What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
In 1757, the Qing Dynasty completely eliminated the Dzungar Khanate that occupied the western region, and the Qianlong Emperor took the meaning of "new return to the homeland" and named this land "Xinjiang".
Time pushes forward, the last time the Western Regions were ruled by the Central Dynasty was during the Tang Dynasty, after the fall of the Tang Dynasty was the Great Chaos of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, and then it was the great division of the Three Kingdoms of Song, Liao, and Jin, in these hundreds of years, there was no great unified dynasty, and the Western Regions were naturally not recovered by the Central Dynasty.
In the Yuan Dynasty, although the territory was quite vast, most of the western region was ruled by the Chagatai Khanate, the fiefdom of Chhagatai, the second son of Genghis Khan, for a long time, and did not belong to the Yuan Dynasty.
During the reign of Zhu Di, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty, the Hami Wei set up roughly ruled the eastern part of the Western Regions, and it can be said that the Central Dynasty came closest to recovering the Western Regions.
However, the subsequent Ming Dynasty did not recover all the western regions with a single blow, but on the contrary, the control of Hamiwei has been lost, and during the reign of Emperor Jiajing of the Ming Dynasty, it was completely abandoned by Hamiwei, and the Ming Dynasty's power was completely retracted within Jiayuguan.
Therefore, since the Tang Dynasty, the Western Regions have been separated from the rule of the Central Dynasty for nearly a thousand years, and only during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty were recovered by the Central Dynasty.
So why did the Qing Dynasty recover the Western Regions that had not been recovered for nearly a thousand years?
Generally speaking, why ancient dynasties want to expand their territory has the above reasons.
The first is the desire of agrarian societies for fertile land.
Let's look at the ancient unification dynasty, which basically expanded to the sea in the east, the steppe in the north, the Gobi Desert in the west, and the jungle in the south.
For the dynasty dominated by agricultural civilization, the sea, grassland, desert, and jungle obviously did not have much use value, but it was a burden, so it stopped here and managed the land suitable for cultivation in the territory.
The second is to occupy its territory after eliminating strong enemies and external troubles, or occupy more land after taking the initiative to attack and create a large strategic space for itself.
The third is driven by strong interests, such as a place with a good economy, rich in gold or something, or that this place is too strategic, naturally it is a place where the dynasty must compete.
There are second and third reasons why the Han Wudi Emperor Liu Che wanted to operate the Western Regions during the period, first of all, the Xiongnu retreated to the northwest to further attack the Xiongnu through the Western Regions, and there was the overland Silk Road that brought a lot of benefits to the economy of the Western Han Dynasty, and the Western Regions, as an important area in the Silk Road, naturally had to vigorously operate and control the Western Regions, which was equivalent to obtaining huge economic returns.
As for why no dynasty paid attention to the Western Regions after the Tang Dynasty, it is because the overland Silk Road has declined, and the Maritime Silk Road has been greatly developed in the Song Dynasty, which means that in terms of economy, the Western Regions are no longer so important.
Moreover, at that time, the main border problem of the dynasty was the northern steppe, or the northeast side of the late Ming Dynasty, and there was basically no major enemy in the northwest, that is, during the Song Dynasty, the Western Xia played a certain threat to the dynastic rule, but it was not a great threat, so that the dynasty had to use troops to attack and defend the northwest to strive for a large strategic space.
In fact, the early Qing Dynasty also did not pay attention to the western region, during the reign of the Kangxi Emperor, the Dzungar department in the northwest rose strongly under the leadership of Kaldan, after the Dzungar department divided the northwest, Kaldan began to use troops against the Khalkha Mongols, directly threatening the qing border, and later Kaldan even drove straight into inner Mongolia Ulanbutong, which is only seven hundred miles away from Beijing, so that the nature has changed, which is equivalent to Kaldan wanting to compete with the Qing Dynasty for world domination and infect the Central Plains.
For this major problem in the northwest, the Kangxi Emperor was the Three Expeditions to Kaldan, and since then the war between the two sides has lasted for nearly a hundred years, through the three dynasties of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong, until the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, taking advantage of the civil strife in the Dzungars, to completely eliminate it in one fell swoop, and then to recover the Western Regions.
Therefore, to sum up, the reason why the Qing Dynasty recovered the Western Regions was because the strong enemy of Dzungar was too threatening to it, so naturally it was necessary to do everything possible to eliminate this strong enemy and recover the land it occupied.
Of course, no matter what the motives of the Qing Dynasty were, the recovery of the Western Regions was a great contribution to its territory and deserved to be commended.