Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity, and Empire in Qing Central Asia, 1759-1864 (review)

Chinese frontier studies have come into their own in the past decade. In the United States, the academy's focus on multicultural and ethnic studies has contributed to this development. In the People's Republic of China, both increased tensions along several of China's borders and enhanced access to archival materials have played a role. The 1980s in China saw a proliferation of monographs and articles on the border regions, in part as an expression of nationalism. Beyond the Pass is James Millward's impressive contribution to this discourse.

Five of the six main chapters focus on commercial relations between China proper and the northwestern territories (Xinjiang) conquered during the eighteenth century. After an introduction in which he outlines the neglect of Xinjiang studies by twentieth-century historians, Millward analyzes the geographic and historical background to Xinjiang (chapter 1), the efforts of the Qing court to finance the "new territories" and the limited results of these efforts (chapters 2 and 3), the penetration of Chinese traders and goods into Xinjiang (chapters 4 and 5), and the manner in which commercial relations caused a shift in Qing ethnic policies in Xinjiang (chapter 6). In concluding, Millward describes the economic factors that led to the decline of Qing control over Xinjiang from the 1820s through the 1860s and explains how the eighteenth-century imperial concept of empire evolved into an assimilationist Chinese model in the next century.

Millward's introduction includes an important historiographical piece. The author explains why traditional scholarship has obscured "the significance of the Inner Asian elements of the Qing" (p. 18). Owen Lattimore limited his writings on China to the territory within the Great Wall as contrasted to the nomadic steppe world beyond it, while Millward argues that the Great Wall was not an impermeable barrier between China proper and the steppe. William Skinner, "adopt [ing] the perspective of the mandarinate" (p. 11), omitted Inner Asia from his "regional systems" approach; Millward, on the other hand, uncovers significant interregional trade and ethnic interaction between Xinjiang and China proper. But Millward directs his main criticism against John K. Fairbank, whose paradigms of "Western impact/Chinese response," "tribute system," and "Chinese world order" have focused historical studies on China proper, leaving Inner Asia "in limbo" (p. 9). Moving away from modernization theory back into the eighteenth century changes our perspective on the Qing dramatically. Accordingly, Millward demonstrates that the Qing dynasty was a multiethnic, not Chinese, empire. Even modern Chinese nationalism, according to Millward, has marred our understanding of the Qing. Eager to retain territories conquered by the Manchus, twentieth-century Chinese nationalists have been loath to attribute their borders to non-Han conquests. A deeper understanding of non-Han areas of the Qing period represents an advance in the field of China studies, an advance due in no small part to the accessibility of relevant source material and to a greater interest in examining China's history from a non-Sinocentric point of view.

Unlike modern Chinese nationalists, Millward classifies the Qing conquest of Xinjiang as imperialism. While he identifies clear differences between late nineteenth century European imperialism and Qing rule in Inner Asia (in the sense that the Manchus were both conquerors and the conquered, etc.), he nonetheless sees colonial patterns both in Qing commercial relations with Xinjiang and in Han settlements in the region. In the conclusion, he argues that while European motives for colonialism were largely economic, this was not the case with the Manchus. Not only were their concerns primarily strategic but they never succeeded in making the new colony fiscally self-sufficient. Furthermore, he states that the Qing court, unlike European imperial powers, had "little missionary impulse" (p. 246) since it initially made no attempt to sinicize the indigenous population and regulated Han migration into Xinjiang. His perspective here is clearly Manchu and/or Chinese; a Mongol, Uyghur, or...