This groundbreaking book analyzes the dramatic impact of Han Chinese migration into Inner Mongolia during the Qing era. In the first detailed history in English, Yi Wang explores how processes of commercial expansion, land reclamation, and Catholic proselytism transformed the Mongol frontier long before it was officially colonized and incorporated into the Chinese state. Wang reconstructs the socioeconomic, cultural, and administrative history of Inner Mongolia at a time of unprecedented Chinese expansion into its peripheries and China's integration into the global frameworks of capitalism and the nation-state. Introducing a peripheral and transregional dimension that links the local and regional processes to global ones, Wang places equal emphasis on broad macro-historical analysis and fine-grained micro-studies of particular regions and agents. She argues that border regions such as Inner Mongolia played a central role in China's transformation from a multiethnic empire to a modern nation-state, serving as fertile ground for economic and administrative experimentation. Drawing on a wide range of Chinese, Japanese, Mongolian, and European sources, Wang integrates the two major trends in current Chinese historiography-new Qing frontier history and migration history-in an important contribution to the history of Inner Asia, border studies, and migrations.
- ISBN10 153814607X
- ISBN13 9781538146071
- Publish Date 21 September 2021
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Rowman & Littlefield
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 354
- Language English