Organizer: Richard S. Horowitz, Harvard University
Chair and Discussant: Peter C. Perdue, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
This panel seeks to examine connections between the Qing empire's geopolitical situation and the construction of power within the empire during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even at its eighteenth century pinnacle, Qing China did not stand in isolation. Trade, diplomacy and war linked it to its neighbors in Asia and, increasingly, the West. Foreign influences took a number of forms, including military pressure, the development of international trade networks, the introduction of new technologies, and the spread of religious ideas. In order to maintain its authority the Qing state needed to deflect or, at times, harness these influences.
The papers in this panel describe a Qing state actively engaged with the cultures and commerce of Asia and the West. Joanna Waley-Cohen looks at how Tibetan Buddhism was seen to threaten the Qianlong emperor's domestic authority, and provoked the Qing involvement in the Jinchuan war in the 1770s. C. Patterson Giersch examines the Qing state's concerns about Burmese influence and its difficulties in governing indigenous peoples along the inhospitable Yunnan-Burma border in the 1760s and 1770s. Richard Horowitz shows that in the 1860s and 1870s-revenues from foreign trade and loans from foreign merchants enabled the Qing state to produce new weaponry and to reconquer much of the Northwest from Muslim rebels. These papers move beyond the narrow focus on domestic sources of change in current scholarship. The panel as a whole breaks new ground in highlighting affinities in Qing statecraft between the High Qing and post-Opium War periods.
War and Religion in Eighteenth-Century China
Joanna Waley-Cohen, New York University
Qing emperors saw no clear delineation between the realms of religion and of politics. Thus they identified religion, unless carefully controlled, as a potential menace to their sovereignty. In particular, Christianity, Buddhism and Islam all appeared extremely threatening, in large part because in each case their principal source of power was externally derived and hence beyond Qing control. In this respect, wars involving lamaist Buddhists or Muslims are distinguishable from campaigns to suppress millenarian rebellions, whose ideology was deeply rooted in the native folk religious tradition. Only in the nineteenth century did wars involving Christianity occur in China.
In this paper, I demonstrate that the generally held view that China, lacking an established religion along European lines, also lacked religious wars is inaccurate. I focus in particular on the Jinchuan war of the 1770s. This war, ostensibly fought to suppress rebellious minorities in western Sichuan province near the Tibetan borderlands, had much to do both with Qing opposition to Tibetan religious leaders' inroads on their authority and, as a corollary, with contestation over imperial claims to supreme authority over the many lamaist Buddhist believers living within the empire. These motivations are connected to Qianlong's acute concern with establishing himself as a universal ruler both in accordance with Chinese tradition and in Buddhist terms. They also help explain why his intense focus on ritual and architectural displays of power often was couched in terms of Tibetan Buddhism.
The Persistence of the Panna: Qing Imperialism Confronts Tai-Lue Culture and the
Southern Yunnan Climate, 1765-1777
C. Patterson Giersch, Yale University
Faced with a vigorous Burmese Kon-baung dynasty (1752-1885), whose military consolidation near the Yunnan frontier in the 1760s threatened Qing-controlled "buffer" zones, the Qianlong court's attention turned from the Northwest, where Qing armies had recently conquered Xinjiang, to Yunnan. When officials determined that traditional reliance on indigenous rulers (tusi) to secure the frontiers would not suffice, veteran commanders deployed Green Standard and Banner troops against Burma. The failure of the Burma Campaigns (1765-1769) forced the court to reconsider policy yet again. Concerned that each strike into Burma had been defeated both by Burmese might and the harsh, tropical climate, policymakers endorsed a stronger defensive presence on the Yunnan periphery. Critical to this presence was the stationing of garrisons further out on the frontier. Officials planned to reduce their dependence on indigenous rulers by increasing direct military rule.
This paper examines the consolidation of Qing power over the Tai region of Sipsong Panna (Xishuangbanna). In 1773, the Qing deposed the indigenous ruler, deployed troops, and tightened oversight of the remaining Tai headmen. Although there was no armed opposition, and the reforms seemed to have been instituted painlessly, four years later the deposed ruling family was reinstated and the soldiers withdrawn. The initiative had failed in the face of local disapproval and the difficulties of stationing troops in a malarial region. Initially formulating frontier policy to confront a foreign threat, Qing officials discovered that "domestic" cultural and political diversity as well as environmental factors also constrained state power.
Guns and Money: Customs Revenue, Foreign Loans, and the Late Qing State
Richard S. Horowitz, Harvard University
In the 1860s and 1870s, revenue from foreign trade and loans from foreign merchants transformed the financial capacities of the Qing state. The formation of the foreign staffed Imperial Maritime Customs Service, and its subordination to the Zongli Yamen (office of foreign affairs) in Beijing, enabled the Qing state to extract resources from the growing international commerce on the China coast. By using these revenues to guarantee repayments, the Qing state was able to float substantial loans from foreign merchants to finance military expenditures. This paper, drawing on new archival research, looks at the impact of the customs revenues and foreign loans on the late Qing state, examining how these funds were managed and allocated from 1861-1880. It shows that customs revenues provided the lion's share of the funding for major efforts at military modernization, particularly the creation of a modern ordnance industry. Foreign loans provided crucial financing for Zuo Zongtang's Northwestern campaigns against Muslim rebels. However, by the mid-1870s, as the Qing state came under increasing military pressure from Japan and the West, demands on these funds far exceeded revenues, severely restricting military modernization.
This paper contradicts standard interpretations of the period that see the central government weakened by rebellion and unable to act effectively. It demonstrates a reassertion of financial control by the central government in the 1860s, and Beijing's impressive capacity to redistribute resources to meet national needs. In the 1870s, however, limited financial resources emerged as the major constraint on the further development of the state.