the old mandarin conviction that China sat at the apex of world civilization no longer held true. China needed to look outside itself for answers to its quest for wealth and power. But most Qing officials were not ready for that perspective and in 1850, when Emperor Daoguang died and was replaced by a more traditionalist leader, Emperor Xianfeng, the court accused Xu Jiyu of “inflating the status of foreign barbarians” and banished him, along with other pro-Western officials, to the edges of the empire.
