Volta
Conflict1876 – 1878

Zuo Zongtang’s Reconquest of Xinjiang

Also called: Qing reconquest of Xinjiang

In 1876–1878 a Qing army led by Zuo Zongtang destroyed Yakub Beg’s state and reconquered Xinjiang. The Ili region, occupied by Russia, was mostly returned by the Treaty of Saint Petersburg in 1881.

When Muslim revolts in the northwest broke Qing rule over Xinjiang in the 1860s, Yakub Beg, a commander from Kokand, seized Kashgar in 1865 and came to rule the Tarim Basin as far as Ürümqi. Russia used the chaos to occupy the Ili region in 1871.

After Japan’s Taiwan expedition of 1874 the Qing court debated whether to put coastal defence (Li Hongzhang) or frontier defence in the northwest (Zuo Zongtang) first. It chose both, and in 1876 Zuo marched out of Gansu and retook Ürümqi that year. Yakub Beg died in 1877, his state collapsed, and by the end of the year Qing troops had entered Kashgar.

After hard negotiations with Russia the Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1881) returned most of Ili, and in 1884 the Qing made the region the province of Xinjiang.

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The map in 1876

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States and rulers at the time
Qing · victor — Guangxu Emperor
Places
Kashgar

People

  • Zuo Zongtang1812 – 1885

    commander · Late Qing Han Chinese statesman and general who helped crush the Taiping, founded the Foochow Navy Yard and in 1876–1878 overthrew Yakub Beg and reconquered Xinjiang

Before and after

Earlier
1874 Japanese Expedition to Taiwan
Later
1880 Second Envoy Mission and A Strategy for Korea

Themes that include this event

  • The Last Half-Century of the Qing1861 – 1901

    From the Self-Strengthening Movement to the Boxer Protocol — forty years in which a Qing China trying to learn Western technology lost to France and Japan, was carved up by the powers and saddled with indemnities it could not pay