From envoy journals to legation reports: regulating knowledge of the world in late imperial and modern China

ABSTRACT In the Qing dynasty, the diary-form for intelligence gathering was perfected by Tulišen, whose travelogue to Central Asia allowed the Kangxi emperor’s “imperial eyes” to assume vicarious witness to that heroic journey. Prior to China’s stationing of resident ministers abroad in 1876, envoy journals similar to Tulišen’s were commonly used for information gathering. In the next three decades, the genre of envoy communication became a fertile field for trials and experimentations, as Qing diplomats adjusted their method of communication to the changing needs of the state and the prevalent media and information technology. When the Qing dynasty established China’s first bureau of foreign affairs (Waiwubu) in 1901, the modern-style “foreign office” required radically new genres for diplomatic communication, which prioritized systemization, standardization, and a complete elimination of subjective experience. These diplomatic reports, akin to Western-style bluebooks, were separated from classified information and thus designed for domestic circulation. Tracing the evolution in diplomatic communications from late imperial China to the turn of the twentieth century, this paper seeks to unpack how new views of the foreign were shaped by new genres, new media, and new diplomatic institutions.