Abstract
This study examines the geopolitical significance of the Qinghai Lake region during the sixteenth-century Ming–Mongol confrontations. Through a transregional lens, it analyzes how contestations over territorial dominance shaped the circulation of material resources, the form of religious networks, and the movement of military populations. Following their civil war defeats in the early 1500s, Mongol groups strategically reconstituted the Qinghai Lake region as both a geopolitical sanctuary and a spiritual corridor connecting to the Tibetan Buddhist ecumene. By leveraging the lake region for refuge, pilgrimage, and resource extraction, various Mongol actors could bring about flows of personnel, commodities, and religious practices. In contrast, the Ming initially adopted a defensive strategy, concentrating military infrastructure along the region’s periphery while tolerating limited cross-border interactions. This equilibrium collapsed in the 1590s when increased Mongol mobility precipitated a full-scale frontier crisis. Despite the Ming’s eventual military suppression of this mobility, the present study demonstrates how such regulation of transregional mobility fundamentally reconfigured the Qinghai Lake region’s geopolitical configuration.
Keywords
Qinghai Lake region, Ming–Mongol relations, transregional movements
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