The Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms, or Haiguo Tuzhi, is a 19th-century Chinese gazetteer compiled by scholar-official Wei Yuan and others, based on initial translations ordered by Special Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu. The Treatise is regarded as the foremost meaning chinese exploit on the West and one of China ‘s initial responses to the Anglo-Chinese First Opium War ( 1839–1842 ). finally stretching to one hundred juan, or scrolls, the treatise contains numerous maps and much geographic detail covering both the western and eastern hemispheres. Wei ‘s record besides garnered significant sake in Japan and helped mould the nation ‘s foreign policy with regard to the West .
background [edit ]
During his term in Canton ( now Guangzhou ) as particular Imperial Commissioner, Lin Zexu observed the might of British naval office and the inadequacies of the chinese coastal defensive structure system at first hand. Along with early intellectuals of the fourth dimension, Lin ‘s objective was “ to determine the beginning and nature of western power in Asia and to discover western objectives in East Asia. ” The commissioner hired four chinese translators who had been trained by missionaries to assist with the job of obtaining and translating appropriate western text. One of them, Liang Jinde ( 梁進得 ), an adjunct to missionary Elijah Coleman Bridgman, provided copies of The Chinese Repository and other works. Lin besides purchased a replicate of the 1834 Encyclopedia of Geography by Hugh Murray from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, which Liang translated to become the draft for Lin ‘s own Geography of the Four Continents ( 四洲志 ). however, before the script could be published, the First Opium War broke out in 1839 and the project was shelved. When the war ended in 1842, Lin ‘s exile to the outside northwestern city of Yili mean that he passed his draft manuscript to Wei Yuan with a request that he complete it. Lin ‘s contributions to the treatise proved indeed important that Karl Gützlaff mistakenly attributed the work to him in his September 1847 inspection for the Chinese Repository .
contented [edit ]
equally well as mapping versatile countries, Wei ‘s aim was to provide as complete a video as possible of the advantages they possessed in shipbuilding techniques and weapons production so that these “ might be turned to use for subduing them. ” Wei completed his investigations of western penetration into East Asia in 1841, and in the Treatise proposed the construction of a shipyard and arsenal at Canton and the use of extraneous engineers to teach marine seafaring and weapons operation – ” pioneer ideas in the military history of modern China ” .
structure and editions [edit ]
[ It ] divides the wholly into eighteen parts, which are set forth in classical and reasonably obscure linguistic process. The 1st incision enjoins the necessity of taking advantage of barbarian office and inventions, to resist the barbarians and to be on a proper foot with them. This may be said to be the thousand object of the book, which then proceeds to give a geographic and historic account of all the nations in Europe, Asia, Africa and America. The close chapters direct attention to the superiority of barbarians in their method of circulating news, ship-building, and gunnery ; and are filled with woodcuts representing things and processes & c. Amongst barbarians, the English occupy a big place.
The Chinese Repository Volume XIX January–December, 1850; p. 135
The first edition of the Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms, comprising 50 juan or scrolls, was published on January 3 1843. This was followed in 1847 with a reorganize and slenderly longer version running to 60 juan, while the one-third and concluding edition of 100 juan appeared in 1852. As the editions progressed, each in turn featured modern maps and geographic information regarding the West, using material that became available after the first base Opium War .
shock [edit ]
Hǎiguótúzhì Map of England from the
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Although on issue the Treatise received scant care in China, [ A ] in the longer term, Wei and his contemporaries helped change the chinese see of the external earth not alone through the dissemination of new material but besides by starting to change the view that China was the “ kernel of civilization ” or “ center of the universe ” ( “ Middle Kingdom ” ). [ 8 ] Wei ‘s work was besides to have a late impact on japanese extraneous policy. In 1862, samurai Takasugi Shinsaku, from the ruling japanese Tokugawa dictatorship, visited Shanghai on board the trade ship Senzaimaru. Japan had been forced open by US Commodore Matthew C. Perry less than a decade earlier and the function of the deputation was to establish how China had fared following the country ‘s frustration in the second Opium War ( 1856–1860 ). Takasugi was mindful of the forward think exhibited by those such as Wei on the raw threats posed by western “ barbarians ” and late recorded in his diary : “ The doctrine of the taiwanese people stands poles aside from the chastise path for China ‘s future exploitation. They are infatuated with eminent words unrelated to reality. ” [ 11 ] Sinologist Joshua Fogel concludes that when Takasugi found out “ that the writings of Wei Yuan were out of photographic print in China and that the Chinese were not forcefully preparing to drive the foreigners out of their country, preferably than derive from this a long analysis of the failures of the taiwanese people, he extracted lessons for the future of Japan ”. [ 12 ] Similarly, after reading the Treatise, scholar and political reformer Yokoi Shōnan became convinced that Japan should embark on a “ timid, gradual and realistic opening of its borders to the westerly world ” and thereby avoid the mistake China had made in engaging in the First Opium War. Takasugi would belated emerge as a drawing card of the 1868 Meiji Restoration which presaged the emergence of Japan as a modernized nation at the beginning of the twentieth hundred. Yoshida Shōin, influential japanese intellectual and Meiji reformer, said Wei ‘s Treatise had “ made a bad affect in our state ”. [ 15 ]
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- ^Chinese Repository observed: “We have never heard of this work in the bookshops of Canton and have only seen an advanced review copy. … It should be distributed amongst officials in Beijing and all the provinces to aid their understanding when dealing with foreigners.” In September 1847, theobserved : “ We have never heard of this make in the bookshops of Canton and have only seen an advanced review replicate. … It should be distributed amongst officials in Beijing and all the provinces to aid their understand when dealing with foreigners. ”
海國圖志 ( in Chinese ) – via Wikisource. Chinese .