A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.]Eberhard, Wolfram
History
A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.]
Eberhard, Wolfram
China -- History
one of his sons into the government bureaucracy. No doubt, in spite of
all this, Chinese business and industry kept on developing in the Manchu
time, but they did not develop at such a speed as to transform the
country from an agrarian into a modern industrial nation.
3 _Expansion in Central Asia; the first State treaty_
The rise of the Manchu dynasty actually began under the K'ang-hsi rule
(1663-1722). The emperor had three tasks. The first was the removal of
the last supporters of the Ming dynasty and of the generals, such as Wu
San-kui, who had tried to make themselves independent. This necessitated
a long series of campaigns, most of them in the south-west or south of
China; these scarcely affected the population of China proper. In 1683
Formosa was occupied and the last of the insurgent army commanders was
defeated. It was shown above that the situation of all these leaders
became hopeless as soon as the Manchus had occupied the rich Yangtze
region and the intelligentsia and the gentry of that region had gone
over to them.
A quite different type of insurgent commander was the Mongol prince
Galdan. He, too, planned to make himself independent of Manchu
overlordship. At first the Mongols had readily supported the Manchus,
when the latter were making raids into China and there was plenty of
booty. Now, however, the Manchus, under the influence of the Chinese
gentry whom they brought, and could not but bring, to their court, were
rapidly becoming Chinese in respect to culture. Even in the time of
K'ang-hsi the Manchus began to forget Manchurian; they brought tutors to
court to teach the young Manchus Chinese. Later even the emperors did
not understand Manchurian! As a result of this process, the Mongols
became alienated from the Manchurians, and the situation began once more
to be the same as at the time of the Ming rulers. Thus Galdan tried to
found an independent Mongol realm, free from Chinese influence.
The Manchus could not permit this, as such a realm would have threatened
the flank of their homeland, Manchuria, and would have attracted those
Manchus who objected to sinification. Between 1690 and 1696 there were
battles, in which the emperor actually took part in person. Galdan was
defeated. In 1715, however, there were new disturbances, this time in
western Mongolia. Tsewang Rabdan, whom the Chinese had made khan of the
Ölöt, rose against the Chinese. The wars that followed, extending far
into Turkestan and also involving its Turkish population together with
the Dzungars, ended with the Chinese conquest of the whole of Mongolia
and of parts of eastern Turkestan. As Tsewang Rabdan had tried to extend
his power as far as Tibet, a campaign was undertaken also into Tibet,
Lhasa was occupied, a new Dalai Lama was installed there as supreme
ruler, and Tibet was made into a protectorate. Since then Tibet has
remained to this day under some form of Chinese colonial rule.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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