Summary of the book

 

Prior to the nineteenth century, the West occupied an anomalous space in the Chinese imagination, populated by untamable barbarians and unearthly immortals. First-hand accounts and correspondence from Qing envoys and diplomats to Europe unraveled that perception. In this book, I explore the history of Qing legation-building from the perspectives of China's first official travelers, envoys and diplomats to Europe and how how diplomat-travelers navigated the conceptual and physical space of a land virtually unmapped in the Chinese intellectual tradition and created a new information order. This study reveals the fluidity, heterogeneity, and ambivalence of their experience, and the layers of tension between thinking, writing, and publishing about the West.

​

Download sample chapters (click to download in pdf): 

• Introduction

• Chapter 1: The Traveler 

​

Selected Primary Sources used in the book (click to download in pdf)

• Cheng cha biji (Tokyo, 1872) vol. 1 and 2

• Supplementary newspaper accounts on Zhigang's mission

​