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

Mark Elliott's The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China is a groundbreaking institutional study of the Manchu banner system and its pivotal role in defining Manchu ethnic sovereignty and preserving Manchu dominance of the imperial power structure during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). The book centers on the creation and evolution of the complex and elusive concept of Manchu ethnic identity, an understanding of which the author contends is crucial to understanding Qing rule and its legacy in the modern period. The author asserts that the study of Manchu identity sheds important light on two basic questions: (1) How did a minority ruling elite manage to rule so long and so well, and (2) did it matter?

Elliott's approach to these two questions is very practical. He undertakes a down-to-earth examination of the eight Manchu banners—the key institution which, he asserts, defined, institutionalized, and perpetuated Manchu ethnic identity and sovereignty and, therefore, accounts for the stability and longevity of Qing rule. He argues that important ethnic distinctions and a concept of Manchu ethnic identity, based on ancestry, language, occupation, and geography, began to emerge in the early seventeenth century with the creation of the banner system—not in the late nineteenth century as was argued earlier by Pamela Crossley (pp. 33-34; see Crossley 1990, pp. 1-135)—and this persisted until the end of the dynasty. He further argues that the special position of those defined as "Manchu" in the early years of the dynasty was buttressed by political, economic, legal, and social privileges, and these privileges acted to define and solidify Manchu identity, which flowered into a shared consciousness and rhetoric of Manchu distinctiveness and nationhood (gurun) (pp. 68-69, 165-171). When "sinicization," or acculturation, seemed to undermine the Manchu ruling style in the early eighteenth century, the Yongzheng emperor (1723-1735) enacted a series of reforms that expanded and strengthened the privileged position of Manchu bannerman, elite and commoner, especially guaranteeing their economic security. These reforms reinforced their bonds with the ruling house until the end in 1911.

One of the major contributions of the study is Elliott's probing analysis of ethnic identity in the Qing period. He asserts that Manchu ethnic distinctions and privileges changed and evolved over time, and this process, centered in the Manchu banners, was complex and multifaceted, but it succeeded in creating a hereditary Manchu military caste whose special political, legal, economic, and social privileges set them apart from the Han. The members of this caste performed vital governing functions that extended far beyond the military tasks associated with the security of the capital and the Manchu garrison cities sprinkled across the empire. These tasks ranged from policy making and civil administration at both the central and regional levels to the management of sensitive strategic issues related to the governance of the new borderland dependencies. The author concludes that overall, the power and commitment of this military caste, situated in the Manchu banners, served to reinforce and perpetuate the Qing system of "ethnic sovereignty" and dominance drawn from the earlier Altaic khanate traditions of the Khitan Liao (907-1125), Jin (1115-1234), and Yuan (1215-1368), and did so in ways that far surpassed those of earlier conquest dynasties.

Yet while the maintenance of the Manchu power elite was accomplished with a very particularistic system of ethnic sovereignty and caste, Elliott points out that Manchu ethnic sovereignty also embraced a governing ethos that was cosmopolitan and inclusive of the diverse peoples of Greater China. The seeds of this ethos lay in the notion of Manchu universal kingship that theoretically positioned the Qing emperor at the pivot of several different authority hierarchies that reflected the political traditions of various subject groups within the empire. This orientation informed the Qing rhetoric of inclusion that...