Imperial competition in Eurasia: Russia and China

LAURA HOSTETLER

Imperial Russia under the Romanovs and Imperial China during the Qing dynasty (1636/44 to 1911) competed with each other in contests for land, control over frontier peoples and for imperial status.

During the early modern period, both of these growing empires faced and came to terms with many of the same challenges in building their respective empires. These included: developing relationships with frontier peoples; imposing control on newly conquered territories; mapping their domains; documenting their diverse inhabitants; and representing their imperial for­mations both at home and abroad through the sponsorship of literary and artistic production. In short, these two empires were able to compete because they were playing the same game. Considering the competition between these two expanding empires in a world-historical context allows us to trace how the rules of that game were gradually established over the course of the early modern period, and how each of these empires positioned itself vis-a-vis the rest of the early modern world more generally from about 1600 until the late eighteenth century.

Growth of the empires

The Qing dynasty was first proclaimed in 1636 by Hong Taiji in the region of Northeast Asia that we now know as Manchuria. The early groundwork for the empire was, however, established by his father, Nurhaci. Nurhaci was a Jurchen tribesman who achieved a large measure of success in uniting different clans under his leadership.

Nurhaci's eighth son, Hong Taiji, built on the advances made by his father. In competing against his brothers and consolidating his own position, he relied on Chinese advisors from the border areas and adopted Chinese- style bureaucratic structures. His renaming of the Jin dynasty established by his father to Qing in 1636 signaled a broader ambition and some distancing of himself from the Jurchen tribal origins of the Jin in order to broaden the ethnic composition of his base. Hong Taiji's followers were now to be called Manchus, a newly coined term meaning “great good fortune,” which would have broader appeal. Within less than a decade, the Qing would move in to fill the power vacuum left in China by the fall of the Ming to internal rebels in 1644. The relationships established by Hong Taiji with (bilingual and bicultural) Chinese advisors from Liaodong enabled his imperial successors to be well positioned to implement the transition to a new dynastic house in China.

Following the establishment of Qing power in the former Ming territories, the scope of the empire was gradually expanded to include Taiwan (1681), southwest China (1683) and the Khalka Mongols (1691). In 1721, Qing armies would enter Tibet, where the empire's influence would continue to be felt until the end of the dynasty in 1911. Finally, in 1759, a series of wars against the Zunghar Mongols was brought to an end and Xinjiang was also incorpor­ated into the Qing dynasty.

The Russian Empire grew out of a power base in Muscovy. After the demise of the Golden Horde, to which Muscovy was a tributary until 1480, the principality continued to gain power and accrue additional territory under its dominion. By 1503, Ivan III had begun occasionally using the title of tsar, enhancing the profile of the region along with his own position. Officially, the first Muscovite monarch to be crowned as tsar and to use the title consistently was Ivan IV (the Terrible). Fueled at least in part by the desire to profit from its wealth in furs, Russian exploration of Siberia began by the 1580s. Imperial expansion continued under the leadership of the Romanovs, who gained power in 1613, and by 1639 Russian explorers reached the Pacific. It was in the Amur River valley during the 1640s that Russian explorers first came into conflict with the Qing. Several skirmishes followed in the next few decades, but neither the Qing nor the Russians had any real sense that these altercations involved the colonial reach of another major power until the 1670s.

Frontier management in both empires functioned according to a kind of tribute system in which gift exchange played a major role. The beauty, or at least durability, of the arrangement lay in its flexibility and the latitude it allowed for both parties not only to benefit, but also to interpret the relationship according to their own best interests. For the large empires, tributary relationship assured (bought) peace in the form of forging alliances that were ostensibly of a paternalistic and hierarchical nature.

In the Russian case, the requirements of tributary frontier tribes included shert', yasak and amanat, all of which derived from the legacy of the steppe politics of the late Golden Horde. Shert' can be described as an oath of allegiance to the empire, the specifics of which were always cast in local terms. Yasak was a tax, paid in kind—usually in furs in Siberia. Amanat, usually translated as “hostage,” was a practice that served to guarantee loyalty. Hostages would usually be selected from the extended family of a chief, often a son or nephew, as a kind of surety of allegiance. In return for allegiance, Muscovy provided various rewards and encouraged governors to feast and give gifts to local chieftains. In practice, these agreements were not exclusive; tribes could and did often conclude such agreements with multiple powers, although this was not Moscow's preference.

Over time, the hostage system began to be viewed as a kind of civilizing mission. In a statement reminiscent of Chinese attitudes regarding the desirability of transforming their own frontier peoples, a 1775 report from the governor of Astrakhan opined that: “By teaching the hostages the Russian language, civilizing them and discouraging their barbaric customs, in a short time there would no longer be any need for hostages, and they would convert to Christianity.”¹ Although made in a different context and at a later date, we can nonetheless see in the remark a pervasive attitude of imperial superiority and evidence of confidence in its civilizing mission. Even in the first decade of the eighteenth century, when what it meant to be civilized was changing from the standards of the old Muscovite tsardom into an imperial model built on a somewhat different notion of statehood, Peter the Great had a vision for including the sons of frontier nobility in his educational mission, wanting them trained in both a variety of languages and the emergent scientific methods so important to state building.

The Qing tribute system functioned in a similar, although not identical, way. Its primary requirements included the submission of tribute, normally transmitted in person to the emperor via a tribute mission. Tribute cere­monies included an extensive set of rituals with the exchange of gifts and often the conferral of titles by the emperor on the tributary. The tribute gifts were expected to consist of representative local products, which functioned much like the Russian yasak. The return gifts from the emperor were, in effect, a reward bestowed for loyalty.

Tulisen, the Manchu Qing ambassador to the Torghuts, describes a specific instance on the Russian frontier that sounds in practice much like the Russian arrangement of rewards and annuities. In his account he wrote: “Our Emperor... readily received O-la-pu-tchu-eur, created him a prince of the empire (Pei-tse) and gave him an establishment... Every year the Emperor makes him a present of silks and cattle, besides a pension in money, so that he is already become very rich and comfortable in his new situation.”^[249]

It may be that Russian and Qing frontier practices influenced each other as frontier groups played one power against the other in their negotiations, or rather even more likely, that both may have been derived from the earlier steppe, especially Mongol, practices.

We also see instances of sending hostages to court under the Qing Empire. In the course of the Qing conquests of the Zunghar Mongols in 1759, a variety of Central Asian peoples pledged loyalty to the Qing court.

In time, as each empire grew in strength vis-a-vis its frontier peoples, tributaries were no longer able to exact the same kinds of gifts as rewards. By the nineteenth century, they were also unable to resist changes imposed by the imperial powers that would come to incorporate them in new ways, as the early modern period gave way to the modern era.

Mutual knowledge

In 1650, the Russian and Qing empires knew very little of each other, although presumably Russia had received word of the 1644 Manchu conquest of China. Motivated by a need for additional revenues that it hoped to attain by finding eastern markets for its furs, and the related desire for knowledge about its neighbor, the Russian court sent an ambassador to China in 1654. Beset by failures in communication and hung up on matters of ceremonial protocol, the embassy was a complete disaster, at least diplomatically speak­ing. The ambassador, Fedor Isakovich Baikov, was dismissed from Beijing without having his gifts or letters accepted. He was, however, able to record observations about the city of Beijing and its inhabitants as well as the kinds of goods available in the city's markets. Baikov's relatively unsuccessful diplomatic mission was followed by several trade missions that met with a somewhat more favorable reception.

Despite the 1654 mission, it was only in 1670 when Russian explorers in eastern Siberia came up against Qing subjects that they discovered that the various terms they used to refer to peoples in the Far East actually all referred to the same political entity in the form of the Qing dynasty.^[250] This became clear in light of an international incident when the Qing objected that a Tungus chieftain by the name of Gantimur, who had for a time recognized Qing suzerainty, defected with his people.^[251] Events surrounding the incident provoked the governor of Tobolsk to send an envoy to Beijing to discuss the issue. The envoy, Ignatii Milovanov, carried a letter that invited the Qing emperor to recognize the tsar's suzerainty and become a tributary! It was perhaps fortunate for all that the letter was unable to be translated at the time. Through this mission, however, Beijing came to realize that the settlements on the Amur where there had been skirmishes were functioning under the protection of the Russians. The conflict could no longer be interpreted as simply the product of unruly frontier settlers; it would need to be taken more seriously. Increased contact and negotiations between the two powers became necessary.^[252]

Now with a better sense of whom they might be negotiating with, Moscow sent another mission to Beijing in 1674 led by Nikolai Milescu (also sometimes called Spafarii).^[253] Trade issues dominated the Russian agenda for the mission. However, for the Qing the return of the renegade Gantimur and Russian evacuation of the Amur River area were prerequisites for any agreements. Russian refusal to negotiate on these questions and conflict over ceremonial protocol led to Milescu's expulsion from Beijing without any agreements having been reached.^[254] The ambassador was, however, able to engage in several conversations with Ferdinand Verbiest, a Jesuit employed by the court, and through these conversations gain useful information.

Even though neither the Milovanov nor the Milescu mission achieved the goals of either empire, they did make it clear that the Russians were, at least nominally, in charge of the raiding parties of Cossacks on the borders. The Qing consequently stepped up its military presence in the area. In 1685 and again in 1686, the Manchus attacked Albazin, a settlement established on the Amur River in the 1640s, which had sometimes served as a place of refuge for those who fled the Muscovite governors in Ilimsk or Nerchinsk, forcing its evacuation. Once it had become clear that the skirmishes in the Amur basin did indeed involve the tributaries of two competing empires, however recalcitrant, it was in the interest of both empires to establish a firm border so as to more easily regulate the movements and fix the loyalties of the frontier region's inhabitants.

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In 1689, with the assistance of Jesuit translators and negotiators, a formal agreement on border, trade and sovereignty issues was reached in the form of the Treaty of Nerchinsk. Delimiting the frontier allowed both empires to begin to establish a firm boundary between them, which would limit, if not eliminate, the ability of frontier residents to play one power off against the other. Instead, the tributary and service obligations of frontier peoples would be fixed according to the empire in which they resided. Furthermore, their mobility across the newly established borders would also be limited under the new agreements. On the Russian side, peace was desirable in order to establish what they hoped would be profitable trade relationships. For the Qing, a major incentive in reaching an accord was to inhibit any kind of alliance between Russia and Mongol groups with whom they themselves had not formed alliances or with whom they were in active conflict, namely their formidable foe Galdan. These agreements would be refined and extended in 1727 in the Treaty of Kiakhta.^[255]

Additional Russian embassies would travel to the Qing court after the Treaty of Nerchinsk was signed, but embassies not only traveled from Russia to China, but also in the other direction. As alluded to above and discussed further below, a Manchu envoy by the name of Tulisen left China in 1712 to visit the Torghuts (known in Russia as the Kalmyks), a Mongol tribe pushed by strife with the Zunghars into the Volga region of Russia. The Kangxi emperor was keenly aware that Tulisen might have the opportunity to have an audience with Peter the Great, and provided him with detailed instruc­tions on what to say and how to behave in the case of such an eventuality. The Yongzheng emperor also sent two embassies to Russia in 1729 and 1730, prompted by his desire to ensure Russian neutrality in the Qing war with the Zunghar Mongols. Yongzheng was also interested in promoting the return of the Torghuts to Qing territory, which would finally happen in 1771 during the reign of the Qianlong emperor.

As Peter Perdue has pointed out, while the Qing and Russian Empires certainly competed with each other during the early modern period, they also practiced mutual accommodation in ways that allowed sedentary agriculturalists to thrive while undermining the power of nomadic peoples. For both the Qing and the Russian Empires, ending the raiding activity on which the steppe societies relied was crucial to imperial stability and pros­perity. The treaties of Nerchinsk and Kiakhta were key in facilitating this transition of power.

Mapping the frontier

At the time of the Treaty of Nerchinsk, the frontier had not been systematic­ally mapped, but that situation changed rapidly as both empires realized that it would be to their advantage to have a more precise picture of the region. A look into cartographies of exploration and expansion within each empire is quite instructional. Briefly, we can document that similar changes happened more or less simultaneously in both Imperial Russia and Qing China with regard to cartographic practices employed at the court. Formal border delineation began in the late seventeenth century, when the need to claim and defend frontier regions spurred mapping of the lands in question. Court officials first relied on indigenous cartographies, which would soon be supplemented by the latest in early modern mapping technology as both courts turned to the international language of early modern to-scale mapping to stake out their claims internationally. Simply put, we see overall a move towards imperial sponsorship of to-scale surveys that supplement but do not immediately supplant indigenous forms of cartography.

An overview of four carefully selected maps illustrates the kinds of activity occurring with regard to the mapping of the frontier between the Qing and Romanov Empires. The earliest surviving map of Siberia was made by Semon Remezov. Remezov's Atlas of Siberia, which contains twenty-four sheets, is largely organized around river systems (see Figure 12. ι). Although the date of Rcmczov's earliest maps of Siberia is uncertain, they were probably made shortly after 1677 when the tsar ordered Peter Ivanovich Godunov, governor of Siberia, to have the region mapped. Remezov’s completed atlas appeared in 1701. The first map in the atlas consists of an overview of the whole region. This map, which is oriented to the south, shows Beijing located behind the Great Wall in the upper left-hand corner. Major river systems and cities are labeled, as are the names of tribal peoples dwelling along the southern frontiers. Other maps in the atlas include both

Figure 12.1 Overview map of Siberia from Atlas of Siberia by Semyon U. Remezov (MS Russ 72 (6), Houghton Library, Harvard University).

larger-scale maps of regions within Siberia, and a map of all of China, oriented to the north, that reaches as far south as Hainan Island and includes a full view of the southeast China coast. Korea is also clearly labeled on this map. While Remezov must have been relying on local surveys for the maps of Siberia, he clearly had access to additional information for the maps of China and other regions beyond his own ken. This map demonstrates Russian interest in Siberia and knowledge of the Great Wall of China beyond. It locates important towns and centers in Siberia, but leaves much ground uncharted.

“La Carte de Tartarie,” published in 1706 by Guillaume Delisle, geog­rapher to Louis XIV, dates not much later, but is done in a significantly different style. In contrast to the overview map of Siberia by Remezov, Delisle uses a northern orientation and relies on latitude and longitude as an overall guide for situating specific locations. Rivers are indicated but do not have the same prominence as on the Remezov map. It is likely that Guillaume Delisle gained some of his information from the map in Nicolaas Witsen's 1692 Noorden Oost Tartaryen. Witsen was a Dutch magistrate who visited Moscow twice and had extensive contacts with Russians who traveled in Siberia. Delisle's map demonstrates the latest in early modern techniques of scaled representation that would later be patronized by both Peter the Great (r. 1689 to 1725), who would later arrange for Guillaume’s brother Joseph Nicholas to serve at his court,^{[256] [257]} and by the Kangxi emperor (r. 1661 to 1722) through the presence of EuropeanJesuits at his court.

A third map of Russia entitled “Etats du Tsar” (“The Lands of the Tsar”) grew out of a 1692 to 1694 embassy from Russia to Peking. According to information found on the cartouche, the map was based on Adam Brand’s account of Evert Ides’s 1692 embassy to Peking, and on observations made by Witsen and a certain Pere Avril. Dating from 1722, this map in many ways serves as an amalgam of the Remezov and Delisle maps. Although oriented towards the north, the nature of the depiction of Beijing beyond the great wall recalls the Remezov map. And while later than the Delisle map, lines of latitude and longitude are not displayed, although they undoubtedly came into play in the making of the map. The emphasis here is specifically on travel routes from Moscow to Beijing. Not only is the actual route followed by the Ides embassy indicated on the map by means of a double line, but the names of localities along the route through which the embassy passed are also listed sequentially in a box appearing to the right-hand side of the map, forming a kind of textual route map of their own. The reference to trade in the heading of this list clearly indicates Russian incentives for the embassy, and for continued relationships with Beijing. In its enumeration of the coordinates of latitude and longitude for Constantinople, Moscow and Beijing, the cartouche additionally underscores the international standing of Moscow and Beijing as important imperial centers. Similarly, enumeration of scale in units of measure used in Moscow, Poland and Ukraine, and in estimated time between distances, also highlights both the expected inter­national audience for the map and its intended utility for traders.

A desire to map the frontier was also very much present on the southern side of the Sino-Russian border. In the 1710s, Tulisen’s embassy which traveled to Russia to meet with the Torghuts was instructed to give due attention to “the inhabitants of the Russian Territory, its natural and artificial produc­tions,” as well as “its geography and general appearance.”11 In fact, Tulinsen’s entire narrative is carefully tuned in to the geographical situation of places visited with descriptions of particular settlements, noting carefully their size in terms of population, situation in relation to waterways, whether or not they were wooded, how many church buildings there were, whether they were garrisoned and, if so, with how many soldiers. The final summary of the trip could easily be plotted on a map and, in fact, the ambassador did “subjoin a sketch of the hills and rivers passed” en route to his textual description of the trip.¹² This trip was made a few years prior to the surveys for the Kangxi Atlas, and would have exceeded the northern bounds of its scope.

Jesuit missionaries, who had been present in China and served at the court in small numbers since the late Ming, introduced coordinate mapping to China. The Kangxi emperor (r. 1662 to 1722) was quick to see its merits. In the 1710s, he commissioned scaled maps of the entire Qing Empire. The Kangxi surveys were unprecedented in their scope and ambition. Drawing on the services of several teams of Jesuit surveyors and administered through institutions of the Qing court, surveys of every province of the empire (and as far as possible in Tibet and Korea) were carried out. The results appeared in various forms, including several Chinese atlas editions as well as versions published in France by Jean Baptiste D'Anville, and by J. B. Du Halde as part of his multivolume Description... de la Chine, which was translated into a number of European languages, including Russian.¹³ Truly an innovative early modern endeavor, the complete atlas of China, Chinese Tartary and Tibet appeared prior to the national surveys of both France and Russia. A sheet reproduced from a 1721 Chinese edition of the Kangxi Atlas shows the use of scaled mapping based on latitude and longitude for precise maps of the Chinese frontier (Figure 12.2).

This flurry of map-making activity and the technological advances it represented, which has been described as the “global integration of space,”¹⁴ was due in large part to the patronage of monarchs such as the Kangxi emperor, Peter the Great and Louis XIV (r. 1643 to 1715), who recognized the utility—indeed necessity—of recording more precise geographic knowledge of their own realms and beyond. In fact, both Peter the Great and the Kangxi emperor were exceptional in the degree to which they displayed a personal interest in practical learning and scientific method, namely observation and

Figure 12.2 Kangxi Map Atlas (Huangyu quanlan tu) 1721 (© The British Library Board).

description of the natural world through verifiable methods. On his grand tour to Western Europe in 1697 to 1698, Peter visited shipyards in the Netherlands incognito in order to obtain a first-hand understanding of the craft, even working there as a carpenter under the name of Peter, de timmerman van Zaandam. He would later make several return trips to Western Europe, where in 1717 he met the young Louis XV in Paris. On this same trip, his early interest in mapping was heightened and he determined to commission an atlas of the Russian Empire, which would eventually be completed in 1745 by Joseph Nicholas Delisle, who worked in Russia from 1726 to 1747. Peter I was also keen on disseminating scientific knowledge and had a vision for training a core group of individuals schooled in modern methods to assist in building the empire. He gave the order for the founding of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which was established in 1725 shortly after his death.

The Kangxi emperor also had a great thirst for and interest in knowledge about the natural world and in science as a means to gaining a better understanding of it. He expressed scepticism over blind adherence to received book learning not verified by experience and direct observation, and believed in the importance of careful planning. On hunting expeditions to the north, he himself determined the group's location according to astronomical calculations. He also calibrated the measure of the Chinese li (exactly 0.5 kilometers) to correlate precisely with astronomical measurements. Like Peter I, he too traveled extensively, making six trips south to the richest and culturally elitist Jiangnan region of the empire, where he personally inspected waterworks along the Yangzi River. While not international in their scope, in some ways these trips parallel Peter's visits to the cultural and economic centers of Europe.

The confluence in these contemporary monarchs' outlooks and interests is remarkable, but perhaps not coincidental. Both were following the impera­tives necessary to successful statecraft in the early modern period using an array of methods and technologies available to them both domestically and internationally. As each prioritized the growth and integration of his own empire, they faced similar sets of challenges to which they responded in similar ways. Their legitimacy depended on fostering imperial growth and grandeur through a flourishing of the arts and sciences and a relative openness towards technologies from the outside world for purposes of empire building at home. In a sense, it is hardly remarkable that advances in scientific mapping were made simultaneously under their reigns.¹⁵

Mapping the globe, and different imperial spaces within it, was of necessity a cooperative global endeavor, yet the necessity and desirability of cooper­ation was also always tempered by the competition between imperial centers. The extent of cooperation versus competition fluctuated at different times according to a variety of circumstances. A certain measure of openness was essential to laying claim to territories mapped and to asserting one's expertise. The surveying and cartographical work was greatly facilitated through international cooperation and communication between the scholars in centers of learning such as Paris, Beijing and Muscovy who carried out the work and who were often members of the Academies of Sciences of more than one country. There was also formal exchange of information between the various courts. The Kangxi emperor sent a copy of his recently completed atlas to Peter the Great in 1721. A few years later, a Russian embassy to Beijing

1 ⁵ For an argument that Peter's interest in cartography was not only a question of importing European technology, but also grew also out of more long-term indigenous cartographic traditions that had themselves emerged out of the demands of statecraft, see DenisJ. B. Shaw, "Mapmaking, Science and State Building in Russia before Peter the Great,” Journal of Historical Geography 31 (2005), 409-29. offered as a gift a 1725 atlas by Johann Homann that had been printed at Nuremberg and included maps of the Caspian Sea as well as of Kamchatka— an area of particular interest to the Qing court. The Kangxi maps were also sent to Paris for engraving, from whence they circulated quite widely through­out Europe in various forms.

Yet, at other times, secrecy and mistrust were the order of the day. Sino- European relations began to founder over disputes concerning the practice of Catholicism in China and what kind of foreign supervision European mis­sionaries in China should be working under.¹⁶ The Qing court had been eager to employ European missionary scientists as free agents, but was not receptive when foreign entities wanted representation in China, whether in the form of papal supervision of missionaries, or requests for rights of diplomatic residency. After 1706, the Kangxi emperor required all Jesuits remaining in China to sign an agreement stating that they would not return to Europe without imperial permission. Mapping activity continued in the context of these tensions, but gradually increasing amounts of secrecy surrounded these endeavors; under the reigns of the Yongzheng (1722 to 1735) and Qianlong emperors (1735 to 1796), Jesuits at court would still be given a role in map-making, but it would be more limited, and access to geographic information more tightly constrained.

Antoine Gaubil was a Jesuit missionary who arrived in Beijing shortly after the death of the Kangxi emperor. He was soon pressed into cartographic service under the Yongzheng emperor. His collected letters provide a mar­velous source for information on the Qing court, particularly with regard to its relations with Europe and the ongoing collection of geographic know­ledge. He was especially interested in regions to the north of China where Russian exploration was also occurring. A letter he penned in the autumn of 1726 mentions receiving two maps made by M. Delisle,¹⁷ and further asserts that the correction made by him with regard to the lake to the east of the Caspian Sea accorded well with the findings of the Jesuits in China. He further reports that another of the Jesuits at the court in Beijing would forward to Paris what he had learned in the palace regarding the Kalmuk Tartars.¹⁸

1 ⁶ The Russian Orthodox Church in Beijing operated under separate arrangements.

1 ⁷ From the context it is not clear whether he is referring to Guillaume Delisle in Paris, or his brother, Joseph Nicholas, who moved to Russia in the same year. Gaubil would correspond extensively with Joseph Nicholas in Russia in the coming years.

1 ⁸ Antoine Gaubil, Correspondence de Pekin, 1722-1759 (Geneva: Libraire Droz, 1970) pp. 116-17. Translation from French by the author.

It seems that preparations for the Treaty of Kiakhta (ratified in 1728) spurred further geographical interest and preparations at the Qing court. Gaubil relates that in January 1727 a group of Jesuits was called to the palace, where they were quizzed on their geographical knowledge. Having appar­ently measured up, they were then brought to another location where they were presented with an assortment of atlases with maps of the four major continents and further questioned. They were then given the commission to make a map of the countries situated between the Amur River, the North Sea and the Eastern Sea. In the course of the commission, they had the opportunity to examine a variety of maps held in the palace and to interview travelers who had been to the areas in question. The commission accounts at least in part for Gaubifs eagerness for cartographic information on Russia, whether in correspondence with fellow Jesuits in France, or with Joseph Nicholas Delisle in Russia.

The preparations for the treaty negotiations also involved additional diplomatic activity. In 1725, Moscow sent another embassy to Beijing. The visit occasioned a great number of questions on the part of the Qing court to the Jesuits in Peking. They were particularly interested in knowing what questions had been put to the Jesuits by members of the embassy, whether in respect of religion or other topics. Unsatisfied with the answer that the Russians had asked about the Dutch activities in Batavia, the questioner is said to have replied that the ambassador "M. Sava, is a European with more than fifty Europeans in his entourage. I doubt that these people are coming here for commerce; they come to inform themselves on the state of things.”¹⁹ In other words, those at court doubted that the embassy was inspired only by an interest in trade, but believed it had further intelligence designs as well. Gaubil, in his response, took the opportunity to describe Russian patronage of arts and sciences, perhaps in the dual hope of inspiring respect for Imperial Russian scientific and artistic achievements and spurring the Qing court to compete in this realm. More specifically, he wrote:

I took the floor and made common ground regarding the protection that the Russians were giving to the arts, which had attracted many European workers that were quite well paid. I spoke of the observatory that they are considering building in St. Petersburg, and of the great estimation in which the scholars of Europe are currently held in Russia, I also added that I knew of two capable astronomers who had recently journeyed from France to St. Petersburg, invited by the Tsarina.

1⁹ Gaubil, Correspondance de Pekin, p. 173.

Later in the same letter, he added that “the Russian embassy gave no pleasure to the emperor, and we had occasion to believe that the Prince would report everything he learned through us about Russia to the emperor.”^[258] From these accounts, it is clear that competition between the empires was intense, and mistrust was growing.

Competition with Russia formed the topic of other letters written in the same year. In his annual letter to Father Gaillard, Gaubil relates that on 16 March he had been able to meet with representatives from the Russian ambassador, and that he personally preferred to keep a certain distance in relation to the negotiations at Kiakhta. More specifically, Gaubil did not want to travel with the ambassador's retinue, nor did he want any other Jesuits from the court to make the return trip to Russia with the group.

Yet, Gaubil was keen to learn what he could about Russian activities in the border regions. He was especially interested in information regarding Kamchatka, or Jesso as the French called it, and divulges what he had learned about Russian plans for the first Kamchatka expedition—namely, that: “The Tsarina has given the order to equip vessels on the coast of Jesso that are to reconnoiter and prowl the coasts of Japan, Korea, and China.” And that “sailors, pilots, carpenters, geographers, and officers had already arrived at Erguskoy [Irkutsk] with the items necessary for the expedition.”^[259] In a later letter, he asserted:

It will be up to the Muscovites to instruct us on whether large ships will be able to navigate the strait that separates Jesso from Tartary. It is also by them that we may be able to be instructed on geographical points regarding the northern, western and eastern coasts of Jesso, and on navigation from the gulf and the Kamchatka sea to the lands of Jesso, Japan, Korea and China. If Russian establishments are able to construct the vessels and have the other things necessary for navigation, it would be easy for them to come to the ports of China by the strait between Jesso and Tartary if they can get through, and if not, they could easily come to China via the east of Jesso in passing by the Ryukyu islands.²²

The fact that Gaubil could not get information from the Chinese side made him especially eager for whatever he could learn about Russia whether from contacts in France, or directly from Russia. The Qing court was also eager for this information, and pressed the Jesuits for what they could learn.

Demands on the Jesuits for information about Russia and its neighboring countries grew especially intense in 1729 during the preparations for a Chinese embassy to Russia. Gaubil was asked to map out Russia's borders with all of its neighboring lands and stated specifically that anything to do with Russia was of the utmost importance. The court was also interested in revolution in Persia, in connections between the Turks and Russia, the war with Sweden (by then over), “the great number of Europeans in the Russian army, and those who went there in pursuit of the arts and sciences, but above all relations between Muscovites and other Europeans.” Other questions ranged from Russia's ancient history to information on a possible route to China from Europe via the Arctic Sea and of course the route from Beijing to Moscow. Later in the same letter, Gaubil relates that there were those in China who wished that Persia and Turkey, or even Sweden, would make war against Russia, no doubt to keep its great power in check.^[260]

Meanwhile, cartographic activity continued apace in both countries. In 1717, Peter I had commissioned scaled maps of the entire empire, based on the coordinate system using latitude and longitude. Peter's imperially spon­sored maps would first appear in 1734 in an atlas published by I. K. Kirilov, and more officially in 1745 in the Atlas Russicus, over which Joseph Nicolas Delisle presided.^[261] Meanwhile, the survey maps commissioned by the Yongzheng emperor that covered territory including not only all of China, but also extending north to include all of the Russian Empire and west to the Mediterranean, would be completed by circa 1735. A letter by Gaubil to J. N. Delisle dated 1732 asking for precise coordinates of several locations within Russia—Archangel, Astrakhan, Tobolsk, Lake Baikal, the mouth of the Lena and Kamchatka—ideally together with a map, indicates that work on the Yongzheng map was ongoing at that point.^[262] Unlike Delisle's Atlas Russicus, however, the information in the Yongzheng map would remain guarded within the court and did not circulate through publication.

Exploration and expansion in the Russian Empire

Cartographic activity was, of course, closely related to exploration itself. A multifaceted literature of exploration also burgeoned in each empire

Figure 12.3 “Karte des Reisewegs der 1. Kamtschatkaexpedition von Tobolskbis nach Kamtschatka mit ethnographischen Darstellungen." (1729) by Pjotr Awraamowitsch Tschaplin (Peter Chaplin). (Cod. Ms. Asch 246, Lower Saxonian State and University Library, Gottingen).

during the eighteenth century. The embassies themselves collected and recorded information regarding the regions through which they traveled. Eberhard Ysbrand-Ides and Adam Brand both published travelogues based on the journeys they undertook as part of the 1692-94 Russian embassy to Beijing. These illustrated accounts are not confined to routes and topograph­ical features, but also show an interest in the peoples of Siberia and their livelihood. Only a few years after this embassy, in 1697, a group of Cossacks explored Kamchatka, and in 1711 an exploratory mission visited the Kurile Islands. 1719 would see another voyage to Kamchatka, allowing progress in mapping the Kurile Islands. However, not all Russian geographical attention was focused on Siberia. In the 1710s, effort was also expended towards finding a viable sea route to India.

With the establishment of the Academy of Sciences in 1725, the infrastruc­ture was in place to support more systematic and extensive exploration both by land and by sea. Under its auspices, Russia would make two more major expeditions to Kamchatka and the Kurile Islands. The first, alluded to in Gaubil's letter above, occurred from 1725 to 1730. It was led by Captain Vitus Bering. A route map made by Peter Chaplin in 1729 on a Mercator projection details: the route taken; geographical features encountered, including both rivers and settlements; coastlines; ethnographic sketches of peoples encoun­tered; and even a somewhat cartoonish depiction of the explorers themselves at the farthest extent of their voyage in a boat off the far coast (Figure 12.3). The international interest in the findings of this expedition is demonstrated by inclusion of maps of Bering's explorations from Tobolsk to Kamchatka in D'Anville's 1737 Nouvelle Atlas de la Chine.

As the first Kamchatka expedition was unable to determine whether Northeast Asia and North America were connected by land, a second exped­ition was proposed. The second, also led by Bering, was a full decade in duration, lasting from 1733 to 1743. More ambitious than the first, it had three main goals, each to be carried out by a different subset of the expedition party. One goal was to explore and map the coast of Siberia; a second was to search for a passage by sea from Okhotsk to the Kuril Islands and to Japan; the third was to attempt an actual voyage to the coast of North America. In addition, the expedition included a contingent of scholars from the Academy of Sciences charged with studying the peoples, natural environment and history of Siberia. The fruits of the expedition included extensive studies in botany, natural history, ethnography and of course cartography. The land expedition, led by Gerhard Friedrich Muller and Johann Georg Gmelin, surveyed Siberia's geography, its plant and animal life, and also its inhabitants. This information, together with documents collected from local archives, would form the basis for Muller's Description of the Siberian Kingdom, published in Russian in 1750, and his Sammulung Russischer Geschichte (Collection of Russian History), published in 1759, as well as two four-volume works by Gmelin: Reise durch Siberien (Travels through Siberia), which first appeared in 1751 to 1752, and Flora Siberica, which appeared between 1749 and 1769. Other scholars in this contingent of the second expedition included Stepan Krasheninnikov (1711 to 1755) and Georg Wilhelm Steller (1709 to 1746).

Under Catherine II (1762 to 1796), many more expeditions were sponsored through the Academy of Sciences. Generally speaking, these expeditions were designed to survey the empire more thoroughly in ways that would both add to knowledge and facilitate the exploitation of natural resources. During the 1760s and 1770s, no fewer than five major expeditions were made. These included an Orenburg expedition, whose leadership included Peter Simon Pallas, and an Astrakan expedition, whose leadership included Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin (nephew to Georg Gmelin). Pallas was especially prolific. His reports appeared in Russian, German, French and English editions under the general title Journey through Various Provinces of the Russian Empire (1771 to 1776). He also published on botany (Flora Rossica, 1784 to 1788) and, at Catherine's behest, compiled a dictionary of all languages, which included almost as many languages (200) as words (273). Gmelin's expedition mainly explored the Caspian and Caucasus. He did not leave the same kind of prolific record as Pallas, for he died captive in a prison in Ak-Mechet.

The Academy expeditions also gave rise to a series of ethnographic surveys. Johann Gottlieb Georgi, who took part in Pallas's Orenburg expedition, published a four-volume work that included descriptions of the inhabitants of Siberia based both on his own observations and those of others. The title, in direct translation from the German, reads: Description of AU the Nationalities of the Russian Empire. It was published in Russian, German, French and eventually English. Its subtitle, Their Way of Life, Religion, Customs, Dwellings, Clothing and Other Characteristics, again in direct translation from the German, gives one a sense of the range of the contents. Heavily illustrated, this work has been called “the first ethnographic survey of the Russian empire.”^[263] The work has also been described as Linnean in its efforts to categorize the peoples of the Russian Empire. And indeed, Georgi did engage in personal correspondence with the Dutch taxonomist. While remarkable in its scope, Georgi's work was by no means unique in the interest it took in the peoples of the Russian Empire and the effort it made to depict them. A number of additional exploratory missions would be undertaken in the 1780s and 1790s, and more scholarly works of a similar nature would derive from them. Among these later expeditions was another by Pallas in 1793 to 1794. Afterwards, Pallas published an account in two volumes illustrated by Christian Gottfried Heinrich Geissler, who accompanied him on the trip. The illustrations include ethnographic images of peoples of various ethnicities, animals, landscapes and maps. Geissler also published a series of additional ethnographically- oriented albums based on his time in Russia in the 1790s.^[264]

Generally speaking, the Academy expeditions were designed to facilitate a better command of knowledge of the lands, peoples and other resources of the Russian Empire. The fruits of the research carried out in conjunction with the Academy expeditions sponsored by Catherine II were so prolific that they caused Willam Coxe, author of Travels into Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark, to remark in print that “perhaps no country can boast, within the space of so few years, such a number of excellent publications on its internal state, on its natural productions, on its topography, geography, and history; on the manners, customs, and languages of the different people.”^[265]

There would have been no reason for Coxe to have been aware of the Qing dynasty's contemporaneous production of both pictorial ethnographic works and increasingly detailed and extensive maps. Yet, around 1750, the Qianlong emperor commissioned an illustrated compendium describing over 300 of its frontier peoples and tributaries. This work was in many ways a more comprehensive empire-wide version of the provincial “Miao Albums” made to assist administrators in governing areas heavily populated by cultur­ally non-Chinese peoples in remote regions. The Qing Imperially Commis­sioned Illustrations of Tributary Peoples (Huang Qing zhigong tu) represented Qing power at the height of its territorial reach. It included Central Asian tribes on the border with Russia who submitted to the Qing in the wake of the Zunghar conquests, which were completed in 1759, as well as the Torghuts, who voluntary returned to Qing territory and rule from the region of the Volga River basin where they had migrated several generations earlier. At the same time, the Qianlong emperor also sponsored additional mapping projects that encompassed not only the Qing dynasty, but also the entire Russian Empire, reaching north to the Arctic Sea, west to the Caspian and east to Kamchatka. These maps, although not widely distributed, would form the basis of Julius von Klaproth's nineteenth-century maps of Central Asia. Knowledge of frontier areas, especially in Xinjiang—the “New Territories”— was furthered by highly educated Chinese exiled to the region for political reasons. Their scholarship played an important part in making the area and its local conditions accessible to a broader audience. In short, knowledge of new territories and the management of peoples of a variety of ethnicities were central to the growth and maintenance of both the Qing and Russian Empires during this period of intense mutual imperial expansion.

Patronage of art and literature

The final way in which the Russian and Qing Empires both competed to build legitimacy and create lasting legacies was through the patronage of arts and the creation of a distinctive literature. Art and literature were powerful ways to represent an empire both at home and abroad. Official histories, as well as other types of literature and works of art and architecture, all played a hand in projecting an image of empire whether Russian or Qing—or French or Ottoman for that matter—during the early modern period. The first actual histories of Russia appeared during the reign of Catherine the Great, and a major dictionary of the Russian language was also begun. Similarly, the Qianlong emperor commissioned special histories of the Manchu people, as well as multilingual dictionaries. All of these fostered a sense of imperial grandeur and identity and accrued legitimacy for the rulers who patronized their compilation.

Conclusion

During the early modern period, maintenance of viable imperial formations required the allegiance of a variety of peoples, access to the finest objects in the realm, the best scholarship that the known world had to offer, and the ability to demonstrate command over all of these things by incorporating them into one's own imperial milieu. As we have seen in the specific instances of Russia and China, this also called for successful tribute relation­ships and sponsorship of the most up-to-date science and technology. Imper­ial legitimacy also called for a thriving art and architecture as well as the development of a distinctive literature and a history that one could claim as one's own. Successful empires, or at least their leaders, were cognizant of the achievements of their competitors. Their success was always based at least in part on patronage of and cooperation from individuals of various origins. Early modern empires drew on the talents of various peoples, their ethnic or national origin being relatively unimportant in and of itself.

Yet, at the same time that imperial courts called on the service of experts of a wide variety of international backgrounds, managing difference within their expanding empires became a central preoccupation of rule. Especially in frontier areas, where the peoples they governed were from a variety of linguistic and cultural backgrounds, a tension existed in both Russia and China between the urge to “civilize”—i.e. to make the other like us with regard to manners, customs and values—and to perpetuate distinctions between those who governed and those who were governed. Was political unity throughout the empire best achieved through cultural sameness, or could political unity—and even greater imperial glory—be better achieved through the allowance of cultural difference? The answer to the question was debated. This evident tension may have also served to mask an equally important cultural shift in which the ruling houses embraced an epistemo­logical shift in what constituted knowledge—one that privileged the role of science and measurement—in order to bolster their own power and legitimacy.

The management of difference was also complicated by a desire to preserve the special position of those in power vis-a-vis the larger population. This latter imperative produced pressure to perpetuate difference in a way that would guarantee continuing privilege for the elite in the future—to somehow fix it indefinitely. This shift would allow those who successfully wielded tools of technology for state building, or their descendants, to see their own success as a product of who they were rather than what they had achieved through scholarship, collaboration and imperial sponsorship at a given historical moment. One way to perpetuate elite privilege was to link it with descent. Perpetuating privilege through the accumulation of wealth handed down through family lines was an age-old strategy. However, growing emphasis and awareness of ethnic difference introduced a new twist, one that would rigidify into concepts of racial difference in the nineteenth century. Manchu privilege, for example, hardened under the Qianlong emperor when the Han banners, formed of Chinese who had pledged loyalty to the Qing before the conquest, were dissolved due to financial constraints. Those Han Chinese who had been supported by the state as bannermen became “free” to earn a living in other ways, while Manchu bannermen retained privileges inherited with their position. In Russia, too, discourses of difference shifted during the eighteenth century in ways that gave increasing attention to ethnic identity.

In Europe, the rise of national consciousness played out differently. Political legitimacy was tightly connected to an ideology of sameness within the nation-state. Yet, a dynamic of difference similar to that found in the imperial context contributed to the European construction of itself vis-a-vis non-European “others” during the same period. Even as nations within Europe came to be constituted (at least ideologically) on the basis of majority nationalities, Europe itself came to be at least partially defined in relationship to its own perceived others. In the face of its own internal ethnic, linguistic and other national differences, Europe was also held together by the geo­graphic proximity of its countries and by certain commonalities in terms of shared experience. More specifically, the kinds of changes that European countries went through beginning in the eighteenth century—while not unlike those that would occur elsewhere—were so pivotal and thorough­going that they became in and of themselves essential to Europe's self­definition, thus contributing to its creation and coherence as a supra-national entity. This dynamic has obscured the fact that Qing China and Imperial Russia also underwent similar changes in terms of the technologies of rule at more or less the same time as other early modern powers, including many leading European countries.

In much of the scholarly literature on Russian history, the “Greats,” Peter and Catherine, have come to be characterized as Europeanizers. However, a world-historical perspective that encompasses a comparative view with the Qing court, which strategically deployed these same strategies, helps us to see that it was not European culture per se that allowed Russia to become the important empire it was. Rather, successful patronage and mastery of early modern technologies and tools of empire allowed both empires to thrive and to successfully compete with one another during the early modern period. Viewed in this way, it is not surprising that individuals of Germanic, Scottish, Danish and other origins were involved in exploring and document­ing the Russian Empire. Nor is it surprising that Manchus used European Jesuit labor in mapping the Qing Empire. Peter the Great, the Kangxi emperor, Catherine the Great and, to an extent, the Qianlong emperor, recognized that fluency in the emergent idioms of empire would be crucial to the success of their reigns and their fluency in the currency of early modern empire allowed them to compete successfully in this arena through­out the early modern period.

Yet, ethnic nationalisms, born at least partly through imperial cataloging and deployment of difference, would in due course come to play havoc with the imperial visions of both Qing China and Russia. In China, rising Han nationalism confronted Manchu privilege, while in the Russian Empire a Slavic backlash pushed against the reforms of the eighteenth century. In this context, leaders in both empires would feel obliged to cater to internal nationalisms to maintain their own positions. As a result, each would need to weigh the use of technologies perceived as foreign against their own survival as imperial formations by appearing to patronize important internal majority constituencies. Thus, the documentation, and thereby the creation, of ethnic difference undertaken under empire proved to be a double-edged sword.

FURTHER READING

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