Foreign Office Imperialism: British Consuls and Diplomats in China’s treaty port

A lecture by Dr Isabella Jackson (History, TCD) for the Centre for International History Seminar Series.

The crises, conflicts and quotidian business of British representatives in late 19th and early 20th-century China were managed from the Foreign Office. The work of the Foreign Office was underpinned by the same chauvinistic assumptions of the racial and national superiority of white Britons that characterised all British imperialism. But race-based prejudice was in greater tension with the diplomatic work of the Foreign Office than its explicitly imperial counterparts in the Colonial and India Offices. Foreign Office Imperialism shaped the British presence in East Asia; we must understand its tensions and tendencies if we are to understand the nature of British imperialism in this region.

The Centre for International History draws on the burgeoning insights of scholars in the past few decades that history does not stop at the border of the nation-state.  International history explores comparative approaches and uncovers transnational flows of commerce, politics, culture, and ideas. The Centre's research seminars and public events will display these methods while examining historical developments across the globe especially in the late modern period.

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