Mongolia During Qing Rule - Governance

Governance

For the administration of Mongol regions, a bureau of Mongol affairs was founded, called Monggol jurgan in Manchu. By 1638 it had been renamed to Lifan Yuan, though it is sometimes translated in English as the "Court of Colonial Affairs" or the "Board for the Administration of Outlying Regions". This office reported to the Qing emperor and would eventually be responsible not only for the administration of Inner and Outer Mongolia, but also oversaw the appointments of Ambans in Tibet and Xinjiang, as well as Qing relations with Russia. Apart from day-to-day work, the office also edited its own statutes and a code of law for Outer Mongolia.

Unlike Tibet, Mongolia during the Qing period did not have any overall indigenous government. In Inner Mongolia, the empire maintained its presence through the Qing military forces based along Mongolia's southern and eastern frontiers, and the region was under tight control. In Outer Mongolia, the entire territory was technically under the jurisdiction of the military governor of Uliastai, a post only held by Qing bannermen, although in practice by the beginning of the 19th century the Amban at Urga had general supervision over the eastern part of the region, the tribal domains or aimags of the Tushiyetu Khan and Sechen Khan, in contrast to the domains of the Sayin Noyan Khan and Jasaghtu Khan located in the west, under the supervision of the governor at Uliastai. While the military governor of Uliastai originally had direct jurisdiction over the region around Kobdo in westernmost Outer Mongolia, the region later became an independent administrative post. The Qing government administered both Inner and Outer Mongolia in accordance with the Collected Statutes of the Qing Dynasty (Da Qing Hui Dian) and their precedents. Only in internal disputes the Outer Mongols or the Khalkhas were permitted to settle their differences in accordance with the traditional Khalkha Code. To the Manchus, the Mongol link was martial and military. Originally as "privileged subjects", the Mongols were obligated to assist the Qing court in conquest and suppression of rebellion throughout the empire. Indeed, during much of the dynasty the Qing military power structure drew heavily on Mongol forces to police and expand the empire.

The Mongolian society consisted essentially of two classes, the nobles and the commoners. Every member of the Mongolian nobility held a rank in the Qing aristocracy, and there were ten ranks in total, while only the banner princes ruled with temporal power. In acknowledgement of their subordination to the Qing Dynasty, the banner princes annually presented tributes consisting of specified items to the Emperor. In return, they would receive imperial gifts intended to be at least equal in value to the tribute, and thus the Qing court did not consider the presentation of tribute to be an economic burden to the tributaries. The Mongolian commoners, on the other hand, were for the most part banner subjects who owed tax and service obligations to their banner princes as well as the Qing government. The banner subjects each belonged to a given banner, which they could not legally leave without the permission of the banner princes, who assigned pasturage rights to his subjects as he saw fit, in proportion to the number of adult males rather than in proportion to the amount of livestock that to graze.

By the end of the eighteenth century, Mongolian nomadism had significantly decayed. The old days of nomad power and independence were gone. Apart from China's industrial and technical advantage over the steppe, three main factors combined to reinforce the decline of the Mongol's once-glorious military power and the decay of the nomadic economy. The first was the banner system, which the Qing rulers employed to divide the Mongols and sever their traditional lines of tribal authority; no prince could expand and acquire predominant power, and each of the separate banners was directly responsible to the Qing administration. If a banner prince made trouble, the Qing government had the power to dismiss him immediately without worrying about his lineage. The second important factor in the taming of the once powerful Mongols was the "Yellow Hat" school of the Tibetan Buddhism. The monasteries and lamas under the authority of the reincarnating lama resident in the capital Beijing were exempt from taxes and services and enjoyed many privileges. The Qing government wanted to tie the Mongols to the empire and it was Qing policy to fuse lamaism with Chinese religious ideas insofar as Mongolian sentiment would allow. For example, the Chinese god of war, the Guandi, was now equated with a figure which had long been identified with the Tibetan and Mongolian folk hero Geser Khan. While the Mongolian population was shrinking, the number of monasteries was growing. In both Inner and Outer Mongolia, about half of the male population became monks, which was even higher than Tibet where only about one third of male population were monks. The third factor in Mongolia's social and economic decline was an outgrowth of the previous factor. The building of monasteries had open Mongolia to the penetration of Chinese trade. Previously Mongolia had little internal trade other than non-market exchanges on a relatively limited scale, and there was no Mongolian merchant class. The monasteries greatly aided the Han Chinese merchants to establish their commercial control throughout Mongolia and provided them with direct access to the steppe. While the Han merchants frequently provoked the anger of the monasteries and the laity for several reasons, the net effect of the monasteries' role was support for Chinese trade. Nevertheless, the empire did make various attempts to restrict the activities of these Han merchants such as the implementation of annual licensing, because it had been the Qing policy to keep the Mongols as a military reservoir, and it was considered that the Han Chinese trade penetration would undermine this objective, although in many cases such attempts had little effects.

The first half of the 19th century saw the heyday of the Qing order. Both Inner and Outer Mongolia continued to supply the Qing armies with cavalry, although the government had tried to keep the Outer Mongols apart from the empire's wars in that century. Since the dynasty placed the Mongols well under its control, the government no longer feared of them. At the same time, as the ruling Manchus had become increasingly sinicized and population pressure in China proper emerged, the dynasty began to abandon its earlier attempts to block Han Chinese trade penetration and settlement in the steppe. After all, Han Chinese economic penetration served the dynasty's interests, because it not only provided support of the government's Mongolian administrative apparatus, but also bound the Mongols more tightly to the rest of empire. The Qing administrators, increasing in league with Han Chinese trading firms, solidly supported Chinese commerce. There was little that ordinary Mongols, who remained in the banners and continued their lives as herdsmen, could do to protect themselves against the growing exactions that banner princes, monasteries, and Han creditors imposed upon them, and ordinary herdsmen had little resource against exorbitant taxation and levies. In the 19th century, agriculture had been spread in the steppe and pastureland was increasingly converted to agricultural use. Even during the 18th century growing number of Han settlers had already illegally begun to move into the Inner Mongolian steppe and to lease land from monasteries and banner princes, slowing diminishing the grazing areas for the Mongols' livestock. While alienation of pasture in this way was largely illegal, the practice continued unchecked. By 1852, Han Chinese merchants had deeply penetrated Inner Mongolia, and the Mongols had run up unpayable debts. The monasteries had taken over substantial grazing lands, and monasteries, merchants and banner princes had leased many pasture lands to Han Chinese as farmland, although there was also popular resentment against oppressive taxation, Han settlement, shrinkage of pasture, as well as debts and abuse of the banner princes' authority. Many impoverished Mongols also began to take up farming in the steppe, renting farmlands from their banner princes or from Han merchant landlords who had acquired them for agriculture as settlement for debts. Anyway, the Qing attitude towards Han Chinese colonization of Mongolian lands grew more and more favorable under pressure of events, particularly after the Amur Annexation by Russia in 1860. This would reach a peak during the early 20th century, under the name of xinzheng or "New Administration".