Ruins and Heritages, or the Great Mutation of China’s Diplomacy in Its Encounter with Europe in the Nineteenth Century

Chinese diplomacy was traditionally integrated into the Ministry of Rites (Libu 礼部), an institution dominated by Confucian principles, overseeing religious rituals and court ceremonials, as well as imperial examination and China’s foreign relations. However, since the second half of the nineteenth century, in the context of the Opium Wars (1839–1842, 1856–1860), the Qing court was reduced to submitting to orders set by foreign powers, forcing it to rely on the conflict between international law and the rules of powerful states to maintain its independence. The premise of Confucian Rites in Chinese diplomacy will undergo upheaval. Institutional changes were one element among others. In 1858, Britain forced the Qing Court to sign the Treaty of Tianjin, which marked the beginning of the establishment of British consuls in China. The Government Agency in Charge of China’s Foreign Policy (Zongli Yamen 总理各国事务衙门) replaced the Ministry of Rites in 1861. Among the transformations in Chinese diplomacy, the change in the notion of the West was also another phenomenon. The dispatch of Chinese diplomats to Europe, also foreseen by the Treaty of Tianjin of 1858, was finally achieved in 1875. These Chinese diplomats of the Qing Court sent to Europe were also responsible for writing their travel reports on the European world, delivering their observations on the countries in which they stayed. Among these diplomats, Tcheng-Ki-tong (Chen Jitong 陈季同, 1851–1907) was a singularity. H raised a question: How to situate civilizational heritages in a century of modernity and progress that Europe claimed and a century of humiliations that China suffered?