ann
(Ann)
#1
problems persisted in the Bordered Blue pastures that precluded such
absolute solutions. A 1739 report on the regional problem concluded that
itinerant Han cultivators who had become economically dependent on
pastureland they had worked to arablize should be allowed to remain and
pay rent to Mongol banners. However, they would be keptfirmly within
clear-cut boundaries to preserve Mongol military virtues and pastoral
livelihood.^108
Putting this formulation another way, the proximity and scale of Han
cultivation could create serious and potentially irreversible environmental
damage to herd areas. This problem is exemplified by a 1747 proposal to
expand the boundaries ofTaipusihorse herds that had become hemmed
in between Han cultivation to the south and Pastoral Chakhar lands to
the north. Both wolves and bandits had begun ravaging the horses since
the inception of Han cultivation, which had probably disrupted carnivore
habitats and attracted human predators.^109 No later than 1732 the
dynasty, in an ironic reversal, was actually trying to maintain“border
ramparts,”outliers of the Great Wall, to keep Han trespassers out of
Mongolia. Green standard troops were expected to effect patrols and
repairs. Some ramparts had broken down that year to permit infiltration
by a train of twenty-seven donkeys and nineteen Han. Such were the Han
cultivators that officials feared would“harm the interests of the Mongols’
pastoral livelihood.”^110
Han cultivation not only increased the potentially criminal human
population of the locality, but also may have been more destructive of
animal habitat in clearing land for bothfields and barriers than the com-
paratively casual form of Mongol cultivation. Indeed, this may be a reason
why Mongols did not practice intensive cultivation in thefirst place.
Comparatively radical ecological alteration, for good or bad, may also
have been part of what was meant by the term“Han-style cultivation”
(Ma:nikarame usin tari[ngge]), which occasionally appears in Manchu
documents.^111 It is also important to recognize that, like its modern analogs
elsewhere, Han-style cultivation restricted and effectively precluded the
mobility vital to herding populations.^112 So Han-style cultivation outside
its“native”Hanspace ecosystems required considerable administration,
such as the 1747 pasture shifts involving thousands of horses.
Han cultivation also began to complicate, narrow, and, in some
instances, preclude options for the provision of Mongol relief. A proposal
from Chakhar Plain Yellow Superintendant Ušiba to provide his banner’s
impoverished Mongol households with glutinous millet seed and unused
banner pasture lands to till wasfirmly rejected by central officials as a threat
150 Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain
