A review of internalizing the West: Qing envoys and ministers in Europe, 1866-1893, by Jenny Zhengzheng Huangfu.

In the mid-1980s, just as China was headed into the post-Mao reform era, a collection of diaries and travel writings by late Qing diplomats and sojourners abroad was published to wide acclaim. Compiled through a painstaking effort by the veteran editor Zhong Shuhe 鍾叔河 (b. 1931) and named Marching towards the World (Zouxiang shijie 走向世界, a title inspired by the contemporary Marching towards the Future [Zouxiang weilai 走向未来] book series), this collection both embodied the spirit of that decade’s so-called Cultural Fever (wenhua re 文化熱) and echoed the modernization (xiandaihua 現 代化) discourse that was beginning both to dominate the reforms and to overtake previous revolutionary paradigms in Chinese historical writing. A significant number of the thirty-six titles published in the Zouxiang shijie series comprised journals kept by late Qing envoys to Europe, Japan, and the United States. Required by the Zongli Yamen (Zongli geguo shiwu yamen 總理各國事務衙門) to submit their diaries as records of investigation of the Western nations, the Qing ambassadors and their secretaries kept voluminous writings as they travelled abroad. Upon their return, not only were these journals submitted to the Qing court and reviewed by high officials, but they were also often circulated among friends and colleagues and sometimes published privately for a wider readership.

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Jacqueline Nivard

Jacqueline Nivard, Centre d'études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine

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