Dingdang Population Registers

A distinctive category of registers

*Dingdang* were Qing registers recording adult males, household members, and status classifications for administrative review. They are especially important for The Eight Banners and the populations under certain Mongol princely jurisdictions. Their structure and governmental uses should not be equated without qualification with a modern household-registration document.

In the *Draft History of Qing* (*Qingshi gao*), juan 120, the treatise on households distinguishes administrative responsibility for different population registers. Ordinary provincial household records were compiled by local officials and sent to the Ministry of Revenue, while registers for Manchu, Mongol, and Han Bannermen were managed by the ministry's Eight Banner pay office. Registers of people under Outer Mongol *jasagh* administrations came under the Court of Colonial Affairs (*Lifanyuan*).

Review procedures and identity

Banner populations were normally reviewed every three years, with company commanders (*zuoling*) checking newly adult males and entering them into the registers. Regulations from 1727 required household-by-household names, occupational or official status, relatives, and whether members were locally registered or absent. In 1741 further instructions addressed adults and certain younger men already receiving pay, with distinctions such as original-status, separately registered, and dependent persons, as well as family and career details. These archives thus illuminate pay entitlement, service, kinship, and status. Their triennial banner review rules cannot be generalized to every civilian household in Qing China.

Related encyclopedia entry: The Eight Banners.

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