The Qing Dynasty was the last feudal empire in Chinese history. When the Qing Dynasty reached its peak, it reached Zengmu Dark Sand in the southern maritime territory, and the land territory reached Thang Long City (that is, today's Hanoi City, Vietnam); the eastern maritime land territory reached the Ryukyu Islands and the East Outer Sea; the northern territory reached the Waixing'an Mountains and Sakhalin Island; and the western regions east of the Onion Ridge and the inner and outer western regions ruled to the west. At its peak, it had a total area of 13.1 million square kilometers. The extent of this kind of actual control is unique in Chinese history.
So why did the Qing Dynasty have the most vast territory in history? There are four reasons why, and the last point is often overlooked.
The first is to inherit the old territory of the Ming Dynasty
The establishment of a new dynasty must be carried out on the basis of the old dynasty. First of all, the predecessor of the Qing Empire was the Later Jin Empire, and the territory owned by the Later Jin regime in the traditional sense was very limited, basically the three northeastern provinces, from Heilongjiang to yalu River, such a land and the scope of rule were completely different from the later Qing Empire. In the true sense, the expansion of the Qing Empire was carried out by inheriting the old territory of the Ming Dynasty. Later Jin took advantage of the infighting between the Ming government and the peasant army and marched into Shanhaiguan. Sweeping the traditional han residential area in an unstoppable way. After inheriting the eighteen provinces of the Han Dynasty, the Great Qing Dynasty became the Zhengshuo Dynasty in the traditional sense, and thus began to be called an empire by later generations of experts and scholars.
The second is military conquest, which is intended for reunification
Although the Qing Empire, which inherited the old territory of the Ming Dynasty, began to rule over the vast agricultural areas, the late Ming restoration forces were not willing to lose. The Restoration forces still occupied the provinces of Yunnan, Guichuan and Taiwan, and they always looked for every opportunity to prepare to overthrow the Qing Empire. However, if an empire wants to fully exercise its decrees in the area of its rule, it must complete a real sense of unity in order to be convinced by grass-roots officials and ordinary people. Therefore, under the leadership of Kangxi, the second monarch after the Qing Empire entered the customs, he successively recovered Yunguichuan, pacified the Taiwan region, and achieved true unification, and the territory of the Qing Empire became more extensive.
The third is the continuous development of the emperors of the Qing Dynasty
The territory owned by the agrarian nation in the psychological sense is limited to the land that can be cultivated, so the expansion of the territory of the Successive Han Dynasties has always been continuously southward, because the territory of southern China is more conducive to the cultivation of crops. The south can ripen twice a year or even three times a year, while the territories of the north and northwest are not suitable for crop production and are naturally abandoned. The Qing emperors, on the other hand, were born into nomadic origins and were full of pioneering ideas. Therefore, the later monarchs of the Qing Dynasty have always adhered to this concept. During the Kang Yongqian era, the northwest and southwest were successively pacified, and Xinjiang and Tibet, as well as Inner and Outer Mongolia, were brought under Chinese rule, making the territory of the Qing Empire the largest in Chinese history.
The fourth is the decline of the nomadic forces in the north
The founders of the Qing Dynasty were also nomadic peoples from the northeast, and judging from the situation of the confrontation between the north and the south in ancient China, once the ethnic minorities in the north rose, it was bound to be a single ethnic independence, and the Jurchen people at that time were exactly like this. The Jurchens began to rise from the late Northern Song Dynasty and destroyed the Northern Song dynasty with their own strength. In the late Ming Dynasty, the Jianzhou Jurchen was even stronger, rising between the White Mountains and Black Water, struggling to survive under the high pressure of the Ming Dynasty.
First, the use of force to force Korea to submit to the south, so that the Ming Dynasty and Korea's hierarchical relations were severed, and a large area of territory was obtained from Korea, including the Tielingwei and Changbaishan areas, which had been lost since the Ming Taizu period; secondly, to the west, mongolia was annexed by two means, either by force or by marriage, so that the Weirat Mongol and Murwei Mongol areas were included in the territory of the Qing Dynasty, and it was directly ruled, not the traditional Han regime. How big was the Mongolian region at that time, roughly equivalent to two Chinas, and the Mongols had the right to inherit Siberia in the historical sense, so Siberia was naturally included in the Qing Dynasty. Although in the later period, Tsarist Russia expanded eastward, the Qing Dynasty did not retreat, and only bounded by the Ural River.
Conclusion: The establishment of the Qing Dynasty is no accident, it learned the lessons of the Yuan Dynasty, abolished the system of ethnic discrimination, although psychologically still exists, but the concept of the Manchu Han family has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people with time. The vast territory is not only from the advanced administrative system of the Han nationality, but more importantly, thanks to the identity of the emperor of the Qing Dynasty, he is not only the emperor of China, but also the great khan of other ethnic minorities, he is known as italbe Khan in Mongolia, and in the western region is called Lamodo Khan, and the integration of many identities and multiculturalism makes the Qing Dynasty have a vast and stable territory.