although they generally treat Asiatic subjects with regrettable
indifference, to that wider circle of English readers on whose opinion and
efforts the development of our political and commercial relations with the
greatest of Oriental States will mainly depend.

D. C. BOULGER, April 28, 1893.




CHAPTER I

THE EARLY AGES


The Chinese are unquestionably the oldest nation in the world, and their
history goes back to a period to which no prudent historian will attempt
to give a precise date. They speak the language and observe the same
social and political customs that they did several thousand years before
the Christian era, and they are the only living representatives to-day of
a people and government which were contemporary with the Egyptians, the
Assyrians, and the Jews. So far as our knowledge enables us to speak, the
Chinese of the present age are in all essential points identical with
those of the time of Confucius, and there is no reason to doubt that
before his time the Chinese national character had been thoroughly formed
in its present mold. The limits of the empire have varied from time to
time under circumstances of triumph or disunion, but the Middle Kingdom,
or China Proper, of the eighteen provinces has always possessed more or
less of its existing proportions. Another striking and peculiar feature
about China is the small amount of influence that the rest of the world