Posted 07 September 2004 - 10:07 PM
Some quotes from "The Mongols at China's Edge" Written by Bulag, Uradyn Erden. 2002
The Daurs, an important but numerically small group, are today scattered in eastern Inner Mongolia and the neighboring Chinese province of Heilongjiang. They are also some in Xinjiang. Once tributaries of the Horchin Mongols, they were conquered by the Manchus and organized in the imperial Manchu eight banner system, seperate from the Mongols. During the Qing Dynasty they were closely identified with the Manchus, so closely that they were called "new Manchu." However, they were not confused with the Manchus. All the banners were seperately labeled "Solon," "Daur," "Barga" and so on (see Lattimore 1969). As the boundary between the Qing and Russia was drawn in the treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689 and the treaty of Kiakhta in 1727, some Daurs, along with other groups such as Ewenki, Orochon, and Barga (Mongols), were sent to Hulunbuir, where the Daurs played a dominant role in defending the Qing border... (p148)
In 1926, while editing comprehensive data on China's transportation and military affairs, Guo published the eight-volume Heishui Guoshi Jiacheng, of which three volumes survive (Ao-Dong 1989)..... Guo Kexing, however, had a completely sinocentric view of the origins of the Daur. Dahuer (Daur), he wrote, was originally descended from huaxia, that is, the Chinese. But as they moved to the nothern steppe, they adopted a pastoral economy and became "barbarian" (yong yi bian xia). He lamented the lack of written tradition that contributed to the obliteration of the true history of the Dahuer:
"When people talk about nationalities in Heilongjiang province, they usually refer to the Solon, Manchu, and Mongol. And the Daur people also shook the world as the crack force of the Solon, and when the Manchus and Mongols moved in and ruled China, they (the Daur) were also proud of being Solon, Manchu or Mongol, forgetting who they were. Pity! Forgetting ancestors would be ridiculed by people. (Guo 1987: 127)"
Degulai, another prominent Daur politician, who wrote the preface, was to become an important official working for the Mongolian border government of the Mongolian prince Demchugdonrob....... the Daurs' Mongol identity was officially affirmed in Japanese controlled Manchukuo. Daur-Mongol identity resided, then, in both a linguistic and a genealogical imagination. Curiously, there was little effort on the part of the Mongols to claim that the Daurs were their lost brothers, and indeed, as of today I have yet to find a single piece written by Mongols insisting that the Daurs were Mongols. (p154)
The ambivalence of the Mongols tot he Daur claim of Mongol identity was evidenced in the new nickname given by Mongols to the Daurs-- "September 18 Mongol," implying that they became Mongols only after the Japanese conquest of Manchuria on September 18, 1931... When Japanese scholar Ikeshiri (1982) published a book in 1943 entitled Daur nationality, many Daurs were enraged, accusing the Japanese of attempting to split the Mongolian nationality (tegusi, interview 1996). (p155)
The Manchugo emperor Pu Yi's wife Wan Rong was a Daur. The highest Mongolian commander within Manchukuo was Daur, Guo Wenling. Together with Lingsheng, another Daur notable from Hulunbuir, Gui was instrumental in persuading Pu Yi to become emperor of Manchukuo in 1932. (p155)
On the other hand, the Daurs' fiercely independant character was a constant challenge to Japanese expansionism. Their insistence on their autonomy from Japan was treated by the Japanese as indicative of strong Mongol nationalism.
will post more from the book later.
