A History of China (60 page)

Disruptions among the Zunghars undermined this seemingly stable system. After Erdene Baatar’s death, his son Sengge had succeeded him, but in 1671 two elder half-brothers assassinated him. His brother Galdan (1644–1697), who had been studying in Tibet to become a Buddhist monk, decided to avenge his sibling’s death. Before departing from Tibet, he sought and received the Dalai Lama’s blessing. Within a few months, Galdan overwhelmed the usurpers and established himself as khan of the Zunghars. At that point, Galdan was not satisfied with his position as leader of his own group of Mongols; he wished to restore the old Mongol Empire with himself as the Great Khan. The divisions among the Khalkha offered him the opportunity to gain control, but such an attempt to annex their lands would inevitably lead to conflict with China, and possibly with a new force in east Asia: the Russian Empire.

After the collapse of Mongol and Turkic domination around 1505, the new Russian government sought to create a buffer zone against any future attacks from the east. It therefore encouraged colonization of what came to be known as Siberia. Russian colonists crossed the Ural Mountains into Asia in the late sixteenth century, and by following the flow of the Siberian rivers had reached the Pacific by 1648. Adventurers, fur trappers and hunters, fur-trapping ­merchant families, prospectors, soldiers, and farmers, learning of the minerals, furs, and other rich resources in the region, led the way into the new territories, where they came into conflict with the Qing in the Amur River basin. The Russians built forts and tried to extract tribute from the native inhabitants, and the Qing was concerned about this belligerent group right across its northeastern border. The tsar sent several ambassadors to establish a more peaceful relationship with China, but the envoys returned empty handed. The resulting battles between the Qing and the Russians appeared to presage a full-scale war between the two great empires.

Galdan appeared well positioned to take advantage of this conflict. While China was occupied with the perceived Russian threat, Galdan first moved against the oases and towns along the old Silk Roads. By 1679, he had attacked and occupied Hami and Turfan, and shortly thereafter his troops moved into Kashgar and Yarkand. His next step was to dispatch several thousand men, instead of the prescribed two hundred, on tribute (actually covert trade) missions. The Qing court was unwilling to sustain the enormous costs entailed in supplying embassies. Galdan became ever more hostile when the Qing thus denied him an increase in trade. His most important challenge was his dispatch in 1688 of troops into the Khalkha lands and his occupation of much of eastern Mongolia. Recognizing that he could not, by himself, defeat the Qing, he entertained the notion of an alliance with the Russians.

He was too late because, by the late 1680s, the Russians and the Qing had realized that they had complementary objectives. They recognized that they could gain more from each other than they could from Galdan. Russia wanted trade to obtain China’s silks, tea, porcelains, and rhubarb while China sought a favorable demarcation of its borders with the tsarist empire. Russia already had a vast domain in Siberia and could afford to be generous in delineating the border. With the assistance of two Jesuit missionaries based in China, the two sides signed the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689. By treating Russia as an equal and signing the treaty, the Qing accepted an alteration in the tribute system, which denied the equality of other states. Faced with the possibility of a Zunghar–Russian alliance, the Qing was realistic enough to modify its traditional conduct of foreign relations. Under the agreement, the Russians withdrew from the Amur River valley, burned down their forts and towns in the region, and pledged to return deserters to the Qing; the Manchu dynasty agreed to allow a specified number of Russian caravans to reach Beijing for trade. As a result of later treaties, the Qing founded a school to teach Chinese and Manchu to a small number of Russian students and permitted the establishment of a Russian Orthodox mission to cater to the students’ spiritual needs.

Galdan was now vulnerable. He could not attract the support of the Bogdo Gegen, nor could he unify with the Khalkha Mongols. Indeed, by 1691 the Khalkha had accepted Qing overlordship, and the Manchu court quickly appointed officials to govern the Khalkha domains. Even Galdan’s own nephew, Tsewang Rabtan (d. 1727), betrayed him by attacking his uncle’s troops along the old Silk Roads. Lacking allies, Galdan tried to elude the Qing forces, but in 1696 they caught up with and defeated him. The following year he either died of natural causes or committed suicide. The last effort to restore a Great Khanate in inner Asia suffered an inglorious end.

However, the Qing still had to contend with the Zunghars who had fled from Mongolia. Tsewang Rabtan and his troops roamed throughout inner Asia for a time but finally, in 1717, occupied Lhasa, thereby instilling fear at the Qing court that he would install a new Dalai Lama and use him to unite the Tibetans and the Mongols. The Qing had to act, and in 1720 they rooted out the Zunghars, who had alienated the Tibetans by their oppressive rule. Tibet and the nearby territory of Qinghai became tributaries of the Qing, and a Manchu official known as an
amban
governed the region. Yet some Zunghars escaped and established a base in Xinjiang, from which they harassed the Qing or, from the Zunghar perspective, sought to dislodge the Manchus from their ancestral homeland in Mongolia. Battles persisted for more than three decades, until the Qing devised the supply lines and logistics to dispatch an army to travel through some of the world’s most daunting terrains to reach the area that eventually came to be known as Xinjiang. In 1757, its forces, aided by disunity and a smallpox epidemic among their enemies, decisively defeated the Zunghars. In fact, the Zunghars disappeared from the historical record. Not all were massacred; many escaped westward and joined or intermarried with other Mongol groups. The Qing now had substantially increased the territory under its control while incorporating non-Chinese peoples along its borders, a fact that required new policies. By 1760, the Qing had annexed Inner Mongolia, Mongolia, Tibet, and the area across the northwestern frontiers now known as Xinjiang. The Lifanyuan, a newly founded government agency, supervised many of these new domains.

Internal peace, as well as expansion along China’s frontiers, gave birth to an optimism that pervaded Emperor Qianlong reign. Qianlong (1711–1799) proclaimed universalist ambitions while affirming Manchu identity. He laid claim to Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang, part of which was based upon his conquest of the Zunghars and of their link to Chinggis Khan, which he himself appropriated. He began to connect with the Mongols and their aspirations for a world empire, and Tibetan Buddhism, which he patronized, offered ideological justification and legitimacy for his claim. To be sure, his support for Tibetan Buddhism also stemmed from a sincere desire for personal enlightenment through the religion. His and his grandfather Kangxi’s construction of a summer retreat in Chengde, a site north of the Great Wall, with temples modeled on several in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, and his and his predecessors’ building of numerous Tibetan temples in Beijing, including the Yonghegong, reveal a devotion to the religion. In addition, he learned Sanskrit and Tibetan and was initiated into a Buddhist sect. One should not discount his devotion to Tibetan Buddhism, but perhaps part of his dedication to the religion may have been due to his attempt to maintain control over a multiethnic empire. The Qing did so not only by adopting some of the ethnic groups’ practices and beliefs but also by themselves influencing the social, economic, political, and cultural patterns of the peoples whom they subjugated.

On the other hand, the Qing, especially Qianlong, wanted to affirm its identity. Qianlong repeatedly enjoined his Manchu subjects to maintain Manchu language, dress, social status, shamanism, and customs and emphasized retention of military skills. He also sought to remind Manchus of their lineage, stretching to the Jurchen Jin and other conquest dynasties of China and culminating in his attempts to identify himself with Chinggis Khan. It is no accident that he commissioned the writing of Manchu histories and genealogies and descriptions of rituals that emphasized the Manchus’ relationships with the other great conquest dynasties. His predecessors’ and his own deviations from the Chinese model of foreign policy offered additional evidence of affirming a separate Manchu identity. Chinese rulers had inveighed against seeking to expand beyond the Chinese cultural boundaries. However, the Manchus annexed a tremendous amount of territory and then ruled numerous ethnic groups who did not subscribe to Chinese customs and practices.

Despite underlying economic and political problems, the Kangxi and Qianlong reigns witnessed considerable cultural developments. The economy seemed prosperous, cities grew, and the number of potential patrons and consumers increased. China was at its height in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and ranked among the world’s great powers, annexing new territories and ­contributing to an efflorescent society. Although much of the population continued to lead a hand-to-mouth existence, the governing elite and the wealthy could afford luxury goods and great works of art. At the same time, Westerners craved beautiful objects from China.

Figure 9.1
Plate, eighteenth century (ca. 1715–1720), hard-paste porcelain, Gr. H. 1
³
/
⁸
″ (3.5 cm), Diam. 9
¹
/
⁸
″ (23.2 cm). New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Lucile and Robert H. Gries Charity Fund, 1970. Acc. no.: 1970.220.1. © 2013. Image copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource / Scala, Florence

Porcelain remained attractive to both Chinese and foreign consumers. Some connoisseurs preferred the Song, Yuan, and Ming ceramics, which often had limited decorative motifs. Song ceramics, for example, were often plain. By contrast, the Qing blue-and-white vessels, some of which were designed for export, were often elaborately decorated, and quite a few wound up in stately homes in the West. The fashion for Chinese porcelains spread throughout the Western world, with the English gentry being avid consumers. Chinese producers must have believed that Westerners preferred pictorial representation to plain and unadorned works. Thus, they depicted scenes with humans, animals, and plants. In addition, Westerners commissioned specific motifs such as coats of arms and Western figures or scenes. Westerners became so enamored of porcelains that they also clamored for highly decorated lacquerware, textiles, and cloisonné.

Nonetheless, Qing potters added to the innovations of their Ming predecessors. They developed new colors in their monochromes, including yellow and turquoise blue. From copper they produced pieces (mostly vases) in so-called oxblood, a reddish color that consumers found attractive. Enamels of vases and bowls of a rose color (
famille rose
) and of a green color (
famille verte
), with depictions of birds and plum blossoms, also secured a receptive audience. Striking and bright colors in general became popular.

Yet other developments that were not as aesthetically pleasing began to appear. Jingdezhen, the important site for Ming porcelains, especially blue-and-white wares, became a center for mass production, with dozens of individuals contributing to the production of one piece. Although the objects were often technically perfect, creativity and refinement were frequently lost. As more porcelains were produced on demand for Europeans, quality declined. Potters fulfilled European requests for specific motifs on porcelains that were gaudy and lacked taste. Some nouveau-riche members of the Qing also served as consumers for such wares. The Song elite, which favored understatement, would have perceived these plates, bowls, and dishes as garish. The fussiness and the elaborateness of the decorations would perhaps have disturbed Song consumers. By contrast, the Qing elite and foreigners were captivated by these ornate objects because they attested to the owner’s wealth and status.

Painting also served the elites because it linked them to the traditional scholar-officials. However, some of the most prominent Qing painters did not serve in government. Like some Yuan-dynasty painters who had rejected employment in the Mongol government, several of the more important Qing painters sought havens outside public service. Because the seventeenth-century artists, in particular, witnessed the destruction wrought by the Manchus, they distrusted the invaders and would not have wanted to assist them in ruling or perhaps exploiting the Chinese.

These artists turned away from public life to focus instead on their own private pursuits. Zhu Da (ca. 1626–1705), who signed his work as Bada Shanren, was perhaps the most individualist of these painters and joined a Buddhist monastery. Preferring to have limited contact with others, he no longer talked and issued only a few guffaws or other strange noises. Reflecting the influence of Chinese Buddhism, his technique aimed at quick strokes that would elicit the essence of an object or scene. His sketches of birds and rocks are strange but expertly depicted. Shi Tao (1642–1707), one of the so-called Two Stones (because the “Shi” in their names means “stone”), was also isolated. He originally joined a Buddhist monastery but eventually converted to Daoism and returned to secular life. In a major text on art, he emphasized the union between artist and nature and sought to implement this insight in his paintings. Other seventeenth-century painters also found the Manchu ­conquerors repugnant and would not hold office in the Qing.