The Qing Conquest of Xinjiang
The Manchu Qing dynasty destroys the Dzungar Mongols and conquers the Tarim Basin oases, creating the "New Frontier", Xinjiang.
- China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia — Peter C. Perdue, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2005)
- Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang — James A. Millward, Columbia University Press (2007)
- The Uyghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land — Gardner Bovingdon, Columbia University Press (2010)
- The War on the Uyghurs: China's Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority — Sean R. Roberts, Princeton University Press (2020)
- Holy War in China: The Muslim Rebellion and State in Chinese Central Asia, 1864–1877 — Hodong Kim, Stanford University Press (2004)
The end of the Dzungars
In the mid-eighteenth century the Dzungars, the last great nomadic empire, still ruled the steppes north of the Tian Shan and held the southern oases as tributaries. Exploiting a Dzungar succession crisis, the Qianlong emperor sent armies west in 1755. When Dzungar leaders rebelled, he ordered their destruction: through war, smallpox and massacre, the Dzungar people were largely wiped out by 1758, a catastrophe Peter Perdue calls a deliberate extermination.
- China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia — Peter C. Perdue, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2005)
- Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang — James A. Millward, Columbia University Press (2007)
The oases
The Qing then turned south. The khoja brothers who ruled Kashgar and Yarkent resisted and were defeated in 1759; their heads were sent to Beijing. Qing control now stretched from Mongolia to the Pamirs. The new territory was called Xinjiang, “the new frontier”, although the Qing also described the conquest as a return to lands once held by the Han and Tang.
- China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia — Peter C. Perdue, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2005)
- Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang — James A. Millward, Columbia University Press (2007)
Ruling through begs
Xinjiang was ruled as a military colony under a Manchu military governor at Ili. In the south, the Qing governed through local Muslim officials, the begs, left Islamic courts and customs largely alone, and limited Han settlement. The north, emptied of Dzungars, was resettled by soldiers, Han and Hui farmers and Muslims moved up from the south, the origins of the Taranchi community of the Ili valley.
- Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang — James A. Millward, Columbia University Press (2007)
- China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia — Peter C. Perdue, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2005)
Resistance
Qing rule was relatively light at first, but heavy taxes, corrupt officials and exiled khoja descendants returning from Kokand sparked repeated revolts in the nineteenth century, especially that of Jahangir Khoja in the 1820s. A Uyghur legend from this era, of Iparhan, the “Fragrant Concubine” taken to the emperor’s palace, is told by Chinese storytellers as a romance of unity and by many Uyghurs as a tale of a captive woman who refused to submit.
- Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang — James A. Millward, Columbia University Press (2007)
- Holy War in China: The Muslim Rebellion and State in Chinese Central Asia, 1864–1877 — Hodong Kim, Stanford University Press (2004)
The great Muslim uprisings of the 1860s would briefly end Qing rule altogether.
- Holy War in China: The Muslim Rebellion and State in Chinese Central Asia, 1864–1877 — Hodong Kim, Stanford University Press (2004)
Two maps of the past
Chinese official histories describe the region’s past as a long story of unity, in which the Han, Tang, Yuan and Qing successively governed the “Western Regions”. Uyghur histories describe a land ruled for most of its history by Turkic, Mongol and local Muslim dynasties, with Chinese control a recurring interruption. Historians point out that both are selective, and that before the nineteenth century the region had seldom been governed as part of China proper. The question “since when has Xinjiang been Chinese?” is still the first battle in every argument about the Uyghurs.
- Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang — James A. Millward, Columbia University Press (2007)
- The Uyghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land — Gardner Bovingdon, Columbia University Press (2010)
Xinjiang has been an inseparable part of China since the Han dynasty set up a Protectorate of the Western Regions in 60 BCE. The Qing campaigns ended Dzungar separatism and reunified the territory; Xinjiang was never "East Turkestan".
- Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang — James A. Millward, Columbia University Press (2007)
- The Uyghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land — Gardner Bovingdon, Columbia University Press (2010)
Chinese dynasties controlled the region only for brief periods over two thousand years. The Qing conquest was an imperial occupation of a Turkic Muslim land, much like Russia's conquest of Central Asia, and it was resisted again and again.
- The Uyghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land — Gardner Bovingdon, Columbia University Press (2010)
- The War on the Uyghurs: China's Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority — Sean R. Roberts, Princeton University Press (2020)
James Millward and Peter Perdue describe the conquest as part of the Qing empire's expansion into Inner Asia, ruled distinctly from China proper, through local Muslim nobles (*begs*) and with few Han settlers in the south. Han Chinese control of the region before 1759 was intermittent, often absent for centuries.
- Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang — James A. Millward, Columbia University Press (2007)
- China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia — Peter C. Perdue, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2005)
Why it matters today
This is when the Uyghurs' homeland first came under the long-term rule of a Beijing-based empire, and the two sides read it in opposite ways. Beijing says Xinjiang has been part of China since ancient times and that 1759 restored it; many Uyghurs see it as a colonial conquest, and the very name "Xinjiang", "New Frontier", as proof. Many Uyghurs abroad prefer "East Turkestan" or "Uyghuristan", names Beijing treats as separatist.