Early history Origin , Emperor Taizu of
Jurchen Jin The Manchus are descended from the
Jurchen people who earlier established the
Jin dynasty (1115–1234) in China. However, this is disputed by historians. The Jianzhou Jurchen originated in part from the Huligai, who were classified by the Liao dynasty as a separate ethnicity from the Jurchen people who founded the Jin dynasty and, during the Yuan dynasty, were classified as separate from the Jurchen. Their home was in the lower reaches of the Songhua River and Mudanjiang. The Huligai later moved west and became a major component of the Jianzhou Jurchens, led by
Möngke Temür, during the Ming dynasty; the Jianzhou Jurchens later became the Manchus. According to the records of Ming Dynasty officials, the Jianzhou Jurchen were descended from
Mohe people who established the Balhae Kingdom. The name
Mohe might refer to an ancestral Manchu population. The Mohe practiced pig husbandry and were mainly sedentary. They used pig and dog skins for coats. They were predominantly farmers and grew soybeans, wheat, millet, and rice, in addition to hunting. settled farmers with advanced agriculture. They farmed grain and millet as their cereal crops, grew flax, and raised oxen, pigs, sheep, and horses. These farmers lived differently from the pastoral nomadism of the
Mongols and the
Khitans on the
steppes. In 1019, Jurchen pirates
raided Japan to kidnap and enslave Northern Kyushu residents. Japanese governor Fujiwara Notada was killed. 1,280 Japanese were taken prisoner, 374 Japanese were killed, and 380 Japanese-owned livestock were killed for food. Only 259 or 270 were returned by Koreans from the 8 ships. The woman Uchikura no Ishime's report was copied. Jurchen raids on Japan in the 1019
Toi invasion, the
Mongol invasions of Japan, and Japanese views of the Jurchens as "Tatar" "barbarians" (adopting China's barbarian-civilized binary), may have played a role in Japan's hostility to Manchus in later centuries. For example,
Tokugawa Ieyasu viewed
the unification of Manchu tribes as a threat to Japan. The Japanese mistakenly thought that
Hokkaido (Ezochi) had a land bridge to Tartary (Orankai), where the Manchus lived, and that the Manchus could invade Japan. The
Tokugawa Shogunate Bakufu sent a message to Korea via Tsushima, offering to help Korea against the
1627 Manchu invasion, but the offer was declined.
Liao dynasty Following the fall of Balhae, the Jurchens became vassals of the
Liao dynasty, which was founded by Para-Mongolic
Khitans. The Liao dynasty became the first state to control all of Manchuria.. The
Yalu River Jurchens became tributaries of
Goryeo during the reign of
Wang Geon, who called upon them during the wars of the
Later Three Kingdoms period. The Jurchens switched allegiance between Liao and Goryeo multiple times. Posing a potential threat to Goryeo's border security, the Jurchens offered tribute to the Goryeo court, expecting gifts in return. Before the Jurchens overthrew the Khitan, married Jurchen women and Jurchen girls were raped by Liao Khitan envoys
as a custom which caused resentment. The Jurchens and their Manchu descendants had Khitan linguistic and grammatical elements in their personal names, such as suffixes. Many Khitan names had a "ju" suffix. In the year 1114,
Wanyan Aguda united the Jurchen tribes and established the
Jin dynasty (1115–1234). His brother and successor,
Wanyan Wuqimai defeated the Liao. After the fall of the Liao, the Jurchens went to war with the
Northern Song dynasty, and captured most of northern China in the
Jin–Song wars. The Yuan grouped people into different categories based on how recently their state surrendered to the Yuan. Subjects of the southern Song were classified as southerners (
nan ren) and also referred to as
manzi. Subjects of the Jin dynasty,
Western Xia, and the kingdom of Dali in
Yunnan, southern China, were categorized as northerners, using the term
Han. However, the use of the
Han as the name of a class category by the Yuan dynasty was a different concept from
Han ethnicity. Ethnic Han people were divided into two classes in the Yuan,
Han Ren and
Nan Ren. Additionally, the Yuan directive to treat Jurchens the same as Mongols referred to Jurchens and Khitans in the northwest (not the Jurchen homeland in the northeast), presumably in the lands of Qara Khitai, where many Khitans lived. However, it remains a mystery how the Jurchens lived there. Many Jurchens adopted Mongolian customs, names, and the
Mongolian language. As time went on, fewer and fewer Jurchens could recognize their own script. The Jurchen
Yehe Nara clan is of paternal Mongol origin. Many Jurchen families descended from the original Jin Jurchen migrants in Han areas, such as those using the surnames Wang and Nian 粘 reclaimed their ethnicity and registered as Manchus. Wanyan (完顏) clan members who changed their surnames to Wang (王) after the Mongol conquest of the Jin dynasty applied successfully to the national government for their ethnic group to be marked as Manchu despite never having been part of the
Eight Banner system during the Qing dynasty. The surname Nianhan (粘罕), shortened to Nian (
粘), is a surname of Jurchen origin, also originating from one of the members of the royal Wanyan clan. It is an extremely rare surname in China, and members of the Nian clan live in
Nan'an,
Quanzhou,
Jinjiang,
Shishi,
Xiamen,
Fuzhou,
Zhangpu and
Sanming,
Fujian, as well as in
Laiyang,
Shandong and in
Xingtai,
Hebei. Some of the Nian from Quanzhou immigrated to Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia. In Taiwan, they are concentrated in
Changhua county. There are fewer than 30,000 members of the Nian clan worldwide, with 9,916 in Taiwan and 3,040 of those in Fuxing township of Changhua county.
Ming dynasty The Yuan dynasty was replaced by the Ming dynasty in 1368. In 1387, Ming forces defeated the Mongol commander
Naghachu's resisting forces who settled in the
Haixi area and summoned the Jurchen tribes to pay tribute. Their relationship was eventually stopped by the Ming government, who wanted the Jurchens to protect the border. In 1403, Ahacu, chieftain of Huligai, paid tribute to the
Yongle Emperor. Soon after,
Möngke Temür,, chieftain of the Odoli clan of the
Jianzhou Jurchens, stopped paying tribute to Korea, instead becoming a
tributary to China.
Yi Seong-gye, the
Taejo of Joseon, asked the Ming Empire to send Möngke Temür back, but was refused. Korea unsuccessfully tried to persuade
Möngke Temür to reject the Ming overtures, and he submitted to the Ming Empire. During the Ming dynasty, the name for the Jurchen land was
Nurgan. The Jurchens became part of the Ming dynasty's
Nurgan Regional Military Commission under the Yongle Emperor, with Ming forces erecting the
Yongning Temple Stele in 1413, at the headquarters of Nurgan. The
stele was inscribed in Chinese, Jurchen, Mongolian, and Tibetan. In 1449,
Mongol Taishi Esen attacked the Ming Empire and captured the
Zhengtong Emperor in
Tumu. Some Jurchen guards in Jianzhou and
Haixi cooperated with Esen, More Jurchens adopted Mongolian as their writing language and fewer used Chinese. The final recorded Jurchen writing dates to 1526. The Manchus are sometimes mistakenly classified as nomadic people. The Manchu society was agricultural, farming crops and tending animals. Manchus practiced
slash-and-burn agriculture in the areas north of
Shenyang. The
Haixi Jurchens were semi-agricultural, the Jianzhou Jurchens and Maolian () Jurchens were sedentary, while hunting and fishing was the way of life of the "
Wild Jurchens". Han Chinese society resembled that of the sedentary farmers Jianzhou and Maolian. Hunting, archery on horseback, horsemanship, livestock raising, and agriculture were all part of Jianzhou Jurchens culture. Although Manchus practiced equestrianism and archery on horseback, their immediate progenitors practiced sedentary agriculture. Manchus also partook in hunting. They lived in villages, forts, and walled towns. Only the Mongols and the northern Wild Jurchen were semi-nomadic. The rest gathered ginseng root, pine nuts, hunted for game pelts in the uplands and forests, raised horses in stables, and farmed millet and wheat in their fallow fields. They engaged in dances, wrestling, and drinking strong liquor. These Jurchens, who lived in the northeast's harsh cold climate, sometimes half-sunk their houses in the ground, which they constructed of brick or timber. They surrounded their fortified villages with stone foundations on which they built wattle-and-mud wall fortifications. Village clusters were ruled by
beile, hereditary leaders. They fought each other and dispensed weapons, wives, enslaved people, and lands to their followers. Jurchens like Nurhaci spoke both their native Tungusic language and Chinese, adopting the Mongol script for their own language, unlike the Jin Jurchens, who used a Khitan-derived script. They adopted Confucian values and shamanic traditions. Unlike their Mohe ancestors, the Jurchens began to respect dogs around the time of the Ming dynasty, and passed this tradition on to the Manchus. It was prohibited in Jurchen culture to use dog skin, and forbidden for Jurchens to harm, kill, or eat dogs. For political reasons, the Jurchen leader
Nurhaci chose to emphasize either differences or similarities in lifestyles with other peoples, such as the Mongols. Nurhaci said to the Mongols that "the languages of the Chinese and Koreans are different, but their clothing and way of life is the same. It is the same with us Manchus (Jušen) and Mongols. Our languages are different, but our clothing and way of life is the same." Later, Nurhaci indicated that the bond with the Mongols was not based on shared culture. It was for pragmatic reasons of "mutual opportunism," since Nurhaci said to the Mongols: "You Mongols raise livestock, eat meat, and wear pelts. My people till the fields and live on grain. We two are not one country and we have different languages." made efforts to
unify the Jurchen tribes and established a military system called the "
Eight Banners", which organized Jurchen soldiers into groups of "Bannermen", and ordered his scholar Erdeni and minister Gagai to create a new Jurchen script (later known as
Manchu script) using the
traditional Mongolian alphabet as a reference.
Qing dynasty During the transition from Ming to Qing, Nanjing civilian official Zhang Sunzhen remarked that he had a portrait of his ancestors wearing Manchu clothes because his family was
Tartar. Therefore, he considered it appropriate to shave his head into the Manchu hairstyle when the
queue order was given. The Qing stationed the "New Manchu" Warka foragers in Ningguta and attempted to turn them into farmers. Still, the Warka reverted to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and asked for money to buy cattle for beef broth. The Qing forced the Warka to become soldier-farmers, but the Warka left their garrison at Ningguta and returned to their homes along the Sungari River to herd, fish, and hunt. The Qing accused them of desertion.
Manchu rule over China When Nurhaci reorganized the Jurchens into the Eight Banners, many Manchu clans were artificially created from unrelated people, who founded a new Manchu clan (
mukun) using a geographic origin name, such as a toponym, as their
hala (clan name). The irregularities over Jurchen and Manchu clan origin led the Qing to try to systematize the creation of historical documents for Manchu clans, including manufacturing a legend around the origin of the Aisin-Gioro clan using mythology from the northeast. In 1603, Nurhaci gained recognition as the Sure Kundulen Khan (, "wise and respected khan") from his Khalkha Mongol allies; Factors for the name change from Jurchen to Manchu include the fact that the term "Jurchen" had negative connotations since the Jurchens had been in a servile position vis a vis the Ming dynasty for hundreds of years, and it also referred to people of the "dependent class". The change was made to hide the fact that the ancestors of the Manchus, the Jianzhou Jurchens, had been ruled by the Chinese. In the Ming period, the Koreans of
Joseon referred to the Jurchen inhabited lands north of the Korean peninsula, above the rivers
Yalu and
Tumen to be part of Ming China, as the "superior country" (sangguk) that they called Ming China. The Qing deliberately excluded references and information that showed the Jurchens (Manchus) as subservient to the Ming dynasty, from the
History of Ming to hide their former subservient relationship to the Ming. Because of this, the
Ming Veritable Records were not used as a source for content on the Jurchens during Ming rule in the History of Ming.
Hong Taiji created an effective
political system for that time based on Han Chinese management methods, which lasted until the fall of the Qing Empire in the 20th century. In this sense, Hong Taiji is considered by historians as the true first emperor for the Qing dynasty. In 1636, Hong Taiji invaded Joseon Korea, as the latter did not accept that Hong Taiji had become emperor and refused to assist in operations against the Ming Dynasty, who were the legitimate emperors of China. With the Joseon dynasty surrendered in 1637, Hong Taiji succeeded in making them cut off relations with the Ming dynasty and force them to submit as tributary state of the Qing dynasty. Also during this period, Hong Taiji took over Inner Mongolia, which protected northern border of China, in three brutal, high-mortality wars, each of them victorious. From 1636 until 1644, he sent 4 major expeditions into the Amur region. In 1640 he completed the conquest of the Evenks, when he defeated and captured their leader Bombogor. By 1644, the entire region was under his control. In 1644, the Ming capital,
Beijing, was sacked by a
peasant revolt led by
Li Zicheng, a former minor Ming official who became the leader of the peasant revolt, who then proclaimed the establishment of the
Shun dynasty. The last Ming ruler, the
Chongzhen Emperor, died by suicide by
hanging himself when the city fell. When Li Zicheng moved against Ming general
Wu Sangui, the latter allied with the Manchus and opened the
Shanhai Pass to the Manchu army. After the Manchus defeated
Li Zicheng, they established their capital in
Beijing () in the same year. It was this multi-ethnic, majority Han force in which Manchus were a minority that conquered China for the Qing Empire. A mass marriage of Han Chinese officers and officials to Manchu women was organized to balance the massive number of Han women who entered the Manchu court as
courtesans,
concubines, and wives. These couples were arranged by Prince Yoto and Hong Taiji in 1632 to promote harmony between the two groups. To promote ethnic harmony further, a 1648 decree from the
Shunzhi Emperor allowed Han Chinese civilian men to marry Manchu women from the Banners with the permission of the Board of Revenue (if they were registered daughters of officials or commoners) or the permission of their banner company captain (if they were unregistered commoners). Later in the dynasty these policies allowing intermarriage were done away with. A few were sent to other places such as
Inner Mongolia,
Xinjiang and
Tibet to serve as garrison troops. While the Manchu ruling elite in Beijing and posts of authority throughout China increasingly adopted
Han culture, the Qing imperial government viewed the Manchu communities (as well as those of various tribal people) in Manchuria as a place where traditional Manchu virtues could be preserved, and as a vital reservoir of military power dedicated to the regime. The Qing emperors tried to protect the traditional way of life of the Manchus (as well as other tribal peoples) in central and northern Manchuria by a variety of means. In particular, they restricted the migration of Han settlers to the region. This had to be balanced with practical needs, such as maintaining the defense of northern China against the Russians and the Mongols, supplying government farms with a skilled work force, and conducting trade, which resulted in a continuous trickle of Han convicts, workers, and merchants to the northeast. An example was the Tokoro Manchu clan in the Manchu banners, which claimed to be descended from a Han Chinese with the surname of Tao who had moved north from
Zhejiang to
Liaodong and joined the Jurchens before the Qing in the Ming Wanli emperor's era. The Han Chinese Banner Tong 佟 clan of
Fushun in
Liaoning falsely claimed to be related to the Jurchen Manchu Tunggiya 佟佳 clan of
Jilin, attempting to get transferred to a Manchu banner in the reign of the
Kangxi emperor. Select groups of Han Chinese bannermen were mass transferred into Manchu Banners by the Qing, changing their recorded ethnicity from Han Chinese to Manchu. Han Chinese bannermen of Tai Nikan (台尼堪, watchpost Chinese) and Fusi Nikan (撫順尼堪, Fushun Chinese) The Fushun Nikan became Manjurified and the originally Han banner families of Wang Shixuan, Cai Yurong, Zu Dashou, Li Yongfang, Shi Tingzhu and Shang Kexi intermarried extensively with Manchu families. A Manchu Bannerman in Guangzhou called Hequan illegally adopted a Han Chinese named Zhao Tinglu, the son of former Han bannerman Zhao Quan, and named him Quanheng so that he could benefit from his adopted son receiving a salary as a Banner soldier. Commoner Manchu bannermen who were not nobility were called
irgen, which meant common, in contrast to the Manchu nobility of the Eight Great Houses who held noble titles. Manchu bannermen of the capital garrison in Beijing were said to be the worst militarily, unable to draw bows, unable to ride horses, and fight properly, and abandoning their Manchu culture. Han civilians and Manchu bannermen in Xi'an had bad relations, with the bannermen trying to steal at the markets. Manchu Lieutenant General Cimbru reported this to the Yongzheng Emperor in 1729. Governor Yue Rui of
Shandong was then ordered by the Yongzheng to report any bannerman misbehavior and warned him not to cover it up in 1730 after Manchu bannermen were put in a quarter in Qingzhou. Sociologist
Edward Alsworth Ross wrote of his visit to Xi'an just before the Xinhai revolution: Ross spoke highly of the Han and
Hui population of Xi'an,
Shaanxi and
Gansu, saying: "After a fortnight of mule litter we sight ancient yellow Sianfu, "the Western capital," with its third of a million souls. Within the fortified triple gate the facial mold abruptly changes and the refined intellectual type appears. Here and there faces of a Hellenic purity of feature are seen and beautiful children are not uncommon. These Chinese cities make one realize how the cream of the population gathers in the urban centers. Everywhere town opportunities have been a magnet for the élite of the open country." In the 1850s, large numbers of Manchu bannermen were sent to central China to fight the
Taiping rebels. (For example, just the
Heilongjiang province – which at the time included only the northern part of today's Heilongjiang – contributed 67,730 bannermen to the campaign, of whom only 10–20% survived). Only after the "
Hundred Days Reform", during the reign of emperor
Guangxu, were Han allowed to enter inner Beijing. German Minister
Clemens von Ketteler was assassinated by a Manchu. Thousands of Manchus fled south from
Aigun during the Boxer Rebellion, their cattle and horses stolen by Russian
Cossacks who razed their villages and homes. The Manchu clan system in Aigun was obliterated by the invaders. By the 19th century, most Manchus in the city garrison spoke only
Mandarin, and not Manchu, which distinguished them from their Han neighbors in southern China, who spoke other dialects. The Manchus' use of Beijing dialects made it relatively easy to recognize them. In Guangdong, Manchu Mandarin teacher Sun Yizun advised that the
Yinyun Chanwei and
Kangxi Zidian, dictionaries issued by the Qing government, were the correct guides to Mandarin pronunciation, rather than the pronunciation of the Beijing and
Nanjing dialects. Most intermarriage consisted of Han Bannermen marrying Manchus in areas like Aihun. As the end of the Qing dynasty approached,
Manchus were portrayed as outside colonizers by
Chinese nationalists such as
Sun Yat-sen, even though many reform-minded Manchu officials and military officers supported the Republican revolution he brought about. In 1942, the Japanese-authored
Ten Year History of the Construction of Manchukuo emphasized the right of ethnic Japanese to the land of Manchukuo while attempting to delegitimize the Manchus' claim to Manchukuo as their native land, noting that most Manchus moved out during the Qing dynasty and returned only later. The
Eight Banners system is one of the most important ethnic identity of today's Manchu people. Manchu culture and language preservation is promoted by the
Chinese Communist Party, and Manchus again became one of China's most socioeconomically advanced minorities. Manchus generally face little to no discrimination in their daily lives, except among Han nationalist conspiracy theorists, whom claim that Manchu elites occupy the CCP and, therefore, Manchus receive better treatment under the People's Republic of China. Manchus were subjected to the same
one child policy and rules as the Han people. Manchus, Koreans, Russians, Hui, and Mongols in Inner Mongolia were subjected to restrictions on two children. == Population ==