Article ID: CBB001420326

Relieving Mongols of Their Pastoral Identity: Disaster Management on the Eighteenth-Century Qing China Steppe (2014)

unapi

This article explores the contradictory effects of state disaster relief on the Inner Mongolian steppe borderland of China's last dynasty, the Qing (1644--1911). As a Manchu-dominated polity most noted for its unprecedented unification of vast Inner Asian territories with China proper, the Qing had to manage complex environmental dependencies between humans, climate, vegetation, water resources, and animals across diverse borderlands. In Inner Mongolia these dependencies, ordered under what I term imperial pastoralism, were based on sustaining connections between Mongol herders and their livestock, which were continuously disrupted by harsh steppe conditions. Imperial state adaptation to these largely uncontrollable conditions constrained central administrators to provide agrarian (grain and silver), rather than pastoral (livestock) forms of disaster relief. This assistance helped alienate Mongols from their herds and, consequently, from the pastoral identity on which the Qing northern borderland order was based. This process predates the emergence of more direct and conventional pressures from nineteenth-century ethnic Chinese agrarian steppe migration.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001420326/

Similar Citations

Book Marsha L. Weisiger; (2009)
Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country (/isis/citation/CBB805061553/)

Article David A. Bello; (2018)
Consider the Qing Locust (/isis/citation/CBB086732783/)

Thesis Horan, Joseph; (2013)
Fibers of Empire: Cotton Cultivation in France and Italy during the Age of Napoleon (/isis/citation/CBB001567521/)

Article Tello, Enric; Valldepera, Natàlia; , Anna Ollés; Marull, Joan; Coll, Francesc; Warde, Paul; Wilcox, Paul Thomas; (2014)
Looking Backwards into a Mediterranean Edge Environment: Landscape Changes in El Congost Valley (Catalonia), 1850--2005 (/isis/citation/CBB001421413/)

Book Ingram, Darcy; (2013)
Wildlife, Conservation, and Conflict in Quebec, 1840--1914 (/isis/citation/CBB001422396/)

Article Freschet, Grégoire T.; östlund, Lars; Kichenin, Emilie; Wardle, David A.; (2014)
Aboveground and Belowground Legacies of Native Sami Land Use on Boreal Forest in Northern Sweden 100 Years after Abandonment (/isis/citation/CBB001421440/)

Book Terry Rugeley; (2014)
The River People in Flood Time: The Civil Wars in Tabasco, Spoiler of Empires (/isis/citation/CBB004167987/)

Article Beattie, James; Melillo, Edward D.; O'Gorman, Emily; (2014)
Rethinking the British Empire through Eco-Cultural Networks: Materialist-Cultural Environmental History, Relational Connections and Agency (/isis/citation/CBB001421435/)

Chapter Maierhofer, Waltraud; (2012)
Goethe and Forestry (/isis/citation/CBB001421369/)

Book Mikhail, Alan; (2014)
The Animal in Ottoman Egypt (/isis/citation/CBB001422352/)

Book Amrith, Sunil S; (2013)
Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants (/isis/citation/CBB001421571/)

Book Rogers, Thomas D.; (2010)
The Deepest Wounds: A Labor and Environmental History of Sugar in Northeast Brazil (/isis/citation/CBB001211190/)

Article Morgan, Ruth A.; (2013)
Histories for an Uncertain Future: Environmental History and Climate Change (/isis/citation/CBB001201446/)

Article Lenders, H.J. Rob; Janssen, Ingo A. W.; (2014)
The Grass Snake and the Basilisk: From Pre-Christian Protective House God to the Antichrist (/isis/citation/CBB001421412/)

Book Mikhail, Alan; (2011)
Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History (/isis/citation/CBB001200956/)

Authors & Contributors
Mikhail, Alan
Marsha L. Weisiger
Butler, Christina Rae
Ingram, Darcy
Zhang, Jiayan
Wilcox, Paul Thomas
Concepts
Environmental history
Nature and its relationship to culture; human-nature relationships
Agriculture
Livestock
Imperialism
Conservation biology
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
20th century
17th century
Qing dynasty (China, 1644-1912)
21st century
Places
China
Great Britain
Mongolia
Germany
Europe
Egypt
Institutions
Jesuits (Society of Jesus)
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment