Manchu people
The Manchus are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin and Qing dynasties of China were established and ruled by the Manchus, who are descended from the Jurchen people who earlier established the Jin dynasty in northern China.
Manchus form the largest branch of the Tungusic peoples and are distributed throughout China, forming the country's fourth largest ethnic group. They inhabit 31 Chinese provincial regions. Liaoning has the largest population and Hebei, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Inner Mongolia and Beijing each have over 100,000 Manchu residents. About half of the population live in Liaoning and one-fifth in Hebei. Manchu autonomous counties in China include Xinbin, Xiuyan, Qinglong, Fengning, Yitong, Qingyuan, Weichang, Kuancheng, Benxi, Kuandian, Huanren, Fengcheng, Beizhen, including over 300 Manchu towns and townships.
Etymology
"Manchu" was adopted as the official name of the people by Emperor Hong Taiji in 1635, replacing the earlier name "Jurchen". Allegedly, manju was an old term for the Jianzhou Jurchens, although the etymology is not well understood. The Chinese characters chosen to translate the Manchu name are 滿洲 which, like the character for "Qing", include the water component. Possibly this was done because the Ming dynasty's name, which means "bright", represents fire, and water extinguishes fire.The Jiu Manzhou Dang, archives of early 17th century documents, contains the earliest use of Manchu. According to the Qing dynasty's official historical record, the Researches on Manchu Origins, the ethnic name came from Mañjuśrī. The Qianlong Emperor supported that point of view and wrote poems on the subject.
Qing dynasty scholar Meng Sen agreed. He also thought the name might stem from Li Manzhu, the chieftain of the Jianzhou Jurchens.
Scholar Chang Shan held that Manju is a compound word. Man was from the word mangga which means "strong", and ju means "arrow". In this interpretation, Manju means "intrepid arrow".
Other hypotheses include Fu Sinian's "etymology of Jianzhou"; Zhang Binglin's "etymology of Manshi"; "etymology of Wuji and Mohe"; Sun Wenliang's "etymology of Manzhe"; "etymology of mangu river" and so on.
An extensive etymological study from 2022 lends additional support to the view that manju is cognate with words referring to the lower Amur river in other Tungusic languages and can be reconstructed to Proto-Tungusic *mamgo 'lower Amur, large river'.
History
Early history
Origin
The Manchus are descended from the Jurchen people who earlier established the Jin dynasty in China. However, this is disputed by historians. The Jianzhou Jurchen originate partially from the Huligai who were classified by the Liao dynasty as a separate ethnicity from the Jurchen people who founded the Jin dynasty and were classified as separate from Jurchens during the Yuan dynasty. Their home was in the lower reaches of the Songhua River and Mudanjiang. The Huligai later moved west and became a major component of the Jianzhou Jurchens led by Möngke Temür during the Ming dynasty, and the Jianzhou Jurchens later became Manchus. According to the records of Ming Dynasty officials, the Jianzhou Jurchen was descended from Mohe people who established Balhae Kingdom. The name Mohe might refer to an ancestral Manchu population. The Mohe practiced pig husbandry and were mainly sedentary. They used pig and dog skins for coats. They were predominantly farmers and grew soybeans, wheat, millet and rice, in addition to hunting.In the 10th century AD, the term Jurchen first appeared in documents of the late Tang dynasty in reference to the state of Balhae in present-day northeastern China. The Jurchens were sedentary, settled farmers with advanced agriculture. They farmed grain and millet as their cereal crops, grew flax, and raised oxen, pigs, sheep and horses. These farmers lived differently from the pastoral nomadism of the Mongols and the Khitans on the steppes.
In 1019, Jurchen pirates raided Japan for slaves. Japanese governor Fujiwara Notada was killed. 1,280 Japanese were taken prisoner, 374 Japanese were killed, and 380 Japanese-owned livestock were killed for food. Only 259 or 270 were returned by Koreans from the 8 ships. The woman Uchikura no Ishime's report was copied. Jurchen raids on Japan in the 1019 Toi invasion, the Mongol invasions of Japan, and Japanese views of the Jurchens as "Tatar" "barbarians", may have played a role in Japan's hostility to Manchus in later centuries. For example, Tokugawa Ieyasu viewed the unification of Manchu tribes as a threat to Japan. The Japanese mistakenly thought that Hokkaido had a land bridge to Tartary where Manchus lived and thought the Manchus could invade Japan. The Tokugawa Shogunate Bakufu sent a message to Korea via Tsushima offering to help Korea against the 1627 Manchu invasion, which was declined.
Liao dynasty
Following the fall of Balhae, the Jurchens became vassals of the Liao dynasty. The Yalu River Jurchens became tributaries of Goryeo during the reign of Wang Geon, who called upon them during the wars of the Later Three Kingdoms period. The Jurchens switched allegiance between Liao and Goryeo multiple times. Posing a potential threat to Goryeo's border security, the Jurchens offered tribute to the Goryeo court, expecting gifts in return. Before the Jurchens overthrew the Khitan, married Jurchen women and Jurchen girls were raped by Liao Khitan envoys as a custom which caused resentment. The Jurchens and their Manchu descendants had Khitan linguistic and grammatical elements in their personal names, such as suffixes. Many Khitan names had a "ju" suffix. In the year 1114, Wanyan Aguda united the Jurchen tribes and established the Jin dynasty. His brother and successor, Wanyan Wuqimai defeated the Liao. After the fall of the Liao, the Jurchens went to war with the Northern Song dynasty, and captured most of northern China in the Jin–Song wars. During the Jin dynasty in the 1120s, the first Jurchen script came into use. It was mainly derived from Khitan script.Yuan dynasty
In 1206, the Mongols, then vassals to the Jurchens, rose in Mongolia. Their leader, Genghis Khan, led Mongol troops against the Jurchens, who were ultimately defeated by Ögedei Khan in 1234. Jurchen Jin emperor Wanyan Yongji's daughter Jurchen Princess Qiguo married Genghis Khan in exchange for relieving the Mongol siege upon Zhongdu in the Mongol conquest of the Jin dynasty. The Yuan grouped people into different categories based on how recently their state surrendered to the Yuan. Subjects of the southern Song were classified as southerners and also referred to as manzi. Subjects of the Jin dynasty, Western Xia, and the kingdom of Dali in Yunnan in southern China were categorized as northerners, using the term Han. However, the use of the Han as the name of a class category by the Yuan dynasty was a different concept from Han ethnicity.Ethnic Han people were divided into two classes in the Yuan, Han Ren and Nan Ren. Additionally, the Yuan directive to treat Jurchens the same as Mongols referred to Jurchens and Khitans in the northwest, presumably in the lands of Qara Khitai, where many Khitans lived. However, it remains a mystery as to how Jurchens were living there. Many Jurchens adopted Mongolian customs, names, and the Mongolian language. As time went on, fewer and fewer Jurchens could recognize their own script. The Jurchen Yehe Nara clan is of paternal Mongol origin.
Many Jurchen families descended from the original Jin Jurchen migrants in Han areas such as those using the surnames Wang and Nian 粘 reclaimed their ethnicity and registered as Manchus. Wanyan clan members who changed their surnames to Wang after the Mongol conquest of the Jin dynasty applied successfully to the national government for their ethnic group to be marked as Manchu despite never having been part of the Eight Banner system during the Qing dynasty. The surname Nianhan, shortened to Nian is a surname of Jurchen origin, also originating from one of the members of the royal Wanyan clan. It is an extremely rare surname in China, and members of the Nian clan live in Nan'an, Quanzhou, Jinjiang, Shishi, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Zhangpu and Sanming, Fujian, as well as in Laiyang, Shandong and in Xingtai, Hebei. Some of the Nian from Quanzhou immigrated to Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia. In Taiwan they are concentrated in Changhua county. There are less than 30,000 members of the Nian clan worldwide, with 9,916 of them in Taiwan, and 3,040 of those in Fuxing township of Changhua county.
Ming dynasty
The Yuan dynasty was replaced by the Ming dynasty in 1368. In 1387, Ming forces defeated the Mongol commander Naghachu's resisting forces who settled in the Haixi area and summoned the Jurchen tribes to pay tribute. At the time, Jurchen clans such as Odoli and Huligai were vassals to the Joseon dynasty of Korea. Their elites served in the Korean royal bodyguard.The Joseon Koreans approached the military threat posed by the Jurchen by forceful means, incentives, and by launching military attacks. At the same time they tried to appease them with titles and degrees, traded with them, and sought to acculturate them by having Jurchens integrate into Korean culture. Their relationship was eventually stopped by the Ming government, who wanted the Jurchens to protect the border. In 1403, Ahacu, chieftain of Huligai, paid tribute to the Yongle Emperor. Soon after, Möngke Temür, chieftain of the Odoli clan of the Jianzhou Jurchens, stopped paying tribute to Korea, instead becoming a tributary to China.
Yi Seong-gye, the Taejo of Joseon, asked the Ming Empire to send Möngke Temür back, but was refused. The Yongle Emperor was determined to move the Jurchens from Korean to Chinese influence. Korea unsuccessfully tried to persuade Möngke Temür to reject the Ming overtures, and he submitted to the Ming Empire. More and more Jurchen tribes began to offer tribute to the Ming Empire. The Ming divided them into 384 guards, and the Jurchen became vassals to the Ming Empire. During the Ming dynasty, the name for the Jurchen land was Nurgan. The Jurchens became part of the Ming dynasty's Nurgan Regional Military Commission under the Yongle Emperor, with Ming forces erecting the Yongning Temple Stele in 1413, at the headquarters of Nurgan. The stele was inscribed in Chinese, Jurchen, Mongolian, and Tibetan.
In 1449, Mongol Taishi Esen attacked the Ming Empire and captured the Zhengtong Emperor in Tumu. Some Jurchen guards in Jianzhou and Haixi cooperated with Esen, but more were attacked in the Mongol invasion. Many Jurchen chieftains lost their hereditary certificates granted by the Ming government. They had to present tribute as secretariats with less reward from the Ming court than in the time when they were heads of guards–an unpopular development. Subsequently, more and more Jurchens recognised the Ming Empire's declining power due to Esen's invasion. The Zhengtong Emperor's capture directly caused Jurchen guards to go out of control. Tribal leaders, such as Cungšan and, plundered Ming territory. At about this time, the Jurchen script was officially abandoned. More Jurchens adopted Mongolian as their writing language and fewer used Chinese. The final recorded Jurchen writing dates to 1526.
The Manchus are sometimes mistakenly classified as nomadic people. The Manchu society was agricultural, farming crops and tending animals. Manchus practiced slash-and-burn agriculture in the areas north of Shenyang. The Haixi Jurchens were semi-agricultural, the Jianzhou Jurchens and Maolian Jurchens were sedentary, while hunting and fishing was the way of life of the "Wild Jurchens". Han Chinese society resembled that of the sedentary farmers Jianzhou and Maolian. Hunting, archery on horseback, horsemanship, livestock raising, and agriculture were all part of Jianzhou Jurchens culture. Although Manchus practiced equestrianism and archery on horseback, their immediate progenitors practiced sedentary agriculture. Manchus also partook in hunting. They lived in villages, forts, and walled towns.
Only the Mongols and the northern Wild Jurchen were semi-nomadic. The rest gathered ginseng root, pine nuts, hunted for game pelts in the uplands and forests, raised horses in stables, and farmed millet and wheat in their fallow fields. They engaged in dances, wrestling, and drinking strong liquor.
These Jurchens, who lived in the northeast's harsh cold climate, sometimes half-sunk their houses in the ground, which they constructed of brick or timber. They surrounded their fortified villages with stone foundations on which they built wattle and mud wall fortifications. Village clusters were ruled by beile, hereditary leaders. They fought each other and dispensed weapons, wives, slaves, and lands to their followers.
Jurchens like Nurhaci spoke both their native Tungusic language and Chinese, adopting the Mongol script for their own language, unlike the Jin Jurchens' Khitan-derived script. They adopted Confucian values and shamanic traditions.
Unlike their Mohe ancestors, the Jurchens began to respect dogs around the time of the Ming dynasty, and passed this tradition on to the Manchus. It was prohibited in Jurchen culture to use dog skin, and forbidden for Jurchens to harm, kill, or eat dogs.
For political reasons, the Jurchen leader Nurhaci chose variously to emphasize either differences or similarities in lifestyles with other peoples like the Mongols. Nurhaci said to the Mongols that "the languages of the Chinese and Koreans are different, but their clothing and way of life is the same. It is the same with us Manchus and Mongols. Our languages are different, but our clothing and way of life is the same." Later Nurhaci indicated that the bond with the Mongols was not based in shared culture. It was for pragmatic reasons of "mutual opportunism," since Nurhaci said to the Mongols: "You Mongols raise livestock, eat meat, and wear pelts. My people till the fields and live on grain. We two are not one country and we have different languages." Nurhaci, a chieftain of the Jianzhou Left Guard who officially considered himself a local representative of imperial power of the Ming dynasty, made efforts to unify the Jurchen tribes and established a military system called the "Eight Banners", which organized Jurchen soldiers into groups of "Bannermen", and ordered his scholar Erdeni and minister Gagai to create a new Jurchen script using the traditional Mongolian alphabet as a reference.