The Immobile Empire is the English translation of L'empire Immobile, Ou, Le Choc Des Mondes: Récit Historique, a book of history published in French 1989 by the French politician and writer Alain Peyrefitte and translated into English in 1992. The book gives a sweeping narrative of the British Embassy of Sir George Macartney to the Qianlong Emperor of China in 1793. The book was translated into English, Chinese, Dutch, and Portuguese. Peyrefitte contends that the frustration of the mission and the stand-off in relations between Great Britain and China over diplomatic and audience ritual was caused by the ignorant intransigence and cultural conceit of the imperial court. The empire was "immobile" because these attitudes stifled China's natural creativity and kept it bureaucratic, static, and feeble over the following century and a half.
Peyrefitte used his official connections to gain access to archives in Beijing's Palace Museum and organized a team of researchers to explore them. They found documents concerning the mission, some of which had not been opened since the 1790s, and translated a collection of them.[1]
The book was widely reviewed, and eventually came out in 36 editions between 1989 and 2007 in 7 languages [2] The reviews reflect larger controversies over China's traditional foreign relations and relations with the west over the last two centuries, particularly attitudes toward globalization and empire. Jane Kate Leonard writing in the American Historical Review was critical, concluding that the book was "a pretentious and undigested work of limited antiquarian interest."[3] The review also contends that Peyrefitte's work does not add to earlier scholarship by J.L. Cranmer-Byng and Earl H. Pritchard. The University of Chicago historian James L. Hevia published a revisionist study which specifically argued that Peyrefitte and others of the "free trade" interpretation overemphasized economic motives and suggested instead that the British and the Manchu empires both were expanding and both were as much concerned with "ritual" (in the sense of cultural forms) as with profits as such.[4] Princeton University scholar Benjamin A. Elman commented that Peyrefitte painted a "dark picture" of China and recommended that readers consult other works as a corrective.[5]
