Qīndìng Huángyú Xīyù túzhì 欽定皇輿西域圖志
Imperially Endorsed Atlas and Gazetteer of the Imperial Realm of the Western Regions by 傅恒 (奉敕撰), 劉統勳 (奉敕撰), 于敏中 (奉敕撰); with 英廉 and 何國宗 as senior project officials, and 福康安 and 劉墉 as additional Qiánlóng-42 zǒngcái
About the work
A 48-juan + 4-juan-juànshǒu 卷首 illustrated imperial atlas-and-gazetteer of the Qīng-dynasty Western Regions (the territory north and south of the Tiānshān 天山 brought into the Qīng empire by the conquest of the Junghar Khanate in 1755 and the suppression of the Hui Wars of 1758–59), commissioned by Qiánlóng’s edict of the thirteenth day of the second month of Qiánlóng 21 (1756), with first draft (chūgǎo) presented in winter 1762 (Qiánlóng 27, rénwǔ) and final supplemented version (zēngzuǎn) presented in the fifth month of Qiánlóng 47 (1782) by Yīnglián. The work consists of a 4-juan juànshǒu of imperial Tiānzhāng 天章 (poetry and prose by Qiánlóng), then 20 categories distributed over 48 juan: Túkǎo 圖考 (3 juan), Lièbiǎo 列表 (2 juan, tabulated dynastic histories of the Western Regions from Hàn through YuánMíng), Guǐdù 晷度 (2 juan, astronomical altitudes of cities), Jiāngyù 疆域 (12 juan, divided into 4 routes of 3 juan each — Ānxī Southern Route, Ānxī Northern Route, Tiānshān Northern Route, Tiānshān Southern Route), Shān 山 (4), Shuǐ 水 (5), Guānzhì 官制 (2), Bīngfáng 兵防 (1, with táizhàn 臺站 / postal stations), Túnzhèng 屯政 (2, with hùkǒu 戶口 appended), Gòngfù 貢賦 (1), Qiánfǎ 錢法 (1, on the pul / pǔěr coinage), Xuéxiào 學校 (1), Fēngjué 封爵 (2), Fēngsú 風俗 (1), Yīnyuè 音樂 (1), Fúwù 服物 (2), Tǔchǎn 土産 (1), Fānshǔ 藩屬 (3, including the Khazak, Burut, Andijani, and other tributary polities), Zálù 雜錄 (2). The maps total 33 — 21 contemporary regional maps plus 12 historical-dynasty maps — making this the most ambitious illustrated imperial cartography produced for the Western Regions before the late Qīng.
Tiyao
Abstract
The Qīndìng Huángyú Xīyù túzhì is the canonical Qiánlóng-era imperial geographical compendium on the Junghar (Zhǔnbù 凖部) and Hui (Huíbù 回部) territories — the modern Xīnjiāng — newly incorporated into the Qīng empire in 1755–59. Its compilation was a long, multi-stage project closely tied to the imperial conquest itself.
Stages of compilation. The first imperial edict (Qiánlóng 21, second month, thirteenth day = 1756-03-14) ordered Liú Tǒngxūn 劉統勳 (1700–1773), then with the army at Yīlí, to begin compiling place-name and topographical material in collaboration with Hé Guózōng 何國宗, the senior court Jesuit-trained mathematician and astronomer (the only Hàn-Chinese member of the late-Kāngxī surveying team that produced the Huángyú quánlǎn tú 皇輿全覽圖 of 1718). A subsequent edict of the fourth month, ninth day, modified Hé Guózōng’s deployment plan. By the eighteenth day of the sixth month of Qiánlóng 26 (1761), the project was transferred from the field to the Fānglüè guǎn 方畧館 (Office for Strategic Plans) at the Jūnjī chù. The first complete draft (chūgǎo) was finished and presented in the eleventh month of Qiánlóng 27 (1762) — accompanied by Fùhéng’s jìnbiǎo of the twenty-ninth day of the eleventh month, 1762 — and with Qiánlóng’s own preface dated the first day of the twelfth month of the same year. As Qīng territorial and administrative arrangements in the Western Regions matured (and after the Wūshén 烏什 unrest of 1765), the work was held back for revision, twenty years passing before the supplemented edition was finally presented in the fifth month of Qiánlóng 47 (1782) by Yīnglián. Edicts of Qiánlóng 42 (1777) reassigned senior responsibility, naming Fúkāngān 福康安 and Liú Yōng 劉墉 (28th of third month) and then Yú Mǐnzhōng 于敏中, Yīnglián, and Qián Rǔchéng 錢汝誠 (28th of sixth month) as zǒngcái. The work was ordered cut for printing at the Wǔyīngdiàn 武英殿 and entered the Wényuāngé Sìkù quánshū. (The catalog meta gives the date as Qiánlóng 43 / 1778; this picks up the period of intensive late-1770s revision but the bracket of substantive composition is 1756 (initial commission) to 1782 (final supplemented version), with Qiánlóng’s principal preface in 1762.)
Method. The work’s defining methodological commitment — set out in the imperial preface — is that, unlike Hàn and Táng surveys of the Western Regions, which depended on hearsay (ěrwén), the Qīng survey was conducted on the ground (mùdǔ shēnlì 目覩身厯) and through the participation of Junghar and Hui informants now in the imperial service. Qiánlóng himself learned both Èlǔtè 厄魯特 (Oirat Mongol) and Huíyǔ (Turkic) for the purposes of place-name verification (“時御丹槧為之改正”). Place names are systematically re-romanized to fix the older garbled transcriptions (“落克蘭急呼之則為落蘭當即樓蘭”); the work is integrated with the parallel Xīyù tóngwén zhì 西域同文志 — the bilingual / multilingual gazetteer of place- and personal-name equivalences. Astronomical altitudes (guǐdù — běijí gāodù polar altitude and piānxī dù longitude offset from the capital) are taken on the ground rather than computed.
Scholarly significance. The work is the principal Chinese-language primary source for the territorial, fiscal, military, ethnographic, and ritual history of QīngXīnjiāng in the late Qiánlóng period. It is the major resource for the Qīng administrative reorganization of the conquered territories: the Bókè 伯克 (beg) system in the Hui towns, the jūnfǔ 軍府 system based on Yīlí, the Túntián (military farm) policies, the pul coinage, and the Bāqí 八旗 / Lǜyíng 綠營 garrison structure. It also includes substantial ethnographic material on Khazak, Burut (Kyrgyz), and Andijani polities (the Fānshǔ mén). The 33 maps include both Qīng surveyed maps and 12 historical maps of the Western Regions in earlier dynasties.
The work is one of the central documents of the late Qiánlóng “ten great campaigns” (Shíquán wǔgōng 十全武功) self-presentation, alongside the Píngdìng Zhǔngéěr fānglüè 平定凖噶爾方畧 and the Píngdìng Huíjiāng fānglüè 平定回疆方畧 — these latter providing the campaign-narrative complement to the present work’s territorial-administrative-cartographic synthesis.
Translations and research
- Joseph Fletcher, “Ch’ing Inner Asia c. 1800” and “The heyday of the Ch’ing order in Mongolia, Sinkiang and Tibet,” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 10 (1978) — frame; cites the Xī-yù tú-zhì.
- James A. Millward, Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity, and Empire in Qing Central Asia, 1759–1864 (Stanford, 1998) — uses the work as a principal Chinese-language source.
- Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Belknap / Harvard, 2005) — extensive citation; chs. 11–12 in particular treat the production of imperial knowledge of Xīn-jiāng.
- Laura Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise: Ethnography and Cartography in Early Modern China (University of Chicago Press, 2001) — frames the work in the Qīng cartographic-ethnographic project.
- Mosca, Matthew W., From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy (Stanford, 2013) — Chinese-language imperial geography of Inner Asia.
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual (6th ed., 2022) §17.12 (frontier provinces) and §66.6 (Inner Asia); the work is cited as one of the central late-Qiánlóng territorial compendia.
- Modern reprint: Lánzhōu Gǔjí Chūbǎnshè 蘭州古籍出版社 punctuated edition; also in Sìkù WYG facsimile and as part of the Zhōng-guó biān-jiāng wén-kù 中國邊疆文庫.
Other points of interest
The 12 historical maps of the Western Regions (juan 1–3, Túkǎo) constitute one of the most ambitious Chinese cartographic projects ever assembled to display historical change of territorial knowledge from the Hàn through the YuánMíng. The work’s Yīnyuè 音樂 mén (1 juan) preserves substantial material on Junghar and Hui music, including notation of Uighur Mu-ka-mu (mukam) modal cycles. The Xīyù tóngwén zhì — the bilingual / multilingual gazetteer to which this work is the geographical-historical complement — is its companion volume in the Qiánlóng-era imperial Inner-Asian canon.
Links
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual (6th ed., 2022).
- Perdue, China Marches West (Harvard, 2005).
- Millward, Beyond the Pass (Stanford, 1998).
- CBDB: 傅恒 c_personid 510988; 劉統勳 c_personid 56847 (1700–1773); 于敏中 c_personid 57033 (1714–1779).
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11140876 (欽定皇輿西域圖志)