Report of the bailiff of the XII Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Beijing N.I. Lyubimov on interaction with Chinese officials (first half of the 19th century)

The Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in China for two centuries served as an outpost of Orthodoxy and a foreign policy landmark of the Russian state in China, our task is to analyze the report of the bailiff of the XII Russian Spiritual Mission N.I. Lyubimov. For 30 years of work in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs N.I. Lyubimov collected in his collection a weighty layer of official documents, personal and business correspondence, memories that he took when leaving Russia. After his death, the documents were found and today they are stored in the Russian State Historical Archive in St. Petersburg. On the basis of a detailed reference to historical documents, the features of the relationship between Russia and China in the second half of the 19th century are analyzed. A huge role in this was played by the personality of N.I. Lyubimov, who was directly involved in compiling reports on important events and actors in Chinese politics, I analyze the possibility of using them in matters of diplomacy, it is also noteworthy that the bailiff gives valuable advice on saving state funds abroad. The authors come to the conclusion that the Russian Spiritual Mission in China, in general, and its representatives, in particular, were a link between the two countries, a source of reliable information about the internal political life of the Qing Empire, about its language, traditions, history, culture and way of life. Representatives of this mission for a long time acted as an unofficial diplomatic representation of Russia in China

Nikolay Ivanovich Lyubimov, Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Beijing, Russian Orthodox Church, China, Russian-Chinese relations, archive, missionaries, Asian Department, officials, bailiff