Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T19:38:04.876Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - The Expansion of the Qing Empire Before 1800

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2021

Yuri Pines
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Michal Biran
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Jörg Rüpke
Affiliation:
Universität Erfurt, Germany
Get access

Summary

This chapter analyzes the expansion of the Qing Empire between 1583 and 1800, paying particular attention to the factors determining the ultimate boundaries of the realm. It argues that imperial expansion can most convincingly be explained as a Manchu effort to dominate both China and the territory of the Mongols and Oirats. While the conquest of China was completed relatively quickly, the absorption of Mongol territories was protracted, fitful, and ultimately involved expansion elsewhere in Inner Asia, notably Tibet and the Tarim Basin (southern Xinjiang). Qing rulers adopted distinct political strategies for different zones of their empire: China was ruled chiefly via bureaucratic practices adapted from the preceding Ming regime, while much of Inner Asia was ruled by indigenous leaders kept under close Manchu oversight. Efforts to divide the empire into segments governed by distinct political and ideological norms began to break down by 1800.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Limits of Universal Rule
Eurasian Empires Compared
, pp. 316 - 341
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Afinogenov, Gregory. 2016. “The Eye of the Tsar: Intelligence-Gathering and Geopolitics in Eighteenth-Century Eurasia.” Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Atwood, Christopher. 2000. “‘Worshipping Grace’: The Language of Loyalty in Qing Mongolia.” Late Imperial China 21(2): 86139.Google Scholar
Bello, David A. 2016. Across Forest, Steppe and Mountain: Environment, Identity and Empire in Qing China’s Borderlands. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brophy, David. 2008. “The Kings of Xinjiang: Muslim Elites and the Qing Empire.” Études Orientales 25: 6990.Google Scholar
Cheng, Wei-chung. 2013. War, Trade and Piracy in the China Seas, 1622–1683. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crossley, Pamela K. 1999. A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Crossley, Pamela K. 2006. “Making Mongols.” In: Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity, and Frontier in Early Modern China, ed. Crossley, Pamela K., Siu, Helen F., and Sutton, Donald S., 5882. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Dai, Yingcong. 2009. The Sichuan Frontier and Tibet: Imperial Strategy in the Early Qing. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Di Cosmo, Nicola. 2002. “Military Aspects of the Manchu Wars against the Čaqars.” In Warfare in Inner Asian History: 500–1800, ed. Di Cosmo, Nicola, 337–67. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Di Cosmo, Nicola. 2009. “The Qing and Inner Asia: 1636–1800.” In The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: The Chinggisid Age, ed. Di Cosmo, Nicola, Frank, Allan J., and Golden, Peter B., 333–62. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Elliott, Mark C. 2011. “Pei Huang, Reorienting the Manchus: A Study of Sinicization, 1583–1795” (Review). Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 54: 584–8.Google Scholar
Elliott, Mark C. 2001. The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Elverskog, Johan. 2006. Our Great Qing: The Mongols, Buddhism and the State in Late Imperial China. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar
Elverskog, Johan. 2011. “Wutai Shan, Qing Cosmopolitanism, and the Mongols.” Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 6: 243–74.Google Scholar
Fairbank, John K. 1953. Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast: The Opening of the Treaty Ports, 1842–1854. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Fairbank, John K. and Têng, S.Y.. 1941. “On the Ch’ing Tributary System.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 6(2): 135246.Google Scholar
Farquhar, David M. 1968. “The Origins of the Manchus’ Mongolian Policy.” In: The Chinese World Order: Traditional China’s Foreign Relations, ed. Fairbank, John K., 198205. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Fitzgerald, Devin. 2016. “Discussing ‘The Making of “China” out of “Zhongguo.”’” Journal of Asian History 50(2): 299305.Google Scholar
Fletcher, Joseph. 1978. “Ch’ing Inner Asia c. 1800.” In The Cambridge History of China, Volume 10, Part 1: Late Ch’ing, 1800–1911, ed. Fairbank, John K., 35106. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Giersch, C. Patterson. 2014. “Commerce and Empire in the Borderlands: How do Merchants and Trade Fit into Qing Frontier History?Frontiers of History in China 9(3): 361–83.Google Scholar
Giersch, C. Patterson. 2006. Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China’s Yunnan Frontier. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Harrell, Stevan. 1994. “Introduction: Civilizing Projects and the Reaction to Them.” In Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers, ed. Harrell, Stevan, 336. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Herman, John E. 2014. “Collaboration and Resistance on the Southwest Frontier: Early Eighteenth-Century Qing Expansion on Two Fronts.Late Imperial China 35(1): 77112.Google Scholar
Herman, John E. 2007. Amid the Clouds and Mist: China’s Colonization of Guizhou, 1200–1700. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center.Google Scholar
Heuschert, Dorothea. 1998. “Legal Pluralism in the Qing Empire: Manchu Legislation for the Mongols.” The International History Review 20(2): 310324.Google Scholar
Ho, Ping-ti. 1967. “The Significance of the Ch’ing Period in Chinese History.” The Journal of Asian Studies 26(2): 189–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hostetler, Laura. 2001. Qing Colonial Enterprise: Ethnography and Cartography in Early Modern China. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hu, Ying. 2014. “Justice on the Steppe: Legal Institutions and Practice in Qing Mongolia.” Doctoral dissertation, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Huang, Pei. 2011. Reorienting the Manchus: A Study of Sinicization, 1583–1795. Ithaca, NY: East Asia Program, Cornell University.Google Scholar
Kim, Kwangmin. 2016. Borderland Capitalism: Turkestan Produce, Qing Silver, and the Birth of an Eastern Market. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Kim, Loretta E. 2019. Ethnic Chrysalis: China’s Orochen People and the Legacy of Qing Borderland Administration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lee, Robert H.G. 1970. The Manchurian Frontier in Ch’ing History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Levey, Benjamin S. 2013. “Jungar Refugees and the Making of Empire on Qing China’s Kazakh Frontier, 1759–1773.” Doctoral Dissertation, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Lhamsuren, Munkh-Erdene. 2010. “The 1640 Great Code: An Inner Asian Parallel to the Treaty of Westphalia.Central Asian Survey 29(3): 269–88.Google Scholar
Li, Gertraude Roth. 2002. “State Building Before 1644.” In The Cambridge History of China Vol. 9, Part 1: The Ch’ing Empire to 1800, ed. Twitchett, Denis and Fairbank, John K., 972. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, Narangoa and Cribb, Robert. 2014. Historical Atlas of Northeast Asia, 1590–2010. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Lipman, Jonathan. 1997. Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China. Seattle, WA, University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Ma, Haiyun. 2008. “Fanhui or Huifan? Hanhui or Huimin? Salar Ethnic Identification and Qing Administrative Transformation in Eighteenth-Century Gansu.” Late Imperial China 29(2): 136.Google Scholar
Mancall, Mark. 1971. Russia and China: Their Diplomatic Relations to 1728. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Masuda, Erika. 2007. “The Fall of Ayutthaya and Siam’s Disrupted Order of Tribute to China (1767–1782).” Taiwan Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 4(2): 75128.Google Scholar
McNeill, J. R. 1998. “China’s Environmental History in World Perspective.” In Sediments of Time: Environment and Society in Chinese History, ed. Elvin, Mark and Ts’ui-jung, Liu, 3149. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Millward, James. 1998. Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity, and Empire in Qing Central Asia, 1759–1864. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Miyawaki, Junko. 1999. “The Legitimacy of Khanship among the Oyirad (Kalmyk) Tribes in Relation to the Chinggisid Principle.” In The Mongol Empire and Its Legacy, ed. Amitai-Preiss, Reuven and Morgan, David O., 319–31. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Mosca, Matthew W. 2011. “The Literati Rewriting of China in the Qianlong-Jiaqing Transition.” Late Imperial China 32(2): 89132.Google Scholar
Mosca, Matthew W. 2013. From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy: The Question of India and the Transformation of Geopolitics in Qing China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Mosca, Matthew W. 2014. “The Qing State and Its Awareness of Eurasian Interconnections, 1789–1806.Eighteenth-Century Studies 47(2): 103–16.Google Scholar
Nakami, Tatsuo. 1984. “A Protest Against the Concept of the ‘Middle Kingdom’: The Mongols and the 1911 Revolution.” In The 1911 Revolution in China: Interpretive Essays, ed. Shinkichi, Etō and Schiffrin, Harold Z., 129–49. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.Google Scholar
Naquin, Susan. 1981. Shantung Rebellion: The Wang Lun Uprising of 1774. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Oidtmann, Max. 2016. “Overlapping Empires: Religion, Politics, and Ethnicity in Nineteenth-Century Qinghai.” Late Imperial China 37(2): 4191.Google Scholar
Oidtmann, Max. 2018. Forging the Golden Urn: The Qing Empire and the Politics of Reincarnation in Tibet. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Onuma, Takahiro. 2008. 250 Years History of the Turkic-Muslim Camp in Beijing. Tokyo: Department of Islamic Area Studies, University of Tokyo.Google Scholar
Onuma, Takahiro 小沼孝博. 2014. Shin to Chūō Ajia sōgen: yūbokumin no sekai kara teikoku no henkyō e 清と中央アジア草原:遊牧民の世界から帝国の辺境へ [The Qing and the Central Asian Steppe: From the Nomads Arena to the Imperial Frontier]. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.Google Scholar
Oxnam, Robert B. 1975. Ruling from Horseback: Manchu Politics in the Oboi Regency, 1661–1669. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Perdue, Peter C. 2005. China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Petech, Luciano. 1972. China and Tibet in the Early XVIIIth Century: History of the Establishment of Chinese Protectorate in Tibet, 2nd ed. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Qi, Guang 齊光. 2013. Da Qing diguo shiqi Menggu de zhengzhi yu shehui: yi Alashan Heshuote bu yanjiu wei zhongxin 大清帝國時期蒙古的政治與社會: 以阿拉善和碩特部研究為中心 [Mongol Government and Society in the Period of the Qing Empire: Research Centered on the Alashan Qoshud]. Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe.Google Scholar
Rawski, Evelyn S. 1998. The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rawski, Evelyn S. 1996. “Reenvisioning the Qing: The Significance of the Qing Period in Chinese History.” Journal of Asian Studies 55(4): 829–50.Google Scholar
Rowe, William T. 1994. “Education and Empire in Southwest China: Ch’en Hung-mou in Yunnan, 1733–38.” In: Education and Society in Late Imperial China, 1600–1900, ed. Elman, Benjamin A. and Woodside, Alexander, 417–57. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Schlesinger, Jonathan. 2012. “The Qing Invention of Nature: Environment and Identity in Northeast China and Mongolia, 1750–1850.” Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Schlesinger, Jonathan. 2017. A World Trimmed with Fur: Wild Things, Pristine Places, and the Natural Fringes of Qing Rule. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Schmid, Andre. 2007. “Tributary Relations and the Qing-Chosŏn Frontier on Mount Paektu.” In: The Chinese State at the Borders, ed. Lary, Diana, 126–50. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.Google Scholar
Schwieger, Peter. 2014. The Dalai Lama and the Emperor of China: A Political History of the Tibetan Institution of Reincarnation. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Shibuya, Kōichi 渋谷浩一. 2011. “1734–40-nen no Shin to Jūn-garu no kōwa kōshō ni tsuite: Kyafuta jōyaku teiketsu go no Chūō Yūrashia no kokusai kankei” 1734-40年の清とジーン・ガルの講和交渉について:キフタ条約締結後の中央ユーラシアの国際関係 [Peace Negotiations between the Qing and the Junghars, 1734–1740: Central Eurasian International Relations after the Conclusion of the Treaty of Kiakhta]. Tōyōshi kenkyū 東洋史研究 70(3): 608–572.Google Scholar
Shim, Hosung. 2018. “Oyirad Terms for the Manchus.” Saksaha: A Journal of Manchu Studies 15: 113–36.Google Scholar
Teng, Emma Jinhua. 1998. “An Island of Women: The Discourse of Gender in Qing Travel Writing about Taiwan.” The International History Review 20(2): 353–70.Google Scholar
Wakeman, Jr., Frederic. 1985. The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth-Century China. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Waley-Cohen, Joanna. 2004. “The New Qing History.” Radical History Review 88: 193206.Google Scholar
Wills, Jr., John E. 2012. “Functional, Not Fossilized: Qing Tribute Relations with Đại Việt (Vietnam) and Siam (Thailand), 1700–1820.” T’oung Pao 98: 439–78.Google Scholar
Xiao, Minru 蕭敏如. 2009. Cong ‘Hua-Yi’ dao ‘Zhong-Xi’: Qingdai ‘Chunqiu’ xue Hua-Yi guan yanjiu 從‘華夷’到‘中西’: 清代’春秋’學華夷觀研究 [From “Chinese and Barbarians” to “China and the West”: Research on the Chinese-Barbarian Perspective in Qing-era Scholarship on the Chunqiu]. Taipei: Huamulan wenhua chubanshe.Google Scholar
Yanagisawa, Akira. 2005. “Some Remarks on the ‘Addendum to the Treaty of Kiakhta’ in 1768.” Memoirs of the Toyo Bunko 63: 6588.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×