Negotiation and Innovation: Artillery Technology, Ethnicity, and Formation of the Hanjun

Abstract: This article retraces the formation of the Hanjun Eight Banners – one of the three ethnic branches of the Qing Eight Banners system. Unlike most studies on the Eight Banners, which look from an imperial perspective, this study shifts the focus from the Manchu ruling house to the Han subjects, who were mostly bondservants in pre-conquest Qing times. Despite their servitude, these Han subjects, fully aware of the Qing’s need for the artillery knowledge they possessed, actively negotiated with the Qing court for socio-political privileges. This decade-long negotiation, centered around artillery technology, eventually led to the creation of the Hanjun Eight Banners. The negotiation approach highlights the historical agency of the subjugated ethnic group and demonstrates the extent and the limits of state power in devising its ethnic policies. It challenges the conventional notion that the Qing tactfully exploited ethnic differences to rule its vast and diverse subjects. It also demonstrates that the Qing’s flexibility in negotiating and compromising with different ethnic groups was key to its rapid rise in the seventeenth century.