Qing China and Its Offshore Islands in the Long Eighteenth Century

A significant paradigm shift in the examination of China’s engagement with the maritime world has taken place over the past decade. The conventional image of the Qing dynasty in the long eighteenth century as being merely land-orientated has now become obsolete. Historians are no longer satisfied with this stereotype and have put aside the conception that the Qing only realized the importance of strategic marine governance after the First Opium War. In view of this historiographical turn, I seek to deepen our understanding of the Great Qing in relation to the sea. By focusing on a series of sea charts, alongside some relevant palace papers, from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, I will argue that the Qing’s process of locating and charting those offshore islands was an essential, indicative, and demonstrative step for the central authority to project its imperial power onto the waters off the coast of China long before the arrival of Western gunboats in the age of global rivalry.