Shèngzǔ Rénhuángdì qīnzhēng pīngdìng shuòmò fānglüè 聖祖仁皇帝親征平定朔漠方略
Campaign History of the Imperial Personal Expeditions of the Sage Forefather, Benevolent Emperor, in the Pacification of the Northern Desert by 溫達 (奉敕撰)
About the work
The Qīnzhēng pīngdìng shuòmò fānglüè in 48 juǎn is the second of the two precedent-setting Kāngxī-era fānglüè and the first to carry an imperial preface (yùzhì xù 御製序, dated Kāngxī 47 / 1708). It is the official campaign history of the three personal expeditions led by the Kāngxī emperor against Galdan 噶爾丹 (Manchu Galdan, c. 1644–1697), Khong Tayiji of the Dzungar (Junggar) Oirat confederation. The campaigns — the battle of Ulan Butung 烏蘭布通 in 1690, the great pursuit of 1696 culminating in the action at Jao Modo 昭莫多, and the subsequent operations of 1696–97 that ended in Galdan’s death (whether by suicide or by illness, sources vary) — together broke the last great steppe empire of the eastern Mongolian and Tibetan plateau and consolidated Qīng rule over Inner and Outer Mongolia. The chief compiler of record was the Wénhuá diàn 文華殿 Grand Secretary Wēn Dá 溫達, with a large staff. Its imperial preface, dictated by the Kāngxī emperor in his own person, is one of the most extended autobiographical-political statements he ever set down in writing.
Tiyao
(The Wényuān gé witness of this work as filed in the Kanripo set lacks a Sìkù tíyào in its frontmatter — the _000.txt file opens directly with the Yùzhì xù by Kāngxī, dated Kāngxī 47, 7th month, 9th day [= 1708-08-25], and a memorial of presentation by Wēn Dá. The Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù lists this work but its tíyào is preserved only in the Zǒngmù itself.)
The Kāngxī emperor’s own preface, here preserved in full, is the work’s principal authorial framing. He recalls that, charged by Heaven with the inheritance of the dynasty and with the welfare of all his subjects — including the people of frontier and far places — he could not be unmoved by a single corner’s unrest. Of the steppe, he writes that the seven otog of the Khalkha 喀爾喀 and the four tümen of the Eleuth 厄魯特 were vassal lords of equal weight; that Galdan, having murdered his elder brothers and absorbed his three rival tümen, took to swallowing the neighbouring polities; that the Khalkha appealed to the Qīng for refuge; that he, the emperor, settled them within the borders and provisioned them; that Galdan continued his depredations, finally crossing into Ulan Butung 烏蘭布通; that the campaign of 1690 there was won, but Galdan was permitted to slip away on his oath; that Galdan promptly broke his oath and seized the Qīng envoy at Namjar 納木扎爾陀音; that the emperor accordingly determined on annihilation, ordered the supplies and the levies, and rode out at the head of the Six Armies; that Galdan, his routes north and east cut off, fled westward and was finally cornered, dispersing his women and goods, and at last took poison and ended himself; that the campaign succeeded in two seasons against an enemy who had vexed the empire for more than twenty years; that the principle behind the operation was the burning that is not put out becomes a wildfire. — Kāngxī then notes that, before the personal expeditions, his court was much divided: some, judging by present appearances, said the threat was not grave; others, weary of preparation, said the desert horde could not be netted. He, having read in earlier histories of the Hàn, Táng, and Sòng efforts that exhausted the realm without ever cleansing the frontier, took the contrary view: that to set things right, one must extirpate. — Wēn Dá’s memorial of presentation that follows the imperial preface formally records the date of completion. Each juǎn carries day-by-day entries of edicts, memorials, and battle reports, with the imperial preface, the cabinet’s memorial of presentation, and tables of the participating commanders forming the front matter.
Abstract
Wilkinson (§66.6.1 #5) treats this as the second of the two foundational Qīng fānglüè, both of them precedent-setting in form and politically defining for the Kāngxī reign. The work, more than any other source, presents the Kāngxī emperor as a personally hands-on field commander, riding three times “to the Mò” 漠 — to the southern Gobi (1690), then deeply north to the Tula river (1696), then to Ningxia and Ordos (1697). The Galdan campaigns were strategically the foundation of the entire Qīng presence in Inner Asia: their resolution opened the way to Tibet (1720), the Qīnghǎi pacification (1724), and the eventual annexation of Xīnjiāng (1755–59). The compilation labour was contemporary with the events: Wēn Dá and his staff drew on the Junjīchù archives, the Veritable Records, and the personal diaries of the Kāngxī emperor and his attendants. Modern critical scholarship (notably Oyunbilig 1999, Galdan zhuan: Manqing biji yu fanglüe yanjiu) has shown the Shuòmò fānglüè to be heavily edited against the surviving archival record — Oyunbilig estimates that more than half of the Junjīchù documents on the Galdan campaigns were not used at all by the compilers, and that key Manchu-language reports were re-inflected during translation into Chinese to magnify the emperor’s role and to denigrate the enemy. The preface in the present volume is the principal articulation of the imperial line.
The work is also the most-translated of the Qīng fānglüè: the only one of the 24 imperial campaign histories to have received a complete European translation is its predecessor Píngdìng sānnì fānglüè (Hauer 1926, partial), and substantial sections of the Shuòmò fānglüè have been used directly by Perdue (2005), Oyunbilig (1999), and others.
Translations and research
- Perdue, Peter C. 2005. China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia. Cambridge MA: Belknap. The standard English-language synthesis. Chapters 4–6 are based extensively on the Shuòmò fānglüè together with the surviving archival record, and constitute the principal scholarly use of the work in any European language.
- Oyunbilig 烏雲畢力格 [Borjigidai Oyunbilig]. 1999. Zur Überlieferungsgeschichte des Berichts über den persönlichen Feldzug des Kangxi Kaisers gegen Galdan (1696–1697). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Definitive German-language source-critical study, comparing the Shuòmò fānglüè against the Manchu and Mongolian archival originals.
- Yáo Jìróng 姚繼榮. 2002. Qīngdài fānglüè biānzuǎn yánjiū 清代方略編纂研究. Tianjin guji. Chinese-language overview of the fānglüè compilation institution.
- Wilkinson, Chinese History, §66.6.1 #5.
Other points of interest
The Kāngxī yùzhì xù preserved at the head of the work is one of the few extended pieces of personal political writing left by the emperor — a de facto memoir of his most important military undertaking. It was used as a reference text in the eighteenth century by both the Yōngzhèng and Qiánlóng emperors and was consulted by de Mailla in compiling Volume 11 of the French Histoire générale de la Chine (cf. Wilkinson, ch. 41).
Links
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11107144