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Curzon
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Curzon

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April 21st, 2005

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Fun with maps, again

Click here for the full-sized map.

Notice how the Manchu ethnic group is missing and how the Uyghurs and Kazakhs are just called “Turkic” peoples.

Comments to this entry

Dan
April 21, 2005
1:25 pm
Nice.

Any such maps of Iran?
Alexander Browne
April 21, 2005
2:08 pm
"Tungusic" includes Manchu, as "Turkic" includes Uyghur and Kazakh.
Dan
April 21, 2005
3:09 pm
From the Travel China Guide

Manchu has its own language and letters, which belong to the Manchu-Tungusic group of the Altaic language family. Manchu letters were created in the 16th century on the base of Mongolian letters. With more and more Manchus settling in the Central Plains since the Qing Dynasty, the economic and cultural exchange between Hans and Manchus became more and more frequent and the Manchus gradually adopted the Han language.

Perhaps many Manchu are included in Han in this "ethnolinguistic" map.
Alexander Browne
April 21, 2005
4:26 pm
Perhaps many Manchu are included in Han in this "ethnolinguistic"Â? map.

Yeah, I bet most are, and the few who still speak Manchu (about 60 according to Ethnologue, of an ethnic population of almost 2M) plus the Xibe fall under "Tungusic".
Nathan
April 21, 2005
4:56 pm
Where'd you pick this up? I was all ready to be ticked off, but corners are often cut in these kinds of things, and I'm happy that Han at least doesn't show up in East Turkestan.
mark safranski
April 22, 2005
1:04 am
Alex is correct. Tungusic covers the Manchus. The Tungusic dynasties include the *Sung* as well as the *Q'ing*.

Great book for the enthnolinguistic history of the region - _Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia_ by Grousset. A classic.
Curzon
April 22, 2005
1:55 am
But is Manchuria part of... Central Asia??

Thanks to Alex for pointing out the Ethnologue reference. Good stuff to know, I've been educated.
Simon World
April 22, 2005
2:19 am
Daily linklets 22nd April

The links between China's internet firewall, English language teaching and debate. An interesting post saying China's encouragement of English could undermine its firewall. French cooking: see fire, add fuel. It is a move to shore up France's geopo...
Jing
April 22, 2005
4:33 am
While the regions marked are technically accurate, it should be noted that in almost all areas where non-Chinese languages exist, they are the minority. The places where Korean is spoken is a good example of this. Although there are a number of state-created Korean autonomous regions in Jilin province, the qualifications for such a administrative designation are quite low. Even the most populous of them, Yanbian, is slightly less than 40% ethnic Korean with other prefectures falling bellow 20%. Xinjiang mayb be marked as purely turkic speaking, yet Uighur is no longer the dominant language or even ethnicity in the region. The demographics used to construct the map are maybe 50-100 years out of date. It is more accurately as an historical ethnolinguistic map.
Mutantfrog
April 22, 2005
4:35 am
Manchuria is not part of Central Asia, but it is part of what the history books term Inner Asia.
And yes, Tungusic includes Manchu, which is itself basically a dead language. Korean is also often considered part of the Tungusic group, and sometimes Japanese as well.
Curzon
April 22, 2005
4:42 am
Thanks for that clarification of Han Chinese cultural imperialism, Jing. I did indeed hear from the horses's mouth the bitterness some Uyghurs feel towards Han China during my visit to Xinjiang two years ago.
ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » I want a second opinion!
April 22, 2005
5:26 am
[...] rchy.com/images/china-ethno2.jpg"> Click here for the full-size image. Either way, Jing’s comment in the previous post is most valid. [...]
tdaxp
June 15, 2005
3:25 am
Beyond the Collapse of China

"The Sky is Falling and other Assorted Prophecies of Doom," by Jing, Those Who Dare, 14 June 2005, http://thosewhodare.blogspot.com/2005/06/sky-is-falling-and-other-assorted.html.

Nicely following up Beyond the Collapse of Russia, Jing starts a wo...
sun bin
September 30, 2005
7:04 pm
manchu is not central asia, it is in northeast asia (north of korea). the areas shaded with tungustic are mainly other ethnic group such or Oroqen/orochon and Evenks (see wiki, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_ethnic_groups). lingusitically and perhaps genetically related to manchus, but they are hunters and normads. (that is why the language was preserved, while manchurian was not)

the manchu people are scattered among hans in beijing and the area northeast of beijing. they could have indicates tiny dots, but it would be so tiny that they are invisible in the maps.

as for han people in minority dominated areas, they mostly concentrate in urban areas (e.g. urumqi in xinjiang), so they shouldn't affect the colors of the maps too much, i think.
so in repsonse to Jing's comment, it is true that his statistics are probably correct. but the map colors are not too outdated (it probably represents what it is some 20-50 years ago in terms of stats, most have changed in highly populated cities, but not too much has changed in the mountains/villages)

i have been to some of these areas, include northwest, and northeast bordering korea. one of the reasons that many opted for minority status is because of tax benefits etc. so you can imagine a han dominated county declaring to be korean so that they have better tax benefits, and also a children of han and uighur cross-marriage declaring himself to be uighur.

bearing these subtleties in mind, the map is still pretty illustrative.
sun bin
September 30, 2005
7:07 pm
...those little circles in mongolia and xinjiang are the urban han clusters i was referring to above
ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » Global Linguistics
November 2, 2005
9:06 pm
[...] (An a final note, I get the feeling that China will be a topic of contention again… What say you? [...]
DarwinK
November 2, 2005
11:51 pm
There seems to be a stunning constrast between Han Chinese "cultural imperialism" and English imperialism. The Manchus conquered China only to be overtaken by Han culture eventually as a result of assimilation. The European colonists conquered the Americas and the English/Spanish language prevailed by physically wiping out a large chunk of the native population.