Overview

Between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, Qing rulers, officials, and scholars fused diverse, fragmented perceptions of foreign territory into one integrated worldview. In the same period, a single ""foreign"" policy emerged as an alternative to the many localized ""frontier"" policies hitherto pursued on the coast, in Xinjiang, and in Tibet. By unraveling Chinese, Manchu, and British sources to reveal the information networks used by the Qing empire to gather intelligence about its emerging rival, British India, this book explores China's altered understanding of its place in a global context. Far from being hobbled by a Sinocentric worldview, Qing China's officials and scholars paid close attention to foreign affairs. To meet the growing British threat, they adapted institutional practices and geopolitical assumptions to coordinate a response across their maritime and inland borderlands. In time, the new and more active response to Western imperialism built on this foundation reshaped not only China's diplomacy but also the internal relationship between Beijing and its frontiers.

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9780804797290

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Reviews

Mosca presents a fresh, convincing take on Qing foreign affairs via close examination of how the state learned about and understood British India between 1757 and 1860. . . . Mosca analyzes the uneasy relationship between frontier policy and foreign policy in a multiethnic empire, offering much food for thought to theorists of international relations and to historians of Asia. Excellent scholarship, written with clarity and precision. . . . Highly recommended. --K. E. Stapleton, CHOICE

Author Information

Matthew W. Mosca is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington.

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