The Mind of Empire: China's History and Modern Foreign Relations

9. Through Formal Equality to Inferiority

9 Through Formal Equality to Inferiority Despite its reverses, Sinic universalism did not simply flee the battlefield. To the contrary, even after the repeated military defeats and diplomatic humiliations of the 1842–1860 period, it missed few opportunities to try to reassert itself or at least to preserve some remnants of the preeminence it had earlier enjoyed. For some time, China still seems to have assumed that there was nothing qualitatively different between its encounter with the Europeans and its many past encounters with powerful barbarian kingdoms.1 Had not, in fact, crude barbarians on occasion even conquered and ruled China? (Ironically, of course, it was one of these barbarian dynasties, the Manchus, that now suffered European depredations even as it resisted in the name of Sinic supremacy.) Surely, therefore, these reverses were but temporary ones, and the natural order of the universe would soon be reasserted? The Tsungli Yamen To help better manage relations with the barbarians, the imperial government created a Foreign Office at the time of the Tientsin treaties.2 This new office, the Tsung-li Ko-kuo Shi-wu Ya-men—the “office in general charge of foreign affairs,” known more commonly as the Tsungli Yamen—replaced the Byzantine process that had previously obtained for conducting relations with other peoples. Before 1861, diplomatic relations were conducted by several agencies, including the Board of Rites, the Superintendency of Dependencies, the governor of Lia-kua Province , and the governors of various coastal provinces in contact with the Europeans.3 Now, the Tsungli Yamen would bring this disparate work under one office. 142 THE MIND OF EMPIRE Even had it not been intended to be a temporary office, however, the Tsungli Yamen was, to some extent, less than it appeared. It was not organized as were other “real” offices, and it has been described by Mingchien Joshua Bau as being not really a department at all but rather an official guise in which the cabinet itself could handle foreign matters in a decidedly ad hoc fashion. And, even after its creation, most of the European treaties during this period were negotiated not by the new office but by the viceroy of Chihli.4 Moreover, the Tsungli Yamen’s officials were apparently remarkably ignorant of the outside world for which they were nominally responsible. European observers, for instance, found its bureaucrats unable to distinguish between the Austrian Empire and Holland, uncertain of the location of their own tributary state of Burma, and confused enough to have mistaken Baluchistan for Peru. At one point, the office apparently refused to negotiate a treaty with Prussia because its officials had no idea what Prussia was.5 More significant than such haphazardness and ignorance was the fact that the Tsungli Yamen was intended to be no more than a temporary expedient, a brief concession to adverse military circumstances, and one that would soon be succeeded by a restoration of the natural order of things. According to Prince Kung, the Tsungli Yamen was set up on the understanding that the barbarians’ “nature can still be tamed.”6 He made clear that this new office would last no longer than needed to manage the immediate military crisis. According to Kung, who issued a memorial on dealing with foreigners in 1861, “as soon as the military campaigns are concluded and the affairs of the various countries are simplified, the new office will be abolished and its functions will again revert to the Grand Council for management so as to accord with the old system.”7 Nor was the Chinese bureaucracy willing to accord the Tsungli Yamen much status within the imperial system. Its long name, in Chinese , apparently connoted that its real function was to regulate commercial relations—rather than diplomatic relations—with the foreigners, and it was not listed in the official record of Metropolitan and Provincial State Offices until 1890. Its roster included some high-ranking officials, but these officials tended to have other, different duties as well and to regard their work with the Tsungli Yamen as being of notably lesser priority and status. Turnover in the office was rapid and service there not regarded as a good career move.8 It was, in short, a concession to the need for some Through Formal Equality to Inferiority 143 structure in managing relations with the Europeans, but it was a deliberately minimalist one. Even into the 1880s, Chinese officials persisted in trying to...