This study presents historical documentation and contextual information to illustrate how high-ranking Qing leaders conceptualized their maritime territory and strategized how to govern it. Contrary to the prevailing view of seeing the eighteenth-century Qing court as an inward-looking continental empire, this book finds that the Qing did not regard the sea as the third frontier, nor did it treat its sea space with indifference. And even though land power and sea power are entirely different, they are not incomparable. During the Qing, the land–sea relationship was not so dichotomized that an expansion of land territory was predicated on neglect of the sea, and vice versa. Instead, Qing officials in the eighteenth century tended to balance their control of naval management and westward expansion with their maintenance of control over specific geographic locales, either on land or at sea. As a result, the connection between continental governance and maritime control was never as clear-cut as has commonly been assumed.