Foreigners and the Making of the Chinese Diplomat

当清中国在19世纪70年代开始建立第一批使领馆时，外交官们第一次遇到了现代西方意义上的外交。那么，清朝是如何应对破译西方外交概念和结构的挑战的？此外，在20世纪初，当中国共和国取代清朝时，这一过程是如何达到顶峰的，出现了一批有能力处理此类任务的专业外交官？本项目将通过分析受雇于清朝和民国时期中国的使领馆的西方人所扮演的多种角色来解决这些基本问题。对现代中国人和外交史的理解都有重大的意义：(1)外交角色移交给这些西方人；(2)这种移交与中国官僚机构将儒家制度下的官僚没有接受过培训的工作外包给专家的先例有何关系；以及(3)由于国内对培养专业“外交官”重要性的迅速认识，这种西方的存在开始被瓦解。首先，它将帮助我们理解外交，作为现代国家的一种实践和关键的意识形态基础，是如何被编码在早期现代中国的官僚框架和想象中的。其次，它将让我们追溯早期现代中国羽翼未丰的外交服务按照西方范式走向专业化的过程，以及它是如何摆脱传统皮肤的。第三，对西方势力的逐渐消解的分析将有助于我们理解新兴的民族主义和现代国家建设叙事在20世纪初中国外交语境中的直接含义。第一个是关于同时代的清朝视角。19世纪清朝羽翼未丰的外交制度表现出许多外国外交制度所没有的特质。现任部长并不是在一个明确的严格结构内运作，他们最初也不是构成“威斯特伐利亚范例”的主人。我认为，清朝使领馆的这些特点，加上清朝将工作外包给私人专家的制度先例，创造了一个真空，在西方，传统上由外交官履行的职能由外国人履行。因此，晚清外交的特殊性允许(或许是鼓励)大臣们给予这些人相当大的自主权，并以非正统的方式利用他们。这个话题的第二个重要视角是詹姆斯·海维亚(James Hevia)在提到晚清中国的外国帝国主义时所创造的“教化”。清朝雇佣的外国人的行为在某种程度上是被设计为，或者他们可能无意中成为了一个试图教会这些清朝大臣及其工作人员如何为一个现在已经成为“国际大家庭”一部分的国家进行外交的“教学项目”？如果他们的行为本质上是说教的，那么他们在灌输或影响清朝关于外交官应该如何行事的话语方面是否有任何直接影响？第三，我寻求将我的工作置于更广泛的世界历史视角中。清朝并不是唯一一个在外交场合雇用外国人的国家：日本和奥斯曼帝国也有类似的例子。通过与其他地区可比个人的对话，我相信这将有助于澄清清朝外交的内在特点，并使这项研究能够阐明专业外交官和领事是如何从非欧洲背景中出现的。

When Qing China's first legations and consulates began to be established in the 1870s, its diplomats encountered diplomacy, in the modern Western sense, for the first time. How then did the Qing engage with the challenge of deciphering the concepts and constructs of Western diplomacy? Furthermore, how did this process culminate in the emergence of a class of professional diplomats equipped to deal with such tasks in the early 20th century, as the Republic of China emerged in place of the Qing?This project will address these fundamental questions through an analysis of the versatile roles performed by Westerners who served in the employ of Qing and Republican China's legations and consulates. There are significant implications for both modern Chinese and diplomatic history for understanding: (1) the devolution of diplomatic roles to these Westerners; (2) how this devolution was related to the Chinese bureaucratic precedent for outsourcing to specialists the work for which bureaucrats did not, in the Confucian system, undergo training; and (3) the point at which this Western presence began to be dismantled, due to a burgeoning domestic awareness of the importance of fostering professional 'diplomats'. Firstly, it will help us to understand how diplomacy, both as a praxis and as a crucial ideological underpinning of a modern state, came to be encoded in the early modern Chinese bureaucratic framework and imagination. Secondly, it will allow us to trace the process by which early modern China's fledgling diplomatic service came to be professionalised according to Western paradigms, and how it thus came to shed its traditional skin. Thirdly, an analysis of the gradual dismantling of the Western presence will specifically help us to understand the direct implications of newly emerging narratives of nationalism and modern state-building in the diplomatic context of early 20th century China.In framing my answers to the above research questions, I will employ three analytical perspectives. The first regards the contemporaneous Qing perspective. The Qing's fledgling diplomatic system in the 19th century exhibited many idiosyncrasies which were not found in its foreign counterparts. The serving ministers did not operate within a defined stringent structure, nor were they initially masters of what constitutes the 'Westphalian paradigm'. I see these characteristics of the Qing legations and consulates, coupled with the Qing institutional precedent for outsourcing work to private specialists, as creating a vacuum in which functions which, in the West, were traditionally performed by a diplomat, were performed by foreigners. The idiosyncrasies of late Qing diplomacy thus allowed for, and perhaps encouraged, the ministers to afford considerable autonomy to these individuals, and to utilise them in unorthodox ways.The second perspective of importance to this topic is what James Hevia, in reference to foreign imperialism in late Qing China, coined as 'tutelage'. Were the actions of foreigners engaged by the Qing to some extent designed as, or did they perhaps inadvertently serve as, a 'pedagogical project' which sought to teach these Qing ministers, and their staff, how to conduct diplomacy for a country which was now part of 'the family of nations'? If their actions were inherently didactic, did they have any direct influence on inculcating or influencing Qing discourse on how a 'diplomat' ought to act? Thirdly, I seek to situate my work within broader world-historical perspectives. The Qing was not alone in employing foreigners in diplomatic contexts: similar instances can be noted in Japan and the Ottoman Empire. By framing my work in dialogue with materials which shed light on comparable individuals in other regions, I believe it will help to clarify the inherent peculiarities of Qing diplomacy, and enable this research to elucidate how professional diplomats and consuls emerged from non-European contexts.