-
Introduction In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Qing Dynasty presided over a vast and confident empire that saw itself as the centre of the civilised world. For centuries, China’s emperors had managed foreign relations through a tributary system – a hierarchical order in which China granted trade privileges to surrounding states in exchange for symbolic submission. European traders were confined to a single port (Canton, modern Guangzhou) under strict regulations. The Qing rulers viewed foreign goods with ambivalence and foreign envoys as supplicants rather than equals. This Sino-centric world order was built on Confucian ideals of hierarchy…