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Relations between Spain and China, regardless of regimes and time, have followed a path of friendship without excessive mutual commitment. An analysis of these relations reveals the decisive role played by the diplomats and officials who have led them from the moment they were formally established as sovereign states. This article deals with the identification and analysis of the curricula vitae of the Chinese officials who played a leading role in the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Spain. It affirms that they established a relationship characterized, structurally, by a protocolary nature conditioned by the officials' impulse to the post. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes Chineseness in premodern Vietnam and its influence on Vietnam's foreign policy toward China and Southeast Asia both past and present. The term Chineseness refers to the practice and preservation of Confucian ideas and values in Vietnam, which arguably consists of the Mandate of Heaven and Confucian Orthodoxy concepts and their subsequent orthodox lineage issue. Being considered culturally closer to China than Korea and Japan, Vietnam, throughout history, has relied on these concepts to position itself strategically and navigate its relations vis-à-vis China and other smaller countries in Southeast Asia. Vietnamese courts used to question the legitimacy and orthodox lineage of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty because they imagined themselves as part of the Sinic world. The sense of superiority over Manchus and of being the guardian of Sinic civilization reached a climax during the Nguyen dynasty, in part shaping Vietnam's foreign policy toward China and other Southeast Asian countries at that time. In addition, this deep-seated Chineseness also helps Vietnam's decision-makers to understand contemporary China, and subtly guides the creation of Vietnam's foreign policy today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Studying unpublished documents from the Russian archive provides new information on the Sino-Japanese rivalry over Korea at the end of the nineteenth century, a very complicated period in the modern history of Korea. These documents help researchers understand Qing China's relations with Korea and analyze Chinese methods for preserving control of the country. Rivalry over Korea occurred against the backdrop of military and economic expansion of the European powers, which further complicated China's position as a suzerain of Korea. The main milestones in the political dialogue between Qing China and Japan are discussed with a focus on specific Sino-Korean interactions. Qing authorities attempted to consolidate China's control over Korea by deploying the ancient Chinese diplomatic practice of "using barbarians to control [other] barbarians." Transferring this archaic method of maintaining political power into the modern environment of capitalist state expansion in eastern Asia failed. Qing China's loss of control over Korea was the logical result of instituting this erroneous policy. Russian documents reporting China's dialogue with Japan demonstrate that Qing China prioritized preserving traditional forms of contact with Korea, whereas Japan favored opening Korea to economic expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historia Contemporanea is the property of Historia Contemporania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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.

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]

The article focuses on China and the country's history. Topics discussed include Chinese Communist Party, Qing dynasty in the country and Chinese poitical leader Mao Zedong. Further, other topics which includes foreign relations of China, Boxer uprising in the country and other revolutions in the country in 1911 and 1949 are also discussed. In addition, topics which includes Tiananmen protest in the country in 1989, Chinese stateman Deng Xiaoping and British statesman George Macartney are also discussed.

This article studies the New Qing History approach that arose in the US in the 1980s and the ensuing responses to it, and how these responses can be understood in the context of American China studies, twentieth-century historiographical trends, and Chinese nationalism. It argues that the New Qing History approach should be considered in a contextualized and de-politicized way. After examining how Chinese-born scholars responded to the controversial issues (sinicization, the nature of the Qing dynasty/Empire, and the definition of China/Zhongguo) provoked by New Qing History, the article suggests that sinicization should no longer be used as an uncontestable interpretative framework for studies of Chinese history. Instead, it favors a historicized conceptualization of China emphasizing its open, inclusive, and integrative character, as well as the uniqueness of Qing China's expansion. The article also demonstrates the New Qing History approach's positive influences in diversifying primary sources and its contribution in promoting borderland and non-Han studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Editor's Note: The essay that follows is based on a conference paper by Dilip K. Basu that has long circulated informally, in the process exercising an unusually high degree of influence for an unpublished commentary. Most notably, some ideas embedded in it have been spread via literary scholar Lydia Liu's engagement with and quoting of the paper in The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World Making (Liu 2006), a provocative and much-cited book that calls for a radical rethinking of some of the standard terms and concepts used in the past to refer to the Qing Empire's ties to and conflicts with other political and territorial units. Those familiar with Liu's work will find here an essay that complements some arguments in her book; those who have not read it will be introduced to those ideas for the first time. Beyond this, though, all readers will find a discussion of various ideas and events—visions of China's place in the world, how the story of the Opium War is thought about in different settings, the history of Sinology—shaped by personal as well as scholarly concerns.The essay's ties to the author's life and associations, which come into play more as the essay proceeds, make it a good fit with the goals of our recently introduced and still evolving “Reflections” genre. In addition, since it revisits critically ideas about China associated with the work of John K. Fairbank, it can be placed well beside some of the essays published in the “Legacies” series launched by Kenneth George, in his time as editor of the journal. And regular attendees of the Association for Asian Studies annual meetings may notice that much that follows resonates with the keynote address by Amitav Ghosh, one of those familiar with Basu's essay in draft form, when that conference was held in Toronto in 2012. The pages that follow are tightly focused on China, but Basu's discussion of “xenology” (a term for the ways that cultures think about those deemed “others,” which has, of course, the same root as the more familiar term “xenophobia”) clearly has implications for widely varied times and places, just as the handling of Fairbank's distinctive role in Chinese studies may bring to mind parallels to the influence that other prominent Western academics from the last century once shaped and via their legacies can continue to shape academic work on other parts of Asia. While focused tightly on China, in other words, it has much to offer readers whose primary interest is not in that country. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Economic History Research / Investigaciones de Historia Económica is the property of Asociacion Espanola de Historia Economica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses China's Qing dynasty from 1789 to 1806, considering its domestic and foreign policies by focusing on two historical events, the 1789 trade embargo against Russia and the interrelationship between the trade relations of Canton, China and Kiakhta, Russia. Topics considered include the organization of China's government administration, the impact of European wars on China, and China's borderlands or frontier regions.

This paper looks at the establishment of experimental winter overland postal routes in the late 1870s and 1880s, which eventually led to the creation of the Great Qing Imperial Post Office in 1896. The history of this experiment sheds much light on important issues in the establishment of what was to become the country's most crucial information-bearing network, in particular those related to collaboration and negotiation between foreign and Chinese officials, and those between local interests and the central authorities. It also explores how foreign processes and management had to be adapted in order to function in a Chinese context.In March 1878, Robert Hart, inspector general of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, instructed Gustav Detring, commissioner of Tianjin Port, to investigate the possibility of introducing overland public postal routes in China, beginning with Beijing to Tianijn, Niuzhuang, Yantai, and then to Zhenjiang, a treaty port on the lower Yangtze River.The three main challenges involved were: to establish a reliable workforce, to design appropriate routes, and to win the cooperation of local governing officials. Although the winter service was initiated on time, problems repeatedly arose from each one of these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article calls for attention to be paid to the infrastructures that underpinned nineteenth-century globalization, and the use of better-known technological developments and global patterns of professional migration. It does so by outlining the work of the Marine Department of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service after 1868, focusing on its development of a network of lighthouses along the coast of China in its political and comparative contexts. These lights were at once local sites and nodes within a developing national and global system, and evolving practices around circulation of data and best practice, accepted international standards, technology transfer, and maritime safety. The Customs Service was a Chinese government agency, albeit within the British orbit of influence, but acted as a buffer between China and foreign interests and pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article describes the main lines of relations between the Qing and two neighbors, Đai Việt (Vietnam) and Siam (Thailand), ca. 1700-1820. It argues that the tribute system was not a "fossil" of Qing pretensions and meaningless ceremonies but a functional matrix for adjustment to changing realities. It cites archival sources in Beijing and Taipei that will repay further detailed study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that to adequately answer the question its title poses, anthropological approaches to national and transnational China(s) must be grounded in the history of Qing imperial expansion. To this end, it compares and explores the connections between three examples of the “sojourn work” that has gone into making mobile, multiethnic populations abroad into Overseas Chinese. The first example deals with recent official attempts to project the People's Republic of China's multiethnic vision of Chinese-ness beyond its national borders. The second highlights the importance of the early Chinese nation-state in the making of Overseas Chinese community in Southeast Asia in the first decades of the twentieth century. The final case foregrounds the late imperial routes of nascent Chinese nationalism to argue that, in contrast to much of the current rhetoric on the Chinese “diaspora,” national and transnational modes of Chinese community emerged together from the ruins of the Qing empire. Together the three examples point to the need to question the usual ways scholars have conceptualized (Overseas) Chinese-ness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Confucian world view in China was based on the concept of the Celestial Empire of China and embodied in the Tributary System. The Chinese view could not fit into the equal international relationship asserted among European countries. In the mid-19th century, especially after the Opium Wars, international law embarked on a furious collision with Chinese traditional Confucianism. Threatened by forces of Western powers, the Qing government had no choice but to come to compromise with the Western powers. Consequently, the Confucian world order based on the Celestial Empire of China collapsed and Chinese officials and scholars began to learn, accept and apply international law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the looting and burning of the Chinese imperial palace, or Yuanmingyuan, in 1860 by French and British troops during the Second Opium War. It analyzes how the idea of wonderment associated with the palace in European cultural history and the transforming political relationships between China and Europe contributed to the destruction of the palace. Other topics include reflections on the aesthetics of the palace by poets, Jesuits, and Medieval travelers, an examination of the concept of wonder, and a chronology of the events leading up to, during, and following the destruction of the palace.

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]

The article focuses on the bilateral relations between China and the Southeast Asian regions. It states that China seek to advance extensive engagement with its neighboring countries particularly in the growing economic interchange and mentions its efforts to understate the differences on territorial disputes. Moreover, china attempted to solidify its relations with Myanmar by sending a senior Communist Party leader to the country's capital in 2011.

In order to make the Khalkha group in the Mobei area submit to the Qing dynasty, Taizong and Shizu of the Qing adopted a series of strategies and measures including the threat of a military campaign, preventing them from trading with the inner provinces, taking in their fugitives, driving a wedge into their alliance with the Oirat, inviting the Fifth Dalai Lama on a pilgrimage. This eventually forced the Khalkha to acknowledge their tributary status and establish a tribute trade relationship with the Qing. Among all these factors, the most important reason for the Khalkha's submission was their economic dependence on the hinterland provinces. [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]

This article focuses on the German navy troops that were a part of the intervention by the Eight-Nation Alliance, a Western military alliance that sent military troops to China during the Boxer Rebellion, a nationalist uprising in China at the end of the 19th century. Several topics are discussed, including that historians consider the German troops to have been the strongest force in the alliance (despite the fact that the Germans arrived later than the other troops), and how German troops are said to have been too aggressive and violent, shooting 76 Chinese people and killing all the male inhabitants of the city of Liangxiang upon their arrival in China. The author also presents a detailed description of the recruitment, travels, and massacres that were committed by the German troops.

The article discusses relations between Chŏson Korea and Qing China, examining the eighteenth century. It focuses on Yŏnhaengnok, or records of Korean envoys to China called Yŏnhaeng, and reflects on Korean interest in Chinese culture and civilization. The author considers Chinese intellectual influences, commenting on Korean interest in Northern Learning, or Pukhak, and evidential learning, or kojŭnghak. Chinese influences on the construction of Korea's Hwasŏng fortress are also explored.

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]

This article is devoted to the political dimension of Russian consulates' activities in Mongolia between 1861 and 1917, and to their role in implementing the Russian "Far Eastern strategy." The imperial consulates made a significant contribution to the resolution of the "Mongolian problem" as an efficient mechanism of Russia's mediation in Mongolia's efforts to achieve autonomy, and in the "Kobdo" and "Altai" issues in the early 20th century. The article also analyzes the consulates' work to reinforce Russia's positions in Outer Mongolia and to maintain the balance of forces in the competitive international regional subsystem of the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Canton System, China's method of regulating trade between itself and the Western world until the outbreak of the 1839 Opium War. The author seeks to subvert the widely held belief that the System was largely a Qing Dynasty failure. Broadly, the article examines the ways in which the System helped inform Sino-Western commercial and diplomatic relations. Relations between Western merchants and Chinese hong merchants are detailed. The role of Chinese ethnocentrism and xenophobia in shaping its trade restrictions against Great Britain is also examined. The author comments on general cross-cultural contact between foreign traders and Chinese residents of Canton (modern-day Guangdong province).

The history of China's foreign relations is an interesting and controversial topic in its own right, as the essays in this special issue so amply demonstrate. But it is also central to an understanding of China's contemporary international relations. The history of China's foreign relations is not just a chronicle of the past, but also a set of facts and ideas and images that are alive in the minds of policy-makers and the public today, thereby shaping the present and future of China's relationship with the rest of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I began my graduate studies at Harvard in September 1958. In the summer and fall of 1959, I started groping for ways to think about China in the seventeenth century, discovered that there had been some very interesting European eyewitnesses of the Ming-Qing wars, and wrote my first seminar paper for John King Fairbank on the first Dutch embassy, 1655.1657. The rest, shall we say, is history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author addresses the question of how the anxiety about foreign affairs and fascination with exotic material culture and life-ways interacted with the political reformism developing within society in nineteenth century China. According to the author, the two phenomena do not seem to be inherently contradictory. She claims that both anxiety and fascination reflected openness to change. Moreover, the author notes that both anxiety and fascination contributed to the broadening of public space, encouraged formation of public opinion, and fostered new forms of social organization.

Focuses on tributary drama, especially the drama commissioned and performed on the occasion of Lord Macartney's mission to the Qianlong emperor in 1793, the first diplomatic contact between Great Britain and China. Origin of tributary drama; Typical Qing tributary drama; Discussion of Qianlong's eagerness for monumental glory; Examination of the later versions of the Si hai sheng ping.