ann
(Ann)
#1
Appropriate venery relations were formed from a complex network of
human and nonhuman elements. The dynastic emphasis, however, was
not on animal conservation for its own sake, but to forge a particular
bond between Inner Asian peoples. This bond was based on a banner
identity centered on mounted bow hunting that was often broadly char-
acterized as militantly“Manchu,”but that also included Mongols.^103
Moreover, Manchu-Mongol venery was entirely dependent for its viabil-
ity on game. Prey had to be elusive, and that required sufficient space with
sufficient forest cover and even prohibited the use offirearms. The Qian-
long emperor held that elite Solon-Ewenki troops were defined by their
archery skills during the hunt becausefirearms made it too“easy to take
beasts.” His 1750 ban on firearms during battue encirclements was
backed with silver, used to buy back his hunter-soldiers’guns at a tael
each. Another seventy-nine Heilongjiang, Solon-Ewenki, and Dagur were
similarly bought off in 1764.^104
Wild animals had to have both space and chance to live to preserve
borderland Manchus. Preservation, moreover, had to cover a particular
ecology and culture, which no longer existed south of the Great Wall and
were coming under increasing pressure north of it from thefirst decades
of the eighteenth century. These environmental interdependencies condi-
tioned the maintenance of the empire’s northern borderlands but could
not be neatly kept in total isolation from other conditions that linked the
empire across its administrative boundaries. So northern venery periodic-
ally had to be redeemed with southern silver.
conclusion
In July 2008 more than thirty-three thousand people were mobilized to
deal with locust outbreaks across 240 , 000 hectares of land in southern
Inner Mongolia. Eradication teams included herdsmen who deployed
chickens, a traditional insect control method, en masse to eat the locusts.
Such operations, which evoke something of Ciriktai’s efforts nearly three
and a half centuries before, helped to keep locusts from the Beijing area
for several years.^105 Qingfields and their relations within and across both
ecosystems and administrative boundaries continue to resonate in a way
that recalls more of the Yongzheng emperor’s integrated and multicul-
tural Hanspace than Wang Fuzhi’s monocultural preserve.
Nevertheless, the environmental relations structured by imperial arab-
lism effectively constituted a fundamental, if not absolute, ethnic divide
between Han and the venery peoples north of the passes. Imperial
54 Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain
