Abstract: International audience; The last phase of the nineteenth-century China was in a state of dramatic political instability, caused both by foreign aggression and internal troubles. The fall of the Qing dynasty seemed more and more likely, and the presence of the foreign (people, goods, ideas) on the imperial soil aroused confl icting reactions: shame and pride, the desire to emulate and the desire to rekindle "traditional" culture(s), as well as the evidence of the necessity of rapid modernization, at least in the technical fi eld. Stretched betwe...
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