Land Use and Society in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia during the Qing Dynasty

Abstract

In 1990, Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia accounted for nearly one-tenth of the population and one-fifth of the cultivated land in China as a whole.' But it was not always this way. Whereas most of China proper was settled by around the twelfth century, prior to 1700, the Chinese made limited inroads into the territories north of the Great Wall. The occupation and cultivation of Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia marks the single greatest expansion of Chinese population and agriculture in modern times. By the Qing Dynasty (1644-19ii), the greatest settlement and cultivation had occurred in the areas directly north of Peking, in southern and central Manchuria, and on the adjacent steppe, whereas the more remote areas of northern and eastern Manchuria were settled during the twentieth century. Moreover, Manchuria, which enjoyed higher precipitation and less immediate access to migrants from northern China suffered less environmental damage than the area directly north of Peking, which was subject to heavy impacts, and the mid-grass steppe, where moderate rainfall could not support intensive cultivation. Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia (see Map i) form a huge basin, surrounded by a horseshoe of mountains-the Changbaishan along the Korean and Russian borders in the east, the Xiaoxing'anling (Lesser Khingan) in the northeast, the Daxing'anling (Greater Khingan) in the west, and a complex block of ranges, known collectively as the Yanshan, in the southwest-with the bottom of the horseshoe opening into the Gulf of Bohai in the south. Topographical and climatic features divide the region into three parts. First are the mountain ranges and alluvial plain of eastern and central Manchuria. The high elevations and generous rainfall at the eastern end of the monsoon system produce heavy forest cover and swift-flowing rivers: the Sungari (Songhua)-Nonni (Nenjiang) system, which drains the central plain via the Amur (Heilongjiang) River in the northeast, and the Liao, which emerges from the Yanshan Mountains, crosses the southern Manchuria plain and