The History of China - #301 - Qing 36: And I Think It's Gonna Be a Qianlong Time

Episode Date: July 31, 2025

In the wake of military victory, Qianlong turns inward—launching literary purges, rewriting history, and curating an image of himself as the enlightened ruler of a Confucian empire. Through censorship, spectacle, and the manipulation of memory, the Qing court fights a new kind of war: one for cultural supremacy and imperial legitimacy. 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

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. 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. this pivotal era in American history.

Look for the Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts. Hello and welcome to the history of China. Episode 300.2. And I think it's going to be a Chen Long time. 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 Chen 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 step 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 political and cultural

orbit. The scale and complexity of these campaigns were unprecedented. As historian Peter Purdue emphasizes, Chanlong 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 tradition. and Qianlong's generals had to integrate these forces effectively in order to wage war far from the Imperial Corps in Beijing. To sustain their operations, Chin 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 Jengar Khanate. As we saw last time, Qing forces employed a combination of direct military assaults, strategic sieges, and military maneuvers in order to dismantle Jengar 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 Ili Valley in present-day Kazakhstan, and stretches of even southern Siberia. This territorial expansion gave Qianlong unprecedented control. 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 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, and 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 Sichuan, 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 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 Neyman-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 Xie Chun, 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 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 Jung-Gar 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 Qianlong emperor's capacity as the outsized, larger-than-life ruler that he portrayed himself to be. At the heart of this population's surge was the introduction and diffusion of New World crops, such as corn, sweet potatoes, peanuts, as well as others. These had been carried into China toward the end of the Ming Dynasty, and then rapidly integrated into Qing agriculture.

These hardy crops thrived on marginal lands that had previously been deemed unsuitable for crops such as rice or wheat cultivation, thereby dramatically increasing the arable area and food supply. Paired with the political stability established by Kangxi and Yongzheng before, these developments enabled the empire to sustain a population unprecedented ever before in its history. However, as historian Alexander Woodside observes, this success, was not merely agricultural. It was also an administrative triumph requiring enormous skills to distribute food, collect taxes, and manage relief efforts across a vast and diverse empire. Qianlong's court played an active role in expanding cultivated lands, reducing land taxes to

encourage reclamation, and systematizing famine relief to mitigate the social dangers of such natural disasters. Policies such as these were vital to maintaining order, as even localized food shortages in a population of hundreds of millions could spark what might grow into a rebellion. Crucially, Tianlong cultivated a pragmatic partnership with powerful merchant guilds, particularly the salt merchants of the Lianghui region. These merchants, who controlled the lucrative state salt monopoly, wielded extraordinary economic influence.

The Qing court's intimate interaction with big Chinese merchants was a cornerstone of imperial economic stability. Acting as both protector and regulator, Qianlong allowed solitary peddlers to sell salt as a poverty relief measure, while cracking down on organized smuggling groups to safeguard merchant interests. This delicate balancing act reached a notable moment in 1751, when Tianlong resisted calls for price controls on salt. He argued that rising prices were an inevitable consequence of population growth,

and that confiscating merchant profits would overstep government authority. This stance enriched the salt merchants considerably, with some estimates suggesting their profits between 1750 and 1800, soaring to 250 million tails. In turn, these merchants reinvested significant funds, into imperial coffers, supporting Qianlong's expansive military and administrative projects. Yet beneath this surface of prosperity, stark social challenges yet simmered. Early in the century, scholars like Zhu Ze Yun warned that unemployment in poorer counties

could reach as high as 60% with 30% in cities, levels that exceeded the empire's ability to absorb its own labor force. This widespread unemployment fueled vagrancy and social unrest as displaced peasants sought relief and opportunity in overcrowded urban and rural settings. By the 1740s, Tianlong received reports of starving migrants from Shandong, heading to Fujian seeking famine aid, a sobering indicator of uneven development and poverty in certain regions. Compounding these pressures were conflicts over resources like the world. water. By the 1780s, village disputes over irrigation ditches prompted the Qing court to draft statutes, punishing theft from ditches, highlighting the growing strain on essential agricultural

infrastructure. Qianlong's government responded with pragmatic but often reactive measures, including expanded famine relief and encouragement of land reclamation. Yet these efforts frequently lagged behind the scale of social need. ethnic and class divisions further complicated Qing society. Manchu elites, like their Chinese counterparts, were stratified by income. While affluent Manchu's indulged in conspicuous consumption, notably even adopting Western-style bridal chairs, which Qianlong banned in 1741 to curve such extravagance, poor Manchu soldiers in southern cities faced economic hardship,

sometimes being driven to pawn their own military gear just to survive. responding to this, Tianlong instituted special punishments in 1761 in order to uphold discipline within the banner forces, recognizing the critical role of the military system to Qing power. The banner system itself of the army, an organizing framework for Manchu, Mongol, and Chinese martial elites, was both a source of strength and a vulnerability. the backbone of the Qing's great conquest, it now revealed strains of economic disparity and social marginalization, particularly among poorer bannermen who struggled to maintain their status

in a rapidly prospering but increasingly unequal empire. Qianlong's policies also intersected with ethnic dynamics that stirred resentment and division. The enduring formula of Neiman Wai Han, Manchu's on the inside, Chinese on the outside, characterized a point of with Manchu's disproportionately holding high offices like Governor-Generalships. This generated resentment among Chinese literati and officials, who themselves faced intense competition and often felt left out on the margins. In 1737, Shu Ho-The, a Manchu official, proposed restoring Manchu control over customs taxes as a way to alleviate economic hardship among Manchu bannermen. Tianlong rejected this, emphasizing

a, quote, ethnicity-blind civil service based on virtue and merit, and quote, reflecting an emerging imperial ideal of transcending ethnic and familial loyalties for the overall public good. While principled, this stance did little to quell simmering ethnic tensions or address the material disparities between Manchu and Chinese elites. The creators of the popular science show with millions of YouTube subscribers comes the Minute Earth podcast. Every episode of the show dives deep into a science question you might not even know you had, but once you hear the answer, you'll want to share it with everyone you know. Why do rivers curve?

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and administering new territories, placed severe strain on the treasury surplus, which was again initially 33 million tails as of 1735. To offset these pressures, Qianlong increasingly relied on merchant wealth, deepening the empire's dependence on a narrow commercial elite whose fortunes rose alongside imperial expansion. The integration of newly conquered lands, like the Ili Valley, required sustained investment in both infrastructure and governance, stretching Qing fiscal capacity yet further. To manage these sprawling demands, Chan Long's administration consolidated and stabilized eight governor-general ships by the year 1760, balancing.

central control with local autonomy across its vast and diverse provinces. These administrative units became vital nodes in projecting Qing authority over both the heartland and frontier regions at the same time. Despite such tensions and strains, the Chan Long Emperor's early reign was marked by remarkable economic resilience. The Qing Empire's capacity to sustain such a vast population through innovation, administrative skill, and pragmatic policy was testament to its strength. Yet the coexistence of prosperity with widespread poverty, ethnic resentment, and social instability underscored the fragility just beneath the surface.

Chin Long's response combined pragmatism with authoritarianism, supporting merchant guilds while cracking down on smugglers, promoting land reclamation while punishing vagrancy, balancing ethnic interests while maintaining Manchu preeminence. These policies reflect the complexity of governing a rapidly growing multi-ethnic empire where wealth and hardship coexisted unevenly and uneasily. Cultural initiatives were an essential complement to these economic and social policies. As we've already talked about, Chen Long's patronage of Confucianism served as a symbolic anchor for imperial authority across diverse populations.

These gestures helped frame loyalty and obedience within a shared ethical and cultural language, providing ideological support for governance amid social strain. Let's shift focus is now and turn to the intricate world of loyalty and legacy, where the Chanlong Emperor used culture, literature, and even symbolism to forge a unified empire from its diverse peoples and its restless elites. Securing loyalty was the central challenge of the Qianlong emperor's rule. The empire, as we well know, was a patwork of ethnicities, each with distinct traditions, interests, and allegiances.

Its bureaucracy, Woodside calls it a, quote, quasi-bureaucratized monarchy, and quote, prioritized competence and fiscal responsibility over personal devotion, leaving the emperor himself with little to know institutional mechanism to ensure absolute loyalty. His military campaigns, especially the Jengar Wars, revealed just how tenuous that loyalty could actually be. Many elites and officials had been participants only reluctantly, wary of any prolonged warfare and its costs. To address these fractures, Chen Long turned to culture and symbolism, tools that could transcend both bureaucracy and military force.

He cultivated Confucian ritual, literary projects, and symbolic gestures to weave a common identity that could sustain imperial cohesion. At the heart of this cultural strategy was Qianlong's remarkable patronage of Confucianism. He visited the master's ancestral home nine times during his reign, as we mentioned earlier, an extraordinary display of reverence for a tradition that was not even originally Manchu, but instead deeply rooted in Chinese tradition. In an act loaded with symbolic meaning, the emperor even kowtowed to Confucius' ancestral tablet, a gesture signifying profound submission to Chinese ethical and political ideals. Woodside argues that this was not mere self-sinicization or a display of desbitism, but a deliberate alignment with the Confucian foundations of governance and moral authority.

Why was this so vital? Well, in Qing society, loyalty was never a guarantee. Many subjects, whether haughty academicians, novel-reading shopkeepers, streetwise students, or indifferent peasants, often prioritized local deities and traditions over the imperial authority. But by embracing Confucianism publicly, the emperor sought to manufacture this loyalty through a shared cultural sense of values, thus binding a sprawling and diverse population to a common imperial ideal.

Qianlong's cultural reach extended beyond ritual and into the literary realm. In 1768, he ordered the posthumous rehabilitation of the Ming Pretender Princes, such as Zhu Yu Jian and Zhu Long, recasting them as paragons of ministerial loyalty during times. of distress. This was a strategic effort to counter a quote-unquote 18th century Chinese literary underground, end quote, that circulated alternative Ming narratives that glorified resistance to Qing rule. By thus reshaping the historical memory, the Qianlong emperor sought to present Qing rule not

as foreign conquest, but as the rightful continuation of the longstanding and virtuous imperial tradition. His literary campaigns also included celebrated essays like Su Yang Lund, written after the failed Burma campaign of the 1760s. In this, Tianlong lauded a lowly camp follower named Yang for his steadfast loyalty, comparing him to the Han Dynasty General Su Wu, who endured captivity to maintain faithfulness to his emperor. Such works underscored a monarchy increasingly invested in generating symbolic resources to strengthen loyalty as the empire expanded. Qianlong's control extended to cultural norms and everyday behaviors as well. In 1772, he mandated that male actors in Jiangsu theaters shave their heads,

fearing that their bulky cues, a traditional and legally enforced Manchu hairstyle, undermined political submission and blurred gender norms. Such strange decrees might seem off the wall or even trivial, yet they were one and all part of a broader campaign to instill a sense of discipline and obedience in a society where loyalty could never quite be taken for granted. Similarly, Qianlong threatened to dismiss literati who marry during the three-year mourning period prescribed for deceased parents, reinforcing Confucian hierarchies that prioritized filial piety over personal choice. These cultural controls targeted the elite scholarly class who staffed the bureaucracy, aiming to ensure that those who governed the empire embodied and upheld its core values. These efforts gained special urgency in the aftermath of the Jengar campaigns.

As we've well explored already, strained the empire's resources and tested the elite's loyalty. Skepticism was running high among Chinese literati, many of whom viewed the Xinjiang campaign as a, quote, coercive device to use human labor, end quote, rather than as a necessary defense of the homeland. To counter this sort of dissent, the emperor implemented a system of severe rewards and punishments to properly motivate commanders and officials alike. As Wei Yuan recorded in 1842, the Chanlong Emperor granted, quote, superior titles of nobility and expanded privileges for descendants, end quote, to officers who achieved even modest success. Well, failures faced emotion, forced suicide, or public execution.

Such measures, while effective in galvanizing military effort, did expose the fragility of loyalty in a bureaucracy more accustomed to civil administration than prolonged militarism. Administrative reforms reinforced the emperor's broad cultural strategy. By 1760, he had stabilized the eight governor generalships, refining the jurisdictions in order to ensure effective governance across the empire. varied landscapes, from the Chinese heartland all the way out to the recently acquired Central Asian frontier. These governor-general ships were the pillars of Qing administration, balancing central authority with regional autonomy, and enabling Chan Long to project power

over vast swads of territory. The administrative framework also reflected ethnic considerations. Manchu and Mongol officials were appointed to govern nomadic frontier populations, leveraging cultural affinities, while Chinese bureaucrats continued to manage the sedentary heartland. This approach, however pragmatic, perpetuated all such ethnic tensions, fueling resentment among Chinese literati who felt marginalized by Manchu dominance in high offices. The Chan Long Emperor's cultural policies thus operated in a complex social and economic context. The booming population and agricultural innovations brought prosperity, but also, also social strains, employment, poverty, and ethnic division.

His alliance with the merchant guilds, particularly the powerful salt merchants of Lian Huai, helped maintain financial stability, but deepened dependence on narrow commercial elites. His rejection of salt price controls in 1751 benefited merchants, but alienated his poorer subjects. Ethnic divisions manifested in the contrast between wealthy Montchu's indulging in luxury and impoverished bannermen struggling to maintain even basic military readiness. The emperor's rejection of Shu Hotha's 1737 proposal to restore Manchu control over customs taxes reflected his commitment to a civil service based on virtue and merit rather than ethnicity, though this ideal often clashed with the political realities on the ground.

Aiseng Yorongli, the Qianlong Emperor, was himself a highly complex and often conscious, contradictory figure. Woodside describes him as a ruler whose, quote, loves and hatreds were extravagant, and quote. His prodigious literary output, over 42,000 poems, and his habit of inscribing his seals on art and artifacts, reveal a desire to dominate imperial culture, even at the risk of damaging priceless historical treasures. His portraits, depicting him as hunter, Buddhist saint, and filial son were carefully crafted symbols projecting a multifaceted imperial identity, universal, yet deeply rooted in his traditions.

As we close today on this exploration of the Chen Long Emperor's early reign, we see a ruler who combined military might, administrative skill, and cultural patronage to forge a unified empire. From his accession in 1735 to 1760, Qianlong laid a formidable foundation, expanding from stabilizing the bureaucracy and nurturing loyalty through both Confucianism and literary control. Yet his reign was marked by many paradoxes. Prosperity along with poverty, unity amid ethnic tension, an ambition tempered by personal skepticism. Next time we will delve deeper into the Chan Long Emperor's reign and how his policies would shape the dynasty's trajectory into the late 18th century.

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