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Codifying Extraterritoriality: The Chinese “Unequal Treaties”

Pär Kristoffer Cassel

in Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan

This chapter charts the evolution of jurisdiction over foreigners in Qing China from the late nineteenth century through the Sino-British “Chefoo Convention” of 1876, which was the last British ... More

This chapter charts the evolution of jurisdiction over foreigners in Qing China from the late nineteenth century through the Sino-British “Chefoo Convention” of 1876, which was the last British treaty to deal with extraterritoriality to any large extent before the turn of the century. Prior to the Opium War, the Qing Empire granted foreigners far more legal autonomy than the contemporary Ottoman Empire did under the “Capitulations,” a series of treaties between the Sublime Porte and Western nations, which were concluded from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries.Less

Introduction

Pamela Kyle Crossley

in A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology

This chapter describes the rulership that functioned during the Qing Empire. It notes that the empire is considered to have been founded by, controlled by, or given a certain political and cultural ... More

This chapter describes the rulership that functioned during the Qing Empire. It notes that the empire is considered to have been founded by, controlled by, or given a certain political and cultural cast by, the Manchus in the early seventeenth century. The chapter explains that during the eighteenth century, the Qing reached its height of political control over Manchuria, Mongolia, Chinese Turkestan, Tibet, and China, as well as the states recognizing Qing superiority in the system of court visitation, sometimes called the tributary system. It adds that this golden age was represented in the rile of the Qianlong emperor, the most “Confucian,” “sinified,” or simply grandest of the Qing rulers. After his death, the empire went into a decline during which it became vulnerable to the expansionist, colonialist, and imperialist actions of Europe, the United States, and eventually Japan.Less

Making Mongols

Pamela Kyle Crossley

in Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity, and Frontier in Early Modern China

Though multilayered identity has been an inherent part of Mongol social and cultural history, the particular patterns it assumes in the present are to a significant degree a product of historical ... More

Though multilayered identity has been an inherent part of Mongol social and cultural history, the particular patterns it assumes in the present are to a significant degree a product of historical changes of the period from 1600 to 1800. The Qing, particularly, both nurtured the establishment of criteria of Mongol affiliation and forced the political dismemberment of territories inhabited by a majority of those now considered Mongols. Resistance to this process among some Mongol groups was continuous, contributing to the momentum behind the reclamation of partial political sovereignty by Mongols in the last years and after the fall of the Qing empire. People now entertain a notion of “Mongol”as a distinguishable cultural identity, but it is not limited to, congruent with, or intimately associated with the only state that at present uses the word Mongolia in its name.Less

Expelling Extraterritoriality: Treaty Revision in Meiji Japan and Qing China, 1860–1912

Pär Kristoffer Cassel

in Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan

This chapter examines how legal pluralism and extraterritoriality contributed to shape the public debate in China and Japan in the last decades of the nineteenth century. It contrasts official ... More

This chapter examines how legal pluralism and extraterritoriality contributed to shape the public debate in China and Japan in the last decades of the nineteenth century. It contrasts official Chinese and Japanese responses to a series of widely publicized consular courts cases and shows that the Japanese authorities were much more successful in mobilizing public opinion against extraterritoriality than the Qing Empire was. The chapter argues that one of the reasons for the Japanese success was the fact that the Japanese state had created a relatively unified citizenry by abolishing all traces of legal pluralism.Less

Introduction

Pamela Kyle Crossley, Helen F. Siu, and Donald S. Sutton

in Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity, and Frontier in Early Modern China

Ethnicity is produced by socio-political orders that are stratified by associations of certain regions and certain cultural institutions with the “normal,” “classic,” or “formal.” The importance of ... More

Ethnicity is produced by socio-political orders that are stratified by associations of certain regions and certain cultural institutions with the “normal,” “classic,” or “formal.” The importance of being precise in the use of these terms becomes clear when one turns to the period between 1600 and 1800. The Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1636–1912) empires were profoundly different with respect to their perceived structure of national and ethnic populations. In the Ming period, a national group within the empire happened to be very clearly defined, usually by culture, but in some instances by genealogy. The Qing structure was quite different, particularly before the nineteenth century. The lingering centralities and marginalities of the Ming period remained identifiable, and many regions vigorous, beneath the formal, newly historicized hierarchies of the Qing conquest.Less

The Zünghar Invasion

Trent Pomplun

in Jesuit on the Roof of the World: Ippolito Desideri's Mission to Tibet

Desideri flees the capital to escape the Zünghar invasion of 1717 in the fourth chapter, which will largely be taken up by Desideri's narrative of the carnage that followed. This chapter outlines the ... More

Desideri flees the capital to escape the Zünghar invasion of 1717 in the fourth chapter, which will largely be taken up by Desideri's narrative of the carnage that followed. This chapter outlines the dominant ideological and political myths of seventeenth and early eighteenth century Tibet, especially those involving the Dalai Lamas, and addresses the missionary's understanding of the uniquely Tibetan understanding of reincarnation. This approach synthesizes much of the new research being done in Tibetan Studies today and introduces the reader to many of the ideas that the young Jesuit would later present to his European readers. The violent political struggles of seventeenth and eighteenth‐century Tibet also allow the reader to discern the political motives behind Desideri's writing that will be outlined in the fifth chapter and will set the stage for an assessment of his capacities as an historian.Less

Shanxi, Greater China, and the Famine

Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley

in Tears from Iron: Cultural Responses to Famine in Nineteenth-Century China

It was in Shanxi Province that the Incredible Famine threw its longest shadow. The province lost its pre-famine population of between fifteen and seventeen million people to starvation, disease, and ... More

It was in Shanxi Province that the Incredible Famine threw its longest shadow. The province lost its pre-famine population of between fifteen and seventeen million people to starvation, disease, and flight. Before the famine struck, however, Shanxi had been thriving. As one of the few parts of China not severely affected by one of the three gigantic mid-nineteenth-century rebellions, in the early 1870s, the province was home to the lucrative Hedong saltworks, an impressive banking network, and merchants powerful enough to dominate China's trade with Mongolia and Russia. This chapter examines how the drought that struck between 1876 and 1878 resulted in a devastating famine that brought such a wealthy and strategically important part of the empire to its knees. It considers how the formidable challenges facing the Qing Empire in the late nineteenth century hampered the state's ability to prevent a drought from escalating into a major famine.Less

Introduction

Kwangmin Kim

in Borderland Capitalism: Turkestan Produce, Qing Silver, and the Birth of an Eastern Market

This chapter offers an overview of the Muslim notables and the scope and structure of capitalistic commercial agriculture they developed in the Xinjiang oasis. In particular, it argues that the Qing ... More

This chapter offers an overview of the Muslim notables and the scope and structure of capitalistic commercial agriculture they developed in the Xinjiang oasis. In particular, it argues that the Qing empire played a pivotal role in the expansion of the beg enterprise, which caused social tensions within the oasis society resulting in a series of anti-beg and anti-Qing revolts led by Sufi holy man (khwaja). Their story revises the previous narrative on the Qing empire in Central Asia, which was written from a China-centered perspective, and contributes to the global understanding of capitalism by identifying native capitalist developments in Chinese Central Asia, which has often been considered a backwater of world history.Less

British India and Qing Strategic thought in the Early Nineteenth Century

in From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy: The Question of India and the Transformation of Geopolitics in Qing China

This chapter presents a discussion on British India and Qing strategic thought in the early nineteenth century. Indian merchants at Guangzhou did not increase official knowledge of growing British ... More

This chapter presents a discussion on British India and Qing strategic thought in the early nineteenth century. Indian merchants at Guangzhou did not increase official knowledge of growing British power in India. It is noted that the remarkable journey by Thomas Manning had no permanent effect on Qing perspectives on British India. His journey contributes to the tenacity of a frontier policy. William Moorcroft had penetrated the western rim of the Qing empire. His exchange with officials in Yarkand and Kashgar depicts how a frontier policy affected the intelligence gathering and strategic thinking of the Qing state. The Qing government sometimes coordinated its inquiries into foreign conditions between different frontiers and fit together local geographic understandings; even alliances were sometimes contemplated.Less

Transitions to the Modern State System

Timothy Brook, Michael van Walt van Praag, and Miek Boltjes (eds)

in Sacred Mandates: Asian International Relations since Chinggis Khan

The rules governing international relations in Inner and East Asia changed hugely in the nineteenth century. Asian laws of nations were supplanted under pressures coming from outside, most ... More

The rules governing international relations in Inner and East Asia changed hugely in the nineteenth century. Asian laws of nations were supplanted under pressures coming from outside, most conspicuously from the West but also from Japan. The resort to violence by Western powers and Asian rulers alike was justified through doctrines of European international law that had evolved so as to remove restraints on European imperialist projects. Asian states scrambled to reorganize along modern, Western lines, and most governments that had ruled them in the nineteenth century were gone by the twentieth, with few exceptions. As new political elites took power, a continent of khans, emperors, hierarchs, and kings became a world of presidents, party leaders, constitutional monarchs, and national assemblies. Interpolity relations underwent a complete conceptual and organizational transformation. Some states, such as Tibet and its Himalayan neighbors, became the objects of competing imperial ambitions, while others, such as Japan, used their new capacities to overturn the hierarchy of earlier relationships, especially with the Qing Great State, and spread their sway over others, notably Korea. Though the older sources of ruler legitimacy and legality did not fully disappear, newer ideologies and rules of interstate relationships largely replaced them.Less

No Sympathy for the Merchant?: The Crisis of Chinese Tea and Classical Political Economy in Late Qing China

Andrew B. Liu

in Tea War: A History of Capitalism in China and India

This chapter details how, after the rise of Indian tea triggered a collapse of its Chinese rivals, the Chinese trade underwent its own crisis of economic principles in the 1890s. It provides an ... More

This chapter details how, after the rise of Indian tea triggered a collapse of its Chinese rivals, the Chinese trade underwent its own crisis of economic principles in the 1890s. It provides an overview of economic ideas during the high age of the Qing Empire, which entailed a sophisticated grasp of economic growth revolving around the utility of the soil and the importance of trade. The stimulus of competition from South Asian tea, crystallized in the crisis, pushed Qing thinkers to abandon dominant mercantilist notions of wealth as something acquired through overseas trade and instead visualize it as something produced by labor. Indeed, global competition compelled a minority of Qing officials to see wealth as something socially determined, originating from the skill and productivity of human activity, hence capable of infinite expansion through innovation. The economic thinker and Qing bureaucrat Chen Chi was exemplary of this transformation. He penned an influential memorial on reviving the tea trade, with much of his analysis tied to a simultaneous engagement with the translated works of English economist Henry Fawcett, ultimately arriving at the same classical tenets of “value” outlined by W. N. Lees in India.Less

The Opium War and the British Empire, 1839–1842

in From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy: The Question of India and the Transformation of Geopolitics in Qing China

This chapter explores the Opium War and the British empire during 1839–1842. New appreciation of the British as an empire contributed to the increased quantity of research conducted during the Opium ... More

This chapter explores the Opium War and the British empire during 1839–1842. New appreciation of the British as an empire contributed to the increased quantity of research conducted during the Opium War. The mission by Lin Zexu eradicated the opium trade in Guangdong. Lin was involved in developing opium policy. The Opium War can be regarded as a peerless opportunity for securing a Qing alliance against the British. At the end of the Opium War, Qing officials confronting the manifest power of the British remained unpersuaded that it rested on sound foundations. It is noted that the significance of the Opium War lay in its impact on the empire's geostrategic worldview. The Qing state persisted in its frontier-specific operational geography even though this was ill-suited to elucidating the overall strategic situation of the Qing empire in relation to its multipronged British foe.Less

A Wealth of Indias: India in Qing Geographic Practice, 1644–1755

in From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy: The Question of India and the Transformation of Geopolitics in Qing China

This chapter explains that Chinese scholars were conditioned to treat place-names as the foundation of geographic analysis. It also focuses on the way geographic argument proceeded by proposing ... More

This chapter explains that Chinese scholars were conditioned to treat place-names as the foundation of geographic analysis. It also focuses on the way geographic argument proceeded by proposing connections between bodies of evidence that were hard to commensurate, and the corresponding posture of skepticism that led geographic claims to be considered provisional, which is described as “geographic agnosticism.” Islam had brought new geographic concepts into China. The textual research methods that influenced the evaluation of foreign geography have led to what can be termed the kaozheng paradox of Chinese geography. Chinese geographic practice moved slowly from text-oriented geographic agnosticism toward a single, standardized worldview framed against a roughly agreed-upon cartographic background. Current events have offered no force for either the state or private scholars to organize intelligence gathering across multiple frontiers and build an integrated picture of the relationship between India and the Qing empire in a global context.Less

1700–1800

Li Narangoa and Robert Cribb

in Historical Atlas of Northeast Asia, 1590-2010: Korea, Manchuria, Mongolia, Eastern Siberia

This part of the book explores the eighteenth-century political configuration of Northeast Asia. By the beginning of the century, the Qing Empire had no single governance structure in all among their ... More

This part of the book explores the eighteenth-century political configuration of Northeast Asia. By the beginning of the century, the Qing Empire had no single governance structure in all among their territories. This was due to a growing number of Chinese traders and residents, as well as a feared Russian penetration of the region. In response, the Qing authorities initiated the instruction of Mongolian to its territories and trade caravans with the Russians. By the mid-eighteenth century, despite consolidation efforts, Qing authorities had not effectively managed its growing territorial extent. One of the Qing's main territorial concerns was the Zunghar Mongols' uprising—initiated due to the emperor's refusal of their right to install “khan.” As a consequence, the Mongols were often passed over in favor of the Manchus for the top administrative positions. Meanwhile, at the periphery, Korea's economy was flourishing and Russia was becoming more lenient over their control of Siberian territory.Less

The Historical Writing of Qing Imperial Expansion

Pamela Kyle Crossley

in The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 3: 1400-1800

This chapter examines historical writing under the Qing Empire. It details the comprehensive and energetic pursuit of a documentary legacy for the Qing Empire that would integrate origins, identity, ... More

This chapter examines historical writing under the Qing Empire. It details the comprehensive and energetic pursuit of a documentary legacy for the Qing Empire that would integrate origins, identity, righteous conquest, and the fate of civilizations into a coherent imperial narrative. The undertaking relied heavily upon the development of the fanglve genre, complemented by administrative histories, historical compendia, and lyric meditations through the media of poetry, architecture, landscaping, curating, and ritual performance.Less

The Discovery of British India on the Chinese Coast, 1800–1838

in From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy: The Question of India and the Transformation of Geopolitics in Qing China

This chapter explains the discovery of British India on the Chinese coast during 1800–1838. The crisis on the coast was directly associated to the administrative and fiscal structure of the British ... More

This chapter explains the discovery of British India on the Chinese coast during 1800–1838. The crisis on the coast was directly associated to the administrative and fiscal structure of the British empire. Ruan Yuan carried the first steps toward developing a new provincial gazetteer, the Guangdong tongzhi. The Guangdong tongzhi revealed circumstantial evidence of having used oral inquires. The cartography by Li Mingche for the Guangdong tongzhi was supervised by Ruan, who in turn was guided by court precedent on the use of maps. It is observed that private assessment into the British empire before 1838 was mostly limited to sources on the coast, and while it recognized a sprawling and widespread network of territories, it had yet to ascertain its proximity to the Qing empire's inland frontiers.Less

The Qing Empire in the Fabric of Global History

Matthew W. Mosca

in The Prospect of Global History

This chapter offers a brief review of dominant approaches to placing early modern China in its world context, discussing major findings, ongoing debates, and emerging challenges. Attention to ... More

This chapter offers a brief review of dominant approaches to placing early modern China in its world context, discussing major findings, ongoing debates, and emerging challenges. Attention to different geographic regions, periods of time, and topics of research, including economic, political, and cultural and intellectual history, have led to competing judgements about the degree to which the Qing Empire was integrated into global developments. Against this background, and with reference to the case of the Qing official Ghombojab, it argues that the rise of global history can complement research that focus on the Qing empire or China as a whole, by emphasizing the differential impact of global forces on individual Qing subjects and their reciprocal individual contributions towards shaping those forces.Less