Qīndìng pīngdìng Jīnchuān fānglüè 欽定平定金川方略
Campaign History by Imperial Command of the Pacification of [the First] Jīnchuān by 來保 (奉敕撰)
About the work
The Qīndìng pīngdìng Jīnchuān fānglüè in 32 juǎn is the imperially commissioned campaign history of the First Jīnchuān 金川 war of 1747–1749 — the Qiánlóng government’s punitive expedition against the Tibetan-speaking tǔsī of Greater Jīnchuān (modern Sìchuān, north of modern Dānbā 丹巴, on the upper Dàdù river), whose paramount chief Suōluóbēn 莎羅奔 (Tibetan Sönam Rab-brtan) had absorbed the smaller surrounding tǔsī and was at war with the Qiánlóng emperor’s allies among the neighbouring chieftaincies. The campaign — conducted across some of the most difficult terrain in eighteenth-century Qīng warfare, against fortified stone tower-forts (diāolóu 碉樓) along the Lú river — passed through several commanders before the senior Manchu official Fù Héng 傅恆 was sent in 1748 to take overall command; in early 1749 Suōluóbēn made formal submission and the campaign was closed. The book opens with the Qiánlóng emperor’s Yùzhì xù 御製序 (Qiánlóng 17, 6th month, 15th day = 8 August 1752) — modelled on the Kāngxī Shuòmò preface — followed by an illustrated geographical túshuō 圖說 of the Jīnchuān region, a memorial of presentation by the Wǔyīng diàn Grand Secretary Lái Bǎo 來保, and the chronological day-by-day documentary record. The work belongs to the same later Qiánlóng-era fānglüè tradition that would produce the Píngdìng zhǔn’gā’ěr fānglüè (KR2c0012), the Píngdìng liǎng Jīnchuān fānglüè (KR2c0013) on the Second Jīnchuān war, and the various jìlüè of the late Qiánlóng frontier campaigns (KR2c0014 – KR2c0017).
Tiyao
(The Wényuān gé witness lacks a Sìkù tíyào in its opening juǎn — the front matter consists of the imperial preface, geographical túshuō, and Lái Bǎo’s jìn biǎo 進表. The Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù lists the work as 32 juǎn with imperial preface dated Qiánlóng 17, but the tíyào itself appears in the Zǒngmù, not in the volume.)
The Qiánlóng Yùzhì xù preserved here, dictated from the throne, is the work’s principal authorial framing, and was modelled directly on Kāngxī’s Shuòmò preface. The emperor stresses two principles: (a) that the term fānglüè properly refers not to the dictation of operational tactics from afar — “thousand-li requests for battle plans” — but to the entire ruler’s art of xìnshǎng bìfá 信賞必罰 (firm reward, certain punishment); (b) that the present Jīnchuān affair, though small in scope (“a corner not at peace”), demanded the levying of soldiers and the strain of supply across several provinces, and so a clear record was a duty. He distinguishes this campaign explicitly from the great Kāngxī expeditions: he himself, he says, was unable to lead in person, and “Jīnchuān has long been a domain on the official rolls — it cannot be spoken of in the same breath as the desert-crossing intriguer Galdan.” The compilers’ summary memorial (Lái Bǎo’s jìn biǎo) places the campaign within an institutional history of southwestern frontier rule running from the Yu-shi 苗 of antiquity, through Hàn dynasty dūwèi and xiànshǔ, to Míng and Qīng tǔsī; it presents Suōluóbēn as a defaulting tǔsī whose contumacy made armed action unavoidable, and characterises the resolution as the recovery of all encroached tǔsī lands and the binding of the chieftaincy by six articles of submission.
Abstract
Wilkinson does not single out the First Jīnchuān fānglüè; for the Second Jīnchuān see his §66.6.1 and the Theobald monograph (cited at KR2c0013). The First Jīnchuān war was politically a small affair — a punitive operation against one tǔsī that ballooned into a costly two-and-a-half-year mountain campaign — but historiographically and institutionally a watershed: it was during this campaign that the Qiánlóng court realised the existing frontier compilation arrangements were inadequate, and in 1749 the Fānglüè guǎn 方略館 was established as a permanent office adjacent to the Junjīchù 軍機處 (it had hitherto been an ad hoc commission appointed at the close of each campaign — see Wilkinson §66.6.1). The present fānglüè, although prepared in the older ad hoc mode, is the institutional bridge to the new system. It is also the campaign that introduced Fù Héng — Qiánlóng’s brother-in-law — to senior field command; his career as commander, councillor, and subsequent compiler of the much larger Píngdìng zhǔn’gā’ěr fānglüè (KR2c0012) descends from his Jīnchuān service, and the celebratory tone of the present work toward him is unmistakable. The book’s geographical opening — the Jīnchuān túshuō — is a substantial source on the human geography, settlement pattern, and military terrain of the Greater Jīnchuān region, including ethnographic notes on Bon and Bka’-brgyud religious life, ritual mo divination, marriage and burial customs, dress, weaponry, and seasonal climate.
The work was completed in mid-1752, three years after the campaign closed, and was carried into the Sìkù in the 1780s. It must be carefully distinguished from the much larger and chronologically later Píngdìng liǎng Jīnchuān fānglüè (KR2c0013, 152 juǎn, completed 1786), which covers both the First and the Second Jīnchuān wars and incorporates much of the same opening material.
Translations and research
- Theobald, Ulrich. 2013. War Finance and Logistics in Late Imperial China: A Study of the Second Jinchuan Campaign (1771–1776). Leiden: Brill. (Treats the First Jīnchuān campaign in its opening chapters as institutional and military background.)
- Dài Yìngcōng. 2009. The Sichuan Frontier and Tibet: Imperial Strategy in the Early Qing. Seattle: University of Washington Press, esp. ch. 6.
- Waley-Cohen, Joanna. 2006. The Culture of War in China: Empire and the Military under the Qing Dynasty. London: I. B. Tauris. (Frames the fānglüè as instruments of an early-Qiánlóng cult of military virtue.)
- Wilkinson, Chinese History, §66.6.1.
Other points of interest
The 1749 establishment of the permanent Fānglüè guǎn — directly prompted by the experience of compiling and re-compiling materials for this campaign — institutionalised the Qīng campaign-history office for the next century and a half. The First Jīnchuān war is thus the institutional birthplace of the Qīng military-historical archive on which all later Qiánlóng fānglüè (KR2c0012 – KR2c0017) drew.
Links
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11107175