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Scholarship on the origins of modern territoriality and the modernist conception of territory has largely been confined to Europe and its colonial histories. Few attempts have been made to understand modern territoriality from an alternative epistemic starting point. This article moves beyond critiques of Eurocentrism by examining the territorial metamorphosis of the Qing Empire to modern China. Like the United States and Russia, China has retained its early modern continental colonial possessions. In order to explain the territorialisation of the multi-ethnic Qing empire, this article engages empirically with cartographic and textual representations of China from Confucian literati scholars, European Jesuit cartographers and the Manchu imperial court from the 17th to the early 19th centuries. The empirical study shows that by the early 19th century, a new territorialised conception of 'China' closely resembling that of modern territoriality had emerged. This 'modern' and Sinocentric form of territoriality encompassed areas that were hitherto seen as foreign and non-Chinese. In opposition to the extant Eurocentric historiography, this article traces the emergence of modern territoriality in imperial China to a nexus of European cartographic techniques, Qing imperial conquests and the literati synthesis of Manchu imperial and Sinocentric forms of territoriality. By showing the deep historical processes and global entanglements behind the emergence of modern China as a territorial state, the article makes a case for a polycentric account of modern territoriality [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In the literature, the ‘Overview Maps of Imperial Territories’ orHuangyu quanlan tu皇輿全覽圖, is mostly referred to as ‘the Jesuit atlas of China’. The reason is that this early eighteenth-century atlas of all Qing China’s territories plus Korea and Tibet is assumed to have resulted from European missionaries importing European cartographic practices. In this essay, I argue that this view is outdated and can no longer be sustained. By revisiting the background of the missionaries’ involvement in cartographic exchanges between Asia and Europe, the techniques used for surveying Qing territories and the production of the resulting atlases, I show that the mapping project behind the ‘Overview Maps of Imperial Territories’ is best understood as a creative answer to the unique needs of Qing frontier management and imperial control, made possible by the integration, in mensurational and in representational terms, of European and East Asian cartographic practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows and analyses the issue of the relations between Nepal and the Ch'ing Empire from the British point of view during the last months of the Manchu authority in China. Nepal, a buffer state between India and Tibet, represented for the British an important and decisive ally in South Asia. The first part of the work will be dedicated to an analysis of the political and geopolitical status of Nepal compared to Britain and China of the Ch'ing Dynasty. The second part, which further develops the first, enters into the specifics of a tribute that the Himalayan country should have offered the Emperor P'u-i. The Hsin-hai Revolution of 1911 put an end to imperial power in China and would lead to the establishment of the republic and would resolve issues and misunderstandings between the countries. The paper pays particular attention to the correspondence between the then Nepalese Prime Minister, Chandra Shum Shere, and the British Resident in Nepal, John Manners Smith. The research takes as a benchmark the wider scenario of the period immediately following the end of the Great Game and the decline of the Manchu power. The guideline and key to interpretation of the documents reflects the perspective of the geopolitical and strategic interests of the British Empire in Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provinces are not always as provincial as they seem. This is particularly true of North-East England. While late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century London was becoming an international commercial hub, extending its mercantile and financial tentacles across the globe, and developing a taste for Asian imports, North-East England, particularly Newcastle and Durham, was not far behind. The gentry avidly consumed Chinese imports in the first decades of the eighteenth century, and consumption of these Chinese goods was well established among the middling sort and probably to a lesser degree among the lower sort by the 1740s. Thus, before mid century, the consumption of Chinese goods particularly tea and chinaware had become deeply rooted in the national culture. China had unknowingly civilised the British. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 9 to 11 August 2010, the Institute of Qing History of the Renmin University of China held the international symposium "Qing Politics and National Identity" in Beijing. Nearly 60 experts and scholars from the Chinese mainland, Taiwan, the United States, Japan, Germany, and other countries addressed the issue of "New Qing History.” This shift in paradigm benefited from focused research on marginalization in political history, as well as input from social history and cultural history methodologies. The reaction to this influx of approaches and ideas also generated a counter-reaction to “return to old political history.” This core theme runs throughout the symposium. Scholars discussed such topics as the Qing state and national identity, the Qing political system, Qing bureaucracy and government administration, Qing political culture, and state control and social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aerbuba was a Tibetan who defected to the Qing regime and was given an official Qing noble title. He played an active role in Qing\Tibetian relations during the reign of the Kangxi and Yongzheng Emperors. In 1728, Aerbuba was captured by the Tibetan leader Poluoding, taken to the the Lhasa Bamari Mountains, and put to death by dismemberment. Much research has been conducted on the family ties shared between Aerbuba and Suonuomudaerzha, the father of the 7th Dalai Lama Kelsang Gyatso. Using mutiple sources, this article sets out to prove that Suonumuderzha was Aerbuba’s aunt’s husband, contrary to the common belief that Suonumuderzha was Aerbuba’s biological uncle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the adverse views of the tribute system that some scholars have advanced, this essay examines the original purpose of the tribute system at the time when the Qing dynasty was building political relationships with foreign countries. The Qing dynasty instituted the tribute system with the obvious intention of seeking her own security and stability in border areas. Compared with the Ming dynasty, the Qing dynasty abandoned the political ideal of playing the role of "emperor of the whole world" overseas, as conceived by Ming Taizu (Zhu Yuanzhang) and Ming Chengzu (Zhu Di). Instead, the Qing dynasty concentrated much more on its own stability and security in border areas when dealing with foreign affairs. The tribute system of the Qing dynasty emphasized the frontier defense system. Reflecting their political interests, the Qing rulers preferred institutional arrangements for tributary affairs, the Ministry of Rites and the Court of Colonial Affairs (Lifan Yuan), took charge of neighboring countries' tributary affairs. To a certain extent, these arrangements were relevant to different national characteristics, and this reflected the relevance and flexibility of the Qing dynasty in dealing with foreign affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]