The Immobile Empire

Über

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. Published originally in French, the book was then 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.
In doing the research for the book, Peyrefitte used his official connections to gain then unprecedented access to archives in Beijing's Palace Museum and organized a team of researchers to explore them.