The Mongolian nobility\, the descendants of C hinggis Khan\, enjoyed exemptions from tax and compulsory labor during the Qing dynasty (1691-1911) until the mid-nineteenth century\, when those pri vileges diminished. Scholars have correlated this erosion of privilege to i ncreasing debts owed by noblemen and officials to Chinese merchant houses. However\, based on archival research about disaster and poverty relief effo rts in Qing Mongolia during the nineteenth century the crucial elements app ear to be environmental factors\, poverty alleviation efforts\, and anti-cl ericalism.
The twenty years between 1830- 1850 were the coldest in Mongolia in the last 1\,000 years\, according to d endrological paleoclimatic data. During those two decades\, the Mongolian c ountryside was ravaged by winter storms and droughts\; as a result of repea ted livestock die-offs\, many districts were unable to meet tax and labor q uotas. Unlike the Chinese parts of the Qing empire\, where the government o pened grain reserves to relieve famine and offset inflated prices during na tural disaster\, in Outer Mongolia the government moved common herders\, li vestock\, and goods from wealthier districts to destitute ones\, a process they called “equalizing dues” (Mo. alba tegsidkekü). Because of the prolonged period of cold and dry weather\, equalization was insuffic ient to meet the Qing’s fiscal demands in the 1820s\, leading to an emergen cy decision to tax the nobility directly. The direct taxation of the nobili ty exposed to Qing auditors the means by which wealth had been sheltered in Outer Mongolia\; importantly\, the Qing court perceived Mongolian Buddhist ecclesiastical estates as sites of wealth concealment and labor runoff\, a nd in 1838 prescribed enrollment in Buddhist estates to a narrow range of p eople. These policy shifts\, triggered by abnormal climatic conditions\, ha d long-lasting consequences for Mongolian society.
This presentation draws on Mongolian\, Manchu\, and Chinese sourc e materials to explain this process and contextualize the findings in terms of their significance to late imperial Chinese history and Mongolian studi es. This presentation will be of interest to students of early modern Chine se and Inner Asian history as well as pastoral-nomadic and Mongolian studie s.