Settling upon the "Inside" Worlds: Sovereignty and Overlapping Territorial Conflicts in the Qing Xinjiang Crisis, 1860s-1880s

Abstract

In the mid-19th century, as the Dungan revolution was spreading in Xinjiang, Yakub Beg, a khanate from the Kokand kingdom in Central Asia, established an independent Muslim regime in southern Xinjiang, the western "outer dependencies" of the Qing Empire. Hence, the Qing's tributary international order in Central Asia, as well as Xinjiang's ontological status within the Qing empire and internationally, have been challenged unprecedentedly since the Qing's annexation of Xinjiang in the 1700s. This essay will redefine the conceptual scope of Manchu sovereignty and explore the evolution, balance, and consequences of territorial conflicts in Xinjiang during the Qing empire's modern state transition period, to challenge the static rather than dynamic view to evaluate the nature of the Qing regime. I will cite official court materials and statecraft scholars' memorials and letters to try to prove that, based on the Manchu sovereignty in Inner Asia, how the Manchu rulers made non-mainstream political decisions during the controversy among Han statecraft scholars over whether the Qing should abandon Xinjiang and thus, launched a violent and bloody conquest war in the west of Qing empire once again. In this war, the Qing empire joined the bilateral competition of the Central Asia "great game" between Britain and Russia in the final stage. The traditional tributary suzerain system and the Westphalia sovereignty state system were inextricably linked in the two negotiations between the Qing empire and Britain in the Southern Xinjiang and Russia in the Ili, accompanied by the alternate victory of the Xinjiang-preserving faction and the Xinjiang-abandoning one within the empire. The results show that the multi-parties international negotiations involved in this war ended the Qing Empire's worldview of unlimited and defenseless Xinjiang. As the buffer zone defense lines between the Qing Empire and Tsarist Russia, a powerful competitor, retreated from their Central Asian neighbors to the frontier position of Xinjiang, the resulting anxiety about the border security triggered a huge shift in the governance logic of the Qing Empire in Inner Asia and the institutional reforms. Although, this reform shook the legitimate pedestal of Manchu sovereignty and put the Qing Empire in another kind of unseen danger, which continues to affect China today.