The Separation of Bannermen and Civilians in Zhili

To set the stage, we will begin by briefly examining the socio-economic conditions of Qing-era Zhili, which underwent profound transformations under early Qing policies of land distribution and management. Throughout the Qing dynasty, various groups of people in the Eight Banners were distributed in concentric sectors in the metropolitan area (jifu 畿輔), with Beijing at the center. The imperial guards and the Eight Banner garrisons surrounded the capital and secured its defenses, while large numbers of bannermen who subsisted on agriculture also settled here, providing services for the royal family, nobles, and ordinary soldiers. At the same time, the metropolitan area continued to host a large civilian population primarily of Han ethnicity, inevitably becoming the locus of mixed Banner and civilian residence.

Between the Eight Banners and the prefecture-county system, and between the two identities of “bannermen” and “civilian people,” the two systems and two groups coexisted alongside each other. This duality allowed for two options in survival strategies. Although officially segregated from each other, the two groups also influenced, intertwined with, and interpenetrated each other. The interactions between them featured both conflict and coexistence. Both bannermen and civilians took advantage of the loopholes in this dual system, moving between the Eight Banners and the prefecture-county system. The group of touchong people examined in this article exemplified such practices.

Manors were small-sized organizational units consisting of lands that the Qing court distributed to royals, nobles, officials and troops of the Eight Banners, beginning from the reign of Nurhaci. The Qing court instead implemented large-scale land enclosures in the metropolitan area to set up manors (zhuangyuan 莊園). The Gazetteer of Raoyang County notes: “The lands within 500 li 里 of the metropolitan area was given to the Eight Banners, called Banner enclosures.”Footnote ³ This initiative is commonly known as the “Enclosure Movement” (paoma zhanquan 跑馬占圈). The Qing continued to use the land seized from the civilian population for agriculture but converted it into various types of manors.Footnote ⁴ The most fertile land was allocated for imperial manors. Following that, based on rank and title, it was distributed among princes and other nobility for princely manors. The remaining land was divided among Eight Banners officials and soldiers as general Banner lands. As a critical institution throughout the Qing dynasty, the manorial system provided economic security for the royal family, princes, and ordinary bannermen through daily supply of provisions, as well as supporting the military defense of the capital.

The conception and management of land by the early Qing rulers originated from the semi-fishing-hunting, semi-agricultural lifestyle of the Jurchen people, the predecessors of the Manchus. This origin is exemplified by the testimony of Korean envoy Sin Chung'il (Shen Zhongyi 申忠一) who visited Feiala City (費阿拉城, Manchu: fe ala), the most important Jianzhou Jurchen city when Nurhaci began his rise to power. His book Jianzhou jicheng tuji 建州紀程圖記 mentioned numerous locations where the Jurchens cultivated the land, specifically noting that noble “farms” (nongmu 農幕) were mostly built along rivers to improve access to irrigation. “They live along waterways. There are more barbarian families along riversides than in mountain valleys.”Footnote ⁵ Nongmu (farms) is a Korean term, equivalent to the Manchu tokso, which became the prototype of the manor that took shape after the Manchus captured Beijing in 1644.Footnote ⁶ As a particular form of economic organization, the tokso is likely to have existed during or even before Nurhaci's rise. When Nurhaci established the Later Jin (後金), he retained this Jurchen convention of establishing agricultural manors. Indeed, tokso served as an important economic organizational unit of the Later Jin; records in the Manchu Original Documents (滿文原檔) discuss the subject of tokso frequently. It suffices to say that tokso served as a major building block of traditional Jurchen culture and society.

The same manorial system followed the Eight Banners’ armies into China's Central Plains region, as bannermen at all levels seized lands and enslaved civilians for themselves. These lands and slaves became the private property of specific bannermen, with each patrimony constituting a separate unit, managed without interference from each other. In principle, the state did not interfere with specific matters such as Head of manor appointments, manorial management and the collection of land rent.

During the early Qing, the practice of seizing land continued for several decades until 1685. Peaks in land enclosure occurred at two stages, the early years of the Shunzhi reign and the early Kangxi reign.Footnote ⁷ In addition to “occupied land,” obtained through seizure, many of the civilian population (mainly those of Han extraction) opted to “voluntarily join” (touchong 投充) the Eight Banners. Many of these touchong people brought their lands with them when they surrendered, and this land was designated as “voluntarily joined land” or “touchong di” 投充地. The concepts of “compulsory occupation” and “voluntarily join” are often collectively understood as “enclosure” (quandi 圈地).

Over time, land enclosure grew to cover much of the Zhili region. The range of “occupied” and “voluntarily joined” lands extended from the Shanhai Pass in the east to the Taihang Mountains in the west, and from the Great Wall in the north to Shunde Prefecture in the south. The Eight Banners General Records put it that “within the nine prefectures of Zhili Province, except for Guangping and Daming Prefectures, which are far south of the capital, there are Banner manors everywhere. Among the remaining seven prefectures, there are 77 prefectures, counties and guards with Banner manors, covering more than 2,000 li.”Footnote ⁸ While the specific figures are not identical, most sources indicate that enclosures exceeded 250,000 qing 頃.Footnote ⁹ The enclosure rate in each prefecture and county of Shuntian Prefecture was highest, accounting for more than 80 percent of the original civilian land, with some counties even reaching 100 percent.

As a result, the landscape of the Beijing metropolitan area changed fundamentally, giving way to the dominance of Banner official manors. In the prefectures and counties where lands were either “occupied” or used for touchong, little civilian land survived the enclosures. The more than 200,000 qing of “occupied” and touchong di accounted for about 5 percent of the national arable land, about 5 million qing at that time. Although it may seem that such a proportion was not that high, they were all concentrated in the Zhili region. According to the Gazetteer of Daxing County: “in the capital region of Jifu (metropolitan area), bannermen scattered everywhere and land belonged to officials rather than civilians. The civilian were few and population sparse.”Footnote ¹⁰ Although the manorial system underwent various modifications during the late Qing period, until the early years of the Republic of China when the Beiyang government took over, Zhili still had about 160,000 qing of Banner land under the control of the Eight Banners system, accounting for more than 15 percent of the province's arable land at that time.Footnote ¹¹

These lands of manors were generally assigned to the management of a Manor Head deemed competent to the task. Cultivation was left to “manor men” (莊丁), the relatives of the Manor Head, and “strong [able-bodied] men” (壯丁), who were employees. Manor Heads, “manor men” and “strong men,” although bannermen, were classified as slaves, and cultivated the land on behalf the Banner royalty, nobility, officials and soldiers, who held all rights over manor lands. Manor Heads and associated cultivators had only the right to use the land.

The status of land in Banner manors was very different from that of Han civilians’ land. Manor land could not be bought and sold freely. Both the management system and the rents to be paid were also distinct from civilian land. Until the 1720s (during the Yongzheng period), bannermen paid land rents primarily in goods, and only later gradually switched to payment in currency. Since its inception during Nurhaci's reign, the manor had been the private property of the princes, nobles and soldiers of the Eight Banners. The head of the manor was only selected from among its “strong men” to manage the affairs of the manor. The Manor Head was an appointment. The land and “strong men” under the Manor Head were not his personal property, but belonged to the Manor Head's master. For example, Manor Heads for the emperor's provisions were under the supervision of the Imperial Household Department, and the manors’ land belonged to the royal family. The heads of manors belonging to princes and nobles managed land that was the private property of those princes and nobles. The lands under other important institutions, such as the Yonghe Palace or various temples, were also under the ownership of those respective institutions. Therefore, in principle, the Manor Heads’ lands were not their own, and each Manor Head had no right to freely dispose of the land under his control. In reality, bannermen surreptitiously found loopholes in the law, but that was a separate matter from their legal rights. In a nutshell, the Manor Heads of the Eight Banners belonged to the Eight Banners system: their appointment, the property under their control, and even the Manor Heads themselves belonged to their masters. In contrast, civilians and civilian land were completely different. Civilian landowners came under the management of local prefectures’ and counties’ administrations. Their ownership of land was not related to any official appointments they might have held, but was considered private property under that civilian family.Footnote ¹²

A Socio-Historical Approach to the Banner–Civilian Relationship

The bannermen, at the foundation of the Qing dynasty, received special protection from the Qing court. The Eight Banners exhibited clear internal distinctions, with different types and grades of bannermen being managed under various policies, and each bearing unique identities. Nonetheless, the Qing court's general ruling policy upheld the separation between “Banner” and “civilian.” The Qing summarized this policy in the adage: “do not distinguish between Manchu and Han, only between Banner and civilian.” The various types and classes of bannermen were collectively regarded (at least in the eyes of non-bannermen) as members of the Eight Banners, as opposed to the label “civilian” used for non-bannermen.

The Qing court enforced this rigorous distinction between individuals associated with the “Banner” and those classified as “civilian” across a wide array of policies. This differentiation was evident in matters such as place of residence, property exchange, marriage, justice, education, official appointments, promotions, and social control. Bannermen enjoyed various treatments superior to civilian people. The separation of Banner and civilian became one of the most prominent features of the Qing political system. As a matter of principle, institutional inequality between Banner and civilian people, favoring the bannermen over civilians, never wavered throughout the Qing dynasty.

Since the early twentieth century, many scholars have sought to discuss the differences between Banner and civilian people, mainly with a focus on political and institutional history.Footnote ¹³ In the last two decades, both Chinese and English-language scholars have approached the topic from the perspective of ethnicity, exploring the formation and evolution of the Manchu ethnic community as well as non-Sinicization models of ethnic relations.Footnote ¹⁴ Intentionally or not, they tend to over-emphasize the particularity and solidarity of Banner society, which leads to a narrative mode that places “Banner” and “civilian” as well as “Manchu” and “Han” in opposition to each other. Such a binary framework influences scholarly evaluations of other “Banner” and “civilian” issues, including the judicial system, which has decisive significance for the persistence of inequality between Banner and civilian people and the particularity of Banner people until the late Qing dynasty.Footnote ¹⁵ Some scholars have pointed out that the inequality between Banner and civilian people in the justice system was not as great as imagined, particularly after the Yongzheng era.Footnote ¹⁶ As Hu Xiangyu argues, Qing-dynasty law gradually reduced the differential treatment based on rank and ethnicity in the process of evolution, that is, the normalization of laws.Footnote ¹⁷ Such works demonstrate that we should not oversimplify Qing societal conditions into a caricature of itself.

To address the gap in existing scholarship, this article proposes a social historical approach with a focus on lower-level groups within the Eight Banners system and on the lived experiences of individuals on the ground. In real life, the relationships between Banner and civilian individuals were more complex than institutional provisions implied. Driven by economic interests and other practical needs, ordinary bannermen and civilians did not adhere completely to the prescriptions of the official regulations. The Eight Banners system indeed played a key role in preserving bannermen's interests and identity, and the independence of Banner culture. Nevertheless, the Banner society could not sustain a prolonged “independent” or “closed” state from civilian society. Over time, the relationship between the Banner and civilian populations grew closer, leading to a gradual erosion of the distinguishing characteristics of bannermen.Footnote ¹⁸

The Banner–civilian relationship on the ground is further complicated by the intricate internal structure of the Eight Banners. The Eight Banners Manchu, the Eight Banners Mongol, and the Eight Banners Han armies were explicitly delimited by grades, including regulars, the “entailed households” (開戶), and household slaves（戶下奴僕）, each with clear ranks of precedence. The status categories were classified based on their proximity with the core members of the Eight Banners, forming concentric circles that decline in importance as they expand outward. This resulted in a gray area at the edges of the bannermen. The touchong people of the Zhili area discussed in this article represented such a marginal group caught between Banner and civilian status.

Adopting a socio-historical approach to examine the status-shifting practices of touchong people is essential. This is particularly pertinent as the touchong practice in the Zhili area was chaotic and complex from its inception. Moreover, it led to the simultaneous existence of two seemingly opposing elements within the lives of touchong people, one that marginalized and the another that empowered. A comprehensive understanding of the banner–civilian relationship on the ground necessitates a careful dissection of both element in each individual case.

The touchong people faced marginalization because many were coerced into bondage under the Banners in the early Qing. The process of touchong took place in a tumultuous manner, occurring simultaneously with Banner seizures of land for the establishment of manors. In the early Qing period, the Eight Banner armies exploited civilians everywhere as a labor force, coercing them into joining the Banners through touchong and serving bannermen of varied ranks, such as by working on the manors and Banner lands. The bannermen's motivation to enslave the populace had its roots in pre-Qing practices in the Jurchen homelands. The number of slaves one owned had always been emblematic of strength among the Eight Banners nobility. Touchong subjects were an important means for them to expand their power. The Qing Veritable Records relate that “They (Banner troops) forced people from various prefectures, counties and villages into touchong. Those who were unwilling were threatened verbally and coerced by force. All professions of craftsmen were sought after and ordered to touchong. As a result, people were uneasy, rumors were rampant, and they only thought of escaping.”Footnote ¹⁹ Forcing civilians into touchong caused considerable turmoil to local society in the Zhili region.

Meanwhile, the touchong people gained empowerment by joining the Banners, as this inclusion elevated them to a privileged class. Many Han people who agreed to touchong had opportunistic intentions. As soon as the Qing issued the order to recruit people for touchong, many Han people, rich or poor, volunteered for touchong. In addition to those who participated in touchong on a personal basis, there were also some who “Voluntarily Joined with Land” (帶地投充). A contemporary record describes these people as rogues and rascals “who were afraid of land enclosure, [and] brought their land to join. Or they had no land at all but secretly brought other people's land to join.”Footnote ²⁰ According to the Veritable Records, once admitted to the Banners in this way, they could use their Banner identity to “act recklessly in villages and counties, resist officials,” or even “ride horses directly into prefecture, state, or county yamen [衙門; government office], sit with prefecture, state, or county officials, hold officials and clerks in contempt, act arbitrarily as they please. They had no respect for officials in their eyes, let alone civilians. Their bullying was obvious.”Footnote ²¹ The Yangjizhai Compiled Records also states that the touchong, by “Relying on strength to occupy land, there were many malpractices [by] using Banner [status] for evil, harming people at will. Therefore, there were imperial edicts, drum edicts, communication edicts, and disputes emerged endlessly.”Footnote ²² The Wanping County Gazetteer similarly notes the malpractices of touchong people, commenting that “One person voluntarily joined and his whole family took advantage of it, and wicked people gathered.”Footnote ²³ While criticizing the misconducts of the touchong people, these contemporaneous records consistently emphasized the privileges afforded to them by their Banner status.

As Banner and civilian people lived together, Banner land and civilian land were also mixed. Several Qing-era local gazetteers documented this problem

“Because Banner and civilian people are mixed, land [registration] is easily confused and lawsuits are rampant.”Footnote ²⁵ As bannermen and Banner land were meant to belong to the Eight Banners system, “Local officials have no responsibility to restrain bannermen, and the managing official who knows everything is far away in the capital. There is only one boshiku 撥什庫 official in the village who cannot restrain them.”Footnote ²⁶ These descriptions all point to a prevailing issue: the split jurisdiction resulted in a power vacuum in the administration of the touchong people.

Caught between the Eight Banner system and the prefectures-county system, the touchong people were caught in a gap in legal classification. However, they also possessed an “advantage”: navigating between both systems to gain benefits from both statuses. The touchong people became marginal groups wandering—both by choice and pushed by external forces—between bannermen and civilian people. Focusing on the touchong people, who were situated in the overlap between the dual systems, allows us to challenge the one-sided paradigm of a “Banner-versus-civilian” dichotomy. This approach promotes a more grounded perspective on ethnic relations and regional society under the Qing's dual system.

“Those who are in the register are bannermen, those who are not in the register are civilian.”

After the completion of land enclosure and the touchong program in the Zhili region during the early Qing dynasty, both the status of land and the identity of demographic categories underwent fundamental changes compared to the Ming dynasty. From the 1950s to the 1990s, Chinese and Japanese scholars focused their studies on manor banner lands without paying much attention to the bannermen residing on these lands.Footnote ²⁷ Only in the recent two decades have Chinese scholars, me included, begun to explore the range of people associated with manor banner land. Still, little scholarly attention has been directed towards the touchong group, with only some brief discussions about the situation of touchong people serving royal manors under the Imperial Household Department (Neiwufu 內務府).Footnote ²⁸

The substantial number of civilians who participated in touchong to become bannermen, however, did not merely undergo a simple identity change; they became slaves, the private property of the royal family, princes, and nobles. Shackled within the Eight Banners system without freedom to leave, they were no different from those who were enslaved by bannermen before the Qing conquest of China Proper. However, when considering the development process of land enclosure and touchong, it becomes challenging to distinguish this group from civilians in terms of ethnic identity, social behavior, and even legal recognition. Besides challenges such as the difficulty in managing the coexistence of Banner and civilian populations, the inherent defects in land enclosure and touchong policies—unavoidable in the implementation of such a system—are important reasons for the emergence of malpractices.

The process by which civilians underwent touchong contributed to the ambiguity in their identity. Two critical questions arise: In what form did touchong people enter the Eight Banners organization? Was it a family/clan decision or an individual choice? Judging from actual cases, both situations existed, although it was more common for individuals and nuclear families to enter the Eight Banners organization. This is not inconsistent with the Qing's original scheme of seizing occupied civilian land and forcing them to join the Banners as slaves. The Qing court, which prioritized the induction of civilians into the Banner organization to bolster the Banners, did not specify whether civilians were joining as individuals or as households. As a result, the policy created a situation whereby a single clan or even a single nuclear family could be divided between civilians and bannermen. Due to their different identities, different family members would be subject to different legal constraints, and governance of the family would be split between the Eight Banners system and the prefecture-county system.

This situation appears to be common among touchong families in the metropolitan area. It blurred the boundary between bannermen and civilians, providing space for touchong people to switch between Banner and civilian identities. A memorial by Su Jiagan 孫嘉淦 elaborates on the situation as follows:

The comment that “only one person in each family was reported, so the rest of his brothers, uncles and nephews were still civilians” demonstrates how a whole family could have escaped from taxes or labor service by means of touchong. A more serious problem emerged after several generations: as descendants multiplied and branched out, not only did the identity of bannermen and civilians become increasingly blurred, but some members even fell out of both categories. The ambiguity in status posed many covert challenges for local governance.

Generally speaking, the Qing established two categories to classify bannermen under the Imperial Household Department: Zuoling (佐領, Manchu: niru), and Guanling (管領, Manchu: booi da).Footnote ³⁰ The identity of touchong people within this twofold division remained ambiguous, as no official documents from the Qing ever specified their proper classification. Fortunately, archives have left us some clues.Footnote ³¹ An 1809 document from the Duyusi reports on a person who held the position of Manor Head but was not a bannerman:

This passage reveals that touchong people's status was different from and inferior to the regular bannermen. For regular banner soldiers, their entire families were registered in the Eight Banners population household register. However, this was not the case for the manorial population. As discussed above, manorial families included both bannermen and civilians. The register was a crucial criterion for determining the banner identity of individual members within manorial families.

The bannermen household registration system was an important formal institution that administered touchong people. The system was established by the Qing court before their occupation of the Central Plains in 1644, gradually fine-tuned its function after 1644, and remained in place until the end of Qing dynasty. The function of the system was to ensure strict control of the members of the Eight Banners and coordinate the strength of various Banner units. For example, ordinary Banner workers were compared to the register once every three years, and the population was registered once every three years. Princes and nobles reported family births, deaths, marriages, daughter's marriages, and other population changes once every three months. The royal family had even stricter population registration regulations and requirements: each registration had to record in detail the various situation reports on the relevant population and their families.Footnote ³³

The once-every-three-year Banner population compilation was intended, on one hand, to assist each of the Eight Banners in assessing their numbers, and on the other hand, to provide a verifying mechanism for the management of the different categories of bannermen. Although all these groups were bannermen, there existed great distinctions in their internal status; the Qing court granted differential management policies to Manchus, Mongols, Han, zuoling, guanling, slaves and other groups. Therefore, based on the population record, one can clearly determine any individual's status and position within the Eight Banners system and hence verify the appropriate policy to apply.

While considered members of the Eight Banners system, touchong people constituted a distinct subgroup among bannermen. They were registered separately and were not integrated with other bannermen administered under zuoling and guanling. This separation was not due solely to their low status; more important was the fact that their roles and functions differed from those of other bannermen.Footnote ³⁴ The household register of the Eight Banners primarily served as the institution through which regular bannermen received their military salaries.Footnote ³⁵ On the other hand, the household register of touchong people functioned as the institution for the payment of tribute. In essence, these two groups interacted with the register in contrasting ways, with the former receiving their pay through the register and the latter making payments instead. The highly developed administration thus allowed the Qing court to place increased emphasis on utilizing the registration system to support the economic operations of the manor system, with a particular focus on assessing whether the manors could deliver income and grain punctually.Footnote ³⁶ Given these requirements, population reports for touchong people differed from other Banner household registers where managing population was the primary focus. Due to their unique status, the registers pertaining to touchong people put an emphasis on economic roles.

Using their marginal identity and loopholes between the dual systems of the Eight Banners and the prefecture-county system, the touchong group profited from both sides. Cases of this kind abound. In 1683, Gergude 格爾古德, the governor of Zhili and the Manchu Bordered Blue Banner, reported:

In the Qianlong period, Sun Jiagan 孫嘉淦 submitted a memorial summarizing the issues arising from the practice of switching status:

Gergude and Sun Jiagan approached the drawbacks of touchong people self-interested switching of status from different perspectives. Gergude emphasizes the motives for touchong people seeking to switch status, that is, the benefits that touchong people attain from engaging in this practice—lending money for profit as civilians and stirring up legal disputes or exploiting villagers as bannermen. Sun's memorial illustrates that switching from Banner to civilian status granted individuals the ability to participate in examinations and become officials. Conversely, switching from civilian to Banner status provided an opportunity for individuals to exploit and acquire property.

More importantly, defining the identity of the touchong people was not a straightforward task for local officials since they had no access to the bannermen population register, the most common and authoritative criterion. As Sun Jiagan's memorial continues:

Sun Jiagan's memorial focuses on the methods through which the touchong people change their status with impunity from official administrators. This problem was highly relevant to the issue of Eight Banner membership rolls. Having no case-files to verify identities, local officials could only report up the chain of command for consultation with the Ministry of Revenue, which in turn sought consultation with the Imperial Household Department and other Eight Banner institutions. Only after this check of the bannerman's identity could the officials judge the case. The whole process often stretched for months or even years. Even upon checking the bannermen population register, numerous issues could impede investigation. These challenges included undetailed logs, diverse Manchu transliterations into different but homophonous Chinese characters, as well as falsified reports and updates. Cases could often go unresolved and resulted in several areas of administrative paralysis. The complexities in verifying identity within the two parallel systems provided considerable opportunities for irregularities to persist.

In short, the lack of clear boundaries between identities and inadequate population registers provided touchong people ample institutional loopholes for exploitation. At times, they abandoned Banner status and identified as civilians, while other times they did the opposite. These stories vividly portray the survival strategies of touchong people as a social group strategically maneuvering between Banner and civilian statuses for profit. The following pages zoom in on two case studies to further explore this issue.

Abandoning Civilian Status and Claiming to be Bannermen

Thousands of criminal cases involving touchong people are preserved in the Qing archives, including plots to take the position of Manor Head, abscondment, arrears of money and grain, obstructions of official errands, homicides, robbery, and rape. Among these offenses, cases of land disputes are the most common. Since land was the foundation of civilian life, land enclosure and the impact of touchong resulted in underlying complications in distinguishing between touchong people and civilians, or between Banner land and civilian land. There are both cases of bannermen plundering civilian property,Footnote ⁴⁰ and civilians occupying Banner enclosure.Footnote ⁴¹

Instances of profiting from Banner status and Banner land were significantly more prevalent than those involving civilian status and civilian land, indicating that bannermen were more inclined to acquire land and derive profits from it than were civilians. This phenomenon was directly related to the established institutional nature of Banner land manors.Footnote ⁴² Although Manor Heads were theoretically considered slaves and did not own of the land they managed, they wielded local influence due to the substantial amount of high-quality land under their de facto control. In the early Qing period, the Eight Banners occupied the most fertile land in Zhili. The less fertile areas, characterized by alkaline or sandy soils, were not allocated to touchong and therefore consistently paid their grain tribute under the prefecture-county system. Despite the overall superior quality of Banner land compared to civilian land, the rent dues for the former were less burdensome than the taxes imposed on civilian land.Footnote ⁴³

Due to the privileged status of bannermen, prefecture and county officials were aware of the land seizures but were largely powerless to prevent them. This reality led to a growing prevalence of Banner manors engaging in rampant land encroachment. The gap in effective enforcement also enticed many individuals, both bannermen and civilians, to “voluntarily join” as Manor Heads. “Voluntarily joining” allowed them to leverage on their Banner membership and Banner land status for personal gain. Concealing land ownership (from both Banner and civilian registration) or claiming another clan's land as their own were common means through which touchong people seized land from civilian owners. The combination of these factors provided Manor Heads with an array of loopholes to exert considerable power in pursuit of their own interests.

A fact easily overlooked by later generations is that civilians also frequently entered the Banner register to acquire land. Such cases often centered on civilians aiming to maximize their opportunities by capitalizing on touchong di privileges, namely, making use of their familial connections with actual touchong people. Take the cases of Wu Sigui 吳思貴 and Liu Shilu 劉士録 in 1783 and 1787 as an example. Wu was a Wuqing 武清 County booi (包衣 bondservant) of the Plain Yellow Banner, and Liu was an Imperial Household Department Manor Head. Liu Shilu was originally a civilian named Liu Simao 劉巳卯, who, seeking an opportunity to acquire land, changed his name to Liu Shilu. Liu registered as a bannerman under a Banner household and took on the position of Banner Manor Head before he was reported for fraud.

During the first trial, the Ministry of Justice 刑部 and the Imperial Household Department jointly ruled on the case based on the following “facts”: Liu Shilu's original name was Liu Simao; he was a grandson of Manor Head Liu Yuanzhao 劉元照 and son of Liu Zhi 劉埴; he was registered under the Banners, and not a son of the civilian Liu Kan 劉堪, as the public had accused him to be. After Liu Yuanzhao had retired, his nephew Liu Ying 劉塋 took over the Manor Head position. Later, Liu Ying retired due to old age and passed on the position to Liu Shilu. Wu Sigui and others had accused Liu Shilu of “buying a section of Banner land by working with various ‘reed household’ 葦戶Footnote ⁴⁴ people to illegally pawn out Banner land while Liu Shilu redeemed it without buying.” The Ministry of Justice ruled that the bannermen among the plaintiffs were to be punished for making a false accusation but handed over the civilians to the jurisdiction of the Zhili governor for punishment.

In 1787, because Wu Sigui and others were dissatisfied with the verdict and appealed again, the Ministry of Justice retried the case, with Hešen 和珅 as the presiding official. After Hešen interrogated him, Liu Shilu confessed that he was the son of Liu Kan (a registered civilian), a Gongsheng (scholar) from Wuqing County. Liu Kan's brother, originally named Liu Xian 劉壏 (a civilian), changed his name to Liu Zhi and illicitly entered the Banner register. After that, although officials had doubts about his status, they did not pursue the matter further due to the rule that “those who are in the Banner register are bannermen, those who are not in the register are civilians.” Liu Yuanzhao (a Banner person), a touchong Manor Head of the Imperial Household Department Plain Yellow Banner, was the uncle of Liu Kan and Liu Zhi. When Liu Yuanzhao was a Manor Head, he falsely reported having Liu Zhi as his son. After Liu Yuanzhao retired, his nephew Liu Ying (a Banner person) succeeded him. In 1766, Liu Kan and Liu Ying put Liu Shilu into the population register as the son of Liu Zhi. In 1784, Liu Ying retired, and the manor headship was taken over by Liu Shilu (who had already entered the Banner register). After Liu Shilu became the Manor Head, he identified several impoverished “reed households” and appropriated their Banner land through pawning. The case was ultimately resolved, and individuals such as Liu Shilu and others (both Banner and civilian) involved in the fraudulent entry into the Banner register were punished. Many officials were held responsible and handed over to the Ministry of Personnel to process their names, individually assessed for punishment. These included those who had been in charge of the population register since Liu Shilu entered banner register in 1766 as well as those who approved Liu Shilu's appointment as a Manor Head.Footnote ⁴⁵

The multifold Banner and civilian identities within the Liu family were bewildering (Figure 1). Liu Yuanzhao was a touchong Manor Head under the Imperial Household Department Plain Yellow Banner. Liu Yuanzhao had three nephews with different identities involved in this case: (1) Liu Kan, a civilian Wuqing County scholar; (2) Liu Kan's brother Liu Zhi, who was originally a civilian named Liu Xian but later changed his name and entered the Banner register; (3) Liu Ying, a Banner person. Liu Shilu, the protagonist of this case, was originally named Liu Simao and a son of civilian Liu Kan, entered the Banner register as a son of Liu Zhi. In summary, of the three generations of the Lius, two were officially classified as bannermen, while two of the remaining three—Liu Zhi and Liu Shilu—entered the Banner register, transitioning from civilian to the bannermen status.

Figure 1.

Liu Shilu's relationships and identity. In this figure, a single-direction arrow indicates a relationship between two people, a double-direction arrow indicates different identities of a single person.

The case of Liu Shilu and his family reveals that a clear and accurate population register was crucial for managing the replacement of manor personnel and that it played an important role in maintaining the stable development of the manor system. In this case, the register played a critical role in verifying the Banner status of Liu Zhi and Liu Shilu, whether it was for Liu Shilu's succession as a Manor Head or accusations against him for encroaching on Banner land. The primary principle that “those who are in the register are bannermen, and those who are not in the register are civilians” appears repeatedly in the Qing archives. However, it was precisely because the touchong population register was neither clear nor accurate in practice that individuals like the Liu men were able to circumvent the system, changing their civilian status to become bannermen and thereafter reap the benefits of being a Manor Head.

Abandoning the Banner Status and Claiming to be Civilian

In addition to civilians falsely claiming Banner status, there were instances of bannermen impersonating civilians as well. In 1760, due to the mixed residence of bannermen and civilians near Beijing in the jurisdiction of Zhili, many problems drew the attention of the Qianlong emperor. He asked for a check on “people in between the bannermen and civilians,” making the following remarks:

The Qianlong Emperor's statement explicitly indicates that, with regards to touchong people, the changing of status was bi-directional: there were civilians switching their status to become bannermen, and bannermen switching to civilian status. Such self-seeking, opportunistic switching of status seriously undermined societal order, and both Banner officials and prefecture-county administrations were hampered in their efforts to manage these status-switching populations (bannermen or civilians). The Qianlong Emperor requested a thorough investigation to rigorously differentiate bannermen from civilians and resolve the administrative ambiguity. The Qianlong Emperor noted particularly that participating in the Imperial examinations was an important motive for bannermen posing as civilians.

Since civilians and bannermen had distinct paths of social mobility, the chance to participate in civil service examinations as a civilian became an important incentive for touchong people to switch from Banner to civilian status. The civil service examination system was the most important avenue for upward social mobility in traditional Chinese society. After taking control of north China in 1644, although the Manchu rulers adopted the Ming dynasty's examination system for the recruitment of officials, the Qing also retained many traditional Manchu governance practices. The Qing court regarded bannermen as fundamental to the state and gave the highest honor to the Manchus. Regular bannermen—especially those who were Manchu and Mongol—had advantages in entering officialdom and in promotions. In addition to participating in the national imperial examinations, they had various opportunities for advancement, such as through military accomplishments, inheritance of hereditary titles or positions, prior service as imperial guardsmen or in translation work, success in the bitieshi 筆帖式 (as clerks), or enrollment in the Eight Banners official school or other similar institutions.

In contrast to regular bannermen, touchong people entered the Eight Banners as slaves. They had a strong personal attachment to their masters and faced many legal restrictions, such as in schooling, examinations, and officialdom. As an example of such restrictions, the Qing policy on whether touchong people could participate in imperial examinations did not directly move from prohibition to permittance, but repeatedly vacillated between “allowing them to take exams” and supposedly “permanently prohibiting” participation. Existing scholarship has paid more attention to the constantly issued prohibitions, and hence tended to conclude that at least at the institutional level, touchong people were prohibited from participating in imperial examinations. However, the Qing court's consistent reiteration of the prohibitions was prompted by ongoing real-life violations and the subsequent need for the state to address these issues.Footnote ⁴⁸

The case of Song Yu 宋鈺, a son of Imperial Household Department Manor Head Song Jiuyue 宋九岳 in Yutian County 玉田縣, typified the practice of switching from Banner to civilian status. Song Yu quietly transitioned to civilian status and became a Jinshi-degree holder in 1769. He alternated between the Banner register and civilian status multiple times, navigating through various twists and turns.

According to the archives, Song Yu's great-grandfather Song Hanhui 宋含輝 “voluntarily joined with land” in 1645 and became a qianliang Manor Head (錢糧莊頭) of the Imperial Household Department Plain White Banner. Song Yu's grandfather and father successively succeeded Song Hanui in this position. When Song Hanhui “voluntarily joined with land,” one plot of their land in Yutian County was too infertile to be enclosed and was not included in touchong. The family was thus registered with civilian household names and paid grain to the county office. Song Yu's father Song Jiuyue had two sons, the elder son Song Yu and the second son Song Jian 宋鑒. Song Jiuyue registered his second son under Banner status, but registered his elder son as a civilian. At a young age, Song Yu studied at the house of Song Jiuyue's father-in-law under the name of “Song Yu宋昱” and was not registered under Banner status.Footnote ⁴⁹

In 1743, Song Yu, in accordance with his father's wishes, took over the duty of paying grain while succeeding the Manor Head position. At the same time, he still took the civil service examinations under the name of “Song Yu 宋昱” in Yutian County. That is to say, Song Yu simultaneously served as a Manor Head under the Eight Banners system and participated in examinations, using two homophonic names written with different characters, “Song Yu 宋鈺” for the former and “Song Yu 宋昱” for the latter.

In 1751, the year of the regular population registration, the Imperial Household Department sent an official named Qin Laoge 秦老格 to supervise population registration. Song Jiuyue, afraid of being caught missing household members, reported into the register. Qin Laoge took his voluntary submission and registered Song Yu's name 宋鈺 as Song Jiuyue's son in the population register. Even after Song Yu reported into the Banner register, the name of the student Song Yu宋昱 registered with Yutian County was not removed. In 1753 Song Yu took the provincial examination under the name of “Song Yu宋昱” and became a successful candidate (juren 舉人) in the Shuntian provincial examinations. In 1761, he passed the highest national level of examinations, becoming an advanced scholar (jinshi 進士).

The scheme, already quite elaborate, did not stop there. In 1748, when it was time for another population registration, the Imperial Household Department sent Official Hai De 海德 to oversee registration. Song Yu, who had become a jinshi-degree holder, could not continue to be a Manor Head. He reported himself at Hai De's place, saying: “I was young and studying, and did not know how to perform errands. Afraid of making mistakes, I said that my brother Song Jian had always followed my father to pay money and grain and was familiar with performing errands, [so I] requested to let my brother Song Jian take over.” Hai De took his voluntary submission and allowed Song Jian to succeed Song Yu as the Manor Head. So far, the Song family had alternated between the Eight Banners and prefecture-county systems, taking advantage of the benefits from both.Footnote ⁵⁰

Only later was this case of status-switching finally exposed, when the population registration official Fu Ying 福英 discovered that Song Yu had entered civilian status and became a jinshi. Following usual procedure, Fu reported the case to the Ministry of Justice. In 1769, after officials had investigated the case, they ruled as follows:

This verdict indicates that Song Yu had the option to take the examinations as a bannerman through proper reporting. His reason for not taking this option remains unclear due to the lack of historical materials. Nonetheless, the Song family intentionally disregarded regulations and assumed civilian status, as evidenced by their use of two different but homophonic characters as names for different occasions. The Songs certainly saw considerable advantage in concocting such an elaborate scheme to elude the authorities.

In 1778, an imperial edict was issued to each province to check on military exiles who had passed ten years since their deportation. If the criminals had adhered to the law and met the criteria outlined in a 1746 case precedent, they were to be released and reinstated in the register.Footnote ⁵² In the eleventh month of the same year, an Urumqi official named Sonuomu Celeng 索諾穆策淩 reported that Song Yu “did not make any mistakes doing errands during these nine years.”Footnote ⁵³ The next year, Song Yu, now over sixty years old, was released and returned home after ten years in Urumqi. After that, he led a carefree life and ended his days indulging in poetry and wine.Footnote ⁵⁴

The relevant judicial authorities similarly resolved Song Jian's case in his favor. Concerning the Song family's plot of land, which paid its taxes to the prefecture-county system, the Ministry of Justice investigated and found that touchong Manor Head Song Jian (who took over Song Yu's position as the Manor Head) “now managed official land of eighty-eight qing and eighty-five mu, and the remaining land of three qing, four mu, two fen, one li.” This area of land “matches with the size of land in mu recorded in the Red Register when Song Yu's great-grandfather Song Hanhui originally ‘voluntarily joined’ the Banners.” As the investigation confirmed, the Song family's civilian land was “since the beginning and for a long time [had been] paying grain as civilian land to the county [administration], and was not a case of bannermen failing to report land to conceal grain, [and] using the loophole to take the land as private property.” In other words, the authorities concluded that the Song family did not intend to conceal the land to “avoid performing Banner duties or paying civilian grain tribute.” Subsequently, the Ministry of Justice ruled that “(this land) should still continue to operate as usual, paying civilian grain tribute to that county, and there is no need to propose alternative resolutions.” The Ministry then ordered Song Jian, who was at the time serving as a Manor Head, to continue farming the civilian land and paying grain in the prefecture-county system.Footnote ⁵⁵

This is a case of the touchong people taking on civilian status to participate in the imperial examinations. The civilian grain land owned by the Song family played an important role as a material element for Song Yu to exploit the system's loopholes, enabling him to transition into civilian status and take part in the examinations. In the local society of the Zhili countryside, it was rather common to find families or lineages that included both bannermen and civilians. Many individuals in Zhili's rural society, initially classified as civilians, joined the Banners through touchong. They strategically navigated both the Eight Banners and prefecture-county systems, manipulating regulations to their advantage, and effectively utilizing state structures to respond to and shape the systems in return. The contestation and cooperation among multiple forces, encompassing both state institutions and local communities, influenced the emergence and evolution of touchong as a distinct social group. In this process, it also shaped the dynamics of local society in the Zhili region.