AHP 40: Review: WAR FINANCE AND LOGISTICS IN LATE IMPERIAL CHINA

The tremendous territorial expansion and establishment of direct rule in peripheral areas were two major characteristics of Qing rulership in eighteenth century China. Under the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong emperors, the territorial reach of the Qing was almost double that of the Ming Dynasty, consolidating its control of Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan, and many other regions that Chinese imperial governments had never directly intervened in before. The dynasty's imperial expansion has been widely acknowledged by recent Qing historians, whose works aim to analyze the Qing colonial enterprise from an Inner Asia perspective. It is not difficult for historians of the Qing to locate some important scholarly works on the Qing's strategy in establishing territorial sovereignty, including Millward's Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity, and Empire in Qing Central Asia, 1759-1864 (1998), Perdue's China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (2005), and Dai's The Sichuan Frontier and Tibet: Imperial Strategy in the Early Qing (2009). ..