A Study On The Foreign Concepts Of The Ministers To Britian In Late Qing Dynasty

To dispatch minister to foreign country is an important step for the government of Qing Dynasty to walk into the international world. Those ministers take huge responsibilities that they should not only maintain the national image and interests in front of the western powers, but also need to observe and learn their way to be prosperous and strong. They belong to the Qing dynasty officials and the traditional intellectuals, but they are the first batch who have a deep understanding of the west. To analyze their diplomatic concept, we can know more about the transformation of modern China, especially the pains and efforts in the process of transformational diplomacy. This article is divided into six Chapters:The first chapter analyzes the background of the Chinese ministers in Britain. All of the ministers had more or less contact with western civilization before their dispatch, except Liu Xihong, viewing from their past experience. What’s more, the later Chinese ministers to Britain may have longer contact time than that of ministers in early stage; from their English proficiency, the later Chinese ministers during the late stage shall also have better performance than that in earlier stage;from the regional distribution, they were mainly from two areas: one was the coastal area, such Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong province; the other was the area of Hunan and Anhui province; from the family background, most of them were from the prominent families; From the perspective of their scholarly honor, they generally got a average achievement, among whom only four got First-degree Scholar(successfully passed the imperial examination in the provincial level).The second chapter discusses the understanding of the world and regional situation for the ministers of late Qing dynasty in Britain. Their view towards world situation had changed from the initial transformation view to social evolutionism; As for the suzerainty-vassalage relationship, the group represented by Guo Songtao advocated to abandon this relationship so as to keep the boundaryconsolidated by themselves. However, the other group represented by Zeng Jize, Liu Ruifeng, and Xue Fucheng, strongly recommend to maintain the important suzerainty-vassalage relationship. The attitude towards Japan, it changed from contempt to admiration and alert.In chapter three, the cognition those ministers’ in Britain have made on western civilization has also been analyzed. For the overall cognition on the western civilization, first of all they’ve advocated to the use of theory of Chinese culture in western way, and later recognized that the knowledge shall have the universality; for the political civilization in the western country, they’ve experienced the conversion process from appreciation and envy to practice, from constitutionalism to revolution;for the western commercial and industrial civilization, the main contribution of those minister in Britain during earlier stage is to eliminate the thought obstacles for learning the advanced western commercial and industrial civilization, and the ministers in BRITAIN during late stage have put themselves even more into the practice of the specific commerce and industries;for western education, generally they did realized that the advanced western education shall be the foundation of the national prosperity, and positively promoted the development of the new style education in China.The fourth chapter discussed the diplomatic preposition of ambassador to Great Britain about treaty, international law,establishment of consulates to protect overseas Chinese, international organizations, concept of war and other aspects. Treaties and international law were the legal norms of international social communication in modern times, establishment of consulates to protect the overseas Chinese and international organizations were the most common communicating way of international community in modern times. The proposition of envoys in British in the late Qing on the aspects of treaties, international law, establishment of consulates to protect the overseas Chinese, international organizations, the concept of war can reflect the following questions:(1) The envoys in British in the late Qing Dynasty could accept modern international social communication principles and methods, and actively promoted China’sinto the international community, such as compliance with the treaties and international law, joining international organizations.(2) The envoys in British in the late Qing Dynasty faced the resistance of two aspects when promoting China’s into the international community: First,the domestic conservative forces, such as the Qing government on the establishment of consulates overseas to protect the oversea Chinese and joining to international organizations; Second, the big foreign powers,they forced to maintain its treaty privileges and went against the international law.(3) The envoys in British of the late Qing Dynasty promoted the process of China’s integration into the international community, but what they did could not change inferior position of China in the international community. No matter peace group or the officials who advocated the war for peace in the late Qing Dynasty admitted that China was not able to defeat the foreign military powers.In the modern international community pursuit of diplomatic strength,the envoys in British could use international law and international organizations to retrieve part of the benefit, but could not fundamentally change inferior position of China.