Manchu Politicians

The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) and Qing (1636–1912) dynasties of China were established and ruled by the Manchus, who are descended from the Jurchen people who earlier established the Jin dynasty (1115–1234) in northern China.

Manchus form the largest branch of the Tungusic peoples and are distributed throughout China, forming the fourth largest ethnic group in the country. They can be found in 31 Chinese provincial regions. Among them, Liaoning has the largest population and Hebei, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Inner Mongolia and Beijing have over 100,000 Manchu residents. About half of the population live in Liaoning and one-fifth in Hebei. There are a number of Manchu autonomous counties in China, such as Xinbin, Xiuyan, Qinglong, Fengning, Yitong, Qingyuan, Weichang, Kuancheng, Benxi, Kuandian, Huanren, Fengcheng, Beizhen and over 300 Manchu towns and townships. Manchus are the largest minority group in China without an autonomous region.

Name

"Manchu" () was adopted as the official name of the people by Emperor Hong Taiji in 1635, replacing the earlier name " Jurchen". It appears that ''manju'' was an old term for the Jianzhou Jurchens, although the etymology is not well understood.

The ''Jiu Manzhou Dang'', archives of early 17th century documents, contains the earliest use of Manchu. However, the actual etymology of the ethnic name "Manju" is debatable. According to the Qing dynasty's official historical record, the ''Researches on Manchu Origins'', the ethnic name came from Mañjuśrī. The Qianlong Emperor also supported the point of view and even wrote several poems on the subject.

Meng Sen, a scholar of the Qing dynasty, agreed. On the other hand, he thought the name ''Manchu'' might stem from Li Manzhu (), the chieftain of the Jianzhou Jurchens.

Another scholar, Chang Shan, thinks Manju is a compound word. ''Man'' was from the word ''mangga'' () which means "strong," and ''ju'' () means "arrow." So ''Manju'' actually means "intrepid arrow".

There are other hypotheses, such as Fu Sinian's "etymology of Jianzhou"; Zhang Binglin's "etymology of Manshi"; Isamura Sanjiro's "etymology of Wuji and Mohe"; Sun Wenliang's "etymology of Manzhe"; "etymology of mangu(n) river" and so on.

History

Origins and early history

The Manchus are descended from the Jurchen people who earlier established the Jin dynasty (1115–1234) in China. The name Mohe might refer to an ancestral population of the Manchus. The Mohe practiced pig farming extensively and were mainly sedentary, and also used both pig and dog skins for coats. They were predominantly farmers and grew soybeans, wheat, millet and rice, in addition to hunting.

In the 10th century AD, the term Jurchen first appeared in documents of the late Tang dynasty in reference to the state of Balhae in present-day northeastern China. The Jurchens were sedentary, settled farmers with advanced agriculture. They farmed grain and millet as their cereal crops, grew flax, and raised oxen, pigs, sheep and horses. Their farming way of life was very different from the pastoral nomadism of the Mongols and the Khitans on the steppes. Most Jurchens raised pigs and stock animals and were farmers.

In 1019, Jurchen pirates raided Japan for slaves. The Jurchen pirates slaughtered Japanese men while seizing Japanese women as prisoners in northern Kyushu. Fujiwara Notada, the Japanese governor was killed. In total, 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 down. Traumatic memories of the Jurchen raids on Japan in the 1019 Toi invasion, the Mongol invasions of Japan in addition to Japan viewing the Jurchens as "Tatar" "barbarians" after copying China's barbarian-civilized distinction, may have played a role in Japan's antagonistic views against Manchus and hostility towards them in later centuries such as when 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 Manchus lived and thought the Manchus could invade Japan. The Tokugawa Shogunate bakufu sent a message to Korea via Tsushima offering help to Korea against the 1627 Manchu invasion of Korea. Korea refused it.

Following the fall of Balhae, the Jurchens became vassals of the Khitan-led Liao dynasty. The Jurchens in the Yalu River region were tributaries of Goryeo since the reign of Wang Geon, who called upon them during the wars of the Later Three Kingdoms period, but the Jurchens switched allegiance between Liao and Goryeo multiple times, taking advantage of the tension between the two nations; posing a potential threat to Goryeo's border security, the Jurchens offered tribute to the Goryeo court, expecting lavish 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. Khitan envoys among the Jurchens were treated to guest prostitutes by their Jurchen hosts. Unmarried Jurchen girls and their families hosted the Liao envoys who had sex with the girls. Song envoys among the Jin were similarly entertained by singing girls in Guide, Henan. The practice of guest prostitution – giving female companions, food and shelter to guests – was common among Jurchens. Unmarried daughters of Jurchen families of lower and middle classes in Jurchen villages were provided to Khitan messengers for sex as recorded by Hong Hao. There is no evidence that guest prostitution of unmarried Jurchen girls to Khitans was resented by the Jurchens. It was only when the aristocratic Jurchen families were forced to give up their beautiful wives as guest prostitutes to Khitan messengers that the Jurchens became angered. This probably meant only a husband had the right to his married wife while among lower class Jurchens, the virginity of unmarried girls and sex did not impede their ability to marry later. The Jurchens and their Manchu descendants had Khitan linguistic and grammatical elements in their personal names like 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 dynasty. After the fall of the Liao dynasty, the Jurchens went to war with the Northern Song dynasty, and captured most of northern China in the Jin–Song wars. During the Jin dynasty, the first Jurchen script came into use in the 1120s. It was mainly derived from the Khitan script. Poor Jurchen families in the southern Routes (Daming and Shandong) Battalion and Company households tried to live the lifestyle of wealthy Jurchen families and avoid doing farming work by selling their own Jurchen daughters into slavery and renting their land to Han tenants. The Wealthy Jurchens feasted and drank and wore damask and silk. The History of Jin (Jinshi) says that Emperor Shizong of Jin took note and attempted to halt these things in 1181.

In 1206, the Mongols, vassals to the Jurchens, rose in Mongolia. Their leader, Genghis Khan, led Mongol troops against the Jurchens, who were finally defeated by Ögedei Khan in 1234. The Jurchen Jin emperor Wanyan Yongji's daughter, Jurchen Princess Qiguo was married to Mongol leader Genghis Khan in exchange for relieving the Mongol siege upon Zhongdu (Beijing) in the Mongol conquest of the Jin dynasty. Under the Mongols' control, the Jurchens were divided into two groups and treated differently: the ones who were born and raised in North China and fluent in Chinese were considered to be Chinese (Han), but the people who were born and raised in the Jurchen homeland (Manchuria) without Chinese-speaking abilities were treated as Mongols politically. From that time, the Jurchens of North China increasingly merged with the Han Chinese while those living in their homeland started to be Mongolized. They adopted Mongolian customs, names, and the Mongolian language. As time went on, fewer and fewer Jurchens could recognize their own script.

The Mongol-led 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 began to summon the Jurchen tribes to pay tribute. At the time, some Jurchen clans were vassals to the Joseon dynasty of Korea such as Odoli and Huligai. Their elites served in the Korean royal bodyguard.

The Joseon Koreans tried to deal with the military threat posed by the Jurchen by using both forceful means and incentives, and by launching military attacks. At the same time they tried to appease them with titles and degrees, traded with them, and sought to acculturate them by having Jurchens integrate into Korean culture. Despite these measures, however, fighting continued between the Jurchen and the Koreans. Their relationship was eventually stopped by the Ming dynasty government who wanted the Jurchens to protect the border. In 1403, Ahacu, chieftain of Huligai, paid tribute to the Yongle Emperor of the Ming dynasty. Soon after that, Möngke Temür, chieftain of the Odoli clan of the Jianzhou Jurchens, defected from paying tribute to Korea, becoming a tributary state to China instead. Yi Seong-gye, the Taejo of Joseon, asked the Ming Empire to send Möngke Temür back but was refused. The Yongle Emperor was determined to wrest the Jurchens out of Korean influence and have China dominate them instead. Korea tried to persuade Möngke Temür to reject the Ming overtures, but was unsuccessful, and Möngke Temür submitted to the Ming Empire. Since then, more and more Jurchen tribes presented tribute to the Ming Empire in succession. The Ming divided them into 384 guards, and the Jurchen became vassals 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. Yishiha, who was a Jurchen eunuch slave in the Ming imperial palace after he was captured and castrated as a boy by Ming Chinese forces, was the one who led the Ming expedition into Nurgan to erect the stele and established the Nurgan Regional Military Commission.

In 1449, Mongol taishi Esen