Dzungar Khanate

The Dzungar Khanate was the last great nomadic empire of Inner Asia. Founded by Oirat Mongols in the 1630s, it ruled Dzungaria, in what is now northern Xinjiang in China, and dominated a wide region from Kazakhstan to Tibet, until the Qing dynasty destroyed it in the 1750s.

The Oirats were the western Mongols, who had challenged the eastern Mongols for leadership in the fifteenth century. In the early seventeenth century, the Oirat tribes, the Choros, Dörbet, Torghut and Khoshut, competed for pastures. Some Torghuts migrated west to the Volga, becoming the Kalmyks, and the Khoshuts under Güshi Khan conquered Tibet in the 1640s on behalf of the Dalai Lama. The Choros, led by Khara Khula and his son Erdeni Batur, built the Dzungar state, taking its name from the "left hand", the left wing of the Oirat army.

Erdeni Batur, who ruled from 1634 to 1653, united several Oirat groups, built a capital, encouraged farming and crafts, and in 1640 convened a great assembly of Oirat and Khalkha Mongol leaders, which issued a legal code, the Mongol-Oirat Code. The Oirats were devout followers of Tibetan Buddhism, and the Oirat monk Zaya Pandita created the Clear Script for the Oirat language in 1648.

Galdan, who had studied as a monk in Tibet, took power in 1671 after his brother's murder and received the title Boshugtu Khan from the Dalai Lama. He conquered the oasis cities of the Tarim basin, such as Kashgar and Yarkand, installing a Muslim leader as vassal, and took Turpan and Hami. In 1688 he invaded Khalkha, eastern Mongolia, and the Khalkha nobles fled to the Qing. The Kangxi emperor led armies against Galdan, defeating him at Ulan Butung in 1690 and at Jao Modo in 1696, where Qing cannons were decisive. Galdan died in 1697, possibly by suicide or illness.

Galdan's nephew Tsewang Rabtan, who ruled from 1697 to 1727, rebuilt the khanate. In the 1720s the Dzungars invaded the Kazakh lands, a disaster the Kazakhs remember as the "Years of Great Disaster", leading the Kazakh hordes to seek Russian protection. In 1717 a Dzungar army invaded Tibet and took Lhasa, killing the Khoshut ruler, until Qing forces drove them out in 1720, establishing Qing influence in Tibet. Galdan Tseren, who ruled from 1727 to 1745, defeated a Qing army at Hoton Nor in 1731 but made peace in 1739.

The Dzungars were not only nomads: they built towns, encouraged farming by Turkic Muslims they moved from the Tarim basin, called Taranchi, and developed metalworking and arms production. A Swedish officer captured at Poltava, Johan Gustaf Renat, helped them make cannon in the 1720s and 1730s, and his map of Dzungaria is one of the earliest. They traded with Russia, China and Central Asia.

After Galdan Tseren's death in 1745, the khanate fell into civil war. A noble, Amursana, fled to the Qing and asked for help. The Qianlong emperor sent armies in 1755, which took the Dzungar capital, Ghulja. When Amursana, disappointed by the Qing, rebelled, the emperor ordered the Dzungars exterminated. In campaigns from 1755 to 1758, Qing armies and their allies killed a large part of the population, and many others died of smallpox or fled to Russia. Estimates suggest that the great majority of the perhaps 600,000 Dzungars perished. Many historians describe this as genocide.

The Qing settled Dzungaria with Han Chinese, Hui Muslims, Manchus, Sibe and others, and the region, with the Tarim basin, became the Qing province of Xinjiang, "new frontier". In 1771 the Torghuts of the Volga returned to Dzungaria, losing many lives on the journey.

Our maps show the Dzungar Khanate on the 1650 and 1700 maps. Its largest outline, about 2.6 million square kilometres on the 1650 map, is nearly two-thirds in today's China, with the rest in Mongolia, Russia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Kashgar lies inside it. From 1783 the region is part of the Qing dynasty.