This book provides an examination of the Muslim notability (begs) and their development of capitalistic enterprises in Eastern Turkestan under the Qing Empire. The begs, the powerful organizers of trade, agriculture, and labor in the oases, needed the empire and its military as a patron of their capitalistic reorganization of the oasis agriculture and the expansion of their access to new markets and resources. The Qing needed the begs as the foundation of imperial security and as partners in revenue extraction from local agriculture and mining development constituencies. However, the capitalistic transformation of the oasis economy created socio-economic tensions between the begs and the rural villagers. From the latter’s ranks, resistance grew in the form of bandits and refugees fleeing into the mountains that surrounded the oases, where these people would amass to form outsider communities. These communities, under the leadership of Sufi holy men (khwaja), eventually engaged in over political action in the early 1800s, which culminated in war against the Qing state. The Qing fell in Central Asia in 1864, as this new crisis deepened after Opium War (1839-42). This book offers a new perspective on Qing imperial history, and also contributes to a revised narrative on the history of global capitalism and imperialism on a truly global scale, and in an interconnected fashion.