Foundation
The Aisin Gioro clan, as a Manchu clan, claimed descent from the Jurchen people, who founded the Jin Dynasty nearly 5 centuries earlier in China under the Wanyan (完顏 Wányán) clan.
Under Nurhaci and his son Hong Taiji, the Aisin Gioro clan of the Jianzhou tribe won hegemony among the rival Juchen tribes of the northeast, then through warfare and alliances extended its control into Inner Mongolia. Nurhachi created large, permanent civil-military units called “banners” to replace the small hunting groups used in his early campaigns. A banner was composed of smaller companies; it included some 7,500 warriors and their households, including slaves, under the command of a chieftain. Each banner was identified by a coloured flag that was yellow, white, blue, or red, either plain or with a border design. Originally there were four, then eight, Manchu banners; new banners were created as the Manchu conquered new regions, and eventually there were Manchu, Mongol, and Chinese banners, eight for each ethnic group. By 1648 less than one-sixth of the bannermen were actually of Manchu ancestry. The Manchu conquest was thus achieved with a multiethnic army led by Manchu nobles and Han Chinese generals. Han Chinese soldiers were organized into the Army of the Green Standard, which became a sort of imperial constabulary force posted throughout China and on the frontiers.
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Famous quotes containing the word foundation:
“I desire to speak somewhere without bounds; like a man in a waking moment, to men in their waking moments; for I am convinced that I cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation of a true expression.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, & to institute new government, laying it’s foundation on such principles & organising it’s powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The Bermudas are said to have been discovered by a Spanish ship of that name which was wrecked on them.... Yet at the very first planting of them with some sixty persons, in 1612, the first governor, the same year, “built and laid the foundation of eight or nine forts.” To be ready, one would say, to entertain the first ship’s company that should be next shipwrecked on to them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)