The History of China - #298 - Qing 33: Echoes of the Erased

Episode Date: July 10, 2025

The story of the last great nomadic empire’s fall - and the Qing’s ruthless imperial vision for a New Frontier. Time Period Covered: 1739-1759 CE Major Historical Figures: The Great Qing Empire: The Qianlong Emperor (Aisin-Gioro Hongli) [r. 1735–1796] General Bandi [d. 1755] Hojs, Hakim Beg of Ush Dzungar Khanate: Galdan Tseren [r. 1727–1745] Tsewang Dorji Namjal [blinded 1750] Lama Darja [r. 1750-52] Dawaci, self-declared Hong Taiji, [r.1752-55] Amursana [d. 1757] 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 298. Echoes of the Erased. It is the early summer of 1755. Across the vast arid highlands of Central Asia, the winds sweep unbroken across the steppe. These plains have long echoed with hoofbeats, home to mobile empires, khans, and chieftains, wandering monks, and mounted warriors. Here lies Jungaria, the heartland of the last great nomadic empire, the Jungar Khanate.

Jungaria, the heartland of the last great nomadic empire, the Jungar Khanate. But by the mid-18th century, the Jungars were in crisis. Civil war had torn through their nobility, foreign powers had encircled their own frontiers, and now the most formidable empire in East Asia had set its sights on their utter destruction. Today, we get into the story of how a complex society built on horseback, ritual, and warfare, unraveled before the military might and political machinations of the Great Qing Dynasty. Today we set the stage. How did a seemingly stable connet implode in just a few years? The Jungars were part of the Oirat, or Western, Mongol tribes, a branch of the greater Mongol world that had once shattered Eurasia under the hoofbeats of the great Genghis Khan.

Yet by the 17th century, the Mongol Empire was nothing more than a distant memory. In its place had arisen regional successor states, the Khalkha in eastern Mongolia, the Chahar in the Ordos, and of course, the Oirats to the west. Among these, it was the Jungars who emerged as the most formidable. By the 1640s, a century before our own time period, they'd begun consolidating power under a series of ambitious rulers who combined military strength with the religious authority provided by the faith of Tibetan Buddhism. A leader who we know very well by now,

Galdan Bashuk Tukan, who reigned from 1671 to 1697, is easily the most famous of these early rulers, and had studied as a Lama in Lhasa before turning towards warfare. His combination of religious legitimacy and military brilliance made him both respected and feared across the Asian Plains. Under Galdan, the Jungars had launched military campaigns across Central Asia and military brilliance made him both respected and feared across the Asian plains. Under Galdan, the Djungars had launched military campaigns across Central Asia and Eastern Mongolia, posing serious threats to the early Qing Empire, which, as you'll recall, had only recently conquered China proper in 1644. In 1690 and again in 1696, the Kangxi Emperor led campaigns deep into the steppe to defeat

Galdan. The second one steppe to defeat Galdan. The second one would succeed, with Galdan's death occurring shortly before the Jungar's formal surrender. But the Jungar polity endured. Galdan's nephew, Sehwang Rabdan, rebuilt and expanded Jungar influence from his base along the Ili River. He established tribute relationships with Tibet and trade links with Russia. His own son, Galdansarin, who ruled from 1727 to 1745, brought the Jungar state to what would be its zenith.

Galdansarin created a centralized administration. He introduced taxes on herders, oversaw the distribution of lands, and enforced military service. He also cultivated diplomatic ties with Lhasa as well as Beijing. He was a patron of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism, and maintained a court in Ili that rivaled any sedentary kingdom in both wealth and sophistication. In short, the Xungars were not some disorganized horde of barbarians. They were in every respect a fully functional state. And to Great Qing, to its east, that was the very heart of the problem. As with so many Chinese dynasties, the Qing dynasty had inherited its predecessors'

chronic problems. In this case, the same one has drove the Ming so crazy, the steppe frontier itself. For centuries at this point, Chinese rulers had struggled to contain or appease the nomadic polities that arose along their northern and western borders. But the Qing were different. They were, after all, not Chinese. Founded by the Manchus, a semi-nomadic people of the northeast, they understood much more personally the cultural logic of the steppe. They used the Mongolian language when conducting diplomacy,

they intermarried with Khalkha nobles, and even styled themselves as the universal emperors to Tibetans, Mongols, and the Han alike. Still, the Qing saw the Jungars as its most serious threat. The Jungar military was disciplined and mobile, its cavalry could cover enormous distances in unbelievably short periods of time, and its rulers claimed a form of legitimacy that challenged even Great Ching's authority across Inner Asia, that is, religious patronage over Tibetan Buddhism. In the words of historian Peter Perdue, quote, the Jungars developed the institutions of a mature state, tied to an ideological tradition, and positioned themselves as successors to the Genghisid legacy."

This ideological and military challenge could not be ignored. The Qing court began, especially under the reigns of the Yongzheng emperor and then his son, Qianlong, to see the elimination of the Gengar threat as one of its central strategic goals. Yet even at this point, war was not inevitable. For much of the 18th century, the Qing and the Jungars were able to maintain a stable, if uneasy, peace. From 1739 until the mid-1740s, relations between Galdon Seren and the Qing court were defined by diplomacy and limited trade. Both sides sent emissaries, exchanged letters, and engaged in carefully supervised commerce. The Qing permitted Jungar caravans to enter China through fixed points, but always and only under strict surveillance.

The Jungars, as we discussed last time, also sent boiled tea caravans, or the so-called Ao Cha missions, to Tibet itself, supposedly to deliver religious offerings. In practice, though, these missions were political. Galdan Serin used them to cultivate ties with Tibetan lamas, and to assert his authority as a protector of the faith itself. The Qing tolerated these missions, but uneasily. In 1741, one Zhongguo envoy strayed from the prescribed route and made unauthorized visits

to powerful monasteries. The Qianlong emperor was furious. He accused the Jungars of undermining Qing authority in Tibet, and thereafter banned further missions. Still, as it always does, trade found a way. Silver flowed from China to Jungaria. Horses and livestock moved in the opposite direction. Duxing used these exchanges to gather intelligence.

Merchants were interrogated. Routes were mapped. Informants were planted. As Purdue notes, quote, the trade routes doubled as arteries of espionage, end quote. This wasn't so much a peace as it was a state of cold war, each side simply biding its time, waiting for the other to make a critical mistake. That turning point came in 1745, with the death of Galdon Saren. Unlike his predecessors, Galdon Sen did not designate a clear heir.

He had three sons and a daughter, each with claims of their own. His second son, Sabang Dorji Namjal, initially seized power, but he proved to be unstable. Qing sources describe him as paranoid, brutal, and erratic. His sister, Ulan Bayar, attempted to check his power. Yet when he imprisoned her, she conspired with her husband, the noble Sayin Bollek, to overthrow him. In 1750, Dorje Namjal was captured, blinded, and then imprisoned. His brother, Lama Darja, then claimed power, yet lacked authority on his own. As such, the Jungar nobility began to fracture into mutually hostile camps.

In this chaos, two key figures emerged. The first was Dawachi, a descendant from the powerful Oirat general Sering Dandub. The second was Amarsana, a prince of the Khoit tribe. Together, they raised troops to march against Lama Darja. By 1752, they'd seized Ili. Lama Darja was killed, and Dawachi proclaimed himself Dataiji of the Jungars. Amarsana stood behind him as an ally. Yet this alliance, forged in blood, as many such alliances do, proved to be short-lived. Dawachi soon consolidated his power and sidelined Amarsana. When Amarsana proposed dividing control of the Khanate among the tribes, Dawachi refused. In 1754, fearing for his life, Amarsana fled east, directly into Qing territory.

And with him, he brought a proposition. Amarsana arrived at Uliastai with a bold plan. If the Qing would support him in overthrowing Daoachi, he would submit to Qing authority. In return, he asked to be recognized as the ruler of a unified Djungar state. This, as it turned out, was exactly the moment that the Qianlong Emperor had long been waiting for. He, like his father and grandfather before him, had long considered the Jungars a lingering threat. Their internal collapse now presented a perfect opportunity to intervene, not as a conqueror, but as a restorer of order. Someone who would be greeted as a liberator.

In 1755, he ordered two armies to march west. One from Uliastai under General Bandi, and another from Barkol under General Yongchang. The campaign would be swift, overwhelming, and above all, final. And it would prove to be the beginning of the end for the Jungar's entire world. In the spring of 1755, two Imperial columns marched tirelessly westward. From Uliastai to the north, a Manchu-led army under General Bandi advanced, accompanied by the Jungar Defector Lord Amarsana and thousands of his own loyal followers. From Barcal to the south, a second force moved under Yongchang, tasked with securing the mountain passes and isolating

Tawachi's stronghold. The Qianlong Emperor watched from Beijing, tracking dispatches with growing anticipation. For decades, the Jungar Khanate had proved to be a thorn in the Qing side. Now, it seemed seemed the perfect opportunity had arrived to erase it from the map entirely. Not only was the Junggar leadership fractured, but one of their own, Prince Amarsana himself, had even turned against them. Qianlong issued his orders with both clarity and confidence. His goals were simple. Crush Daawachi, welcome the surrendering tribes into the Qing fold, and then begin the process of incorporating the whole region into his imperial suzerainty. But beneath this placid surface, tensions simmered.

The Qing columns moved with speed and precision. General Bandi's army numbered approximately 20,000 men. It included Manchu bannermen, Mongol auxiliaries, and the Han Green Standard troops. Amarsana rode at Bandi's side, serving as both guide and political asset. He knew the terrain and the tribal loyalties. He also knew the weaknesses of Dawachi's regime. Dawachi himself, still based in the Ili River Valley, scrambled now to consolidate his power. He had somewhere between 8,000 to 10,000 troops, yet they now were badly demoralized. His heavy drinking and his suspicion of his own officers had alienated many among his own retinue.

Even as Qing forces approached, Dawachi now hesitated, unsure whether to negotiate, flee, or fight. The two Qing columns converged on the Bortala Valley by June. From there, they advanced westward. Ahead of them, town after town surrendered, and several Jungar nobles even sent envoys offering their submission. Others joined the Qing ranks outright. submission. Others joined the Qing ranks outright. Bandi and Amarsana pressed into the Ili region. As they closed in on Tawachi's camp near the Tian Shan Mountains, intelligence arrived that the Jungar leader was preparing to flee to the south. On July 2nd, 1755, Qing cavalry launched a night raid. They struck swiftly, scattering Tawachi's followers.

The Radhaji himself escaped to the mountains, but was soon captured. Not by Qing troops, however, but by Hakim Beg of the Ush, a local Muslim leader who saw an opportunity to gain Imperial favor. Dawachi was escorted to Qing headquarters, and then sent under guard back to Beijing. Upon his ignominious arrival to the capital, Dawachi was not executed. Instead, he was put on display. Qianlong ordered that he be treated with a mixture of ceremonial respect and political condescension. Dawachi was given a minor title, granted a stipend, and even married off to the

Imperial clan. The message was clear. The emperor had Dawachi was given a minor title, granted a stipend, and even married off to the imperial clan. The message was clear. The emperor had not only the power to destroy, but also to pardon. This performance of magnanimity served multiple functions. Domestically, it reassured the court that the Qianlong Emperor ruled through moral virtue, not martial tyranny. Diplomatically, it signaled to other inner-Asian elites that submission would be rewarded.

Yet all of this was little more than a smokescreen. Behind this whole theater of mercy, the Qing court was already discussing how to govern the newly conquered territory, and, critically, how to prevent any specter of Jungar revival ever again. In the wake of Daoachi's fall, the Qing faced a question. What should become of the Jungar Khanate? The Qianlong Emperor's answer was simple. It should be completely disintegrated. Rather than appoint a single khan, the Emperor ordered the division of Jungaria into four

parts. Each major Oirat tribe, the Kohit, Choros, Dordobit, and Khoshad, were to be placed under his own chieftain. These chieftains would hold titles granted by the Qing and rule under close imperial supervision. Amr Sana was granted control, but only over his own tribe, the Kohit. He would not be allowed to claim Galdansaran's legacy, nor reconstitute the Khanate. Such a decision was stunning to the Mongol lord. Quite frankly, Amursana had expected more.

He had, after all, delivered Dawachi, facilitated the conquest, and yet now found himself denied the very prize that he had sought in the first place as a condition for his help, that is, rulership over all of the Oirats. Worse, he was now being summoned directly to Beijing in order to receive his title and seal. This move was clearly meant to bind him to the court. He saw it as but a prelude to overt captivity. He hesitated. Then, he refused. What else could he do? The Qing military presence in Ili was thin. Bandi and Yongchang remained with limited numbers of troops. Most of the Qing army had been forced to withdraw east shortly after the conquest.

In this vulnerable moment, Amarsana began to rally support. He rejected his new imperially granted title, and continued to use the old seal of Galdansaran. He reached out to the disaffected tribal leaders, Kazakh chiefs, and Tibetan lamas. He claimed that the Qing had betrayed their promise, and that only a unified Oirat state could preserve the Mongol legacy. In due time, reports filtered back to Beijing. Bandi warned of unrest. Yongchang requested reinforcements. That August, the Qianlong Emperor acted, and ordered Amir Sana's arrest. But the prince had done what Mongols do best. He fled into the wilds before he could be taken.

With only a few hundred loyalists, he slipped away from Ili, crossed the Irtish River, and vanished into the hinterlands of the Northern Steppes. For all intents and purposes, his rebellion had begun. Qianlong's response was as immediate as it was furious. He accused Amarsana of, quote, Repaying kindness with treachery, end quote, Of violating the moral order and the mandate of heaven itself. In a scathing imperial edict, he declared, quote, This traitor who sucked at our table and accepted our gifts

Now bears fangs like a wolf to its master. Let his name be blotted from the lineage of princes." He ordered the mobilization of yet new armies. Troops were recalled to the frontier. Bandi, overwhelmed by the failure, committed suicide. What had seemed like a triumph now teetered on the edge of disaster. Its late autumn of 1755. What had already been declared a final victory had now become a dangerous crisis. When Amur Sana disappeared into the steppes in August 1755, he took with him the last

hope of a peaceful settlement. Within weeks, attacks began on Qing supply lines. Tribal leaders who had already submitted to the Qing, began to hedge, some fleeing, others quietly aiding Amursana's rebellion. The carefully balanced political order established in the Ili Valley was crumbling to sand. Local chieftains assassinated Qing-appointed leaders. Garrisons found themselves isolated and vulnerable. Panic began to spread.

Bandi, the general who'd led the initial campaign, now reported that the situation was rapidly deteriorating. In despair over his failure to maintain order, and fearing imperial reprisal for his failure, he committed suicide in early 1756. Back in Beijing, Chen Long was incensed. He viewed Amarsana's actions not just as treacherous, but as cosmically offensive, a betrayal of imperial grace, a challenge to the very moral order of the universe. He resolved not only to eliminate the rebellion, but to destroy the Jungars as a political and social entity

down to the very framework. He appointed now a new commander, the Manchu noble Zhao Hui, to lead this campaign. Zhao Hui was a veteran official and trusted courtier. His mission was unambiguous, suppress the uprising with overwhelming and merciless force. The Qing military response as of 1756-57 was as swift as it was brutal. Qing forces advanced in multiple columns, from Barkol, from Urumqi, and also from the Altai region. Their orders were to pursue Amir Sana and annihilate any tribe that offered him aid. Daohui adopted a strategy of scorched earth.

Villages suspected of collaboration were simply destroyed. Their crops burned, irrigation systems dismantled, herds slaughtered, entire encampments wiped out to the last man, woman, and child. Captured rebels were executed on the spot or transported east for interrogation and then execution. Even civilians, women, children, the elderly were not always spared. The logic was as simple as it was blood-soaked. Anyone who might support Amarsana was automatically a threat to be neutralized. A memorial from General Zhao Hui, sent in the 9th lunar month of 1756, reads, quote, These rebels cling to their loyalty like walls to blood. They retreat into the hills and

return at night. Only when the land itself is emptied can the fire be truly quenched, end quote. Yet in spite of this wanton destruction, Amarsana himself remained elusive, slipping between tribal allies and Kazakh hosts alike. Yet the Qing generals pushed ever forward, killing or displacing any group that harbored him. The rebellion, increasingly desperate, began to lose coherence. By early 1757, entire valleys of the Ili Basin had been completely depopulated. Modern scholars have often debated the nature of Qing policy in this region during this

period. In his book China Marches West, Peter Perdue estimates that between 70 to 80% of the Jengar population, standing originally between 600 to 800,000, died in the course of this war, between battle, starvation, disease, or trying to flee the chaos between 1755-1758. The Qianlong Emperor himself acknowledged the scope and scale of this destruction. In an Imperial edict from 1757, he wrote, quote, The Djungars are no longer a people. They are like smoke before the wind. Their names shall be preserved only in records, so that future ages

may know the price of treason. End quote. It's a relevant question to ask, then. Was this a genocide? The term itself did not, of course, exist in the 18th century, and Qing rulers did not articulate any racial ideology in the modern sense that we understand the term. Yet the outcome, that is to say the intentional eradication of a population's political, social, and physical existence from the surface of the earth, more than meets that standard of expectation. The Jungars were not simply defeated nor were they incorporated into the Empire. They were erased, exterminated. What else could we call it than a genocide? Prime Day is here. With great kitchen deals, greatness is a deal

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army pursued him relentlessly. In a last-ditch effort to survive, he fled west, across the Irtysh River, and into Russian territory. There, at the outpost town of Semipalatinsk, Russian authorities placed him under house arrest. The Qing demanded his extradition into their custody. The Russians stalled. They had no love for Amarsana, but they saw strategic value in denying the Qing its demands. The stage was set for an epic confrontation between two imperial powers.

And yet, before it could lead to anything more, Amarsana himself resolved the matter by dying, most likely of smallpox. He was quietly buried on Russian soil. As for Qianlong, the Emperor was enraged. He accused the Russians of harboring a traitor. And yet privately, he was happy. The rebellion was over. The frontier, he believed, had finally been, oh what's the word, cleansed.

He issued a final proclamation. Quote, let the traitor's bones rot in foreign soil. His name shall not return. The steps are ours, pacified by thunder. End quote. Yet this pacification had come at staggering human cost. What happened to the survivors of Jungaria? Some fled west to Kazakhstan, to Russia. Others were taken captive by Qing forces. Many were absorbed into other communities—Uyghur, Kazakh, or Mongol—losing

their identity in the process. This is common to and part of any kind of genocide. The Qing resettled loyal Muslim populations into the Ili Valley to repopulate this now suddenly emptied land. Weaver farmers from the Tarim Basin were moved north, Khalkha Mongols were granted new pastures, Manchu Bannermen established military colonies. The region itself was renamed. No longer Jungaria, it now became the new frontier, Xinjiang. And the Jungars, long the terror of the steppe, vanished into the pages of history books. The Jungar Khanate had vanished, but the frontier it had defined remained. The Qing Empire now faced an immense challenge, how to govern a territory shattered by war and emptied of its previous rulers.

This task was not merely administrative, it was also ideological. A place that had long been a rival now needed to be transformed into a loyal province of the Empire. A people who had been enemies needed to be replaced, renamed, and set to new purpose. This was no mere semantic shift. The term reflected a deliberate act of political refounding. The name, Zungaria, had been bound to memories of rebellion, resistance, and now, extermination. Xinjiang implied renewal, order, and imperial authorship.

It literally implies, hey, it's free real estate. Initially, Qing documents referred to the area as Junbu, or the Western Regions. But by the early 1760s, the term Xinjiang had begun appearing more and more frequently. It would come to represent not just geography, but ideology, a space that had been specifically civilized by Qing intervention. The name, much like the conquest itself, was intended from its very conception to overwrite history. The Qing did not impose a uniform administrative model on Xinjiang.

Instead, they adopted a layered and segmented system tailored to the region's diversity. At the top stood the general of Yili, a powerful military viceroy reporting directly to the emperor. Below him were banner commanders, Mongol nobles, and Muslim Begs, each ruling over their own communities with varying degrees of autonomy. The Qing maintained a tripartite division of authority. Their own Manchu bannermen were settled in garrison towns and tasked with the overall defense of the region. Mongol allies were rewarded with pasture land and allowed to retain internal autonomy within the larger Qing suzerainty.

The Turkic Muslim leaders were given administrative authority over their own people, particularly within the Tarim Basin. This diversity of rule served multiple purposes. It allowed the Qing to co-opt local elites, deflect resistance, and avoid the administrative burden of what full integration would demand. But it also ensured that no single ethnic group could ever come to dominate the region. As Alexander Woodside writes, the Qing created, quote, "...a segmented web of loyalty rather than a homogenized bureaucracy, end quote. With the Jungars gone, the land they had occupied was now largely depopulated. To prevent power vacuums and to restore the agricultural productivity of the region, the Qing initiated a massive resettlement campaign.

Turkic Muslim farmers from southern Xinjiang were moved north into the Ili Valley. Han Chinese settlers were encouraged, though cautiously, to migrate westward. Mongol banners from inner and outer Mongolia were given widespread pasture rights. Manchu soldiers were stationed permanently. Each community was governed by its own laws and administrators, but all were subject to the authority of the general of Ili. This population strategy helped to reshape the region. The Ili Valley, once the Jungar's heartland, became the new Imperial frontier, its original inhabitants replaced by a

mosaic of new and loyal subjects. The old step order had been very effectively erased and replaced with a Qing-defined plurality. Yet conquest is never just about territory. It must also be explained and justified within the moral sensibilities of the empire doing it. The Qianlong Emperor undertook an extensive ideological campaign to frame the destruction of the Jungars as both moral and necessary. In Imperial Staley's court histories and paintings, the conquest was described as a civilizing mission, a restoration of the heavenly order. Jesuit painters at court produced detailed scrolls depicting the campaigns.

Staley inscriptions proclaimed the emperor's virtue. Poetic anthologies praised the benevolence of Qing rule and the loyalty of those who submitted. In one inscription composed by Qianlong himself, he wrote, The rebels rejected the path of submission and brought ruin unto themselves. Their destruction was not vengeance, but purification. Their lands now bloom under our care." The extermination of the Zhengars was rebranded as a form of moral hygiene.

Qing officials also sought to integrate Xinjiang through education. Territory schools were established to teach Chinese classics and Confucian ethics. The goal was not just literacy, but loyalty. Local elites, including Muslims and Mongols, were encouraged to send their sons to learn the language of the court, Mandarin. By the 1760s, the Imperial Examination System was introduced in parts of Xinjiang, opening the path to bureaucratic service for qualified candidates. In theory, this created new

channels of upward mobility. In practice, it was a strategy to reshape elite identity altogether. Chen Hongmo, a prominent Qing statesman, summed up the strategy nicely, quote, nature is one, only education divides, end quote. Yet not everyone embraced this vision. Resistance yet simmered across the region. Some students learned Chinese to navigate the bureaucracy, but not to embrace it. Others rejected the idea entirely. To reinforce its authority, the Qing government deployed its next weapon, ritual. Annual ceremonies were held in Urumqi and Ili to commemorate the conquest. Officials recited imperial poems. Military victories were celebrated with processions and sacrifices. These events were not just performances. They

were tools of both memory and amnesia. The Qing also incorporated Xinjiang into the broader cosmology of the empire writ large. Maps were redrawn. The steps were no longer a periphery, here there be dragons, blank on the map. They were now a stage upon which the Qing had proven its legitimacy. Those blank spaces had been filled in. As one court official wrote, quote, the Emperor rules not just China, but the lands where the wind carries his banners. In the West, as in the East, the sun rises under his gaze." It was in every respect the language of empire, poetic, absolute, and inseparable from the concept of power itself.

By the early 1760s, the Qing had turned the ashes of war into a new political order. What had been a nomadic conit was now a heavily militarized, bureaucratically segmented region, administered, resettled, and ideologically reimagined from the ground up. But this transformation carried in it contradictions. The Qing had expanded its reach, but at great cost. The frontier had been stabilized, but it was not peaceful. And the memory of what had been done, both to the Jungars and the land, would prove to be very difficult to erase entirely.

Yet conquest has consequences, and the Qing would soon discover that success on the steppe did not guarantee victory elsewhere, either in the jungles of the south or in the pages of history. By 1760, the Qing court had achieved what no Chinese dynasty had managed to in centuries – the complete subjugation of Inner Asia. The Mongols were divided and pacified. Tibet was under imperial supervision. What was now called Xinjiang was being repopulated, administered, and now defended by imperial troops. Within the view of the Qianlong Emperor, the world had been set in its proper order. That crowning triumph, as

crowning triumphs so often do, emboldened yet new ventures. With its western frontier now secure, Qing attention could turn southward. In the mid-1760s, officials in Yunnan raised concerns about Burmese encroachment and instability in Thai regions. Qianlong, interpreting these events through the lens of his recent conquest, saw yet another opportunity. If the Jungars could be eliminated, why not the Burmese? If Xinjiang could be pacified, why not all of Southeast Asia as well? In 1765, the Qianlong Emperor ordered a military expedition into Burma.

The justification was the protection of the Qing-allied Thai peoples. But beneath that comforting exterior lay an iron core of imperial ambition. The desire to expand Qing influence and to recreate the triumph in Jungaria on yet another new frontier. The campaign, how to put this delicately, was a disaster. The Qing army, accustomed to dry-step warfare, was utterly unprepared for the humid forests and monsoon rains of the Irawati Valley. Disease, especially malaria, decimated the troops exactly as it had done for centuries and centuries before. Communication was poor, supplies

were lost, local resistance proved to be as fierce as it was highly organized. From Woodside, quote, the same structure that had triumphed on the steppe collapsed in the jungle, end quote. It was a lesson that had triumphed on the steppe collapsed in the jungle." It was a lesson that had been learned centuries before by the Mongols of Kublai Khan, but it would now be learned in blood yet again. Tellingly, by 1769 the Chin Court was forced to accept little more than a negotiated peace. The Burmese rulers would retain their autonomy, though they agreed to at least nominal tributary relations. The emperor declared victory, because of course he did. But privately, the failure haunted his military advisors. It exposed the limits of conquest, and the

dangers of projecting power without understanding the terrain, the culture, or the potential cost. Two decades later, in 1788, Qianlong again attempted to intervene beyond the empire's formal boundaries. A power struggle in Vietnam between the declining Le dynasty and the Upsart Taisan movement drew his attention. The Taisan had seized Hanoi and killed the Le Klement. Chen Long, invoking tributary duty and imperial honor, dispatched an army to restore the old order. Initially successful, the Qing forces occupied northern Vietnam. But in early 1789, during the Lunar New Year, known in Vietnam as Tet, Taisan General Nguyen Hue launched a surprise counterattack. Does this sound a little bit familiar? The Qing army was routed, thousands perished in the retreat. Once again, the Qianlong

Emperor was forced to reframe this event. He recognized Wenhui as a ruler, but only after securing his tribute. Yet the lesson was clear. The Ching model of conquest, so effective in Jungaria, definitely had its limits. None of these campaigns, of course, were cheap. The cost of Jungaria cost the Ching treasury tens of millions of tales. The Burmese and Vietnamese campaigns added yet further economic strain. And the ongoing costs of garrisons, resettlement, and administration across Xinjiang required constant revenue. The court increasingly relied on merchant wealth, salt monopolies, textile consortia, and customs fees in ports like Canton went on to underwrite imperial military spending. From Woodside, quote,

merchants and the state entered a quiet partnership. Money for order, order for profit, end quote. This informal alliance allowed the Qing to fund expansion without heavy taxation, but it also deepened inequality, fostered corruption, and made the court financially dependent on the very commercial interests it so long claimed to despise. The conquest of Xinjiang had been paid for by profit, and that too would prove to have long-standing consequences. The annihilation of the Zhengars also reshaped Qing identity itself. The Manchu court had long defined itself through its ability to manage difference between the Manchu and the Han, the Mongol and the Muslim, sedentary and nomadic.

After the conquest, that capacity was amplified into a full-on ideology. Qianlong presented himself as a universal ruler of a multi-ethnic world. He was the son of heaven to the Han, great khan to the Mongols, Chakravartin king to the Buddhists, and protector of Islam in the Western regions. He commissioned maps that depicted the empire in concentric layers of loyalty, and wrote poems in four languages. He codified rituals to bind each group personally to the throne. But this vision required constant performance and constant resources. As the century wore on, that performance began

to wear thin and strain around the edges. With the benefit of retrospection, looking back over the whole sweep of the Qing conquest of the Jungars, it was certainly both a climax as well as a warning. It represented the apex of Qing military might, the culmination of Inner Asian strategy, and the creation of China's modern northwestern frontier. But it also set a precedent for imperial overreach, for brutal solutions to complex problems, and for the belief that annihilation could produce peace. The Qing, not to mince words, learned the wrong lessons. They mistook submission for

loyalty, tribute for unity, and silence for stability. By the end of the Qianlong reign, the cracks had already begun to show. Corruption was spreading. Peasant revolts were erupting. The Empire was larger, but it was also more brittle than ever before. And along its western edge, a memory yet lingered of a people that had been wiped away, of a conquest that had been reimagined as virtue, and of an empire that mistook extermination for justice. The Qing conquest of the Jungars was no isolated event.

It was a turning point in the history of empire. It showed how violence, when paired with bureaucracy and ideology, could reshape entire landscapes. It offered a vision of rule that was both expansive and fragile, both magnificent and terrifying. And going forward, we're going to turn to the aftermath of events like the Chinggunjab rebellion in Mongolia, the deeper bureaucratic transformation of Xinjiang, and the long shadow of Qing colonialism that would stretch even into the modern age. Because conquest never ends with military victory. It echoes, it rebounds, through policies, through memory, and even through the very silence of those who did not survive it.

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