Qing Regionalism at Central Asian Borderlands in the Second Half of 18th Century: The Influence of Zunghar Legacy

Abstract

This publication is a part of an extensive field of the research, devoted to various areas of the borderlands, and it is actualized by the increasing scale of the study about these areas due to changes in the geopolitical situation in Eurasia. The article is devoted to the reasons and the process of the formation of some features of Qing regionalism in the western borderlands of the empire in the second half of the 18th century. The acquirement of the new lands, named the term Xiyu (西域, Western Territory) in Chinese historical materials, was of a great political importance, and the acquired domains bordering on Central Asia were transformed into an administrative-territorial unit of the empire, which became known as Xinjiang (新疆,New Frontier). The author emphasizes the importance of studying the features of the management of the Qing borderlands in Inner Asia, where various approaches to borderland relations were actively used, and were not adopted from the “Confucian” civilization, but adopted from nomads. There reveals the distinctive features that lay in the Qing regionalism in the management of this outlying territory, which was characterized by the implementation of such measures as: the military occupation, the establishment of a new administrative structure and the publication of written monuments in the languages of the Qing empire. Adopting a more flexible approach due to their non-Chinese origins, the Manchu elites developed institutions and frontier management policies, which were different from those of previous dynasties.