Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: New Order for the Old Order
- 1 State Building before 1644
- 2 The Shun-chih Reign
- 3 The K'ang-hsi Reign
- 4 The Yung-cheng Reign
- 5 The Ch'ien-lung Reign
- 6 The Conquest Elite of the Ch'ing Empire
- 7 The Social Roles of Literati in Early to Mid-Ch'ing
- 8 Women, Families, and Gender Relations
- 9 Social Stability and Social Change
- 10 Economic Developments, 1644–1800
- Bibliography
- Glossary Index
- Map 1. The Ch'ing empire – physical features. John K. Fairbank, ed. Late Ch'ing, 1800–1911, Part 1, Vol. 10 of The Cambridge History of China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978), Map 1, p. xii."
- Map 2. Liaotung and vicinity in 1600. Frederic Wakeman, Jr. The great enterprise: The Manchu reconstruction of imperial order in seventeenth-century China (Berkeley, 1985), p. 40. Secondary source: Jonathan D. Spence and John E. Wills, Jr., eds., From Ming to Ch'ing: Conquest, region, and continuity in seventeenth-century China (New Haven, 1979), p. [2]."
- Map 5. Suppression of the “Three Feudatories.” Partly based on: Wang Ya-hsüan, Chungkuo ku-tai li-shih ti-t'u chi (Shenyang: Liao-ning chiao-yü, 1990) p. 163."
- Map 8. Ch'ing empire in 1759. Jacques Gernet. A History of Chinese Civilization (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), Map 24, p. 476."
- Map 11. Distribution of Ming and Ch’ing Customs Houses Defining the Ch’ing Empire’s Integrated Market Economy (by the eighteenth century). Based in part on Map 2-1 in Fan I–chun, “Long-distance trade and Market integration in the Ming–Ch’ing Period 1400–1850.” Diss. Stanford University, 1992, Photocopy, Ann Arbor Michigan: UMI Dissertation Services, 1996."
- References
5 - The Ch'ien-lung Reign
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: New Order for the Old Order
- 1 State Building before 1644
- 2 The Shun-chih Reign
- 3 The K'ang-hsi Reign
- 4 The Yung-cheng Reign
- 5 The Ch'ien-lung Reign
- 6 The Conquest Elite of the Ch'ing Empire
- 7 The Social Roles of Literati in Early to Mid-Ch'ing
- 8 Women, Families, and Gender Relations
- 9 Social Stability and Social Change
- 10 Economic Developments, 1644–1800
- Bibliography
- Glossary Index
- Map 1. The Ch'ing empire – physical features. John K. Fairbank, ed. Late Ch'ing, 1800–1911, Part 1, Vol. 10 of The Cambridge History of China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978), Map 1, p. xii."
- Map 2. Liaotung and vicinity in 1600. Frederic Wakeman, Jr. The great enterprise: The Manchu reconstruction of imperial order in seventeenth-century China (Berkeley, 1985), p. 40. Secondary source: Jonathan D. Spence and John E. Wills, Jr., eds., From Ming to Ch'ing: Conquest, region, and continuity in seventeenth-century China (New Haven, 1979), p. [2]."
- Map 5. Suppression of the “Three Feudatories.” Partly based on: Wang Ya-hsüan, Chungkuo ku-tai li-shih ti-t'u chi (Shenyang: Liao-ning chiao-yü, 1990) p. 163."
- Map 8. Ch'ing empire in 1759. Jacques Gernet. A History of Chinese Civilization (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), Map 24, p. 476."
- Map 11. Distribution of Ming and Ch’ing Customs Houses Defining the Ch’ing Empire’s Integrated Market Economy (by the eighteenth century). Based in part on Map 2-1 in Fan I–chun, “Long-distance trade and Market integration in the Ming–Ch’ing Period 1400–1850.” Diss. Stanford University, 1992, Photocopy, Ann Arbor Michigan: UMI Dissertation Services, 1996."
- References
Summary
INTRODUCTION: PLACING THE REIGN IN CHINESE HISTORY
Hung-li (1711–1799), the Manchu prince who became Ch'ing emperor in October 1735 and is now best known by the reign title, Ch'ien-lung, in use between 1736 and 1796, may well have been the strongest ruler in Chinese history. Ch'ien-lung was, first of all, the emperor who finally ended independent nomad power in central Asia, with his defeat of the Dzungars in the 1750s. As a result, the lands inside the present borders of the People's Republic of China, but also those of the present republic of Mongolia, the Ili valley in Kazakhstan, and parts of Siberia, were incorporated into the Ch'ing empire, itself the heir to the older Chinese political system. To gain this unprecedented control from Peking of both the Central Asian steppe and the Chinese heartland, Ch'ien-lung and his generals, it has been shown, solved logistical problems that had previously prevented the extended deployment of large armies in the northwestern deserts, forests, grasslands, and high mountains. Ch'ien-lung successfully sent out military expeditions that exceeded the distance of Napoleon's failed march on Russia.
The Ch'ien-lung reign's domestic achievements were equally striking. The most important one was the development of a capacity to feed as many as three hundred million people, however badly, in a century in which China's population may well have doubled. The dramatic increase in agricultural output such a capacity required had a political context. Peanuts, maize, and sweet potatoes, the new crops introduced into China from the Americas at the end of the Ming dynasty, could have been only one of the forces behind the breakthrough in agricultural productivity.
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- The Cambridge History of China , pp. 230 - 309Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002
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