Transformation of the legal status of the Mongol lands that became part of the Manchu provinces during the creation of Heilongjiang, Liaoning and Girin

Dudin Pavel Nikolaevich ORCID: 0000-0002-9407-8436 Leading scientific fellow at the Institute of Mongolian, Buddhist and Tibetological Studies of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences 670000, Russia, Republic of Buryatia, Ulan-Ude, Borsoeva str., 13, sq. 31 dudin2pavel@gmail.com Other publications by this author

Bazarov Kirill Yur'evich Researcher, Pacific Institute of Geography, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences 690041, Russia, Primorsky Krai, Vladivostok, Radio str., 7 kbazarov@mail.ru

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Inner Mongolia represented a state-legal phenomenon, since at the heart of its structure it retained semi-independent feudal principalities – Hoshuns, ruled by appointed central authorities in Beijing, but, in fact, hereditary monarchs, Dzasaks – representatives of the ancestral aristocracy, streams of Genghis Khan or his closest relatives. The Dzasaki received their status and privileges in 1636 after a congress in Chifyn, which gathered the sovereign southern and eastern Mongolian rulers, princes and khans, from the principalities of Khorchin, Jalayt, Gorlos Kharchin, Tumet, Aohan, Naiman, Bayrin, Onyut, Zharud, etc. and he elevated the Manchu emperor Abakhai to the Great Khan throne with the title of Bogdo Khan ^{[1, p. 2]} (Great Khan), thereby ensuring his succession to the empire of Genghis Khan. Despite the fact that the transfer of the sovereign rights of the princes of Southern and Eastern Mongolia (Khingan) to the Manchus deprived them of what we call external sovereignty, inside their possessions they remained full-fledged masters, whose duties were to observe a few ceremonial functions in relation to the supreme general imperial power. As a result, their descendants continued to rule their Khoshuns until the Communists came to power in 1949.

We believe that, based on our own historical and theoretical research in this field ^[2],  During the period of joining the Qing Empire and before 1914, we can characterize Inner Mongolia as an autonomous state, which is a political organization that, having the main array of signs of a sovereign state, had a contractual defect of external sovereignty, which gave it the right to fully exercise the appropriate prerogatives for organizing domestic policy in accordance with the ancient way of life but it did not allow to be a full-fledged subject of international law and international relations.

The atypical legal status also created the need for a special system of external management through a specially authorized authority endowed with extensive and peculiar powers. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, they were carried out by the Department/The Chamber of Management of Dependent Territories (Lifanyuan//Tulergi golo-be dasara dzhurgan), which A. L. Leontiev called the Dzhurgan of the outer regions ^{[3, p. 48]} / Dzhurgan, which manages the outer regions ^{[3, p. 72]} and which was assigned part 51 in "Taiqing gurun..." ^{[3, p. 266-277]}. The peculiarity of this body was that, firstly, there were no analogues to it in previous eras either in China or in other states of the region. Established in 1636 as a division of Li Bu, Mongol Yamun/Meng Jurgan, already in 1639, while expanding its influence by subordinating the power of the Manchus of Tibet, Qinghai and Xinjiang, the Department was named Lifanyuan and already in 1661 it became the seventh Department equivalent in status to Liu Bu institutions. Over time, his powers included contacts with Russia, but in 1861, with the formation of the State Imperial Chancellery, all foreign policy issues were transferred to a new institution. In 1907, Lifanyuan's status was changed to a ministerial one, and with the establishment of the republic, it was transformed into the Commission for Mongolia and Tibet Affairs headed by Prince Gunsennorov ^[4].

Based on the uniqueness of the legal status of the Mongolian lands, a unified system of internal management is being formed. Its essence boiled down to the following. Inner Mongolia was divided into a kind of military districts – the sejms, of which there were 6. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the sejms had turned from military administrative institutions into coordinating structures that helped the imperial authorities manage these vast spaces.  As a key tool for ensuring manageability, there were seimas congresses held every three years, at which the head/chairman, called "chigulganu-darga", who still had to be approved in Lifanyuan, and his deputy (dead-chigulganu-darga) could be elected, governing bodies were formed, authorized issues were resolved (in the field of justice, accounting of the population, prompt response to certain situations related to the violation of law and order, etc.).

The direct power of the ancestral aristocracy, which retained its possessions of ancestral territories under the Manchus, was henceforth limited to the small principalities – the Hoshuns, whose number was constantly increasing, splitting up the Mongolian space and thereby reducing the likelihood of separatist actions that could threaten the empire from within. So by the beginning of the twentieth century. In Inner Mongolia, there were 49 Hoshun principalities (in 1691 there were only 8 of them). At the head of the hoshun was dzasak, a sovereign (within the framework of his powers, which did not go beyond the general imperial framework and the powers of the Sejm institutions) ruler, approved by Lifanyuan, as a rule, from among the closest representatives of the same family, which implements the functions of appointing its administration, distributing pastures among nomadic subjects, regulating the movement of third parties through its hoshun, organizing a hoshun militia and attracting subjects for this, administering justice, collecting taxes and distributing duties for the next period. Operational management was provided by the Hoshun administration – the council of Hoshun or Tamga.

The intermediate link between the Sejm and the Khoshun organization of power was the aimaks – larger formations than the principalities, whose membership was dictated by the close kinship of certain princes and the presence of common ancestors among them in the relatively recent past. Thus, the Khoshuns of Inner Mongolia were united into 24 aimags, usually 2 or 3 in each. For example, in the Shilin-Gol Sejm (on the border with Outer Mongolia) The Sunite aimag included the left-hand hoshun of Tsung-sunit/Tsung-Sunit hoshun of tsasaka Turun-he-jun-wang and the right-hand hoshun of Barun-sunit/Barun-Sunit hoshun of Tsasaka Turun-durun-he-jun-wang, and in the Zhosot/Zhasaktu Diet in southwestern Inner Mongolia, Kharachinsky The aimag included Tsung-harachin/ Kharachin hoshun tsasaka hoshunai base/ Kharachin of the left wing, Barun-harachin/ Kharachin hoshun tsasaka dureng-he-jun-wang/ Kharachin of the right wing and Dunda-harachi/Kharachin hoshun tsasaka hoshunai base/ Kharachin of the middle/central wing. It could also be that the aimag consisted of a single hoshun, as was the case in the Zhu-Ud Diet in the southeast, where the Aimag of Aohan was also the Aohan hoshun of the tsasak of Turun-he-jun-wang. In turn, Their Zhu Diet in the south of Inner Mongolia consisted of one aimag - Ordos, which included 7 Khoshuns, etc.

However, the situation has changed dramatically since the 1880s, with the weakening of imperial power, when the ancient Manchurian-Mongolian agreements on the inviolability of the Mongolian steppes for settlement by residents of the so-called "walled" China were violated. The events that changed the legal status of the Mongolian lands were called Chinese colonization, as we have already written about in our previous works ^{[5, pp. 301-304; 6, pp. 482-484]}. As a result, on the one hand, in the Mongolian territories, along with the traditional one, a parallel Han government system is being formed, which provoked a series of "sovereignty parades" on the periphery in the first months of the Xinhai Revolution, which led to the fall of Outer Mongolia (Khalkha) in 1911 and Barga in 1912, as well as an attempt to join them numerous Khoshuns of Inner Mongolia. Legally, the starting point of this ambiguous process, which over the next 30 years will bring many disasters to both the Mongolian and Chinese populations, should be considered December 1901, when "Jianjun Sabao presented to the throne a report on the need and importance of settling the railway strip from Harbin to Hailar." In the spring of 1902, after his approval by the emperor, the allotment of the lands of the Mongolian khoshuns of Durbet, Northern Gorlos, Jalait and Zhasait (Khorchinsky right wing of the front Khoshun) began. The settlers turned out to be residents, as a rule, of the southern and central provinces, who moved with their families and relatives, receiving extensive allotments for plowing and processing, which narrowed the grazing area and deprived the Mongolian population of the opportunity to lead a traditional lifestyle, moving deeper into the region. The next legal step was the creation in 1907 of three provinces on the ancestral lands of the Manchu emperors: Heilongjiang, Jilin/Jilin and Fengtian/Liaoning. However, in addition to the Manchurian spaces proper, the territories of the new provinces were overgrown with the Mongolian territories of the eastern sejms, which were integrated into the national system of Han government with the destruction of the ancestral way of life in them and the disappearance of some Hoshuns. In 1914, a new administrative reform followed, dividing the territory of the Mongols of the central and western Sejms into a number of administrative regions, three of which included Inner Mongolia itself: Suiyuan, Chakhar and Zhehe. Chinese counties were formed in these territories, which were no longer subordinate to the dzasaks, but to the provincial governors, and accordingly the entire management system was being restructured. It turned out to be a kind of superstructure of the Han state bodies of territorial administration over the ancestral Mongolian institutions, in which the power and privileges of the Dzasaks in the Khoshuns controlled by them were not formally abolished, while the territory of the Khoshun itself was reduced or completely redeemed, which led to its liquidation.

An illustration of this unique transformation process is the maps of Mongolia ^[7] and Manchuria ^[8], compiled under the guidance of V.I. Surin, which we have already described ^{[9, p. 89]}. The map data in geoinformation format was uploaded to the ArcGIS Pro 3.0.1 software environment. Two polygonal vector thematic layers were created that described the boundaries of the khoshuns and counties, respectively, and one point layer displaying the position of the princes' stakes. In many cases, the borders of hoshuns and counties are confined to the borders of hydrographic objects or roads (including railway lines). When drawing the borders, modern data (in vector format) on administrative and municipal borders, roads and hydro grid facilities were used. For example, the border between the Khoshuns of Jalait and the Northern Gorlos passed along the Nonni River (modern Nenjiang) – the location of the modern riverbed was used to draw the border. The work also used a map of Mongolia by I.Y. Korostovets ^[10], which also underwent a spatial reference procedure and was uploaded to a GIS environment. It was this map that was used as a source of data on the location of princely stakes (a kind of nomadic "capitals" of the Khoshuns) and the position of the borders of the principalities that were not on V.I. Surin's maps. Based on them, we will consider the process of changing the legal status of the Mongolian lands in Manchuria in more detail.

So, Shengji/Fengtian Province/ Liaoning/ Mukden province (according to some publications of the CER ^{[11, p. 98]}), V.I. Surin's map is marked with the Latin numeral III and there were: khoshun Darkhan-WAN (No. 130), without isolation of Chinese counties, all territory within the jurisdiction of zazaca; khoshun Tushetu-WAN (No. 131), in the Eastern States which created the County with the possible center in the city of Tea-Yu (Kai-Hua-Zhen) (map V. I. Surin County captures the South-Eastern lands of khoshun, but that is basically the whole of its southern part, which also became part of the Manchurian provinces); most of the khoshun was not divided into counties, and remained in the jurisdiction zazaca; khoshun Jacanju-WAN (No. 132), on the southern half of which, as pointed out by V. F. Didochok, was originally created by 2 of the County: Kiton-Yang with its center in the city of Cayton and Qing-an-Hsien (on the map V. I. Surin not detected), then was annexed to the County of Li-Quan sun ^{[12, p. 29]} (obviously, in its territory on the map V. I. Surin is the city of Du Quan and the County captures part of the border of the North-Eastern land of khoshun Tushetu-WAN), however, we see another 2 County: Tao-Nan Tao-Nan Xiang (Tao-Nan-fu); the Northern part remained in the jurisdiction zazaca; khoshun Carcass-guna (No. 133), on the southern half of which was created 2 counties with the possible centers in cities Zhen-Dong and Anh-Guang-Xiang with center'an Guan; the Northern part remained in the jurisdiction zazaca; khoshun Bo-Wang (No. 134), with 6 counties in the South and East (with the possible centers in the cities of Caen-Ping, Chan-Tu-fu or Kai-yuan etc.); the Western part remained in the jurisdiction zazaca; khoshun Bintu-WAN (No. 135), the center of which converge 3 Chinese County (Zhang PU, FA-a-Boo etc.), and the third of the territory remained in the jurisdiction zazaca.

Heilongjiang Province/ Qiqihar Province (according to the same edition of the CER) – V.I. Surin's map is marked with the Latin numeral I and there were: hoshun Zhalait (b/n, with the name on the map of V.I. Surin) with 3 counties (with probable centers in Jing-Xing-Zhen, Tailaixian and Tahu (Liang-jia-za-dian)); hoshun Northern Gorlos (b/n, with the name on the map of V.I. Surin) with 7 counties, 2 of which (in the north and east) went beyond the borders of the principality; of these, obviously, 4 northern belonged to the former. hoshun Durbet, whose territory is marked on the map of V.I. Surin as the territory of Northern Gorlos; hoshun Durbet (present on the maps of I.Ya. Korostovets and P.N. Menshikov, absent on the map of V.I. Surin, but he also has an indication on the map of P.N. Menshikov of the prince's headquarters in the western corner near the Miao shrine and the city Tailaixian) with 4 counties (the centers in the cities of Linglian, Xing-Lung-Zhen (located outside the principality), Anda, etc.), assigned to the territory of Northern Gorlos on V.I. Surin's map.

Finally, the province of Jilin / Jilin – on the map of V.I. Surin is marked with the Latin numeral II and within its borders there was hoshun South Gorlos (b/n, with the name on the map of V.I. Surin) with 5 counties.

As we could see when comparing these maps and the information available in the publications of the CER, in most cases the borders of the formed counties were confined to the borders of the Hoshuns (principalities) and formed within their borders, but in some cases the counties were "cross-border", for example: most of their two three counties on the territory of Bintu-Wan were located in the territory of neighboring Hoshun Bo-Wan; the county in the north of Bo-Wan also extended into the territory of the principality of Zhasaktu-Wan; in the central part of the principalities of Zhasaktu-Wan and Tushetu-Wan there was a county crossing their borders; in Northern Gorlos, counties in the north and east crossed the borders of Hoshun. Of the ten Hoshuns considered in the work, half (Durbet, Jalait, Tushetu-Wan, Northern and Southern Gorlos) had the prince's headquarters located in the territories of the counties, and the Prince Bintu-Wan's headquarters were in the immediate vicinity of the border. The headquarters of the princes of Northern and Southern Gorlos were also located in close proximity to the borders of "mainland" China.

At the same time, the data obtained indicate that the territorial organization of Northeastern China within the borders of the former polity of Manchuria (Dongbei) and in the eastern part of Inner Mongolia in its current state, after the imposition of maps by I.Ya. Korostovets and V.I. Surin, partially preserved the historical boundaries of smaller units such as the aimag Khingan and The aimag of Shilin Gol, the urban district of Hulun Buir, as well as numerous modern hoshuns existing on the site of former Mongolian principalities (e.g. Shine-Barga-Yuqi in Hulun Buir or Jalaid/Jalait–Qi in Khingan). Thus, in our opinion, the leadership of the People's Republic of China, when building its national policy both at the initial stage of the formation of socialist statehood and today, is trying to ensure the stability and continuity of its statehood to the ancient institutions of public power and its territorial organization.