Anglo-Chinese Encounters Before the Opium War: A Tale of Two Empires
Over Two Centuries studies the fascinating encounters between the two
historic empires from Queen Elizabeth I's first letter to the Ming
Emperor Wanli in 1583, to Lord Palmerston's letter to the Minister of
China in 1840.
Starting with Queen Elizabeth I's letter to the Chinese Emperor and
ending with the letter from Lord Palmerston to the Minister of China
just before the Opium War, this book explores the long journey in
between from cultural diplomacy to gunboat diplomacy. It interweaves the
most known diplomatic efforts at the official level with the much
unknown intellectual interactions at the people-to-people level, from
missionaries to scholars, from merchants to travelers and from artists
to scientists. This book adopts a novel "mirror" approach by pairing and
comparing people, texts, commodities, artworks, architecture,
ideologies, operating systems and world views of the two empires. Using
letters, gifts and traded goods as fulcrums, and by adopting these
unique lenses, it puts China into the world history narratives to
contextualise Anglo-Chinese relations, thus providing a fresh analysis
of the surviving evidence. Xin Liu casts a new light on understanding
the Sino-centric and Anglo-centric world views in driving the complex
relations between the two empires, and the reversals of power shifts
that are still unfolding today.
The book is not intended for specialists in history, but a general
audience wishing to learn more about China's historical engagement with
the world.
