Marriage and Politics

In the critical years before 1683, when the Manchu rulers were creating their empire, marriage exchanges functioned as an important means of winning new allies and stabilizing military coalitions. Rival Manchu tribal leaders, Mongol princes, Chinese frontiersmen, and Chinese generals were rewarded for their support with Aisin Gioro wives and enrolled in the Manchu, Mongol, and Chinese banners created during the early seventeenth century.

The banners were large civil-military units created in the early seventeenth century that replaced the small hunting groups of Nurgaci's early campaigns. Composed of companies, each with three hundred households of warriors and headed by a hereditary leader (Wakeman 1985:54-55), the banners became administrative units for registration, conscription, taxation, and mobilization of the tribes and peoples who joined the Manchu cause before 1644. To the eight Manchu banners were added, by 1635, eight Mongol (Ch'en 1984:114) and by 1642 eight Chinese banners (Wakeman 1985: 200-201). The conquest of China was achieved by these combined banner forces, in which less than 16 percent of the soldiers by 1648 were actually of Manchu origin (An 1983).

Table 5.2 summarizes the ethnic origins of the principal spouses of emperors, princes, and princesses. For the moment, we will focus only on the first wives of emperors and princes and the marriages of princesses, who were all first wives. Because later marriages followed the patterns begun by Nurgaci and his successor, Hung Taiji, they are included in the table, which ends with the children of the Hsien-feng emperor (1831-61).^[11]

Empresses, ti fujin (wives of princes), and efu (husbands of princesses) came from a relatively small number of favored houses (see table 5.2). Of the 641 Manchu clans listed in the Pa-ch'i Man-chou shih-tsu t'ung-p'u compiled in 1745, only 31 were favored by the Aisin Gioro lineage with marriage. Among the Manchu clans, the Niohuru descended from Eidu supplied almost half of the empresses for the entire dynasty. Their bonds with the Aisin Gioro were

exceptionally close. The Niohuru genealogy analyzed by Huang P'ei records seventy-seven of Eidu's male descendants and seventy-two Niohuru daughters marrying into the Aisin Gioro main line (Huang 1986:638). The Manchus also displayed a strong preference for Mongol spouses: 25 percent of empresses, 16 percent of princes' wives, and 55 percent of princesses' husbands were Mongol. The Khorchins, who were the earliest Mongol allies of the Manchus, were especially favored: twelve sons-in-law, an empress, and one prince's wife were Khorchin. There were no Hun Chinese empresses, and the Chinese princely wives and husbands either date from the period of conquest or belonged to the Chinese banners.

Manchu Affines

The favored marriage partners among the Manchu clans were those who had allied themselves with the Aisin Gioro lineage. The exchange of wives had long been an accepted mode of cementing tribal alliances. The Manchus

interspersed such alliances with the use of force to unify the Jurchen tribes. Of the Guwalgiya, Niohuru, Sumuru, Nara, Donggo, Hoifa, Ula, Irgen Gioro, and Magiya clans that formed the so-called Eight Great Houses,^[12] only the Hoifa is missing from the list of imperial affines presented in table 5.2. "Heroes" of the conquest period were often rewarded with Aisin Gioro brides. Hohori (1561-1624), of the Donggo clan (Hummel 1943 1:291), wed Nurgaci's eldest daughter. Fiongdon (1564-1620), of the Suwan Guwalgiya clan (ibid., 247), distinguished himself in Nurgaci's military campaigns and obtained noble titles and wives for his sons.

Mongol Affines

Manchu marriages with Mongol nobles also increased as the Ch'ing armies expanded into central Asia in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Earlier Chinese dynasties had given princesses to Mongol princes and other "barbarian" tribal leaders, but the Manchus conducted a bilateral exchange of wives on an unprecedented scale. The frequency of Manchu marriage exchanges with Mongol princes underlines the crucial importance of the Mongols in the Manchu conquest of Ming China.

From 1612 the Manchus wooed the Khorchin Mongols of western Manchuria and Inner Mongolia away from adherence to the Ming. Mongols who "came over" were showered with gifts and presented with Aisin Gioro wives. They in turn wed their daughters to the Manchu rulers. Nurgaci is said to have proclaimed: "The Manchus and Mongols have different speech [languages] but their clothing comes from the same origin, and they are brother states" (Lü 1985:18). Resisting the Chahar Mongol leader Ligdan Khan's attempts (supported by the Ming) to unify the Mongol tribes, the Khorchin allied with the Manchus to defeat Ligdan Khan in 1634. Once defeated, the Chahar Mongols were also wooed by the Manchus, who presented a Manchu princess to Ligdan Khan's heir in 1635. The Qalqa Mongols, who lived further west in what is now Outer Mongolia, were also courted: in 1617, for example, Nurgaci gave one of his nieces to Enggeder, son of a Qalqa khan who came over to the Manchu cause, and accepted another Qalqa prince's daughter as a daughter-in-law. By 1691 the Qalqa Mongols were absorbed into the Manchu state and reorganized into Mongol banners (Bawden 1968; Lattimore 1934).

Ch'ing marriage networks grew with the Manchu penetration of central and north Asia. The Tüshiyetü Khan exercised sovereignty over the Mongol tribes in east-central Outer Mongolia; their primary regional center, Urga (modern-day Ulan Bator), had been captured by Galdan, leader of the Zunghars, in 1688. In 1697, a year after the Ch'ing troops had defeated Galdan, a grandson of the Tüshiyetü Khan married K'ang-hsi's sixth daughter; several years later (1702) an alliance with the Jasaghtu Khan, who ruled over the Mongol tribes further west, was cemented by his marriage to the daughter of

a Manchu prince. In 1706 a descendant of the Sayin Noyan Khan, who held the territory between the Jasaghtu and Tüshiyetü Khans, was married to K'ang-hsi's tenth daughter (Bawden 1968).

The Ch'ing subjugation of the Western Mongols was achieved with the aid of their Mongol allies; as Lattimore (1934:60) notes, "Manchu sovereignty was not achieved by outright conquest but was always based on alliance with some one group of Mongols against another group and the status of Mongols within the empire was different from, and higher than, the Chinese." By the nineteenth century the previously mighty Mongol domains were supervised by Ch'ing appointees, the Mongol nobility held Ch'ing titles, the once powerful tribes had been reorganized into banners, and the khans "were little more than distinguished banner princes" (Fletcher 1978:51).

From 1636 onward Mongols were given Manchu titles of nobility. Mongol nobles from 1614 on exchanged daughters and sisters with the Manchu rulers, and were tied to the Aisin Gioro lineage by a complex network of affinal exchanges. Manjusri (1599-1649), a Khorchin Mongol noble, was the nephew of Empress Hsiao-tuan, Hung Taiji's wife. Two of Manjusri's daughters married two of Hung Taiji's sons; in 1636 he was given the title "Baturu chün-wang," designating leadership of one of the six political units into which the Manchus divided the Khorchins. Empress Hsiao-tuan was herself related to four of the six princes who ruled the Khorchins under the Ch'ing (Hummel 1943 1:304). Moreover, her three daughters, and those of her niece, Empress Hsiao-chuang (mother of the Shun-chih emperor), half-Khorchin in descent, were all married to Mongol nobles. Other Mongols also participated in these sustained marriage exchanges. For example, marriage ties between the Aisin Gioro and the descendants of Bandi, son-in-law of Hung Taiji and leader of the Aokhan Mongols, lasted for five generations (Hua 1983:52).

The cultivation of ties extended beyond marriage. From 1659 onward, sons of Manchu princesses could be reared in Peking at court (Chao 1984), and from K'ang-hsi's reign, some Mongol boys of noble descent were invited to Peking, where they were raised in the palace and attended school with the Manchu princes (Hua 1983). The Shang-shu-fang, founded by the Yung-cheng emperor (1678-1735) to educate imperial sons, grandsons, and other princes (including sons-in-law), taught Mongol as well as Manchu and Chinese (Kahn 1971:117-20). When they came of age, these Mongols were married to princesses and frequently served the Ch'ing. Tsereng, the Qalqa noble (Hummel 1944 2:756-57) who married K'ang-hsi's fourth daughter (1706), performed exceptional military service in the Ch'ing campaigns against Galdan and won commemoration in the Ch'ing imperial ancestral temple in Peking. Septen Baljur, a Khorchin noble who married Ch'ien-lung's third daughter, had a similar background (Hua 1983). Many Mongols

became an integral part of Ch'ing society: Ch'ung Ch'i, father of T'ung-chih's empress and a member of the Mongol Plain Blue Banner, was the son of a grand councillor and grand secretary, a chuang-yuan in the 1865 chin-shih examinations, and a Ch'ing official (Hummel 1944 1:208-9).

Marriages with Mongols did not end with the stabilization of China's Inner Asian frontiers in the mid-eighteenth century. By this period, the Ch'ien-lung emperor (1711-99) called the pattern of marrying Ch'ing princesses to Mongols a tradition that should be maintained (TCHTSL c. 1), although he also permitted (in 1751) princesses to marry into distinguished banner families (TJFTL 2.6a). Through the nineteenth century, successive emperors tried to preserve this marriage pattern by reiterating that the names of eligible young Mongols (and information on three generations of their forebears) must be sent to the Li fan yuan (Court of Colonial Affairs) for selection as sons-in-law (TCHTSL c.1; TJFTL 2.la; Chao 1984; Hua 1983). The marriages between the Aisin Gioro lineage and the Mongol aristocracy continued into the nineteenth century; by the 1820s-1840s more than three thousand such marriages were recorded (Hua 1983:52). If we ignore the tribal designations, Mongol nobles were the single largest group with whom the imperial house exchanged marriage partners.

Chinese Bannermen

Chinese who came over to the Manchu cause in the years before 1644 were also showered with rank, honors, and Aisin Gioro wives. This policy was clearly expressed in a letter sent by Nurgaci to the commander of the Fu-shun garrison, Li Yung-fang, in 1618 during his first major campaign against the Ming (Wakeman 1985 1:60): "If you submit without fighting . . . I will let you live just as you did before. I will promote . . . the people with great knowledge and foresight . . . give them daughters in marriage and care for them. I will give you a higher position than you have and treat you .like one of my officials of the first degree." Li Yung-fang surrendered the city and was treated "as a Chinese frontiersman admitted into the ranks of the Jin aristocracy" (ibid., 61); he married one of Nurgaci's granddaughters, fought alongside Nurgaci, and died a viscount. His nine sons continued to serve the Manchus and were enrolled in the Chinese Plain Blue Banner after 1642. At least one of them—the second son, Shuai-t'ai—also married into the Aisin Gioro lineage (Hummel 1943 1:499).

Sun Ssu-k'o, the son of a Ming officer who surrendered to Nurgaci in 1622, was enrolled in the Chinese Plain White Banner and helped to lead the Manchu troops in defeating the Eleuths at the battle of Jao Modo (1695); he was rewarded with a title, and his son was married to K'ang-hsi's fourth daughter (ibid. 2:682). Wu San-kuei, Shang K'o-hsi, and Keng Chi-mao, the three Han Chinese generals who were instrumental in the Manchu conquest of

south China, were each granted princely titles otherwise reserved only for Manchus and Mongols, and were linked by marriage with the imperial house (TCYT ; Hummel 1943 1:415-16; T'ang 1923:192-93).^[13]

These Chinese bannermen—the term derives from the designation (Han-chün ) used in 1642 when the Chinese banners were organized—served the: Manchu rulers as advisers, generals, and officials in the crucial conquest period. Especially in the seventeenth century, their language and cultural knowledge made them favored appointees for local government posts in China. Chinese bannermen dominated the posts of governor and governor-general during the late seventeenth century (Wakeman 1985 2:1021-23, 1024, 1029, 1031-33). Wakeman concludes that the Shun-chih reign "saw the transformation of Han bannermen into a new supra-elite, acting almost like provincial janissaries for the throne," and even replacing Chinese degree holders in posts (ibid., 1020). Like other Manchu adherents, their loyalty and service to the throne frequently continued over many generations (ibid., 1018-20). The T'ungs of Fu-shun, sinicized Jurchen who joined the Manchu cause from 1618 to 1645, are an outstanding example of the rewards, which included promotion into a Manchu banner, heaped upon loyal Chinese bannermen (Crossley 1983; Hou 1982).

Chinese bannermen were sharply distinguished from Chinese captured in the early phases of the Manchu conquest, who became bondservants, a hereditary servile status. Mongol, Korean, and Chinese bondservants were used to till the estates created in north China for imperial kinsmen, banner officials, and bannermen (Wei, Wu, and Lu 1982). Organized according to the Eight Banner system, bondservants in the upper three banners (the Bordered Yellow, the Plain Yellow, and the Plain White) came under the direct personal control of the emperor in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and were appointed to positions within the Imperial Household Department (Torbert 1977). Their servile status did not prevent some bond-servants from becoming rich and powerful; they were used for delicate and confidential tasks by the emperors, and some attained provincial and even central government posts (Spence 1966:13-15). And, as we shall see, daughters of Chinese bondservants could also enter the imperial harem.

The differentiation between Chinese bannermen and Chinese civilians was primarily a political one, but there is also evidence that "culturally the important distinctions of the early Qing period lay not between the Manchus and the Chinese-martial Bannermen but between the Bannermen of all origins and the conquered Chinese" (Crossley 1987:779). In the early stages the designation of Chinese bannermen had been applied to persons who were not necessarily racially Chinese, but who had been subjects of the Ming (ibid.). Many were in fact northeast Asians who had settled in Liaotung: sinicized Jurchens, Mongols, Koreans were thus called nikan , the Manchu word for persons who lived in the manner of Chinese. In fact, the early Mongol and

the Chinese banners both enrolled descendants of Jurchen (ibid.). By the 1660s many Chinese bannermen were second- and third-generation descendants of officers who had joined the Manchu cause and were "barely distinguishable from the Manchu nobility" (Wakeman 1985 2:1017). Many had been "transfrontiersmen" who through long residence in Liaoning had become accustomed to Manchu ways and took on Manchu identity with Nurgaci's acquiescence (ibid., 1:45). Nurgaci classified "individuals on the basis of their culture primarily"; the K'ang-hsi emperor displayed his relaxed attitude toward ethnicity in his willingness to transfer whole Mongol tribes and Chinese lineages from the Mongol and Chinese banners to the Manchu banners (Crossley 1987:779). Indeed, K'ang-hsi's willingness to incorporate other ethnic groups into the banner system extended even to Russian prisoners of war, who were enrolled as a company in the Bordered Yellow Banner in 1685 (Wu 1987).

Support for the argument that the Manchus emphasized political rather than ethnic boundaries in their marriage patterns can be found in analysis of the circumstances surrounding the 1648 decision of the "Imperial Father Regent," Dorgon, to permit Manchu-Han marriages. In 1648 the Manchu conquest of China was far from assured, and Dorgon used various measures to try to obtain the voluntary compliance of Chinese to Manchu rule. Bannermen were prohibited (after 1644) from plundering civilians; from 1647 onward imperial pronouncements repeated the theme that "Manchu and Han are one family." The subject set for the palace examinations in 1649 was how Manchus and Han could be brought to live together (Kessler 1976:15-17; Chou and Chao 1986:408-9). In reality, this policy could not be implemented. Ethnic strife in Peking forced Dorgon to rule (October 5, 1648) that the two races should be separated so that each could "live in peace." The bannermen were eventually housed in separate walled garrison quarters in thirty-four cities across north China (Wakeman 1985 1:480).

The edict ordering the removal of all Chinese from the northern imperial city to the southern city in Peking was followed a day later by an edict permitting intermarriage to promote friendship between Manchus and Han. Details implementing this policy were announced on October 14 (TCSL 40.9ab, Ila, 14ab). In what can be interpreted as an effort to win over the Han populace, the edict specified that Manchus marrying Han women were required to take them as wives and not concubines.

We do not know how many individuals availed themselves of the opportunity offered by the 1648 edict;^[14] what we do know is that the policy permitting intermarriage ended abruptly in 1655. Dorgon was dead; the young emperor responded angrily to a memorial from a Chinese official who criticized an expedition to Yangchow to buy Chinese women for the palace. The memorialist, Li K'ai-sheng, touched on the delicate ethnic situation, reminded the emperor that Yangchow had the "bandit spirit" (it had forcibly

resisted the Ch'ing armies), and warned of the adverse public reaction to such activities. The emperor, who punished Li for his memorial, indignantly denied the truth of the charges and reiterated the Manchu tradition that excluded Chinese women from the imperial harem (TCSL 92.13b-15b, 20b).

The 1648 edict removing Chinese from the imperial city in Peking specifically exempted Chinese bannermen. Nor were the Manchus alone in thus separating Chinese bannermen from the rest of the Chinese population. Contemporary Han Chinese looked down on them as "racial renegades and no better than Manchus" (Kessler 1976:18) because they had betrayed the Ming cause. The distinction between Chinese bannermen and Han Chinese is clear in a 1651 complaint by a Han Chinese censor, who urged the emperor to stop relying so heavily on bannermen in top provincial posts (ibid., 17-18)—as we have already noted, Chinese bannermen dominated provincial posts during this period.

The early Manchu laxity toward "ethnic purity" was replaced in the mid-eighteenth century by a heightened concern with the maintenance of Manchu separateness. The empire was secured, the frontiers stabilized. The Ch'ien-lung emperor, who saw himself as the ruler of a multicultural empire, desired that "there should be orderly congruence of race to custom"; during his reign, oral genealogies were written down, every Manchu was fixed within a clan, and the major clans were traced back to the Chin dynasty that had ruled north China during the twelfth century. Concern for the preservation of Manchu identity was expressed in strictures on the maintenance of Manchu dress and the perpetuation of shamanism, the traditional Manchu religion. The prohibition against intermarriage with Han Chinese was no doubt strengthened by these new attitudes, and prevailed until the end of the dynasty.

In its emphasis on the military segment of society, Ch'ing imperial marriages greatly resembled those of the Northern Sung (Chung 1981), when virtually none of the imperial concubines came from the prominent scholar-official families. In the Ming, as in the Northern Sung, imperial marriage partners tended to be drawn from hereditary military families (Soullière 1988). Scholar-officials might consider themselves the sine qua non of the dynasty; that the imperial perception differed is suggested by the consistent priority given to wu (the military) over wen (the civilian officials) in imperial marriage.