IN THE CENTER OF IT ALL: A PASTORAL VIEW OF EMPIRE IN ASIA

Overlapping empires
To the visitor arriving by airplane, the vast grassland of Hulunbuir will feel as
remote as anywhere in the world. Traveling overland from Harbin or Chita makes
the distance (about 700 km in either direction) all the more tangible. The distance
of Hulunbuir from the great imperial centers might give the impression that the
region is free of state power, a northern version of the Southeast Asian highlands
that James Scott has characterized as ungovernable by the empires of the
lowlands.1 Yet up to the nineteenth century this seemingly isolated region had
been formally or informally part of four empires: the Mongol, Chinese Ming and
Qing, and Asiatic Russia. In 1932, it was incorporated into the Japanese Empire as
part of the client state of Manchukuo, and there it remained until the Japanese
surrender in 1945. Each of these empires brought to the region distinct interests,
threats, and opportunities. Peripheral and contested regions such as Hulunbuir
present a unique view of Asian empire, not the self-portrait of empire as an
integrated system, but the overlap of plural empires as a way of life.

<Fig 1: Asynchronous map of Hulunbuir, showing relation to historical empires>

The layered legacy of empire in Hulunbuir remains inescapable today. The
main city of Hailar boasts Chinggis Park, befittingly crowned by a statue of
Chinggis (aka Genghis khan) himself on horseback, and a large concrete cairn
(ovoo) where ethnic Mongols come to deposit stones carried from the
conquerors birthplace in neighboring Mongolia. Much of the surrounding
countryside is divided not into counties and districts, as would be the case in most
other parts of China, but rather into banners (qi), a system that derives ultimately

from the structure of the Manchu Qing military. Near the modern train station in
the bustling border town of Manzhouli, a small crowd of derelict wooden izba
(Russian style houses) stands as silent testimony to the history of Russian imperial
interest in the China Eastern Railway. The 1901 completion of this line first threw
open Hulunbuir to investment and to contention, as Moscow, Beijing, and Tokyo
each spent the next four decades trying to pull the region into their spheres of
economic and military control. The extent of this rivalry remains visible in the
remains of Japanese-era fortifications just outside of Hailar, and the preserved site
of the 1939 Nomonhan Incident (also known as the Battle of Khalkhin Gol), a
defeat that convinced imperial Japan to seek peace with the Soviet Union. Since
1949, the region has been part of the Peoples Republic of China, which has itself
been accused of a neo-imperialist policy of flooding ethnic minority regions
such as Hulunbuir with Han Chinese settlers and tourists.
<Fig 2: Picture of cairn, Chinggis Park, Hailar>

<Fig 3: Closeup map of Hulunbuir>

Defining empire
If we are to understand places like Hulunbuir as sites of imperial overlap we
must first address some fundamental issues about empire itself. The first is
literally one of language: talking about empire in Asia is itself an exercise in
circular logic. The terminology of empire, and the foundational ideas of what
empire is and does, draw overwhelmingly from Western historical experience,
particularly the two prototypical examples of Rome for the ancient world and
Britain for the modern. Adapting these ideas to fit the political aspirations of
thirteenth-century Mongol tribes, the commercial networks of Malay maritime
traders, or the wandering of Buddhist monks up and down the trade highways of
Central Asia is a task that we must approach with the greatest care.

It is, however, worth doing, if only because the fact and image of empire as an
identifiable political type are so integral to the historical vocabulary. The language
and symbols of empire echoed across Europe for centuries after the decline of the
Roman imperium, and retained an evocative currency deep into Africa and
Western Asia. European visitors took this symbolism with them on their voyages
of discovery, referring to distant Asian lands as empires, regardless of whether
they desired to connote civilizational grandeur or political tyranny, or simply as a
placeholder term for any large polity that they did not yet understand. As
European ventures took on a global character, they added new meanings that
eventually supplanted the ancient world as the point of reference for the idea of
empire. When in 1868 Japan named itself an empire (even creating a new term in
its own language for the occasion), it was clearly thinking of the image of Britain
more than it was of Byzantium or ancient Rome. By the end of the nineteenth
century, the idea of empire had global currency. Three decades after Japan
declared itself an empire, neighboring Korea followed suit, an act that referenced
admiration and apprehension of Japan itself. (The latter was certainly warranted:
after just over a decade, Japan would go on to annex the peninsula.)
Empire is an evocative concept, but not a unitary one. The term carries with it
such strong iconic value that the library of historical writings on empire is itself
an archive of sorts, one that shows the different ways that empire as an ideal has
been used as a mirror (often a dark one) reflecting the issues of the day.
Eighteenth-century political philosophers used the tyrannical or enlightened rule
of distant Asian emperors as a straw man in their debates over political ideals at
home.2 Such critiques became more focused as the center and stakes of empire
moved from Asia to Europe. Both Adam Smith and Karl Marx condemned British
imperialism, but they did so for very different reasons. Whereas Smith treated the
acquisition of American colonies as the unsustainable dream of venal
monopolists, Marx focused instead on the moral injustice of the enterprise,
claiming that the British plunder of India far exceeded in brutality the worst of
their Asiatic antecedents.3 For each, empire was a symbol, a cautionary tale, and
an embodiment of ideals betrayed.
Although the idea of empire lost much of its nominal legitimacy in the wave
of decolonization after the Second World War (no political system today would
refer to itself as an empire), the term continues to wield considerable symbolic
power. This is in popular usage in part because it can act as an empty signifier.
The same people who implicitly understand the meaning of Ronald Reagans
1983 characterization of the Soviet Union as an evil empire, or American
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfelds assertion that we [the United States]
dont seek empires, were not imperialistic will still speak with admiration of
empires of fashion, taste, or commerce. The new era of American dominance at
end of the Cold War, with the subsequent entry of the United States into a series
of military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, was a factor in the resurgence
of scholarly interest in empire as a mode of political organization. However, even
this wave of critical scholarship was not free of the pull of iconic and occasionally
reductive images of empire. During the years after the 2005 US-led invasion of
Saddam Husseins Iraq, classic accounts such as Edward Gibbons Decline and

Fall of the Roman Empire, enjoyed a resurgence of both popular appeal and
scholarly citations. Tales of imperial degeneration continue to appeal to a wide
array of constituents, each of whom sees in them a very different set of historical
lessons.4
There is value to seeking in empire a set of rules and typological patterns.
Perhaps the most sweeping view comes from Michael Doyle. Doyle addresses the
full range of causal explanations for imperial development: an explosion of
energies from the center (Lenin, Schumpeter); instability or weakness at the
periphery (Gallagher and Robinson); or an international system unable to
accommodate a dramatic power imbalance between regions. He terms these
causal forces metropolitan, pericentric, and structural, respectively, and sensibly
concludes that all three must be present, and further that they mutually shape each
other.5 Some scholars have divided historical empires into types and families,
distinguishing, for example, the aims and trajectories of outward-looking
seaborne empires such as Britain and Spain from the layered sovereignty of land
empires in Central Europe.6 But these big images of empire are still by and large
drawn to and from very specific moments in European history. Even the field of
postcolonial studies, devoted as it is to recapturing the lost voices of empire, is
disproportionately concerned with the experience of former British colonies. Yet
as this volume makes abundantly clear, the phenomenon of empire encompasses a
far broader set of arrangements than the Western experience alone.
The challenge, then, is to discover what sort of patterns and expressions might
be specific to the eastern two-thirds of Eurasia. We may anticipate a certain
degree of similarity with the European experience of empire. In addition to
necessary functions such as defense, any sufficiently large and complex polity
would also face the particular challenges of balancing central oversight and local
autonomy, and managing internal diversity so as to channel aspirations and
energies towards the center. Other similarities can be tied to waves of
transformation, such as advances in communication, transportation, or technology,
and particularly of the rise of the state form that would eventually supplant empire
as the political norm.7 Complicating the idea of typologies is the fact that empires
did learn from and emulate one another, and in this sense, it is possible to speak of
an evolving global form. Yet surface similarities may mask causalities and
conflate independent processes and concerns that may in reality have been
coincidental or even antagonistic. Apparent similarities, for example in the
colonial policies even of contemporaries such as British Malaya and Japanese
Taiwan might denote either something fundamental to the behavior of states in a
system or the copying of policy between neighbors. But it is just as likely that
such similarity might represent two very individuated paths to the same point,
with differences in motivations and aspirations intentionally masked by the appeal
to the universal language of empire.
Conversely, much of what makes individual systems unique may be traced to
cultural norms or material constraints. Distinct paradigms and idioms of rulership,
legitimacy, and authority evolve and accrete over the rise and fall of successive
polities, becoming embedded in the languages and cultures of kingship.8 The

institutions of rule will reflect the realities of productive ecologya sparsely

populated mountain region will obviously operate under different constraints than
a cosmopolitan city-state. But here again the problem is one of causality. It is one
thing to say that a state will organize itself so as to overcome resource
deficiencies, and another to say, as would Marxs Asiatic mode of production,
or Wittfogels idea of hydraulic empires, that these realities are truly the source
of cultural expectations or political mindsets, particularly when such ideas
themselves outlast changes in ecology or production.9 The question remains:
without veering into determinism, can we find in the combination of historical
accident, cultural preference, and ecological constraint one or more uniquely
Asian experiences of empire?
Empires and states
What was it about places like Hulunbuir that allowed different systems of
power to coexist? One reason may be the simple limits of power extension, but at
least as important was how the diversity of political interests and idioms allowed
different systems to co-occur without direct confrontation. Here the current state
system provides a useful point of contrast; while the parameters of empire are
subjective and shifting, the rules of the nation state are fixed by a global
diplomatic order that both legitimates and dictates this form like it does no other.
The legal personhood of a state rests on objective criteria. The 1933 Montevideo
Convention on the Rights and Duties of States defines these as a permanent
population, defined territory, functioning government, and the capacity to enter
into relations with the other states.10 Such a description will no doubt strike the
modern reader as a very sensible description of government, and indeed all have
been generally accepted at least since the mid-twentieth century. Yet although
intentionally written to be expansive, these definitions do come with political
values attached. The artificial permanence of the state form, as expressed in
criteria such as stable borders and populations, requires a radical reshaping of
society to conform to political parameters. Borders are set and made absolute.
Populations are fixed, and languages, histories, and identities are reworked so that
the mythos of the nation can expand up to, but not past political boundaries.
Precisely because these definitions of the state are not value free, they become
interesting at the point that they no longer work. Conditions such as a permanent
territory and population, for example, are easily adapted to much, but not all, of
the early modern world. Both would have been largely workable in the core
agrarian regions of Europe or East Asia, where land is the primary foundation of
wealth, but far less so in places like the pastoral lands of Hulunbuir, where land is
plentiful but largely unsuitable for intensive agriculture, and where wealth is
counted in herds of stock that must remain seasonally mobile. The same
ecological constraints that make meaningless the idea of settled populations
within fixed borders also shape the nature of authority. Unable to coerce stable
revenue from sources such as land tax, political power in a pastoral setting grows
instead out of the ability to command the fealty of a population that can literally
walk away from unpopular rule. It does so by appealing to a different set of

virtues: ties of personal allegiance cemented by bonds of kinship, the charisma of

the ruler, and the lavish gift giving that was a hallmark of Chinggisid rule.
If the statecraft of the grasslands is foreign to the post-imperial order of the
twentieth century, it was equally so to its own agrarian contemporaries. The Ming
and Qing were stable bureaucracies that were based primarily in the interests of
agriculture, but each one claimed suzerainty over large regions of grassland.
Although the Ming emphasized separation and subjugation of the frontier, and the
Qing voiced the relationship as a treaty alliance with its banner Mongols, both
created policies to keep the pastoralists at a distance, while at the same time
preventing the encroachment or rise of rival military powers, and ensuring the
steady supply of strategic grassland commodities such as horses. Most important,
despite the overt hostility of the Ming and apparent friendliness of the Qing, both
dynasties were content to exert what authority they could through native
structures, rather than attempting direct administration. Whether due to ecological
constraints, an understanding of ethnic difference, or simply the logistics of ruling
people who were very far from the center of power, Chinese dynasties exerted
only a partial and mediated influence over regions such as Hulunbuir.
In the same way, the pastoralists themselves viewed the Chinese center as
both a threat and an opportunity, and moreover not the only one. There was little
cost in expressing fealty to China. Their supposed overlords were far away, and
made relatively few material demands, and the connection to China brought
opportunities for trade. The cost of nominal fealty actually declined as dynastic
power weakened, a fact that explains why other weak empires such as the later
Mughal were able to remain together in the absence of a strong rival. On the other
hand, the Qing always remained vigilant towards the possibility that their allies
might be pulled away towards an alternate center of power. They were right to be
concerned. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, both Russia and the
Khalkha of Outer Mongolia actively tried to court the loyalty of the Barga
Mongols in Hulunbuir. There were always alternate opportunities for those on the
periphery of empire.11
The layering of authority in Hulunbuir reveals the overlap of very different
sorts of power. Well into the twentieth century, Hulunbuir, positioned at the center
of the grasslands and on the periphery of the agrarian world, negotiated two very
different political idioms, neither of which corresponds neatly to the totalizing
conventions of the modern nation-state. The completion of the Russian railway
brought the region into range of a competing agrarian core, as well as adding a
third incipient idiom, that of state-led developmentalism.12 Internally, the type of
rule that grew out of the grasslands was politically and economically fluid, far
more so than the modern state, with its pretentions to permanence and naturalness,
could accommodate. In effect, power on the grasslands coalesced to meet
opportunity, and shrank as its component pieces drifted away. The Ming and Qing
were realistic about the military threat the Hulunbuir Mongols represented, but
also treated them as part of Chinas own internal periphery, one which would be
allowed to remain essentially self-governing, so long as no competitive power
appeared on the horizon.

Material foundations
Political forms grow to suit the nature of material conditions. The difference
between agrarian and pastoral empires was fundamentally one of resources, both
productive and strategic. Chinese empires used the wealth of the agrarian surplus
to build stable political institutions. The Mongols used the pasture as a productive
resource, but drew their military strength from a strategic domination of space.
We may see a similar sort of difference separating the settled agrarian
bureaucratic states of China and Russia from the fluid polities of the steppe, as
well as from the shifting polities of the Southeast Asian mainland. The grassland,
like the sea, is a resource in its own right, and a highway of commerce linking and
in some ways dominating densely settled agrarian regions. Thus, Anthony
Disneys prescient separation of seaborne empires from maritime powers, i.e., the
use of the sea as a productive resource or a strategic one, holds equally true for
the coalitions of powers of and in archipelagic Southeast Asia, as well as for the
oceanic Pacific.13
The question of resources shapes the viability of that most imperialistic of
political acts, territorial expansion. Looking at the depictions such as those on
Trajans Column, with its images of treasure-laden Roman soldiers returning to
the capital, it is easy to imagine imperial aggression being its own reward.
Sometimes it was. Plunder was indeed a source of income for Rome. One
estimate claims that Romes military predation brought fifteen to twenty thousand
slaves per year into the capital.14 At least for a time, plunder justified the cost of
the military, and motivated Rome to continue to push outward. In the words of
Catherine Steel, A year with no conflict was a year in which Rome was not
exploiting its power to the full. War was a means of collecting tax. 15 However, as
Roman expansion moved beyond the wealthy lands adjacent to the Italian
peninsula itself, the dividends of conquest grew comparatively smaller, and less
easily transported, and there was little to be materially gained in moving further
beyond already troublesome borders. 16 While military victories did provide a
political boost at home, the empire did not rely on conquest to balance its books.
Rome reached its greatest territorial extent in the early second century, and
continued to thrive for two hundred years after continued expansion had ceased to
be profitable. There are many ways for individuals to profit from war, and many
strategic reasons to engage in violence, especially in the pursuit to acquire
specific commodities or to deny them to competitors.17 But as a state strategy,
predation works best in times of instability or transition, and is by definition only
temporary.
Trade was a resource, but one that came with political costs. Commerce
brought wealth to the realm, and material benefit to the state. Merchant houses
could be taxed, made to pay for state-sanctioned monopolies, or asked to perform
services, such as helping to coordinate the movement of goods. Traders spread
word of imperial glory, and brought in new ideas. On the other hand, merchant
interests could easily run counter to those of the state. Political elites had to

remain vigilant against merchants who evaded tax and smuggled contraband.
There was always a threat that the power of money would prove too great for the
state to control, such as when merchants used their wealth to act above their
station, to bribe corrupt officials, or to extract political concessions in return for
financing the kings wars.

Destination

Jas commerce was a resource for empire, empire was a resource for
commerce. Empire backed trade but also directed its flow. Merchant houses
benefitted from the security and administrative infrastructure that empire created.
The Silk Road that connected China to the Mediterranean flourished during
periods when great powers such as Tang China or the united Mongols were able
to enforce a peace (and like the Southeast Asian kingdom of SriVijaya, to actively
promote trade) across vast swathes of Central Asia.18 The explosive growth of
oceanic trade during the late nineteenth century owed much to advances in
transportation and communication (transatlantic transport costs fell roughly 60 per
cent between 1870 and 1900 alone), but these developments would have meant
significantly less without the guarantee of security provided by the global reach of
the British and other imperial navies.19 At the same time, empires restricted trade
by prohibiting the export of strategic commodities or precious metals, limiting the
numbers of licensed trading houses, or banning commerce with certain regions.
But even with these limitations, the convenience of remaining within one political
system or trading with countrymen using the same laws and language was a
powerful incentive to channel commercial activity into the nodes and networks of
empire itself. Despite the rhetoric of free trade, the commerce of the British
Empire flowed disproportionately to its own settlements, colonies and dominions:
Argentina, Australia, Canada, and India together absorbed five times as many
British exports as the United States in 1913.20 The private money of the London
markets preferred lending to British colonies for apparently no other reason than
the greater trust they placed in British rule.21 The connections forged by empire
can long outlast it. Even today, the flow of foreign direct investment continues to
reflect the lingering influence of empires long since disbanded, with a small but
perceptible tendency for British investment to remain within the Anglosphere
(including former colonies in southern Africa, from which American interest is
notably absent), and a marked preference for Central and South America as a
destination for investment originating in Spain (Table 1).

UK
Australia
United States
Europe
Southern Africa
Central

3.6
21.
8
40.
2
5.1
4.0

Source of investment
USA Franc German
e
y
4.1
0.2
0.3
11.7
4.7

Spai
n
0.25
9.5

45.4

62.0

81.0

61.4

0.6
13.1

2.1
0.8

0.0
0.6

0.3
7.5

America
South America

2.4

5.2

3.8

3.6

24.5

<Table 1: Destination of FDI 2003-2012, measured as a percentage of national

total. Source: OECD International direct investment database, available online at
http://stats.oecd.org. Data accessed 1 August, 2015.>
What about the economic footprint of empire on the ground? Who benefits
from imperial integration, and who pays the price? One argument claims that
empire disproportionately benefits its periphery by opening global markets, while
providing investment and good administration that are financially supported by
the imperial center. Another (referring to what might be called economic
imperialism) argues just the opposite: that empire by that or any other name
allows states or politically leveraged investors to exert an unfair advantage over
colonies, systematically stripping colonies of resources and capital, and coercing
them into relationships that make them dependent on the imperial center.22 There
is little common ground between these two perspectives and even less point in
trying to debate them in the abstract. In fact, the diversity of such relationships is
itself an effective warning against seeking a unitary image of empire. Rather, to
understand the drivers, advantages, and costs of empire, we must understand in
detail the range of interests that connect imperial centers and peripheries, and the
specific nature and degree of political advantage that empire creates.
Like political empire, the waves of material interest in Hulunbuir were highly
individuated, each representing a distinct mix of concerns, threats, and
opportunities. The grasslands had for centuries been linked to agricultural core
regions in China, Korea, and Manchuria through a number of lucrative trade
networks in which the region sold animal products, particularly wool, processed
hides and pelts, and bought grain, tea and cloth. This circulation increased during
the period of Mongol unification, when newly created walled outposts came to
serve as markets for Chinese, Uighur, and other traders.23 In contrast, the Ming
aimed not to integrate the region, but to separate it, surrounding the grasslands
with fortifications, delineating a no-mans land in which settlement and
agriculture were forbidden, and restricting trade to thirteen horse markets on the
Mongol border (a similar policy was also used by Chosn Korea). 24
Despite their more cordial relationship, the subsequent Qing continued to
control trade with the Mongols. In a decree of 1696, it abolished the Ming horse
markets, and instead restricted trade to eight merchant houses, who paid for the
privilege. The bottleneck of trade rights not only raised revenue for the dynasty, it
also gave them willing partners to help enforce a ban on the import of metals,
which could be used for weapons. (Conversely, the dynasty also waived tax on the
import of necessary items such as coffins.) At the same time, the Qing also
depended on the merchant houses for logistics: three times during his long reign,
the Kangxi emperor (r. 1651-1722) commissioned Shanxi merchants to ship grain
and fodder to troops stationed in the region. This highway of provisions,
conveyed by two hundred thousand conscripted laborers, itself became a major
source and destination of trade.25

The completion of the CER threw open the region to a new and entirely
different sort of opportunities. While the old model had made money on
conveyance, the new availability of transport shifted value instead to production
and processing. Within a few years, new Russian and Chinese banks, merchant
houses, and export-oriented ventures in mining and timber had become
established in the city of Hailar and the border boomtown of Manzhouli.26 Trade
flowed both east and west. The construction of the CER did not trap Hulunbeier
in a relationship with a better-developed center; to the contrary, it opened the
region to competing markets in Russia and China. Access to new markets vastly
expanded the regions volume of traditional animal exports, but seems to have had
little effect on productivity. While the arrival of Russian (as well as Buryat)
settlers did introduce some innovations, such as new cattle breeds, traditional
practices for the most part remained in place. The greatest beneficiaries of
increasing demand were undoubtedly the Barga pastoralists themselves, whose
herds grew steadily over the next two decades (Table 3). Chinese and Russian
entrepreneurs invested in tanning works in Hailar and Manzhouli, keeping the
value of processing within the region.27 This new prosperity was reflected in daily
life. While a source from 1908 had lamented the expense of importing every
grain of rice from great distances, the increase of railway traffic made necessities
such as cloth and foodstuffs ever cheaper.28
Not everyone benefitted. The reliance on foreign markets directly exposed the
region to the effects of external shocks such as the chaos of the Russian
Revolution, the instability of externally issued currency, and the global economic
depression of 1929. Chinese merchant houses were displaced, not by empire as
such, but by their own compatriots, the better organized houses from Harbin who
were able to leverage capital and their access to the railway. New trade networks
disrupted old ones. Japanese investigators who visited the annual market at the
Ganjuur Temple in 1912 recorded massive exchanges of cattle, horses, and wool.
By 1938 the market, separated from the railroad and bypassed by new exchanges,
was a pale shadow of its former glory (Table 2).29
Cow
s

Horse
s

Sheep

Camel
s

191
2

6,000

1,500

15,00
0

90

192
4

3,000

2,500

3,000

60

192
6

1,700

1,500

5,000

50

193
8

1,183

589

3,454

<Table 2: Declining volume of trade at the Ganjuur Temple Market. Note:

citation appears at end of previous paragraph>

The more overtly developmental influence was not in the grasslands, but
rather to the east of the Xingan Mountains, where pasture gradually gave way to
agriculture. While the pastoralists saw only an increase in the volume of trade, the
completion of the railroad introduced Hulunbuirs farmers to new ways of life,
particularly if they produced for the global market. In 1905, agriculture was
devoted almost exclusively to grain for local consumption. By the late 1920s, land
under cultivation had roughly doubled, and was 40% planted in soybeans, the
export crop that had become a mainstay of the Manchurian economy, driving
improvements in the production, sale, and transport of agrarian produce.30 Here as
well, there were losers. The farmers almost complete dependence on the railway
for exports narrowed the choice of buyers to a few conglomerates, while existing
industries ranging from commercial houses to moneylenders were squeezed out
by better capitalized competitors, particularly those from Japan.31 But
overwhelmingly, the gains outweighed losses. Even the decimation of markets
during the Great Depression did not affect farmers as much as it did the capitalintensive processing industries (such as flour milling and oil pressing), which
were disproportionately owned by foreign interests.32
The late 1930s saw yet another face of empire, as Japanese-controlled
Manchukuo incorporated Hulunbuir into a command economy that centered on
serving the needs of the Japanese military. Massive areas were thrown open to
cultivation. Between 1935 and 1942, the total area of farmland increased from
610 thousand to two million mu (approximately 40,000 to 130,000 hectares).33
Rice-growing agrarian colonies (including a number of frontier villages
[kaitaku mura] founded by settlers brought in from Japan or Korea) were
established throughout Manchuria, including newly opened farmlands in and
around Hulunbuir.34 As part of a Soviet-inspired Five Year production plan,
Hulunbuir itself was given a target quota of cattle, sheep, and wool, but at a price
that was set so artificially low that many preferred to slaughter their stock rather
than selling it. By the time of the Japanese surrender in 1945, the numbers of
horses and sheep had fallen to less than a third of what they had been in 1906.35
Cattle

Horses

Sheep
and goats

190
6

124,41
8

170,17
2

1,460,87
6

192
5

170,68
8

180,89
6

1,597,99
5

193
7

200,80
9

175,59
2

1,167,07
2

194
6

105,30
4

50,192

540,422

<Table 3: Herd size in Hulunbuir, 1906-1946, Source: Hulunbeier meng zhi

[Gazetteer of Hulunbeier] (Hailaer: Nei Menggu wenhua chubanshe, 1999): 790792 (note: citation can appear here or at end of previous paragraph)>.
The point is that there is no simple way to characterize the material drivers or
impact of empire in Hulunbuir. This one region saw the full range of imperial
policies designed to develop or discourage trade, state development, and resource
extraction. The material motivations of empire changed over time, and were
experienced differently by each sector of the population; growth in one area did
not necessarily come at the expense of another. One thing that is clear is that
economically as well as politically, Hulunbuir was both periphery and center of
very different sorts of relationships.
Empire and culture
The culture of empire presents two aspects: the internal expression of
legitimacy and hierarchy, and the external face that empire presents to the world.
The former begins with the culture of kingship. Within Asia some differences in
internal cultural expression become quickly evident. Bruce Lockhart contrasts the
Theravada Buddhist emphasis on the personal karmic virtue and authority of the
sovereign with the dynastic emphasis and thus greater continuity of the Sinic
model. A similar distinction might be made about other expressions of
personalized versus delegated or bureaucratic rule, but these are difficult to pin
down to imperial types. Jack Faireys description of Turco-Persianate rule, for
example, shows the integration of elements from both traditions.36 In each of these
traditions, the court itself is an embodiment of the culture of rule. Courtly cultures
were living repositories of classical languages and traditions, and centers of
learning. The desire of a succession of imperial rulers to gather all the knowledge
of the world under the roof of the palace (the Chosn printing of the Buddhist
Tripit a ka, the great encyclopedic compilations of the Ming Yongle and Qing
Qianlong emperors, or the great libraries of Istanbul, Agra, or London)
intellectually reflects the universalizing pretensions of the empire. Highly literate
societies invariably portrayed the sovereign as a great patron and lover of
knowledge. Of the illiterate Mughal Akbar, it was said that there are no historical
facts of past ages, or curiosities of science, or interesting points of philosophy
with which his Majesty, a leader of impartial sages is unacquainted. He does not
get tired of hearing a book over again, but listens to the reading of it with more
interest.37 The court itself was a repository of classical manners, languages, and
traditions, although the elaboration of these traditions was itself sometimes a sign
that both intellectual energies and real power had moved elsewhere.
As heterogenous political entities, empires would have to manage or at least
explain the logic behind their own internal diversity. There would be no avoiding
hierarchy. Explanations and management of hierarchical structures might be based
on mobile cultural signifiers such as the Hua-Yi (often translated as
Chinese/barbarian) discourse that Ming China used to embody its own sense of
civilizational superiority both to its neighbors and to the less civilized internal

minorities within its own borders.38 Or hierarchy might be racially conceived, as it

was, for example, in Spains New World empire (with a new vocabulary of
quadroons, octoroons and quintroons to precisely denote proportions of African
descent). However, the sprawling nature and internal diversity of empire could
also pull in the opposite direction, away from hierarchy and towards the notion
not so much of principled equality as of the equal responsibility of the sovereign
to the many people of the realm. Such an attitude explains the ability of highly
religious polities such as the Ottoman and Russian empires to incorporate
confessional diversity, not merely within their borders, but also within their own
political worldview. Although sultan and tsar were each legitimated as protectors
of the faith, they also cultivated an alternate, but strictly compartmentalized,
legitimacy based on their duty to care for their non-Muslim and non-Orthodox
subjects.39 In the same way that imperial rule often relied on the cooperation of
local elites and indigenous aristocracies, empire did not erase cultural differences.
By supporting existing structures and hierarchies, it often strengthened them.
Externally, political empire often relied on what would now be called soft
power, the use of culture to entice people to support the imperial project. The
monuments and architecture of the capital physically displayed the strength,
inevitability, and necessity of empire, motivating city dwellers and visiting
provincials alike to devote their own energies to the imperial enterprise. Schools
and missions served as two-way bridges, spreading the culture and language of
the imperial center to the provinces, and drawing upwardly mobile provincials to
seek their fortunes and status in the capital. Both during and well after the heyday
of the British Empire, institutions such as Eton and Oxford inculcated in a global
diaspora of colonial elites a set of shared tastes, manners, and experiences. Even
when some of these same elites came to lead the struggle against empire, they
never lost the ability to operate in the imperial world and speak in its language.
Earlier versions of this phenomenon can be seen throughout premodern Asia: the
use of Byzantine and Hellenic cultural referents throughout Western Asia, the
persistence of Persianate culture as the unifying discourse of the Mughal court,
the circulation of Buddhist missions between Korea and Japan, or the elaborate
expression of Confucian fealty on display in diplomatic communication with
China.
But culture is not merely a tool of imperial governance, nor is it ever under the
complete control of the state. The interests of private cultural actors sometimes
coincide with those of political empire, and sometimes oppose them. Like
commerce, religion was always a double-edged sword; missionaries were
sometimes the foot soldiers of empire, and sometimes its greatest nuisance.
During the nineteenth century, France unilaterally placed the Catholic Church in
Asia under its diplomatic protection, and was subsequently able to use the
persecution of missionaries as a pretext for military action in Indochina and
Korea. But these inroads came at a price. French minister to China Alphonse de
Bourboulon expressed his annoyance that missionaries who were sure of military
backing came to totally lack prudence, seeking out conflict with no regard for
the effect on French interests and prestige.40 Missionaries were politically
influential in the capital. Congregants and well-wishers who would never

personally experience the physical sprawl of empire received many of the clearest
and most visceral images of distant lands from mission publications and reports.
In this capacity, some missionaries acted as successful cultural interlocutors,
completing monumental feats of scholarship in ethnography and translation, both
literal and cultural. Others, quite often the same missionaries who clamored most
vocally for diplomatic protection abroad, had no qualms about presenting highly
exaggerated images of darkness and depravity in order to increase donations to
mission coffers and to arouse the outrage of their home congregations for use as
political leverage.
These issues are separate still from the question of cultural imperialism, a
term that often has more rhetorical than analytical value. Similar to the idea of
economic exploitation, the problem with cultural imperialism is that it conflates
the overt actions of empire in promoting certain elements of culture with the
positional advantage enjoyed by private cultural actors who operated under the
imperial umbrella. The latter might (like the aforementioned missionaries) appeal
to legal or diplomatic structures to help them in local disputes, but the advantage
need not be so visible, nor take the form of overt conflict. Rather, the efficiency of
cultural exports may be so great that the sheer ubiquity of an imported culture
allows it to overwhelm and displace local ideas and values. Such logic drives
criticism of what has been called global McDonaldization, the claim that
American mass consumer culture is intentionally made to be so cheap,
convenient, and easily available that it essentially destroys competitors by
flooding marketsthe cultural equivalent of dumping.41 However, this analogy
must be strictly qualified. Unlike economic imperialism, which has clear winners
and losers, cultural flows are more fluid, more layered, and ultimately subject to
interpretation. No political power can truly dominate culture.
However, these are modern examples. Would things have worked differently
in a premodern setting, in which the spread and reception of culture moved much
more slowly? Although places like Hulunbuir had circulated material culture for
centuries, the most significant cultural flows before and during the period of
Chinese dynastic rule took the form of migration to and from the region, and these
massive population movements were all directed by empire. Under Mongol rule,
the region was politically divided between vassals, who moved their populations
accordingly. The Ming and Qing each took steps to restrict the flow of Han
migrants, but they did so for completely different reasons. The Ming aimed to
isolate the pasturelands as part of its policy of purging Mongolian customs (the
same policy that threatened with exile Chinese parents who cut their childrens
hair in Mongolian fashion).42 The Qing, in contrast, aimed to protect the
pastoralists from being overwhelmed by Han settlers, although it did relent
somewhat during the late nineteenth century, allowing limited cultivation of new
lands to the east of the Xingan range.43 At the same time, empire moved different
groups of Mongols into the area, particularly for defense. Following a practice
developed by Chinggis, the Yuan brought tens of thousands of Mongol
households to the region, to herd during peacetime and defend during war.
Immediately after the Treaty of Kiakhta in 1727, the Qing began moving

populations of Barga, Daur, Oroqen and Solon to resettle the region along the
newly established Russian border.44
The new migrants brought with them culture, most visibly religion. The
Mongols, who by way of an alliance with Tibet had adopted Lamaist Buddhism in
the sixteenth century, brought their religion with them in a very tangible way by
importing large numbers of lamas. The three thousand Barga Mongols who were
resettled from the Setsen Khanate in 1734 brought with them no fewer than 157
lamas. Fifty years later, this same banner completed the Ganjuur Temple (with the
characters for the Chinese name written by the Qianlong emperor himself), and
other banners built lamaseries over the course of the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries.45 As the trickle of Han migrants grew more pronounced
during the nineteenth century, they founded a complex of visibly Chinese temples
in and around the growing city of Hailar.46 In contrast to its commercial interest,
Russian cultural influence in the region was distinctly muted. Here as in much of
the Chinese Northeast, the Russian Orthodox Church operated primarily within
communities of Russian settlers and sojourners. Unlike the massive missionary
undertakings of the Catholic and Protestant churches, the Russian Orthodox
clergy had very limited interest in expanding the local church beyond the handful
of Russian villages that dotted the Hulunbuir border.47 Rather than spreading their
own culture, Russian (and later Soviet) agents chose instead to appeal to Mongol
separatism to chip away at Chinese influence in the region.48
Beyond facilitating the movement of populations, the Qing and its subsequent
states both manipulated and ornamentalized the marks of internal cultural
distinction. Qing emperors appealed to the distinct political idioms of Tibetan
Buddhism (for example by literally painting the emperor as a reincarnation of the
bodhisattva Majur) and disbursed titles and awards to Mongol leaders. But
these gestures may have carried more importance for the self-image of Qing itself
than it did for the Mongols on the ground.49 Although the dynasty demanded
fealty, the preservation of ethnic difference meant that in most matters imperial
authorities gave banners a wide berth, as well as allowing the lama institution to
grow far more elaborate than it did in areas under direct administration.50 The
dynasty also gave legal weight to ethnic customs in matters such as family or
commercial disputes, a policy that was continued by the subsequent Republic, and
actually enhanced by the Japanese Manchukuo regime, which based its own
legitimacy on the idea of the managed ethnic harmony of the five races (usually
expressed as Han, Mongol, Muslim, and Japanese/Korean). Manchukuo was so
invested in local customs that it created a separate legal system for its Mongol
provinces, and organized massive ethnographic projects to collect information on
marriage and inheritance practices in preparation for writing local practices into
its new civil code.51
A similar dynamic of managed cultural diversity remains visible today,
perhaps even more so than it did during the period of formal empire. Soon after its
founding, the Peoples Republic of China fixed ethnic identities through a series
of Soviet-inspired classificatory campaigns, and contemporary Chinese policy
continues this tradition of simultaneously protecting and engineering ethnic

identities.52 Although there is no question that ethnic minorities receive immense

consideration in terms of education and materials needs (particularly the exclusive
access to the grasslands given to Mongol pastoralists), China has also faced
intense international criticism for its attempts to exert state authority over Tibetan
Buddhism, as well as to fence in and resettle former nomads.53 Most tellingly, the
current state continues to promote the image of harmonious ethnic diversity. It has
been unapologetic in its attempts to co-opt the history and culture of its ethnic
minorities, painting a somewhat implausible picture of conquerors such as
Chinggis grandson Khubilai as heroes of the Chinese people, and selling the
image of the exotic frontier both at home and abroad. The road from Hailar to
Manzhouli is strewn with hotels built to resemble yurts and promising Chinese
tourists a taste of canned life on the grasslands. Mongol culture has become a
commodity.54
Conclusion
Looking back on seven centuries of empire in Hulunbuir, the discontinuities are
impossible to overlook. Even if the region was itself rather too remote to warrant direct
conquest, Hulunbuir visibly shifted orientation a number of times, each one integrating it
into new networks of fealty and tribute, culture and commerce. At the same time, the old
networks did not vanish entirely, but rather continued to exist and evolve as new empires
added new layers of connections, symbols and loyalties. Of course empires could and did
clash. Hulunbuir was militarily contested, even if much of the actual the fighting took
place elsewhere. The material surplus of the region, particularly its valuable animal trade,
was politically controlled by the Ming and Qing, sought by Russia, and aggressively
extracted by Japan. At a more symbolic level, the memory of past empire was a potent
weapon for those seeking alternatives: Chinggis remained a potent symbol of Mongol
unity to secessionist movements well into the early twentieth century.55 But overlap did
always produce antagonism. Russia and China each established individual, and largely
non-conflicting commercial interests. For centuries, such suzerainty as imperial China
could claim rested on the compliance of local structures. Even now, Beijing exerts
authority through political forms that retain at least the nominal distinction of ethnic
autonomous rule.
The lessons of Hulunbuir can be transported to similar sites of imperial overlap
such as the Caucasus, Yunnan or the Malay Peninsulabut they also suggest that notions
such as core and periphery need to disaggregated. From an agrarian perspective,
Hulunbuir was undoubtedly a periphery, but it has been and remains very much the center
of certain industries, most notably of stockbreeding. The cultural world of the
pastoralists, of which memory (accurate or not) of empire remains a vital part,
undoubtedly centers on the history and geography of the grassland, while urban centers
like Beijing or Shanghai are at best places to sojourn for work and study. Even in the
capital, empire is always plural.
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1Thanks to Tomoko Akami, Arouna, Aurore Dumont, Jack Fairey, Misako Suzuki, Jinping Wang,
Zhang Wei. ARC Grant supported the authors first trip to Hulunbuir.
James C. Scott, The art of not being governed: an anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).
2 A very different set of images was created by Europeans in the precolonial era. Kim M. Phillips,
Before Orientalism: Asian Peoples and Cultures in European Travel Writing, 1245-1510 (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014).
3 Karl Marx, The British Rule in India, New York Daily Tribune 1853. Available at
[https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/06/25.htm] Accessed 1 September 2015. Adam
Smiths extensive critique of mercantilist policy by Britain and others appears in the chapter On
Colonies, Book IV, Chapter 7 of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,
Available online at <http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN.html>.
4 Paul Kennedy among others has made the connection between the overreach of past empires and the
predicament facing the United States. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and
Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York, NY: Random House, 1987).
5 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Available online a <
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ > (Accessed 15 June, 2014). Hobson, J.
A., Imperialism: a study (London: J. Nisbet, 1902). Schumpeter, Joseph A. The Sociology of
Imperialisms. In idem, Imperialism and Social Classes. Ed. and introduction by Paul M. Sweezy (New
York and Oxford: A.M. Kelley Blackwell, 1951). Gallagher, John, and Ronald Robinson, The
Imperialism of Free Trade, The Economic History Review, New Series, 6, 1 (1953), pp. 1-15. Michael
Doyle, Empires (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986).
6 A. I. Miller, and Stefan Berger (eds), Nationalizing empires (Budapest: Central European University
Press, 2014).
7 Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference
(Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2010) examines critically the often assumed trajectory from
empire to nation. See also A. I. Miller and Stefan Berger. Building Nations in and With EmpiresA
Reassessment in idem (eds). Nationalizing empires: 1-30.
8 On the development of Sanskrit as a political language, see Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the
Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India (University of California,
2009).
9 Karl A. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism, A Comparative Study of Total Power (Yale University Press,
New Haven, 1957). For a history and critique of Marxs Asiatic Mode of Production, see Chun Lin,
China and global capitalism: reflections on Marxism, history, and contemporary politics (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 17-40.
10 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States. Text available at the website of the
Council on Foreign Relations. http://www.cfr.org/sovereignty/montevideo-convention-rights-dutiesstates/p15897 <accessed 11 September 2015>
11 Sren Urbansky, Tokhtogos Mission Impossible: Russia, China, and the Quasi-independence of
Hulunbeir, Inner Asia, 16, 1, pp. 64-94. David Atwood. State Service, Lineage and Locality in Hulun
Buir, East Asian History, 30 (2005), pp. 5-22. FV
12 The idea of the developmental state was first used in reference to the industrial reconstruction of
postwar Japan, but draws on an earlier legacy of political legitimation based on the promise and
institutions of economic and social development. See Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese

miracle: the growth of industrial policy, 19251975 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982); and
Meredith Woo-Cumings (ed), The Developmental State (Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 1999).
13 David Armitage and Alison Bashford (eds), Pacific Histories: ocean, land, people (Basingstoke,
Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
14 Peter Fibiger Bang, Predation, in Scheidel, W. (ed) The Cambridge companion to the Roman
economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 200-202.
15 Catherine Steel, The end of the Roman Republic, 146 to 44 BC: conquest and crisis (Edinburgh,
Scotland: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), p. 66.
16 M. I. Finley, Empire in the Greco-Roman World, Greece & Rome, 25 (1978), p. 8; Mireille
Corbier, Coinage and taxation: the state's point of view, A.D. 193337 in Alan Bowman, Averil
Cameron, Peter Garnsey eds., The Crisis of Empire, AD 193-337 (Second edition), Volume 12 in
Cambridge Ancient History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 328.
17 Philippe Le Billon, Wars of Plunder: Conflicts, Profits and the Politics of Resources (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2012).
18 Michal Biran, The Mongol Transformation: From the Steppe to Eurasian Empire Medieval
Encounters, 10, 1-3 (2004).
19 Lundgren, Nils-Gustav, Bulk Trade and Maritime Transport Costs: The Evolution of Global
Markets. Resources Policy 22, 1 (1996), 5-32.
20 John Ravenhill, The Study of Global Political Economy, in idem. (ed). Global Political Economy
(Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 9.
21 Niall Ferguson and Moritz Schularick, The Empire Effect: The Determinants of Country Risk in
the First Age of Globalization, 18801913 The Journal of Economic History, 66 (2006).
22 For different iterations of this basic theme, see V. Lenin, Imperialism, William I Robinson,
Globalization and the sociology of Immanuel Wallerstein: A critical appraisal, International
Sociology 26, 6 (2011), and Utsa Patnaik, The Free Lunch: Transfers from the Tropical Colonies and
their Role in Capital Formation in Britain during the Industrial Revolution, in K. S. Jomo (ed) The
Long Twentieth Century: Globalization Under hegemony: The Changing World Economy (New Delhi,
New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
23 Zhao Yue, Gudai Hulunbeier [Ancient Hulunbuir], Hailar: Neimengu wenhua chubanshe, 2004, pp.
156-157, 241-244.
24 Michael J. Seth, A history of Korea from antiquity to the present (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield,
2011), p. 144.
25 Ma Hongxiang, Hulunbeier l Mengshang [Mongolian itinerant merchants of Hulunbuir] (Hailar:
Nei Menggu wenhua chubanshe, 2010), p. 7.
26 Notably the Harbin-based Bank of Manchuria (Dong sansheng yinhang). Cheng Tingheng, Jiafan
Zhang, Hulunbeier zhi le [Draft gazetteer of Hulunbuir], 1923, repr. (Hailaer: Tianma chubanshe,
2012), p. 211.
27 Hulunbeier meng er qinggongye bianzuan weiyuanhui. Hulunbeier meng er qinggongye zhi
[Gazetteer of secondary industries in Hulunbuir] (Hailaer: Nei menggu wenhua chubanshe, 1989), p.
26-29.
28 Cheng, Hulunbeier zhi le, p. 109.
29 The Ganjuur market is described in Ma Hongxiang, Hulunbeier l Mengshang, pp. 55-100. Chart
from page 79. Original data on this market are recorded in a series of Japanese consular reports:
Kanjru shi [Ganjuur market] 1924, National Archives of Japan, item ref: B12083628300; Kanjru

ichiba [Ganjuur market] 1930, B08061603700; and Manshkoku Kanjru teiki ichi [Manchukuo
Ganjuur periodic market], pt. 1, 1931, B08061754900, and pt. 2, 1940, B08061755000.
30 Hulunbeier Meng shizhi bianzuan weiyuanhui, Hulunbeier Mengzhi [Gazeteer of Hulunbeier
league] (Hailaer: Nei Menggu wenhua chubanshe, 1999), pp. 898-900.
31 Opinions differ on whether Japanese domination of the soybean market developed or exploited
agriculture, the accusation for the latter being that consignment purchase trapped farmers in a cycle of
debt. This debate was played out in the early 1970s in Herbert Bix, Japanese Imperialism and the
Manchurian Economy, 1900-31 The China Quarterly 51 (1972); and Ramon H. Myers and Herbert
Bix, Economic Development in Manchuria under Japanese Imperialism: A Dissenting View, The
China Quarterly 55 (1973). On the role of the railway in the marketing of agrarian produce see
Yasutomi Ayumu. Teikiichi to kenj keizai1930 nen no zengo ni okeru Mansh nson shich ni
okeru tokuch, [Periodic markets and the economy of the county towncharacteristics of Manchurian
rural markets before and after 1930] Ajia keizai 43-10 (2002).
32 Tim Wright, The Manchurian Economy and the 1930s World Depression, Modern Asian Studies
41, 5 (September 2007).
33 Hulunbeier meng zhi, p. 872.
34 On the agrarian cooperative movement, see Manshu noson gassakusha undo no ronso [Collected
writing on the Manchurian agrarian cooperative movement] (Harbin: Hinksh kyn gassakusha
rengakai, 1941).
35 Cite here or after Figure 3
36 BL and JF cite?
37 Abul Fazl Allami. Ain-i-Akbari, Volume 1, Chapter 85. Tr. H. Blochmann (Calcutta: Asiatic
Society of Bengal, 1873).
38 Another variation of the division between Hua and Yi was that between Fan and Han. Yang, Shaoyun, Fan and Han: The Origins and Uses of a Conceptual Dichotomy in Mid-Imperial China, ca. 5001200, in Francesca Fiaschetti and Julia Schneider (eds) Political Strategies of Identity Building in
Non-Han Empires in China (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014).
39 PW and JF, Howard Eissenstat. Modernization, Imperial Nationalism, and the Ethnicization of
Confessional Identity in the Late Ottoman Empire in Miller and Berger (eds) Nationalizing empires.
Robert D. Crews, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2006).
40 Jean-Paul Wiest, Catholic activities in Kwangtung Province and Chinese responses. PhD diss.
University of Washington (1977): 42-48. On the complex interaction of French diplomatic and
missionary interest in China, see Ernest P. Young, Ecclesiastical colony: China's Catholic Church and
the French religious protectorate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
41 The idea of McDonaldization was first coined in George Ritzer in his eponymous The
McDonaldization of society (Thousand Oaks, Calif: Pine Forge Press 2004). The influence of this
thesis, combined with the global ubiquity of McDonalds restaurants has been reflected in subsequent
scholarship, such as James L. Watson, Golden arches east: McDonald's in East Asia (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1997), as well as the use by magazines such as The Economist of the local
cost of the Big Mac sandwich as a semi-serious global pricing index of purchasing power. See
<http://www.economist.com/content/big-mac-index> (accessed August 21, 2015).
42 WJP
43 Hulunbeier meng zhi, pp. 872, 875-877.
44 Zhao Yue, Gudai Hulunbeier, pp. 217-218, 302-303. Atwood. State Service, pp. 6-8.

45 Zhao Yue, Gudai Hulunbeier, pp. 329-330.

46 Cheng, Hulunbeier zhi le, pp. 186-189.
47 Song Xiaojian. Hulunbeier bianwu diaocha baogao shu [Report of an investigation of Hulunbuir
border affairs]. 1908, repr. Tianma 2012: 36-38.
48 Urbansky, Tokhtogos Mission Impossible.
49 Johan Elverskog, Our great Qing: the Mongols, Buddhism and the state in late imperial China
(Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2006).
50 Cheng, Hulunbeier zhi le, pp. 186-187.
51 These surveys and the Manchukuo policy of ethnic pluralism are discussed in Thomas David
DuBois, Inauthentic Sovereignty: Law and Legal Institutions in Manchukuo Journal of Asian Studies.
69, 3 (2010).
52 Thomas S. Mullaney, Coming to terms with the nation ethnic classification in modern China
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).
53 See for example Andrew Jacobs, China Fences In Its Nomads, and an Ancient Life Withers New
York Times
54 On the commodification of minority culture in China, see Donald Sutton and Xiaofei Kang.
Recasting Religion and Ethnicity: Tourism and Socialism in Northern Sichuan, 1992-2005, in Thomas
David DuBois (ed), Casting Faiths: The Construction of Religion in East and Southeast Asia, (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2009).
55 Urbansky, Tokhtogos Mission Impossible.