ᠴᡈᡉᠨ ᡎᠠᠷ Zöün ɣar ᠵᠡᠭᠦᠨᠭᠠᠷ Зүүнгар Züüngar | |
|---|---|
| Total population | |
| 658,372-668,372 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| 250,000 (2013 estimate) | |
| 205,000 (2010 census) | |
| 183,372 (Kalmyk)[1] | |
| 12,000 (Kalmyk)[2] | |
| 325 (Kalmyk)[3] | |
| 1,500 (Kalmyk)[4] | |
| Languages | |
| Oirat,Chagatai | |
| Religion | |
| Tibetan Buddhism | |
| Dzungar people | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese name | |||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 準噶爾 | ||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 准噶尔 | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
| Mongolian name | |||||||||||||
| Mongolian Cyrillic | Зүүнгар,Mongolian pronunciation:[tsuːŋˈɢɑr] | ||||||||||||
| Mongolian script | ᠵᠡᠭᠦᠨᠭᠠᠷ | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
| Kazakh name | |||||||||||||
| Kazakh | Жоңғар[ʑwʊɴˈʁɑɾ] Joñğar جوڭعار | ||||||||||||
| Oirat name | |||||||||||||
| Oirat | ᠴᡈᡉᠨ ᡎᠠᠷ zöün ɣar | ||||||||||||
TheDzungar people (also written asZunghar orJunggar; from theMongolian wordszüün gar, meaning 'left hand') are the many MongolOirat tribes who formed and maintained theDzungar Khanate in the 17th and 18th centuries. Historically, they were one of the major tribes of theFour Oirat confederation. They were also known as theEleuths orÖöled, from theQing dynasty euphemism for the hated word "Dzungar",[5] and as the "Kalmyks". In 2010, 15,520 people claimed "Ööled" ancestry inMongolia.[6] An unknown number also live in China, Russia and Kazakhstan.
The Dzungars were a confederation of severalOirat tribes that emerged in the early 17th century to fight theAltan Khan of the Khalkha (not to be confused with the better-knownAltan Khan of the Tümed),Tümen Zasagt Khan, and later theManchu for dominion and control over the Mongolian people and territories. This confederation rose to power in what became known as theJunggar Basin inDzungaria between theAltai Mountains and theIli Valley. Initially, the confederation consisted of the Oöled,Dörbet Oirat (also written Derbet) and theKhoid. Later on, elements of theKhoshut andTorghut were forcibly incorporated into the Dzungar military, thus completing the reunification of the West Mongolian tribes.
According to oral history, the Oöled and Dörbet tribes are the successor tribes to theNaimans, a group of Mongols who roamed the steppes of Central Asia during the era ofGenghis Khan. The Oöled shared the clan nameChoros with the Dörbet.Zuun gar "left hand" andBaruun gar "right hand" formed the Oirat's military and administrative organization. The DzungarOlot people and the Choros became the ruling clans in the 17th century.
In 1697, two relatives ofGaldan Boshugtu Khan, Danjila and Rabdan, surrendered to the QingKangxi Emperor. Their people were then organized into two Oolodbanners and resettled in what is nowBayankhongor Province,Mongolia. In 1731, five hundred households fled back to Dzungar territory while the remaining Olots were deported toHulunbuir. After 1761, some of them were resettled inArkhangai Province.
The Dzungars who lived in an area that stretched from the west end of theGreat Wall of China to present-day easternKazakhstan and from present-day northernKyrgyzstan to southernSiberia (most of which is located in present-dayXinjiang), were the lastnomadic empire to threaten China, which they did from the early 17th century through the middle of the 18th century.[7]
During this time, the Dzungar pioneered the local manifestation of a ‘Military Revolution’ in Central Eurasia after perfecting a process of manufacturing indigenously created gunpowder weapons. They created a mixed agro-pastoral economy, as well as complementary mining and manufacturing industries on their lands. The Dzungar managed to enact an empire-wide system of laws and policies to boost the use of the Oirat language in the region.[8]
After a series of inconclusive military conflicts that started in the 1680s, the Dzungars were subjugated by theManchu-ledQing 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 Dzungar state but of the Dzungars as a people."[9] After theQianlong Emperor led Qing forces to victory over the Dzungar Oirat (Western) Mongols in 1755, he originally was going to split the Dzungar Khanate into four tribes headed by four Khans.[10]

The Khoit tribe was to have the Dzungar leader Amursana as its Khan. Amursana rejected the Qing arrangement and rebelled since he wanted to be leader of a united Dzungar nation. Qianlong then issued his orders for the genocide and eradication of the entire Dzungar nation and name. Qing Manchu Bannermen andKhalkha (Eastern) Mongols enslaved Dzungar women and children while slaying the other Dzungars.[10]
In 1755, theQianlong Emperor ordered thegenocide of the Dzungars, moving the remaining Dzungar people to the mainland and ordering the generals to kill all the men inBarkol orSuzhou, and divided their wives and children to Qing forces, which were made out ofManchuBannermen andKhalkha Mongols.[11][12] Qing scholarWei Yuan estimated the total population of Dzungars before the fall at 600,000 people, or 200,000 households. Oirat officer Saaral betrayed and battled against the Oirats. In a widely cited[13][14][15] account of the war, Wei Yuan wrote that about 40% of the Dzungar households were killed bysmallpox, 20% fled to Russia orKazakh tribes, and 30% were killed by the Qing army of Manchu Bannermen and Khalkhas, leaving noyurts in an area of several thousandsli except those of the surrendered.[16]

During this war, Kazakhs attacked dispersed Oirats andAltays. Based on this account, Wen-Djang Chu wrote that 80% of the 600,000 or more Dzungars, especially Choros, Olots, Khoid,Baatud andZakhchin, were destroyed by disease and attack[17] which Michael Clarke described as "the complete destruction of not only the Dzungar state but of the Zungars as a people."[18] HistorianPeter Perdue attributed the devastation of the Dzungars to an explicit policy of extermination launched by Qianlong, but he also observed signs of a more lenient policy after mid-1757.[14]
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."[19] The Dzungar genocide was completed by a combination of a smallpox epidemic and the direct slaughter of Dzungars by Qing forces made out of Manchu Bannermen and (Khalkha) Mongols.[20]
Anti-DzungarUyghur rebels from theTurfan andHami oases had submitted to Qing rule as vassals and requested Qing help for overthrowing Dzungar 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-Dzungar campaign.[21] The Qing employed Khoja Emin in its campaign against the Dzungars and used him as an intermediary with Muslims from theTarim Basin to inform them that the Qing were only aiming to kill Dzungars and that they would leave the Muslims alone, and also to convince them to kill the Dzungars themselves and side with the Qing since the Qing noted the Muslims' resentment of their former experience under Dzungar rule at the hands ofTsewang Rabtan.[22]
It was not until generations later that Dzungaria rebounded from the destruction and near liquidation of the Dzungars after the mass slayings of nearly a million Dzungars.[23] HistorianPeter C. Perdue has shown that the annihilation of the Dzungars was the result of an explicit policy of extermination launched by Qianlong,[24] Perdue attributed the elimination of the Dzungars to a "deliberate use of massacre" and has described it as an "ethnic genocide".[25]
The Qing "final solution" of genocide to solve the problem of the Dzungars made the Qing sponsored settlement of millions of Han Chinese, Hui, Turkestani Oasis people (Uyghurs) and Manchu Bannermen in Dzungaria possible, since the land was now devoid of Dzungars.[24]Dzungaria, which used to be inhabited by Dzungars is currently inhabited by Kazakhs.[26] In northern Xinjiang, the Qing brought in Han,Hui, Uyghur,Xibe, and Kazakh colonists after they exterminated the Dzungar Oirat Mongols in the region, with one third of Xinjiang's total population consisting of Hui and Han in the northern area, while around two thirds were Uyghurs in southern Xinjiang's Tarim Basin.[27] In Dzungaria, the Qing established new cities likeÜrümqi (former Dihua of Qing, 迪化) andYining.[28] The Qing were the ones who unified Xinjiang and changed its demographic situation.[29]
The depopulation of northern Xinjiang after theVajrayana Buddhist Oirats were slaughtered, led to the Qing settling Manchu, Sibo (Xibe),Daurs,Solons, Han Chinese, Hui Muslims, and Turkic MuslimTaranchis in the north, with Han Chinese and Hui migrants making up the greatest number of settlers. Since it was the crushing of the BuddhistÖölöd (Dzungars) by the Qing which led to promotion of Islam and the empowerment of the Muslim Begs in southern Xinjiang, and migration of MuslimTaranchis to northern Xinjiang, it was proposed by Henry Schwarz that "the Qing victory was, in a certain sense, a victory for Islam".[30] Xinjiang as a unified defined geographic identity was created and developed by the Qing. It was the Qing who led to Turkic Muslim power in the region increasing since the Mongol power was crushed by the Qing while Turkic Muslim culture and identity was tolerated or even promoted by the Qing.[31]

Qianlong explicitly commemorated the Qing conquest of the Dzungars 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 Dzungars.[32] After the Qing were done conquering Dzungaria in 1759, they proclaimed that the new land which formerly belonged to the Dzungars, was now absorbed into "China" (Dulimbai Gurun) in a Manchu language memorial.[33][34]
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.[35] In the Manchu officialTulišen's Manchu languageaccount of his meeting with theTorghut leaderAyuka 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.[36]
The Hulun Buir Oolods formed an administrative banner along the Imin and Shinekhen Rivers. During the Qing dynasty, a body of them resettled inYakeshi city. In 1764 many Oolods migrated toKhovd Province in Mongolia and supplied corvee services for the Khovd garrison of the Qing. Their number reached 9,100 in 1989. A united administrative unit was demanded by them.[37]
The Dzungars remaining inXinjiang were also renamed Oolods. They dominated 30 of the 148 Mongolsums during the Qing dynasty era. They numbered 25,000 in 1999.