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Ch'ing Policies in Outer Mongolia 1900–1911

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Thomas E. Ewing
Affiliation:
University of Leeds

Extract

While China's response to Western imperialism during the closing years of the Ch'ing dynasty has been the subject of thoughtful and imaginative research, the history of China's frontiers during that period, by contrast, has received relatively little attention. This article attempts to survey briefly the impact which the transformation of Chinese politics, economics and society had on the frontier, Outer Mongolia in particular, and to examine the changes wrought by foreign imperialism and Chinese nationalism on the frontier policies of the Ch'ing government.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

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4 For more on the taxation system in Mongolia during the Ch'ing see Nasanbaljir, Ts., Ar Mongoloos Manj chin ulsad zalguulj baisan alba, 1691–1911 (Ulan Bator, 1964);Google ScholarGombo, L., Manjiin Uyeiin alban guvchuur (1650–1910) Ulan Bator, 1960).Google Scholar The best survey of Outer Mongolia during the Ch'ing is Bawden, C. R., The Modern History of Mongolia (New York, 1968), pp. 39186.Google Scholar A valuable but more technical study is Farquhar, David H., ‘The Ch'ing Administration of Mongolia up to the Nineteenth Century,’ Ph.D. Thesis, Harvard University, 1960.Google Scholar

5 Natsagdorj, , Khalkhyn tüükh p. 173;Google Scholar also Natsagdorj, Sh., Ar Mongold garsan ardyn khödölgöön (Ulan Bator, 1956), p. 33.Google Scholar

6 Maiskii, , Mongoliya nakanune revolyutsii, p. 172. The size of this debt is independently confirmed by an estimate of the Mongolian Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1921 that the debt of the four aimags (excluding the ecclesiastical office of the Jebtsundamba Khutukhtu, the Shav' Yamen) was nine million taels.Google ScholarNatsagdorj, , Ardyn khödölgöön, p. 55.Google Scholar It must be remembered that this figure did not include the private debts of the Mongols which, according to the estimate of Bennigsen, , p. 57, exceeded the official debt by two or three times.Google Scholar

7 According to one document of 1870, nine Chinese shops exported to China 270,000 head of sheep, 6,700 horses, 1,000 head of cattle, and 6,000 camels. Sanjdorj, M., Khalkhad Khyatadyn möngö khüülegch khudaldaa neuterch khögjsön n' (XVIII zuun) (Ulan Bator, 1963), p. 88.Google ScholarBennigsen, , p. 57, while travelling through Mongolia from 1909 to 1911, was told by Mongols that their livestock had decreased tenfold during the past decade. This is supported by the archives of the Shav' Yamen, which recorded a disastrous fall in the number of livestock, from a million in 1861 to around 12,000 in 1909.Google ScholarTsedev, D., Ikh shav' (Ulan Bator, 1964), p. 91.Google Scholar And the Ministry of Dependencies (Li-fan pu) in 1909 remarked on the number of petitions from Khalkha aimags requesting that their taxes be remitted because ‘the harvests had failed’; in 1911 it complained about the shortage and poor quality of horses bought by the imperial government from the Mongols. Ta-ch'ing Hsuan-t'ung cheng-chi shih-lu (repr. Taipei, 1964), Vol. I, p. 350, Vol. 2, pp. 1061–2.Google Scholar

8 Yü-shu, Li, Wai-meng cheng chiao chih-tu k'ao (Taipei, 1962), p. 182.Google Scholar For a criticism of Ch'ing officials in Mongolia see a memorial from the Ministry of Dependencies in October 1911 in Shih-lu, Vol. 2, pp. 1061–2. According to one source, it would require 200,000 taels to secure the appointment of Urga Viceroy; on the other hand, the office could reasonably be expected to yield 500,000 taels.Google ScholarLu, Ch'en, Chih-shih pi-chi (Shanghai, 1919), pp. 244–5.Google Scholar

9 Svechnikov, , p. 36;Google Scholar also Bügd Nairamdakh Mongol Ard Ulsyn tüükh (Ulan Bator, 19661968), Vol. 2, p. 394.Google Scholar

10 For a valuable collection of these petitions see Natsagdorj, Sh. (ed.), Ardyn zargyn bichig (XVII-XX zuuny ekhen) (Ulan Bator, 1966);Google Scholar this volume has been translated by Rasidondug, S., Petitions of Grievances Submitted by the People (18th– beginning of 20th Century) (Wiesbaden, 1975).Google Scholar

11 Tsedev, , Ikh shav', p. 58;Google ScholarNatsagdorj, , Khalkhyn tüüükh, pp. 239, 265;Google ScholarUlsyn tüükh, Vol. 2, p. 402;Google ScholarNatsagdorj, , Ardyn khödölgöön, esp. pp. 35–52.Google Scholar See also Natsagdorj, Sh., Khalkha dakh' ündesnii erkh chölöönii khödölgöön ba fyodalyg esergüütssen khödölgöön (Ulan Bator, 1941),Google Scholar and his Aratskoe osuoboditel'noe dvizhenie v khobdoskom raione (Moscow, 1954).Google Scholar

12 Chung-fu, Chang, Chung-hua min-kuo wai-chiao shih (repr. Taipei, 1957), pp. 99101, gives a useful account of this affair.Google Scholar

13 Price, Don C., Russia and the Roots of the Chinese Revolution, 1896–1911 (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), p. 165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Two recent and very useful books which explore the link between Western imperialism and the growth of Chinese nationalism are Rhoads, Edward J., China's Republican Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1975),Google Scholar and Schrecker, John E., Imperialism and Chinese Nationalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 For an interesting study of Russian academic and humanitarian activities in Mongolia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries see Ligüü, B., ‘Mongol-Orosyn soyolyn khariltsaa,’ Shinjlekh ukhaany akademiin medee, No. 1 (1971), pp. 515.Google Scholar

16 This figure is based on estimates by Svechnikov, , pp. 27, 46;Google Scholar and Kendall, Elizabeth, A Wayfarer in China (London, 1913), p. 284. The majority of these Russians were refugees who came to Mongolia apparently after the 1905 Russian Revolution and were described by the Kyakhta Frontier Commissioner in 1908 as criminal and political ‘vagrants’.Google ScholarDarevskaya, E. M., ‘Russkie revolyutsionery v Mongolii,’ in Proceedings of the 2nd Mongolist Congress (Ulan Bator, 1970), Vol. I, p. 162.Google Scholar For more on the Russian community see Darevskaya, , ‘Russkaya promyshlennost' i naemnyi trud v dorevolyutsionnoi Mongolii,’ in Trudy Irkutskogo Universiteta, Vol. XXXI.Google Scholar

17 Nai-lin, Hsu, Ch'ou-pien ch'u-yen (repr. Taipei, 1969), p. 64.Google Scholar

18 Shih-lu, Vol. I, p. 435.Google Scholar

19 Pin, Hsieh, Meng-ku wen-t'i (Shanghai, 1935), p. 39;Google ScholarHangin, John G., Köke Sudur (The Blue Chronicle) (Wiesbaden, 1973), p. 18. Abbé Huc observed in the 1840s that many of the Western Tümed could no longer speak Mongol.Google ScholarSouvenirs d'un voyage dans la Tartarie et le Thibet pendant les années 1844, 1845, et 1846 (Paris, 1868), Vol. I, p. 147.Google Scholar

20 Yuan-an, , Nei Meng-ku li-shih kai-yao (Shanghai, 1958), p. 138.Google Scholar

21 Pin, Hsieh, Meng-ku wen-t'i p. 46.Google Scholar The best account of the constitutional reform movement in China during the late Ch'ing remains Cameron, Meribeth E., The Reform Movement in China, 1898–1912 (Stanford, 1931).Google Scholar See also Chang, P'eng-yuan, ‘The Constitutionalists,’ in Wright, Mary C. (ed.), China in Revolution: The First Phase (1900–1913) (New Haven and London, 1968), pp. 142–83;Google Scholar and I-shan, Hsiao, Ch-ing-tai t'ung-shih (repr. Taipei, 1963), Vol. 4, pp. 2065–753.Google Scholar

22 Hsi-kuang, Yao, who accompanied Prince Su, published in 1908 a detailed set of recommendations for Inner Mongolia under the title Ch'ou-Meng ch'u-i (repr. Taipei, 1965).Google Scholar

23 Lu, Ch'en, Chih-shih pi-chi, p. 76.Google ScholarBogolepov, M. I. and Sobolev, M. N., Ocherki russko-mongol'skoi torgovli (Tomsk, 1911),Google Scholar cited without page in Sandag, , p. 237;Google Scholar and Perry-Ayscough, H. G. C. and Otter-Barry, R. B., With the Russians in Mongolia (London, 1914), pp. 105–6.Google Scholar

24 Shih-lu, Vol. I, p. 431;Google ScholarLu, Ch'en, Chih-shih pi-chi, p. 177.Google Scholar

25 Shih-lu, Vol. I, pp. 303–4.Google Scholar

26 Jamsran, L., ‘Manj tsin uls ‘shine zasgiin bodlogo’ gegchee Mongold kheregjüülekh gesen n',’ Tüükhiin sudlal, Vol. X (1974), p. 95. My thanks to Fujiko Isono of Paris, France for providing me with a copy of this article.Google Scholar

27 Shih-lu, Vol. 1, p. 189.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., Vol. 2, pp. 713–14.

29 Ibid., Vol. 1, pp. 519–20; Jamsran, , pp. 99–100.Google Scholar

30 Shih-lu, Vol. 1, pp. 182–3. In 1902 a Belgium firm won a concession from the Ch'ing government to build a telegraph line from Taku to Kyakhta via Urga.Google ScholarUlsyn tüükh, Vol. 2, p. 371.Google Scholar

31 Ch'ung-tsu, Ch'en, Wai meng-ku chin-shih shih (Shanghai, 1926), pien 2, p. 107;Google ScholarBoloban, A. P., Mongoliya v eya sovremennom torgovo-ekonomicheskom otnoshenii (Petrograd, 1914), p. 40;Google ScholarShirendev, B. (Shirendyb), Mongoliya na rubezhe XIX-XX vekov (Ulan Bator, 1963), pp. 36–7;Google ScholarSvechnikov, , p. 74.Google Scholar

32 Shih-lu, Vol. 2, p. 809.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 864.

34 See for example Kallinikov, A., Revolyutsionnaya Mongoliya (Moscow, 1925), p. 64;Google ScholarGrumm-Grzhimailo, , Vol. 3, p. 473;Google ScholarThe China Yearbook: 1916 (London, 19161921, Tientsin, 1921–28), p. 574.Google Scholar

35 Yü-shu, Li, Wen-t'i, p. 2, claims that there were around 100,000 farmers in this region, and Perry-Ayscough, Otter-Barry, With the Russians in Mongolia, p. 128, were told by Russians that there were over 200,000 colonists. According to a March 1911 issue of Golos Sibiri, 20,000 Chinese were reported to have come to Urga in 1909 alone.Google Scholar Quoted in Sandag, , Mongolyn uls töriin gadaad Rhariltsaa, p. 199.Google Scholar The Mongolian historian Natsagdorj, Sh., Khalkhyn tüükh, p. 259, writes that 4,905,000 desyatina (over 13,000,000 acres) of northern Mongolia were under cultivation.Google Scholar The origin of this figure is apparently Kropatkin, A. N., Russko-kitaiskii vopros (St Petersburg, 1913), who cites a 1911 article by A. Isaev, ‘The Present Situation of the Russian Far East’ (in Russian; I have been unable to identify either the author or the article), estimating that 4,905,000 desyatina of Mongolian land had been transferred to Chinese cultivators.Google Scholar Quoted in Jamsran, , p. 98. It appears, however, that Isaev was referring to Inner and not Outer Mongolia.Google Scholar

36 Jamsran, , p. 97.Google ScholarKallinikov, , p. 40, however, claims (without citing a source) that 70,000 desyatina (189,000 acres) were owned by Chinese farmers before 1911 in Outer Mongolia. This figure may include the cultivated land around Khovd and in the Tsetsen Khan aimag.Google Scholar

37 Shih-lu, Vol. 2, p. 1011.Google Scholar

38 Ibid., p. 851; Pin, Hsieh, p. 48. The Urga garrison was formed in 1905 with forty troops from Hsuan-hua and an equal number of Mongols from the two eastern aimags. In 1910 this force was doubled (apparently with reinforcements from China).Google ScholarSee Jamsran, , p. 87.Google Scholar

39 Shih-lu, Vol. 2, p. 983.Google Scholar

40 Jamsran, , p. 88;Google ScholarLu, Ch'en, Chih-shih pi-chi, p. 179.Google Scholar It appears that the military costs of the New Administration were met, at least in part, by taxing Russian enterprises, especially lumbering and gold mining. See a January 1911 issue of News of Mongolia (Mongolyn sonin bichig), quoted in Sandag, , p. 239;Google Scholar and a memorial from Santo in February 1911 in Shih-lu, Vol. 2, p. 850.Google Scholar

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42 Natsagdorj, , Khalkhyn tüükh, p. 261.Google Scholar

43 Lu, Ch'en, Chih-shih pi-chi, p. 179, quoting Liang Han-nien, an official in Urga at the time.Google Scholar

44 Ibid.; Wei-kang, Lin, ‘O-Meng chiao-she shih-mo,’ in Hsiang-hsiang, Wu (ed.), Min-kuo ching-shih wen-pien (repr. Taipei, 1962), Vol. 3, p. 669.Google Scholar