GUEST RITUAL AND INTERDOMAINAL RELATIONS IN THE LATE QING

Interdomainal relations of the late Qing dynasty are dealt with through an exploration of the category in which such relations were organized by the Manchu Imperial court, Guest Ritual Bin Li . One encounter, that between the Manchu kingdom and England in 1793-94, is focussed on. This British embassy provides an excellent position for viewing Guest Ritual because it highlights many of the fundamental processes through which the Imperial court organized relations with other domains.; Since "traditional" Chinese foreign relations have generally been dealt with through the "tribute system" model, this study begins with a critique of the model, arguing that it displaces native categories with Western models of rational human behavior. British and Chinese perceptions of "international relations" are contrasted, with the former predicated on a natural linear movement from "ceremony" to "business" and the latter involving a ritual process that used intricate classification schemes for monitoring current and past action throughout the encounter. Fundamental to the Chinese perception of relations was a view that things presented as gifts to the Emperor embodied human attributes of the giver and, consequently, could not be separated from their incidence of social production.; Rather than viewing East-West conflict as cultural misunderstanding, this study argues that actors understood much about the consequences of certain actions and deployed strategies to avoid such actions, while attempting to encompass others in their universalistic schemes. Western interpretations of the Macartney embassy are also reviewed to show that the event has been used to authorize a series of absolute dichotomies in characterizing "East" and "West." The resulting formation of binary oppositions is then related to 19th and 20th century Western interpretations of Sino-Western relations.