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Borderland Capitalism
Turkestan Produce, Qing Silver, and the Birth of an Eastern Market
By Kwangmin Kim STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2016 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5036-0042-3
CHAPTER 1
Beg, Empire, and Agrarian Developments in Central Asia, 1500–1750
In the summer of 1731, Yue Zhongqi, the highest-ranking field commander of the Qing troops fighting a difficult war against the Zunghar Mongols in Central Asia, had a surprising piece of good news for his emperor: "2,000 Zunghar enemies surrounded the wall of Lukchun [a small town of Turfan]. They fought for 20 days, day and night. Local Muslims of Turfan showed courage and made raids, and killed 200 enemies, and hurt many more." The leader of the Turfan in this remarkable battle between the Muslims and the formidable Zunghar forces was Emin Khwaja (d. 1777). The Qing record identifies him simply as the "headman" of the Muslims of Lukchun. However, Emin Khwaja was a quintessential oasis notable. A "grand akhund" of Turfan, the Khwaja was an important leader of the 'ulama, when he surrendered to the Qing in 1732. For this heroic battle, Emin was awarded the lowest-level imperial aristocrat title, fuguo gong, by the Qing in 1732. By this act, Emin became the second of the Eastern Turkestani elites who joined the Qing side during the Qing-Zunghar War (1696–1759).
Emin Khwaja was one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of oasis notables, begs, who joined the Qing Empire during the latter's conquest of Chinese Central Asia from 1754 to 1759 — and arguably the most prominent. Originally a leader of the local Islamic establishment of Turfan, Emin went on to have an influential career under the Qing rule, even working as the imperial superintendent of the entire Muslim domain, a post that no other Muslim assumed after him. His descendants also remained as the most reliable allies to the empire throughout its rule in Eastern Turkestan, working primarily as the powerful Muslim governors of the strategic, affluent oasis districts of Yarkand and Kashgar.
Offering an examination of Emin's career and his family background, this chapter examines the foundation of the beg alliance with the Qing Empire. Commercially oriented landlords sensitive to the fluctuations of global commerce, this chapter argues, the begs joined the Qing Empire because of their interests as agromanagers in the oasis region. They pledged their alliance to the empire in order to overcome the fundamental crisis of the oasis agriculture that they had been presiding profitably over since the sixteenth century. That crisis was caused by the downward fluctuation of the rhythm of China trade — the trade that was most critical to the success of the agrarian developments in the oasis. The begs saw the alliance with the Qing Empire as a viable solution to the crisis of the oasis economy.
Qing expansion in the eighteenth century was thus an event embedded in the expansion of trade and agrarian developments across Eurasia. In Muslim Eurasia from the Middle East to South Asia, the economic expansion resulted in a synchronous "decline" of central political authority of the Ottoman, Mughal, and Safavid empires over their provinces, and fostered the decentralization of political authority within each empire during the eighteenth century. In the eastern part of Eurasia, in the Sino-Central Asian borderland, on the contrary, the same expansion of trade resulted in the unprecedented expansion of the Qing Empire. Behind these different patterns of political realignment emerging in the east was the agency of the commercially oriented begs. Their choice to seek patronage of the infidel Chinese ruler who could provide stable access to the China market and political protection of their agricultural interests made the difference.
Muslim Eurasia and the Beg Context to Qing Imperial Expansion
As the Qing Manchu extended the arm of their empire into Central Asia to defeat the Zunghar Mongols in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, large numbers of Turkic Muslim leaders from Eastern Turkestan joined the Qing side. The first to submit was the ruler 'Ubayd Allah of Hami, an easternmost town on the border to China, in 1696. Subsequently, numerous Muslim leaders from all over the oasis would offer their allegiance as well, in 1754 — and later, against the resistant Naqshbandi Sufi leaders who rose in revolt against the Qing in 1758 and 1759. The Turkic Muslims served as field commanders, led vanguard forces, and handled logistical support for the Qing troops during the wars (see Appendix B-1).
Eventually, six families and their associates emerged as dominant figures under the cloak of Qing rule, achieved by their military contribution and political influence in local society. They were (1) 'Ubayd Allah, (2) Emin Khwaja (Turfan), (3) Udui (Kucha), (4) Gadaimet (Ush/Bai), (5) Setib Aldi (Ush), and (6) Khwaja Si Beg (Ush). Not only did these people go on to acquire various prestigious Qing aristocrat positions, from junwang (the second-highest Qing aristocrat title), beile (third-highest Qing aristocrat title), and beise (fourth-highest Qing aristocrat position), to gong (lowest-rank Qing aristocrat title), but their families achieved virtual autonomous rule of their hometowns, and virtually monopolized the governor positions in the major oasis districts (Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan, and Aksu), which had not been their original domains (see Appendix C-1).
These Muslim collaborators came from the beg. According to local definition, they were the headmen of the settler communities, large and small, scattered across the oasis towns, villages, and foothills, although the settled community led by them could be often mobile, if not tribal. Khwaja Si Beg's son, Modzapar, would define the term as "chief" (Manchu: da; a word referring to a chieftain of nomadic tribe), or a "leader of a small place" (Manchu: buyasi ba i dalaha niyalma), if a Qing inquirer asked. The same beg would describe hakim (Manchu: akim) as "manager" (Manchu: jakirukci), or a "leader of a big city" (Manchu: amba i hoton i dalaha niyalma). In this definition, beg was different from hakim in terms of the size of the domain controlled. More important, the nature of the former's relations with the people and place under their control was also different from latter's. The beg was the leader of the community "chief," while the hakim was the official appointed by a sovereign to manage a certain domain. Indeed, the original meaning of the word, "beg" was nomadic noble, a Turkic equivalent of Persian amir, and Mongolian noyan. However, the meaning of the word was broadened to include other kinds of leaders of settler communities in Eastern Turkestan in the eighteenth century. This change occurred in the seventeenth century as the nomadic nobles gradually became landed elites in the oasis and thus largely indistinguishable from leaders of other settled communities.
They reflected diverse backgrounds, including both nobility and commerce. For instance, the Udui descended from a prominent nomadic noble. Some were also heads of caravan merchants. However, by far the most prevalent source of the pro-Qing begs were the Sufi leaders and their descendants. 'Ubayd Allah, for example, traced his ancestry to a Sufi named Muhammad Shah Khwaja. Emin Khwaja claimed his lineage from a rather famous Sufi shaykh (chief), Khwaja Muhammad Sharif. Khwaja Si Beg's genealogy extended back to Jamal al-Din, a saint associated with the Kucha khwajas and a Sufi order known as the Qadiriyya.
The Tarikhi äminiyä explains the foundation of the beg alliance with the Qing Empire from a borderland perspective: seven rulers of the Seven Cities (Yättishahr, meaning Eastern Turkestan) comprising the domain of Eastern Turkestan decided to petition the "Chinese emperor" to help them solve the local people's hardship — trouble caused by the Zunghar and khwaja rule in the seventeenth century. Hearing their petition, the emperor decided to grant them soldiers. Thus, these rulers subdued the seven cities even without waging a war. And the emperor gave the seven begs Chinese aristocrat rank, designating them as the governors of their respective towns. He also bestowed land and water, as well as several families of yanqi farmers as sources of revenue. The emperor additionally decided to grant the begs large amounts of silver as salaries.
The story emphasizes the agency of local Muslims in this process: it was their invitation to the "Chinese" to the region, and it was they who ruled the oasis domain under their protectors. Equally intriguing, this passage provides an explanation of a surprisingly materialistic foundation to the begs' alliance with the Qing. That loyalty was circumscribed by the provision of land, water, the yanqi to draw revenue and silver. This exchange would incur such a depth of loyalty that the conquering emperor's successors would find even the begs' descendants still collaborative when the Chinese later resurrected their power in the region after a short hiatus in the late nineteenth century, at that time extending to them "salaries" to resume relations.
Previous scholarship in the field has considered the beg alliance as derived from a series of political actions taken by traditional (noble) nomadic ruling elites to preserve their political, social, and economic privileges — most importantly their right to extract revenue from the oasis population without engaging in production — in the face of the rapid Islamization of oasis society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This explanation is not necessarily contradictory with the explanation provided by the Tarikhi äminiyä, above. However, the problem is that the begs were not exclusively, or even primarily, descendants of nomadic nobles. The mainstay of the pro-Qing begs were the Sufi leaders that the begs supposedly struggled against to protect their interests. Thus, one should not understand the begs' economic interest in allying with the Qing as that of nomadic nobles of the old days. Rather, a better approach is to consider the interest as that of the oasis society itself and of its Sufi leaders in particular.
Recent scholarship on the Sufis in Central Asia sheds new light on the Sufi's role as the agromanager in Central Asia in the post-Mongol period. During the Timurid Dynasty (1370–1507), Sufi shaykhs had the reputation of being managers and developers of agriculture in the wider area of Central Asia. As constant tribal war threatened political and social stability, the Sufi institution was the most stable one to manage the oasis agriculture in the Timurid domain — both as the institution for managing large scale landholding and as the transmitter of the technological knowledge for agrarian development. Its shrines and meeting places, which had substantial landed property holdings from religious endowments, emerged as centers of management and development of the oasis agriculture as a whole. The Sufi shaykhs and the managers of the shrines and meeting places organized irrigation works and sponsored land development. For this reason, even the reigning khan donated much desolate land under government control to the Sufi-affiliated facilities — not only to show religious support but also to procure the development of the land as a potential revenue source.
Indeed, the evidence confirms that the Sufi descendants among the pro-Qing begs were the major agrarian developers in Eastern Turkestan. For example, Khwaja Si Beg's father, Azziz Khwaja (Manchu: Ashuji), established a new agrarian settlement in the oasis district of Ush for the Zunghar ruler sometime in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Azziz Khwaja even renamed the new settlement in Ush as "Turfan"/"Turman," because the landscape reminded them of his hometown. In Eastern Turkestan, which suffered from a severe scarcity of labor, perhaps the most fundamental base of the Sufi leaders' position as the agromanager was their ability to recruit and manage the human labors. They were able to mobilize oasis farmers by offering the believers various incentives including protection from the rulers' arbitrary taxation, as well as a chance to cultivate their private estates and land donated as religious endowment. Mobile Sufi leaders also often moved with their disciples and new converts into new locations in the region. If we are to believe one legendary account, 'Ubayd Allah's father, Muhammad Shah Khwaja, a Muslim missionary, captured the city of Hami with the aid of one thousand Muslims as well as Mongols, and became governor there.
Notably, the Sufi family's ability to control and organize the collective labor of the settlers was the most important feature the Sufi leaders held in common with other pro-Qing begs. The descendants of the former nomadic tribal leaders still firmly controlled the mobility of the settlers they led. Thus, for example, when Udui relocated from a southern oasis district, Kucha, to Ili Valley under pressure from the Zunghar Mongols in the early eighteenth century, he moved together with his settler community. When he surrendered to the Qing from Ili in 1756, he was accompanied in his surrender by twenty-five hundred households, fifteen thousand Muslims altogether. Likewise, the heads of caravan merchants also organized mobile labor groups. Caravan merchants in Central Asia at that time were not like those in the contemporary sense — that is, professionals specializing in the transaction of moving goods in the marketplace. The term bederege, which we translate as "caravan merchant" for the lack of a better word, refers actually to a group of traveling people who work in a common productive endeavor. Given that the most prominent item of trade in Central Asia during the period was livestock, including horses and sheep, one can easily discern that they were in fact a traveling cohort of ranchers constantly moving across the vast oasis terrain. Bederege were also known to have developed agriculture in Ili Valley for the Zunghar ruler in the seventeenth century.
In this regard, it is important to note that moving logistical supplies to the Qing troops was the most crucial among the many contributions that the begs made for the Qing. For instance, as early as 1718, Hami rulers developed agricultural colonies (tuntian) in Hami to supply grain to Qing troops stationed nearby in Barkul. In addition, in 1758, Udui provided military supplies to a division of Qing troops heading to Kashgaria to fight against the khwaja there. On three separate occasions within a month in early 1759, he and his wife supplied the Qing troops with two hundred sheets of cloth made of lambskin, three hundred bolts of cotton cloth for making winter clothing, one hundred horses, as well as a thousand foot soldiers and cavalries, along with the provision of lamb and grain.
One can easily see why the Qing Empire, or any state or empire builder for that matter, would have been eager to acquire the beg allegiance. With the ability to manipulate the flow of goods and manpower, the begs could dictate the political fortune of any ambitious state builder. The begs' motivation in allying with the Qing during this period also relates to the exchange they received — for example, not only did the Hami rulers and Udui received remuneration for the supplies in silver and satin; they also received various kinds of "rewards" for their contributions, in the form of gain, silver, and cotton clothes. In other words, the begs engaged in profitable trade with the Qing troops.
The realization puts the formation of the beg alliance within the broader and long-term context of agrarian development in Central Asia. The pro-Qing beg family shaped their political, religious, and migration strategies, in order to remain viable as agrarian developers under the changing conditions of global trade post sixteenth century. They migrated into Eastern Turkestan in the first place in order to take advantage of the unprecedented expansion of the China trade into Central Asia after the sixteenth century. In the eighteenth century, the begs entered into the alliance with the Qing to cultivate the imperial connections that would help them expand their commercial agriculture enterprises in the oasis, and to gain access to more resources ("land," and "water") and labor ("farmers") in the oasis countryside, and to "silver" circulated globally to achieve that goal. The illustrious careers of Emin Khwaja and his esteemed ancestor will illuminate this history.
Emin Khwaja and His Legendary Sufi Ancestor
In the late nineteenth century, one of Emin's descendants informed a Russian ethnologist that he was a scion of Khwaja Muhammad Sharif (1473/74–1565), a legendary Sufi master who migrated to Eastern Turkestan in the mid-sixteenth century. Having migrated from Samarqand to Eastern Turkestan, Muhammad Sharif became the leading political and spiritual guide to the second khan of Yarkand khanate, 'Abd al-Rashid Khan (r. 1533–60). According to Emin's family, they were the children of this venerable Sufi holy man. Indeed, even prior to this declaration, Emin's family cultivated connections to the venerable Sufi for a while. The family had built a madrasa dedicated to the khwaja in Yarkand in the early nineteenth century.
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Excerpted from Borderland Capitalism by Kwangmin Kim. Copyright © 2016 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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