From the late 17th to the 19th century, the Qing dynasty expanded over Central Asia by combining military conquest with policies of division. While Qing armies crushed powerful rivals such as the Zunghars, the state also used land redistribution and the promotion of Tibetan Buddhism to weaken nomadic power and bind Mongol and Turkic peoples into a stable imperial border. Before this expansion, earlier Chinese dynasties primarily attempted to manage Inner Asian nomads through border defenses rather than direct administration. As the Manchu rulers built their own empire, the rise of new gunpowder militaries pushed them to seek political control over those border regions, such as Mongolia and Xinjiang.
During Qing westward expansion, military conquest and power division strategies were the critical tools for breaking the power of Inner Asian nomads. The Kangxi Emperor notes that Mongols had harmed China since the Han, Tang, Song, and Ming dynasties, and explains that conquesting is like “using needles on a person with illness,” and it was only necessary in times when it was disorder (Doc. 1). As a ruler writing his own journal, he claims his campaigns not as aggression but as morally justified violence to restore long-term peace on the frontier of the state. Similarly, Qishiyi also describes how the “Heavenly (Chinese Manchu) troops” exterminated nearly one million Zunghars over ten thousand li of territory in just a few years which means that their destruction was because of “usurping rebels followed each other” (Doc. 3). This exerpt suggests that the author is trying to illustrate a conquest of culture rejection which plays as a role against coalesence instead of an aggression. Earlier frontier experience from the Ming dynasty was also used by the Qing government. A Ming commander reports that the Ordos Mongols were split into 42 branches and recommends rewarding those who submitted early while turning away others and always being ready for wars so that they recognize China’s strength (Doc. 7). As a border defending group writing to the imperial, he emphasizes both the need to destroy Mongol power and to show the military force to persuade the state to adopt his methods. Overall, these 3 documents all show the harsh conquests justified as positive reasons for long-term nomadic threats and reinforced by the fragmentation towards the force of nomads.
After destroying major nomadic rivals, the Qing government further consolidated its control over Central Asia through different religious patronages and state-directed colonization. In the Qianlong Emperor‘s book “On the Lamas”, he explains that all Mongols follow the Dalai Lama and Panchen Erdeni. So he declares that promoting the Yellow Religion (Buddhism) is a way to win over the Mongols, while declaring himself from the Yuan’s flattering and honoring vainly of Tibetan monks (Doc. 5). As the emperor of the Qing Dynasty, he was controlling a multiethnic empire. He claimed seriously that Tibetan Buddhism is a critical political tool to secure Mongol loyalty, demonstrating that they often employ religious means to stabilize the frontier. At the same time, a table of settlers in Ili shows that the Qing moved large numbers of Taranchi (Turks), military (Mongol), Civilian (Chinese), Banner (Manchu), and Criminal (Mixed) into Ili, Xinjiang, and distributed a great amount of mou of land to them (Doc. 6). This system of colonization suggests that the state was trying to secure the basic production ability and to reduce the power of any local group by interweaving different groups of culture under supervision. Overall, these policies indicate that other than direct combats, the Qing transformed Central Asia from a seldom-connected nomad zone into a well-organized frontier of the Qing dynasty through shared religion.