Description
Book SynopsisAn analysis of China's historical relationship with Tibet. It illuminates issues of considerable importance in Chinese history and foreign relations: Sichuan's rise in importance as a key strategic area in relation to the complicated struggle between the Zunghar Mongols and China over Tibet.
Trade ReviewThis excellent narrative proves that the dynamic process of imperial strategy exhibited on the Sichuan frontier and Tibet during the early Qing is critical to understanding the history of Qing as a whole, making this book an essential reading for all specialists.
-- Tianxiang Jiang * Journal of Chinese Military History *
Dai's revisionist work forces us to reconsider two sacred tropes in Chinese history, the predominance of civilian over military values, and that Qing success rested on blind adherence to Chinese administrative norms.
-- Blaine Chiasson * Canadian Journal of History *
Dai has provided us with a highly informative study of how state policies and military institutions shaped the socioeconomic reconstruction of eighteenth-century Sichuan . . . . [and] has provided us with a valuable study of how state policy and military institutions led to the dramatic reconstruction of Sichuan province during the eighteenth century.
-- John Herman * Pacific Affairs *
Provides a fresh explanation of Sichuan's place in the Qing system based on the empire's strategic endeavor in the Tibetan and Mongolian regions of Inner Asia.
* Journal of Asian Studies *
Dai's vivid study of Sichuan allows us to see in some detail the ways in which Qing expansion into Dzungharia and Tibet profoundly militarized the economies and the political elites of Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi, while nurturing the intertwining of mobilization and corruption that made the empire as incapable of containing rebellion in the heartland as it was further extending its conquests at the borders.
* The China Quarterly *
This is a wonderful, meticulously-documented and tersely written work on the Sichuan frontier and, more broadly, on Qing China's empire building in the Southwest. It is also a welcome addition to the exciting literature on the history of the Qing frontier.
* Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society *
This book is a brilliant study of the interplay between regional and central governments during a pivotal period as China expanded into Tibet and Xingjiang. Summing up: Essential.
* Choice *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsReign Dates of the Qing Dynasty, 1636-1911Introduction1. A Humble Beginning, 1640-16962. A Strategic Turn from the Steppe to Tibet, 1696-17013. The Formative Era, 1701-17224. Realignment in the Yongzheng Period, 1723-17355. The Shaping of Independence in the Qianlong Period, 1736-17956. The Military Presence in Society and Economy7. The Benefit and Cost of Imperial StrategyEpilogueAbbreviations Used in Notes and BibliographyNotesGlossaryBibliographyIndex
