Manchu was the name that a number of united Jurchen tribes took in the 17th century in present day Manchuria. Manchu being an identity rather than a race, the Manchu cultural group contained mostly Jurchen but also Koreans, Ming Chinese deserters and frontiersmen, Mongolians and others.

The Jurchens were originally a shamanic warrior people that lived mostly off hunting and fishing. They gained considerable wealth through the trade in furs and other animal deratives as well as products such as ginseng to Russia, China and Korea. It is remarkable that even though they did settle themselves, they did not develop any agriculture until as late as the 16th century. Their main tool for both hunting and fishing was their composite bow. The Jurchen tribes lived in small communities that worked together as hunting parties. Local landlords, the Beile, led the hunts and controlled the villages and often also had control of the local arrow production. As was the case with the different Mongol tribes, Jurchen tribes were known to opportunistic and frequently raided and fought with other Jurchen settlements.

In the early 16th century a particularly charismatic and cunning leader, Nurhaci, changed this and managed to unite the different quarreling Jurchen tribes under his command. He established the latter Jin dynasty, harking back to the early Jurchen Jin state that had conquered much of northern China from the Chinese Song empire until both the Song and Jin were destroyed by the invading Mongols who founded the Yuan dynasty.

Nurhaci ordered many reforms, under which the formulation of a Manchu script that was going to be used to govern his state. He also divided the tribes under an administrative system of banners, which would later become the administrative institutions under which all Manchu households were divided; the Eight Banners. He set out to reclaim the old Jin lands from the Ming but got fatally wounded during an attack on Beijing. His ambitious son, Hong Taiji, took over and changed the name of Nurhaci's latter Jin into Qing. Qing, meaning "pure" in Chinese and having associations with the word "warrior" in Manchu, was a name that worked well for both sides. The Manchus succeeded in taking Beijing in 1644 and set out to conquer the rest of China in the decades following.

The Manchu Qing dynasty did not stop expanding after conquering the whole of Ming China, it even expanded China's borders to unprecedented vastness in the 18th century under a number of expansive campaigns led by the Qianlong emperor. Ultimately the Qing dynasty governed over 36% of the world's population and was the largest empire that has ever existed by this criterium. It is then notable that their unique composite bow remained one of the central weapons in the Manchu army, being effectively used to deal with armies who already relied much more on firearms.

During almost the entire duration of the Qing dynasty, Manchu "bannermen" were garissoned in walled cities inside Chinese cities or at strategic points all over the empire, and in the capital's inner city, guarding the Imperial Palace. The Manchus remained a warrior elite that were government sponsored, and enjoyed priviliges like exemption from torture. They lived in these walled cities, strictly separate from the Chinese population, almost until the very end of the dynasty.

In the 19th century, the combination of a number of internal rebellions and the arrival of Western Imperialists with modern firearms finally proved the Manchu warrior system, who were often still better with bow and arrow than with firearms even in the latter half of the 19th century, to be obsolete. In the late 19th century the Qing began to train troops with Western equipment and tactics. The bow was eventually taken out of the military system, but only as late as 1901. In 1911 the Qing empire fell entirely and made place for nationalists and later the communists. Now, less than a century later, only two hundred native Manchu speakers are left. The Manchu culture and its traditions perished almost completely in the tumults of the 19th and 20th centuries. During the Cultural Revolution the last remnants of their long standing archery tradition got cut off, only to regain interest recently.

The true history and culture of the Manchus may have went lost in time, would it not be for a new generation of scholars in the West who study Manchu language and culture like none had done before. Their new revisionist history shows a distinctly different image from official Chinese sources: a very own Manchu identity instead of assimilation into Chinese culture in an early stage as was so often assumed. Interest in the Manchus is slowly being re-awakened among the general public by this new research, providing a firm basis on which we can rebuild their archery tradition.

by Peter Dekker

Selected sources
Elliott, Mark C. - The Manchu Way
Heath, Ian - Armies of the 19th century: China
Struve, Lynn A. - Voices from the Ming-Qing cataclysm
Crossley, Pamela Kyle - Orphan Warriors
Crossley, Pamela Kyle - The Manchus