Becoming Inner Kirghiz: Qing Policy Toward the Five Tribes in Xinjiang, 1750s–1790s

Abstract:The scholarship on Qing Xinjiang has not paid much attention to the Qing relationship with the Kirghiz. On one hand, the Kirghiz, decentralized and fragmented, escape the attention of scholars interested in Qing relations with Central Asian “polities.” On the other hand, historians of Altishahr consider the Kirghiz as nomadic outsiders, only mentioning them in passing when their paths cross those of the Altishahri. A careful examination of Manchu-language palace memorials from the Qingdai Xinjiang Manwen dang’an huibian, however, shows that there was a subgroup of Kirghiz who the Qianlong emperor (r. 173599) and his officials firmly incorporated into Altishahr and maintained as an integral part of Altishahr society. In turn, these Kirghiz, whom I call “inner Kirghiz,” went on to serve the Qing empire as active agents of early Qing state building efforts in Xinjiang. Using inner Kirghiz life stories, I will ultimately argue that boundaries separating “Qing” and “foreign” remained elastic throughout the second half of the eighteenth century. These boundaries were neither clear-cut nor permanent, constantly fluctuating according to the decisions made by the Qianlong emperor and his officials as well as the inner Kirghiz themselves.