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.

Yi Wang is associate professor of history at Binghamton University.

List of Figures

List of Maps

List of Tables

List of Abbreviations

Dynasties, Weights, and Measures

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 A Changing Frontier: Inner Mongolia in Context

2 Merchants, Monetization, and Networking: Han Commercial Expansion in the Steppe

3 Beyond the Western Pass: Sojourning and Settlement Across Han-Mongol Borders

4 The Rise of Land Merchants: Irrigation, Commercialization, and Local Autonomy in Hetao

5 Cultivation for Salvation: Missionaries, Migrants, and Catholic Expansion

6 Moving People to Strengthen the Border: Official Reclamation and State Building

Conclusion

Bibliography

Glossary

Index