Ten Great Campaigns

The Ten Great Campaigns were a series of wars fought during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, much celebrated in the official Qing Dynasty annals. They included three to enlarge the area of Qing control in Central Asia: two against the Dzungars (1755-1757) and the pacification of Chinese Turkestan (1758-1759). The other seven campaigns were more in the nature of police actions on frontiers already established - two wars to suppress the Jinchuan rebels in Sichuan, another to suppress rebels in Taiwan (1787-1788), and four expeditions abroad to chastise the Burmese (1766-1788), the Vietnamese (1788-1789), and the warlike Gurkhas in Nepal on the border between Tibet and India (1790-1772), the last counting as two.

Suppression of the Jinchuan hill peoples

The suppression of the Jinchuan hill people was the costliest and most difficult, and also the most destructive. The Jinchuan (literally "Golden Stream") was northwest of Chengdu in western Sichuan. The tribal peoples there were related to the Tibetans of the Amdo. The first campaign in 1747-1749 was a simple affair; with little use of force the Manchu general induced the native chieftains to accept a peace plan, and departed.

Related Topics:
Jinchuan - Chengdu - Tibetans - Amdo

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Interethnic conflict brought the Manchus back after twenty years. The reresulting Qing expeditionary force was forced to fight a protracted war of attrition costing the Qing treasury several times the amounts expended on the earlier conquests of the Dzungars and Turkestan. The resisting tribes retreated to their stone towers and forts in steep mountains and could only be dislodged by European cannon. The Manchu generals were ruthless in annihilating the rebellious tribes, then reorganised the region in a military prefecture and repopulated it with more cooperative inhabitants.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~