ABSTRACT
This chapter explores British attitudes towards China’s political reforms in the first decade of the twentieth century and places them in the wider context of Britain’s imperial project. At least since the middle of the nineteenth century, Western diplomats had been acutely aware that the Qing government was under threat. By the turn of the century, it was clear to British observers that the Chinese government was under threat. Not only had the Boxer Rebellion, and its suppression by an international force, disrupted the Qing dynasty significantly, but revolutionary ideas were also beginning to spread throughout parts of China. The notion of constitutional change in China was quite a radical one, and indeed it seems as if the only way British observers could have been assured of the potential success of the Chinese reforms was through a far-reaching and complete change of many traditional practices.
