Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T08:12:59.461Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Ch'ing Inner Asia c. 1800

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

Joseph Fletcher
Affiliation:
Harvard University
Get access

Summary

Three changes occurred in the eighteenth century that set the course of China's subsequent history. The change that has received the most scholarly attention is the solid establishment of Europe's presence. But two other changes may prove to have been of greater significance in the long run. One of these was a doubling of the territorial size of the Chinese empire. The other was a doubling of the Han Chinese population. The interplay of these three factors has set the direction of China's history in modern times.

By the opening decades of the nineteenth century the dimensions of the Middle Kingdom's effective sovereignty were greater than at any time in her history, and China was on the threshold of a political, economic and cultural metamorphosis. This metamorphosis, often seen as ‘modernization’, came not only as the result of the influence exerted, directly and indirectly, by European civilization but also as a result of China's internal social evolution. The indigenous social and economic processes of a demographically and territorially expanded China, no less than pressures from outside, have underlain the modern transformation of Chinese society that is still under way.

Before 1800 the focus of Ch'ing history was on Inner Asia – its conquest, its politics, the swallowing and digesting of immense, culturally diverse areas by a single, increasingly Han Chinese empire. After 1800 that emphasis began to shift to the interior of China proper and to the coast. In the nineteenth century Ch'ing Inner Asia commenced being slowly absorbed into an expanding China and began to come under the influence of Han Chinese culture.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1978

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ahmad, Shāh Naqshbandī. ‘Narrative of the travels of Khwajah Ahmud Shah Nukshbundee Syud who started from Cashmere on the 28th October, 1852, and went through Yarkund, Kokan, Bokhara and Cabul, in search of Mr. Wyburd’. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 25.4 (1856).Google Scholar
Bawden, Charles R.A juridical document from nineteenth-century Mongolia’. Zentralasiatische Studien des Seminars für Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft Zentralasiens der Universität Bonn, 3 (1969).Google Scholar
Bellew, Henry Walter. ‘History of Káshghar’, in Forsyth, T. D., ed. Report of a mission to Yarkund in 1873, under command of Sir T. D. Forsyth, K.C.S.I., C.B., Bengal Civil Service, with historical and geographical information regarding the possessions of the Ameer of Yarkund. Calcutta: Foreign Department Press, 1875.Google Scholar
Chang, Chih-yi. ‘Land utilization and settlement possibilities in Sinkiang’. The Geographical Review, 39 (1949).Google Scholar
Dabbs, Jack A. History of the discovery and exploration of Chinese Turkestan (Central Asiatic Studies, 8). The Hague: Mouton, 1963.
Jarring, Gunnar. ‘A note on Shamanism in Eastern Turkestan’. Ethnos, 1961, nos. 1–2.Google Scholar
Natsagdorj, Sh. (Š;. Nacagdorž). ‘The economic basis of feudalism in Mongolia’, tr. Lattimore, Owen. Modern Asian Studies, 1.3 (1967).Google Scholar
Nebol'sin, P. I.Ocherki torgovli Rossii s Srednei Aziei’. Zapiski Imperatorskogo russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva, 10 (1855).Google Scholar
Schram, Louis M. J.The Monguors of the Kansu-Tibetan frontier, pt III. Records of the Monguor Clans: history of the Monguors in Huangchung and the chronicles of the Lu Family’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, NS, vol. 51 (May 1861) pt 3.Google Scholar
Wathen, W. H.Memoir on the U'sbek State of Kokan, properly called Khokend, (the ancient Ferghana) in central Asia’. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 3.32 (Aug. 1834).Google Scholar
Wathen, W. H.Note of a pilgrimage undertaken by an Usbek and his two sons from Khokend or Kokan, in Tartary, through Russia, & c. to Mecca. Obtained in conversation with the parties’. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 3.32 (Aug. 1834).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×