Tarim Basin

So too is the second part of the formal name not exactly accurate.

Though the Uyghur peoples have indeed long held sway over the two regions of Xinjiang, Tarim in the south and Jungaria in the north, they are by no means there alone.

Other than them, and the significantly more recent influx of Han Chinese colonization in modern times, Xinjiang is likewise home to Tajiks, Hui, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tibetans, Russians, Saibs, and, wait for it, the Mongols.

And it will be against these particular Western Mongols, also known as the Oirat, aka the Dzungars, that the majority of Qing forces will be directed in the century to come.

The term autonomous is likewise a cynically erroneous turn of phrase.

Even region is not strictly the case, as we've already seen it's at least two regions, Tarim and Dzungaria, three regions if you also want to separate out the Taklamakan Desert as a third separate region unto itself.

More correctly, the region consists of hundreds to thousands of microbiomes largely or completely disconnected from one another, except through whatever intercourse the shifting seasons might bring, be that in warfare or tradecraft.

Let's start by once again painting a picture of the region we're talking about, the Central Eurasian Steppes.

He was an affront to the very world order that Kangxi upheld.

And so today we will look at the decade when these two figures finally collided, a war that ranged from the Great Bend of the Yellow River all the way out to the sands of the Tarim Basin.

Kangxi would later describe this struggle that would fulfill his very life.

It is also a story that ends in the utter destruction of the Djungar nation and people, a clash of civilizations that would stretch on ultimately for more than a century and a tragedy across three generations.

For the Qing court, Inner Asia was a strategic buffer, not a revenue source or zone of active governance.

By the early 1800s, British India, Nepal, Khokhand, Maktoum-Zada networks in the Tarim Basin, and Russia all pressed against the Qing Empire's frontiers.

But from Beijing's vantage point, these were still just distant murmurs, barely audible through the haze of its own increasingly frenetic domestic concerns.

And so, Tibet found itself in a familiar, yet precarious position.

nor was it only the nobility peeling away.

Down in the Tarim Basin, the string of Muslim oasis cities the Jungars had held as subject provinces for decades, the region later called Altishar, or the Six Cities, the collapse of the Khanate's center was felt as an opening around its edges.

In 1754, as the Khanate tore at itself, Kashgar rose against its Jungar masters, and the grip the Jungars had kept on the oases for two generations began to slip.

Two men out of the region's most powerful religious lineage, the ones history will remember as the Koja Brothers, held for years as hostages up in Ili, are going to walk out of this chaos and into a story of their own a few years down the line.