I have long been looking forward to an update to Manchuria, Mongolia and Siberia, but are not satisfied with what was reveled today. Especially Mongolia which didn't receive any new tags were a big disappointment, the removal of Buryats and some IMO erratic decisions in Manchuria is grounds for disappointment to the work done in the region.
I'm planning on doing a separate thread on Mongolia later on, but as that'll take more time I'll start with Manchuria today.
Strangely enough my main criticism here is too many tags which IMO are ill-though out.
So we need to acknowledge a lack of sources about outer Manchuria in the early part of our timeline, the need for poetic licensing both due to lack of sources and due to video game not being reality.
I'm building back to some old threads by @JKiller96 on the topic there a lot of content and history were discussed,
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...equest-for-redrawing-of-northern-asia.968001/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...s-make-1-21-the-mongolia-patch.1012148/page-6
Now the primary point I want to make to the map presented in today's diary are the arbitrariness in making the new tags. Let me explain,
Donghai and Yeren are the same "people" in the sense chinese sources used the terms interchangeably, as per this book https://books.google.se/books?id=7K...RQQ6AEwBnoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=donghai&f=false (seach for donghai jurchens)
or as wikipedia puts it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Jurchens
The Wild Jurchens (Chinese: 野人女真)[1] or Haidong Jurchens (Chinese: 海東女真) were a grouping of the Jurchens as identified by the Chinese of the Ming Dynasty. They were the northernmost group of the Jurchen people (the other being the Jianzhou Jurchens and Haixi Jurchens) in the fourteenth century, inhabiting the northernmost part of Manchuria from the western side of the Greater Khingan mountains to the Ussuri River and the lower Amur River bordered by the Tatar Strait and the Sea of Japan.
The descendants of wild Jurchens do not identify themselves as Manchus. Instead, they formed different nations such as Nanai, Evenks, Negidals, Oroqen and Nivkh.
Now that doesn't mean that Yeren was a unified state as Yeren does mean "wild/savage", most of them lived in small clan societies, some semi-nomadic, others lived in settled societies. Not even Haixi or Jianzhou refered to united states but to clan based societies. But they make enough sense as tags. Now Yeren had a simple beauty to it as being a catch all for tungus speakers living in the vast forest and river systems in stateless societies.Still it makes a lot of sense to try and break out new states from the previous Yeren as it's anymore realistic to have the area fragmented rather than united under one big tag, then it's practical to use Donghai and Yeren as different tags.
Now the problem is putting tags with a level of arbitrariness that they feel like they don't represent anything real. Now this is what I want to counter by making a case for a solution more grounded in reality, now, I will largely use a set up in existence from the late 16th century (as I don't have reliable data for earlier).
The beauty of using catch all terms like Donghai and Yeren is that we don't end up making mistakes like making a tag called Udege which doesn't even include Udege lands. Udege were, like Nanai a people living along the middle Amur and east of the Ussuri Current Udege tag is entirely located west of Ussuri plz fix. Nanai ppl stretched up the Amur river to the confluence of Sungari making them present in the easternmost Udege province.
Now the Nivkh tag is interesting and has been requested before (including by myself until I changed my opinion
)
Now let me explain why Nivkh is popular and why I changed my opinion. Nivkhs speak a language isolate making them unique in the tungusic speaking region of manchuria, their culture is quite distinct as well, much easier to distinguish and pay attention to than the 7 or so tungus speaking people in the area.
Now why did I change my mind? Well Nivkh inhabit a very small area around the mouth of amur and northern sakhalin and where, while maintaing distinct culture and language, closely intertwined with tungusic peoples living in a symbiosis with especialy the Ulch people. Being an exogamous group the Nivkhs flourished as "diplomats" of the amur river interconnecting with their neighbors. Especially when Sakhalin now seems to be uncolonized and Nivkh didn't get their own culture, but rather Tungus culture, it's not interesting to have them as their own tag.
The third new tribal entity is the Solon, which is not too bad, but I have a better suggestion. But back to Yeren and what's left of the tag. And the question is, what even is Yeren now? In my proposals I have tried to group tribes based on lifestyle and geography, an approach I think yielded a very well working strategy. Here Yeren came to represent the hunters and fishers of the amur-ussuri region, Negidal, Nivkh, Udege, Nanai, Ulchi, Orok and Oroch
The current Yeren tag refers to areas inhabited by Evenks in various levels of nomadism-settled presence.
Now I would suggest Yeren to still represent those Amur people, except Nanai and Udeghe who will be represented by the new Donghai tag.
I.e.
Yeren would represent the people living along the lower Amur and it's estuary, Nivkh, Ulchi and Negidal
Donghai would represent the peopel of the Amur Ussuri maritime region, Nanai, Oroch and Udege.
I'm basing this division on the division found in James Forsyth's excellent book on Siberia "A History of the people of Siberia" It is by no means a 100% strict division as borders, political and ethnic were porous.
To the vast area north of the Amur river starts the contact zone between Jurchen/Manchu and Evenki tribesmen, evenkis in close proximity would assimilate with the jurchen but farther north be roaming free as reindeer herders known as Oroqen up to the stanovoy mountains.
Along the upper AMur lived the mongolian speaking Daur people, in close relationship with the Horse Ewenkis later known as Solon. I suggest putting Oroqen, SOlon and Daur as one tag known as Beishan. The name is from chinese sources provided by chinese contributers @Wudadi and @Warial in previous thread https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...equest-for-redrawing-of-northern-asia.968001/
Thus my updated map:
Should be blue dots around the province which has the Yeren unit aswell
Talking about culture, the current line of contact between Evenks and jurchen are weird and should be moved so that Haixi, Jianzhou has Jurchen culture, Beishan and Yeren has Evenki culture, Donghai could go either way.
And finally I see devs still hasn't fixed the horrible backwardness of having Evenki culture group with Tungus as a culture, switch thus around!
@neondt
I'm planning on doing a separate thread on Mongolia later on, but as that'll take more time I'll start with Manchuria today.
Strangely enough my main criticism here is too many tags which IMO are ill-though out.
So we need to acknowledge a lack of sources about outer Manchuria in the early part of our timeline, the need for poetic licensing both due to lack of sources and due to video game not being reality.
I'm building back to some old threads by @JKiller96 on the topic there a lot of content and history were discussed,
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...equest-for-redrawing-of-northern-asia.968001/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...s-make-1-21-the-mongolia-patch.1012148/page-6
Now the primary point I want to make to the map presented in today's diary are the arbitrariness in making the new tags. Let me explain,
Donghai and Yeren are the same "people" in the sense chinese sources used the terms interchangeably, as per this book https://books.google.se/books?id=7K...RQQ6AEwBnoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=donghai&f=false (seach for donghai jurchens)
or as wikipedia puts it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Jurchens
The Wild Jurchens (Chinese: 野人女真)[1] or Haidong Jurchens (Chinese: 海東女真) were a grouping of the Jurchens as identified by the Chinese of the Ming Dynasty. They were the northernmost group of the Jurchen people (the other being the Jianzhou Jurchens and Haixi Jurchens) in the fourteenth century, inhabiting the northernmost part of Manchuria from the western side of the Greater Khingan mountains to the Ussuri River and the lower Amur River bordered by the Tatar Strait and the Sea of Japan.
The descendants of wild Jurchens do not identify themselves as Manchus. Instead, they formed different nations such as Nanai, Evenks, Negidals, Oroqen and Nivkh.
Now that doesn't mean that Yeren was a unified state as Yeren does mean "wild/savage", most of them lived in small clan societies, some semi-nomadic, others lived in settled societies. Not even Haixi or Jianzhou refered to united states but to clan based societies. But they make enough sense as tags. Now Yeren had a simple beauty to it as being a catch all for tungus speakers living in the vast forest and river systems in stateless societies.Still it makes a lot of sense to try and break out new states from the previous Yeren as it's anymore realistic to have the area fragmented rather than united under one big tag, then it's practical to use Donghai and Yeren as different tags.
Now the problem is putting tags with a level of arbitrariness that they feel like they don't represent anything real. Now this is what I want to counter by making a case for a solution more grounded in reality, now, I will largely use a set up in existence from the late 16th century (as I don't have reliable data for earlier).
The beauty of using catch all terms like Donghai and Yeren is that we don't end up making mistakes like making a tag called Udege which doesn't even include Udege lands. Udege were, like Nanai a people living along the middle Amur and east of the Ussuri Current Udege tag is entirely located west of Ussuri plz fix. Nanai ppl stretched up the Amur river to the confluence of Sungari making them present in the easternmost Udege province.
Now the Nivkh tag is interesting and has been requested before (including by myself until I changed my opinion
)Now let me explain why Nivkh is popular and why I changed my opinion. Nivkhs speak a language isolate making them unique in the tungusic speaking region of manchuria, their culture is quite distinct as well, much easier to distinguish and pay attention to than the 7 or so tungus speaking people in the area.
Now why did I change my mind? Well Nivkh inhabit a very small area around the mouth of amur and northern sakhalin and where, while maintaing distinct culture and language, closely intertwined with tungusic peoples living in a symbiosis with especialy the Ulch people. Being an exogamous group the Nivkhs flourished as "diplomats" of the amur river interconnecting with their neighbors. Especially when Sakhalin now seems to be uncolonized and Nivkh didn't get their own culture, but rather Tungus culture, it's not interesting to have them as their own tag.
The third new tribal entity is the Solon, which is not too bad, but I have a better suggestion. But back to Yeren and what's left of the tag. And the question is, what even is Yeren now? In my proposals I have tried to group tribes based on lifestyle and geography, an approach I think yielded a very well working strategy. Here Yeren came to represent the hunters and fishers of the amur-ussuri region, Negidal, Nivkh, Udege, Nanai, Ulchi, Orok and Oroch
The current Yeren tag refers to areas inhabited by Evenks in various levels of nomadism-settled presence.
Now I would suggest Yeren to still represent those Amur people, except Nanai and Udeghe who will be represented by the new Donghai tag.
I.e.
Yeren would represent the people living along the lower Amur and it's estuary, Nivkh, Ulchi and Negidal
Donghai would represent the peopel of the Amur Ussuri maritime region, Nanai, Oroch and Udege.
I'm basing this division on the division found in James Forsyth's excellent book on Siberia "A History of the people of Siberia" It is by no means a 100% strict division as borders, political and ethnic were porous.
To the vast area north of the Amur river starts the contact zone between Jurchen/Manchu and Evenki tribesmen, evenkis in close proximity would assimilate with the jurchen but farther north be roaming free as reindeer herders known as Oroqen up to the stanovoy mountains.
Along the upper AMur lived the mongolian speaking Daur people, in close relationship with the Horse Ewenkis later known as Solon. I suggest putting Oroqen, SOlon and Daur as one tag known as Beishan. The name is from chinese sources provided by chinese contributers @Wudadi and @Warial in previous thread https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...equest-for-redrawing-of-northern-asia.968001/
However, Haixi, Jianzhou, Yeren they all use Chinese pinyin as a name
Hai(sea)xi(west) menans west of sea,
Jianzhou is a place name. As you know "zhou" and "fu" and "wei" means the level of this area = state.
Ye(wild)ren(people) means wild people, or barbarian
so it should tranlate
1. west of sea Jurchens (Haixi)
2. Jian state Jurchens (Jianzhou)
3. wild people Jurchens (Yeren)
4. Northern Mountains Jurchens (Beishan)
Thus my updated map:
Should be blue dots around the province which has the Yeren unit aswell
Talking about culture, the current line of contact between Evenks and jurchen are weird and should be moved so that Haixi, Jianzhou has Jurchen culture, Beishan and Yeren has Evenki culture, Donghai could go either way.
And finally I see devs still hasn't fixed the horrible backwardness of having Evenki culture group with Tungus as a culture, switch thus around!
@neondt
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