A Group Study On Nanyang Minister In The Late Qing Dynasty

After the second Opium War, the external dealings between China and foreign countries became increasingly frequent. In order to cope with this changed situation, the Qing government set up Tsungli Yamen and Nanyang Minister and Beiyang Minister in central and local governments respectively. Nanyang Minister, whose predecessor was Five-port Commerce Minister, was established in the tenth year of Xianfeng period, and ended in the third year of Xuantong period, existing for fifty years, and seventeen ministers took up this position in all. At the beginning of its establishment, Nanyang Minister's duty was to manage the local trading affairs and external negotiations, belonging to local negotiation organ, but its authority gradually increased with the development of situations, which promoted the changes of the late Qing Dynasty's diplomatic institutions. The individual differences of the group of Nanyang Minister and the restictions of the institution itself on this group all to some extent affected the exertion of Nanyang Minister's functions in diplomatic affairs. Therefore, this paper will do a statistical analysis from the aspects of the Man-Han ratio, the distribution of native places, the birth backgrounds, the qualifications, reputations, the incumbency age, the span of tenure and the causes for turnover of the Nanyang Minister group in chapter 2 and chapter 3, with the purpose to analyze the general conditions of personnel alteration of Nanyang Minister group, and find out the negative factors of Nanyang Minister group. In chapter 4 the author will analyze Nanyang Minister in a institutional perspective from the fours aspects of the relations between Nanyang Minister and Tsungli Yamen, Nanyang Minister and Beiyang Minister, Nanyang Minister and local governors of southern provinces, and the organizational operation of Nanyang Minister respectively, and want to find out the factors that affected the exertion of Nanyang Minister's functions. Although Nanyang Minister group had many negative factors, it played a certain role in the transition of diplomatic institution in the late Qing period. Thus the author will select Zeng Guofan and Liu Kunyi to make case studies in chapter 5, in order to further explore the Nanyang Minister's role in the diplomacy in late Qing period. Though Nanyang Minister's main responsibilities was dealing with external negotiations, this group also participated in the reform and coastal defense construction in late Qing period, so this paper will further study its contribution to the reform and coastal defense construction in late Qing period on the former basis.