In The Peking Gazette: A Reader in Nineteenth-Century Chinese History, Lane J. Harris offers an innovative text covering the extraordinary ruptures and remarkable continuities in the history of China’s long nineteenth century (1793-1912) by providing scholarly introductions to thematic chapters of translated primary sources from the government gazette of the Qing Empire. The Peking Gazette is a unique collection of primary sources designed to help readers explore and understand the policies and attitudes of the Manchu emperors, the ideas and perspectives of Han officials, and the mentality and worldviews of several hundred million Han, Mongol, Manchu, Muslim, and Tibetan subjects of the Great Qing Empire as they discussed and debated the most important political, social, and cultural events of the long nineteenth century. This volume is related to the primary source database compiled by the author entitled Translations of the Peking Gazette Online and produced by Brill (2017). For a video with explanation by the author, visit Brill's YouTube channel

In the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), China experienced far greater access to political information than suggested by the blunt measures of control and censorship employed by modern Chinese regimes. A tenuous partnership between the court and the dynamic commercial publishing enterprises of late imperial China enabled the publication of gazettes in a wide range of print and manuscript formats. For both domestic and foreign readers these official gazettes offered vital information about the Qing state and its activities, transmitting state news across a vast empire and beyond. And the most essential window onto Qing politics was the Peking Gazette, a genre that circulated globally over the course of the dynasty. This illuminating study presents a comprehensive history of the Peking Gazette and frames it as the cornerstone of a Qing information policy that, paradoxically, prized both transparency and secrecy. Gazettes gave readers a glimpse into the state’s inner workings but also served as a carefully curated form of public relations. Historian Emily Mokros draws from international archives to reconstruct who read the gazette and how they used it to guide their interactions with the Chinese state. Her research into the Peking Gazette’s evolution over more than two centuries is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the relationship between media, information, and state power.

By looking at China from the periphery, this study shows how European sources offer a unique way of expanding the knowledge about the gazette of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its interconnected history illustrates how the Chinese gazette, as translated by European missionaries, became a major source for reflections on state and society by Enlightenment thinkers.