On the impact of the Shaanxi Hui uprising on the demographic structure of northern Shaanxi during the Tongzhi period

On the impact of the Shaanxi Hui uprising on the demographic structure of northern Shaanxi during the Tongzhi period

Hu Zhen

(Yan'an University, Yan'an 716000, Shaanxi, China)

In the first year of Tongzhi (1862), the Huimin in Guanzhong, Shaanxi Province, set off a large-scale self-defense and anti-Qing uprising movement, which effectively cooperated with the revolutionary struggle between the Taiping Army and the Twist Army in the later period, and dealt a heavy blow to the feudal rule of the Qing Dynasty in Shaanxi and the northwest region. The seven-year struggle has wiped out the Hui population that has gradually accumulated in Shaanxi over the past two hundred years, destroyed the foundation for the continued development of the Hui in this area, changed the demographic structure of the Guanzhong region, and also had a profound impact on the demographic structure of northern Shaanxi.

[Keywords] Hui uprising; northern Shaanxi region; population structure

I. The demographic situation in northern Shaanxi before the Hui uprising

Located in the north of Shaanxi, bordering the Inner Mongolian Plateau in the north and the Guanzhong Plain in the south, northern Shaanxi is an important area for the integration and exchange of Han and ethnic minorities. In the early years of the Qing Dynasty, due to the impact of long-term wars, the northern Shaanxi region suffered from wars, the productive forces were seriously damaged, and the population growth was slow. After the efforts of several enlightened monarchs in the early Qing Dynasty, the productive forces were restored, and the population of northern Shaanxi also increased greatly. Before the first year of the Tongzhi Dynasty, the contradictions between the Hui and the Han became increasingly intense due to problems such as land and economic interests, and because the feudal rulers of the Qing Dynasty implemented the policy of dividing and ruling by han, the contradictions between the Hui and the Han became more acute, and the intensification of ethnic contradictions became one of the important reasons for the uprising of the Hui people in Shaanxi during the Tongzhi period.

In August of the first year of Tongzhi (1862), the Shaanxi Hui army grew to about 300,000 people, and the Hui people in Gansu also revolted. In the second year (1863), under the siege of the Qing army's Duolong'a foreign guns and cannons, the Shaanxi Huimin Army moved to Dong Zhiyuan, Gansu, and formed an eighteenth battalion in conjunction with the Gansu Huimin Army, while planting land, while reorganizing and training. In the spring of the fifth year of Tongzhi (1866), the Guyuan region of Gansu was in short supply of grain, coupled with the Lanzhou Mutiny, the Longdong Huimin Army hoped to return to its hometown of Shaanxi, and the Western Twister Army also entered Shaanxi at this time. The large-scale activities of this rebel army in northern Shaanxi also had a serious impact on the population of northern Shaanxi. Since then, the demographic structure of northern Shaanxi has begun to be affected by this war.

Second, the key activities of the Hui Han rebels in northern Shaanxi

1. The Gansu Huimin Army is in Dingbian

In the fourth year of Tongzhi, Yu Yanlu, a leader of the Huimin Army, together with Sun Yibao and Sha Xueli, entered the Ding border from Hongliugou and divided his troops into three mountains and Tang. The Qing army Zhao Gui and Duan Hu led the Qihan and Han armies to engage the Huimin army at Dingbian, and the Huimin army plundered livestock, grain, and property along the way, leaving the mountains uninhabited for hundreds of miles.

2. Four battles of the Huimin Army in Yanzhou

In the seventh year of Tongzhi, the Huimin commanders Wang Crazy and Ma Fusheng led more than 20,000 people to besiege the city of Yanzhou, and the Qing army and the Huimin army fought four major battles in the city of Yanzhou, including the Battle of Jizixian, the Battle of Shihezi, the Battle of Zhoucheng and the Battle of Niuwu. After these four major wars, the Huimin army was ambushed by the Qing army, suffered heavy casualties, and also brought deep disasters to the local people, and the central county was "located in a remote area, with no HanMeng and Qing army banners, and its owner was only this Hanmin." Since the Tongzhi army famine, the hukou has been sparse, the household has been scattered, the smokers are strange, the land is sparsely populated, and it is difficult to remember the period of cultivation and survival"[1]1580. According to the second issue of Wenbo in 1991, there is a white bone pagoda built of bricks in the thirteenth year of Qing Tongzhi (1874) in the east of the youfangtou village of Zhangjiawan in present-day Fu County, remembering that the Qing army once quelled the "rebellion" in the area, collected the bones of soldiers and civilians, built the history of the white pagoda, and the activities of the Muslim army here.

3. Yanchuan Hui Han massacre

In the sixth year of Tongzhi, the Huimin army conquered the county seat of Yanchuan. Afterwards, the Hui Nationalist Army came to Yanchuan many times, and the civilians hid in the villages and kilns of the cliffs in order to escape the fire. In some villages, men, women and children were burned to death, some villages were breached, and villagers were killed. In the territory of the county, the countryside is barren and the population has decreased sharply. On the north side of Lujiawan Village in present-day Gaojiatun Township, there are cliff caves dug by farmers during the Qing Dynasty, which are more than 200 meters long and connected by three layers.

4. The Muslim Army is in Suide

In April of the sixth year of Tongzhi (1867), a unit of the Shaanxi-Gansu Hui Nationalist Army, led by Yu Deyan, set out from Qingyang Dong Zhiyuan to march towards the Yansui area and kill Ma Qingchang, the guerrilla commander of the Left Camp in Yulin. Later, Tao Maosen led the town army to suppress it, and the Huimin army hurriedly withdrew, passing through Yihe, using the banner of horse guerrillas to open the city gate, and there were many deaths and injuries among men and women in the city. In October of the sixth year of Tongzhi, the Huimin army advanced to Suide, and in coordination with the Western Twister Army, launched a battle to attack and defend Suide City. In the battle with the Qing army, in the early morning in the city set fire, the streets and alleys were as bright as day, the killing noise everywhere was tremendous, the swords and swords were shadowy, and the corpses were everywhere. At the end of the battle, thousands of people were killed and wounded in the city, becoming the deadliest battle in the history of the Suide War. In the Republic of China's "Continuation of the Shaanxi Tongzhi Manuscript and Hukou", it is recorded that in Suide Prefecture, the six and seven soldiers of Tongzhi were in chaos, with nearly 10,000 deaths and many fugitives.

5. The Huimin army attacked Yulin City

In August of the sixth year of Tongzhi (1867), the Western Twister Army and the Huimin Army captured Suide, and then the Huimin Army attacked Mizhi and other places. On the fourteenth day of the first month of the seventh year of Tongzhi (1868), Ma Zhenghe, the leader of the Huimin Army, led more than 10,000 troops to attack Yulin City in two ways, north and south, and continued to attack the castles of Shuangshan and Shenmu after the defeat, and then was defeated by the Qing army in Shanxi at Fugu, and then entered the townships in Yulin to loot. Yulin County is recorded in the "Draft of the Continuation of the Shaanxi Tongzhi": "In the Xianfeng season, the road camp was stopped, the military and the people were in difficulty, and there were many migrants. In the seven years of the Tongzhi Muslim War, although the city was held, the four townships were ravaged. The eyes are devastated, and the exiles of the people are three or four times out of ten. ”［2］577

6. The Muslim Army is in Shenmu

In the first month of the seventh year of Tongzhi, Ma Zhenghe led the Hui army to attack Yulin Buke, and instead broke through Gaojiabao, Xiejiabao, and Berlin Fort, and burned them all. On the nineteenth day, he forced the sacred wood, and on the twentieth day, he broke into the city and burned it on a large scale, the flames burned for several days without extinguishing, the buildings in the city were scorched earth, and the residents died more than 10,000 people. From April to May, the Hui army returned twice, and the new ZhiXian and hundreds of residents were killed. In Zhao Shipan Village, Gushan Township, Shenmu County, there is a stele of the Nanshan Temple in the thirteenth year of Qing Tongzhi (1874), which records that the main hall and the east and west halls of the Nanshan Temple were destroyed "since the seventh year of Tongzhi after the rebellion of bandits", and the construction of the Tongzhi Temple began in the twelfth year. "The Shenmu County Rural Chronicle (Gongfu Hukou) records that in the seventh year of Tongzhi, the Hui people ravaged Gaojiabao and other two places, slaughtering the Yingmin of the county out of 1089, the survivors of 112, and the rest of the survivors also 56 of the 10. In this life, for more than forty years, the vitality is still not exhausted"[4]519.

7. The Muslim Army is in Jingbian

In the sixth year of Tongzhi, the Huimin army invaded Jingbian. During the attack on Fort Ningsai, the city was attacked with artillery fire, tables and stools were set on fire, and the city gates were burned, and the city was destroyed, and all the officials and people who guarded the city were destroyed. During the attack on Dujia Datai, the Huimin army used smoke to force the old, young, old women and children hiding in the cliff kiln, and none of them survived. During the attack on the town of Muningtiaoliang, countless women took poison, hung beams, and threw wells. The fleeing people trampled on each other because the deep trenches were difficult to cross because of the ring street, until the corpses filled the trenches. "About 100,000 people died", "A hundred years of Xiongzhen, once Qiu Ruins"[5]582.

The same was true of the activities of the Huimin rebels in other prefectures and counties in northern Shaanxi, which brought deep disasters to the northern Shaanxi region.

Iii. The Impact of the Muslim Uprising on the Demographic Structure of Northern Shaanxi

The Hui uprising in Shaanxi during the Tongzhi period was the cause of the population catastrophe in northern Shaanxi after the li zicheng uprising at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and the impact of this uprising on the population of various localities is recorded in the county records and historical materials. For example:

In the third year of Daoguang (1823), suide honshu hesi county had a population of 331,000, compared with about 519,000 in the 1953 census. Based on a population growth rate of 2 ‰, the population of the whole state should be 357,000 by the eleventh year of Xianfeng, and with a population loss ratio of 10%, the population of the whole state lost about 36,000 people in the Muslim War.

The "Rural Chronicle of Shenmu County" (Gongfu Hukou) records: "In the seventh year of Tongzhi, the Hui people ravaged the city and Gaojiabao, slaughtering the Yingmin of the county in 10 of 89, 1/12 of the survivors, and the remaining survivors also 56 out of 10. [6] 519 Based on this, it can be seen that in this Huimin War, the population loss of Shenmu County will not be less than 40%, and Mr. Cao Shuji used the retrospective method in the book "History of Chinese Mouth" (Volume V, Part II) to deduce that the population of Shenmu County in the last years of Xianfeng was about 124,000, so the population lost in the war was about 50,000.

Volume 31 of the Republic of China's "Continuation of the Shaanxi Tongzhi Draft" records that Fugu County was "half of the four townships and five mouths outside the death of the enemy, martyrdom, hoop walking, fleeing, and sending people to other places" in the early days of Tongzhi County. The population of Fugu County in the third year of Daoguang was only 82,000, and at an average annual growth rate of 3‰, there should be a population of 92,000 by the end of The eleventh year of Xianfeng, and the population loss in this war was about half[7]600.

The same was true of the population losses in other parts of northern Shaanxi during the war. Mr. Cao Shuji said in the book "History of Chinese Mouth" (Volume V, Part II) that in this Muslim war, about 4.16 million people died in shaanxi except northern Shaanxi. The pre-war population of northern Shaanxi was about 1.7 million, and if the loss population is calculated as 30% before the war, the dead population in northern Shaanxi is about 500,000[8]600.

From the historical records and the discussions of scholars, we can see the huge losses caused by this Huimin War to the population of northern Shaanxi. The war destroyed the places where the people of northern Shaanxi were recuperating, the natural population growth rate fell greatly, and the abnormal population mortality rate rose sharply. Since then, the population of northern Shaanxi has not returned to pre-war levels for a long time.

This Huimin War not only caused the population of northern Shaanxi to decrease and migrate, but also caused changes in the ethnic structure of northern Shaanxi. After the Shaanxi Hui uprising during the Tongzhi period, many Hui people died in the war, and some were moved to Gansu, Qinghai and other places, and since then there have been few Hui people left in Shaanxi, which is undoubtedly an important change in the ethnic composition of the population, and this is also the case in northern Shaanxi. Ma Qiguang, a Muslim who lived in Xi'an, Shaanxi during the Republic of China, said: "(After the war) shaanxi, except within the provincial walls and south of the Qinling Mountains, there are no footprints of my religious people in Sanfu and northern Shaanxi. ”［9］214

This Hui uprising was originally launched by the Hui people to resist the racial discrimination and class oppression of the Qing government, but the Hui people hurt many innocent people in this uprising. During the war, some innocent Han people were killed, some fled, some were forcibly moved out to fill the original Hui residential areas, and the Han people who survived the war, together with the Hui people who were forcibly arranged in northern Shaanxi and other people who emigrated here, formed a new population and ethnic structure in northern Shaanxi and continued to produce and live on this land. In this way, the population and ethnic structure of northern Shaanxi was broken and reorganized.

The Hui uprising that took place in the Guanzhong region in the first year of the Tongzhi Dynasty had an important impact on both the Guanzhong region and northern Shaanxi. This uprising not only changed the demographic structure of northern Shaanxi, but also seriously hurt the national psychology of the people of northern Shaanxi and the Hui people, so much so that some regional and county records in northern Shaanxi still called this Hui uprising "rebellion", which shows that the scars it left on the people of northern Shaanxi are difficult to heal. Therefore, we must bear in mind the bitter lessons of this Hui uprising, resolutely support national equality and national unity, and enable the Big Family of the Chinese Nation to live in harmony and prosper and develop.

[Resources]

Cao Shuji. History of Chinese Mouth: Volume 5[M].Shanghai:Fudan University Press,2001.]

[2][3][4][6] Zhou Guoxiang. Xi'an: Shaanxi People's Publishing House, 2008.

Yulin Regional History Steering Group. Yulin District Chronicle[M].Xi'an:Northwest University Press,1993.]

Cao Shuji. history of Chinese mouth: volume 5[M]].Shanghai: Fudan University Press, 2001.

Horse longevity. Historical Investigation Record of the Shaanxi Huimin Uprising during the Tongzhi Period[M].Xi'an:Shaanxi People's Publishing House,1993.]

[Received]2015-03-14

[About the author] Hu Zhen (1989-), female, master's degree in ancient Chinese history, Yan'an University, research direction: Chinese cultural history.