Seminar

China’s Rediscovery of India: The Qing Empire’s Geopolitical Conception of British India, 1750 – 1850

Asia/Hong_KongChina’s Rediscovery of India: The Qing Empire’s Geopolitical Conception of British India, 1750 – 1850
    Asia/Hong_KongChina’s Rediscovery of India: The Qing Empire’s Geopolitical Conception of British India, 1750 – 1850
      Overview

      Title:

      China’s Rediscovery of India: The Qing Empire’s Geopolitical Conception of British India, 1750 – 1850

      Speaker:

      Dr. Matthew Mosca (Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, The University of Hong Kong)

      Date:

      February 3, 2010

      Time:

      4:30 pm

      Venue:

      The Reading Room, Room G-4 (Ground Floor), Tang Chi Ngong Building, The University of Hong Kong

      Language:

      English

      Enquiry:

      (Tel) (852) 3917-5772
      (Email) ihss@hku.hk

      Abstract

      Although it has received comparatively little attention, the period between 1750 and 1850 was a critical time in Chinese relations with India. In that period the frontiers of the Qing Empire first became contiguous with those of the expanding British East India Company in India. This new proximity, together with the growing trade in opium, gave India an unprecedented significance for China’s economic and military security.

      This talk will consider interaction between the Qing government and officials and agents of British India on three frontiers: Xinjiang, Tibet, and the Chinese coast. Particular attention will be paid to questions of Chinese geographic understandings and how these influenced the way Qing officials interpreted foreign conditions. Although by 1750 China had an extensive vocabulary for describing India, including the current standard name of Yindu, Qing scholars and bureaucrats learned about Indian affairs via informants who used a plethora of different terms derived from local languages along the empire’s diverse regional frontiers. It was not until the decades immediately before the Opium War that Chinese officials began to piece these terms together into a coherent whole and realise that British India was an important force beyond much of their frontier. Only at this point were the implications of the British conquest of India recognised, which in turn led Chinese geo-strategists to re-conceptualise their Empire’s place in the world. At the same time, interpretations of India’s place in China’s foreign relations were also influenced by a major internal realignment between 1750 and 1850 from a Manchu-ruled multiethnic empire toward a more Chinese-dominated political system.

      The talk will conclude with a brief consideration of the legacy of the Qing period for subsequent Chinese-Indian relations.

      About the Speaker

      Matthew Mosca received his doctorate in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University in 2008. Following a term as post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Chinese Studies of the University of California, Berkeley, he currently holds a post-doctoral fellowship at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (Incorporating the Centre of Asian Studies). His research concentrates on Qing China’s foreign relations and geographic scholarship.

      Poster