Qing Travelers to the Far West: Diplomacy and the Information Order in Late Imperial China by Jennifer Huangfu Day (review)

The nineteenth century is a current focus of revision for historians of the Qing, and this book is an effective addition to the general refresh of the literature. It draws from the travel and observation writings, whether compiled or incidental, of a set of Qing scholars who found a role in the development of late Qing international relations as diplomats, translators, or both—Binchun (1804–1871), Zhigang (f. 1867–c.1880), Zhang Deyi (1847–1918), Guo Songtao (1818–1891), Zeng Jize (1839–1890), and Xue Fucheng (1838–1894). Although each is the linchpin of a chapter, they are used to connect a wide range of foreign and Chinese men whose relationships revolved around the struggle of China and "the West" to assess and understand each other in rapidly changing technological and political conditions after the Taiping War.

A great virtue of the book is the meticulous reading of the Chinese sources and their introduction to English readers in a clear, efficient, framework. The chapters are not in any sense biographical studies. In some cases, they are portraits of collaborations—as between Binchun and Robert Hart, or Zhigang and Anson Burlingame—that allow the Chinese side to be much better illuminated. Day conveys the close observations of Europe and America by such well-known men as Zhang, Guo, Zeng, and Xue with excellent color and immediacy.

The mosaic structure of the book permits serial intimacy with critical points in late nineteenth-century global history but creates challenges for the author to bring sustained consideration to some of the most intriguing material in the book. Each chapter is broken into smaller sections, redolent of the quality of the "notes" compositions of late nineteenth-century China, but this framework does not allow a textured and convincing analysis of the many complex ideas that a few of these men worked into their writings. In seeking the sources for the preconceptions of the Chinese and Manchu writers, far-flung and tenuous lines of reasoning lead backward to figures such as Sima Qian and Wang Fuzhi, and forward to Zhou Enlai. Yet the book effectively suggests the potential rewards of lingering on the insights of a figure such as Zeng Jize, whose carefully reasoned and profound confidence in the basic stability and potential of China predicted the status of China in the twenty-first century more accurately than did the ideas of most other nineteenth-century figures.

Despite the book's modest length, its ambitions to restructure the narrative about the emergence of modern China are vast. At the outset, Day tells readers that she will present a new picture of the 1880s, particularly through the use of concepts from communications studies, to break up the entrenched dichotomies of traditionalist/revisionist and progressive/reactionary views. When the telling is done and the show begins, the material indeed has the desired effect. But the structure of the book sacrifices an ability to trace long and wide structural changes in the network of communications. For instance, Day refers to telegraphs and newspapers only incidentally. She provides little discussion of the larger picture involving the introduction of true telecommunications, for instance, despite its importance to the overall story. The chapter featuring Guo Songtao, when contrasted to the chapter featuring Zeng Jize, anecdotally suggests the role of telegraphs and newspapers in creating true diplomats from the envoys who had previously been encumbered by the need to wait months for instructions—instructions that would likely have been irrelevant if the envoys ever received them. But the elaboration of rail lines, the angiogenesis of telegraphy, and even the laying of transoceanic cables happens hazily and discontinuously in the book's background.

Qing Travelers to the Far West is an original and effective contribution to the ongoing revision of the last decades of the Qing. As is often the case, the books suggests more...