Plain Yellow Banner

Plain Yellow Banner
Flag of the Plain Yellow Banner
Active	1615 – 1911
Country	Qing dynasty
Type	cavalry, musketeers
Part of	Eight Banners

The Plain Yellow Banner was one of the Eight Banners of the Manchu Qing dynasty military. The Plain Yellow Banner was one of three "upper" banner armies under the direct command of the emperor himself, and one of the four "right wing" banners.^[1] The Plain Yellow Banner was the original banner commanded personally by Nurhaci. The Plain Yellow Banner and the Bordered Yellow Banner were split from each other in 1615, when the troops of the original four banner armies (Yellow, Blue, Red, and White) were divided into eight by adding a bordered variant to each banner's design.^[2] After Nurhaci's death, his son Hong Taiji became khan, and took control of both yellow banners. Later, the Shunzhi Emperor took over the Plain White Banner after the death of his regent, Dorgon, to whom it previously belonged. From that point forward, the emperor directly controlled three "upper" banners (Plain Yellow, Bordered Yellow, and Plain White), as opposed to the other five "lower" banners.^[3][4]

References

Bibliography

• Elliott, Mark C. (2001), The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China, Stanford University Press, ISBN 9780804746847 

• Wakeman Jr., Frederic (1985), The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth-century China, Berkeley: University of California Press, ISBN 0520048040 

Further Reading

• Dennerline, Jerry (2002), "The Shun-Chih Reign", in Peterson, Willard J.; Twitchett, Denis Crispin; Fairbank, John King, The Cambridge History of China: Volume 9, Part 1, The Ch'ing Empire to 1800, The Cambridge History of China, 9, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521243346 

• Rawski, Evelyn S. (1998), The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions, University of California Press, ISBN 9780520926790