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So my name is Nora Yitong Qiu. I am a lecturer assistant professor at University College of London. I teach modern East Asian history from 1600

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to about 2000 or just yesterday. I work on topics related to economic history, financial history, material culture, and also interested in larger questions of modernity

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and inequality in my research. So during that period, well, Qing was experiencing a very complex time. So it was threatened by both external forces

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from other imperial powers but also has to deal with its own internal rebellions. And in that time, they also met the force of modernization. Because modernization, or depending

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on your definitions, at least from an economic history term, it is a process in which people's lives are fundamentally shaped by a change of technology. People were no longer using organic powers.

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They were using steam powers. They are burning fossil fuels. They could travel much faster. Force-- they have much more powerful military

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and artilleries that they could use to conquer other places. So we're seeing, with these large changes, Qing has also to mitigate and defend its territory. So therefore, modernization in this period

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was not just a teleological process that every place is experiencing the last 200 years, but I'd say both a response and also an internal dialogue that the government was trying to, let's say,

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deal with in this time period. So the consequence of modernization, well, at least two layers of consequences from the institution or the state level.

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The Qing, by the time of 1906, had went through a serious reform. It had a new legal system, a new set of institutions that mimics, actually, a lot of governments in the world.

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They have studied about at least 15 countries' legal systems and consolidated and made it into another Qing legal code. And that legal code had consequences in both PR China and also, of course, Republic of China.

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There were heavy legacies of these institutional reforms. For instance, I have an article working on bank reforms. And in this, we see that the Qing government, at the first time, introduces new concepts of banking

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and finance into the Chinese words and then into the people who work on commerce in China. So they were actually the forebearer of the work on translations and the work on introducing

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these modern concepts. In the local level, then we have the consequence of modernization. A, because of the establishment of railways and telegraph,

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we have large migrations and movement of people became possible in this time period. So you would have seasonal workers, for example, entering or exiting Manchuria when the labour was demanded

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in harvest season. We would have, let's say, the people who would come to treaty ports looking for work or for constructions or for working as businessmen

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or women and then connecting the hinterland towards the coastal area. So we have different modes of economic production. And, well, the other side was the third side

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that it has is on the gender dynamics and family dynamics because of modernization or, let's say, increasing encounters and study and contact with other countries.

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Of course, this does not mean that they didn't have any contact. But the amount of contact increased, that people were exposed to new ideas,

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whether it's about law, about rights, about different systems, or about what should men and women actually be doing in a society had changed fundamentally. And of course, depending on where the community was based,

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some of them had connections with, for example, Japanese universities because they went to study abroad in Japan. Some of them have connection with German doctors

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because they were trained in German for medical things. So therefore, you have different communities talking and thinking about, well, we have seen other societies working this way. What should we do about our society?

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Then you have different concepts of modernity emerge in these communities. So therefore, there were at least three layers, so from the macro government perspective to the local level

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to the family level. I think the reason for us to study modernization-- well, I will say three things, actually, for threefold answer. The first was that studying modernization of the Qing period

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gives you another layer of understanding of the types of modernization. Modernization was not just one way, whether it's the British way or the French way or the German

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way, but could be many, many-- let's say it could be achieved by many methods and also were also fundamentally localised practises. Then Qing modernization or, in general,

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China's modernization will give you another perspective and another possibility for both policymakers and also, of course, historians and students to understand the complexity that the society experienced

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when we have such profound changes. The second reason of studying modernization for both the British and/or other audiences in the English-speaking world was that they would start to see

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the complexity of the reverse change that the British experienced when they started to-- whether colonise or contact with the local people. Because in the archives that Adam Matthew holds

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for this collection, we would see that a lot of, let's say, the agents and the people who worked with local population developed very different ideas about modernization and about how, actually, we could help

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or we could gain from this process. So we could see this very, let's say, multilateral and bilateral change between cultures and between agencies on the ground.

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The third reason of studying modernization was because first, let's say we have-- well, after about a hundred years passed, we were now living in a ever-globalised world.

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And we could see that conflicts were arising when we have different ideas about justice, we have different ideas about rights. And, well, the problems that we were encountering now also

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happened in the past time period. So therefore, studying modernization in the past and studying these encounters with conflicts or cooperation also provide us the present-day knowledge about how to negotiate

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and how to work in a more globalised world. OK. So these sources were government, let's say authorised communications

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between the British consulate and in different treaty ports and also, of course, towards their mother countries. So these sources, in other words, were official correspondence that the people

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on the ground, work in the local area, wanted the other side, whether it's another city or thousands of miles away, the local government wanted to know.

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So therefore, they gave us a window towards the institutional response and its agenda and its reaction towards the Qing society. And also, we could study the modes or the motivations

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of the British, let's say, agencies or the British government have in the local area. And also, it gives us a rare peek about the debates that the parliament were

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having in their business with, let's say, China's treaty port and with Chinese merchants. For instance, there were one correspondence, which happened to appear in my study on the Yangtze Delta,

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was on ships' rights of entering Yangtze River. And there were fierce debates, both in the parliament in Britain and also in the local area, on whether should we ask for these rights.

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How should we ask for these rights? There were people who disagree with them, saying that, well, this is their territory. Why we would have our warship while shipping into it?

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And on the other hand, however, we have, of course, merchants saying that, well, we need them to protect our ships. So we can see both angles in these documents.

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The other perspective that these documents would provide, actually, out of expectation, was that in these documents, you could see private and personal emotions and responses. Because during that time, sending telegraphs

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were quite expensive. So therefore, they would both write private messages and public messages in the telegrams that was paid by the government.

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So you could actually have a rare peek on-- well, not only just use their diaries, but a rare peek in these official documents about the personal emotions and personal thoughts

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on the happenings on the ground. I think for the past 30 years, we see that, because with the opening up of China and with China's archive, we see a lot of very detailed studies

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that questions the traditional narrative in which we have a simplistic understanding of, the British people think or the British government act 1, 2, 3, 4 ways while the Chinese government reacted 5, 6, 7,

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8 ways. So therefore, these large narratives has already been dismantled by the study of these local and central archives.

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So some of the recent, of course, books by the time of 2025-- of course, depending on the longevity of this video, we will have new studies.

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But by the time of 2025, we have new books on, for example, labour history, new books on gender history, how gender reacted and family reacted in this time period. We have books on diplomatic exchanges

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and on the art of translation. How did translation led or misled these negotiations? We also have detailed legal studies on the changes that has happening on the ground

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and on collaborations between different governments. I think there's another trend that was happening, both in European history and in Chinese history, was to, in many sense, debunk the myth that modernization

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has only one image. There was only one Western way of modernising or a Chinese way of modernising. These larger Western or Chinese labels will slowly wither away.

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Because they find that the British, the French, or even Scotland versus England have different opinions on modernization. The local government in London versus the local government

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in Edinburgh have their own agenda in how to clean the streets and how to manage their government on a local level. So therefore, these very detailed ground-level studies

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is going to be, I think, the next wave that we will see helping us to understand the complexity of modernity and the complexity of social and global interactions.

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So another note was these all, despite how I am telling you on the diversity of the opinions that has in the British government, it is only representing the English-speaking agents that

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is working on the ground. If you want to do a PhD study or further studies on the topic in this area, I would highly recommend you to read other sources in other languages.

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Because you would find that people's memory, when they are writing about these documents, were not trustworthy. It might be they are not just intentionally lying to you,

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but they memorise things in very different ways. So therefore, it is just like working with oral histories or working with diaries. We need multiple accounts to understand

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the complexity of one event or microhistory of negotiations. Because one side of the story is never, let's say, the full story. So this is the other thing that I

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want you to be aware of when you are looking into these archives.