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.