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(Ann)
#1
Borderland Manchus were a particularly valuable human resource
formed under these conditions. They embodied the empire’s Manchu-
rian borderland, ideally as its quintessential northeastern hunter-soldier
unspoiled by residence in the agro-urbanized south.“New Manchus”
were the most militarized manifestation of borderland Manchu iden-
tity, which also included indigenouspelt tributary peoples not normally
subject to military service. New Manchus ideally combined vernery
skills in service of the dynasty’s regional order.^2 This distinction
in identity differentiates those indigenous groups who left trapping
behind when they took up arms and residence in Qinggūsabanner
companies from other groups who remained on the hunt, but not
the attack, in their native villages. Administrative space reflected
these differences during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The mid-SAH settlements were stripped by direct recruitment and
transfer of New Manchus while those of the lower SAH persisted
in place under traditional clan organizations subject to periodic super-
vision.^3 Modern scholars have characterized exchange relations with
this latter group as“rewarding pelt tribute with goods.”Such“tribute
relations”became an increasingly commercialized trade of pelts for
the textile products overseen by authorities at Ilan Hala in the
Qianlong period.^4
Nevertheless, borderland Manchu identity remainedfluid in practice
because it was based on a regional venery experience that permitted
the dynasty to draft and demobilize indigenous hunters. Units like Hei-
longjiang’s“Hunting Eight Banners”(Bu-te-ha baqi), composed mainly
of Solon-Ewenki, Dagur, Orochen, and Bargut, were training reserves. As
soldiers they could be relieved of their regular pelt tribute to grow grain,
but authorities recognized hunting as the prerequisite skill for all elite
banner troops. A 1732 edict offers a concise rationale for the state’s
venery construction of its soldiers:“it has been heard that the able-bodied
men of Butha Ula have multiplied to two or three thousand. Since all hunt
for a living, they are inured to toil and hardship...select 1 , 000 of those in
their prime as soldiers.”Foraging ability enabled hunters in Heilongjiang
and Jilin to be deployed in strategic, unarable, territory such as Hulun
Buir.^5
Embedded in regional ecological conditions through foraging,
indigenous peoples were among the resources mostfiercely contested
during the Romanov-Qing conflict over the SAH river basin in the latter
half of the seventeenth century. This imperialfight for space, pelts, and
people accelerated the dynasty’s formation of a borderland Manchu
64 Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain
