COMPTES RENDUS - AFEC

Comptes rendus
more than simply a frontier policy. Perdue argues in the middle part of his
book that the enterprise of empire création in new territories and the création
of new institutions that it required also had powerful effects on the
shape of things in the previously existing Chinese core areas of the Qing.
The rooting of state power, whether Mongol or Qing, in the area of the
pasturelands depended upon effective combining of nomadic and sedentary
forms of économie activity. Both Galdan and his Manchu rivais attempted
this. After he was defeated, the Qing made a massive effort to
move agriculturalists into the new territories of Mongolia and Xinjiang.
Horse farming was promoted. Ail of this altered the ethnie composition of
thèse areas, nobbled locals who might hâve sought power, and had powerful
mobilizational effects on China proper. Markets became more inclusive,
money moved towards standardization, priées converged. The deployment
and maintenance of large garrisons and when necessary, field armies,
became practicable. But the assimilation of thèse new western territories
into the Qing empire was never as complète as happened to the south. The
territories always remained rather distinct in character and never paid for
themselves.
Furthermore, as Perdue points out, the initial benefits of the
conquests to the overall Qing empire gradually turned into a new set of
problems. At one point the frontier and its conquest had given cohésion to
the whole Qing enterprise. But once thèse vast territories had been brought
in, the requirements of keeping them began to work against needs
elsewhere in the empire. The Qing is fatally weakened by war on two
fronts: small scale but intensive against Europeans in the east; large scale
against explosive uprisings in the west - and later in the heartland.
In the officiai imagination of the Qing, however, incorporation was
achieved. Indeed, it was so thoroughly proclaimed through stelae, tours of
inspection, maps, drawings, rituals, agreements and so forth that the idea
became widespread that the Qing had not really acquired anything new.
They had simply moved "China" once again to its natural and original
frontiers - or, putting it in différent and more modem sounding language,
begun the "formation of modem China's identity as a 'multinationality
nation-state.'" (p. 333-334). Perdue has wisely placed the conquering and
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