The Sichuan Frontier and Tibet. Imperial Strategy in the Early Qing.
Yingcong Dai
During China's last dynasty, the Qing (1644-1911), the empire's remote, bleak, and politically insignificant Southwest rose to become a strategically vital area. This study of the imperial government's handling of the southwestern frontier illuminates issues of considerable importance in Chinese history and foreign relations: Sichuan's rise as a key strategic area in relation to the complicated struggle between the Zunghar Mongols and China over Tibet, Sichuan's neighbor to the west, and consequent developments in governance and taxation of the area.
Through analysis of government documents, gazetteers, and private accounts, Yingcong Dai explores the intersections of political and social history, arguing that imperial strategy toward the southwestern frontier was pivotal in changing Sichuan's socioeconomic landscape. Government policies resulted in light taxation, immigration into Sichuan, and a military market for local products, thus altering Sichuan but ironically contributing toward the eventual demise of the Qing.
Dai's detailed, objective analysis of China's historical relationship with Tibet will be useful for readers seeking to understand debates concerning Tibet's sovereignty, Tibetan theocratic government, and the political dimension of the system of incarnate Tibetan lamas (of which the Dalai Lama is one).
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About Yingcong Dai
Reviews for The Sichuan Frontier and Tibet. Imperial Strategy in the Early Qing.
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.
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