뉴스레터

The Jurchens, who now refer to themselves as the Manchus, used to be people without a nation until they founded the Qing dynasty. There weren't even that many of them, about 1.5 million around the early seventeenth century. In short, they didn't used to have much of a presence. It would be unnecessary to go any further than to explain that, up until the middle of the Joseon dynasty in Korea, they used to serve Joseon as their parent state.

Those very people came to form the Qing dynasty, an empire unprecedented in the history of the world for its size. They also maintained close relations with Koreans. There are even theories suggesting that the Jurchens and Koreans share the same ethnic roots. Considering that even Yi Su-gwang claimed in his work Jibong nyuseol, the Topical Discourses of Jibong, that Nurhaci's family were descendants of a family named Wang from Korea's Goryeo dynasty indicates that the two peoples had in fact been fairly intimately involved with each other. Nonetheless, the Qing dynasty founded by the Jurchens ended up treating Joseon very harshly. Humiliating incidents that immediately come to mind are Byeongjae horan, the invasion by the Manchus in 1636, and Joseon's submission to the Qing dynasty at Samjeondo.

The one who led the founding of a dynasty that performed miracles in the context of world history and brought disgrace to the Korean people was none other than Nurhaci (1559-1626). In Chinese history, Nurhaci is referred to as the Qing dynasty's first emperor. Yet, he wasn't someone who had been born to found a great empire. He came from the Jianzhou Jurchens, a relatively weak clan out of the many Jurchen tribes. His grandfather Giocangga (覺昌安) and father Taksi (塔克世) had to pledge their allegiance to the Ming general Li Chengliang (李成梁) in order to keep their tribe alive. So, Nurhaci had originally been in no position to build a great empire, let alone manage to survive.

From a Minority Jianzhou Jurchen to a Great Khan

Under orders from Li Chengliang, Nurhaci's grandfather and father struggled to survive by heading the subjugation of their fellow Jurchen tribes, but they ultimately failed to save their own lives. The Ming army killed them once they were deemed as no longer useful. Nurhaci had no choice but to suppress his hostility at the time as he was being held hostage at the home of Li Chengliang.

An opportunity emerged soon than expected for Nurhaci. He built an army with the thirteen suits of armor that his grandfather and father had passed down to him, and eventually achieved the unification of the Jianzhou Jurchens in 1589 at the age of thirty. From then onwards, he had nothing to fear. By bringing other Jurchen tribes nearby into submission, he laid the steppingstone to become a Khagan (大汗, Great Khan). By 1599, Nurhaci brought down the Hada (哈達) clan of the Haixi Jurchens and went on to absorb other Haixi Jurchen clans, the Hoifa (輝發) clan in 1607 and the Ula (烏拉) clan in 1613. When he practically unified the Jurchens by 1616, Nurhaci founded a dynasty, named it Later Jin, and changed the peoples' name from Jurchen to Manchu.

Nurhaci thereafter began to reveal the claws he had kept hidden. He finally decided to initiate an attack on the Ming dynasty, a lifelong target of revenge for him. By announcing to heaven the famed manifesto of Seven Grievances (七大恨) in 1618, war was declared against the Ming dynasty. Some may have likened that declaration to an attempt to crack a rock with an egg, but the reality turned out to be very different. Nurhaci succeeded in overpowering the Ming dynasty and was able to secure a foundation for building a great empire. In 1621, he attacked Liaodong and completely conquered the area north of Shanhaiguan (山海關). What only seemed to remain by that point was to enter Beijing and accept the Ming dynasty's surrender. Alas, as the good comes with the bad, Nurhaci passed away in September 1626 from an injury he suffered earlier that year in February during the Battle of Ningyuan across the Liao River. His first defeat since he began striking attacks upon the Ming dynasty since 1618 ended up costing him his life.

Still, Nurhaci's grand goal did eventually become fulfilled through the hands of his son Hong Taiji (皇太極) and grandson the Shunzhi Emperor. In 1644, Qing, the dynasty of the Manchus, was founded in Beijing. Raising an army with only thirteen suits of armor to form a dynasty seems to be a perfect example of the saying that appears in the Bible or Zhuangzi (莊子): "Your beginnings will seem humble, so prosperous will your future be."

Miracles Made from Eight Banner Troops and Skilled Diplomacy

As a miracle-maker, Nurhaci left behind countless achievements. One of them would be the unification between the Jurchens and the mainland's northeastern region. Forming an ethic community called the Manchus to open up the path leading to a grand empire is something that cannot be overlooked.

Nurhaci's most brilliant achievement would be the "Eight Banner System," which started out merely as a Jurchen hunting group and later became established as an administrative social system. Nurhaci was able to reorganize the Manchu military system, create a formidable cavalry called "Eight Banner troops," and naturally train ethnic Manchus into invincible elite forces. This was the reason why his army had only ever experienced victory prior to the Battle of Ningyuan.

Nurhaci was not simply an armed ruler skilled at fighting battles. He also exercised the cultural intelligence to create the Manchu language and stood at the forefront of social reforms. That was how he was able to switch over from a property ownership system based on slavery to one that resembled feudalism. He was also responsible for creating the framework for crossing over from a nomadic economy to an agricultural economy.

Nurhaci should also be credited for the exceptional diplomatic strategies he employed. They were well demonstrated through the way he laid low and endured servility for many years until the right opportunity arose or through his offer to dispatch troops to Joseon during the Imjin War of 1592-1598 in order to both win Joseon's favor and keep the Ming dynasty in check.

Of course, he deserves to be criticized on several accounts as well. One of them would be the excessive cruelty committed during wars. Ming soldiers captured as prisoners were all too often buried alive, which is said to have set an example on slaughter for the Japanese imperialist army during the Sino-Japanese wars. He also abandoned the rules of succession, namely primogeniture and the appointment of a crown prince in advance, which seems to have been the root cause to later turning the Qing court into an arena of contest for succession to the throne. Notwithstanding, Nurhaci's achievement of building an empire out of thirteen suits of armor seems to bear a resemblance to how the Korean general Yi Sun-shin nearly destroyed an entire armada of hundreds of Japanese warships with only a dozen ships at his command. Considering that, there doesn't seem to be much reason for denying him the honor of being referred to as the second Genghis Khan.