Transforming Inner Mongolia: Commerce, Migration, and Colonization on the Qing Frontier by Yi Wang

Abstract

Reviewed by: Transforming Inner Mongolia: Commerce, Migration, and Colonization on the Qing Frontier by Yi Wang Peter C. Perdue (bio) Yi Wang. Transforming Inner Mongolia: Commerce, Migration, and Colonization on the Qing Frontier. Lanham, MD, and London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. xvi, 334 pp. Hardcover $105.00, isbn 9781538146071. Epub $99.50, isbn 9781538146088. The word "colonization" in the subtitle of Yi Wang's book has deceptively radical implications. It puts the Qing in a class of imperial formations that includes the Western and Japanese empires of the nineteenth century. This comparison has flourished among Western scholars of modern China in recent years. Previously, China was described as a "semi-colonial" formation, a partial victim, not a perpetrator of imperialism. Indeed, the unequal treaties and large indemnities heavily compromised its sovereignty. Owen Lattimore, however, observed over fifty years ago that the Qing concurrently practiced "secondary imperialism" on its own Central Asian frontiers, expanding Han settlement at the cost of Mongols, Turkic Muslims, and others. Now, a wave of new studies has come full circle back to Lattimore, swinging away from simple victim narratives to a new recognition of the vast commercial and political power embedded in the Han majority. Yi Wang's study of Inner Mongolia, the primary victim of Qing expansion, is a welcome addition to the literature. Thoroughly documented with sources from Mongolian and Chinese archives, it provides a powerful analysis of Qing colonialism as an active participant in the formation of global capitalism.1 Prof. Wang's story highlights three aspects of integration of Inner Mongolia into this system: the flow of silver and commodities since the sixteenth century, Qing expansion, and European imperialism. Han migrants as settler colonists engaged with all three trends. The migrants brought capital to clear land and create exports, they supported Qing influence, and they introduced and responded to European imperial demands. During most of the eighteenth century the Qing tried to limit migration, but by 1800 one million Han migrants had already penetrated the region; by 1912, there were over 1.5 million compared to 900,000 Mongols. Today only seventeen percent of Inner Mongolia is Mongolian; the indigenous Mongols have been swamped by the Han. Each of Wang's core chapters centers on one aspect of this integrative process. She describes, first, commercial penetration by Shanxi merchants, followed by agricultural clearance, investment in irrigation, the role of the Catholic Church, and the major policy changes of the Qing state after 1900. Her discussion includes attention to ecological impact, cultural change, legal conflicts, and personal experiences of migrants. We do not hear much about the dispossessed Mongols themselves; their voices are much scarcer in the archives [End Page 148] than those of the Chinese. But we learn much indirectly about what they gained and lost. Chapter 1 stresses the "multilayered boundaries" characterizing interactions between steppe pastoralists and settled farmers, as opposed to a simple dichotomy. Pastoralists historically practiced agriculture as a supplementary livelihood, and settlers often entered into personal and commercial relations with nomads. The Manchu conquerors included Mongol allies and Chinese agriculturalists in their banner system, so from the beginning the Qing elite was a multicultural coalition. Several Qing policies, however, substantially weakened Mongol power. Qing divide-and-rule policy fragmented the Mongols among separate banners, and Qing promotion of monasteries in the steppe drained much of the Mongols' wealth, while also creating a literate class of Buddhist monks who legitimized Qing rule. Although the Qing at first tried to maintain the purity of Mongol culture by forbidding immigration, beginning in 1724 it relaxed many of its restrictions. Migrants from China rented land from Mongol nobles, and many of them married Mongol women. Mongol elites welcomed the rental income, but the Mongols had very different views of land than the Chinese. Mongols worshipped an earth that was "boundless" and "expansive" while Chinese saw virgin soil as simply unproductive wasteland (pp. 46-47). The Mongols kept some areas for extensive cultivation as a backup to pastoralism, but avoided intensive agriculture that would interfere with the needs of their animals. The Qing rulers regarded this extensive agriculture as wasteful and the Mongols as indolent "reckless cultivators" (p. 49). The stage was set already...