Donghu people

Known to us only through Chinese eyes, the Donghu were a loose grouping of mounted pastoral tribes on the north-eastern frontier of early China, in the lands of today's northern Hebei, south-eastern Inner Mongolia and western Liaoning and Jilin. Chinese histories track them from the seventh century BCE until the Xiongnu broke their power at the end of the third century BCE. Two of their branches, the Wuhuan and the Xianbei, carried their legacy forward, and through the Xianbei they are linked to the later Khitans and Mongols.

Donghu means "Eastern Hu". Hu was a Chinese word for horse-riding outsiders of the north, and it carried the sense of "barbarian", so the name tells us how the Chinese classed these people, not what they called themselves. Some modern Chinese writers suggest it may transcribe a native name instead. In the nineteenth century, scholars linked "Donghu" to "Tungus" and concluded the Donghu spoke a Tungusic language. The historian Edwin Pulleyblank dismissed this as a chance likeness in modern pronunciation, and the Russian scholar Lydia Viktorova criticised the identification in 1980.

Sima Qian's Shiji lists the Donghu among the many peoples north of the state of Yan in the time of Duke Wen of Jin (who reigned from 697 to 628 BCE), each with its own chiefs and none able to unite the rest. Some archaeologists connect them with the Upper Xiajiadian culture of the region, which combined farming and herding with bronze-working and horse-borne warfare. That link is uncertain, because the written sources say little about the Donghu beyond their name and their wars.

The Donghu were feared mounted archers. After repeated raids, King Wuling of Zhao in 307 BCE ordered his troops to adopt the trousers and cavalry archery of the Hu. The Yan general Qin Kai, who had once lived among them as a hostage and learned their tactics, defeated them around 300 BCE, and Zhao armies beat them again in 273 and 265 BCE.

In the time of the Xiongnu ruler Touman, Sima Qian says, the Donghu were at the height of their strength. When Touman's son Modu seized power in 209 BCE, the Donghu demanded his finest horses and then one of his consorts, and Modu gave them both. When they went on to demand land, he attacked, killed their king, took their people and herds, and then turned west against the Yuezhi. The confederation broke apart. For a time the Xiongnu used the title "King of Donghu" for a vassal: the defector Lu Wan held it from 195 BCE, and his line kept it until his grandson returned to the Han in 144 BCE.

The survivors split into two groups named after mountains: the Wuhuan in the south and the Xianbei in the north. Gradually these names replaced the old general term. The Xianbei later defeated the Wuhuan and the northern Xiongnu and built a powerful state under the elected leader Tanshihuai. Historians regard the Wuhuan as ancestors of the Kumo Xi, and the Xianbei as ancestors of the Khitans and the Mongols; the Rouran are also traced to Donghu stock.

The Donghu's language is unknown. Paul Pelliot and Pulleyblank described them as proto-Mongols, while others suggest a mix of Mongolic and Tungusic elements. A 2018 genetic study found the male lineage C2b1a1b in remains linked to the Donghu, as well as among the Xianbei and Rouran; it is common among Mongols today. Some genetic work names the Oroqen of northern China as their closest living relatives. The old idea that the Jurchens and other Tungusic peoples descend directly from the Donghu is now regarded as mistaken.

Our 400 BCE map labels them "Donghu tribes" and places them in northern Manchuria, between the Xiongnu to the west and Gojoseon to the south. The outline is approximate, and it sits further north-east than the frontier lands where Chinese sources place them.