Small Players in the Big Game: King Leopold II's Diplomatic Brokers in China, 1865-1909.

This project focuses on the understudied presence of Belgium in late Qing China, which was conspicuous in terms of infrastructural investments and closely tied to the imperialist ambitions of King Leopold II. It proposes a close and long overdue examination of Leopold's complicated web of actors in China during the monarch's reign (1865-1909). Although the King's various 'diplomatic' agents were in close contact with the Palace, their own agendas were not always tied to a strictly 'Leopoldian' or 'Belgian' set of interests, but sometimes also to those of other powers active in China. By combining socio-cultural microlevel analyses with an investigation of larger politico-economic processes, this project will reveal the thoughts, practices and networks of these border-crossing people, men and some women, from the often-neglected perspective of 'small powers' like Belgium. Belgian state and non-state agents are rarely if ever mentioned in major studies on late Qing China. Moving the attention beyond the dichotomy of metropole-periphery that still constrains much of the current literature, this actor-based socio-cultural history of Leopoldian/Belgian expansion in China will offer a more layered understanding of 'Western' imperialist designs, that opens windows onto small state powers in East Asia, inter-imperial collaboration and competition, and the still barely studied workings of behind-the-scenes (dynastic) diplomacy in semi-colonial spaces as China.

Keywords:CONTEMPORARY HISTORY, BELGIAN FOREIGN POLICY, COLONIAL HISTORY, DIPLOMATIC HISTORY

Disciplines:Diplomacy, Political history

Project type:Collaboration project