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encompassed the full development of the herding system intimately linked
with these and other regional military operations. Local ecological and
cultural change, as manifested in Han arablism that disrupted this herding
order, gradually emerged from this period as well. Arablism’s main
effects, however, become fully visible only in the nineteenth century.
Ironically, this change was effected partly by imperial pastoralism’s suc-
cessful incorporation of the steppe through exposure to state agrarian
administrative influences, especially disaster relief.
This chapter will focus on the formative period of imperial pastoralism
as it developed in“Inner Mongolia.”This is a somewhat anachronistic
term for the vast region that Qing documents often called“south of the
desert”(monan) divided among“the Forty-Nine Banners”(Sishijiu qi)of
the innerjasag(nei zha-sa-ke) as grouped into six leagues (meng), two
Tümed banners, and the Eight Banner Pastoral Chakhar.^4 At this time
imperial pastoralism was forming in the face of three major adaptive
challenges of military conflict, the encompassing steppe environment of
extreme weather, and Han migration. The chapter begins with the initial
Qing consolidation of people and herds in response to thefirst two of
these challenges and concludes with an examination of the various
pastoral-agrarian resource conflicts that defined the third challenge. The
main Qing object throughout was to manage disruptive strife over pas-
tures and control herder-livestock relations in the face of both human and
climatic pressures.
Steppe conditions ensured that ecological considerations were inex-
tricable from ethnic administration. HanjunNeiwufubannerman Fu
Ge incidentally outlines this interdependency in his explanation of the
“Nine Whites”(jiubai), the annual Khalkha tribute of iconic steppe
herbivores to the Qing throne:“The court pacifies its subjects by lavish
emolument and light obligation.As the Mongol lands are in the desert
where there is little produce, each noble presents eight head of white
horses and one white camel.”^5
In this formulation relations are tempered by“desert”conditions, partly
self-existent and partly constructed, that necessitate particular attention to
the nature of ritual exactions. Consequently, rituals requiring tribute of
regionalflora or fauna that are unobtainable in terms of quality or quantity
actually corrode the human relations they are meant to maintain. The Nine
Whites tribute was certainly structured and maintained by humans, but not
by humans alone. Inseparable as they were from the steppe, even artificial
constructs such as tribute or leagues were conditioned by steppe ecology.
The primary set of steppe links holding imperial pastoralism together did
The Nature of Imperial Pastoralism in Southern Inner Mongolia 117
