S04: Qing in the World

FSP Info Session: History’s Foreign Study Abroad Program in London TUESDAY January 1/13/2026 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm

Join faculty and students to hear about the Dept. of History’s Foreign Study Program in London at University College London. Free dinner served.

• Parent-child hierarchy as foundation of imperial legitimacy and local governance
• Relations between parent and child reinforced imperial power relations: “There is government when the prince is prince, and the minister is minister; when the father is father, and the son is son.”

The Qing governed different parts of the empire differently. Within China proper, it continued to uphold:

• Imperial legitimacy: Mandate of Heaven
• Educated elites: Examination system
• Families and lineages: Filial piety

Montesquieu:

• Stagnation
• Rule by man, not by law
• Excessive despotism

State-society relations in tension:

• Governance on the cheap, growing population but shrinking bureaucracy and tax base
• Elite voluntarism vs. Vigilance against local power

Universal ideal…

• Late imperial Chinese governance was remarkably stable, built on an Emperor, scholar-bureaucrats, and Confucianism.
• “Benevolent government” meant minimal intervention, low taxes, and moral guidance.
• The Confucian bureaucracy unified the empire by promoting harmony order and universalism against local groups.

… and particularistic reality

• Magistrates – outsider, and overworked – depended on managing clerks, private secretaries, and gentry.
• The state’s reach in the countryside was limited by resources, finances, and local interests.
• Officials faced a conflict between bureaucratic duties and obligations to personal networks (family, friends).

• Canton Trade: Qing in the World
• Opium: How did it create the modern world economy?
• The Great Divergence: What explains Qing’s decline?

• The Selden map is a 17th-century wall map of East Asia, showing areas from Siberia to Java and Japan to Burma.
• It is named after John Selden (1584–1654), a lawyer and Oxford’s first rabbinic studies scholar.
• Selden donated the map to Oxford’s Bodleian Library as part of his collection of Oriental manuscripts.

• A network of trade developed around the South China Sea, involving merchants from tribute-paying states to the Ming dynasty, focusing on Chinese goods and grain.
• This trade relied on two key conditions: Ming’s ability to produce high-quality goods at reasonable prices; limited foreign access to Ming market.
• These stable conditions throughout the sixteenth century fostered a strong trading system, creating a “world-economy.”

• The Spanish and Portuguese were able to integrate into regional trade in Asia thanks to monopoly of silver from the New World, especially Peru, Bolivia, and Mexico.
• Conventional wisdom suggests that economic modernity originated from a dynamic West European foundation, but the Europeans were not major players in Maritime East Asia yet.
• Certain Asian economies were more advanced than European economies until the Industrial Revolution.

• What are we looking at?
• How did this figurine travel in time and space? Who were its makers / buyers?
• What can this object tell us about their makers and the world it was made?

• New crops like corn, sweet potatoes, and peanuts were integrated into farming, growing well in marginal areas and complementing existing grain crops.
• Improvements in irrigation, terracing, grain storage, tools, and organic fertilizers further enhanced food production.
• The rising population in turn placed pressure on arable land, prompting mass migration from densely populated areas to frontier regions to expand agricultural practices.

• Like the Ming, coastal trade only permitted at designated ports
• Canton (Guangzhou) as sole port open for Western trade
• Revenue went to imperial treasury
• Fixed, seasonal trading period
• Mobility restriction: Special residential quarter for foreign merchants

• Canton trade system (1757-1842): Hong merchants acted as exclusive liaisons between American traders and Chinese government
• Hong merchants held licenses, controlled trade, and enforced regulations
• They purchased imports, arranged exports, ensured compliance

• Only allowed to trade in Canton and live in designated quarters
• Subject to Qing law, with no diplomatic representation

• Boston Tea Party: chests of Chinese tea into Boston Harbor December 16, 1773
• Target: Tea Act of May 10, 1773, which allowed tax-free tea sales by British East India Company in American colonies
• Sons of Liberty strongly opposed taxes in Townshend Act as rights violation and destroyed EIC tea shipment

• In 1794, Emperor Qianlong received Lord George Macartney.
• King George III of Great Britain – the same king against whom the American colonies rebelled in 1776 – dispatched Lord Macartney to China
• Qianlong dismissively informed the British that China had no need for any English goods or inventions, and sends him back to King George III empty handed.
• The British needed to balance a massive trade deficit fueled by tea addiction.

• What did the Europeans want?
• Why didn’t they get want they want?

China:

• Tianxia / “All under heaven”: concentric hierarchy of foreign relations
• Sino-centrism: China as “middle kingdom”
• Tribute system based on ritual submission

The West:

• Sovereignty and equality of nations
• Nations are free and independent of one another
• “Natural law”: law of nature applicable to nations
• Free trade as an inherent right: If abridged, a state had the right to enforce that freedom.

• EIC vs. Cohongs: two government-recognized monopolies
• England vs. Qing China: two empires with universal pretensions

Mercantilists

• Trade as zero-sum game
• Increase exports, decrease imports
• Connected to bullionism: wealth of nation = gold and silver reserves
• Trade restrictions: tariffs, monopolies, exclusive patents

Free Trade

• Division of labor: Comparative advantage, rather than absolute advantage
• Trade as mutually beneficial
• Less government intervention, lower trade barriers
• Financial system based on banking

• 1600: East India Company chartered to contest Portuguese control of East Indies
• 1834: End of EIC’s Trade Monopoly in China

• Congress of Vienna in 1815: A sovereign state recognized as having the ability to exert influence on a global scale.
• Powerful, centralized state as index of the level of progress and civilization
• Comity of nations based on mutual and equal sovereignty, regardless of size, wealth, or power

• “Our Celestial Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within its borders.”
• What does China want?

• Great Britain, exported opium grown in India and sold it to China
• Indian opium replaced silver as medium of trade
• The British used opium profits to purchase Chinese porcelain, silk, and tea

• After the American Revolution, U.S. merchants started trading independently in the East Indies and challenged the monopoly of the British East India Company
• Mercantile wealth helped concentrate capital, create wealth, and establish modern business corporations
• Canton trade fed anti-British sentiment at the same time as it boosted American national spirit after independence

• What is Lin Zexu’s message to Queen Victoria?
• How might his letter have been received in England?

Opium War as the “First National Humiliation”: it “cut off the lifeblood of the state” and “threatened our people’s chance of survival.

China’s Destiny (1943)