Zunghar genocide

The Zunghar genocide was the mass extermination of the Zunghar people by the Qing dynasty of China. The Qing Manchu Qianlong Emperor ordered the extermination to punish the Zunghar leader Amursana's rebellion against Qing rule after the Qing first conquered the Zunghar Khanate with Amursana's support before he rebelled in 1755. The genocide was carried out mainly by Manchu Bannermen and Khalkha, who were part of the Qing force sent to crush the Zunghars. Uyghurs from Turfan like Emin Khoja who were vassals and allies of the Qing, helped supply Qing forces during their war against the Zunghars. After wiping out the native Zunghar population of Dzungaria, the Qing then resettled Han Chinese, Hui, Uyghur, and Xibe on state farms in Dzungaria along with Manchu Bannermen to repopulate the area.

The Oirats converted to Tibetan Buddhism around 1615. The Zunghars were a confederation of several Oirat tribes that emerged suddenly in the early 17th century. The Zunghar Khanate was the last great nomadic empire in Asia. In 18th century, the Dzungars were annihilated by Qianlong Emperor in several campaigns. About 80% of the Zunghar population, or around 500,000 to 800,000 people, were killed during or after the Manchu conquest in 1755–1757. Some scholars estimate that about 80% of the Zunghars population (600,000 or more) were destroyed by a combination of warfare and disease during the Qing conquest of Zunghar Khanate in 1755–1757.

Background
The Zunghars who lived in an area that stretched from the west end of the Great Wall of China to present-day eastern Kazakhstan and from present-day northern Kyrgyzstan to southern Siberia (most of which is located in present-day Xinjiang), were the last nomadic empire to threaten China, which they did from the early 17th century through the middle of the 18th century. After a series of inconclusive military conflicts that started in the 1680s, the Zunghars were subjugated by the Manchu-led Qing dynasty (1644–1911) in the late 1750s. Clarke argued that the Qing campaign in 1757–58 "amounted to the complete destruction of not only the Zunghar state but of the Zunghars as a people." After the Qianlong Emperor led Qing forces to victory over the Zunghars in 1755, he originally was going to split the Zunghar Empire into four tribes headed by four Khans, the Khoit tribe was to have the Zunghar leader Amursana as its Khan. Amursana rejected the Qing arrangement and rebelled since he wanted to be leader of a united Zunghar nation. Qianlong then issued his orders for the genocide and eradication of the entire Zunghar nation and name, Qing Manchu Bannermen and Khalkha enslaved Zunghar women and children while slaying the other Zunghars.

Qianlong's orders
The Qianlong Emperor issued his commanders with direct orders to "massacre" the Zunghars and "show no mercy". Rewards were given to those who carried out the extermination and orders were given for young men to be slaughtered while women were taken as the spoils of war. The Qing extirpated Zunghar identity from the remaining enslaved Zunghar women and children. Orders were given to "completely exterminate the Zunghar tribes, and this succesful genocide by the Qing left Zungharia mostly unpopulated and vacant.

Qianlong ordered his men to- "Show no mercy at all to these rebels. Only the old and weak should be saved. Our previous campaigns were too lenient." The Qianlong Emperor did not see any conflict between performing genocide on the Zunghars while upholding the peaceful principles of Confucianism, supporting his position by portraying the Zunghars as barbarian and subhuman. Qianlong proclaimed that "To sweep away barbarians is the way to bring stability to the interior.", that the Zunghars "turned their back on civilization.", and that "Heaven supported the emperor." in the destruction of the Zunghars. According to the Encyclopedia of genocide and crimes against humanity, Volume 3, under Article II of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Qianlong's actions against the Zunghars constitute genocide, as he massacred the vast majority of the Zunghar population and enslaved or banished the remainder, and had "Zunghar culture" extirpated and destroyed. Qianlong's campaign constituted the "eighteenth-century genocide par excellence."

Genocide
Qianlong emperor moved the remaining Zunghar people to China and ordered the generals to kill all the men in Barkol or Suzhou, and divided their wives and children to Qing soldiers. In an account of the war, Qing scholar Wei Yuan, wrote that about 40% of the Zunghar households were killed by smallpox, 20% fled to Russia or the Kazakh Khanate, and 30% were killed by the army, leaving no yurts in an area of several thousands of li except those of the surrendered. Clarke wrote 80%, or between 480,000 and 600,000 people, were killed between 1755 and 1758 in what "amounted to the complete destruction of not only the Zunghar state but of the Zunghars as a people." 80% of the Zunghars died in the genocide. The Zunghar genocide was completed by a combination of a smallpox epidemic and the direct slaughter of Zunghars by Qing forces made out of Manchu Bannermen and (Khalkha) Mongols.

It was not until generations later that Dzungaria rebounded from the destruction and near liquidation of the Zunghars after the mass slayings of nearly a million Zunghars. Historian Peter Perdue has shown that the decimation of the Zunghars was the result of an explicit policy of extermination launched by Qianlong, Perdue attributed the decimation of the Zunghars to a "deliberate use of massacre" and has described it as an "ethnic genocide". Although this "deliberate use of massacre" has been largely ignored by modern scholars, Dr. Mark Levene, a historian whose recent research interests focus on genocide, has stated that the extermination of the Dzungars was "arguably the eighteenth century genocide par excellence."

Uyghur supply of Qing forces
Anti-Zunghar Uyghur rebels from the Turfan and Hami oases had submitted to Qing rule as vassals and requested Qing help for overthrowing Zunghar rule. Uyghur leaders like Emin Khoja were granted titles within the Qing nobility, and these Uyghurs helped supply the Qing military forces during the anti-Zunghar campaign.

Kalmyks return to Zungharia
The Kalmyk Khanate was founded in the 17th century with Tibetan Buddhism as its main religion, following the earlier migration of the Oirats from Zungharia through Central Asia to the steppe around the mouth of the Volga River. During the course of the 18th century, they were absorbed by the Russian Empire, which was then expanding to the south and east. The Russian Orthodox church pressured many Kalmyks to adopt Orthodoxy. In the winter of 1770–1771, about 300,000 Kalmyks set out to return to China. Their goal was to retake control of Zungharia from the Qing Dynasty of China. Along the way many were attacked and killed by Kazakhs and Kyrgyz, their historical enemies based on inter-tribal competition for land, and many more died of starvation and disease. After several grueling months of travel, only one-third of the original group reached Zungharia and had no choice but to surrender to the Qing upon arrival. These Kalmyks became known as Torghuts. After being settled in Qing territory, the Torghuts were coerced by the Qing into giving up their nomadic lifestyle and to take up sedentary agriculture instead as part of a deliberate policy by the Qing to enfeeble them. They proved to be incompetent farmers and they became destitute, selling their children into slavery, engaging in prostitution, and stealing. Child slaves were in demand on the Central Asian slave market, and Torghut children were sold into this slave trade.

Consequences of the Genocide
The Qing "final solution" of genocide to solve the problem of the Zunghars, made the Qing sponsored settlement of millions of Han Chinese, Hui, Turkestani Oasis people (Uyghurs) and Manchu Bannermen in Zungharia possible, since the land was now devoid of Zunghars. After the Chinese defeated Jahangir Khoja in the 1820s, 12,000 Turki (Uyghur) Taranchi families were deported by China from the Tarim Basin to Zungharia to colonize and repopulate the area since the mass extermination of the Zunghars left it empty. The Zungharian basin, which used to be inhabited by Zunghars, is currently inhabited by Kazakhs.

The Zunghar genocide has been compared to the Qing extermination of the Jinchuan Tibetan people in 1776.

Qianlong explicitly commemorated the Qing conquest of the Zunghars as having added new territory in Xinjiang to "China", defining China as a multi ethnic state, rejecting the idea that China only meant Han areas in "China proper", meaning that according to the Qing, both Han and non-Han peoples were part of "China", which included Xinjiang which the Qing conquered from the Zunghars. After the Qing were done conquering Dzungaria in 1759, they proclaimed that the new land which formerly belonged to the Zunghars, was now absorbed into "China" (Dulimbai Gurun) in a Manchu language memorial. The Qing expounded on their ideology that they were bringing together the "outer" non-Han Chinese like the Inner Mongols, Eastern Mongols, Oirat Mongols, and Tibetans together with the "inner" Han Chinese, into "one family" united in the Qing state, showing that the diverse subjects of the Qing were all part of one family, the Qing used the phrase "Zhong Wai Yi Jia" 中外一家 or "Nei Wai Yi Jia" 內外一家 ("interior and exterior as one family"), to convey this idea of "unification" of the different peoples. In the Manchu official Tulisen's Manchu language account of his meeting with the Torghut leader Ayuka Khan, it was mentioned that while the Torghuts were unlike the Russians, the "people of the Central Kingdom" (dulimba-i gurun 中國, Zhongguo) were like the Torghut Mongols, and the "people of the Central Kingdom" referred to the Manchus.