The making of a frontier: The Qing military in Taiwan, 1684--1783 (China)

This dissertation focuses on the issues surrounding the stationing of military forces on Taiwan after the Qing state annexed it in 1684, the measures put in place to control the island's officers and troops, and the mechanics of their financing and maintenance. The aim of this dissertation is twofold: to shed light on the process of Han Chinese migration to frontier areas of the empire (a notable development in the eighteenth century), and to contribute to an understanding of the processes of state expansion and control in late imperial China.; Aspects of the following intriguing questions are discussed and analyzed: Why did inhabitants from southern coastal Fujian, a heavily populated area from at least the twelfth century and dependent on grain imports, not migrate to a fertile island lying only about 150 kilometers away until the seventeenth century? Why had the Chinese state, heavily reliant on agricultural taxes for its revenues, not actively sought to populate this territory with agricultural settlers and to administer it? Why, when the island was finally incorporated into the Chinese empire in the late seventeenth century, did Qing rulers institute a policy of partial quarantine on the island? And why, despite the quarantine policy, did Han Chinese settlement of Taiwan increase to unprecedented levels?; Several conclusions are reached in this dissertation. First, the increasing commercialization of the Ming-Qing period complicated the state's ability to control its maritime frontier. Understanding the nature and cause of these complications is essential to understanding the rationale behind Qing policies on Taiwan. Second, even in the case of a territory situated in close proximity to a highly commercialized region, the state played a crucial role in initiating Han Chinese agricultural settlement to that territory. Finally, the state, in stationing its troops in a frontier area, likewise played a large role in continuing to create the conditions favorable for Chinese immigration to that area, and helped to shape the sub-ethnic composition of the frontier population.