The Diplomacy Comparative Study Between China And Russia In The Early 18th Century

Russia began to expand its territory since the mid-term of the 16th century. Its boundary advanced eastward at a very fast pace, and till the late 17th century, the Russian expansionists had already arrived at the northern border of Qing Dynasty , which was not consolidated yet at that time. What's more, they even interfered in the internal ethnic affairs of the frontier people. At the same time, Russia attached great importance to the commercial interests from trade with Qing Dynasty, because the two countries are very close to each other geographically. Facing the aggressive Russia, the primary task of Qing government was to resist the foreign aggression outside the country, and stop their intervening into Qing's domestic unification of the frontiers. Due to this kind of situation, there formed a relationship of being held in check with each other and both countries derived their own benefits based on this relationship. Either by means of war or the diplomatic techniques they can get rid of this contradiction. Since at this time, Russia wasn't powerful enough to launch the large-scale wars in Russia's Siberian region, while its counterpart—Qing government was also not willing to launch the wars after the war of YaKeSa, which was between Qing Dynasty and Russia, in order to maintain Qing's domestic stability and concentrate on solving the problem of Zhungar. Thus the diplomatic method is the only option in terms of dealing with the relationship of the two countries. The diplomatic policy of both sides showed their own distinctive characteristics due to the difference of the national conditions and the values of the two countries. While in the early 18th century, the frequent friendly intercourse of the two countries envoys offered us a good access to the features of the inspection and diplomacy.This paper is divided into five parts:The first part of the paper is the introduction to the state and achievements of the research on the history of the relationship between the pre-Qing Dynasty and Russia in the circle of history both home and abroad.The second part is the analysis of the background of Russia's starting the diplomacy to China in the early 18th century, and of the investigation to the reasons and process of the two Russian groups of envoys' visits to China. The third part is the research on the backdrop and the process of the visit to Russia by the two groups of envoys of Qing government during one of the Qing Emperors, Yongzheng's administration.The fourth part is the inspection and comparison including three aspects in terms of the diplomatic policy of Qing and Russia. The three items: the plan and arrangement about the visit to Russia and the process of the empowerment to the envoys; the selection of the envoys and their abilities; the measures contributing to the diplomacy.The fifth part is the conclusion, in which the levels of the diplomacy of the two countries are evaluated based on the research in the former four parts.