ann
(Ann)
#1
forager did not arise from Han migration, usually denounced as the main
agent for the erosion of traditional Manchu identity. Instead, stress
reverberated from the political summit of the Manchu diaspora in
response to military exigency under particular ecological conditions.
imperial competition for the sah basin: first stage
The imperial borderland of Qing dynasty Manchuria was still forming in
the second half of the seventeenth century, along with its attendant
Manchu identity, as a result of interactions between indigenous peoples
and subjects of the Russian and Chinese empires in the SAH basin. Manchu
identity and Qing dynasty themselves remained somewhat recent notions,
having only been formally declared in 1635 – 36.^42
At this same time Russia’s Romanov dynasty ( 1613 – 1917 ) sought
Eurasian empire through eastward Siberian expansion into the SAH
basin, initially spearheaded by the Cossack raiders of Vasilii Poiarkov in
1643. This expansion then stalled from a combination of indigenous
resistance, Cossack rebellion, and Manchu arms, all abetted by sheer
distance from authorities in Moscow.^43 After a major defeat by Qing
forces in 1658 , however, Russians had steadily, and largely without
authorization, infiltrated back into the basin in the 1660 s. By the early
1670 sanofficial Cossack stronghold at Yaksa (Ru: Albazin) on the SAH
River had been built. Such local departures from the tsar’s authority are
symptomatic of the contemporary limitations of Russian centralization in
the wake of the political turmoil of the“Time of Troubles”and the
consequent improvisational nature of Siberian expansion. By this time a
number of ill-conceived and futile missions, begun in 1654 , had been sent
to the Qing court to formally assert Romanov imperial authority over the
basin and its resources.^44 The renewed Russian challenge compelled the
Qing to incorporate the SAH basin in less ambiguous terms.
The complexities of this incorporation were embodied in the dynasty’s
attempts to reorder the identities of inhabitants of a river basin that
already had three distinct names in Manchu, Russian, and Chinese.
In 1676 thousands of these inhabitants, generically termed“Warka”in
Manchu documents, accordingly found themselves undergoing a not
entirely voluntary removal southward under Qing auspices.^45 Like the
ginseng, river pearls, and sable pelts enriching their forest habitat along
the SAH tributary of the Sungari River, thousands of indigenous peoples
were being hunted and gathered by both the multiethnic Romanov and
Qing empires.^46
74 Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain
