Dzungar Khanate

• 1. Introduction

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  The Dzungar Khanate was the last nomadic empire of Oirat Mongol origin, and at its height it stretched from southern Siberia in the north to Tibet in the south, from the western edge of Mongolia to present-day Kazakhstan. For more than a century it held its own against the two most formidable empires in Eurasia: China's Qing dynasty and the Russian Empire. Then, between 1755 and 1758, it was erased. Not just defeated militarily, but erased as a people. Historian Mark Levene has called it arguably the eighteenth century genocide par excellence. How did a nomadic confederation on the Central Asian steppe build an empire that could repel Chinese armies, dominate the Kazakhs, invade Tibet, and manufacture its own firearms? And why did it end not in defeat on a battlefield, but in the calculated destruction of its population? Those are the questions at the heart of this story.

• 2. Roots of the Oirats

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  The Oirats were originally from the area of Tuva during the early 13th century. Their leader Qutuqa Beki submitted to Genghis Khan in 1208, and his house intermarried with all four branches of the Genghisid line. That connection to Mongol royalty gave the Oirats prestige, but it did not protect them from centuries of political turbulence. During the Toluid Civil War, the Four Oirat tribes sided with Ariq Böke rather than with Kublai Khan, and they never accepted Kublaid rule. After the Yuan dynasty collapsed, the Oirats threw their support behind the Ariq Bökid claimant Jorightu Khan Yesüder to seize the Northern Yuan throne. For generations they held sway over the Northern Yuan khans, until the death of Esen Taishi in 1455 drove them westward under pressure from the Khalkha Mongols. By the latter half of the 16th century they had lost still more territory to the Tumed. The Oirats were a people accustomed to fighting for survival on the edges of larger powers. That habit of survival, forged over centuries, would eventually produce something no one anticipated: a new empire of their own.

• 3. Building an Empire

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  By 1620, the Oirats had declared independence at the Battle of Irtysh River after years of warfare against the Khalkhas and the Kazakhs. The man most responsible for what came next was Erdeni Batur, son of Kharkhul. He was granted the title of Khong Tayiji, which translates into English as crown prince, married the Khan's daughter Amin Dara, and was sent back to establish what would become the Dzungar Khanate on the upper Emil River south of the Tarbagatai Mountains. Erdeni Batur moved quickly. He invaded the Kazakh Khanate in 1635, capturing their khan Jangir, and returned in 1640, 1643, and 1646 to press the advantage further. He established Ghulja as the capital city, naming it Khobak Sari, where he built monasteries and buildings. He also established formal relations with the Tsardom of Russia, granting the Russians rights to salt mines and trade, which allowed them to settle, create outposts, and build a prosperous economy between the two nations. In 1640, the Oirats created an Oirat Mongol Legal Code, regulating the tribes and giving support to the Gelug Yellow Hat Buddhist sect. Erdeni Batur also assisted Zaya Pandita in creating the Clear Script, a new writing system for the Oirat language. His rule ended with his death in 1653, having laid the institutional, diplomatic, and military foundations of a state that would outlast him by more than a century.

• 4. Galdan's Conquests

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  Galdan Boshugtu Khan was born in 1644 and recognized at birth as the reincarnation of a Tibetan lama who had died the previous year. He left for Tibet in 1656 to receive education from Lobsang Chökyi Gyaltsen, the 4th Panchen Lama, and the 5th Dalai Lama. When his brother Sengge was assassinated by half-brothers in 1670, Galdan returned from Tibet and took revenge on the conspirator Chechen. By 1678, the Dalai Lama had bestowed on him the highest title of Boshogtu Khan. Galdan then turned outward. In 1679 he led 30,000 men into Turpan and Hami, and in 1680 he followed with 120,000 men to conquer the Yarkent Khanate entirely. A religious exile named Afaq Khoja had enlisted his help by going to the 5th Dalai Lama in Tibet, and the Aq Taghliq faction aided Galdan's forces from within. Ismail Khan was taken prisoner; his son Babak Sultan died resisting the battle for Kashgar; the general Iwaz Beg died defending Yarkand. Galdan then installed Abd ar-Rashid Khan II as a puppet ruler. He followed up by seizing Sayram, Tashkent, and much of the Fergana Valley between 1681 and 1684. In 1688, armed with Russian firearms, Galdan led 30,000 troops into Khalkha Mongolia and defeated the Tüsheet Khan Chikhundorj in three days. The Khalkha leadership fled across the Gobi Desert and submitted to the Qing dynasty's Kangxi Emperor. That flight would trigger the wars that ultimately destroyed Galdan.

• 5. Collision with the Qing

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  In the summer of 1690, Galdan crossed the Kherlen River with 20,000 troops and engaged a Qing army at the Battle of Ulan Butung, 350 kilometers north of Beijing. The Qing forced him to retreat but lacked supplies to pursue. In 1696, the Kangxi Emperor led 100,000 troops into Mongolia and caught Galdan between two converging armies. At the Battle of Jao Modo, near the upper Tuul River, Galdan was crushed. His wife Anu was killed. The Qing captured 20,000 cattle and 40,000 sheep. Galdan fled with a handful of followers and died in the Altai Mountains near Khovd on the 4th of April, 1697. His nephew Tsewang Rabtan, who had been in revolt since 1689 and in effective control since 1691, now led the Dzungars. Tsewang Rabtan proved equally ambitious. In 1714 he sacked Hami. In 1717, his brother Tseren Dhondup invaded the Khoshut Khanate, killed Lha-bzang Khan, and looted Lhasa. The Kangxi Emperor struck back in 1718, but his expedition was annihilated by the Dzungars at the Battle of the Salween River. A second, larger Qing expedition expelled the Dzungars from Tibet in 1720 and installed Kälzang Gyatso as the 7th Dalai Lama in 1721. The Dzungar Khanate had now fought the mightiest empire in Asia to a draw across multiple campaigns spanning decades.

• 6. The End of the Dzungars

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  Galdan Tseren died in 1745, and the succession disputes that followed unraveled everything. By 1755, the Qianlong Emperor seized the moment, sending an army of 50,000 against the claimant Dawachi. The Qing army, supplemented by Muslim and renegade Dzungar troops, surprised Dawachi at Borotola in June 1755, about 300 li from Ili. A charge led by the Dzungar renegade Ayusi and just 20 of his men stormed the camp and delivered around 8,000 prisoners to the Chinese. Only 2,000 soldiers escaped. Dawachi was captured by the Uyghur leader Khojis and delivered to the Qing; he surrendered to the general Zhaohui and was taken to Beijing, where the Emperor pardoned him and made both him and Khojis princes. The Qianlong Emperor then refused to let the former ally Amursana rule all the Dzungars, making him only khan of the Khoid tribe instead. Amursana rebelled. He was defeated at the Battle of Oroi-Jalatu, fled to the Kazakhs, then to Russia. He died of smallpox in Russian lands in September 1757. In the spring of 1762, his frozen body was brought to Kyakhta for the Manchu to inspect; the Russians refused to hand it over for posthumous punishment and buried it themselves. By 1758, the remaining Dzungar forces were defeated at the Battle of Khorgos and at the Battle of Khurungui near Almaty. What followed was not a conquest but an extermination.

• 7. Genocide

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  The Qing scholar Wei Yuan, who lived from 1794 to 1857, recorded that the Dzungar population before the conquest was around 600,000 people in 200,000 households. Wei Yuan wrote that roughly 40 percent of households were killed by smallpox, 20 percent fled to Russia or Kazakh tribes, and 30 percent were killed by Manchu bannermen. Historian Peter Perdue has argued that the destruction was the result of an explicit extermination policy launched by the Qianlong Emperor. The Emperor used the term jiao, meaning extermination, repeatedly in orders to his commanders. Generals Hadaha and Agui were punished for occupying Dzungar lands but allowing people to escape. Generals Zhaohui and Shuhede were punished for insufficient zeal. The Qianlong Emperor explicitly ordered the Khalkha Mongols to take the young and strong and massacre them. Wen-Djang Chu concluded that 80 percent of the 600,000 or more Dzungars were destroyed by disease and attack. Michael Clarke described it as the complete destruction of not only the Dzungar state but of the Dzungars as a people. Widespread anti-Dzungar sentiment among former subjects contributed to the destruction. The Muslim Kazakhs and the people of the former Yarkent Khanate, whom the Buddhist Dzungars had used as slave labor, participated in the Qing invasion and attacked the Dzungars. Uyghur leaders like Khojis and Emin Khoja were granted titles within the Qing nobility and acted as intermediaries, telling Muslim populations that the Qing only wanted to kill Oirats and would leave Muslims alone. The land was left nearly empty, and the Qianlong Emperor ordered the painting of the 100 most meritorious servitors of the war, commissioning Jesuit artists including Giuseppe Castiglione to record his victory for posterity.

• 8. Xinjiang Remade

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  After the destruction of the Dzungar people, the Qing dynasty sponsored the settlement of millions of Han, Hui, Xibe, Daur, Solon, Uyghur, and Manchu people in Dzungaria, filling land that had been emptied by genocide. In 1759, the Qing proclaimed in a Manchu memorial that the territory formerly belonging to the Dzungars was now part of China. The scholar Stanley W. Toops has noted that modern Xinjiang's demographic situation still reflects the settlement initiative of the Qing dynasty. Cities in northern Xinjiang, including Ürümqi and Yining, were in effect created by that policy. The elimination of the Buddhist Dzungars also had a religious consequence. Henry Schwarz observed that, in a certain sense, the Qing victory was a victory for Islam. The Qing tolerated and even promoted Turkic Muslim culture and identity, and many Muslim Taranchis moved into northern Xinjiang. The destruction of the only Buddhist nomadic empire in the region cleared the way for Islam and its Muslim Begs to become the dominant moral and political authority in Xinjiang. The Dzungar name itself survives in the name of the region: Dzungaria, the Junggar Basin, a compound of the Mongolian words meaning left hand or east wing. The empire is gone, but the geography still carries the trace of the people who built it.