between 1847 and 1881.  The Kalmuks and Kazaks played a special part in Russo-Chinese relations.  The Chinese had sent a mission to the Kalmuks farthest west, by the lower Volga, and had entered into relations with them, as early as 1714.  As Russian pressure on the Volga region continually grew, these Kalmuks (mainly the Turgut tribe), who had lived there since 1630, decided to return into Chinese territory (1771).  During this enormously difficult migration, almost entirely through hostile territory, a large number of the Turgut perished; 85,000, however, reached the Ili region, where they were settled by the Chinese on the lands of the eastern Kalmuks, who had been largely exterminated.

In the south, too, the Chinese came into direct touch with the European powers.  In 1757 the English occupied Calcutta, and in 1766 the province of Bengal.  In 1767 a Manchu general, Ming Jui, who had been victorious in the fighting for eastern Turkestan, marched against Burma, which was made a dependency once more in 1769.  And in 1790-1791 the Chinese conquered Nepal, south of Tibet, because Nepalese had made two attacks on Tibet.  Thus English and Chinese political interests came here into contact.

For the Ch’ien-lung period’s many wars of conquest there seem to have been two main reasons.  The first was the need for security.  The Mongols had to be overthrown because otherwise the homeland of the Manchus was menaced; in order to make sure of the suppression of the eastern Mongols, the western Mongols (Kalmuks) had to be overthrown; to make them harmless, Turkestan and the Ili region had to be conquered; Tibet was needed for the security of Turkestan and Mongolia—­and so on.  Vast territories, however, were conquered in this process which were of no economic value, and most of which actually cost a great deal of money and brought nothing in.  They were conquered simply for security.  That advantage had been gained:  an aggressor would have to cross great areas of unproductive territory, with difficult conditions for reinforcements, before he could actually reach China.  In the second place, the Chinese may actually have noticed the efforts that were being made by the European powers, especially Russia and England, to divide Asia among themselves, and accordingly they made sure of their own good share.

6 Decline; revolts

The period of Ch’ien-lung is not only that of the greatest expansion of the Chinese empire, but also that of the greatest prosperity under the Manchu regime.  But there began at the same time to be signs of internal decline.  If we are to fix a particular year for this, perhaps it should be the year 1774, in which came the first great popular rising, in the province of Shantung.  In 1775 there came another popular rising, in Honan—­that of the “Society of the White Lotus”.  This society, which had long existed as a secret organization and had played a part in the Ming epoch, had been reorganized by a man named Liu Sung.  Liu Sung