Borderland Capitalism : Turkestan Produce, Qing Silver, and the Birth of an Eastern Market

This book provides an examination of the Muslim notability (begs) and their development of capitalistic enterprises in Eastern Turkestan under the Qing Empire. The begs, the powerful organizers of trade, agriculture, and labor in the oases, needed the empire and its military as a patron of their capitalistic reorganization of the oasis agriculture and the expansion of their access to new markets and resources. The Qing needed the begs as the foundation of imperial security and as partners in revenue extraction from local agriculture and mining development constituencies. However, the capitalistic transformation of the oasis economy created socio-economic tensions between the begs and the rural villagers. From the latter’s ranks, resistance grew in the form of bandits and refugees fleeing into the mountains that surrounded the oases, where these people would amass to form outsider communities. These communities, under the leadership of Sufi holy men (khwaja), eventually engaged in over political action in the early 1800s, which culminated in war against the Qing state. The Qing fell in Central Asia in 1864, as this new crisis deepened after Opium War (1839-42). This book offers a new perspective on Qing imperial history, and also contributes to a revised narrative on the history of global capitalism and imperialism on a truly global scale, and in an interconnected fashion. Scholars have long been puzzled by why Muslim landowners in Central Asia, called begs, stayed loyal to the Qing empire when its political legitimacy and military power were routinely challenged. Borderland Capitalism argues that converging interests held them together: the local Qing administration needed the Turkic begs to develop resources and raise military revenue while the begs needed access to the Chinese market. Drawing upon multilingual sources and archival material, Kwangmin Kim shows how the begs aligned themselves with the Qing to strengthen their own plantation-like economic system. As controllers of food supplies, commercial goods, and human resources, the begs had the political power to dictate the fortunes of governments in the region. Their political choice to cooperate with the Qing promoted an expansion of the Qing's emerging international trade at the same time that Europe was developing global capitalism and imperialism. Borderland Capitalism shows the Qing empire as a quintessentially early modern empire and points the way toward a new understanding of the rise of a global economy. --Publisher description Beg, Empire, And Agrarian Developments In Central Asia, 1500-1750 -- Capitalist Imperatives : Imperial Interconnections And The Oasis Local Economy, 1759-1825 -- The Holy Wars Of The Uprooted, 1826-1830 -- The Just And Liberal Rule Of Zuhur Al-din, 1831-1846 -- Global Crises Of Oasis Capitalism, 1847-1864. Kwangmin Kim. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.