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Collaboration And Resistance On The Southwest Frontier: Early Eighteenth-Century Qing Expansion On Two Fronts, John Herman

History Publications

In 1715 two unrelated international events, the emergence of the Zunghar Mongols in Central Eurasia and Japan’s decision to restrict copper exports to China triggered a burst in Qing expansion into two different regions over the next fifteen years (1715-30), the Kham territory of Eastern Tibet and tusi-controlled territories in neighboring Yunnan and Guizhou provinces. As this article will show, Qing officials posted to Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guizhou during this fifteen-year period were in a very peculiar position. On the one hand, they were authorized to negotiate alliances and grant tusi offices to the local Kham elite in order to …