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The Taiji Government and the Rise of the Warrior State: The Formation of the Qing Imperial Constitution

2023; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 82; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00219118-10290740

1752-0401

Mark Elliott,

Japanese History and Culture

One can read Lhamsuren Munkh-Erdene's new book in one of two ways: either as a well-documented study of Manchu-Mongolian relations and the concurrent transformation of indigenous Mongolian political institutions in the early seventeenth century or as an ambitious revision of fundamental narratives of Mongolian and Qing history between 1600 and 1911. In terms of the former, the book offers very useful accounts of many episodes in the development of the Manchu-Mongol alliance that were key to the Qing consolidation of power in the “Northern Land” and ultimately to the successful expansion of the Qing state to include China itself (and other territories besides). In terms of the latter, the author's attempt to redefine what he calls the “constitution” of the Qing Empire so that it is China, and not Mongolia, that is “colonized” under Manchu rule is unquestionably provocative, even if it is not always persuasive. Whichever angle the reader adopts, this is a work that deserves to be taken seriously and that will certainly inspire lively debate among students of Qing history, Mongolian studies, and comparative empire alike.Coming in at just over five hundred pages (and costing more than two hundred dollars), this is not a book for the fainthearted. The author, a well-regarded authority on early modern and modern Mongolia based at the National University of Mongolia, has incorporated findings from an impressive range of Mongolian- and Manchu-language documents to provide new textuality and texture to our understanding of how the Manchu-Mongol relationship came to be, how it was perceived by Mongol stakeholders, and how it metamorphosed under later Qing rulers. Especially as regards the development of the relationship in the seventeenth century—which forms nine-tenths of the book and takes up ten of eleven chapters—there is nothing in English that comes close to offering this level of detail. Specialists will find much here deserving of close examination (I learned a great deal about the career of Ligdan Khan, who figures centrally in chapters 2, 3, and 6) and owe a debt of thanks to the offer for his thorough footnotes, which help blaze a trail through difficult materials, many only made available in the last twenty-five years, which scholars have yet to fully exploit.As important as this study is, at the same time, there is much that is frustrating about it. It is not just that it is often repetitive (something the editors might have tried to fix), but it is also so caught up in arguments with other scholars that at times it becomes polemical, and nuance is lost. Perhaps this is to some degree inevitable, given the author's determination to establish radically alternate positions on a number of big historical questions, not least including the makeup of the Qing empire: “Constitutionally, the Qing Empire consisted of two halves: the Internal and the External. The Internal was the Manchu Khanate . . . [and the] External was External Mongolia” (525), as well as the nature of Qing rule in Mongolia (hegemonic at best, not colonial) and the evolution of internal political structures in what the author seeks to argue was a sovereign Mongolian state with its own parliamentary structures (204–7). The stakes here are high, and by claiming that the Qing state was, by virtue of marriage alliances and early treaties, at its core a Manchu-Mongolian enterprise, the author is led to some potentially controversial conclusions, such as “the declaration of the Qing dynasty in 1636 is not the foundation of the dynasty. Instead, the Shanhaiquan [sic] is the real rite of passage that made the Daiching Ulus the Qing dynasty and a state” (159). Arresting as such a statement is, one wonders how many readers will accept the logic behind it.Given the many pages devoted to presenting, and then debunking, the interpretations of scholars beginning with Lattimore and Fairbank and showing how they and succeeding generations have “got it wrong” (notably, Nicola Di Cosmo is subject to extensive critique), the author's commitment to finding the roots of modern Mongolian sovereignty in the Qing period—for such it seems is his underlying goal—may have got the better of him. It is no doubt the case that Mongolian princes enjoyed a fair amount of autonomy; there may indeed be flaws in what the author calls the “bureaucratic-colonial framework” that dominates much writing about Qing Mongolia, and a heuristic framework that accentuates the ties between aristocracies (and between nobles and vassals) may be useful in arriving at a full picture of Mongolian society and politics in the Qing. But in an effort to overturn everything we have come to know about this place in this period, the author has perhaps set his sights too high. Setting aside the questionable assertion that “there was no Manchu conquest of Mongolia” (3)—a claim that might be true for the seventeenth century but is hard to sustain for the eigtheenth—before accepting the case in favor of a sovereign Mongolian government or state during the Qing, readers would have liked to see more attention paid to the translation of words taken from original documents (e.g., ejen/qan, jasag, gurun/ülüs) that are said to mean “sovereign,” “government,” and “state,” respectively (cf. 63, 68, 107, 111, 119). Insufficient care in defining and explaining such key terms is bound to leave most readers uneasy as to the author's overarching claims.Likewise, in some places translations seem somewhat forced: a Mongolian document issued on the occasion of Hong Taiji's ascent to the throne in 1636 refers to his having “subjugated the Korean state and unified the Mongolian state [with the Manchu state] and took the Jade Jewel Seal” (139). The original text is provided in the note: solongγ-a ulus-i oroγulju: mongγol ulus nigen-e qamtudγagad: qasbuu erdeni tamaγ-a-yi abuba.We can confirm, then, that the translation is correct, save for one significant detail, which is that there is nothing here that could be understood to mean “with the Manchu state.” To use a rhetorical device of which the author himself is quite fond, where did those words come from? Since, as is acknowledged later in the text, Mongolia was indeed highly fragmented in the early 1600s (234), there seems to be no problem in interpreting the passage without having to introduce the idea that one ulus was being “unified” with another.Equally problematic, in what sometimes looks like a rush to judgment, the author risks misstating or even caricaturing the interpretations of other scholars. For instance, it is untrue and unfair to say that in his recent study of the emergence of the institution of the Golden Urn, Max Oidtmann in fact proposes that “Chinese bureaucracy built the Qing state, and conquered, colonized, and civilized Inner Asia” (32). Similarly, to twist Dorothea Heuschert's studies about the textualization of Mongolian law under Qing rule to say that she argues “it was the Qing that brought law to the Mongols” and that this led to their being “civilized” (44–45) is both to misread her findings and to conflate Heuschert's (correct) characterization of the imperial center's perception of what it sought to accomplish by promulgating legal codes in the region with her own analysis of what that promulgation actually meant. The observation that “Heuschert's assumptions and claims reveal not what Mongolia was like in the pre-Qing period but rather her own understanding of the situation” (47) is clearly meant to be a criticism, but in the post-Rankean world, this would seem simply to be a statement of fact, and one that applies to any historian—including Professor Munkh-Erdene himself.Despite these shortcomings, this is a very rich book, ambitious and wide-ranging, assiduously researched, and clearly organized and presented, which will repay careful reading and rereading.