The History of China - #300 - Qing 35: Empire of Images

Episode Date: July 26, 2025

What does it take to hold an empire together when conquest alone isn’t enough? In this sweeping episode, we explore how the Qianlong Emperor fused culture, coercion, and Confucian performance to stabilize a multiethnic empire—crafting an imperial image as powerful as his armies. Time Period Covered: ~ 1735–1760 CE Major Historical Figures: The Qianlong Emperor (Aisin-Gioro Hongli) [r. 1735-1796] Grand Secretary No'chin [d. 1749] Historican Wei Yuan [1794-1857] Major Works Cited: Perdue, Peter C. China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia. Qian, Zhongshu – Tán Yì Lù, "On the Art of Poetry." Qianlong Emperor, The Siku Quanshu (四库全书) - Qing Imperial Encyclopedia. Woodside, Alexander. Lost Modernities: China, Vietnam, Korea, and the Hazards of World History. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The shadows of strong steel fall upon empty window openings, moving about at will through both north and south, in warm and cold weather, according to the seasons. Immediately upon waking, we give orders to break camp and make proper arrangements to dispatch the scouts. Whether on the move or in camp, the tents remain unaltered. Thus they are nicknamed Boats of the Step. On Flying Snow

One piece, another piece, and another piece. Two pieces, three pieces, four, five pieces. Six pieces, seven pieces, eight, nine pieces. All fly into the flowering reeds and disappear. At the age of 90, I have created as many poems as that of the poets of the whole Tang Dynasty. Isn't that a legend in the literary world? The Qianlong Emperor, his poetry, and quote, circa 1799.

The Emperor Gao Zong of the Qing, Chen Long, wrote poems like he was writing essays, using many unnecessary auxiliary words. It makes people sick. Chen Zhang Shu, from the Tan Yi Lu, or on the Art of Poetry, 1948. It began not with the flourish of trumpets, but with the ritual cadence of continuity. In late autumn of 1735, the 24-year-old prince Ayseng Gioro Hongli ascended the dragon throne under the regnal name Qianlong, meaning lasting eminence. He was the fourth son of the Yongcheng Emperor, grandson of the mighty Kang Shi. But he was also something more, a sovereign poised not merely to preserve his ancestor's legacy,

but to elevate it to new heights of imperial splendor. The Qing Dynasty had entered its matured phase, and Qianlong would become its most vivid expression. Its poet emperor, its philosopher king, and it's like a little bit of the first. last great Consolidator. Markedly unlike so many other emperors that we've covered in the course of this show, what Chen Long inherited was not a realm in turmoil. Much to the contrary, the Qing Empire as of 1735 was at its apogee. A vast functioning mechanism of complexity and cross-cultural trade.

The Mongols had been pacified. The Ming loyalists long suppressed. The Montu elite, well-entrenched as a ruling class, without losing touch, at least just yet, with its martial step-roots. The imperial court had settled into a pattern of structured governance, informed by Confucian orthodoxy, but administered by a cadre of elite scholar bureaucrats, selected through a rigorously hierarchical examination system.

It was not a time for revolution, but for refinement. and Tianlong, from the outset, understood that maintenance of empire was no less glorious a task than conquest itself. As such, he was determined to reign not as a caretaker, but as exemplar. His education had been exhaustive, fluent in classical Chinese, Manchu and Mongolian, schooled in Confucian texts, Step-Lore, Tibetan Buddhism, and the statecraft of his forebears. He practiced poetry, calligraphy, horsemanship, archery, and governance, with equal seriousness, if not always equal success. He was no cloistered palace prince, no heir of convenience or mere genealogy. Instead, the Chenlong Emperor arrived at the throne, well prepared to embody the multiple identities demanded of a position such as his.

Confucian sage, Manchu warrior, Buddhist patron, and divine sovereign of all under heaven. The early years of his reign were a masterclass of imperial consolidation. His court became a crucible of cultural performance and bureaucratic diligence. Ceremonies at the Temple of Heaven reaffirmed the cosmic legitimacy of his very mandate to rule. Annual hunts at Moulon, a woodland preserve north of Beijing, reserved solely for Manchu nobility, revived ancestral traditions of Mounted Archery and Marshall Brotherhood. Within the hallowed halls of the Forbidden City, Qianlong presided over a machinery of government that functioned with startling efficiency,

supported by both Manchu Bannerman and Han Chinese scholar officials alike. He moved deliberately, never hastily. In those first cautious years, he would retain the majority of his father's senior advisory staff, signaling continuity with what had come before. And yet he also began quietly cultivating a cadre of personal confidants, ministers and memorialists, whose loyalty was not merely to the dynasty writ large, but to him personally.

Tim Long, throughout his long life and career, was ever the consummate manager of men. He was suspicious of factionalism, rotated officials frequently, and personally annotated the imperial memorials submitted to him each day. A veritable ocean of paperwork reviewed with his own meticulous attention, marked in bright vermilion ink with commands, corrections, and commendations alike.

This meticulous attention to detail was no mere pedantry. It was instead a strategy of control. The Tianlong Emperor, we must remember, ruled a realm of staggering scale. By the mid-18th century, some 300 million people, people scattered across the largest land empire on earth. He knew that effective governance required more than palace edicts. It demanded widespread surveillance, information, and a steady rhythm of ritual that linked the provinces to the beating heart of the center. His reign became a spectacle of motion. He embarked on no fewer than six grand tours of the South, each lasting

weeks or months, during which he visited gentry estates, Buddhist temples, flood control works, and ancient sites of dynastic memory. These were symbolic, but more than just. They were also imperial audits. Qianlong understood that legitimacy in China flowed downward, but also outward. As such, he positioned himself not only as ruler of the Han Chinese, but as overlord of a truly multi-ethnic empire. He styled himself differently, depending on his audience. In Beijing, as the son of heaven and Confucian monarch. In Tibet, as the reincarnated protector of the faith.

In Inner Asia, as Khan of the Mongols. These were not affectations, but carefully cultivated roles, each embedded within the ideological frameworks of the communities that they addressed. Visual culture played a central role in reinforcing these identities. Court painters such as Giuseppe Castiglione, an Italian Jesuit working under the name Long Shening, produced striking images of the emperor both as serene scholar and as dynamic conqueror. In some scrolls, Qianlong appears in silk robes, pen-in-hand, surrounded by calligraphy and ancient bronzes. In others, he rides a charger across the step, bow-drawn, wearing the armor of a step.

chieftain. Still others depict him in Tibetan garb, receiving homage from llamas. Each portrait is but a fragment of a larger mosaic, an empire of images for an empire of peoples. Material prosperity supported this cultural projection. Ching China in the 18th century was one of the richest societies in the world. Agricultural productivity had risen steadily under Qingruil, aided by new crops from the Americas, such as sweet potatoes, maize, and peanuts, that made once marginal lands now arable. A vast internal market flourished, with commercial networks linking cities and provinces through guilds, riverine transport, and caravan routes. Silver, funneled in through trade, especially tea exports to Europe, became the very bedrock of the entire

state's monetary system. Tianlong was deeply involved in such fiscal. policy, especially early on in his reign. He prioritized the maintenance of granaries, the repair of hydraulic infrastructure, and the stabilization of silver-to-copper exchange rates. He funded massive land surveys and census projects to update the empire's demographic maps. These were not mere exercises in record-keeping. They were, in fact, assertions of power, proof that the court could still see and know the realm. Taxes, overwhelmingly collected in silver, were assessed through a finely calibrated system of quotas,

exemptions, and allowances. Local magistrates, drawn from the examination elite, handled most of the day-to-day extraction. Qianlong understood their pivotal role and kept them under close scrutiny. Promotions were awarded for diligence, but corruption, especially, involving the grain supply, was punished and harshly.

In 1741, a scandal in Jiangnan involving falsified tax rolls led to the public execution of several senior officials. This was not just a purge, it was also a warning. The imperial bureaucracy, though vast, remained relatively lean. The Grand Council, the innermost circle of governance, consisted of just a handful of trusted men who handled memorials and forwarded critical decisions to the throne. Ministries oversaw personnel, revenues, rights, war, justice, and public works, but they did not act independently. Every significant decision passed through the emperor's own hands, at least in theory.

And Qianlong, at this early stage of his reign, embraced that responsibility with gusto. His work ethic was nothing less than legendary, his confidence total. He governed with an eye not only to the present, but also to posterity. Already, as of the 1740s, Chen Long began commissioning massive editorial projects. Collections of poems, editions of Confucian classics, genealogies of the Imperial Clan, surveys of ancient inscriptions. He launched projects to restore ancient temples, re-inscribed, forgotten stale, and build archives to house documents from previous dynasties.

This was more than some antiquarian interest. It was the latest version in a multi-generational campaign to bind the Qing dynasty seamlessly into the long scroll of Chinese civilization overall. An assertion that Manchu rule was not a mere foreign occupation, but a legitimate and even providential continuation of dynastic tinaust. destiny. At the same time, Qianlong took seriously the threat of heterodoxy. Secret societies, especially those with millenarian leanings, were treated as the existential threats that they themselves professed to be. The White Lotus Movement, who we've definitely

talked about before, especially during the Yuan Dynasty and leading up to the Ming, though still relatively dormant in these early decades, was already being monitored by provincial officials. Buddhism, Taoism, and local folk cults were tolerated, heck, even supported, so long as they remained politically quiet. But any whiff of seditious doctrine invited swift and brutal suppression. Orthodoxy to the Chen Long Emperor was not just a moral good. It was a bulwark against chaos itself. And yet the Emperor did not rule by fear alone. His early reign was marked by a genuine openness to merit. He promoted Han officials as readily as he did Manchu ones,

rewarded military valor, and occasionally pardoned dissidents who demonstrated true repentance and utility to the state. His appointments reflected a meritocratic ideal, one in which virtue and competence, not birth, guided elevation. This ideal, of course, was always filtered through the prism of loyalty to the throne. By the 1750s, Qianlong's image had been carefully constructed, the tireless administrator, the cultivated patron, the steely martial leader, the sagacious Confucian. The realm had been truly pacified. The rivers of tribute, from the likes of Korea,

Vietnam, Burma, and beyond, now flowed steadily into Beijing, as they should. Jesuit astronomers charted the heavens at the Imperial Observatory. Muslim merchants traded in the northwest. Mongol princes sent their sons to be educated at the court. The emperor's writ extended from the banks of the Amur to the peaks of the Himalayas, from the rolling deserts of Xinjiang to the tropical shores of Guangdong. And yet, even amidst this splendor,

signs of strain existed beneath the surface. Population growth, encouraged by peace and productivity, began to exert an inexorable pressure upon the land. Ecological degradation, especially in the floodplains of the Yellow River, raised the specter of famine and displacement. Bureaucratic rot, though still contained, lurked in the corners and the hearts of distant prefectures. The court's ideological insistence on Confucian hierarchy

occasionally clashed with the lived realities of a diverse and dynamic society. Still, these were problems for, for tomorrow, or tomorrow's tomorrow. In the early decades of his reign, Chen Long ruled not merely as a sovereign, but as an ideal, one forged in ritual, refined in policy,

and projected across the empire with both theatrical precision and prestige. A throne of silver, yes, but also of scrolls, saddle leather, of incense and cannon fire, harvest, and ritual hymn. The machinery of empire

turned smoothly, and at its center sat a man who believed with absolute conviction that he alone could and would hold it altogether. Now we turn from the political to the cultural, exploring how Qianlong sought not only to rule but to embody and shape the very identity of his vast, multi-ethnic empire.

His reign was not merely about military conquest or bureaucratic efficiency, it was equally a grand, cultural project, a deliberate effort to weave together the diverse peoples under Qing rule through a shared sense of purpose and identity. Qianlong inherited an empire where ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversity had become the norm. The Qing dynasty was itself a creation of the Manchu peoples, a non-Han dynasty that had conquered China in the mid-17th century, and then expanded far beyond that traditional Han heartland.

governing such a patchwork required more than military force. It demanded a ruler who could act as cultural arbitrator, mediating between Manchu tradition, Confucian ideals, and the customs of the myriad peoples from Mongols to Tibetans and Uyghurs and beyond. One of the Qianlong emperor's most defining strategies was his embrace and manipulation of Confucianism, not simply as a social ideology, but as a political instrument. Confucian classicism had long been the bedrock of Chinese imperial governance,

emphasizing such concepts as filial piety, hierarchical order, and moral virtue. Qianlong, though Amanchu, had immersed himself in these traditions for his whole life, not merely adopting them in a superficial manner, but mastering the Confucian classics and presenting himself as the Confucian sage king. His court hosted scholars, poets, and philosophy. cultivating an image of the emperor as the living embodiment of Confucian virtue. Yet Qianlong's Confucianism was far from a one-size-fits-all approach. He understood that the empire's cohesion depended on respecting and integrating the identities of non-Han peoples,

particularly the Manchu, Mongol, Tibetan, and Muslim subjects, pretty much in that order. Rather than forcing cynicization on these groups, he developed a policy of cultural pluralism that allowed them to maintain their customs and religions while affirming Qing sovereignty. This delicate balance is perhaps best seen in his patronage of Tibetan Buddhism and the preservation of Mongol political structures,

both of which reinforced Qing authority in frontier regions. As historian Mark Elliott notes, Qianlong's reign represented a multi-ethnic empire that did not insist on cultural uniformity, but rather on political loyalty through a shared imperial ideology. The emperor himself participated in diverse rituals, from Manchu hunting ceremonies to Tibetan Buddhist rights,

signaling his role as universal sovereign. This syncretic approach helped to legitimize Qing rule across ethnic divides and established the Qianlong emperor as a figure capable of embodying multiple identities at once. The emperor's cultural patronage extended to the arts and to literature as well. He was a prolific poet, composing tens of thousands of poems over the course of his reign, often inscribing them on paintings, artifacts, and even architecture.

These works weren't mere personal expressions. They were deliberate acts of imperial propaganda, reinforcing themes of loyalty, order, and of cultural grandeur. The emperor commissioned monumental projects such as the Sikku Quan Shu, the largest compilation of Chinese literature ever yet assembled, which served both to preserve traditional knowledge and to control its interpretation in a way that supported, again, Qing legitimacy. However, Qianlong's cultural ambitions were not without tension. The Manchu ruling class, while dominant politically, remained numerically

small compared to the vastness of the Han people under them. This imbalance spread anxieties among the Manchu elites about potentially losing their identity amidst the overwhelmingly Han Chinese culture. The emperor responded by promoting Manchu language and customs at court and in the banner system, which organized the Manchu military and social elite. At the same time, he carefully navigated Han elite expectations, offering them patronage and official appointments in order to secure their loyalty. This delicate cultural balancing act also played out in the imperial examination system. While examinations were based on Confucian classics and open in theory to any ethnic group, in practice they heavily favored Han Chinese scholars. Chin Long sought to

maintain the meritocratic ideal of the examinations, but also introduced policies to protect Manchu privileges, such as quotas for Manchu and Mongol candidates. These efforts highlighted the ongoing challenge of governing an empire divided by ethnicity, culture, and language. Qianlong's cultural policies had profound political implications. By weaving together Confucian moral authority, Manchu traditions, and frontier religious practices. He fashioned an imperial audiology that transcended ethnic divisions while still asserting Qing supremacy. This approach bolstered internal stability and justified expansionist

policies by framing the empire as a civilizing force, bringing order to an uncivilized and chaotic world. Yet beneath the polished veneer of this cultural vision, tension simmered. Chinese literati he sometimes viewed the Manchu court's patronage with suspicion or resentment, especially as the emperor asserted his authority through literary projects and historical revisions. The privileged status of the Manchu's in official appointments and military command bred resentment among their Chinese counterparts. At the same time, non-Han groups could chafe under the Qing administrative demands, even as they were courted through religious and cultural recognition.

In navigating these contradictions, the emperor demonstrated extraordinary political skill. He was neither a mere sinusizer nor a rigid Manchu traditionalist, but a ruler who was comfortable in fashioning a hybrid imperial identity that best suited the vast and varied Qing realm itself. His reign marked a high point of Qing cultural sophistication and political integration, setting a foundation for imperial longevity, even as it foreshadowed the ethnic and political tensions that would come to challenge the dynasty's later centuries. Have you ever thought about what would happen if your airline window popped out?

Or if you can build a jetpack using only machine guns? Turns out you can, but you really shouldn't. Hi, I'm Jill Chacha. Host of a podcast that's for weird people who like learning about weird stuff. It's called, well, that's interesting. and it's a comedy science you show that tells the story behind the facts, because as it turns out, those stories are funny. Every Thursday, I tell the tale behind a new, odd discovery,

like how researchers found two mysterious structures surrounding Earth's core or how it's actually possible to stop hiccups using a rectal massage. Yes, there's a story behind that, no pun intended, and I tell the story, because storytelling is the perfect way to learn and remember. The facts are bizarre, the story. stories are epic and the laughter is plentiful, so join the flock and listen to Well That's interesting wherever you do podcasts. Where we turn now is to familiar territory for, at least most of us, the Jungar campaigns

of the 1740s and 1750s that were the opening chapter of Chin Long's celebrated 10 great military campaigns. His series of bold military expeditions that would dramatically reshape Qing imperial territories, and set the stage for the dynasty's dominance across eastern Eurasia. Since we have already looked at these with more detail, this is going to be rather summative, but it would feel very awkward indeed if I tried to bypass them without any comment whatsoever. At the heart of these campaigns was, of course, the Jungar Khanate, the confederation of Uyrat Mongols that had risen as a powerful and independent force in the Western steppes, and covered a vast swath of what are today parts of Mongolia, Kazakhstan,

and even Siberia. The Qianlong Emperor's decision to confront the jungars was shaped by both security concerns and a grander vision of his own universal sovereignty, a Qing empire stretching far beyond the traditional Chinese heartland, embracing the diverse peoples of the steppe and even beyond. His strategy combined military might with administrative integration, aiming not only to defeat the jungars, but to absorb their lands and peoples into the Qing'an. political and cultural orbit.

The scale and complexity of these campaigns were unprecedented. As historian Peter Perdue emphasizes, Chan Long and his generals, quote, solved logistical problems that had previously prevented the extended deployment of large armies in the northwestern deserts, forests, grasslands, and high mountains, end quote. The Qing military had to project power across thousands of miles in inhospitable terrain.

Deserts where water was virtually nonexistent. Mountains where supply lines were precarious, and steps where traditional cavalry warfare demanded both speed and coordination. Mobilizing tens of thousands of troops was a logistical feat unto itself that surpassed even many European campaigns of this very same era. The Qing army was a complex amalgam of Manchu Bannerman, Mongol allies, and Han Chinese soldiers. Each group brought their own distinct military traditions, and Chen Long's generals had to integrate these forces effectively in order to wage war far from the Imperial Corps in Beijing. To sustain their operations,

Qing commanders established supply depots at critical points along the campaign routes, coordinated closely with local allies, and leveraged the empire's vast wealth to maintain prolonged military efforts. The economic strain of these campaigns was tremendous, consuming large portions of the treasury surplus that Qianlong had inherited from his father, the Yongzong emperor. The campaigns themselves unfolded over a decade, beginning in the mid-1740s and culminating in the 1750s with the decisive defeat and crushing of the Jungar Khanate. As we saw last time, Qing forces employed a combination of direct military assaults, strategic sieges,

and military maneuvers in order to dismantle Jungar power once and for all. The final blows came after years of intense warfare that devastated the Jungar population and dismantled their political structures, leaving vast, new, open, and empty territories ripe for Qing administration. With this conquest complete, the Qing Empire now extended its reach across modern-day Mongolia, the Eili Valley in present-day Kazakhstan, and stretches of even southern. Siberia. This territorial expansion gave Chanlong unprecedented control over Central Asia, fulfilling

his vision of a continental empire spanning diverse geographies and peoples alike. Yet, the triumph of the Jungar campaigns would come at considerable cost. The immense financial burden drained the imperial treasury surplus, originally estimated at some 33 million silver tales. Provisioning armies, constructing fortifications, and resettling populations in newly conquered lands required sustained investment, diverting resources from other parts of the empire. Moreover, the campaigns exposed political fissures within the Qing elite. Many Chinese literati and bureaucrats viewed these costly military ventures with skepticism,

concerned that the emphasis on conquest and coercion contradicted the conditions. Confucian ideals of benevolent rule. Palace examination candidates in the year 1760 subtly criticized the Xinjiang campaign as a, quote, coercive device to use human labor, end quote, rather than a necessary defense of the empire. This tension between Qianlong's militarism and the peace-oriented preferences of his elite

underscored the challenges of sustaining prolonged warfare within a traditionally civil bureaucracy. Motivating commanders posed another significant hurdle. The Qing bureaucracy was structured primarily around civil administration, lacking mechanisms to ensure military loyalty over extended campaigns. Qianlong resorted to a system of extreme rewards and punishments in order to inspire and overaw his generals. Wei Yuan, writing decades later in 1842,

observed that the emperor bestowed, quote, superior ideas of nobility and expanded privileges for descendants, end quote, upon officers who achieved even modest success, while punishing failures with demotions, forced suicides, and public executions. One chilling example occurred in 1749, when Grand Secretary No Chin was executed by beheading with his grandfather's sword before his defeated troops in civilization, Chuan, a stark warning to any who might fail the emperor.

Such ruthless enforcement revealed the fragility of loyalty in an empire where the bureaucracy was not built for war. It also reflected Qianlong's relentless drive to consolidate control and push his vision of empire, regardless of human cost. Administratively, the incorporation of Jungar territories demanded yet new governance strategies. By 1760, the emperor had stabilized eight governor-general ships across the empire, adjusting jurisdictions to oversee both the traditional Chinese provinces, as well as the vast new frontier regions.

In Central Asia, he appointed Manchu and Mongol officials to govern nomadic populations, relying on their cultural ties to the local peoples, while establishing military colonies in order to secure the borderlands. These policies were innovative, but stretched the capacity of the Qing bureaucracy, which had long been oriented much more toward the sedentary Chinese populations. Governing the fluid, mobile societies of the step required a flexibility and adaptation that exposed the limitation of Qing administrative practices. Ethnic tensions were also exacerbated by these campaigns.

The heavy reliance on Manchu and Mongol Bannerman reinforced the perceptions of Manchu dominance and fueled resentment among Han Chinese elites. The Ney Man Wai Han, or Manchus on the inside, Chinese on the outside, formula, characterized the very essence of Qing administrative hierarchy, with Manchu's occupying many of the highest offices and military commands. Chinese scholars, like Hong Shishun, criticized this ethnic favorite. which they saw as undermining the principles of meritocracy and fairness. Chanlong's attempts to balance these tensions were met with mixed success.

In 1742, he responded angrily to suggestions that the Manchus were unfit for local government roles, defending their competence. Yet he nonetheless limited Manchu appointments to ease the social unrest at hand. The campaigns, by elevating, the military role of Manchu and Mongol forces intensified these ethnic debates, with Han elites questioning the wisdom and the costs of such ventures. Facing these political and social challenges, Qianlong doubled down on cultural and symbolic strategies to reinforce his authority. His repeated visits to the Shandong establishment of Confucius' descendants nine times over the course of his whole reign, and his ceremonial kowtowing to Confucius' tablet where

deliberate acts to align himself with Chinese moral values and to project an image of virtuous rulership. These gestures were far from mere pageantry. In a society where loyalty to local deities often trumped loyalty to the emperor himself, Chan Long's Confucian patronage sought to create a sort of shared ideological foundation that could unify disparate subjects under one central imperial authority. He also sought to control historical narratives, commissioning new chronicles in order to rehabilitate ancient figures like the Ming Pretender Princes, Zhu Yu Jian and Zhu Yulang, portraying them now as loyal ministers rather than rebels.

Such revisionism was aimed at countering alternative literary traditions that glorified the fallen Ming dynasty and therefore challenged current Qing legitimacy. The Jungar campaigns thus revealed the complexity of Chen Long's early reigns. His military successes extended the empire's boundaries already to their greatest extent in centuries. Yet, they exposed the tensions between ambition versus administration, coercion and consent, expansion, and stability. Qianlong emerged from these campaigns as a militarist visionary, whose dreams of universal, universal sovereignty came at significant economic and political cost. His ability to balance these forces through ruthless enforcement, administrative innovation, and cultural patronage

alike showcases the depth of his political acumen. Yet the strains revealed during the Jungar Wars foreshadowed challenges that would grow in intensity as the Qing Empire continued to expand and faced the building internal pressures as a result. Between 1735 and 1760, the Qing Empire experienced remarkable growth, with his population nearly doubling to about 300 million people. This demographic explosion was a testament to the empire's agricultural innovation and its administrative skill. But it also revealed deep and persistent challenges, from poverty and unemployment to ethnic tensions along the borders, that would test the Chan Long Emperor's capacity

as the outsized, larger-than-life ruler that he portrayed himself to be. That is where we're going to end off for this episode. Where we pick up again next time is a continuation of the early reign of the Qianlong Emperor and the reforms and undertakings that went on during that period of his reign. If you are one of the patrons of the show, you can go right now and listen to that second episode. If you are not, no problem, please feel free to sign up, especially given that this is the 300th episode of the show. It would be lovely, a lovely little tricentennial gift to have your support. But regardless, that next episode will be out for everyone in about a week's time.

This is a major milestone, of course, for me, and so I thank you all in helping me celebrate it, all of us together. And to all of you, thanks for listening. Thank you. Thank you. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. When a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. I'm Tracy.

And I'm Rich. And we want to invite you to join us as we take an in-depth look at this pivotal era in American history. Look for the Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts.