state attempts to arrest change by imposing greater uniformity, rather
than by adapting to diversity, exhibit similar destabilizing contradictions
not entirely attributable to Han population pressure, or purely human
interrelations, alone.
virtue under pressure at the peripheries:
manchuria’s sah basin
AsChapter 3 shows, Qing state-sponsored conversion of central and
northern basin peoples to a more uniformly agrarian set of environmental
relations manifested contradictions driven by Russian, rather than by
Han, incursions in the seventeenth century. By the nineteenth century,
however, the Manchu dynasty was being pressed from both sides seeking
to exploit northeastern resources.
Han pressure came largely from the south, via Fengtian, as the prom-
inent Manchu official Nayančeng averred in 1804. By this time, the Qing
had come to consider Jilin and Heilongjiang the last preserves of an
unspoiled Manchu identity, which elsewhere had succumbed to Han
“contamination”during years of banner garrison duty in China. Nayan-
čeng argued to maintain an ethnically pristine Manchuria through the
ban on Han migration beyond Fengtian to stop the degradation of one of
the empire’s most important human resources, Manchu soldiers:
The banner people of the three eastern provinces [Manchuria] take bow and horse
as their essential tasks. They daily practice with diligence in hunting animals so
that their military strength reaches the utmost level of power and skill. To set Han
among them would certainly result in the contamination of their customs, which
would steadilyflow away into weakness. Now the troops of Heilongjiang are
superior to those of Jilin, as are those of Jilin in comparison to those of Fengtian.
This is clear, visible evidence that strength of arms does not lie in commercial
relations.^22