From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy: The Question of India and the Transformation of Geopolitics in Qing China / Edition 1

by Matthew Mosca

Overview

Between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, Qing rulers, officials, and scholars fused diverse, fragmented perceptions of foreign territory into one integrated worldview. In the same period, a single "foreign" policy emerged as an alternative to the many localized "frontier" policies hitherto pursued on the coast, in Xinjiang, and in Tibet. By unraveling Chinese, Manchu, and British sources to reveal the information networks used by the Qing empire to gather intelligence about its emerging rival, British India, this book explores China's altered understanding of its place in a global context. Far from being hobbled by a Sinocentric worldview, Qing China's officials and scholars paid close attention to foreign affairs. To meet the growing British threat, they adapted institutional practices and geopolitical assumptions to coordinate a response across their maritime and inland borderlands. In time, the new and more active response to Western imperialism built on this foundation reshaped not only China's diplomacy but also the internal relationship between Beijing and its frontiers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804782241
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	02/20/2013
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	408
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Matthew W. Mosca is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington.

Read an Excerpt

From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy

THE QUESTION OF INDIA AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF GEOPOLITICS IN QING CHINA

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By Matthew W. Mosca

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2013 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-8224-1

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Chapter One

A Wealth of Indias India in Qing Geographic Practice, 1644–1755

The Practice of Foreign Geography in Early Qing China

How did Qing officials and scholars understand the physical and political disposition of the outside world? Geography is among the most empirical of sciences, and it is natural to turn at once to the abundant descriptions of foreign lands available to them, including military intelligence, travelers' reports, religious and historical writings, and maps. Yet this material contained a range of conflicting accounts and interpretations. Studying the world in this context meant not passively consuming a transparent body of evidence, but struggling to put the available data in order. Before turning to the empirical basis informing Qing worldviews, and the constructions placed on it by individual scholars, it is therefore necessary to begin with the practice of geographic scholarship itself: the modes of reasoning and debate in which variegated worldviews coexisted and evolved, and the attitudes engendered by these methods.

Scholars of foreign geography in the Qing period were aware that their knowledge was limited, uncertain, and provisional. This was due not to a lack of information, for centuries of interaction with the outside world had brought to China a great volume of data about foreign geography, but rather to the manifest incommensurability of those data. The corpus had accumulated over time via informants with different linguistic, regional, intellectual, and religious backgrounds, whose reports could not easily be amalgamated into one coherent account. Generations of scholars recognized and responded to this challenge by reading broadly, on the basis of which they ventured theories about how seemingly contradictory reports might be harmonized. Such theorizing relied on methods of exegesis and argument inculcated by formal schooling, above all the aggregation and juxtaposition of citations. Textual research and debate profoundly shaped the study of geography by concentrating attention on philological questions of nomenclature. With precise spatial data sparse or lacking altogether, maps—which could only present one image of the world—were far less useful than written geographic studies for reasoning through a thicket of contradictory sources. Before the late Qing, foreign geography was studied almost entirely through word rather than image.

Conscious of the impediments to certain knowledge about the outside world, and possessing a textual methodology tolerant of conflicting opinions and deferred judgment, Chinese scholars generally approached foreign geography with an attitude that can be termed geographic agnosticism. Some claims might be preferred and others doubted, but none could be absolutely endorsed or eliminated. No single conception of the world displaced all others, and judgments on the value of geographic evidence remained provisional.

ELEMENTS OF INCOMMENSURABILITY: DESCRIPTIONS OF THE WORLD BEFORE THE EARLY QING

By the early Qing, Chinese geographers had too much information about the outside world. Informants of various backgrounds, whose testimonies ranged from comprehensive accounts of the universe to fragmentary jottings on a single journey, had over time deposited many strata in the geographic record. Cosmologies available to scholars in 1644 posited seas and continents differing in number, size, and shape. The same regions were often described in different ways using inconsistent names. As scholars of geography read diligently in all these accounts and tried to construct theories that synthesized them, there emerged a range of hybrid outlooks at least as numerous as the original sources themselves. Even a simplified typology of pre-Qing sources and synthetic arguments lies beyond the scope of this study, but it is useful briefly to review this process in order to demonstrate why the body of geographic evidence remained incommensurable despite dogged and skillful attempts to reconcile it.

One of the earliest and most influential descriptions of the world in the Chinese intellectual tradition is found in the "Yu gong" chapter of the Shangshu. After describing the nine regions (zhoua) of China, it concluded vaguely: "On the east reaching to the sea; on the west extending to the moving sands; to the utmost limits of the north and south:—[Yu's] fame and influence filled up all within the four seas." In the Warring States and early Han periods, more elaborate models of the world emerged. The Shanhai jing conceived of a central rectangle surrounded on each side by sea, beyond which lay a "great wilderness" (dahuang). Alternatively, Zou Yan (ca. 250 BC) proposed that the world was composed of nine continents (zhoua), and that China as described in the canonical Shangshu was simply one ninth of a single continent. Each of these continents was surrounded by a "lesser sea" (pihai), while a vast "ocean" (yinghai) encircled the nine continents collectively. Competing worldviews provoked scholarly debates, often with political subtexts. Supporters of Zou's model argued that it described the vastness of the world better than the "Yu gong," while its detractors retorted that it was unfounded and denigrated China. As Mark Edward Lewis has pointed out, the "Yu gong" was upheld by those inclined to venerate the words of the sages, Zou's worldview by those who believed that state policies could innovate effectively beyond the classical heritage. Ideological implications could intrude into empirical arguments.

Beginning in the Western Han period (206 BC–AD 25), the new genre of standard histories brought readers more details about the outside world. Its prototype, Sima Qian's Shi ji, included descriptions of the nomadic Xiongnu and other foreign peoples, and subsequent works in this pattern continued to chronicle the political relations of foreign states with Chinese dynasties. Gazetteers, the geographic counterparts to standard histories, added descriptions of foreign peoples when the locality in question bordered the outside world. Even in the most canonical of these sources, the "Yu gong" and standard histories, inconsistencies were obvious. For example, debate persisted over whether "four seas" really surrounded a central landmass, and if so, how they corresponded to known locations. The Song scholar Cheng Dachang (1123–1195), finding that the "Yu gong" did not specify the location of the West and North Seas, turned to historical evidence. A Han envoy, he noted, had reached a sea beyond Tiaozhi (the Seleucid empire), which Cheng took to be the West Sea, and other travelers reported a sea to the north. A more cautious contemporary, Hong Mai (1123–1202), was only willing to certify the existence of North, East, and South Seas. He believed that there was no evidence of a West Sea, the ocean beyond Tiaozhi being simply the western shores of the South Sea. Reference in the Shangshu to "four seas" was "probably a statement based on extrapolation" (gai yinlei er yan zhi). However, the Ming scholars Qiu Jun (1420–1495) and Yang Shen (1488–1559) believed that the West Sea indeed existed, based on rumors of a large body of water beyond Yunnan in the extreme west. All of these arguments were duly recorded in a commentary by Zhu Heling (1606–1683), who advanced no opinion of his own. Later, the Qing geographer and classicist Hu Wei (1633–1714) registered a radical dissent. The Erya, an early dictionary or thesaurus, defined "four seas" as the foreign peoples in each direction, a definition given moreover in the category for words concerning land (di) rather than water (shui). On this basis Hu denied that the "Yu gong" referred to oceans at all. Places described in subsequent histories as "West Sea" and "North Sea" did indeed exist as real bodies of water, Hu conceded, but at such vast distances as to be irrelevant to the cosmological schema of the classical text.

All of these scholars tackled geographic research using their deep familiarity with classical and historical works and associated commentaries. They arrived at diverging conclusions despite applying similar textual methods to a similar range of orthodox sources. Significantly, none of them believed that one particular source could alone be considered comprehensive, and each found it necessary to reconcile, or at least to grapple with, apparently conflicting information from different works.

Around the end of the Han period, Chinese scholars began to confront a new and unfamiliar vision of the world presented by Buddhist sources. These claimed that the world revolved around a central axis formed by Meru (Sumeru), a mountain of supernatural height surrounded by four major continents (dvipa) within a salt sea. Humans occupied only the southern continent of Jambudvipa, which in its form resembled the Indian subcontinent and Tibet, being narrow at the bottom and wider near the top, split in the middle by the mountain chain of Himavat (the Himalayas). North of those peaks lay Anavatapta, a sacred lake usually identified with Lake Manasarowar in western Tibet, from which was said to emerge the Indus, Ganges, Oxus (Amu Darya), and Sita (Tarim) Rivers.

First propagated in Chinese by translated scripture around AD 300, Buddhist cosmology was also described in detail by pilgrims. Two monk-authored accounts, the Foguo ji of Faxian (ca. 337–422), who between 399 and 414 journeyed overland to India and returned by sea, and the (Da Tang) Xiyu ji of Xuanzang (596–664), whose journey was made entirely by land, were particularly influential. Claims made in Buddhist-derived sources could not easily be reconciled with other accounts. Cosmologically, the theory of four continents around Mt. Sumeru had no Chinese parallel. Even if ocean-enveloped Jambudvipa could be equated to the lands within the "four seas," this Buddhist continent still contained unknown features bearing unfamiliar names. Moreover, Buddhist worldviews had strong Indo-philic biases, presenting northern India, and particularly Bodh Gaya, as the center of the world. Although scholars preferring orthodox Confucian works denounced this bias, Buddhist sources gradually cross-pollinated with older ideas into a variety of synthesized positions. Anavatapta, lodged within high mountains at the center of Jambudvipa, began to be conflated by some authors with Kunlun, a legendary peak regarded in pre-Buddhist Chinese sources as a central pillar supporting the heavens. Such syntheses extended to riverine geography. Pre-Buddhist sources differed over the source of the Yellow River, producing complex theories—often with ideological implications—of multiple sources connected by underground streams. In time Kunlun and Anavatapta, both considered to be the origin of major rivers, began to be associated with each other. Xuanzang, for instance, cautiously asserted that according to some people the Sita River, which Buddhist sources claimed to flow from Lake Anavatapta, ran underground and emerged elsewhere as the source of the Yellow River. This remained a live question: in the Qing period the Kangxi emperor used Chinese histories, Buddhist scripture, and his own survey maps to analyze the Anavatapta-Kunlun relationship (see below). Synthetic trends also emerged in cartography. Maps of Jambudvipa prepared in the Tang or Song period for devotional purposes concentrated at first almost exclusively on India, but ultimately evolved into world maps that placed other countries within the Jambudvipa framework. Intermediate stages show evidence that monks had trouble reconciling Buddhist statements of India's geographic centrality with an impulse to give China prominence. By the late Ming, however, integral maps of Jambudvipa, centered on Lake Anavatapta, gave China and India roughly equal space.

Ideological factors continued to shape interpretations of incommensurable data. A Buddhist work, the Shijia fang zhi, raised the ire of the Yuan-period scholar Wu Lai (1297–1340) by offering an effusive description of India's size and centrality. For Wu, the authority of monk-pilgrims paled before that of standard histories like the Han shu, which gave far more modest descriptions of India. Wu attracted a critic of his own, the Buddhist sympathizer Qian Qianyi (1582–1664). At issue, Qian believed, was China's centrality: "[Wu] Lai means to say that India is a small country west of the Pamirs, that the family of the Buddha was scattered, moving around irregularly, not resembling what the [Shijia] fang zhi called 'a central land and great country' (zhongtu daguo)." By contrast, Qian credited Buddhist sources: "Within the realm of Central India the Xiyu ji records that [Xuanzang] passed altogether through 29 countries. [Wu] Lai cites words in the 'Biography of Zhang Zai' to make the arbitrary judgment 'it is simply one country.' The 29 countries he passed through, were they phantom nations?" Geographic reasoning reflected religious and ideological preferences.

Islam too introduced new geographic conceptions into China. Under Mongol rule, several Muslim scholars are known to have transmitted their knowledge to indigenous researchers, notably Zhu Siben (ca. 1273–1337), who prepared a map reaching to Malacca and Central Asia between 1311 and 1320, and Li Zemin, whose map (ca. 1330) used Islamic sources to depict Europe and Africa. In later centuries, Chinese Muslims continued to draw on Arabic and Persian geographic knowledge. Some became deeply enmeshed in the elite literary and philosophic culture of the Ming and Qing periods, occasionally translating Islamic geographic worldviews. These were, of course, Mecca-centric: Ma Zhu (1640–1711), for instance, informed his imaginary non-Muslim interlocutor that "The ka'aba is located at the center of the world."

From the Song period onward, travel accounts became particularly influential. Some were by scholars in frontier areas who recorded secondhand information, others by voyagers describing their own experiences abroad. Early Ming diplomacy significantly enlarged this corpus. By the late Ming, many such writings had been digested into comprehensive geographic works aspiring to treat the entire known world, so that early Qing scholars had at their disposal eyewitness accounts of many parts of Asia.

Unlike works associated with foreign religions, travel accounts tended to offer piecemeal descriptions of the outside world that did not systematically challenge existing cosmologies. Yet, as new information accumulated it could trigger major conceptual innovations, for instance in maritime divisions and terminology. By the Tang, the term "Southern Sea" (Nanhai) had come to indicate all the foreign peoples of Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, necessitating a more precise lexicon. The Lingwai daida by Zhou Qufei (ca. 1135–1189) divided foreign countries between the Southeast and Southwest Seas, based on a boundary running from Srivijaya to Quanzhou. In time the word yang (conventionally translated as "ocean") also began to appear in this usage, and by the Yuan-era Daoyi zhilüe, the Southeast and Southwest Seas had respectively transformed into the Eastern and Western Oceans, a conceptual framework popularized by chroniclers of the Zheng He (1371–1433) voyages. Although the dividing line between the two oceans shifted, they remained the major divisions within the maritime sphere.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy by Matthew W. Mosca Copyright © 2013 by Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Reign Period Abbreviations ix

Introduction 1

Part 1 The Qing Empire's Vision of the World

1 A Wealth of Indias: India in Qing Geographic Practice, 1644-1755 25

Part 2 Forging a Multiethnic Empire: The Apex of a Frontier Policy

2 The Conquest of Xinjiang and the Emergence of "Hindustan," 1756-1790 69

3 Mapping India: Geographic Agnosticism in a Cartographic Context 101

4 Discovering the "Pileng": British India Seen from Tibet, 1790-1800 127

Part 3 The Age of Transition, 1800-1838

5 British India and Qing Strategic Thought in the Early Nineteenth Century 163

6 The Discovery of British India on the Chinese Coast, 1800-1838 199

Part 4 Foreign Policy and its Limits

7 The Opium War and the British Empire, 1839-1842 237

8 The Emergence of a Foreign Policy: Wei Yuan and the Reinterpretation of India in Qing Strategic Thought, 1842-1860 271

Conclusion: Between Frontier Policy and Foreign Policy 305

Character List 315

Notes 329

Bibliography 367

Index 389

Editorial Reviews

"Breaking the mold of the Chinese universalistic imagination of all under Heaven and the tributary relations in explaining the complexities and dialectics of local-empire relations, Mosca has fused cultural and intellectual history with geography, politics and foreign relations in his highly original and stimulating study of Qing perceptions of British India."

China Review International - Ying-kit Chan

"Mosca expertly revises our understanding of relations between Qing China and the emerging power of British India. Rather than being a failing polity, unable to control its fringes, China possessed sophisticated information systems to manage frontier communities. Yet only after 1850 was a broader 'foreign policy' formulated to handle aggressive western powers."

Cambridge University - C. A. Bayly

"Mosca presents a fresh, convincing take on Qing foreign affairs via close examination of how the state learned about and understood British India between 1757 and 1860. . . . Mosca analyzes the uneasy relationship between frontier policy and foreign policy in a multiethnic empire, offering much food for thought to theorists of international relations and to historians of Asia. Excellent scholarship, written with clarity and precision. . . . Highly recommended."

CHOICE - K. E. Stapleton

"Matthew Mosca's meticulously researched book has not only solved my personal angst; it has also filled a serious vacuum between our burgeoning knowledge of Qing 'frontier policy' . . . This is an excellent, much-needed book, one that should be read by all sinologists working on late imperial China and scholars of early modern global history—as well as inquiring undergraduates seated in the back row."

Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies - Laura J. Newby

"To the old narrative of Chinese ignorance of diplomatic relations, Mosca's work provides, not a complete revision, but an intelligent and persuasive reformulation in term of intellectual history, and in doing so outlines a methodology that might well be applied to other fields of Qing political history. The book impresses with its philological dexterity, and draws on a rich body of previously untapped archival sources in Manchu and Chinese. Its scope makes it a contribution, not only to Qing history, but to the history of Chinese foreign policy more generally, and of Sino-Indian relations."

China Journal - David Brophy

"With his clear articulation of Qing ruling elites as actively engaging the knowledge that constructed their worldview, Matthew Mosca in From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy makes an important contribution to Qing studies and helps reshape our understanding of China's foreign relations in the age of Western imperialism."

Worcester Polytechnic Institute - Jennifer Rudolph

"With this impressive first book, Mosca is now a leader in using Manchu, Mongolian, Chinese, and European texts to rethink over five hundred years of Asian historiography. He demonstrates his erudition and deep knowledge of multi-lingual sources on almost every page of his book. His argument about the global convergence of historiography in the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries is very significant, as is his presentation of Chinese analytical sophistication and interpretive imagination."—Benjamin A. Elman, International Journal of Asian Studies


"Matthew Mosca's meticulously researched book has not only solved my personal angst; it has also filled a serious vacuum between our burgeoning knowledge of Qing 'frontier policy' . . . This is an excellent, much-needed book, one that should be read by all sinologists working on late imperial China and scholars of early modern global history—as well as inquiring undergraduates seated in the back row."—Laura J. Newby, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies

"Breaking the mold of the Chinese universalistic imagination of all under Heaven and the tributary relations in explaining the complexities and dialectics of local-empire relations, Mosca has fused cultural and intellectual history with geography, politics and foreign relations in his highly original and stimulating study of Qing perceptions of British India."—Ying-kit Chan, China Review International


"In this impressive book, Matthew W. Mosca demonstrates that the reasons for the massive Qing intelligence failure about the world at large and strategic vulnerability along its coast lay not only in its bureaucratic structure, but also in the nature of Chinese geographic epistemology and the modes of geographic writing practiced in late imperial times . . . Mosca's fresh and erudite book will surely make all readers reconsider our understanding of Qing world views and the background to the Opium War."—James Millward, American Historical Review


"To the old narrative of Chinese ignorance of diplomatic relations, Mosca's work provides, not a complete revision, but an intelligent and persuasive reformulation in term of intellectual history, and in doing so outlines a methodology that might well be applied to other fields of Qing political history. The book impresses with its philological dexterity, and draws on a rich body of previously untapped archival sources in Manchu and Chinese. Its scope makes it a contribution, not only to Qing history, but to the history of Chinese foreign policy more generally, and of Sino-Indian relations."—David Brophy, China Journal


"Matthew W. Mosca has made a graceful and substantial contribution to our understanding not only of late imperial China (the expansive and multicultural Qing Empire in particular) but also of Inner Asian politics, the growth of 'British' India, and the nature of global interactions during the period from 1750 to 1860."—Richard J. Smith, H-Net
"Matthew Mosca's impressively researched and carefully structured new book maps the transformation of geopolitical worldviews in a crucial period of Qing and global history. . . . Readers from beyond the field of Chinese studies will find useful discussions here of multiple Qing modes of cartography, geography, and lexicography that inform a broader historical epistemology of the early modern world."—Carla Nappi, New Books in East Asian Studies
"Mosca presents a fresh, convincing take on Qing foreign affairs via close examination of how the state learned about and understood British India between 1757 and 1860. . . . Mosca analyzes the uneasy relationship between frontier policy and foreign policy in a multiethnic empire, offering much food for thought to theorists of international relations and to historians of Asia. Excellent scholarship, written with clarity and precision. . . . Highly recommended."—K. E. Stapleton, CHOICE
"Meticulously researched and compellingly presented, this book reads like a detective story. Where and what is the true India, and what does it mean for the Qing? Linking politics, foreign relations, cultural and intellectual history, this work is a must read in the current re-conceptualization of the early nineteenth century in China."—R. Kent Guy, University of Washington
"With his clear articulation of Qing ruling elites as actively engaging the knowledge that constructed their worldview, Matthew Mosca in From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy makes an important contribution to Qing studies and helps reshape our understanding of China's foreign relations in the age of Western imperialism."—Jennifer Rudolph, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
"Mosca expertly revises our understanding of relations between Qing China and the emerging power of British India. Rather than being a failing polity, unable to control its fringes, China possessed sophisticated information systems to manage frontier communities. Yet only after 1850 was a broader 'foreign policy' formulated to handle aggressive western powers."—C. A. Bayly, Cambridge University

From the Publisher

"Meticulously researched and compellingly presented, this book reads like a detective story. Where and what is the true India, and what does it mean for the Qing? Linking politics, foreign relations, cultural and intellectual history, this work is a must read in the current re-conceptualization of the early nineteenth century in China."

University of Washington - R. Kent Guy

"With this impressive first book, Mosca is now a leader in using Manchu, Mongolian, Chinese, and European texts to rethink over five hundred years of Asian historiography. He demonstrates his erudition and deep knowledge of multi-lingual sources on almost every page of his book. His argument about the global convergence of historiography in the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries is very significant, as is his presentation of Chinese analytical sophistication and interpretive imagination."

International Journal of Asian Studies - Benjamin A. Elman

"In this impressive book, Matthew W. Mosca demonstrates that the reasons for the massive Qing intelligence failure about the world at large and strategic vulnerability along its coast lay not only in its bureaucratic structure, but also in the nature of Chinese geographic epistemology and the modes of geographic writing practiced in late imperial times . . . Mosca's fresh and erudite book will surely make all readers reconsider our understanding of Qing world views and the background to the Opium War."

American Historical Review - James Millward

"Matthew W. Mosca has made a graceful and substantial contribution to our understanding not only of late imperial China (the expansive and multicultural Qing Empire in particular) but also of Inner Asian politics, the growth of 'British' India, and the nature of global interactions during the period from 1750 to 1860."

H-Net - Richard J. Smith

"Mosca's erudite study shows that the Qing were well aware of the British presence in India, not least because of encounters during the Gurkha wars of the late-eighteenth century, but that they failed to realise either that this was the same group of people that were making trouble at the opposite end of the empire or how wide-ranging British imperial ambitions were....[T]he wide-ranging and well-informed perspective Mosca brings to his subject makes this an important contribution to the literature."

The English Historical Review - Joanna Waley-Cohen

"Matthew Mosca's impressively researched and carefully structured new book maps the transformation of geopolitical worldviews in a crucial period of Qing and global history. . . . Readers from beyond the field of Chinese studies will find useful discussions here of multiple Qing modes of cartography, geography, and lexicography that inform a broader historical epistemology of the early modern world."

New Books in East Asian Studies - Carla Nappi