ann
(Ann)
#1
Warka and the other Donghai, or“Savage”(Yeren), Jurchen lived
intermixed between the Sungari-Hūrha (-Mudan, in Chinese) and
Ussuri-SAH confluences. They all had been exposed to manpower raids,
which were not always resisted, by the nascent Manchu state decades
before the arrival of Russian competitors. Raids on theseaimanwere
launched as early as 1607 , when the Weji were attacked. A main objective
of such raids into the SAH basin, virtually annual during the 1630 s, was
the enlistment of captured males, supplemented by other human and
natural resources taken at the same time.^47
These state-building raids were thefirst of two regional mobilizations
by the Manchu state. Raids in thefirst half of the seventeenth century
ultimately abetted the conquest of China proper, and raids in the cen-
tury’s second half provided for the defense of the SAH basin against
Russian incursion. Both mobilizations expanded and consolidated
Manchu territory through the transformation of diverse indigenous iden-
tities into “New Manchus,” whose composition and incorporation
differed in terms of the pre- and post- 1644 conquest contexts.^48
Although all operations against SAH peoples prior to 1644 can be seen
as central to the Jin-Qing“unification”of Manchuria, indigenous peoples
who avoided removal from their native places were not fully subjugated.
They could even become restive, as the Solon-Ewenki centered on the
upper SAH reaches did in afinal uprising in 1639 – 40. The Qing suppres-
sion operations in 1640 – 41 captured at least 3 , 385 adult males, along
with 4 , 296 dependents. Probably many of the Donghai Jurchen captured
that same year were also picked up in the process.^49
Manpower raids perhaps most perfectly exemplified the Manchu con-
cept of hunting as warfare and also exhibit the imperial state’streatmentof
their captives as human resources. Hong Taiji, for example, decided that
557 newly captured “Warka”men in 1634 (identified as“Hūrha” in
Table 1 )“need not be equally distributed in eight equal parts,”one for
each banner as usual, but apportioned to understrength banners as
needed.^50 The seventeen raids listed inTable 1 , conducted against the
“Warka”and other Donghai Jurchen peoples, were regulated by a series
of statutes governing the foraging of human beings.^51 A 1638 report most
explicitly prescribes capital punishment for officers who“failed to capture
asingleperson.”One soldier was punished for a lack of vigilance that had
allowed a mass escape from“the pen constructed to restrict all the able-
bodied males captured from the designated villages.”Another officer was
rewarded“because the males captured were more than the number origin-
allyfixed.”This rather blithe revelation implies the existence of a quota for
The Nature of Imperial Foraging in the SAH Basin 75
