A Demographic Estimate of the Population of the Qing Eight Banners

Abstract

We introduce new estimates of the size of the Eight Banner populations. Published estimates of the size of the population of the banners vary widely because of inconsistencies in the numbers reported in different original sources, and differences in the assumptions used to translated these numbers into estimates of total population size. For example, estimates of banner forces at the time of the Qing conquest vary from 60,000 to 350,000, with most clustered around 100,000-150,000. These typically multiply the numbers reported for the numbers in the banners by a scaling factor which includes an estimate of the number of household dependents. Assumptions about the scaling factor vary widely. We take a different approach used routinely by demographers to produce indirect estimates of total population size from fragmentary evidence on the numbers in specific age groups. We multiply numbers of adult males (ding) by ethnic banner reported for 1648, 1720, 1721, and 1723 in archival documents by a scaling factor that includes other age groups derived from stable population theory. In this approach, the choice of scaling factor only requires an assumption about mortality levels and the population growth rate. We produce a range of estimates of total population size based on different plausible assumptions about the life expectancy and population growth rate. We conclude that at the time of the conquest, the Eight Banner population at large was between 1.3 and 2.4 million people, and that seventy years later it had grown to between 2.6 and 4.8 million. Population in the Manchu banners in the middle seventeenth century was somewhere between 206,000 and 390,000, growing by 1720 to between 577,000 and 1.08 million.