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.
"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 sur
American Historical Review
"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
"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."
