ched along the road from Peking that leads
northward through Mongolia to the far distant Uliassutai and Kobdo. The
cost of transport for one _shih_ (about 66 lb.) amounted to 120 pieces
of silver. In 1781 certain economies were introduced, but between 1781
and 1791 over 30,000 tons, making some 8 tons a day, was transported to
that region. The cost of transport for supplies alone amounted in the
course of time to the not inconsiderable sum of 120,000,000 pieces of
silver. In addition to this there was the cost of the transported goods
and of the pay of soldiers and of the administration. These figures
apply to the period of occupation, of relative peace: during the actual
wars of conquest the expenditure was naturally far higher. Thus these
campaigns, though I do not think they brought actual economic ruin to
China, were nevertheless a costly enterprise, and one which produced
little positive advantage.

In addition to this, these wars brought China into conflict with the
European colonial powers. In the years during which the Chinese armies
were fighting in the Ili region, the Russians were putting out their
feelers in that direction, and the Chinese annals show plainly how the
Russians intervened in the fighting with the Kalmuks and Kazaks. The Hi
region remained thereafter a bone of contention between China and
Russia, until it finally went to Russia, bit by bit, between 1847 and
1881. The Kalmuks and Kazaks played a special part in Russo-Chinese
relations. The Chinese had sent a mission to the Kalmuks farthest west,
by the lower Volga, and had entered into relations with them, as early
as 1714. As Russian pressure on the Volga region continually grew, these
Kalmuks (mainly the Turgut tribe), who had lived there since 1630,
decided to return into Chinese territory (1771). During this enormously
difficult migration, almost entirely through hostile territory, a large
number of the Turgut perished; 85,000, however, reached the Hi region,
where they were settled by the Chinese on the lands of the eastern
Kalmuks, who had been largely exterminated.

In the south, too, the Chinese came into direct touch with the European
powers. In 1757 the English occupied Calcutta, and in 1766 the province
of Bengal. In 1767 a Manchu general, Ming Jui, who had been victorious
in the fighting for eastern Turkestan, marched against Burma, which was
made a dependency once more in 1769. And in 1790-1791 the Chinese
conquered Nepal, south of