COMPTES RENDUS - AFEC

Comptes rendus
we weigh them we "cannot ignore the sheer force of personal will that so
strongly marked thèse critical years." (p. 133) This observation is of
course correct. At âge 14 the young emperor, having assumed personal
rule, saw to it that Oboi the chief régent died in prison, and purged the Six
Boards. Next, between 1673 and 1678, he suppressed the quasiindependent
power of the "Three Feudatories," gênerais who had crucially
assisted the Manchu conquest while greatly increasing the Manchu forces,
from 179 companies to 799. The new emperor clearly intended to dominate.
Furthermore, he knew how to negotiate, fight, and build institutions
in a way that would permit him to do that.
The Kangxi emperor's views of military policy changed repeatedly.
In connection with Taiwan, for example, he initially enforced a maritime
prohibition, but when the island grew wealthy and strong through trade in
which the Qing did not participate, he was persuaded to change his
approach. A similar process took place with respect to the steppe frontier.
The emperor initially sought no more than order, but as the situation
developed, he became persuaded of the need to conquer and annex new
lands. Thus he gradually shifted his approach to Galdan from an attempt to
regulate to détermination to defeat. Some Mongol relations with the Qing
capital had been governed by agreements going back to 1653, which his
nomadic predecessors had been given a seal and title, and permitted to
trade on a strictly controlled basis. Galdan expressed willingness to
conform to this System in 1677. Until the first campaign was launched, the
Qing seem to hâve been concerned chiefly with order on the borders. But
subsequently the argument emerged that the Mongols had a crucial
stratégie rôle between the Qing and its neighbors in Tibet to the West and
in Russia to the North. Were thèse three to work together, the Qing would
face a diffïcult threat to its frontiers.
Nevertheless, Perdue takes care to stress that this potential threat did
not prédétermine policy. "There was no stratégie imperative for the Qing
to expand further; it already exceeded the size of the Ming empire by 1678,
and the Zhungar Mongols arguably did not constitute a serious threat to
the core of Chinese rule" Indeed, as already mentioned, "Relations between
Galdan and Kangxi began amicably, following précédents set by
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