URTUULY

1636/1691 – 1911

Under the Manchu Qing · Манж Чин улсын эрхшээлд

Inner Mongolia submitted to the Qing in 1636, the Khalkha at the Dolonnor assembly of 1691. Two and a half centuries followed of frozen banner borders and a monastic economy: the destruction of the Dzungars, demographic decline, foreign rule. When the Qing collapsed in 1911, Mongolia declared independence.

Dated from 1636, when Inner Mongolia submitted. For Khalkha the date is 1691, the assembly at Dolon Nor.

Mongolia was not sovereign in this era, so the map shows it as a highlighted region within the Qing, not a fake border. Date precision: 1635, Ejei surrenders the seal; 1636, Qing proclaimed with Inner Mongolian recognition; 1691, Khalkha submission.

This period has a page and its sources; the scroll-through chapter is not written yet.

Events

Inner Mongolia recognizes the Qing Заавар, эх сурвалж биш

1636

The Inner Mongolian princes recognized Hong Taiji as the Qing was proclaimed (Ejei had surrendered the Yuan seal in 1635).

The Dolonnor assembly: the Khalkha submit

May 30 – June 3, 1691

Fleeing Galdan Boshugtu's 1688 invasion, the Khalkha nobility, counselled by Zanabazar, formally submitted to the Kangxi emperor at the Dolonnor assembly.

The destruction of the Dzungars

1755–1758

The Qing crushed Amursana's revolt and destroyed the Dzungar Khanate: the last independent steppe empire; its population was largely exterminated.

The frozen banner system

18th–19th centuries

Khalkha was split into four aimags and 80-plus banners whose borders Mongols were forbidden to cross. Monasteries multiplied: by 1918 some 45 percent of Khalkha men were registered as lamas, though only about 15 percent lived in monasteries, while the population shrank.

The Taiping rebellion, and the turn to silver

1850–1864

The rebellion drained the Qing treasury, and the tax Khalkha owed shifted from livestock to silver. Silver had to be borrowed from the Han trading firms at interest and repaid in animals driven south, and nobles who fell into debt raised the levy on their own commoners. This is the machinery behind the grievances of 1911, not a mood.

The Convention of Peking: a Russian consulate at Urga

1860

The convention opened the whole Russo-Chinese frontier to free trade and put a Russian consulate in Urga. Khalkha now had a second empire inside it, and by 1911 the nobles had somewhere else to write to.

The New Policies

1901–1910

After the Boxer defeat the Qing reorganized the frontier, and in Outer Mongolia the aim was assimilation rather than modernization: Han colonization of Mongol pasture, a reorganized administration, a new army. A decree in 1910 abrogated the old prohibition on Chinese settling in Outer Mongolia, and in January 1911 Tang Zaili arrived to raise a Mongolian army, with a four-hundred-room barracks going up near Khüree.

The Russo-Japanese secret agreement Заавар, эх сурвалж биш

30 July 1907

Russia and Japan agreed in secret that the whole of Outer Mongolia lay in the Russian sphere. The independence declared four years later was made into a space two empires had already divided on paper.

The secret assembly at Ikh Khüree Заавар, эх сурвалж биш

10 July 1911

Khalkha nobles and high clergy convened in secret under cover of a religious festival. Prince Tögs-Ochiryn Namnansüren persuaded the Jebtsundamba to call it, eighteen nobles resolved on independence, and three envoys went to St Petersburg to ask for arms and protection. A Provisional Government of Khalkha followed on 30 November and the proclamation ending Qing rule on 1 December.

People

  • Zanabazar, the First Jebtsundamba 1635–1723 — Spiritual head of the Khalkha, master artist
  • Galdan Boshugtu Khan 1644–1697 — Khan of the Dzungars
  • Amursana 1722/23–1757 — Leader of the last Dzungar revolt

Sources