The Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms, or Haiguo Tuzhi, is a 19th-century Chinese gazetteer compiled by scholar-official Wei Yuan and others, based on initial translations ordered by Special Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu.

The main principles advocated in the Treatise were later absorbed by the Self-Strengthening Movement, and the book also garnered significant interest in Japan and helped mould the country's foreign policy with respect to the West.

During his term in Canton (now Guangzhou) as Special Imperial Commissioner, Lin Zexu observed the might of British naval power and the inadequacies of the Chinese coastal defence system at first hand.

"[1] Wei completed his investigations of western penetration into East Asia in 1841,[6] and in the Treatise proposed the construction of a shipyard and arsenal at Canton and the employment of foreign engineers to teach marine navigation and weapons operation –"pioneer ideas in the military history of modern China".

[10] Japan had been forced open by US Commodore Matthew C. Perry less than a decade earlier and the purpose of the mission was to establish how China had fared following the country's defeat in the Second Opium War (1856–1860).

Takasugi was aware of the forward thinking exhibited by those such as Wei on the new threats posed by Western "barbarians"[11] and later recorded in his diary: "The philosophy of the Chinese people stands poles apart from the correct path for China's future development.

[13] Similarly, after reading the Treatise, scholar and political reformer Yokoi Shōnan became convinced that Japan should embark on a "cautious, gradual and realistic opening of its borders to the Western world" and thereby avoid the mistake China had made in engaging in the First Opium War.