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The late nineteenth-century age of empire was also an age of anti-superstition. In China, Western missionaries, diplomats and travellers labelled practices that resisted Western technologies and ideas as 'superstitious'. This article examines how a group of Qing scholar-officials, all members of the diplomatic corps, interpreted and ultimately defended these customs. Conventionally viewed as tragic figures unable to transcend a 'Sinocentric' world view, they were deeply embedded in the global circulations of empire. During their time in Europe and the United States, they compared Western culture and the development of capitalism with the changes they saw in China. For these cosmopolitan actors, Chinese popular cultural practices offered potential sources of anti-imperial resistance to Western presence in China. Yet they also had differing, at times conflicting, visions for how the Chinese state should relate to the 'superstitious'. Some argued that they needed to be kept in place, undisturbed from the onslaught of Western influence; others believed the 'superstitious' could be mobilized as an anti-imperial force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The practice turn in IR offers new ways to understand how diplomats can creatively engage with their environment and one another. Yet, sometimes their diplomatic practices limit their ability to achieve agreements. This article focuses on how and why domestic practices conflict with international practices, and why states sometimes might feel constrained into engaging in practices that harm their international position. Drawing on field theory, I introduce a causal mechanism I call symbolic binding that explains why regimes may become so bound by their domestic practices of legitimation that they incur considerable international cost. Symbolic binding occurs when the symbolic practices needed to generate domestic legitimacy intersect and conflict with practices from the diplomatic field, when domestic audiences are observing the diplomatic interaction, and when regimes have limited access to alternative forms of political capital. I demonstrate the logic of this mechanism by analyzing the antagonistic diplomacy that occurred between Britain and China from the late eighteenth until the late nineteenth century. I show that the root of this diplomatic conflict can be linked to the incompatibility of both states' diplomatic practices and show how the Qing regime's need to maintain domestic legitimacy constrained it into steadfastly adhering to diplomatic practices that were incompatible with that of encroaching European powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article considers foreign relations between China and Europe between 1845 and 1914, focusing on how European-led changes to China's infrastructure after the First Opium War impacted ancestral tombs and led to social unrest among Chinese against their colonizers. Topics include anti-foreign propaganda, ancestor worship, modernization and traditional Chinese society, the belief of the interrelationship between nature and built environment known as feng sui, and death practices.

An essay is presented on the ideational and material explanations in the Qing Dynasty diplomatic transformation. It determines the behavioural adjustments were as a result of ideational or material factors and explores the basis of changes in Qing dynasty foreign policy. It also mentions on the changes in the ideas significant role on any determination of behaviour as material factors.

An essay is presented on the rationalist approach within the academic field of international relations (IR) generally cites power and interest as primary cause for determination of the external state behaviour. It believe that ideas are important variable, equal in significance to the power and interest in interpreting the state behaviour of the Qing Dynasty. It also mentions on the government's external outlooks and ideas, pinpoint on the various specific stages of changes.