2019 Volume 2019 Issue 197 Pages 197_10-197_25
The first wave of modern scholarship on Chinese diplomacy began as a form of international political history which drew upon foreign sources. Following the publication in 1929-30 of the Chouban yiwu shimo 籌辦夷務始末 (lit. the management of barbarian affairs from A to Z; hereafter CBYS), the possibility of exploring Chinese diplomatic history from the Chinese perspective finally became a reality. However, scholars who made use of the collection were inevitably experts whom were versed in the methodologies and approaches of the Western school of diplomatic history. Their readings of the CBYS were thus predicated on Western paradigms, leading to a skewed understanding of the historical realities and circumstances which underpinned the context in which the collection’s documents were penned by Qing bureaucrats in the 19th century. More specifically, their readings failed to be conducted in line with the autochthonous Qing perspective, or tianchao dingzhi 天朝定制.
Many scholars have perceived the Zongli Yamen 総理衙門, established in 1861, as performing the function of a foreign office. However, from the outset, Qing bureaucrats limited the scope of the institution’s functionality, curtailed its scale and authority, and planned for its eventual abolition. Similar characteristics can also be observed in debates in the early 1860s surrounding the role of the Minister Superintendent of Trade. Zeng Guofan 曾国藩, for instance, articulated his institutional vision for this role from the standpoint that trade was an issue which was of an identical nature to domestic tax collection. In other words, while the Qing did establish new institutions and roles for the handling of foreign affairs, it nevertheless planned from the start to limit their functionality, curtail their scope and, eventually, abolish them in favor of a more traditional solution. The key focus for the Qing when it came to institutional change in the mid-19th century was, therefore, not what had changed, but how to reinstate former precedents in place of of these changes.
In the 1860s, the instigators of internal rebellions (such as the Taipings) and foreign powers (such as Russia) were all, for the Qing, comparable entities in that they did not genuflect to the authority of the Celestial Empire (tianchao 天朝). For this reason, all were categorized as “foreign entities” (yiwu 異物). During the compilation of the CBYS, both foreign relations and domestic problems were treated indiscriminately, and the collection did not draw any distinctions between internal insurgencies and foreign threats. At this juncture then, the Qing did not pursue a “foreign policy” in the way which we understand it today; rather, it pursued a foreign policy which addressed foreign entities in the domestic context only.
