Empire and Nation in Comparative Perspective: Frontier Administration in Eighteenth-Century China

In this chapter, the author suggests that frontier administration is a useful site for examining such questions of coherence and diversity in these large agrarian empires. He distinguishes the frontier regions of China as the regions encompassed by modern Manchuria, Mongolia [Outer and Inner], Xinjiang, Qinghai and Tibet. As areas of reduced state control, greater cultural alienation, poorer resources and more dispersed populations, they contrasted sharply with the settled agricultural regions of China Proper. The long-term solution was to build up the productive resources of Turkestan so as to support both an expanded population and a military apparatus. This development only came after the mid-eighteenth century, when the Qing began the aggressive promotion of the settlement of Xinjiang. A Qing frontier official of the eighteenth century might find the Ottomans too generous, however, in leaving substantial autonomy to frontier commanders.