The Cost of Receiving Foreign Tributes to the Qing Court
This is the annual Dr H Y Mok Charitable Foundation Lecture
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Many European countries wanted to establish a diplomatic relation with the Qing after they had replaced the Ming as ruler of China in 1644, but most of the European countries insisted that their envoy entered the Qing court as an “ambassador”, not a “tributary”. China, on the other hand, did not admit the idea of an “embassy”. Chinese emperors presumed that foreigners came to Beijing out of admiration for the Celestial Empire.
When writing about European embassies to China historians usually focus on the kowtow ceremony, or the large sums of money the embassies spent buying the presents. They seldom speak of the expenses that the Chinese government had to bear to receive those embassies.
This lecture will show that Chinese emperors also had to pay large sums of money to receive those presents.
Image: Jade ruyi given to George Staunton by Emperor Qianlong in September 1793. Copyright V&A, A.17-1925
Speaker
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Ming Wilson
Ming Wilson was formerly Senior Curator and then Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Asian Department, Victoria and Albert Museum. She has organised exhibitions and written books on a wide range of topics in Chinese art, including export paintings (2003), jades (2004), books (2006), and imperial robes (2010). Recently she has been conducting in-depth research on Sino-British relations. In 2017 she published two articles about diplomatic gifts exchanged between these two nations, namely 1) Gifts from Emperor Qianlong to King George III, and 2) Gifts presented to the Chinese emperor by Lord George Macartney.
