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China The Western Powers Arrive
As elsewhere in Asia, in China the Portuguese were the
pioneers, establishing a foothold at Macao (Aomen in pinyin), from
which they monopolized foreign trade at the Chinese port of
Guangzhou (Canton). Soon the Spanish arrived, followed by the
British and the French.
Trade between China and the West was carried on in the guise of
tribute: foreigners were obliged to follow the elaborate,
centuries-old ritual imposed on envoys from China's tributary
states. There was no conception at the imperial court that the
Europeans would expect or deserve to be treated as cultural or
political equals. The sole exception was Russia, the most powerful
inland neighbor.
The Manchus were sensitive to the need for security along the
northern land frontier and therefore were prepared to be realistic
in dealing with Russia. The Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689) with the
Russians, drafted to bring to an end a series of border incidents
and to establish a border between Siberia and Manchuria (northeast
China) along the Heilong Jiang (Amur River), was China's first
bilateral agreement with a European power. In 1727 the Treaty of
Kiakhta delimited the remainder of the eastern portion of the SinoRussian border. Western diplomatic efforts to expand trade on equal
terms were rebuffed, the official Chinese assumption being that the
empire was not in need of foreign--and thus inferior--products.
Despite this attitude, trade flourished, even though after 1760 all
foreign trade was confined to Guangzhou, where the foreign traders
had to limit their dealings to a dozen officially licensed Chinese
merchant firms.
Trade was not the sole basis of contact with the West. Since
the thirteenth century, Roman Catholic missionaries had been
attempting to establish their church in China. Although by 1800
only a few hundred thousand Chinese had been converted, the
missionaries--mostly Jesuits--contributed greatly to Chinese
knowledge in such fields as cannon casting, calendar making,
geography, mathematics, cartography, music, art, and architecture.
The Jesuits were especially adept at fitting Christianity into a
Chinese framework and were condemned by a papal decision in 1704
for having tolerated the continuance of Confucian ancestor rites
among Christian converts. The papal decision quickly weakened the
Christian movement, which it proscribed as heterodox and disloyal.
Data as of July 1987
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