The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China (review)

The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China. By Mark C. Elliott (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2001) 580 pp. $65.00

China's last dynasty, the Qing (1644-1911), was not ruled by Chinese. The Manchus, seminomadic warriors who formed a powerful state in the early seventeenth century on China's northeast frontier, conquered Beijing and held power for over 250 years. This important study stresses that, throughout their rule, the Manchus always maintained themselves as a distinct ethnic group, in modern terms. The Manchus look like odd ethnics, products of a powerful state, not marginalized misfits. Yet the emperors did not create the Manchu identity out of whole cloth. Instead, they performed political bricolage with cultural distinctions already in their people's minds. Like other newly formed "peoples," the Manchus manipulated linguistic, genealogical, territorial, and cultural differences to make themselves one.

But wait. Didn't the Manchus lose their own language? Didn't they control the vast Han Chinese population only by "civilizing" themselves with classical texts? Didn't the emperors constantly complain about their warriors' decadence? Although many scholars still believe that the Manchus fully assimilated Chinese ways, even without a language, a separate territory, or a strong military culture, the Manchus remained different, mainly because of the special institution that they created, the banners. The banners organized fighting men and their families into units that overrode tribal and kinship loyalties. They could expand to include Mongols, Chinese, and even Russians, but they remained, in essence, a distinctively Manchu institution designed to ensure minority domination.

By examining the details of garrison life, using extensive archival materials written only in Manchu, Elliott draws an insiders' picture of their world. Manchu bannermen lived in segregated urban quarters, literally walled off from the Chinese masses around them. They practiced shooting arrows from horseback even when they had no wars to fight. They received inadequate silver stipends, but could not take up other professions. Unlike the Chinese, most of their women did not bind their feet, and had considerably higher social status. To the Chinese, Manchu shamans practiced mysterious rituals, and even Manchu names looked strange. The Manchu-Chinese relationship contained plenty of hidden tension, because the imperial ideology of equality masked the obvious signs of banner favoritism. Chinese merchants cheated naïve bannermen, forcing them into heavy debts, but the state struck back by cancelling their debts. In cultural, social, and economic relations, Manchus and Chinese kept distinct ways of life and adjusted awkwardly to living with each other.

During the eighteenth century, the banners exhibited decay: impoverishment, loss of the Manchu language, and a fatal preference for teahouses and brothels over archery. New policies designed to revive the "old ways" of the warrior state generally failed, but by ejecting the ano-malous Chinese bannermen, the court cut costs and narrowed the definition of Manchu identity. Elliott regards these reforms as a successful resolution of the Manchu identity crisis, one that allowed the banners to persist for 150 more years.

Elliott's view differs significantly from that of Crossley, who has published three books and many articles about the Manchus in the Qing state.¹ For Crossley, Manchu identity is essentially not ethnic, but political, a creation of the state. She examines Qing authority from the top down; Elliott looks at it from the "bottom" up, in Manchu terms. Elliott is deeply versed in Manchu archival texts; Crossley concentrates on the imperial texts that legitimated Qing rule. Crossley almost embraces a solipsistic imperial gaze; Elliott immerses the rulers in a diffuse Manchu culture. Crossley highlights the ambiguous role of the Chinese banner- men; Elliott nearly ignores them. Looking up and looking down reveal incompatible aspects of Qing authority. Who creates ethnic difference? The debate will continue. Both Elliott and Crossley neglect the fact that the banners were designed first and foremost for...