In 1876, the Qing empire, still reeling from decades of internal rebellion, faced another crisis in the Gansu-Qinghai borderlands: A dead Tibetan hostage. A kidnapped Mongol princess. Retaliatory raids sweeping across the pastures of the northeastern Tibetan plateau.
This book reconstructs a violent and protracted legal case between a Mongol prince and neighboring Tibetan communities from the petitions, depositions, and reports of litigants and local elites, the private letters and formal communications of Qing civil and military officials, and Tibetan-language chronicles. The case exposes the tensions fracturing local and imperial state-systems alike—and reveals a shared interest, among indigenous and imperial authorities, in restoring and wielding a common “disciplinary state.”