COMPTES RENDUS - AFEC

Comptes rendus
The book begins with a sweeping and comprehensive look at Eurasia.
If one read only his descriptions of geography and climate, and his références
to various grand théories of Eurasian history, one might conclude
that Perdue's work fit in with the long tradition of writing in which
peoples move rather like tides, pulled by great ecological or
anthropological forces. That would be a serious mistake. Early on Perdue
mentions the domestication of the horse, the resuit of human intelligence
and activity. This signais an approach to history in which settings, natural
constraints, and social and économie forces, ail receive their due, but in
which the human mind and will still play a major and even décisive rôle in
shaping events.
Having surveyed the natural and human setting, Perdue then turns to
the expériences of states rooted in the East China plain before the Qing in
dealing with the nomads of Central Asia, laying particular stress upon the
Ming. That dynasty had begun with ambitious campaigns against
Karakorum, led by gênerais and emperors who clearly modeled
themselves on their Yuan predecessors. But thèse campaigns proved very
difficult militarily, in part because the Ming élite forgot fairly quickly how
to negotiate with and fight the nomads, and in part because the Ming was
unable to provide adéquate logistical support to its armies. Less than a
century after the dynastie founding, an emperor had been defeated and
taken captive by the Mongols, and décision makers had begun to search,
wimout success, for an approach to the steppe that would somehow both
control die nomads and maintain the superiority of the "civilized" Chinese
over the "barbarian" Mongols. This proved impossible to do. So the Ming
poured vast funds into a signaling and fortification system, later
misleadingly dubbed "the Great Wall," a poor political compromise that
seemed intended to solve the problem by excluding it - but failed.
We are now ready for the entry of the remarkable man known as the
Kangxi emperor (1654-1722) who "in an astonishingly short period of
time, a mère thirty years from taking personal power, [...] decisively imposed
his will on the régents - his own uncles - the gênerais ruling the
southwest, Taiwanese aborigines, and most impressively, the free nomadic
leaders of Mongolia." Many factors contributed to this achievement, but as
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