| Summary: | 碩士 === 淡江大學 === 歷史學系碩士班 === 99 === During the period of Late Imperial China, the Policy of Purchasing Foreign Warships was reflected the indeed needs of national defense in Qing Dynasty, also the ultimate attempt to keep hegemony in East Asia. To against the military threaten from other various powers, the Qing Dynasty continually purchased the gunboats, cruiser, ironclad warship and other kinds of naval vessels. The Minister of Beiyang Li Hongzhang had led the development of policy of ship-buying, and also built the first modernize navy of China - The Beiyang Fleet.
In the year of 2008, there was a new version of Li Hongzhang quan ji（The Collected Works of Li Hongzhang, 李鴻章全集）published at that time. It shows that it collected the plenty of Archives of the Grand Council, the secret edicts and some personal letters between Li Hongzhang and his private staff. These historical materials had not been used efficiently in the past research. But this research is based on the Collected Works of Li Hongzhang and discovered the management background of Jiangnan Machinery Manufacture Bureau（江南機器製造局）, Li’s personal intelligence network to investigate the technology of Western navy, and the unpredictable event in politics. It was the main reasons why the content of the Policy of Purchasing Foreign Warships would continually changes at that time.
In this research, it was pointed out that the development of Li’s personal navy knowledge was connected with the evolution of Policy of Purchasing Foreign Warships. It had four important changes in this affair such as, at First, the first contact with Western army when Li Hongzhang compete for Taiping Rebellion; second, the transition of the Policy of Purchasing Foreign Warships, third, the content of Policy of Purchasing Foreign Warships after the debate on coast defense and last, the peak or stagnation time of purchasing warships activity after Sino-French war. Through the historical investigation of these four important variations, this research can provide the integrated statement for the Policy of Purchasing Foreign Warships in Late Imperial China.
|
|---|
