Relations between the Qing Dynasty and Kazakhs in the 1770s: The Closing of the Northwestern Border of the Qing Dynasty

The aim of this article is to closely examine the various problems that arose in the 1770s between the Qing dynasty and the Kazakhs and elucidate changes in Qing policy in the process of responding to the Kazakhs. As evidence, I have chiefly relied on Manchu documents, but have also employed Turkic (Chaghatay) documents send to the Qing by the Kazakh sultans. After the Kazakh "submission" in 1757, the Qing dynasty received tribute missions on a nearly annual basis. However, by the 1770s a series of events had occurred, such as the "submission" of the Torghuts, repeated requests from the Kazakh for military assistance, and worries over Kazakh forgeries of imperial edicts; as a result, Kazakh tribute missions were frequently suspended. The Qing dynasty received tribute missions from the Kazakhs on only four occasions in the decade, including the embassy that arrived in 1780, indicating the worsening of relations between the Qing dynasty and the Kazakhs. From around 1775, fighting between the Kazakhs and Kirghiz on the southern Kazakh steppe intensified and internal fighting among the Kazakhs over rule of the town of Turkistan broke out. Kazakh chieftains requested the Qing administrators of Yili and Tarbaghatai for intervention and resolution of these problems. The Qing dynasty, which had been at a loss over how to respond, indicated directly a policy of nonintervention in the Kazakh internal affairs, and that policy thereafter became fixed as the guiding principle of Qing policy toward Central Asia. The Qing principle of nonintervention in foreign matters led to acquiescence to the Russian swallowing up of the Kazakhs in the first half of the 19th century and invited the ill will and alienation of the Kazakh chieftains was cemented in amidst the turmoil of the Qing-Kazkh relations of the 1770s. In the decade of the 1770s, the system of rule in the northern Xinjiang spread more widely, and the population, which had been sparsely distributed, began to steadily increase. Amidst these changes, the Qing dynasty undertook a reform of the karun (guard post) system from 1777-78. The Qing dynasty granted the formal request of the Kazakhs who were the "albatu" of the Qing emperor to move their homes within the Qing boundary (within the karun line) from 1766 until 1778. However, in 1778 an incident of Kazakh trespassing inside the karun line occurred, and as consciousness of the existence of the karun line rose, the coexistence of a contradiction between a sense of territoriality, determined by whether one was either within or without the karun line, and individual links that knew no such boundaries, i.e., the ejen-albatu relationship, became striking. As a result the Qing began to steer its policy in the direction of favoring the former and ceased its policy of incorporating the Kazakhs. In the northwest borderlands of the Qing the consciousness of the "territorial principle" eclipsed the conception of a "personal principle." Amidst the turmoil that raged between the Qing and the Kazakhs in the 1770s, the northwestern borderlands of the Qing, in which the ambiguity (which might even be termed flexibility) had prevailed since the Junghar campaign, were closed. The dropping of the policy of incorporating the Kazakhs in 1779 reflected the changes in the system of imperial rule, which faithfully proceeded during the flourishing period that might be termed "Pax Manchurica."