Jungar Refugees and the Making of Empire on Qing China's Kazakh Frontier, 1759-1773

Abstract

This dissertation tells the story of what happened to Jungar refugees on the Qing empire's Kazakh frontier in the years immediately following the collapse of the Jungar confederation, 1759-1773. Narratives of violence have dominated the historiography on the fall of the Jungars. Nearly every history of the Jungars' demise highlights the Qing's violent massacres against the Jungar people, with several works even asserting these massacres were tantamount to "genocide." Based on a large corpus of previously unstudied Manchu documents, this dissertation moves beyond historical narratives that view the Jungar collapse solely through the lens of Qing violence by highlighting the important historical role that Jungar refugees played in the years following the disintegration of the Jungar state.