous millet and buckwheat annually. Investi-
gators determined that these activities were constricting herding areas and
inhibiting breeding. Concluding that“there is no benefit should common-
ers be permitted to live intermixed with Mongols,” the investigators
recommended all Han be returned to their places of origin in China
proper.^107 By the mid–eighteenth century this formulation was being cited
as a justification for active prevention of Han cultivation activities in the
vicinity of Mongol pastures, because land clearance would“put pressure
on the Mongols’pastoral herding of livestock.”Pastoral Chakhar officers
were formally tasked with ensuring pastures would remain Han-free, but
The Nature of Imperial Pastoralism in Southern Inner Mongolia 149
