The History of China - #279 - Qing 19: The Treaty of Nerchinsk

Episode Date: November 9, 2024

In an epic handshake of history, the Qing and Russian Empires hammer out the first major treaty between East and West. It's good for Great Qing, it's maybe good for Russia... but it's definitely not good for the Mongols who got iced out of the negotiations by a couple of Puritan hustlers, like Galdan Khan and his harried host of Dzungars. Not good news at all... Please support the show!: patreon.com/thehistoryofchina Time Period Covered: 1690-91 CE Major Historical Figures: Qing Dynasty: The Kangxi Emperor (Aisin-Gioro Xuanye) [r. 1654-1722] Jean-Francois Gerbillon, Puritan Missionary Tómas Pereira, Puritan Missionary Russian Empire: Count Fedor Alekseevich Golovin [1650-1706] Mongols/Tibetans: Lamist Tibetans: The Fifth Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso [1617–1682] Dzungar Mongols: Galdan, the Boshugtu Khan [r. 1679-1697] Khalkha Mongols: Jebzongdanba Khutukhtu Tusiyetu Khan Chechen Khan Tsewang Rabdan Major Sources Cited: Liu, Cixin. Death's End. Munkh-Erdene, Lamsuren. The Taiji Government and the Rise of the Warrior State. Perdue, Denis. China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia. Thokmay, Darig. “Game Changers of the Tibetan Buddhist Political Order in Central Asia in the Early Eighteenth Century” in The Tibet Journal, Vol. 46, No. 1. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 278, The Treaty of Narcinsk. I am a tomb. Whose tomb is this? The tomb of those who created it. Is this a spaceship? It used to be a spaceship, but now it is dead, and so it's a tomb. Who are you? Who is conversing with us?

I am the tomb. It is the tomb speaking to you. I'm dead. You mean you're a ship whose crew died? In other words, you're the control system for the ship? There was no reply to this. We can see many other objects in this region of space. Are they also tombs? Most of them are tombs. The others will be tombs soon. I don't know them all. Are you from far away? Or have you always been here? I'm from far away. They're also from far away. From different places far away. Where? There was no answer. Did you build this four-dimensional fragment?

You told me you came from the sea. Did you build the sea? You are saying that for you, or at least for your creators, this four-dimensional space is like the sea for us? More like a puddle. The sea has gone dry. Why are so many ships or tombs gathered in such a small space. When the sea is drying, the fish have to gather into a puddle. The puddle is also drying, and all the fish are going to disappear. Are all the fish here? The fish responsible for drying out the sea is not here. We're sorry. What you said is really hard to understand.

Dark forest? What do you mean? The same thing you mean. Are you going to attack us? I am a tomb. I'm dead. I won't attack anyone. From Death's End by Liu Zixin Last time, we left off with the Battle Royale between the Kangxi Emperor and Galdan Khan, coming to a middle.

Galdan was bruised and battered, his forces but a shadow of their former selves in the wake of the devastating Qing offensive of 1690, personally commanded by the Emperor. He was down, yes, but not yet out. And, much to the disappointment of the Kangxi Emperor's unusually zealous drive to put down Galdan once and for all, the Qing government had found the limits of its capacity to pursue an aggressive expedition of conquest into the trackless wilds of Central Asia, as one often does. And so it is here that we once again resume today. Though it couldn't by any stretch of the imagination be called a total victory for the Kangxi Emperor, it nevertheless seems that even a partial defeat of the Zhengar state to his west was enough for the Qing proclamations to celebrate it as such.

Yet even that rested not on Qing efforts alone, but was thanks in large part due to Russian acquiescence. From Peter Perdue, quote, China and Russia signed the Treaty of Nurchansk in 1689 and the Kyashhta Trade Treaty in 1727. These treaties had decisive consequences for Central Eurasian power relations. Their most important effect was to reduce the ambiguity of their frontier by eliminating the unmapped zones. Peoples in between the two expanding agrarian empires took advantage of the fluidity of this zone to protect their identities through shifting allegiances. After 1689, refugees, deserters, and tribespeople had to be fixed as subjects of either Russia or China. Maps, surveyors, border guards, and ethnographers began to determine their identities and their movements.

As I read that passage, it really struck me just how relatively new, in the grand scheme of things at least, so many of our fundamental understandings and societal norms really are. And not just in China, of course, but virtually anywhere we look, just as Peter Perdue states here, that occurs in lockstep with the process of those areas of the map that were once labeled terra incognita being filled in. We think of the way we live, by which I mean as sedentary, agrarian-based, typically urban-dwelling non-nomads, which is more than like 99% of us on Earth at this point, as being normal. And there's certainly justification for that.

At least, if you're looking at it from the perspective of today. But you don't have to go back too terribly far in time, surprisingly close in fact, to find a point in any region or cultural sphere where that urban agrarian lifestyle was just one of several options on the table. And one could, in some cases, choose to, and others be more or less forced into, abandoning one lifestyle for another. Casting way back into the past, when we look back at the An Lushan Rebellion in the mid-8th

century Tang Dynasty, over the course of which the tax records indicate that China lost something like half of its overall population, what did that really mean? Some, many, died by either violence, starvation, illness, or any number of other factors, of course. But that doesn't account for everyone. It never does. Many others, no matter how thorough the attempt to exterminate the populace of an area is, some people just somehow survive. But as is the case in the Anshu Rebellion, they fall off the tax records thereafter, seemingly for the rest of whatever lives they might have had.

What came next for them? Well, they lived, quite literally, outside of the law. In the woods, hills, and mountains, in the very sense of Robin Hood and his merry band of brigands. Outlaw, neither beholden to nor protected by any organized state. We are at the point of our story where, around the world, the places where here there be monsters are beginning to be ever more swiftly filled in by survey lines, taxonomies, and tax receipts. In some ways, perhaps, and it's certainly framed this way by the instigating expansionary empires across time and space, it is a great leap forward for the societies thus incorporated into

the narrow imperial definition of society, often technologically, materially, and legally, at least at the high watermark of that imperium. But that is a steep trade-off, and those unique aspects of culture that are either traded in, or in some particular cases, such as is ongoing in Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and now Hong Kong, enforced as the new standard of normality, are wrestled back only ever exceedingly rarely. Most are lost to time, cultural ephemera like a snowflake in the winds of winter night. Digression aside, over the course of the latter 17th century, as we've seen, Russo-Qing relations had developed, but cautiously. Negotiations had been both delicate and ongoing, and with several armed flare-ups when

understandings had not been achieved via diplomatic channels. Yet, in spite of the seemingly bilateral nature of this budding relationship, there were in fact four major parties in play here. Apart from the obvious Chinese and Russian empires, of course, there were also the Mongols and Jesuits to consider. All four quite influential across at least portions of the region, and all with markedly different individual interests. It's easy to lose sight of just how truly immense Asia is. Don't worry if you forgot it for a moment, you're in good company. Napoleon Bonaparte found out the hard way,

as did his pale Austrian imitator Hitler a century later. Well before them, the likes of Alexander of Macedon took a big chunk, but ran out of his men's patience. And of course, smattered throughout are any number of Chinese emperors who claimed dominion over the totality of the continent, and the Mongols who, ever so briefly, achieved the high score in the 13th century. But make no mistake, Asia is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.

I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemists, but that's just peanuts to Asia. As the 1600s ticked by, the two empires blindly groped toward one another through the barren taiga and steppe wilderness between them. As they interacted with the various minor settlements of peoples in the otherwise largely empty vastness, both came to realize that fixing such peoples along their borders in allegiance to themselves would be in their own best interests. Both, likewise, came to see the rising might of the Djungar Khanate smack dab in the middle as a clear and present danger to that expansionistic mission. Russia first became aware of Qing China as it moved east across the Siberian tundra. Word soon reached such explorers of the riches that awaited within the

boundaries of the Qing Empire, and they thus sought to trade with it with their own chief commodities, all of which they'd found in abundant, nigh inexhaustible supply in Siberia, by which I mean the pelt of games such as ermines, black and silver foxes, beavers, otters, and most precious and sought-after of all, mink. As was typical, the Russians knew next to nothing about the civilization that they were seeking to trade with. But then, that hardly mattered, didn't it? Still, the little tidbits we get of their discoveries about China in this period are amusing. Wrote one member of the Russian-sent caravan that failed in its mission to reach Beijing in 1608, quote, The Chinese use firearms, and people come from many lands to trade with them, and they wear

golden robes, and to him, the emperor, they bring all kinds of precious stones and other things out of many countries, end quote. Wow, they really are just like us. Over the course of the 17th century, Sino-Russian relations continued to develop, albeit in fits and starts. Nevertheless, by the 1680s, that had not only boiled over into a series of minor armed conflicts all their own, but by 1689, the two sides were sitting down for a round of everyone's favorite game, diplomacy. The primary Qing concern by this point was in preventing the Russians from throwing their support behind the rising star of Galdan Khan. To that end, they agreed to meet with the Russian embassy in July of 1689 at Nechinsk, the then-recently-established administrative center of what is now Zabekalsky Krai. So if you picture a map, it's just a little north of the

eastern point where the modern borders of China, Mongolia, and Russia intersect. The Russian emissary, who we know as Golovkin, along with a retinue of about a thousand attendants, met with seven Qing ambassadors, the leader of which was Songgotu, and including the two Jesuits we've previously brought up, Gerbion and Pereira, as well as, quote, military regiments and Buddhist clergy numbering at least 10,000, end quote. The Qing representatives were, one and all, high Manchu officials, including no less than the Chinese uncle of the Kangxi Emperor, as well as the two victorious commanders of the Qing victory over the Russians at Fort Albazin.

It was, to put it mildly, something of an entire to-do. There were, however, no Mongol princes invited to attendance, a rather stunning oversight considering the territory in question. Nevertheless, their quote-unquote hidden presence still managed to influence two critical issues of the negotiations, the means of communication and the delineation of the border. Curiously, and almost bizarrely, the language of the negotiations was to be conducted in Latin. Both sides insisted that neither side's native language was to be used, so as to give scrupulous lip service to the idea of equality between the two parties. Thus, though the Qing

had Russian translators, they refused to use them. And while the Russians were willing to cast about for a Manchu translator, they couldn't find any competent enough for the task. Well, all right, but still, why Latin? Why not any number of other languages that people actually use in day-to-day life, especially amidst the trackless expanses of the Eurasian steppe? Why not, say, conduct the meeting in Mongolian, which was certainly the most common trade language among the vastly differing frontier peoples? And that's where the critical question of who, specifically, can insert themselves at a critical moment, at just the right time, to become the linchpin upon which global history frequently but fleetingly swings.

From Perdue, quote, Because the Jesuits had inserted themselves as crucial mediators, they could decide the terms and the language of communication. On the first day of the meeting, August 22nd, the envoys agreed in principle to communicate in Latin. According to Golovkin's report, they believed that there were not enough Mongolian translators and that they were not reliable, so both sides agreed that it would be more objective to rely on the Jesuits' Latin. End quote. Thus agreed, the negotiations turned to the major issue of the day,

namely the border question. The Manchus claimed an initial position of establishing a fixed border all the way at Lake Baikal, which was way beyond, it ought to be noted, any maximum Chinese border ever. Yet the looming specter of sketchiness soon came to overshadow the proceedings. When the Russians countered that the border should be drawn along the Amur River, they heard in reply from the translators

that the Qing would threaten them with a storm of swords in the form of military incursions if they did not concede immediately on this question. Taken quite aback, the Russian emissaries came to realize that it was not the Qing diplomats, but rather their Jesuit interpreters who were inserting words into their translations in order to alter the meaning. The Russians then asked to switch languages and converse in Mongolian instead, prompting the Qing ambassadors to withdraw for an extended discussion.

When they came back, they clarified that they had, quote, only directed the Jesuits to speak on the border issue, and not of military matters, end quote. Well, that's not exactly the most comforting of assurances, but alright, I guess? Time and again, when the discussions deadlocked, the Russians sought to bypass the Jesuits' Latin and communicate directly with their Manchu counterparts via their Mongolian translators. But the Jesuits insisted that such translators were incompetents, who would serve only to botch such delicate negotiations. Perdue notes,

The Jesuits also told the Russians not to speak to the Manchus in between negotiations, and they told their own interpreters and Manchu official assistants, never to speak to the Russianschus in between negotiations, and they told their own interpreters and Manchu official assistants, Jarguchi, never to speak to the Russians alone in Mongolian. Mongolian could certainly have served as a bridging language just as easily as Latin. By excluding it, the Jesuits put themselves in the position of getting better terms for the propagation of their religion from both sides, end quote. Classic sense of professional self-preservation, I say. Tale as old as translation, whether about Mongolian versus Latin or Google versus Bing

versus hiring a professional translator. Always double-check and always be aware of someone or something that offers its service for free. The Jesuits got the Russians to promise their church favorable treatment from the Tsar in exchange for their supposed ability to, quote, dissuade the Kangxi Emperor from war, end quote,

a stunningly dubious claim at absolute best. From the Qing Empire, they were able to obtain an Edict of Toleration from the Imperial Throne as of 1692, as a reward for them taking credit for not just this, but many other successful treaty negotiations. Again, from Perdue, in a hugely revelatory phrasing, quote, In a time-honored tradition of powerful mediators up to Henry Kissinger in our own day,

they were determined to exclude any communication channels outside themselves. Monopolizing the language and the access of each side to the other, they successfully kept any Mongolian interests out of the negotiation. And, you know what? That really seals it for me. Up to that point, I was thinking to myself, you know, I'm starting to think that these Jesuits, Gerbion and Pereira, might not be being entirely above board. But comparing them to Henry Strangelove Kissinger? Oof. Fatality. One issue that absolutely needed to be hammered out was exactly where to draw the new border between Asiatic overland powers. Though negotiations were fraught,

ultimately it was agreed that it would be set just north of the Amur River along the nearest mountain range, with the Russian fortress at Argunsk moved north beyond it, but retaining their access to the valuable salt and mines north of the Argun. And all it took to get them there from the Qing side was the movement of some 12,000 Qing troops to surround Nerchinsk, as well as Mongols nominally under Russian command beginning to desert for Qing lines in droves. Knowing that his position was completely untenable, the Russian emissary Golovin at last begrudgingly gave in to the terms pressed by his Manchu counterparts, and in time, a stele with the terms of this treaty would be erected along the newly established Russo-Cheng border. Quote, losing his Mongolian tributaries would have cost Golovin nearly all

of the tributaries currently under Russian control. The Qing gave up claims to land which it never controlled in the first place, and by offering trade access, ensured that the Russians would not support Galdan. Yet it could hardly be argued, in the grand wash of these negotiations, that it was anyone other than the Jesuits, and through them the Catholic Church overall, that got the best end of the entire bargain. They gained the respect and trust of Kangxi, who profusely thanked them for their work, and other favors that they had performed for him, by opening the whole of his empire to their missionary activities.

This was surely seen as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the Church. Just imagine, an ocean of new converts just waiting to be baptized into the one true faith. Yet, in the end, it would prove to be a far less than achievable goal that the Jesuit organization had set for itself. Like so many others, individual and corporate, secular and theological alike, then and now, they would find that China is a far harder market to effectively penetrate and corner than it first seems. In the end, despite their many efforts, they would never succeed in converting either Manchus or Chinese to their faith in any significant numbers. Moreover, as their favor was tied directly to the good feelings of Kangxi himself, once he died, so too did the Jesuit star fade in China.

At least, for now. Meanwhile, it was surely Galdan, and the Mongols as a whole for that matter, that lost out the most on the Treaty of Narcinsk, effectively boxed out of the proceedings entirely by the Jesuits as they were. Galdan was himself to discover the unpleasant effects of the treaty shortly after its conclusion. In early 1690, he sent an envoy to Golovkin's home in Irkutsk, seeking his military support in Galdan's upcoming attacks against the Kalkas. Quote, since the Russians themselves had been attacked by Tusietsu Khan,

Galdan expected an allegiance between their common enemy. End quote. Golovkin, however, pulled an I was trying to call you but it went-to-voicemail explaining that he'd sent riders with messages to Galdan, but they'd been unable to reach the Khan. And unfortunately, that meant, at this point, that the Russians were just plum unable to offer the Djungar Khan any kind of material aid. It was, in effect, a very delicately put Dear John letter. Or maybe, put better here, Dear Khan letter.

Quote, After signing the treaty with the Manchus, Gullivan no longer had an interest in the Jungar alliance. End quote. Napoleon Bonaparte rose from obscurity to become the most powerful and significant figure in modern history. Over 200 years after his death, people are still debating his legacy. He was a man of contradictions, a tyrant and a reformer, a liberator and an oppressor, a revolutionary and a reactionary. His biography reads like a novel, and his influence is almost beyond measure. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast, and every month I delve into the turbulent life and times of one of the greatest characters in history,

and explore the world that shaped him in all its glory and tragedy. It's a story of great battles and campaigns, political intrigue, and massive social and economic change, but it's also a story about people, populated with remarkable characters. I hope you'll join me as I examine this fascinating era of history. Find The Age of Napoleon wherever you get your podcasts. The Kangxi Emperor eventually learned about the Jungars meeting with the Russians, and, in classic Kangxi fashion, sent a message to Golovin and the Russians reminding them that as per the terms of their freshly inked treaty, the Russians aiding Galdan in any way, shape, or form was, to use the

technical legal phrase, extremely not cash money. Quote, Nurtschinsk now served as the model for defining obligations on the frontier, and the Qing had to find the terms. Galdan was too late. End quote. Time and again, over the course of the 1690s, Galdan would attempt to send missives to the Russian diplomatic corps urgently. Galdan would attempt to send missives to the Russian diplomatic corps urgently. Galdan would attempt to send missives to the Russian diplomatic corps, urgently requesting their aid. Yet they, time and again, refused to permit such embassies to carry on to Moscow in order to present their case to the Tsar himself.

Ultimately, and who can really blame them, the Tsar and his ministers found it much more alluring to remain on the good graces of the Qing Empire than to squander such an incomparable opportunity in order to help a dirty, hardscrabble little step-archer nursing vast delusions of grandeur. As such, it might reasonably be said that the great Qing victory in the course of the Tien-Tsen negotiations was to ensure that the Jungar Khanate remained unable to recruit Russia as a military ally in this clash of kings in the Central Asian highlands. And so it was that this signing of the treaty between Tsarist Russia and Great Qing became

the first treaty signed between a Western power and China. It, along with the Treaty of Kikta, would have the double, dubious, honor of being the only such treaty concluded with the Western world that was conducted on the basis of anything like equality between the parties for more than 200 years thereafter. Markedly unlike the massive diplomatic fiasco that would be the McCarthy expedition late the next century before Kangxi's grandson, the Qianlong Emperor, there was no issue like objections to kowtowing before the emperor to hang up the successful diplomacy of the exercise. Quote, As in the later negotiations with other European powers, the two sides had very different goals. The Russians wanted trade, while the Chinese wanted security.

But unlike the 19th century unequal treaties, each side gained what it needed without inflicting unacceptable losses on the other, end quote. For Russia, that compromise took the form of promotion of their lucrative fur trade, even at the cost of potentially missing out on some of that imperial honor and military glory. For Qing China, it took the form of ceding land claims it held for ritual purposes in exchange for Russian neutrality in the wars against the Dzungars, as should be obvious by now, were sure to come. From a historiographical perspective,

it is interesting to note that the Treaty of Nerchinsk has been dramatically politicized by both Russia and China in the centuries following its signing. From Perdue, Until the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s, Russian and Chinese historians interpreted the treaties as the roots of the Fraternal Alliance of the 1950s, the only successful equal treaties between China and the West. The cooling of political relations in the 60s, however, necessitated a dramatic reframing of the importance of the Treaty of Nerchinsk. Soviet and later Russian historians have come to view Nerchinsk as, indeed, an unequal treaty for themselves, having gotten, in their estimation, the shorter end of the stick, and that it was forced upon them by dishonest Manchus who were

only interested in their own aggressive expansionism. China, meanwhile, reframed their historical interpretation of the outcome at Nerchinsk, as the Russians being the same old, same old treacherous imperialists who signed the treaties but continued to give significant aid to the Mongol state. Even more recently, Chinese partisans have taken to their own version of the winily relitigating ancient centuries defunct treaties spiel and taken to themselves calling the Treaty of Nerchinsk one of the infamous unequal treaties conducted against China by the West, quote,

because China gave up claims to large parts of eastern Siberia purportedly occupied by Chinese, i.e. Tungusic, peoples, end quote. And to both of them, I reply, have either of you looked in the mirror lately? The irony meter is kind maxin' out. There would be, in all, a lull of about six years between Kangxi's first and second campaigns against Galdan Khan. In that interim, the Qing Emperor shored up his border defenses and maneuvered his troops in such a fashion as to maximally isolate the Zhengar Khan. Galdan, for his part, used the time attempting to both rebuild his

shattered forces and ensure the continuing support of the Dalai Lama for his cause. In public, both rulers expressed their deep and ongoing commitment to upholding the peace between the two powers. Yet behind the scenes, neither truly expected it to last, and were actively planning for the inevitable resumption of hostilities. Both also seemed to know that it would be the highlands of Tibet that would be the focal point of the war to come. Kangxi remained privately committed to his solemn pledge to quote-unquote exterminate Galdan root and branch, yet was forced to acknowledge that, hold up as he was,

way out in the hinterlands of Khobdo, the Khan was effectively out of even Great Qing's formidable reach. Until he either managed to lure the wily Galdan close enough to attack, or else short up the underpinnings of his military's offensive logistical capabilities, for all his sound and fury, the mighty Kangxi Emperor was forced to sit on a perpetually defensive and reactive footing. Such a state of affairs was quite simply unacceptable. And so, it would be that Kangxi began the monumental task that is the absolute make-or-break question for any organization, and yet all too often unglamorous and completely unsung. That is, the restructural formatting of

an outdated logistical system in order to effectively meet emergent and unanticipated challenges. It would prove to be a renovation so sweeping and vast that it would take far longer than the lifespan Kangxi had left to him. In fact, its culmination would not be fully apparent until the reign of Kangxi's grandson, the Qianlong Emperor, who would undertake the final cataclysmic destruction of the Zhengar state more than six decades later. Galdan, meanwhile, continued to face his own unique challenges. Because, as we've seen time and again, pretty much whenever they're the focus of the episode, the Mongols in general have a persistent and systemic problem. One might think of it as almost one of the Civ bonuses unique to any

faction, except it's a negative trait. But the trait I'm talking about is their perennially fractious nature. It takes someone akin to a force of nature, like a Tamajin Borjigin, coming into the world, and then beating the rest of them enough to submit to his rule. But as soon as that rockstar generational leader heads off to the great pasturage in the great blue sky, you can pretty much start counting down the seconds until significant chunks of the Khanate begin breaking off and declaring their renewed independence. Game-wise, it'd be like every time your leader dies, some of your cities and regions risk declaring independence and becoming hostile NPC city-states.

So, pretty much exactly like Crusader Kings, come to think of it. Now, as you'll recall, Galdan was, while he still clinged to life and nominal power, it was only by the very edges of his fingernails at this point. He was defeated, which meant that he was weak, which meant that it was an excellent time to jump ships and abandon that clearly sinking vessel. Quote, The fatal individualism, or divisions between the Dzungar and Khalkha Mongols, and within the Dzungars themselves, prevented any joint action by them against the Qing regime.

These divisions, arising in the 1690s, ultimately caused the destruction of the Dzungar people in the mid-18th century. As would be immortally put, half a world away, round about the mid-18th century by noted non-Mongol, bawdy Francophile, and fellow national herder of cats, Benjamin Franklin, quote, gentlemen, we must all hang together or we shall most assuredly hang separately, end quote. Galdan was about to find out the truth of that saying firsthand. Putting aside his anger at the failure of his soldiers to capture the Jungar Khan, the Kangxi Emperor took the space afforded him by Galdan's flight to shore up his support among the Khalkha Mongols already in his orbit.

As such, shortly after his victory at Ulaanbaatar, Kangxi decreed that in order to better establish order and discipline among his Khalkha subjects, he would meet them, yes, all of them, at Dolanur, where they would be established as banner armies and then permanently resettled in pre-designated locations. Very briefly, Dolanur, which means Seven Lakes, is the modern name of the town on the southern edge of Inner Mongolia that way back in the Yuan Dynasty had been established as Shangdu, the summer capital, by Kublai Khan. Or, put somewhat more poetically, in Xanadu did Kublai

Khan a stately pleasure dome decree. Despite the objections of his courtiers, who cited severe weather and the dangers of travel beyond the Great Wall, Kang nonetheless, set out yet again from Beijing on May 9th, 1691. In true royal litter party train fashion, he first held a grand hunt, euphemized as military exercise, presumably to keep the wives from complaining, am I right, my fellow cash eggs? Up top. In spite of their misgivings, the trip proved uneventful for the imperial retinue, and it arrived intact, hearty, and on time a fortnight later at Dolon Nor, some 250 kilometers north of the capital. The Kalkas awaited. Before setting out, Kangxi, ever the micromanager, sent ahead a clear order of precedence for the

Jebzong Danba Kutuktu, along with other notable headmen such as Tusiatu Khan, Chechen Khan, and the younger brother of Jasaktu Khan in the first rank. All in all, some 550 Kalka Mongol leaders were active participants in the proceedings, which involved enough choreography, blocking, and lines rehearsal necessary to make one's head spin. Kangxi well understood that his Kalka subjects were naturally fractious, but also drawn to overt power. Thus, by having been drawn into their internecine conflict, and then curb-stomping the opposition, Kangxi had earned the right to arbitrate such personal disputes as he saw fit as the, in essence, victorious Khan, as was Mongol tradition. Less clear is if the Khalkhas truly understood that in the Manchu

Qing tradition, any such ruling was considered permanent and perpetual in nature, and not just to the individual sovereign, but to the state itself. The meeting lasted for six days, beginning with a huge banquet and military parade aimed at overawing the Kalka subjects with the might and majesty of Great Qing. From Perdue, quote, The firing of cannon and the display of firearms caused them to tremble with fear and admiration. A total of 64 small cannon and eight mortars were placed in the visiting Mongol camps. The emperor himself, armed, on horseback, led the demonstration of 70 pieces of artillery. He asked Gerbion if Europeans also made great voyages, and complained that the Manchus were receiving inferior guns from Jesuit sources.

End quote. Then it was time for his speech, and Kangxi had opted to give a real barn burner. He outright stated that both Tusiatu Khan and the Kutuktu had committed crimes, and that Galdan's invasion had been brought about by Tusiatu messing around and finding out, which had led to the destruction of his state and the death of many members of his own family. It was only, and he must have really hammered this part home, only because of his generous and magnanimous nature that he'd deigned to stoop down and rescue both of them and their people from the consequences of their own benighted barbarism,

taking up the Qing man's burden indeed. With perfectly choreographed timing, both Chusyatukhan and the Jebzong Dangba Kutuktu threw themselves at the feet of Kangxi's mobile throne, declaring that they had foolishly committed grave errors and begged the emperor's forgiveness. Kangxi then pardoned them and, one better, gave them both fiefs and Manchu titles in exchange for their owes of loyalty and pledges to maintain the peace. From Perdue, quote, In the emperor's view, the Kalkas were a disorderly people in need of discipline, or fadu. Enrolling them in banners kept their territories distinctly separated, avoiding pastureland conflicts. Each khan kept his title.

The younger brother of the murdered Jasaktu Khan succeeded to his position, with the title approved by the Qing. Qing officials took over the final authority for granting titles of leadership among the Kalkas. End quote. Qing officials took over the final authority for granting titles of leadership among the Khalkhas. This was certainly not to say that the Khalkhas did not themselves benefit from this —what else are you really going to call it?—submission in direct and material ways. Foremost, among many of their minds, would certainly have been the stabilization of food supplies, which the Qing were only too ready to relieve. They were also showered in newly created titles for their authority status within the Qing apparatus.

Yet for all that, they gave up much and more. Perhaps most importantly to their overall culture and way of life, much as the Great Plains tribes of the American Midwest during the course of westward expansion and conquest, they were restricted for the very first time from their right to move at will. Now, this is often an easy point to simply gloss over. After all, to most of us, we probably don't really think about our right to freedom of movement very often. It's just so innate, isn't it? Of course, you have the right to move. Get a better job? Move. Don't like it here? Just move. House being subsumed by rising ocean waters? Just sell it to Aquaman and move.

But that is actually not the case in China. Even today, from both a technical and very much legal standpoint, there is no actual right for anyone to be anywhere outside of their home area as printed on their Hukou national ID. Now, it's not typically enforced on most people most of the time. From day to day, you do have the freedom of movement, typically, but that by no means makes it a right. Police can, and have, and do, sweep through the cities and round up people, homeless, beggars, prostitutes, the overall underclass of society, who drift in from elsewhere and, effectively, deport them back to the rural western interior of the country, so they stop bothering the nice city folk and making the place look bad.

In modern China, there are entire administrative regions where, without special permission, you're simply not allowed to go. Tibet is one of them. Even more recently than that, I'll just briefly bring up the widespread and open-ended total city lockdowns. In 2002, that froze tens of millions in place for months on end. I was among them. My point is, the Chinese bent toward regulating the movement of its populace is both long-standing and ongoing. No wonder, then, that it was such a difficult prospect for

a people like the Mongols to truly accede and come to terms with a changeover to that kind of highly regulated, bureaucratically administered lifestyle. If your entire life, indeed, lifestyle and culture, was shaped entirely on the prospect of personal autonomy and the freedom to roam, even the most expansive and luxurious of sedentary living will quickly start to feel like the gilded cage that it is. Now, if they wished to move pastureland, they would need to be pre-planned, approved, organized, and strictly supervised by Manchu officials and soldiers. So too were the Kalkas compelled to now cede yet more authority to the Qing over its ongoing feud with the Dalai Lama and his followers, such as Galdan.

Kangxi sent word to the Tibetan leader, informing him of Qing's great success in bringing much-needed peace, justice, and security to the Kalkas. In the same note, he warned that any violation on the part of Galdan of his pact to leave the Kalkas the hell alone would result in the Kangxi emperor issuing an order of jiao mie. And that specific verbiage is quite important here, 剿灭, because it translates most directly as exterminate. these sorts of decisions, the choice to commit a war of genocide, was not undertaken blindly or accidentally, but with deliberate and premeditated malice. There's no alternate way to understand a word like exterminate, which is why, usually, political figures will twist themselves into pretzels to avoid ever saying anything of the sort. It's very rare that we get actual documentation of an extermination order because typically those committing it are either smart enough to not take notes on a criminal conspiracy at all,

or else at least destroy the evidence after the fact. Only the truly stupid, or those who are pretty sure that they can just out and out get away with it, are ever so hubristically confident as to actually write this stuff down and then keep it. And yet, here we are. In the face of such an overwhelmingly existential threat so openly made, and followed up, as it were, with material inducements of lavish gifts from the Qing to the Dalai Lama's court to drive a wedge between him and Galdan, what could Galdan and his meager band of Jungars do but beat a hasty retreat as far away from the wrathful gaze of the Kangxi Emperor as their mounts would allow? Exhausted, under-provisioned, and with morale close to breaking, they made their way first north of Dolanur, hoping to replenish their own badly depleted stocks of horses with some that perhaps they could lift off of the Kalkas.

But when those efforts failed, the Jungars were forced to continue, in a truly humiliating state of affairs for a Mongol warrior, on foot. West was their next heading, through the Ordos Loop, wrapped by the Yellow River's great northward bend. Yet they would find that, though the imperial Qing armies lacked sufficient supply logistics to be able to effectively pursue his forces into the wilds beyond the Yellow River, they were very much able to keep the Dzungars out of the valuable Ordos region. Foiled now a second time, Galdan and his people had no choice but to make for Kobdo, in the far west of Mongolia.

In spite of several plans drawn up to attempt to track him down, he had once again put himself beyond the reach of Qing authority. There, he could exist in a somewhat stable standoff, with his jungars able to threaten and harass the important trade city of Hami in the Gansu corridor, too remote for the Qing to be able to directly defend it, but they could station sufficient troops in the garrison at Ganzhou, in surprisingly distant Jiangxi province by the way, but nevertheless part of the Silk Road network, to keep Galdan from growing bold enough to actually attack in force. Perdue makes special note of the importance of provisions to the overall leanings and loyalties

of the factions that existed in the rapidly shrinking liminal spaces between Great Qing and Russia. Access to sufficient food and supplies would often be the major determining factor for what was even possible, much less advisable, to all parties in the steppe lands. For the Dzungars, the loss of almost all of their herds of sheep and cattle would mean that they needed to settle down and farm, even fish, simply to survive, demobilizing them from launching any kind of retaliatory military strike until they could, as is every adjutant's constant concern, get those additional supply depots required. Thus, in order to stave off their ability to access enough grain to rebuild their once

considerable strength, Qing officials proposed plans to confiscate the grain from the Muslims of Hami and keep it all, for safekeeping, at the military garrison of the Jiayu Pass of the Great Wall, which is, get this, more than 600 kilometers or 375 miles away. I mean, imagine being the guy who thought storing everyone's food 600 kilometers away was a good idea. Suffice it to say, that one never did make it out of the blueprint stage. As hungry to hunt down Galdan as he was, the Kangxi Emperor was forced to concede that, at least for the time being, there was very little he could actually do to pursue his Djungar nemesis out past the ends of the earth. Again, from Perdue, quote,

Most of their concerns during this period were about reducing the size of frontier garrisons in order to economize on supplies. Repeatedly, efforts to move small units out beyond interior forts ran up against limited supplies of grain and horses. In addition, the new Mongol allies, many of them desperate refugees from the battlefields, required relief grain. Food was a useful weapon in the contest for control of the Mongols, but even the huge Chinese agrarian economy could deliver only limited amounts to the frontiers. Yet they did have other methods to induce the wily Jungar Khan. Kangxi sent envoys to Galdan, telling him that he would offer to play the peacemaker between him and his long-standing

enemy, Tsewang Rabdan of the Kalkas, in exchange for Galdan's submission to the Cesarity of Great Qing. Quote, Your animals are all gone. You have nothing to eat, said the emiss part, Galdan rejected this offer and sent the emissary packing, unharmed. But, in a twist of fate, soon thereafter, an incident broke out between the Qing emissary sent to meet with Sewang Rabdan, Galdan's nemesis, and one of Galdan's Jungar subordinates in the streets of Hami. Now, whatever the nature of this disagreement, it ended up with the Qing envoy being cut down then and there, and, of course, the Kangxi emperor personally leveling blame for the murder on Galdan directly, in spite of the Khan's attestations of his ignorance of and innocence in this deadly confrontation. In the meantime, Sewang Rabdan had been in secret communications with the Qing court and sent military gifts to Kangxi, thus managing to secure

his own private deal between the Qing and the Kalkas. In that sense, at least, it was successful in further reducing Jungar power and influence over their brethren Mongols, now that the Kalkas, and the favor of the Dalai Lama besides, had been detached from Galdan's cause and folded into tributary protection, as well as peeling off a massive chunk of the Jungar's homeland. Yet, once again, it could not be counted as a total victory, as Galdan yet remained outside Kangxi's imperial grasp. And that is where we will leave things this time. Next time, we will do our level best to finish up at last the tale of Galdan Khan and the beginning of the end of the Jungar Khanate altogether. All that with the Battle of Jaomodo, as well as the after-effects and the

legacy of historical revisionism by the Qing imperial court, and, as we've already noted, subsequent regimes. As to the meaning and actual conduct of Kangxi's clearly personal vendetta against Galdan and his roving band of Jungar herdsmen, and what it would mean for the future histories of the Middle Kingdom and its Central Asian neighbors. Thanks for listening. Have you ever gazed in wonder at the Great Pyramid? Have you marveled at the golden face of Tutankhamun? Or admired the delicate features of Queen Nefertiti? Thank you.