The relationship between the spread of the Catholic Church and the shifting agro-pastoral line in the Chahar Region of northern China

Abstract

The Great Wall of China roughly follows a transition belt between subhumid region and arid/semiarid region, often thought of as a boundary between agricultural and pastoral area. However, in the mid-18th century, the farming activity began to cross the Great Wall and infiltrate the pastoral region. The agro-pastoral line moved substantially northwards and westwards resulting in a changing landscape beyond the Great Wall. The Catholic Church, which had been proselytizing in Inner Mongolia since the turn of the 18th century, played an important role in this historical process. This paper evaluates the role of Catholic churches in this shift of the agro-pastoral line in Chahar Region in the 19th century.Chahar, a semi-arid region in the southeastern Mongolia Plateau, had a significant Catholic activity after 1700s. As congregation obtained land from the Mongols, missionaries converted local Han Chinese to Catholicism while lending land, housing and farm implements. By 1952 most people living there had been converted. As a result of intensive land management by the Catholic missions, the semiarid landscapes, formerly used for grazing lands, were changed to more intensive agricultural use. This study examines the important role of the practices of an authoritarian religious organization on the movement of the agro-pastoral line and the relationship between those religious missions and environmental change. This study shows that when the missionaries began preaching to the impoverished Han people coming from within the Great Wall rather than the local Mongols of the Chahar Region, increasing numbers of Han Catholic villages appeared beyond the Great Wall, cultivating what used to be grazing land. Meanwhile, to manage these Han people, the local administrative system was transformed from the Meng-Banner system into Banner-county system. As the name suggests, this latter system was based on Mongol-controlled Banners and Han-controlled counties. Thus the boundary between Banner and county hints at the movement of the agro-pastoral line. By tracking this movement we found that the agro-pastoral line in Chahar region shifted in the late Qing Dynasty. Meanwhile, Catholic villages became more concentrated in the counties, indicating that the Catholic Church had played an important role in this movement of the agro-pastoral line.