Travel Writing and the Transformation of Qing China’s Perceptions of Brazil during the late Nineteenth Century

• In Event: Chinese and Brazilian Diasporic Cultural Convergences

Abstract

In the late 1880s, the Qing imperial court in Beijing sent the bureaucrat Fu Yunlong on a government-sponsored expedition to collect first-hand geographical information on Japan and countries in North and South America. Upon his return to China, Fu Yunlong presented a detailed report of his trip to the emperor that included ten volumes of information he collected on Brazil, from climate and topography to its political situation, industry and even customs and literature. Through the analysis of Fu Yunlong’s writings on Brazil, this paper aims to highlight the role that the production and circulation of geographical knowledge played in Qing foreign policy during the late nineteenth century. How did Fu Yunlong’s account mold the Qing court’s perceptions of Brazil and trigger changes in its approach to Chinese emigration to the Americas? My paper will put forth two arguments. First, Fu Yunlong’s writings transformed the Qing court’s view of Brazil, from terra incognita to a country ready to embrace successive waves of Chinese immigrants in order to develop its potential in agriculture and mining. Second, the image of Brazil that Fu Yunlong’s account instilled in the minds of Qing officials led them to reconsider their opposition to Chinese emigration to the country.

Author

• Eric Vanden Bussche, Stanford University