Waiting for the Barbarians

Waiting for the Barbarians: A History of Geopolitics in Early Modern China, 1680-1850 is a groundbreaking examination of how Qing China reimagined its imperial identity through territorial expansion, ideological adaptation, and cartographic precision. Between 1680 and 1850, the Qing integrated Central Asia, Tibet, and Mongolia into a vast, multiethnic empire—challenging traditional Confucian distinctions between civilization and “barbarism.”

Bridging political thought, cultural geography, and geodetic science, this book reveals how Qing rulers legitimized territorial claims using symbolic geography—such as surveys of the Yellow River’s headwaters—and advanced tools like triangulation and the theodolite. These efforts fostered a new understanding of spatial order among Qing officials, intellectuals, and administrators.

Engaging critically with New Qing History, the study situates Qing expansion within a global context, comparing its strategies with those of Russia and the United States. It traces the transformation of the “barbarian” label from an ethnic category to a geopolitical one, reflecting deeper shifts in how the Qing conceptualized inclusion, sovereignty, and empire.

An essential resource for scholars and students of East Asian history, imperial studies, Qing politics, and historical cartography, this book provides an authoritative and accessible account of how early modern empires mapped, measured, and governed an increasingly interconnected world.

"Waiting for the Barbarians is a mature historical work that makes an important point; it examines in book length form questions that are timely and important, and presents its information in eminently readable form. It is based on broad and intelligent reading, careful and exhaustive research, and much thoughtful reflection on the subject matter. The author writes about Chinese science with crystal clarity, and remarkable grace. Underlying principles, sequences of events, and significances are explained, with just the right balance of west and east. Waiting for the Barbarians conveys scientific information and the Chinese understanding of it, in clear and vigorous fashion, a style which well suits Hu’s argument that China was on its way to modernity." —R. Kent Guy, University of Washington

"This study offers a fresh and persuasive perspective on how early modern Chinese geopolitical understanding and spatial sensibilities emerged out of four related ‘imagined territories’ spanning the Axial Age to the early modern era. This is important to how we, especially in the West, have come to a new understanding of the importance of the dynamic evolution of the Chinese empire in the early modern era." —R. Bin Wong, UCLA