Qing Consolidation, Taiwan Integration, and Imperial Governance

Name: Lecture 23: The Qing through Qianlong
Uploaded: 2026-04-07T19:38:15.478490+00:00
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Channel: MIT OpenCourseWare
Description: Summary and key takeaways on Lecture 23: The Qing through Qianlong: Summary & Key Takeaways, covering Qing Consolidation under Kangxi (1661–1722) Kangxi

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Apr 07, 2026

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Kangxi secured the empire by suppressing the Three Feudatories, integrating southern literati, and reinstating civil service examinations. He negotiated the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689, using Latin through Jesuit intermediaries to fix the Amur River border with Russia. The emperor also confronted the Dzungar Mongols, a threat that would later lead to Xinjiang’s annexation under Qianlong.

Taiwan’s Integration

European powers contested Taiwan in the 1620s, with the Dutch in the south and the Spanish in the north. The Dutch encouraged Chinese migration to boost revenue. Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga) expelled the Dutch and created a Ming‑loyalist base, marking the first defeat of a Western military force by a Chinese army. Kangxi ordered “great clearances” that moved coastal residents inland to deprive Zheng’s regime of supplies. Admiral Shi Lang persuaded the emperor to annex Taiwan in the 1680s, and the island was administered as part of Fujian Province. Modern textbooks have shifted from a Chinese‑centric narrative to one that emphasizes Indigenous identity.

Yongzheng’s Administrative Reforms (1722–1735)

Yongzheng ascended through a secret‑box succession system that placed his chosen son in a sealed container above his bed, prioritizing talent over primogeniture. He introduced the secret palace memorial system, requiring officials to submit locked reports directly to the emperor, thereby bypassing corrupt intermediaries. The Zeng Jing affair—a treasonous critique pardoned by Yongzheng but later executed by Qianlong—illustrated the delicate balance of legitimacy. Yongzheng also “liberated” the hereditary yue hu music households, allowing their members to sit for examinations.

Qianlong’s Expansion and Cultural Projects (1735–1796)

Qianlong ruled for 60 years, voluntarily stepping down to avoid surpassing Kangxi’s tenure. He launched the “10 Great Campaigns,” extending Qing control to Xinjiang and cementing the empire’s greatest territorial extent. A prolific builder, he oversaw the construction of the Old Summer Palace (Yuan Ming Yuan) and patronized Tibetan Buddhism. His reign is described as the “sun at midday,” a period of peak power that also sowed corruption and opened the empire to opium imports.

Mechanisms of Succession and Governance

The Qing succession avoided strict primogeniture; the emperor observed his sons and sealed his choice in a box to be opened after his death, ensuring a capable ruler. Secret palace memorials, delivered in locked containers, gave the emperor unfiltered intelligence and reduced the risk of bureaucratic leakage. The Treaty of Nerchinsk demonstrated diplomatic flexibility, using Latin as a common language facilitated by Jesuit priests and a Polish delegate from Russia.

Takeaways

Kangxi consolidated the empire by suppressing rebellions, negotiating the Latin‑mediated Treaty of Nerchinsk, and confronting the Dzungar threat that later led to Xinjiang’s annexation.
Taiwan shifted from a contested European outpost to Qing territory after Zheng Chenggong defeated the Dutch and Shi Lang secured annexation in the 1680s.
Yongzheng’s secret‑box succession and secret palace memorial system reshaped imperial selection and information flow, curbing bureaucratic corruption.
Qianlong’s 60‑year reign combined the “10 Great Campaigns” of territorial expansion with massive building projects, yet his “sun at midday” era also ushered in corruption and opium influx.
The Qing employed unique mechanisms—sealed succession boxes, locked memorials, and Latin diplomacy—to maintain stability across a vast, multi‑ethnic empire.

Frequently Asked Questions

How did the Qing dynasty annex Taiwan?

The Qing annexed Taiwan in the 1680s after Admiral Shi Lang convinced Kangxi that the island needed to be secured to prevent Western powers from taking it. The conquest followed the defeat of the Dutch by Zheng Chenggong and was administered as part of Fujian Province.

What was the secret palace memorial system?

The secret palace memorial system required officials to place reports in locked boxes that were delivered directly to the emperor, bypassing intermediate bureaucrats who might copy or leak the information. This gave the ruler confidential intelligence and reduced corruption.

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Helpful resources related to this video

If you want to practice or explore the concepts discussed in the video, these commonly used tools may help.

The Great Qing Empire History Book Recommended

Provides a comprehensive academic overview of the Qing dynasty's political, social, and territorial evolution, complementing the lecture's themes.

Amazon →

Biography Of The Kangxi Emperor

Offers a detailed look at the life and strategic decisions of the emperor who consolidated the empire and managed early frontier conflicts.

Amazon →

History Of Taiwan And Koxinga

Explores the transition of Taiwan from a frontier base to a Qing province, covering the role of Zheng Chenggong mentioned in the lecture.

Amazon →

The Qianlong Emperor Biography

Covers the peak of the Qing dynasty, the 10 Great Campaigns, and the cultural projects that defined the 18th-century imperial era.

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Full Transcript YouTube

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TRISTAN BROWN: So I
left off last time
in the middle of
the Kangxi reign,
and I was just telling you
about the rebellion of the three
feudatories, which was this
real crisis, political crisis
in South China during
that early Qing dynasty.
And you're thinking
to yourself, hey,
maybe this isn't
going to work out.
And then it turned out the
Qing was able to turn the tide.
The banner systems went into the
banner, men went into action,
and they were able to
put down that rebellion.
Now the next big site of action
in the early Qing in the Kangxi
reign comes on the
island of Taiwan.
So this is really, actually,
the moment from the 1660s
to the 1680s Taiwan really
enters into Chinese history.
And this is what you might--
I always say during
dynastic China all semester,
especially we have students
whose families come from Taiwan
or have Taiwan family ties, and
they'll say, where's Taiwan?
And you say, well, we're
going to get to when it really
comes into the historical
narrative for China, which
in all seriousness, is in
this early Qing period.
Now, quick couple of
things about the island.
There were Indigenous people
living on the island of Taiwan
before Chinese
from mainland China
showed up there in the
late Imperial period.
So these folks spoke an, I
think, Austronesian language.
I think that's the
word for it, which
is a very fascinating thing.
Because it's a language
that's spoken in parts of--
a language family spoken in
parts of Oceania and Polynesia.
So what I always
find fascinating
is that if you look,
for instance, at some
of the Indigenous
Taiwanese languages,
and then you look at
the Hawaiian language,
you will find nouns and
vocabulary that is actually
shared because those
are, in fact, related
languages-- distantly
related, but they are related.
So that was the
story with Taiwan.
Now basically, what ends up
happening is that Taiwan gets
caught up from the very, very
beginning in the 1600s with this
expanding era of
European colonization.
So you already have 1557 the
opening of Portuguese Macau.
By the 1600s, you also have
the Spanish who have shown up.
They're going to
increasingly look
to expand their influence, for
instance, in the Philippines.
They'll consolidate
that over the 1700s.
But basically by the 1620s,
you see the Spanish have,
in the Northern part of Taiwan--
near Jilong today, I believe--
they have a, let's say,
I don't know if colony is
the right word, but a foothold.
And by this basically
the same decade,
the Dutch in Southern Taiwan
have a foothold of their own.
The Dutch presence was
a bit more substantial.
So here's what's
interesting about this.
So you say, how do Chinese
really start getting to Taiwan?
Now, I mentioned
to you previously
you had all the piracy
stuff that was going on.
You had some people who
just migrated over on boats
or whatever, but
the Dutch actually
started encouraging
Chinese migration to Taiwan
because they needed
help to actually expand
their colonial landholdings.
So if you had
Chinese settlers who
were living in the Dutch colony
in southern part of Taiwan,
that would help increase revenue
and all that stuff like that.
So it's kind of an irony of
history that it's the Dutch that
at least played some role in
encouraging that migration
in the 1600s.
So I've already mentioned to
you this fascinating fellow,
Koxinga, which is an
anglicization of a Hokkien
or a Min Nan Hua name for
Zheng Chenggong, this family,
the Zheng family, they basically
come to establish a political
base on the island of Taiwan in
the middle of this 17th century,
in the middle of the 1600s.
Now, I mentioned to you that
Zheng Chenggong is originally--
I think he's from Fujian.
He's certainly from
mainland China.
I think he's from South China.
And I mentioned to
you that basically, he
ends up resisting the Qing
invasion, which I guess we can
call an invasion at that point.
And he joins up with
the Ming loyalist cause.
He ends up basically forming
a permanent power base
on the island of Taiwan.
Now, what's so fascinating
about this guy, Zheng Chenggong,
is that he was certainly an
enemy of the Qing dynasty,
but he has a fascinating legacy.
Because you say, what
does he represent?
Well, he represents,
on the one hand,
an island resistance against
a mainland invading force.
So you might say, well,
that's kind of interesting.
He's going to hold out the
Ming, or at least some semblance
of the Ming on the island while
resisting the Manchu invasion,
or the Manchu conquest.
On the other hand, he
does something else,
which is that he has a naval
battle against the Dutch, which
limit and basically kick
out Dutch influence.
So it's the first time that
a Chinese army has defeated
a Western military power.
So in that sense, he can be
celebrated in mainland China,
too.
So that's why you'll see statues
of Zheng Chenggong in Xiamen
today.
You'll see statues
of Zheng Chenggong.
He's a fascinating figure
for what he represents,
and he represents
different things.
So what you basically see here
is that he-- at this point,
you've got to
understand nobody--
not the Dutch, not
the Spanish, and not
Zheng Chenggong and the Zheng
family, or not the settlers,
nobody's taken over
the whole island.
Remember, Taiwan is extremely
mountainous in its center
and to its east.
So this is basically most
of the island is populated
by that Indigenous population.
What you'll see is, in terms of
the Chinese history of Taiwan,
the big early settlements are
all along that west coast.
So that's where
you'll basically go.
You'll see the
earliest settlements
like the Port of Lugang.
That's an early
Chinese settlement,
might be the oldest
Chinese town on Taiwan.
It's right-- it's near
Taichung right on-- or close
to the coast-- right
on the coast, in fact.
So what happens is that
after establishing a power
base on Taiwan, essentially
the Zheng family, with their,
let's say,
quasi-regime, is going
to just be pirates all up
and down the Chinese coast.
So this is an ongoing issue.
It's not exactly a new
issue because again,
Chinese states have been dealing
with this piracy issue since
the 1500s.
Now, what basically
Kangxi and his government
is-- what the early Qing
government is going to decide
is they're going
to basically, it's
called one of the
great clearances.
They basically take all of these
people living along the coast
and they make them move inland.
And so you say,
that's so disruptive.
How would they do that?
Why would they do that?
They're moving potentially, I
don't know, millions of people.
But the point of
this, of course,
was to try to starve this
piracy regime of funds
and of places to pirate.
Because they could basically
land off the coast of Ningbo.
They could land off the coast
somewhere in the Chinese coast,
steal a bunch of stuff,
pillage a bunch of stuff,
and then bring it
back to the island.
So that's basically what
the Qing does, what they
try to do to limit the damage.
Now, what ends up happening
is Zheng Chenggong
dies in 1662 shortly after
that victory against the Dutch.
And then what ends
up happening is
that the Qing gets preoccupied
with the Three Feudatories
Rebellion in South China.
The son of Zheng
Chenggong tries to, again,
throw his hat in with
the three feudatories
and say, OK, we're going to
try to support this regime.
Anything to counter
Manchu influence.
What ends up happening is
this guy, Shi Lang, who's
a very, very
fascinating individual,
he is eventually put
in command by Kangxi
after the victory over
the three feudatories
to solve the Taiwan question.
Now, Shi Lang was a
fascinating choice
because his father
had actually been
killed by the forces
of Zheng Chenggong,
so he had a personal
beef in the whole issue.
And so he basically amasses
a little bit of an armada.
Remember, this was
going to take time.
The Manchus were good at
bannerman, horseback, archery
stuff.
They didn't have a navy
lying around to do this,
but it took time.
They built it up.
And he ends up taking Taiwan,
meaning the forces of, I think,
Zheng Chenggong's grandson
surrenders to him eventually,
and the Qing takes over
the island in the 1680s.
And at that point, there's
then this fascinating question,
which is to say, what do
you do with this island?
What are we going to do with it?
What should we do?
Now, the first impulse that
some of Kangxi's advisors
had was just forget about it.
It's a worthless island.
It's a piece of rock in
the middle of the ocean.
It's hard to get to.
The Taiwan Straits, you got
to ride boats out there.
Forget about it.
Shi Lang gave a
different opinion.
Shi Lang basically says to
Kangxi, if you don't take it,
the Western powers
are going to take it.
So we should have
a presence here.
So actually, Shi
Lang's argument wins.
And you can just think about it.
It's this moment in the Kangxi
reign that just makes it
so fascinating in the sense of
there were this real long-term--
I mean, what Shi
Lang saw was true.
It was kind of a
long-term vision.
And so what ends up
happening, the compromise
is Taiwan is annexed
into the Qing Empire.
It will be, really,
the only, let's say,
Pacific maritime
coastal area island
that will be annexed
in such a way
during the Qing, the main one.
It's annexed, and then it is
made a part of Fujian Province.
Just to clarify with you all,
it is not annexed as a province.
It doesn't have the
infrastructure to be a province.
It doesn't have an examination
hall at this point.
You couldn't annex
it as a province.
It didn't have enough
people at this time.
It becomes a province in the
1880s like 200 years later--
about 200 years later.
They make it into a
province, and then it's
a province for a very
short period of time,
at which point, in the results
of the first Sino-Japanese war
of 1895, it has to
be ceded to Japan.
So that's the political
backstory of Taiwan.
So now, just to clarify,
before we move on from this,
is what was Qing rule
over Taiwan like?
It was a kind of
light touch rule.
Now, that almost applies in
most places, to be frank.
What you can say is that
over the course of the 1700s,
the population of Taiwan
increased considerably.
There continued to be
migration from mainland China
even though there were supposed
to be restrictions on it,
but those were as
good as they could
be enforced, which
means not always
particularly well-enforced.
By the end of the Qing
dynasty, the island
has a population of
about 2 million people.
So it's pretty--
10% of what it is today.
It's about 20 million today, but
it was a significant population
by the end of the Qing dynasty.
Remember this just so
that you can see this,
the western half of the island
and the northern part of it
is basically the part that
eventually gets absorbed
into the Qing administration.
The mountain stuff, the parts
of the east never really
incorporated that much.
Those remain Indigenous
lands really up
until the time of
the Japanese Empire,
when the Japanese Empire
comes in and really
tries to remake the whole
island for the purposes
of the Japanese Empire.
I think that's the major
thing I want to say.
Oh, the final thing I'll just
say, you might know this term,
you might hear
this term, formosa.
This is kind of fun.
That's a Portuguese word,
Beautiful Island, Formosa.
That's what it means.
Sometimes you will hear
Taiwan is called Formosa,
and that's-- the Portuguese
were the first to name it.
It's like the Dutch,
this Dutch guy Tasman,
he was the first
to name Tasmania.
So that's why the
island of Tasmania
off the coast of Australia
is called Tasmania.
So Taiwan is Formosa because
the Portuguese said, oh, it's
a beautiful island.
Yeah, there you go.
Any questions on this?
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: Why wasn't it included
in the Zheng He [INAUDIBLE]?
TRISTAN BROWN: Zheng He
was trying to establish--
I won't say-- diplomatic
relations is a little bit of a--
it's a little bit of a 20th
century phrasing of it,
but he was trying to do
country-to-country relations.
So the issue is that you
go to Taiwan, Taiwan,
Who are you going to establish
relations with there?
Now, there was, absolutely,
there was a Yuan Dynasty--
there was a Yuan Dynasty
expedition to Taiwan.
That had something of an impact.
There's a record
of it, at least.
There's a reading that
you had for this week
that was a late Ming
literatus view of the island,
and they thought like the island
was totally, frankly, barbaric.
They thought it was beyond
the pale of civilization.
That's a very, very
interesting thing, actually.
Because Taiwan starts off in the
early Qing as a total frontier.
This is not a place
where you have scholars
writing poetry, drinking tea.
But then it ends up becoming
quite a wealthy area
during the Qing
because it has all
this-- it has good agriculture.
It has the access to
all this maritime trade.
It's not as regulated as-- think
about how closely regulated,
per se, the Port of
Guangzhou was, or Ningbo was.
But in Taiwan, it was
like the Qing had, again,
this light touch rule.
So Taiwan was able to
benefit financially.
So one of the things that always
struck me is that by the time
you get to the
early 19th century,
we look at legal
secretary salaries.
So let's say every
official in the empire,
you need to hire
some secretaries.
And I remember looking
at a list once,
and it was the salaries on
Taiwan were the highest.
Because you had-- first of all,
you had to cross the straits.
So there was the
transportation cost,
and you had to attract people
to get over to the island.
So that means you had to
pay them a little bit more.
But it was also just--
it ended up evolving.
And it ends up getting
quite a gentry culture.
So it does end up
getting a lot of people
who've passed the exams
are degree holders
and stuff like that.
It absolutely does.
And remember, if you
want to study its history
during the Qing,
you actually have
to look into records of Fujian
province, which is what it
was part of until 1884, 1885.
Yeah.
So anybody else?
Kind of interesting.
So you understand, I
guess, before we move on,
let me just spell
it out for you is
I'm sure you all are aware
that there's a sovereignty
conflict over this question.
And part of it is that--
so the long story short
of it is that the island
is ceded to Japan in 1895.
It remains under Japanese
occupation until 1945,
so it's 50 years under
Japanese occupation.
In Japan-- that's
a long 50 years.
A lot of things happened
in those 50 years.
There was eventually an
effort to make everybody speak
Japanese, but that
was not until later
in the Japanese occupation.
And then in 1945, you
basically get the outbreak
of the Chinese Civil War.
The nationalists end
up going to Taiwan
or retreating to Taiwan
where they end up in 1945,
and that is the
Republic of China,
which was the state founded
by Sun Yat-sen in 1911.
And that's a state that
still exists today.
It's recognized
by, I don't know,
14 countries around the
world, including the Vatican.
Mainland China does not have
relations with the Vatican.
That's kind of an
interesting one.
So it's still there.
And what's there
to say about it?
So part of the
sovereignty claim,
in a sense, it all goes
back to this Qing dynasty
moment of the Qing had taken
it over, and had annexed it.
So that's the essence of it.
That's the essence of at
least that part of it.
But again, you can also say,
well, the Dutch were there,
and the Spanish were there.
And I mean, now, if
you look at Taiwan,
Taiwan's history textbooks are
also changing, I have to say.
And Taiwanese, one of the things
that you'll say-- well, you
could definitely see in Taiwan
is over the last 20 years,
there's been a big move
towards a local identity
rather than a Chinese identity.
And that's, by
the way, something
that you'll find in
many, many island places.
Think about Sicilians
versus Italians.
Think about people who live
on the islands of Hawaii
versus mainlanders
in the United States.
They share American citizenship,
but it's a little bit different.
And so there's, of course, that
was bound to happen, in a sense.
But you'll now see the
history textbooks of Taiwan,
it's not like the
Chiang Kai-Shek days
where they start with
Chinese civilization.
Now, they start with the
original Indigenous peoples
going back thousands of years
and all of that stuff like that.
So this is a story to watch.
But as you can
see from the video
that I played you at the
beginning of class today,
there's a lot of--
I mean, Chinese culture
is all over the island.
Broadly speaking, Chinese in
terms of zhong hua, that thing.
Without getting political, I
think we can all admit that.
So that's the story.
Any questions?
OK, good.
So what I meant to tell
you in all this story
is to just show you, in a
sense, how talented Kangxi was
as an emperor.
Think of what he's done so far.
He's consolidated his rule.
He's given an olive branch
to the southern literati.
He's tried to avoid the
Mongol mistake of the Yuan.
They've presided over
the reinstitution
of the civil service
examinations.
He's put down the Three
Feudatories Rebellion,
and he just annexed Taiwan.
Pretty good, right?
Well, let's add a
little bit to it.
So then, the next thing on the
agenda is a treaty with Russia.
And this is the
Treaty of Nerchinsk.
So basically, what you have
to realize is the Qing is--
you have the Qing establishment.
And at this time, Russia,
the Russian Empire
is also expanding into Siberia.
And there, by the late 1600s,
they're basically getting right
up close to the edge--
the edge of modern-day Russia.
This then poses a question
of what is the border?
What will the border be between
the Russian Empire and the Qing
Empire?
And so nobody wants a war.
Nobody wants a conflict.
It's very far from Moscow.
It's pretty close to Beijing.
And it's actually
quite close, it's
right abuts Manchuria,
which is the ancestral
homeland of the Manchus.
But Kangxi wants to
avoid a conflict,
and so they're
going to basically
meet with a Russian
delegation to figure out
what the border should be.
This happens in the 1680s, same
decade that Taiwan was annexed
into Fujian Province.
And you could basically
see that they come up
with this agreement,
which is basically
aligning the Amur River.
This is what the
border would be.
It's right there.
This is the border of
the Treaty of Nerchinsk.
And if you look, this
part of the border
is still the border today.
This is one of the most
successful treaties
of Chinese history.
It worked for hundreds of years.
Now, you might say, what's
this, and what's this?
These are lands ceded to Russia
in the 19th century during
the quote-unquote "period
of the unequal treaties."
So remember I told you last
time that there's that how does
the Qing dynasty borders line up
against the borders of the PRC?
This is really one of
the key differences.
In terms of land area, it's
one of the biggest differences
besides outer Mongolia.
In the sense of these lands,
these two parts of it were ceded
to Russia during the
mid 19th century.
There were then
negotiations eventually,
and I think the
treaty was officially
signed in 1990 or something
that the PRC recognized
that those lands
would be Russia.
So this is actually
a fascinating moment
of when the PRC gave
up a territorial claim,
and they did it at that moment.
So this is just an
interesting thing
about the Treaty of Nerchinsk.
I don't know if you can
see it that clearly,
but you might notice
it's not in Chinese.
It's also not in Russian.
It's in Latin.
It's in Latin.
The Treaty of
Nerchinsk is in Latin.
And you might say, why
would it be in Latin?
Because basically, what the Qing
realized, what Kangxi realized,
what the Russians
realized is that they
needed a common
language that they
could negotiate this treaty in.
And the Chinese had
the Jesuit priests
who were based in Beijing.
Remember, I told you
the Jesuit mission.
And so they basically said,
OK, send the Jesuit priests.
They probably know how to
talk to these Russians.
Now, they didn't know
Russian, but there was a Pole
on the Russian delegation.
And the Pole was,
of course, Catholic,
and so the Pole knew Latin.
And so they hammered
out the treaty in Latin.
And then it was recognized.
So it's kind of a funny moment
of the history of diplomacy,
and Chinese-Russian relations,
and Latin, and all of that.
Are you all good?
So this then gets us into--
OK, so you say, wow.
So Kangxi also fixed
the border with Russia.
Pretty good.
Pretty good.
So he's on a roll.
And then the next
thing on the agenda,
which is really the single most,
let's say, the single biggest
headache for the Manchus.
It might surprise you.
You might be like,
are they worried
about the southern Chinese?
Are they worried
about the Taiwanese?
Are they worried
about the Japanese?
What are the Manchus
worried about?
No, the Manchus are
worried about the Mongols.
Now you might say,
wait a second.
Didn't the Mongols
ally with the Qing?
Yes.
Notice-- let me remind you.
There is an Inner
Mongolia today,
and there's an Outer Mongolia.
Not all of the
Mongols were united,
and not all of the Mongols
supported the Qing.
There were different
types of Mongols.
So some of the Mongols,
some of the Mongol tribes
joined in the Manchu
conquest, joined as bannermen,
and became bannermen,
and all that.
They were in the system.
But there was especially this--
the Dzungar Mongols did not
ally with the Qing.
They were not on board
with it, and they
posed a geopolitical
threat to the Qing
for a good first century
of the dynasty's existence
from Beijing.
There was this guy named
Galdan, and Galdan was basically
Kangxi's biggest enemy.
Galdan was like, oh, Galdan.
Galdan was a Mongol leader who
basically goes to war against
the Qing in the late 1600s.
Now, Galdan has a very, very
interesting foreign policy
in and of itself.
What do I mean by that?
I mean that by this
point, many of the Mongols
are Tibetan Buddhists.
So for a time, Galdan actually
goes to Lhasa down here.
He actually goes to Lhasa, where
he studies with the Fifth Dalai
Lama.
So this is a thing that
you got to understand.
There's a very sensitive and
subtle geopolitical relationship
here between Tibet, the
Mongols, and Beijing
in the form of the Manchu rule.
So the Manchus, of course, they
want jurisdiction, sovereignty,
whatever you call it.
Sovereignty is kind of
a 19th century word,
but you get what I mean.
They want influence
over all of it.
But this basically means that
if you want to let's say,
one way that you can
handle this question
is you could just militarily
defeat these Mongols.
Another thing that
you could do is
you could court the Dalai
Lamas, and you could
court the Tibetan Buddhists.
The Qing will do
both of these things.
They will do both
of these things.
But what I just
want you to realize
is from basically
Galdan's campaign of 1688,
Galdan 1696, all of
these fighting campaigns,
eventually Galdan dies
on the battlefield, which
is wonderful news for Kangxi.
He was like, oh,
thank God, right?
But the Mongol threat
doesn't go away.
It doesn't go away.
After Galdan dies, you see
a dynastic, or Qing focus
in particular on the Tibet
side of the equation.
And in the 1720s, the Qing
stations a small army contingent
in Lhasa, somewhat
representing, let's say,
I don't know if we want to
say the incorporation of Tibet
into the Empire,
at least somewhat.
Again, it's one of those things
where it's not really strongly
under Qing control, but
at least they do claim it,
and they have a
military presence there.
The thing that you might not
realize is that the last war
against the Dzungar Mongols
happened in the 1750s.
That's under Kangxi's
grandson, the Qianlong Emperor.
And that is actually the
reason Xinjiang becomes
incorporated into the Empire.
Just realize this.
The Dzungar Mongols, they're
all over this area here.
Basically, you can think this
is approximately Xinjiang today.
Basically, it was not that the
Qing wanted to go conquer Muslim
Central Asia.
That was not their goal.
Their goal was to eliminate
the Dzungar Mongol threat.
And the Dzungar Mongol threat
was in that northern part
of Xinjiang.
But if you want to station
soldiers in that Central Asian
area, you basically
have to take it
all the way to Kashgar, which
is basically what they did.
So they end up annexing
all of Xinjiang
in their war
against the Mongols.
It's not a war
against the Uyghurs.
The Uyghurs just happen
to be living there.
You see what I'm saying?
So that's basically the
story of the Mongols
and the Qing is one
in which some branches
of the outer Mongols were
problems for the Qing.
They fought wars against
them for 100 years,
and it ends up leading
to the consolidation
of this kind of
Western-Northwestern part
of the Empire.
And that's the PRC
that you have today.
Let's be honest.
You go to the PRC today,
you go to Xinjiang,
and sure, they'll tell
you about the Silk Road,
and they'll tell you
about the Han dynasty,
and they'll tell you
there was an expedition,
and they'll tell you
in the Tang dynasty,
there was a military
outpost here.
But the reality is that this
region really became annexed
in the 1750s.
That's like the
Taiwan thing, right?
You just-- I understand we can
always play the game about who
was the first person
ever to walk there,
and there was a Chinese person
who walked there 2,000 years
ago.
Yes, we know.
But the reality is
that, look, it's
a relatively late acquisition.
And the policies that have
you've seen over the last 20
years are evidence of the fact
that it's a relatively late
acquisition because why would
you have to colonize a place
that had been in the
Empire for 2,000 years?
You'd only have to do
it if it was recent.
And again, the name Xinjiang,
New Dominion gives it away--
let's be honest, gives it away.
And again, places conquer
places all the time.
This happens.
Why is that province part of
France, and not part of Germany?
It's like, yeah.
It's like, I don't know,
World War I happened,
you know what I mean?
These things happen.
None of this is to
say it's illegitimate.
This is what history is.
But just so you know
background to it.
Now, all of this, you
basically have to say,
wow, Kangxi puts down the
rebellion, annexes Taiwan,
basically, at least deals
with the beginning blows
to the Mongol threat.
That culminates in
this very large empire.
Now, I want you to think
about the Qing for a minute
because this is a really, really
important part of the Qing.
Qing does one thing.
Think about it like this.
Think about the long
history of China.
You can rule the frontier.
Remember the Jurchen Jin.
Remember the northern Wei in
the early medieval period.
You can rule the North
and the frontier,
or you can rule the South.
But it's very hard
to rule it all
and hold it for a
long period of time.
The Mongols try to do it.
The Mongols try to do it.
The Yuan Dynasty, they have it
all, and they try to hold it.
But they can't hold
it for that long.
Only the Manchus were
able to conquer the North,
conquer the South,
conquer the West,
and hold it for a
long period of time.
And that's what makes
the Qing Dynasty probably
unique among the dynasties
we've looked at this semester.
It's the amount of time they're
able to hold it with stability.
And that gives you
at least a part
of the story of the
borders of China today.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: It's
really fascinating.
I think growing up
and hearing what
[INAUDIBLE] has to say
about we're against this one
unified entity.
But then you look more into it,
there's the Uyghurs in the West,
and like that territory.
Most Han Chinese
do not live there.
Most Han lived in the East.
And then I don't know if
it was going at Harvard,
but there are people
who are calling
for Tibetan independence.
And it's like, it's just hearing
about the geopolitical roots
of all of these.
TRISTAN BROWN: Yeah,
yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And again, well, it's like, for
instance, I told you last time,
Mongolia is independent.
Why is it independent?
Well, because various things
happened in the 20th century
that enabled that to happen.
And other things happened
in Tibet and Xinjiang
that didn't enable
that to happen.
It's just what happened.
But it's good to know it.
It's good to know
the background to it.
All right.
Now, there's
something I also want
to say that we're getting a
little bit of a hint of what
the long-term problem might be.
So you say, wow,
the Manchus seem
to be really quite good at this.
But they have their blind spots.
Where did the Manchus not
pay attention so much?
What were they not as up on?
The answer is really Southeast
Asia, to be honest with you.
And that's the ironic thing.
The dynasty that replaces
the previous dynasty
learns their mistakes,
but sometimes forgets
their strengths.
The Ming actually paid
attention to Southeast Asia.
That's Zheng He.
That's all the
trading that happened
and everything like that.
The Manchus, they're
not really into it.
You say, why aren't
they into it?
There's all these Chinese
who moved to Malaysia.
There's all these Chinese
who moved to Indonesia.
You got-- oh, you can have all
this information coming back.
Why don't you collect
the information?
No.
Because you got to understand
from their perspective,
the Chinese who go abroad
into Southeast Asia
are breaking the law.
They are leaving
the celestial empire
and living in a foreign land.
So they don't trust them
especially because the idea,
the rumor was
always that the Ming
had fled into Southeast Asia.
Remember, the last Ming
claimant to the throne
found himself in Burma
where Wu Sangui killed him.
So there's always this
feeling of, well yeah,
there are Chinese who
live in Southeast Asia,
but we don't listen to them.
And we don't take them-- we
don't talk to them that much.
This is actually
the dynasty's policy
for a remarkably
long period of time.
Now, why is that
going to matter?
Obviously, it's going to matter
because Southeast Asia matters
so much for the 19th century.
It matters so much for the
expanding British Empire.
It matters so much
for the expanding--
all of the major
colonial powers that
are going to have footholds
there for that amount of time.
Now, for those of you who have
taken my modern China class,
I know a couple of you have
taken my modern China class,
there's an additional
irony to this, which
ends up kind of being true.
Which is that Sun Yat-sen.
Was Cantonese.
He was from Guangdong.
And where does he go to do his
key fundraising to basically
overthrow the Manchu dynasty?
He goes to Southeast Asia.
So in a sense, the Manchus are
completely correct that this
is a problematic
region because you've
got Chinese speakers,
Chinese cultural people who
will potentially organize
against them eventually.
Now, it took over 200 years,
but Sun Yat-sen does in fact,
do that.
So there's a little bit
of a point of irony here,
and everything like that.
It's fascinating.
I really recommend, if you
have time, go to Malaysia.
Go to Indonesia.
And Thailand, of
course, has a very--
all of the major
Southeast Asian countries
have historic
Chinese populations.
And they've all been governed
differently in the 20th century,
everything like that.
But that's, I
think, a little bit
of a foreshadowing
of where the Manchus,
they know what's
going on in Kashgar.
They know what's
going on in Lhasa.
They know what's going
on in all these places,
but they don't know what's
going on in Malacca.
You see what I'm saying?
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: I was actually
surprised recently.
I was talking to someone that
I know from Southeast Asia,
and either they
are Chinese 100%,
or they have some Chinese
blood within them.
And I was surprised
to hear that.
I didn't realize that
there was this history
of the Chinese moving
to Southeast Asia
and establishing--
TRISTAN BROWN: The first
overseas Chinese, huge amounts.
I remember saying, like, it
was something like Malaysia
was a third Chinese.
And before the
independence of Singapore.
So basically, just to rundown
really, really quickly,
in Thailand, a large population
of Thailand has Chinese descent.
So a lot of Chinese over the
centuries moved to Thailand,
and that continued into the
20th-- that continues now.
There's Chinese
expats in Thailand.
It's a thing.
The thing is that there
was a king, I don't know,
Rama VI or something like
that, who basically said,
the Chinese can stay, but
you have to take Thai names.
So the Chinese in
Thailand took Thai names,
but there was also a
lot of intermarriage.
Because the Thais are Buddhist.
Chinese were Buddhists.
It's like, OK, close enough.
We can do it.
So the thing about Malaysia
is that Malaysia is different.
Because the Chinese,
there was a little bit
of a wall on the assimilation
possibility there.
Now, it's not to say Chinese
and Malaysians, a lot of them
do speak Chinese, and
they also speak Malay,
but they're not Muslim.
So that basically means
that if a Chinese wants
to marry a Malay, you're
going to convert to Islam,
or you're going to
marry a Chinese.
So that's where the Chinese
community of Malay stayed,
actually, very close together.
And so Chinese Malays
have Chinese names,
everything like that.
You could tell immediately.
Indonesia, that's another
whole story of there was a big
crackdown on Chinese language
and identity in the later part
of the 20th century.
And that was very, very--
you couldn't teach Chinese.
You couldn't learn
Chinese, and all that.
That's now softened
a little bit.
Again, that's a
changing story, but all
of the countries
of Southeast Asia
have had historic
Chinese populations.
You could all do this--
a great timeline project,
if anybody needs a
last minute project.
It's a fascinating story.
It goes all the way back, and I
mean, the history of Singapore
is fascinating.
The Peranakan Chinese, those
are some of the first Chinese,
sometimes called
the Straits Chinese.
Some of those families date
back to the Ming dynasty
in how they got
to Southeast Asia.
So that's the story.
Good, OK?
All right, so Manchus
did not pay attention.
Oh yeah, this is, by
the way, I love this.
I love showing you this.
So one of the
things is it is true
that in the first few decades
of the existence of the Qing
dynasty, some Ming loyalists
did go to Southeast Asia.
Again, I don't want to overstate
it, but some of them really did.
And if you look in Malacca or
in parts of Malaysia, including
what is today now Singapore,
you'll find these inscriptions.
These are from the
early Qing dynasty.
But fascinatingly,
what year is it?
What time is it?
Remember, the
calendar and the year
is determined by the dynasty
and the ruling emperor.
So for the Overseas
Chinese communities
of Southeast Asia in the first
few decades of the Qing dynasty,
they identified the year
as the [Chinese] she me she
me year of the Longfei emperor.
And you go, Longfei emperor?
Who's the Longfei emperor?
He's a made-up emperor.
Doesn't exist.
But they didn't
recognize Kangxi.
You know what I mean?
They didn't recognize him.
They didn't recognize the chain.
So then you have this
fascinating question
of when did Chinese
communities in Southeast Asia
start using the
Qing dynasty dates?
And it's by the 1700s
they're using them.
But it doesn't
matter because you
can try to tell the
Manchus in Beijing that,
and they still don't care.
But you know what I'm saying?
They do actually start--
You'll see Chen Long, [CHINESE]
she me she me year in the 18th
century.
But in the Kangxi reign, you'll
see this made up emperor.
And it's just fascinating to go
to Chinese temples in Southeast
Asia, if they have old
inscriptions, and you'll see,
these are the early Ming
exile communities or something
that they're just not on board
with the Manchu conquest.
So it's fascinating to see.
All right, so
basically, I've just
covered the highlights
of the Kangxi reign.
This was a 60-year reign.
And as you can see from
his stuff with negotiations
with Russia, the Mongols,
the Taiwan annexation,
putting down the Three
Feudatories rebellion,
he had a busy reign.
It was quite active.
But it's just like
sometimes you get lucky.
In the Qing dynasty,
you got lucky
in the sense of they had a
capable emperor at a time
when you really needed one.
And he proved to be fairly--
I don't want to overstate
it, but he was, especially
compared to who you've
seen from the Ming.
So that's Kangxi.
Why was Kangxi chosen, by
the way, to be emperor?
This is interesting.
In fact, my very phrasing of
that sentence is interesting.
He was chosen, meaning
there was a choice.
That's quite important.
The Shunzhi Emperor who preceded
him, who was the first emperor
to rule from Beijing,
the first Manchu emperor
to rule from Beijing at the
beginning of the dynasty,
he died of smallpox
at a fairly young age.
And so the thing
of why Kangxi was
picked to be the next emperor is
that he had contracted smallpox
as a child and survived,
so meaning he had immunity.
Now, the reason why I want
to bring this out to you
is you say, why did the Qing
have pretty decent emperors
compared to the Ming?
Because the Qing
did not practice
the whatever it's called,
primogeniture, whatever--
you know what I'm talking
about-- the first son
becomes the emperor.
That's what the Ming did.
It got them into
tons of trouble.
It got them into tons
of trouble because look,
you cannot guarantee the first
son is going to be the winner.
What I mean to
say is the talent,
it could be not
the talented one.
It might be the sixth.
Who knows?
The way that the Manchus did
it is that the Manchus would
basically say, you
look at all the sons,
and you basically observe them.
And you go, who's the most
intelligent of the bunch?
Who's a little bit curious?
Who's capable?
And they had a long period
of time to observe them.
So this is actually really
fascinating because Kangxi dies
on the 20th of December of 1722.
And I think he had a bunch
of sons-- at least eight,
maybe more.
But there was eight in
contention for the throne.
And for most of
Kangxi's reign, he
had this one son who was
an absolute just awful son,
just horrible.
Like a criminal.
Like I'm serious.
And it's very hard.
It was really a Hunter
Biden situation.
It really was.
I mean, I'm sorry to say, it was
a real Hunter Biden situation.
So it was basically--
it was even worse.
So it was basically, Kangxi had
this son was the Crown Prince.
And you and Crown Prince
basically means you're tapped.
You're probably going to
be the emperor, but no
guarantees until we see
the writing on the wall.
So this guy, people were
telling Kangxi over the years,
we don't think he's the one.
He's accused of like
all these sex crimes.
He was like-- all
this stuff like that.
And then he was
even at some points
trying to overthrow his father.
Who knows if it's true
or not, but it probably
is to a certain extent.
But it's very difficult,
as we can see,
it's very difficult for a father
to throw his son under the bus.
You want to believe, oh,
come on, he's misunderstood.
But eventually, after
decades, Kangxi demoted him.
It was like, oh my God.
OK, so now who's it going to be?
Who's next?
Who's coming up?
We got seven other options
that are all-- any of them
would be better than that
guy, so who's it going to be?
So nobody knew.
And then-- so how the
Manchu emperors did it is
they wrote their choice,
and it doesn't necessarily
have to be the Crown Prince.
The Crown Prince is
the leading contender,
but it could be somebody else.
They write their choice
on a piece of paper
and put it in a locked
box over their bed.
And then when they die, you
can take the box down and then
open it up, and it's like,
OK, that's the next emperor.
Now again, what
this practice did
is that it ensured that the
people who became emperors
during the Qing dynasty
generally could do the job.
That was one thing
that it guaranteed.
So what you had in the
20th of December in 1722,
is that the announcement came,
and it was somebody nobody
expected.
It was the Yongzheng--
the guy who
becomes the Yongzheng Emperor.
And people were like, what?
It was a shock announcement.
Because he wasn't a favorite.
He wasn't in line.
He didn't have a political
establishment in Beijing.
There were all of these people.
He had been a very
loyal son to his father.
He had supported, I
think, one of the things
that he did very
politically astutely
is he didn't throw that
kind of controversial son
totally under the bus.
He was always taking
his dad's side
and trying to be peacemaker.
So he was older.
He was one of the-- when
he assumed the throne,
he was older, which was another
surprise of the announcement.
Because it's like,
why wouldn't you
pick a young guy
who's invigorated,
has a long life ahead of him?
So he picked somebody who
was a little bit older.
And there were always rumors
that Yongzheng had somehow
changed the paper, that
there had been a conspiracy.
From the very
beginning of his reign,
there was always this
thing of, is he legitimate?
But, actually, he ends up
being a totally capable
and probably the most
hardworking emperor
of the whole dynasty.
He literally, as I
mentioned last time,
worked so hard that people
think he worked himself
to death-- an early death.
And so he reigns for 13
years from 1722 to 1735.
And one of the things is
he's the most activist
of all of the Qing emperors.
And what I mean by that
is he identifies problems
and he tries to solve them.
So one thing that he
does over here, let's
start on the far right.
You had in China a system
that was, let's say,
a messenger system between
local provincial officials
and the Imperial State known
as the memorial system.
Basically, officials
would write memorials,
and they would be
mailed to Beijing.
And they'd be
copied out by people
along the way to ensure
that they're accurate.
There was a problem
about this, which
is to say the memorials were
not particularly confidential.
They pass through mediums.
They pass through various
different other layers
of the bureaucracy.
And then once it
got to Beijing, it
was copied by
certain bureaucrats
in the palace who saw it
before the emperor saw it.
So the Yongzheng emperor
is like, if you really
want to figure out what's
going on in this Empire,
if you really want to figure
out who's a good official, who's
a bad official, you have
to have a secret system.
So Yongzheng basically
inaugurates a new communication
system known as the
secret palace memorials.
These are folded memorials.
And what they do is the
official in the province writes
a memorial, puts
it in a locked box.
It's sent to Beijing, and it's
opened in front of the emperor.
And only he reads it.
So that way, if you
see something going on
in terms of
corruption, if you need
to say something that's a little
bit difficult to hear that you
don't want other officials to
hear, the emperor will hear it.
So he basically institutes
this new communication system
that ends up being quite
important because he also
overhauls the tax system.
Now, listen, I know taxes
are nobody's favorite topic.
It's like, OK, but you realize
how important taxes are.
And you realize that,
think about how taxes,
they're so messed up
in the United States.
It's a pain every year.
You have to do your taxes
and everything like that.
So it's like, it's difficult
to streamline a tax code.
There's a lot of
special interests
who want to prevent
you from doing
that, who make money on the
side, everything like that.
So he institutes the secret
palace memorial system,
and then he basically uses
that to try to basically
feel out how are we going to
implement this new tax system?
The system that he
implements ends up basically
lasting the rest of the dynasty.
So it's a real moment of reform.
So the thing that's
sad about Yongzheng
is he actually
identified real problems.
He really wanted to
solve them in government.
He wanted to make the
government better.
Think about this.
I'm talking about you can't
say this for every emperor.
Even the good emperors,
you're like, OK,
they're kind of treading water.
Basically, they want the dynasty
to survive another 10 years.
That's what they want.
But sometimes, you get
somebody who's like, no,
I want it to work better.
I want it to be better
than it is right now.
And that's what you
had in this case.
Now, he doesn't
live long enough.
And if he had lived
longer, it's possible
that he would have even
done more stuff that
would have made the rest of
the dynasty's history look
different.
But he didn't.
Now, I want to just say, let
me show you some examples
of this palace memorial system.
So basically, the official--
this is the official
writes the letter,
writes the memorial to the
emperor, and then the emperor
responds with this red script.
He opens it up.
It's folded.
It's originally folded so nobody
can read it, and he opens it up
and he writes his response.
So the most famous response
of Qing dynasty emperors--
this is true of
probably all emperors
going back some centuries in
Chinese history-- was [CHINESE]
zhi dao le, which
means, I got it.
So basically, you're
going to get--
because you're going to get
a ton of these all the time.
So you get memorials
every day coming
in from different
parts of the empire,
and you don't want
to write like this.
You're like, oh, wow,
that's a nice response.
But you don't want to
write that on every one.
It's like giving
feedback on exams.
I know what the score is.
I could write out why.
I just don't want to.
So I just say, OK, it was a
good essay, and it's actually,
it's the essays that
are the most problematic
that you have to
write the most on.
So it's the same with
the Qing emperors.
The most problematic memorials
you have to respond the most.
But most of the time,
you just go, I got it.
Yeah, I got it,
[CHINESE] zhi dao le.
So this is Kangxi, his version
of [CHINESE] zhi dao le --
Yongzheng's, Qianlong's,
Jiaqing's, these
are all the Qing emperors
and how they would
write those characters in red.
So it's kind of fun.
Now, there's another
thing that's really funny.
It went viral in
China in 2019, which
is that after Kangxi's playing
around with this communication
system.
Of course, why do you
write the emperor?
You write the emperor if
something pressing is happening.
Like oh wow,
there's a rebellion.
You got to write the emperor.
But you also write
the emperor to wish
his mother a happy birthday.
You also-- there are reasons
why you write the emperor.
And especially, if
you want a promotion,
you might send a
memorial to the emperor.
Well, so this went
viral in 2019.
There was this one
official in Jiangnan
who was such a kiss-ass, he
wrote Yongzhen every month.
And he literally-- he
had nothing to say.
He had nothing to say.
So basically, so he
writes him every month.
And he basically asks him, he
says, I hope you're doing well.
I hope your health is well.
I hope everybody in
the home is well.
And basically most of the
time, Yongzheng just responded,
[CHINESE] zheng
an, I'm OK, thanks.
I, imperial we, I'm OK.
So in the fifth year, on the
first day of the first month,
the new year, he
responded like, my health
is really good recently,
and I've even gained weight.
So that gives you a
little bit of a sense
of Yongzheng's personality.
But again, most of the
time that's the response.
You can think about the emails
you get back from professors.
How many words are in them?
So yeah, so that's Yongzheng.
OK.
AUDIENCE: At least at the
end, when you were like, OK.
TRISTAN BROWN: Right, exactly.
Exactly.
So now, there's
another thing that
happens during the Yongzheng
reign, which is really, really
fascinating Is that basically,
there's this thing that's
called the Zeng Jing affair.
And this was made famous by a
popular book by Jonathan Spence,
I don't know, like 25 years
ago called Treason by the Book,
and it's actually
a pretty good read.
It's a book that
you could actually
read on a plane or something.
It's quite a compelling read.
The reason why this
case is so fascinating
is that essentially,
it boils down to this.
Zeng Jing was this
guy, I think he
was in [CHINESE]
Shanxi or something.
He approaches this major Qing
official named Yu Zhongshi
and he basically says like,
hey, I heat the government,
let's overthrow it.
And Zhongshi is like, what?
So he reports Zeng
Jing to the throne,
and Zeng Jing is arrested for
treason, and for sedition,
and for spreading all this
hate, and everything like that.
So he's held in captivity
where he's awaiting
his potential execution.
And Yongzheng starts--
Yongzheng had this
personality where
he was fascinated by Zeng
Jing because he was basically
like, why does
Zeng Jing hate me?
Why does Zeng Jing
hate our empire?
Why does he heat the Qing?
Because Zeng Jing had said
this anti-Manchu stuff.
And he had said this stuff that
was like, the Manchus shouldn't
be running China.
They're barbarians
from beyond the wall.
What the hell is going on here?
Who's this guy
who's our emperor?
He's a loser.
All this stuff like that.
So Yongzheng was like, he was
fascinated by this fellow.
So he starts a pen pal
relationship with him
from prison.
So he basically says,
what's your problem?
And then Zen Jing writes back,
here's my problem with you.
You're a barbarian
from beyond the wall,
all this stuff like that.
So then Yongzheng is
like, OK, you know what?
I'm going to use
this opportunity
to explain to everybody why we
have the right to rule China.
So it's a fascinating
moment in Yongzheng's tenure
where he's like, look,
Confucius says it's not
about barbarian or Chinese.
It's about the ritual,
who does it right.
We're Manchus, but we
do the right rituals.
What are you talking about?
We have the right to rule China.
We have the Mandate of Heaven,
all this stuff like that.
So he actually
writes-- in a sense,
he writes this essay that
eventually is published
and is promulgated
throughout the dynasty which
is kind of like an argument
for diversity in a sense.
It's remarkably prescient in
its cosmopolitan attitude.
Of course, he's writing
it to basically say,
this is why we can rule.
But he promulgates it.
He then, as a mark
of generosity,
pardoned Zeng Jing because
Zeng Jing apologizes.
So then if you make
this big deal about it,
you have to be like, look,
I've taught Zeng Jing well.
Zeng Jing has
learned his mistake,
and he has now realized
the error of his ways,
and he has publicly
apologized to me.
So I'm going to pardon him.
And it's kind of like,
wow, OK, Yongzheng.
This is quite a move.
So then without giving it away,
Yongzheng's son, the Qianlong
emperor, one of
the first acts he
does when he comes
to the throne is
he executes Zeng
Jing immediately.
He just hates this guy.
And then it's quite a funny
situation because you say,
but Yongzheng pardoned-- it
was an imperial pardon, which
was like a presidential pardon.
You're not supposed to go after
him after a presidential pardon.
But then Qianlong says,
ah ha, yes, that's
what my father asked for.
But he insulted my
father, which means that I
have to defend my ancestor.
So Confucianism is
remarkably flexible.
You can justify anything
you want with it,
so he immediately executes him.
So that's the end of
the Zeng Jing affair.
But that's Treason by the Book,
if you want the whole story.
A little bit of another
thing about Yongzheng
is taste for the exotic.
He was exposed to some
Western influence which was
growing in China at this time.
Of course, the Jesuits were
big influencers at court.
He wasn't necessarily
so into Catholicism.
In fact, Kangxi had banned
missionary activity late
in his reign.
Yongzheng upheld that.
But you could see
he was fascinated
by European masquerade
balls, which of course, he
heard about from the Jesuits
in his conversations with them.
So you could basically
see how he appropriated
the clothing or the costumes
of European masquerade balls
for tiger hunting.
Now, the whole
thing is I just want
to make it very
clear to you, I'm
sure this is not
an accurate image.
Meaning I don't think he ever
got that close to a tiger.
I don't think he was wearing
the wig or the outfit there
or anything like that.
But what it does
show you is it's kind
of like a self-fashioning.
It's like, look at
me, I'm the emperor.
I can kill tigers and wear
the latest European fashion.
Why not?
So that just gives you
a sense of Yongzheng.
AUDIENCE: Was it more
like come see Yongzheng?
Were they there actual names,
or was that also later?
TRISTAN BROWN: No, reign name.
Those are the reign names.
They were used at the time.
AUDIENCE: It's like,
[CHINESE] Aixinjueluo.
TRISTAN BROWN: Yeah,
[CHINESE] Aixinjueluo.
That's the personal family name.
And then they all have
personal names, yeah.
And then they have temple names.
So every emperor has
three or four names.
AUDIENCE: Reign
names are definitely
different from before.
Is it like a Manchu thing?
TRISTAN BROWN: The reign names,
we say different from before--
I would say that the Ming
and Qing names-- remember,
so with reign names of
the Ming and the Qing,
they don't change over the
course of the dynasty, which
is actually really convenient
for doing Ming and Qing history.
You see, before that,
again, I gave you
the example of Wu
Zetian, Wu Zetian
had a reign name for
her first few years,
and then she would
change the reign name.
She changes the reign name
throughout her dynasty.
Like the Song, emperors
changed their reign name
throughout the dynasty.
But the Ming and
the Qing emperors,
they picked a reign
name, like Kangxi,
and that's the
name for 60 years.
Very convenient for calendars.
You know what I mean?
In timekeeping.
Yeah.
Good, so there's
another thing, which
is interesting about the
Yongzheng period, which
is the opium question.
So opium comes to Yongzheng's
desk during his reign,
and he's basically going to be--
essentially, he bans
its cultivation.
This is interesting
because what it
shows you is kind of
like what I showed you
in the previous slide,
the taste for the exotic--
the influences that are creeping
into China at this time.
Well, you have the
question of opium,
and opium coming into
China at this time.
Now, you have to basically
understand with the time that
Yongzheng was
reigning in the 1720s,
'30s, there was very little
opium coming into China.
But opium was
cultivated in China.
Now, why would
opium be cultivated?
Opium has actually got
an old history in China
in the sense of it was
called [CHINESE] ying su,
poppy, for the purposes
of producing a medicine.
So that was grown.
Now, the thing is that there
comes to be a number of things.
At this point, tobacco
is already in China
and is becoming quite popular.
And so people are mixing
tobacco and opium.
There's all these different ways
you could smoke it and Inhale it
and everything like that.
Basically, Yongzheng is very
skeptical towards these things
because he doesn't like poppies
not because of addiction
per se, which is not
really a concept he had,
but because he wants
farmers to grow crops,
meaning things you eat.
He doesn't want them to grow
stuff that you can't eat.
And so he's got a skepticism
towards the crop on that basis.
So he basically puts in a ban
on the cultivation of poppies.
But just to
emphasize, he doesn't
ban the consumption of opium.
That's not something
you would ban.
So it was kind of like
a little bit ambiguous.
Now, you realize that by the
time you get to the latter part
of the 1700s, the growing opium
importation into China will
become a major issue.
And that's going to especially
pick up in the early 19th
century, and that's going to
lead you to the Opium Wars.
But it's interesting
during this reign, that's
where you get the big thing.
Really quickly, Yongzheng
in the music households,
we've talked about this
in the past regarding
gender norms, various
anxieties surrounding them.
Also the cults of
female suicides.
As I mentioned to you, there
was a group of people in China,
the [Chinese] yue hu
or music households.
They were a hereditary
group of people
who engaged in the
performing arts,
and by extension, something
that was very linked
to the performing
arts, prostitution.
And so these were a category
of people, the mean people.
They did not take
the examinations.
They inherited their status.
It's a little bit
like a caste system.
They would inherit that status
generation to generation.
Yongzheng basically, liberates,
quote-unquote, "liberates"
these households, says we're
not going to recognize those
statuses anymore.
Everybody can take the exams.
Everybody's going to be
just a regular subject.
No more mean people.
No more music households.
He also, at the same
time, formally puts
a ban on prostitution.
It used to be like,
nobody does prostitution
except music household people.
Everybody knows what they do.
Now we're not having music
household people anymore, which
means prostitution is banned.
Hence, one of the things that
I mentioned to you comes out
of this moment after in the
latter part of the 1700s is
increased anxiety over
accusations that somebody is
a prostitute.
Somebody is, engaged in sexual
immorality, all of that.
So this is also a
interesting thing.
I'll just say really
quickly before moving on,
you take this all together.
You can think about Kangxi as,
Kangxi is the great consolidator
of Qing imperial rule.
He helps consolidate
the borders.
He does all this
geopolitical stuff.
He puts down rebellion
and everything.
He makes sure the
Qing dynasty is going
to be a long-lasting dynasty.
Yongzheng is the reformer.
Whether you think the
reforms are good or bad,
he's the reformer.
He wants to change things,
and he does change.
He changes tax system.
He changes communication system.
He changes inherited caste.
He changes all of that stuff.
So you can basically think
that's his [INAUDIBLE].
All right, now his son, the
Qianlong emperor, there he is,
comes to power, kills Zeng Jing.
That's his first thing.
You know what's going on.
He has a very long reign.
As you can see,
exactly 60 years.
As I mentioned to
you, he steps down
because he doesn't want to
take the throne of the longest
reigning emperor in Chinese
history from his grandfather.
So filial son and grandson.
I love this expression,
like the sun
at midday, because the
Qianlong emperor is often
thought, his rule, to
represent the height
of Qing imperial power.
It's also like
the sun at midday,
the moment where things start
to look a little bit like things
could go wrong.
So remember, I
showed you the opium
imports coming in at the
very end of his dynasty.
Corruption, we'll see,
becomes a talked about thing
at the end of his dynasty--
or sorry, at the end
of his reign, rather.
So Qianlong is a
fascinating figure.
He was certainly extremely
arrogant, let's just face it.
It's hard to be an emperor
and not be arrogant.
Everybody's telling you you're
the son of heaven all the time.
I'm sure it gets to you.
I mean, in fact,
like Yongzheng, I
think it helps to
become the son of heaven
when you're whatever
he was, like around 40.
Because you've
lived a whole life
where you were just like
royalty, but not like big thing.
So it helps to come
in later in life.
But if you become the
emperor really young,
you're too young to
be the son of heaven.
Qianlong becomes fairly young,
as you can see in this portrait.
So he has a 60 year reign.
Long reign.
What he becomes, let me say
one thing about Qianlong
is he wants to fashion himself a
little bit like his grandfather
Kangxi, the very
successful reign.
So he comes in his later
years to call himself,
I'm the old man of the
10 great campaigns.
This is a self-fashioning
phase for himself.
I had 10 great campaigns.
Now you can say, what
were these campaigns?
Were they great?
Not necessarily.
Qianlong is famous for
spending a lot of money.
He spends a lot of money
on military expenditures.
He also builds a ton of stuff.
But one of the things,
he fights a war in Burma.
He fights a few
wars, like in Tibet.
The biggest campaign he
does almost certainly
is the Xinjiang campaign.
Qianlong is the one
who basically engages
the conquest of Xinjiang and
annexes it for the Qing state.
So that's the borders that you
see in the PRC today, that's
Qianlong.
But he has a bunch of
unsuccessful campaigns
that he would just say,
he said were successful.
It was one of those things.
Nobody would really
tell him that they
weren't because the Qing
didn't lose territory
under Qianlong's reign.
And they gained territory,
so overall it was a net gain.
But that's what
he called himself.
So this is what I was saying,
the incorporation of Xinjiang
into the Empire in the late
1750s to end Mongol threat
there.
So this is, by the
time, this is 1820.
By the end of
Qianlong's reign, this
is basically what you're
looking at for the empire.
It's a pretty big empire.
This is really quite large.
I mean, it's incredible to
remember if you're in Gansu,
you're in the center
of the empire.
And just think about that.
Like people in China today,
even today, well, you say Gansu,
you're like oh,
that's the Northwest.
That's way out there.
And it's like, you're in the
center of China, actually.
You know what I mean?
That's how big it is.
So that's that campaign.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: On that map earlier,
what's very west part of China
that also, they lost later on
at that [INAUDIBLE] you have?
Like how the map on
the-- the yellow map.
Because earlier you said
aside from outer Mongolia,
it was Russia.
But there's also the part on
the western border that later--
TRISTAN BROWN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's a part of
it that I think
that's taken at some point, yes.
So you can see the boundaries
and claims of modern China.
It's approximately here.
This, I guess, What would that--
is that Pakistan, or Uzbekistan?
Pakistan?
Kazakhstan?
I mean, the point is to say,
yeah, here's what I mean to say.
With the Russia
border, there was
a border negotiated and fixed.
In the 1750s when
Xinjiang was incorporated,
it's not like they map out every
inch of that border over there.
You see what I'm saying?
Basically, they
take it to Kashgar.
Kashgar is the
edge of the empire.
Kashgar is where
they station troops.
In terms of this part,
it's like, what's in,
what's out, open to negotiation.
You see what I'm saying?
Yeah, yeah.
But it's a good question
because it is fought over with
the Russians later on, and that
goes into the 20th century.
So how that border is exactly
fixed, it's a good one.
Also, the border
like Tibet and India.
That's another one.
All right, so let me just now
tell if you go to Beijing today,
a lot of the stuff
that you will see
there is actually constructed
during the reign of Qianlong.
So the Summer Palace, that's--
a lot of the stuff is
like, you'll just see it--
I remember one of
the first times when
I was living in China,
going around China,
traveling around China, I was
like, wow, this guy Qianlong
built everything.
He was just-- he
was a big spender.
He built a lot of palaces,
built gardens, everything
like that-- old Summer Palace.
The other thing
that you'll see is
that when you go to
Temple of Heaven,
you go to Forbidden
City, you go to
the big Qing imperial complexes,
you will see multilingual signs.
And these are signs
that basically
would have approximately been
there in some shape or form,
a lot of them are redone, of
course, from the Qianlong reign,
incorporating Mongol
language, Manchu language,
Tibetan language, and Chinese.
And this is the Qianlong emperor
really embraces this kind of we
are the great Qing Empire of we
incorporate all of these people
into our empire.
So it is kind of like,
you can say for Qianlong,
he absolutely considers himself
the ruler of China, absolutely.
But he also considers himself
the Khan of the Mongols.
He also considers himself--
you see what I'm saying?
It's not like he considers
all of this China per se.
That will be a later
redefinition of the term.
But he does it like
that universal Empire.
He's particularly devout,
particularly interested
in Tibetan Buddhism.
He becomes quite devout--
quite a devout Tibetan
Buddhist, builds
Tibetan Buddhist structures.
In one of his summer residences,
he rebuilds the Potala Palace,
actually.
I might have an image of that.
The other thing that he
constructs which is worth
pointing out is he
constructs the Old Summer
Palace, which you
might recognize
is that's the Yuan Ming Yuan.
That's the one that's
going to be destroyed
in the wake of the
Second Opium War
by the British and
the French troops.
So there's the ruins of the
Yuan Ming Yuan right there.
It's interesting.
That is not some
of ancient palace.
That was built by
Qianlong relatively--
in the century before
it was destroyed.
And then finally, one
thing, as you remember this,
remember this?
Remember that beautiful
painting from the Song dynasty?
Remember I told
you about Qianlong?
Qianlong adds his
own poem, Remember?
Remember over there, he
says, I love this painting,
but it's just missing something.
It's just missing something.
What's it missing?
It's missing a poem that
just says what that is.
The trees are just
beginning to sprout leaves.
The frozen brook begins to melt.
It's like, thank you, Qianlong.
We just didn't know.
We just didn't know.
So there you go.
OK, out of time.
Have a great weekend.
I'll try to get the study
guide up for you today.
And then remember,
so final exam.
If you want to
take it early, it's
got to be next
Wednesday at this time.
All right?

Taiwan’s Integration

Yongzheng’s Administrative Reforms (1722–1735)

Qianlong’s Expansion and Cultural Projects (1735–1796)

Mechanisms of Succession and Governance

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