A Study On Li Hong Chang And The Late Qing Dynasty Treaties

After the Opium War, in the international relations field, a new pattern of communication has merged in modern China which is the treaty relations. Under the threat of the western powers, China was forced into signing a series of unequal treaties. Since his installation into office of Viceroy of Zhili in 1870, Li Hong-chang had taken charge of the foreign policy of late Qing Dynasty and participated in nearly all the major treaty negotiations. Through negotiating on various treaties, Lihong-chang developed his relatively systematic thoughts on treaties.This dissertation is divided into three parts, introduction, body part and conclusion.In the part of introduction, the author introduces the origin of the topic, review of the academic history and constructs the structure of the text based on the current study. The author still points out the innovation and limitation of this study, and makes definition about the core concepts involved in this study.The body part is totally divided into seven chapters. The first chapter explores the thoughts on the activities of Li Hung-chang's treaty negotiations. This part includes the background of the change from Sino-foreign country system to treaty system, and influence of the thoughts of the Chinese traditional culture and the modern diplomatic concept on his thoughts on treaties. One hand education and accumulation accretion of Chinese culture provides Li Hung-chang with the rational nucleus of mollification and honesty of his treaty strategy. On the other hand, the modern diplomatic concepts provides Li Hung-chang with mean of struggles for implementing rational strategy. In this way, the activities and thoughts of Li Hung-chang's treaty negotiations are inevitably marked by mixture of new and old thoughts, because of the two diplomatic concepts wingled at all times. The second chapter discusses the four stages of the Li Hong-chang's identification with treaty relations, which is pursuing a policy of mollification before 1860's, observing treaty in 1870's, invoking a treaty and seeking the equality in 1880's, abandoning the system of Paying Tribute to China and strictly adhering to the treaty after 1890's. The four stages reflects the change of Li's thoughts from traditional contracts to treaty and public laws.Chapter three and four gives a systematic review and analysis on the different characteristics types of making treaties of Li at late Qing Dynasty. In the chapter five, this attempts to investigate Li Hong-chang's thought of "strictly adhering to the treaty" which is base on the sincerity, regarding draw as objective and by the measure of enhancing people's awareness of following treaty. It profoundly reflects that Li Hong-chang and the Qing Dynasty accepted and adjusted of the irreversibility treaty system in modern international relations. Chapter six elaborates the understanding of Li Hong-chang about the modified treaty and puts forward his viewpoint of the modified treaty based on self-reliance through the Palace Memorial for the Preparation, Consultation and Revision of Treaties presented by Li Hong-chang in 1867. It also analyzes the reason that Li Hong-chang differences in deal with modified treaty, the slow process of modified treaty and the little results of practice. Chapter seven is mostly involving the strategic planning of Li Hung-chang's treaty negotiations, in complex situation such as which is based on reason and self-interest, dealing with different treaty in different ways, learned from foreigners to compete with foreigners and affective communication each other.Combined with the criteria for historical figures, the conclusion made a reconsideration of the evaluation on the thought about Li Hung-chang, which is analyzed from several aspects such as the position of Li Hung-chang in the treaty negotiations of the late Qing Dynasty, the prime cause of his making the ignominious treaties and the pushing effect on the diplomatic transformation of the late Qing Dynasty. In author's opinion, the ignominious treaties signed by Li not only are the result of his overreliance on the treaty or public law and failure to grasp the essence of the western powers, but also are the result of limitation of the times, weak national strength, and the institutional obstacles.