Asian Empire and British Knowledge: China and the Networks of British Imperial Expansion (Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies)

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series General Editors: Megan Vaughan, Kings’ College, Cambridge and Richa...

Author: Ulrike Hillemann

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Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series General Editors: Megan Vaughan, Kings’ College, Cambridge and Richard Drayton, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge This informative series covers the broad span of modern imperial history while also exploring the recent developments in former colonial states where residues of empire can still be found. The books provide in-depth examinations of empires as competing and complementary power structures encouraging the reader to reconsider their understanding of international and world history during recent centuries. Titles include Sunil S. Amrith DECOLONIZING INTERNATIONAL HEALTH India and Southeast Asia, 1930–65 Tony Ballantyne ORIENTALISM AND RACE Aryanism in the British Empire Robert J. Blyth THE EMPIRE OF THE RAJ Eastern Africa and the Middle East, 1858–1947 Roy Bridges (editor) IMPERIALISM, DECOLONIZATION AND AFRICA Studies Presented to John Hargreaves L. J. Butler COPPER EMPIRE Mining and the Colonial State in Northern Rhodesia, c.1930–64 Hilary M. Carey (editor) EMPIRES OF RELIGION T. J. Cribb (editor) IMAGINED COMMONWEALTH Cambridge Essays on Commonwealth and International Literature in English Michael S. Dodson ORIENTALISM, EMPIRE AND NATIONAL CULTURE India, 1770–1880 Ulrike Hillemann ASIAN EMPIRE AND BRITISH KNOWLEDGE China and the Networks of British Imperial Expansion B. D. Hopkins THE MAKING OF MODERN AFGHANISTAN Ronald Hyam BRITAIN’S IMPERIAL CENTURY, 1815–1914 A Study of Empire and Expansion, 3rd edn

Robin Jeffrey POLITICS, WOMEN AND WELL-BEING How Kerala Became a ‘Model’ Gerold Krozewski MONEY AND THE END OF EMPIRE British International Economic Policy and the Colonies, 1947–58 Sloan Mahone and Megan Vaughan (editors) PSYCHIATRY AND EMPIRE Javed Majeed AUTOBIOGRAPHY, TRAVEL AND POST-NATIONAL IDENTITY Francine McKenzie REDEFINING THE BONDS OF COMMONWEALTH 1939–1948 The Politics of Preference Gabriel Paquette ENLIGHTENMENT, GOVERNANCE AND REFORM IN SPAIN AND ITS EMPIRE 1759–1808 Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre IRISH AND INDIAN The Cosmopolitan Politics of Alfred Webb John Singleton and Paul Robertson ECONOMIC RELATIONS BETWEEN BRITAIN AND AUSTRALASIA 1945–1970 Kim A. Wagner (editor) THUGGEE Banditry and the British in Early Nineteenth-Century India Jon E. Wilson THE DOMINATION OF STRANGERS Modern Governance in Eastern India, 1780–1835

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–333–91908–8 (Hardback) 978–0–333–91909–5 (Paperback) (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

Asian Empire and British Knowledge China and the Networks of British Imperial Expansion Ulrike Hillemann Imperial College, London

© Ulrike Hillemann-Delaney 2009 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–20046–3 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

For my parents and Richard

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Contents Acknowledgements

viii

List of Abbreviations

x

1 Introduction 1.1 Britain and China – an overview 1.2 Methodological considerations

1 3 8

2 The Decline of Mythical China 2.1 The origin of language 2.2 Chinese style and British taste 2.3 A Chinese court at Brighton

16 17 21 27

3 At the China Coast 3.1 A diplomatic expedition 3.2 Chinese law and British rights 3.3 The unreliable interpreter 3.4 A barren land 3.5 Diplomacy and local knowledge 3.6 Trade and identity 3.7 British honour and opium

34 34 45 56 64 75 81 91

4 South and Southeast Asian Encounters 4.1 China’s neighbour 4.2 Chinese subjects for the empire 4.3 Co-operator and corruptor 4.4 British rule, Chinese societies 4.5 Educating the Chinese diaspora

106 107 120 130 135 141

5 Asian Networks and the British Isles 5.1 British Sinology 5.2 Saving China 5.3 Forces of free trade

150 152 168 171

6 Epilogue

188

Notes

193

Bibliography

236

Index

254 vii

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Cambridge European Trust, who made this work possible with their financial support. The History Faculty Trust and the St. Edmund’s College Tutorial award contributed to financing the travels to archives in London. I would also like to thank the staff at the Cambridge University Library, the British Library, the SOAS Archive, the Public Record Office and the Archive of the Baptist missionary society at the Angus Library Oxford who were always helpful and friendly. I am also grateful to the Bavarian State Library for granting permission for use of the cover illustration. This book is the result of a journey, which took me from Munich to Edinburgh and then to Cambridge. While I was an undergraduate at Munich, Eckhart Hellmuth introduced me to the fascinating world of 18th century British history. This interest was deepened by the teaching of Harry Dickinson and Nicholas Phillipson in Edinburgh. Cambridge opened new perspectives, especially on the history of the Extra-European world. The person who most influenced the shape of this work and the development of my understanding of history over the last years was, of course, my supervisor, Richard Drayton and I thank him for his patient guidance and unwavering support. Several people helped me by sharing their knowledge and advice: Chris Bayly, as well as Tim Harper, Peter Kornicki and Hans Van de Veen. Michael Dodson provided many useful ideas in the early stages of this work. Sunil Amrith, Felix Böcking, Christina Granroth, Emma Hunter, Florian Schui and Tobias Wolfhart read parts of the text and pointed out the inconsistencies. Matthias Georgi and Georg Vogeler have listened and discussed this study from its very beginning and even took the pains of reading through the entire work at the end. Ruth Cassidy also helped me to avoid some of the traps of the English language. Needless to say the blame for all the remaining errors lies with me. My greatest thanks go to my parents, who, without questioning, helped to finance this work. In addition, my father provided tireless computer support, which was truly invaluable, particularly in the last viii

Acknowledgements

ix

months. My greatest debt is to my husband Richard Delaney. Not only did he still pretend to find the topic interesting after all these years, he also read all the drafts to prevent the worst grammatical mistakes. Without his constant loving support and encouragement I could not have finished this work.

List of Abbreviations BFBS BL BMS CFR CWM EIC LMS Mss APAC PRO SOAS VOC

British and Foreign Bible Society British Library, London Archive of the Baptist Missionary Society, Angus Library, Oxford Canton Factory Records, APAC, BL Christian World Mission, SOAS East India Company London Missionary Society Manuscript Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections, British Library, London Public Record Office, London School of Oriental and Asian Studies, London Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie

x

1 Introduction

China had long enjoyed a mythical place as a prestigious civilisation at the edge of European experience. At the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, China was considered an obstacle to the development of Britain and was also viewed as inhibiting the progress of its own inhabitants, degenerating under a corrupt and arbitrary government. From being regarded as the domain of an ideal monarch and the origin of high quality products, it was now seen as a country that was militarily weak, ruled by an irrational tyrant, incapable of progress and culturally decayed. During this period before the Opium War in 1840, China had become a key focus of British commercial and missionary interests, partly as a result of British activity in India and Southeast Asia. As merchant and missionary interest in this great potential market of goods, consumers and souls increased, pressure mounted to acquire knowledge about China. Yet, this demand for knowledge could not be satisfied easily. China’s Qing dynasty would not allow European traders and missionaries to enter China. These twin forces of the will to knowledge yet the inability to satisfy that desire make China a particularly interesting case for the study of knowledge formation during this period of British imperial expansion and help to explain the marked deterioration of attitudes towards China. The starting point for this book is the diversity of British ideas of China in the different areas of contact between the British, the Chinese and the two empires. Neither in 1763 nor in 1840 was there one single ‘idea of China’, formed and changed only in the British Isles. The book therefore focuses on certain ‘contact zones’ in the system of British interest in the East to understand how the networks of imperial expansion shaped diverse British imaginations of China. It traces how these imaginations formed and were formed by the British search for new legitimate 1

2

Asian Empire and British Knowledge

and systematic knowledge about China. Here, India and Southeast Asia could be as important as Canton and the British Isles. At the Bengal border, China could be considered a mighty power and potential rival of Britain. Intelligence gathering about this unknown but potentially dangerous power was therefore one of the major impulses for knowledge formation in this area. In Southeast Asia, however, the Chinese were increasingly seen as exemplary subjects for the British Empire and in British eyes knowledge about Chinese law, language and racial features became key to successfully ruling over them. This study looks at British groups which had specific interests in Asia, especially the East India Company (EIC) employees, Protestant missionaries and free traders. It highlights the way these groups formed networks that linked the different places of British expansion. Through these networks, ideas were exchanged and transported between Southeast Asia, Bengal, London and Canton. Concepts and knowledge formed in one Asian country were considered applicable to other cultures in the region. Studying these networks, Asian Empire moves beyond the concentration on European intellectual history which characterises other studies of European views of China. It brings India and Southeast Asia into focus as significant sites of British–Chinese encounter. Yet, intellectual changes in Britain itself and their significance for changing perceptions of Asian cultures cannot be ignored. The book highlights the complex ways in which, for example, ideas of the scale of civilisations were influencing and were influenced by the British imperial expansion. In the years studied, the metropolis itself became increasingly shaped by the growing Asian empire, the ideas it provoked and the goods that were imported from the East. In particular, the fashion of Chinoiserie, inspired by silk and porcelain from China, sparked a controversy in Britain, which had a complex relationship with ideas coming back from Britain’s imperial expansion in Asia. With the growing empire in Asia, debates arose in Britain about how the British should deal with a growing non-white, non-settler dependent population. Deeply connected to these anxieties were questions of British identity, both in the metropolis and the periphery. To provide the background for the following study, this introduction first gives a brief narrative of British–Chinese relations from their beginnings to the Opium War in 1840. It then moves to a discussion of modern historiography of this relationship and European attitudes towards China before reflecting on the theoretical and methodological considerations which give a framework to this book.

Introduction 3

1.1 Britain and China – an overview The first regular contact with China in the early modern period was through the Jesuit mission to Beijing. The reports sent back by the Jesuit missionaries generated the enlightened idea of China. Was the Chinese language the original language or perhaps a model for a universal language? Was the Chinese Emperor a rational and moral ruler and were its scholar bureaucrats to be imitated? Confucius was viewed as the Chinese Socrates, a philosopher whose doctrines were based on pure reason, and China the shining example of a society in which reason had replaced superstitious religion. Chinese chronology was considered to be an important challenge to the chronology of the Bible and was used to question its authority. For the French physiocrats, like François Quesnay, China was the model of a state which recognised that all wealth derived from the land and followed the physiocratic laws of nature.1 As David Porter has argued, China was seen as a signifier for representational legitimacy, conformity and antiquity, whose traditions and language reached back into the mists of time.2 The second, almost parallel, encounter with China took place through the import of consumer goods such as porcelain, silk, lacquers and, of course, tea. These imports inspired the fashion of ‘Chinoiserie’ during the baroque and rococo periods, the manufacture of Chinese-style items for interior design and gardens adorned with Chinese-style pagodas, garden seats and bridges. At the other end of society, in the 18th century, tea changed from an exotic beverage into a drink for the masses.3 The enthusiasm for Chinoiserie diminished at the end of the 18th century. Tea was still in high demand, but it was by then seen as a national drink, mainly disassociated from its Chinese origin.4 In the 17th century, China gained a place in the English imagination as a huge market for European goods, as well as possessing almost inexhaustible stores of tea, silk and porcelain.5 The first commercial contact between Britain and China began in 1635, but with only limited success. At this time, the Portuguese had already established themselves in Macao and the Dutch were attempting to set up a trade at the coast. It was only from the middle of the 18th century onwards that the British were able to get a foot into the China trade.6 In the beginning, the EIC imported mainly luxury goods to Britain, such as silk and porcelain. However, it was the tea trade which gave China importance to the EIC. The amount of tea imported by the EIC into England rose steeply from 2 lb and 2 oz in 1664 to 5,857,882 lb in 1783, and in the 1830s it reached

4


about 30 million pounds.7 Over the course of the period covered, the EIC overtook their former rivals and by the time the monopoly of the EIC ended in 1834, the British dominated the European trade at Canton, creating substantial returns in taxes for the British government.8 British products, however, never found as much demand in China as was necessary for a balanced trade and to a large extent, the tea had to be paid for with silver bullion, and in particular, with Indian opium. The acquisition of the opium monopoly in India made the opium trade to China crucial for the EIC’s finances.9 Along with the growing trade, what came to be known as ‘the old Canton system’ was established in the 1750s and 1760s. The Qing Emperor closed all Chinese harbours to the Europeans in 1757, with the exception of Canton, and reduced the permitted contact between European and Chinese merchants to the so-called ‘Hong’ merchants, who were formed into a monopoly organisation, the Cohong. It was only in these years that the Company established a more regulated system for their trade with China, with a General Council of Supercargoes, instead of several individual Supercargoes. Furthermore, they were now allowed to remain in China for the entire year, although due to Chinese restrictions they were obliged to move to Macao outside the season.10 It was under these peculiar circumstances that Britons established first regular contact with the Chinese. The Protestant mission to China, which started in 1807, equally took Canton as its first stepping stone. Meanwhile, the trade of the EIC in India had turned into a battle for supremacy with the regional rulers, which resulted in the de facto British rule of Bengal by 1765. The British thus came to be in control of products like cotton and later opium, which the Chinese were actually interested in, and which could be traded for other Southeast Asian products sold at Canton. The British were now able to become a more potent participant in the Asian trade system. At the same time, they encountered the problem of remitting the income from the land tax in Bengal and other gains back to Britain, which was mainly dealt with through the triangular trade between India, China and Britain. In this context, what became known as the country trade became predominant. Attempts by the EIC to dominate the trade between India, China and Southeast Asia largely failed. Private country traders, mostly British or Parsee merchants, had managed to secure this trade, especially with opium. Even though the company grew the opium in India, it did not want to be associated with its sale to China, which the Chinese government had prohibited.11

Introduction 5

British relations with China were thus becoming intrinsically linked to British interests in India.12 British expansion into Southeast Asia resulted partly from the problems of the China trade and its importance for the EIC in India. From 1750 onwards, several employees of the EIC tried to establish a British entrepôt in Southeast Asia, to redirect trade from Canton. Especially during the Napoleonic Wars, the British extended their sphere of influence in Southeast Asia, mainly to prevent the French taking root there. The large Chinese diaspora the British encountered there was to play an increasingly important role not only for British reflections on the China trade, but also for the formation of knowledge about China. The British government tried to formalise its relationship with China by way of two diplomatic missions, in 1792 and 1816, although this met with little success. At the same time, the EIC at Canton developed a stronger sense of itself as a representative of British national interests. With the end of the EIC’s monopoly for the China trade in 1834, this form of company diplomacy ended for good and the Foreign Office became paramount. The period between 1834 and 1840 saw a significant increase in publications about China in Britain. Political consideration in the metropolis still had to change before it could look expedient to Lord Palmerston to declare war on China. However, the key positions and the key players which were to become important in the context of the Opium War were already in place in the early 1830s. The period from 1763 to 1840 is thus crucial for understanding British–Chinese relations in the 19th century. However, most studies look at British relations with China in the early 19th century as little more than a prequel to the Opium War and British– Chinese relations afterwards.13 Almost all historiographies of the Opium War discuss the British China trade from the beginning to the war itself, mostly with an emphasis on the years after 1784. They narrate the history of growing tensions, from the Lady Hughes affair, regarding the surrender of a British national to the Chinese justice system, via the first British embassy to China in 1792 to the end of the EIC monopoly, and the Napier episode. The idea of a ‘clash of culture’ and the unavoidability of a war to overcome China’s restriction of international trade or to fulfil the needs of the British government in India are the major themes in these works.14 The opium trade takes a centre stage in most of the discussions of the development of British–Chinese relations in these accounts.15 Michael Greenberg has given a detailed study of the British trade with China, focusing on the emergence of the country trade, mainly based on the Jardine and Matheson archives.16

6


There are a few older studies which did examine the period in its own right, written in the 1930s, by H. B. Morse and his student, Earl Pritchard. Morse, in his five volume work on the EIC trade with China, provided a detailed narrative of the EIC records in regard to the trade and other occurrences at Canton, mainly based on lengthy quotes of source material.17 Pritchard defined the early years of British– Chinese contact as ‘the struggle of culture against culture’, determined by the insurmountable differences between the Chinese and British civilisation.18 Louis Dermigny has looked at the European trade in general in Canton between 1719 and 1833. He emphasised the diverging economic and cultural development of Europe and China during the 18th and early 19th century. Despite the trade between the two regions, he argues, no mutual understanding or even significant intellectual exchange took place. In his view, it was inevitable that the industrially developing and commercially adventurous Britain would have to clash with the backward China. At the same time, the positive image of China distributed by the Jesuits gave way to a negative one, inspired by the materialistic world view of British merchants and the impact of the French Revolution.19 However, in order to gain a full understanding of what China meant to the British in this period, and which ideas guided their interaction with China, it is important to set the actions, concepts and ideas of the British in Canton in the larger context of the intellectual and cultural history of Britain and the British Empire. For example, there is hardly any discussion of the development of British legal thought, ideas on language and religion or British self-understanding in these studies. Frequently, the lack of a discussion of the intellectual and cultural history of the British at Canton, while Chinese concepts are explained, creates the image that the British viewpoints on issues like law and diplomacy were the only reasonable and rational ones.20 These works also, in their majority, pay little attention to the metropolitan dimension, a fact to which Glenn Melancon has recently drawn attention, by closely studying the China policy of the British foreign office in the years from 1833 onwards.21 A number of studies from historians and literary scholars have explored the position of China in early modern European intellectual or literary history. However, they do in most cases only lightly touch on the larger context of European interests in Asia or the question of power, if it is mentioned at all. Explanations of the shift from an early sinophile admiration of China towards the arrogant attitude of the early

Introduction 7

19th century have thus mainly looked for causes of the changes in the development of the European intellectual history.22 It has been assumed that the diminishing credibility given to the reports of the Catholic Jesuits also damaged the positive view of China they had advocated. While British imperial expansion and the parallel Protestant mission are often mentioned, the complexity of their impact is not explored.23 This is particularly true for the broad overviews, such as by C. Mackerras, which cover European images of China from antiquity to the present.24 Furthermore, authors such as William Appelton contend that people had grown tired of the fashion of ‘Chinoiserie’.25 The actual contact between China and Britain is in most cases discussed in terms of how contact with the ‘real’ China, contributed to the unravelling of the positive myths and finally led to a more objective study of China.26 In particular, the publication of negative experiences and resulting dismissive opinions by British merchants, naval officers and ambassadors are highlighted.27 Walter Demel has argued that an increased European self-confidence in their progress in the field of sciences, welfare of the population and military strength led to a growing perception of Chinese inferiority in these areas. Especially the reports about many famines in China at the end of the 18th century replaced the idea of the fabulous riches of Cathay. At the same time, the ideal of the enlightened absolutisms, for which China had served as a model, declined. In the context of ideas that favoured the restriction of the ruler, China was increasingly considered as just another Asian despotism.28 Jonathan Spence attributes the change in Western perceptions to the new source of information: diplomats and travellers rather than the Jesuits, and their more sceptical writings, which were informed by the spirit of the age of reason. This coincided with more negative depictions of China by English writers such as Daniel Defoe.29 In their book The Great Map of Mankind, Peter Marshall and Glyndwr Williams argue that the image of Asia, and with it that of China, changed due to the shift within the patterns of thought from the ‘traditionalist’ view, which tried to incorporate new knowledge into that of the Bible, to a ‘natural history of man’ that placed each nation on a scale of civilisations. They have also referred to the effect British expansion in India had on the European view of Asia, without, however, examining the problem of China in detail.30 Recently, David Porter produced a literary analysis of philosophical texts as well as Chinoiserie artefacts in his book Ideographia. He argued that ‘China’ moves from being a signifier for cultural legitimacy and

8


stability to one for illegitimacy and interchangeability.31 He gives some interesting insights into how one could understand the 18th century debate about Chinoiserie as part of the formation of ideas about China, but also remains limited by this approach. Norman J. Girardot has offered a very valuable in-depth study of sinology and Orientalism in the later 19th century in his biography of the missionary and sinologist James Legge. However, due to his focus on Legge, he takes little notice of the influence of earlier British studies of China and the way they were already connected with the British expansion.32 The aim of this book is therefore to bring the focus back on a period that was formative for both British–Chinese relations and deeply linked to it, the formation of British knowledge of China and to reconnect it to the European expansion in Asia in this period.

1.2 Methodological considerations The latest wave of globalisation has brought with it a new focus by historians on how practices and ideas in different parts of the globe were connected and how these were transferred between them, in an attempt to break up the old national narratives. Chris Bayly has recently highlighted the global connections, exchanges and mutual influences that already shaped the world from the 1780s onwards, long before today’s globalisation.33 Tim Harper has drawn attention to the global connections of non-European people in the 19th century, which was based on networks that pre-dated much of European imperialism.34 The ‘new’ imperial history, which has re-invigorated imperial history since the 1990s, focuses on understanding the influence of the imperial expansion on identity and other cultural concepts, such as gender and race, in both the ‘periphery’ and the ‘metropolis’, thus re-adjusting our understanding of what constituted the centre or the periphery for those caught in the webs of imperial expansion.35 Historians are therefore increasingly discussing the interconnectedness of the different colonies and the metropolis and the transfer of goods and knowledge between them. These works mainly concentrate on the modification of ideas within the framework of the British Empire, often neglecting the interaction with other empires or national cultures. The focus lies on tracing how the British in the colonies did not only use concepts which they had imported from the metropolis, but also learned from other parts of the British Empire as well as transferring new concepts back to the metropolis.36 These historians

Introduction 9

explore how the ‘British colonial discourses were made and remade, rather than simply transferred or imposed’ through these networks.37 Ideas about the governance of colonial people as well as ideas of what constituted the colonial ‘Other’ had different expressions in the various parts of the Empire.38 ‘Imperial Careers’, through which Britons and other subjects of the British Empire moved between colonies, brought with them the movement of ideas across the British Empire. As the contributors to David Lambert’s and Alan Lester’s volume on ‘Colonial Lives’ have recently shown, discourse of colonial governmentality was formed and re-shaped through the mobility of governors between different colonies.39 Representations of Irish and Scots could thus, for example, serve as patterns for images of ‘savages’ in the new colonies in America, which in turn served as models for conceptualising other ‘discovered’ peoples.40 Thomas R. Metcalf has recently highlighted how India took a prominent position in this web of Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century, creating an Indian-centred sub-system to the British Empire. While he focuses on the period between 1870 and 1920, this book shows that India was already central to how the British formed their Asian Empire from the 1760s onwards, not just in terms of economic and military logistics, but in particular also with regard to the ideas and concepts that shaped this expansion.41 At the same time, as Catherine Hall has shown, the definition of ‘colonial subjects’ and British experience in the periphery were influential in shaping English and British identity itself, in the metropolis as well as in the colonies.42 Ann Stoler and Frederick Cooper have highlighted the tensions between the universalising claims of European ideology in the 19th and 20th century and the heterogeneous and localised experience of conquest and colonial rule, thus drawing attention to global concepts and local transformation processes and transfers.43 For the continental European context, several scholars have tried to develop alternatives to a ‘comparative history’, which took nations as self-contained units. They emphasise the exchange and transfer of ideas between different nations, such as France and Germany.44 Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann have developed the concept of a ‘histoire croisée’, which draws attention to the process and nature of the international exchange of concepts and ideas. In emphasising the continuous ‘entanglement’ of this process, they try to overcome the idea of a fixed starting point and end of a transfer of ideas. They also problematise the use of national categories in studies of transfer, offering a perspective on the often hybrid origin of concepts and the

10


role of migrants in transferring ideas from one community to another. These travellers often modify ideas when they transfer them, and maybe re-import a concept significantly changed by their experience outside their country.45 In reflecting upon European study of Chinese culture and language and the problem of translation, Haun Saussy has pointed out how global information networks have to be seen not as a simple one-directional process, through which fixed knowledge, words and concepts are transported and might clash in mutual misunderstanding. Rather, one has to view translations between two languages and cultures as a creative process of negotiations, through which a meaning is transferred and modified.46 Many of these studies were influenced by the debate that followed Edward Said’s book Orientalism and its understanding of the relationship between representation and imperial power.47 These questions have only briefly been touched upon by a number of scholars with respect to China. Norman Girardot made the case for different ‘Orientalisms’, especially a sinological Orientalism.48 Hans Hägerdal argued that ‘Orientalism’ could have different aspects in the context of China, but also how ideas about China could be influenced by intellectual traditions unconnected to ‘Orientalism’.49 David Martin Jones in his study of the place of China in European social and political thought from the time of the Jesuit mission until the present tries to show that there was a far more complex view of China than the critique of Said and his followers suggest. Specifically he argues that China was not simply included in an overall ‘Orient’ but seen as different from other Asian countries in many aspects. Although he argues against the simplistic connection between the orientalistic scholarship and poetry and colonial expansion of the West, his study concentrates purely on the history of ideas in Europe and does not even discuss the political and economic context in which these ideas developed. Significantly he fails, for example, to address the connection between the study of Chinese and the British interests in Asia.50 Challenging the easy connection between Eurocentric discourse and colonial power, Eugene Irschick has emphasised the dialogic process of the construction of knowledge in the colonial context, while still being aware of the violence involved in the colonial encounter.51 Homi Bhabha has drawn attention to the ambivalence and uncertainty of the colonial discourse.52 Chris Bayly has argued, in sharp contrast to many who followed Said’s ideas, that British rule in India depended heavily on, and was limited by the access to local information networks as well as the possibility of correctly understanding this information, rather

Introduction 11

than a mere imposition of a European discourse on India, which aimed at constructing the Indians as ‘the Other’.53 Partly influenced by this argument, two recent studies have rightly called for more focus on the social conditions of knowledge and its use in order to move beyond the binary of ‘colonial discourse’ and ‘objective knowledge’. Christian Windler, in his study of French consuls in Algiers has urged to study which social purposes the ‘oriental discourse’ was used for by those who had contact with the ‘Other’ and through which social practices these ideas turned into what was perceived as verified knowledge, especially in contact with their home country. At the same time, the actual interaction could be dominated by norms different to this discourse.54 Michael Dodson has recently called for a move away from a mere epistemology of knowledge in the colonial context, towards understanding it as a source of social and political power for a variety of actors in this context.55 These considerations allow us to take a fresh approach to the formation of knowledge and ideas about China in the period of Britain’s Asian expansion. Central to this is exploring how a multitude of discourses and their local contexts combined to shape what Britons considered to be ‘China’. Bruno Latour’s network theory can be a useful framework for this. Latour argues, with focus on the social sciences, that one has to study the networks which construct an object of study and the mechanism of associations, which form groups. He has called for a study of these connections and the process of association, rather than trying to impose a macro-structure as an explanation model on any given study. To him, ‘society’ and ‘social explanations’ are thus not given entities, but have to be understood as formed through connections, and constantly transformed in the process by the actors.56 These reflections are especially valuable for an understanding of the diversity of connections and associations which formed what contemporaries understood as the British expansion and the British Empire, rather than taking these concepts as a given entity. To draw attention to the local transformation processes, this work uses Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of the ‘contact zone’ as a lens to bring into focus the different kinds of British cultural interactions with China, and the different networks through which ideas of China were transferred.57 Pratt employed this term to describe ‘copresence, interaction, interlocking understandings and practices, often within radically asymmetrical relations of power’,58 at what she calls the ‘imperial frontier’. However, the contact zones I will describe in this work will only occasionally lie in a colonial context. Although there was frequently an asymmetrical

12


power relation, this did not always mean that the British were the ones who dominated the situation. There was a rather more ambivalent relation between the British meanings of China, the creation of knowledge and the exercise of power. Often the British had to come to terms with the gap between their self-image, their image of China and the power relations on the spot. Also, the British were never a homogenous group, but rather made up of a network of persons with diverging and shifting interests. This book also understands Britain itself as a zone of contact with the foreign, even though this was less immediate than in Canton for instance. The contact here rather took place in the form of goods and information brought back to Great Britain as well as those Britons returned from Asia. Nevertheless, as a result, Britain constituted a prominent site for the construction of the meanings of China and the way it was connected to the meanings of other countries. Here, a discourse of the ‘Other’ could be used without the complications of a response from the other culture. In Britain, knowledge of China was verified and integrated into a system of knowledge of the world and it was determined what meaning China held for the wider British public. While this work examines the way the British came to terms with China in the different ‘contact zones’, it does not understand them as isolated but rather as connected entities, influencing each other through the travellers going back and forth between them as well as their letters and journals. In each ‘contact zone’, however, the meaning would be changed by the reaction of those the British encountered and their versions of China. The British discourses were never unchallenged and often enough the British tried without success to force their idea of ‘China’ and ‘Britishness’ upon the Chinese. The ‘Orientalist’ discourse employed by the British should also not distract one from the fact that the British often developed a close relationship with the Chinese, be it in Canton or in Southeast Asia, forming the information networks they needed to create their knowledge of China, and dealing with the Overseas Chinese population in Southeast Asia. In this light, India and Southeast Asia were as important for the formation of the British knowledge of China as China itself, since the British had to come to terms with the Chinese position in Asia in these places as well. Similarly, British experience as a dominant power in India would also influence their attitude towards China. This does not, however, mean replacing the idea of the ‘metropolis’ with an artificial centreing of the periphery. Rather one has to trace carefully the genealogy and

Introduction 13

transfer of concepts and the uses made of them under the distinctively different conditions of each ‘contact zone’ and their varying importance for each other, within as well as outside the boundaries of the British Empire. The study uses the terminology of ‘metropolis’ and ‘periphery’ to describe the fact that for those Britons engaged in the British imperial expansion in most cases Britain remained the central focus. At the same time, the concept of the ‘contact zone’ allows us to understand each of these local places of encounter as centre in their own right, which again were connected to other centres, such as Beijing, Tibet or Bengal. While this study focuses on the British–Chinese encounter, it does not see British history in a vacuum. The British idea of China and the knowledge they created about it were also influenced in a variety of ways by the competition with the other great European powers, such as the French, Dutch, Spanish and Russians, but also by the intellectual contact with individuals from these countries and also from Germany. However, there was no indiscriminate ‘European’ idea of China. Rather, knowledge was transferred between these different cultures, and the meaning of China was linked to the identity of those involved. In this context, ‘British’ is not understood as a fixed entity, but rather as a ‘contested terrain, a “sign of difference” the specific meanings of which depended upon the context of its articulation’59 being shaped and reshaped through the contact with others and the shifting intellectual landscape. This book examines the themes of language, religion, civilisation and race, law and trade, which were the main categories of knowledge through which China was mapped by the British. They are traced in the different ‘contact zones’, highlighting the transfer of ideas as well as the different meaning attached to knowledge in these contexts. In particular, this book focuses on how this knowledge and ideas about the character of the Chinese were used in power relations with the Chinese and the Chinese Empire in the different ‘contact zones’. The first chapter looks at the meaning of China in Britain itself, especially in the fields of philosophy and aesthetics. During this period, contemporary intellectual developments, as well as first contacts with the political and economic entity ‘China’, changed and diversified British images of China. These were inherently British, mainly connected to other European discourses, but not concerned with Britain’s relationship with China as such. The book moves on to discuss the ‘contact zones’ in Asia in which the British came to encounter the Chinese and the Chinese Empire. The

14


second chapter studies the ‘contact zone’ in Canton closely, including the two British embassies to China during this period. The conditions of this meeting place between Britons and Chinese did not only shape British knowledge about China, but also the way the British here understood their relationship with the Chinese. This section discusses three areas which were important for the formation of knowledge about China: law, language and religion. It draws attention to the extent to which the British experience in India was important in shaping the British responses to China in these areas. The last part of the chapter focuses on a discussion of how the influence of the country traders, the British experience in India and the failure of the second British embassy led to an escalation in Canton, during which the EIC tried to force the Chinese to accept their idea of Britishness and the rules of interaction. It concludes with a study of the events that led to the Opium War. The third chapter looks at two different ‘contact zones’ which had an increasing importance for the way the British assigned meaning to China: India and Southeast Asia. The first part addresses the way China was perceived as a great Buddhist power at the fringe of British expansion in India, which was potentially dangerous to British interests in the region. The question of Chinese religion and language were again important here, but despite the contact between Calcutta and Canton, were transformed into having a different significance, highlighting different aspects of Chinese language and religion. In the period under scrutiny, the ‘contact zone’ in Southeast Asia became very important for the development of British ideas on China. Here, the British came into contact with a Chinese population on colonial terms. This chapter explores how this shaped a meaning of the Chinese as industrious workers, but also as possible competitors. The influence of the Protestant mission meant that the moral improvement of the Chinese through education and Christianity came to the forefront. It is discussed how the encounter with different groups of overseas Chinese led to the idea of a more diverse China, in contrast to earlier notions of an extremely uniform culture in China. Ideas such as the stages of civilisation and early race theory therefore became more important in this context. The fourth chapter studies how the meanings and knowledge formed in the ‘contact zones’ in Canton, India and Southeast Asia were transferred back to the metropolis itself and how they were transformed to fit into the cultural and political conditions of the regency period and the debates about reform. When the debate about the renewal of the EIC’s charter began in earnest in 1830, all these different sites of knowledge

Introduction 15

production about China became significant. The final part of the chapter analyses how the different parties in the debates of the 1830s and in the run up to the Opium War used the knowledge created in the ‘contact zones’ in Asia and shaped ideas of China that suited their interests and in the end made a war with China imaginable.

2 The Decline of Mythical China

China had long occupied European imagination as a faraway, mysterious country. The Romans had marvelled about the fantastic region from where they imported silk and Marco Polo brought rumours about Cathay’s fabulous riches back to medieval Europe. However, a new way of thinking about China began with the Jesuit mission to China in the middle of the 16th century.1 The Portuguese, and later the French and German Jesuit monks followed the Portuguese and French traders to the East and for the first time sent detailed reports back to Europe. Their translations of Chinese culture created a new idea of China,2 which would play a significant role in debates about ideas, language, government and religion of the enlightenment. These debates placed China mainly in the philosophical realm, alongside ancient Greece and Egypt. In doing so, the European literati created their own Europeanised vision of China. A similar process took place with regard to the consumer products which the increasing trade with China brought to European shores, and which gave rise to the European fashion of Chinoiserie. Both of those aspects of early modern contact with China will be discussed in this chapter. They shaped the image of China in Britain significantly. However, this process mainly took place within a European network and created an idea of China as a far away, mystical country rather than a real political entity. Developments in the European history of ideas transformed the resulting images of China and from the 1750s onwards a slow change can be noticed in Britain that brought China into closer connection with India and British interests in the East. 16

The Decline of Mythical China 17

2.1 The origin of language The reports emanating from the Jesuit mission in Beijing had provided Europe with a continuous flow of information about China since the 17th century. The Jesuit principle of accommodation, as well as their need to defend this approach to converting China resulted in very positive representations of China. Enlightenment thinkers such as Leibniz and Voltaire were inspired by these accounts to create an image of China as a rational, enlightened state.3 By the second half of the 18th century, this enthusiasm had receded and the critics became more dominant. Moreover, The Rites Controversy at the beginning of the century and finally the abolition of the Jesuit order in 1773 deprived China of their most favourable advocates. Sinophilia had never been that dominant amongst the literati in Britain, and the suspicion about the reports from Catholic priests grew. In addition to this, changes in the intellectual climate and epistemological standards made the Jesuit reports appear increasingly less reliable. In the second half of the 18th century, the study of Asia changed from the framework of the ‘traditionalists’, to a ‘natural history of man’. The former had tried to incorporate information produced by the European ‘discoveries’ into the knowledge created by the Bible and the classical authors. The latter was more concerned with the progress of mankind and tried to identify different stages through which mankind had evolved, by observing contemporary societies. In this context, the Jesuit accounts of China were considered to be increasingly untrustworthy and many members of Britain’s intellectual elite saw the need for new knowledge about China.4 Despite this perceived lack of knowledge, China still figured in British philosophical debates of the second half of the 18th century. The Jesuit letters were still used as a source of information, although the interpretation of them changed. It was subordinated to the idea of progress, so dominant in the Scottish enlightenment, and the attempt to order the world according to a stadial theory. What had made China so fascinating to Leibniz and other enlightenment thinkers, namely its antiquity and its system of writing, now made it prone to the disdain of the literati of this period. China could thus stand for example as a prototype for the agricultural society in Adam Smith’s ‘Wealth of nations’. Even though he still acknowledged its status as a civilised society, it had not been able to reach the highest level – that of a commercial society. He thought this was due to the Chinese neglect of foreign trade, which resulted from

18


their huge internal market. Only by way of a substantial extension of their foreign trade could the Chinese hope to learn from other nations and improve themselves.5 There was no longer the idea that the Europeans might learn from the Chinese, but rather an emphasis on China’s lack of progression. However, this did not mean that the British, at a time where agricultural ‘improvement’ figured increasingly on the political agenda,6 could not admire the seemingly perfect agriculture of China and the dominant position accorded to it by the Emperor. Lord Kames, urging British gentlemen to occupy themselves with farming evoked the image of the Chinese Emperor, ‘who performs yearly the ceremony of holding the plough, to show that no man is above being a farmer’.7 The Chinese language, especially, had long fascinated European minds. Developments of ideas about the Chinese language in the 18th century were strongly connected with the Enlightenment idea of progress.8 The first accounts of the Chinese language to reach Europe in the late 16th and early 17th century excited great interest amongst scholars and philosophers. What were considered to be the characteristics of the Chinese language – its emphasis on the written language, its antiquity and its potential to be understood by members of different linguistic communities – made it the perfect example for those looking for a common and uncorrupted language in a Europe divided by war and religious conflicts. Some, like John Webster, also assumed that the Chinese characters might have a more direct relation to ‘things’ themselves and thereby could convey a better understanding of the natural world and help in the discovery of the ‘real knowledge’ of it. Nevertheless even early on some, like John Wilkins, denied that the Chinese characters had this quality.9 In the mid 18th century, the Chinese language irrevocably lost its special status, where it was viewed as a legitimating and stabilising symbol. This was caused by changes within the intellectual framework of the literati referred to above as well as possibly being influenced by the association of everything Chinese with the superficial Chinoiserie.10 At the same time as these changes came the speculations about the origin of all the arts and sciences in Egypt. While the search for an universal language did not die completely, the study of languages in the 18th century was more strongly influenced by the question of the origins of language,11 and Chinese became incorporated into this quest. Here, two opposing concepts prevailed, both of which had their roots in the 17th century. The one is exemplified by Descartes, who argued in favour of dualism of spirit and matter. He claimed that language produced by the body only communicated

ideas of the immaterial soul without influencing them. In the 18th century, Locke became the greatest counterpart to Descartes’s theory of language. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he argued against the Cartesisian assumption that all ideas derive from sensation and reflection, implying that there were no a priori ideas.12 Developing these considerations further, Condillac related the progress of the human mind to the development of language and thereby introduced the dimension of time into the study of language.13 As the dichotomy between the positions concerning the possibility of immaterial ideas continued throughout the 18th century, the dimension of time became increasingly important. Even opponents of empiricist ideas like James Harris agreed that languages developed over time and stood in correlation to the political system of a people. Languages therefore could provide information about the character and culture of a nation.14 The main focus of the study of language had shifted from the search for a unifying language, a successor of the original language that had existed before the confusion of languages at Babel, towards the quest for the origin of language and its progress, thus linking the study of language with the developing stadial theory.15 Now, the literati tried to find connections between languages, in order to determine the level of progress and character of a language and the people that spoke it. Chinese was no longer of interest as a model of a universal language, uncorrupted over ages and protected by an enlightened government. It had to be placed within the story of the origin and progress of language, which would also reveal the character of the Chinese nation. The stability that had formerly led to it being perceived as the ideal of society, was now seen as proof for the non-creativity of its people. As early as 1738, William Warburton had claimed in the Divine Legation of Moses that hieroglyphic as well as alphabetical writing was an invention of the Egyptians. In contrast to them, the Chinese, according to Warburton, were ‘known to be the least inventive people upon earth; and not much given to mystery’.16 This juxtaposition of Chinese writing and Egyptian hieroglyphics was taken further by Thomas Percy in his Miscellaneous Pieces Relating to the Chinese, who similarly to Warburton argued for the higher antiquity of the Egyptian culture in order to prove that the chronology of the Bible was accurate. For him however this meant that the Chinese could not have invented writing at all but must have received it from the Egyptians. He held the opinion that Egyptian hieroglyphics had arrived in China as a result of trade between the two nations.17 About ten years later, the Scottish thinker Lord Monboddo put forward the same idea in his Of the Origin and Progress of Language, making

10.1057/9780230246751 - Asian Empire and British Knowledge, Ulrike Hillemann

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of MN Twin Cities - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-22


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a major contribution to the ongoing discussion about the origin of language. His work displays a continuous tension between ‘conservative metaphysics’ and a ‘progressive anthropology’.18 He argued that human beings developed a ‘barbaric’ language on the basis of sensual experiences and due to the need of society, but it was only the ‘art of language’ which made it possible to express, ‘accurately and distinctly all the conceptions of the human mind’. However, not all societies had yet reached that state of civilisation which enabled them to develop such a language of art.19 He also firmly believed that these concepts did not derive from sensation alone, but were a priori ideas, archetypes.20 According to him, it was the ancient Greeks who had achieved the highest standard of this artificial language. When compared with this most excellent language, Chinese was necessarily deficient and inferior, albeit no longer wholly barbaric: ‘It cannot be called a language of art; nor is it entirely barbarous; but it participates of both, and may be said to be an intermediate stage betwixt the two.’21 He viewed the language as semi-barbarous, because it made no use of composition, derivation, or flexion. He judged the Chinese according to a standard which had been set by the Greek grammar, a typical feature in the early modern study of languages.22 After lengthy considerations on the unsatisfactory development of the sciences in China, he became convinced that this ‘dull and uninventive people’ could not possibly have invented the more sophisticated parts of its language and writing.23 He therefore came to the conclusion that those must necessarily have been imported to them from the Egyptians, via India. Monboddo saw another proof for the uninventive character of the Chinese in the fact that they had obtained their writing from the Egyptians when it had still been in a very rudimentary state and had not cared to develop it any further.24 Tracing back the beginning of science and civilisation to the Egyptians was a popular notion held by the freemasons ever since they came into being in the 16th century. In the case of Warburton, Percy, Monboddo and Needham it probably arose mainly from the wish to prove the chronology of the Bible right. By this they still might, consciously or not, have joined into a pattern of discourse provided by the adherents of deism. Percy was delighted by the ‘proofs’ of the Egyptian origin of the Chinese characters, because ‘it demolishes at once all the pretences of the Chinese to that vast antiquity, which has been wont to stagger weak minds, and which has with so much parade been presented by certain writers as utterly incompatible with the history of the Bible.’25 Considering that Monboddo attempted decisively to argue against the purely mechanical and sensualist idea of human language by introducing the


concept of the language of art, it is highly probable that he also tried to re-establish the Biblical chronology and thereby prove the unity of the human race.26 China, in any case, could neither continue to serve as a model, nor could it be seen as the origin of all languages. The change could not have been greater. From being the nation which could claim the invention of writing in ancient times, and which might still speak the Adamitic language, China was now deemed incapable even of having developed a system of writing at all. In a time that was no longer preoccupied with ideas of stability but rather with ideas of progress, the Chinese were seen as lacking the capability to invent things and to develop. Within this study of language, Chinese became to be seen not just as stagnant and an obstacle to progress, but this European perception of it was also seen as a valid indicator for the state of Chinese culture in general. Moreover, Chinese antiquity disturbed those who sought to defend Christianity and the Church from the deists and ‘dangerous’ empiricists. They therefore had a vested interest in undermining this claim to antiquity, which was difficult to align with biblical history. If the Chinese ability to write post-dated that of the Egyptians, they reasoned, Chinese culture could not possibly be as old as the Chinese claimed. Rather, it had to post-date Egyptian culture, which was part of Biblical history. Up until this time, the study of the Chinese language in Britain was confined to philosophical discussions. None of the protagonists of the debate could speak any Chinese nor were they interested in gaining a better understanding of it. They were not so much concerned with the study of Chinese and Chinese culture itself but rather used it as an argument in the search for the origin and development of languages and civilisations.

2.2 Chinese style and British taste The reports of the Jesuits from the court of Beijing were hardly the only goods that were transported back from China. Rather, it was mainly the growing trade between Europe and China that made this communication possible. In the 17th and 18th century, this trade was to a large extent an import trade, supplying Europe with consumer goods such as porcelain, silk, lacquers and of course tea. These imports inspired the fashion of ‘Chinoiserie’ during the baroque and rococo periods, the manufacture of Chinese-style items for interior design, and gardens adorned with Chinese-style pagodas, garden seats and bridges.

22


Things, as Arjun Appadurai has noted, have a social life. Their economic and social value changes according to specific social and cultural situations, a process in which the social context of their production, the knowledge about their appropriate consumption and questions of authenticity play a significant role.27 As soon as the tea, silk and porcelain through which the EIC hoped to transmit its revenues from Bengal back home left the docks of London they turned from trading goods into fashion items. In the stores and in the homes of the British, they joined goods from all over the world, especially coffee and sugar from the West Indies. The porcelain, while keeping its distinctive Chinese style most of the time, was already produced in China as an export good according to the tastes of its European buyers and then set on ‘Chinese style’ tables and cupboards which were designed by Chippendale and the Penny brothers. Methods of production for Asian luxury items such as cotton, silk and porcelain were at the same time reinvented in Europe in the 18th century, thus stimulating the British manufacturing industry.28 In 1762, a ‘Chinese visitor’ arrived in London: Lien Chi Altangi. William Goldsmith’s fictitious citizen of the world was a product of the Enlightenment’s fashion of clothing criticism of society in exoticism. He famously mocked the craze for the ‘Chinese style’. Invited to visit a ‘Lady of taste’, his hostess, delighted by her ‘outlandish’ visitor, asked him to comment on the Chinese-style pagodas and furniture. Much to her disappointment, however Lien Chi sees them as ‘clumsy and cumbrous’ or fails to recognise them as Chinese at all. Furthermore, he is bewildered by the crowdedness of this ‘Chinese’ interior design. ‘She took me through several rooms all furnished, as she told me, in the Chinese manner; sprawling dragons, squatting pagodas, and clumsy Mandarins, were stuck on every shelf: in turning round, one must have used caution not to demolish part of the precarious furniture.’29 The trade with China had introduced the foreign into the houses of Britain, and a meaning of China was created in this sphere of consumer goods, adaptation, imitation and rococo rebellion against baroque and classicism. Even though this was not a direct encounter between Britons and Chinese, the imported goods nevertheless established a ‘contact zone’, where this supposedly Chinese style could also threaten British taste and identity. While tea itself became increasingly ‘British’, the tea services that accompanied its use were mainly kept in the ‘Chinese style’. The core element of the fashion of Chinoiserie, which became popular in Britain in the 18th century for interior design and garden architecture, was its


foreignness and exoticism, despite being produced mainly in Britain or on the European continent. While there had been earlier examples of Chinoiserie in England, particularly during the Restoration period,30 it was only to reach its height from the 1740s onwards, coinciding with increased imports of tea and porcelain by the EIC. During this period, numerous furniture and interior designs were fashioned according to the ‘Chinese style’. While these designs were inspired by the porcelain and lacquer items imported from China, they were actually invented by British cabinet makers. They featured pig-tailed little men, Mandarins in long robes, wizards and exotic birds, playing idly or drinking tea. In the popular Chinese-style bedrooms and dressing rooms, these were often combined with tapestries imported from China, which were already being produced according to the tastes of the European market. The tapestries and other items were sometimes called ‘Indian’ sometimes ‘Chinese’ and it was not uncommon to see Native Americans depicted next to a Chinese Mandarin.31 This shows the hybridity of this style, through which everything that looked foreign might be incorporated and domesticated as symbols of a delightful, if incomprehensible and interchangeable ‘Other’ that lent itself to cheerful room decorations, plays and costumes. Nevertheless, the fashion was clearly generally associated with China.32 The cabinet-makers, architects and play writers of Europe, in this period particularly the British ones, had created their own China. The fashion was first sized upon by the upper classes of British society. William Chambers built a pagoda in the garden of Kew for Princess Augusta, and the Duke of Cumberland entertained his nephew George III on his Chinese yacht.33 To the horror of its classicist critics, this exotic fashion was highly popular and soon seemed to be ubiquitous. In 1756, James Cawthorn, in a poem bemoaning the influx of all sorts of foreign evils into Britain, sarcastically remarked Of late, ’tis true, quite sick of Rome and Greece We fetch our models from the wise Chinese; European artists are too cool and chaste, For Mand’rin is the only man of taste . . . On ev’ry shelf a Joss divinely stares, Nymphs laid on chintzes sprawl upon our chairs; While o’er our cabinets Confucius nods, Midst porcelain elephants and China gods.34 ‘China’ and ‘Chinese’ had become the objects of consumer desire, thus giving it a place of importance in British culture, which might equal the

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role of China for the British expansion in Asian trade, partly creating the demand that sustained this role. The meaning China acquired in this context was quite different from the one it held in the EIC headquarters in London. David Porter has recently argued that Chinoiserie with its ‘flow of unmeaning Eastern signs’ around the middle of the 18th century substituted the earlier idea of a China that was substantial, knowable and a place of theological and linguistic legitimacy.35 Altangi’s hostess appreciates her Chinoiserie goods precisely because they are ‘meaningless’ to her. In Ladies Amusement or, the Whole Art of Japanning Made Easy . . . , advice is given to the ladies that With Indian and Chinese subjects greater Liberties may be taken, because Luxuriance of Fancy recommends their Productions more than Propriety, for in them is often seen a Butterfly supporting an Elephant, or Things equally absurd; yet from their gay Colouring and airy Disposition seldom fail to please.36 This association with meaningless signs probably made Chinoiserie desirable for consumers and contributed to a shift in British perceptions of China. However, to see this as the main reason for changes in the intellectual sphere, as Porter does, is somewhat far-fetched. Also, William Chambers’s curious tracts on Chinese gardening show another dimension in the use of Chinoiserie. The foreignness of China served to legitimise an attack on the ‘English’ style of his opponent, ‘Capability’ Brown. In the Preface to his Designs of Chinese Buildings, Chambers discussed the Chinese art of laying out gardens, which he used to attack the English landscape garden. While both took nature for their pattern, Chambers argued that the Chinese artfully employed the ‘pleasing, horrid, and enchanted’ features of nature, thus surprising the visitor, quite in contrast to the rather dull rolling hills of the English landscape garden.37 In his second tract, A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening of 1772, he followed this up by a description of a fantastic Chinese garden, which is a place of luxury, excitement and sublime extravagances. He evokes the idea of an oriental splendour, which a European monarch cannot aspire to reach, but that is worth trying to imitate.38 China here stands for an exotic, fantastic foreignness that excites the mind and can give new ideas and impulses to an uninspired British present.39 This influx of foreign ideas, which were a source of entertainment and fantastic splendour for some, were seen as a danger to a healthy British state for others. It thus could come in combination with a certain


uneasiness about the extended contact with the foreign which the British expansion brought with it. In his attack on Chambers’s Dissertation, William Mason wrote His royal mind, whene’er from state withdrawn, He treads the velvet of his Richmond lawn; These shall prolong his Asiatic dream, Tho’ Europe’s balance trembles on its beam.40 For Mason, Chambers’s praise of the Chinese garden with its extravagances stood for yet another example of the corruptness of the Court and the Tory government and the problematic nature of British interests in the East.41 The indulgence of the British upper and middle classes in this fashion, so associated with the foreign, was also seen as a danger to British virtues. For the classicist critics, Chinoiserie stood for everything that quickened the decay of British society by featuring a foreign and grotesque false taste, which would lead the observer away from the path of moral and virtue. The critic Joseph Warton thus remarked If these observations are rightly founded, what shall we say of the taste and judgement of those who spend their lives and fortunes in collecting pieces, where neither perspective nor proportion, nor conformity to nature are observed; I mean the extravagant lovers and purchasers of China, and Indian screens. . . . No genuine beauty is to be found in whimsical and grotesque figures, the monstrous offspring of wild imagination, undirected by nature and truth.42 In the 18th century, which highlighted the importance of taste for the formation of the right character, this criticism was more than a question of the appropriate interior design; it questioned the very ability of those who adhered to this ‘grotesque’ style to make correct judgements on other issues.43 The other most prominent product of China, tea, had attracted similar criticism around the middle of the 18th century, mainly due to the economic imbalance it produced for British foreign commerce.44 The amount of tea imported by the EIC into England rose steeply from 2 lb and 2 oz in 1664 to 5,857,882 lb in 1783, and in the 1830s, it reached about 30 million pounds.45 From the 1760s onwards, the trade in tea and porcelain from China, with its connection to the EIC in India, was considered to be a good investment. This idea did not only stem from

26


the European taste for tea but also from the Jesuit reports from Beijing, which constantly put forward the notion of China’s huge population,46 which to the mind of commercial men would be an ideal market. Up until then, however, the Europeans had not been successful in selling anything in large quantities to the Chinese and had had to pay for tea, silk and porcelain with silver bullion. Although this could still be a fairly profitable business for the EIC stockholders and the government,47 this practice alarmed those who shared the mercantilist fear that British treasure disappeared in the East. This issue had already found its critics in the early years of the 18th century. Most prominent in this context was Jonas Hanway, who in his ‘Essay on tea’ in 1756 described tea as a beverage which made the British weak and drained Britain of its substance for life, the silver bullion.48 Hanway was strongly concerned with the moral improvement of the British people and, as a merchant, with the welfare of British trade. His criticism of the tea trade echoed bullionist fears as well as worries about the social implications of the consumption of luxury goods.49 He also aimed at lower class women, especially wet nurses. He feared that spending money and time on tea would destroy the economy of their families and that they would neglect their duties to raise strong men for Britain. He considered their thirst for tea a dangerous craving for luxury, which was not suitable for their place in society.50 His assault on tea can thus be seen to have been a part of his other endeavours to promote the moral well-being of his fellow Britons, especially the lower classes.51 David Porter has argued that this criticism was also a sign for the changed meaning assigned to China, which was no longer identified with a possible universal language and a stable origin, but rather as the origin of instability which threatened British welfare.52 Hanway’s argument is indeed closely linked to the classicistic criticism of Chinoiserie,53 mixed with a strong element of a medical discourse on the dangers of new exotic goods. He thus writes about how the tea trade, instead of providing the nation with ‘useful articles of commerce’, ‘consumes our strength in tea, by which we can possibly make no profit, except upon ourselves, whilst it sucks up our very blood; and, by exhausting our treasure, weakens the nerves of the state.’54 In contrast to the benefit trade would normally bring to the island nation Britain, any contact of this sort with China was highly injurious in his eyes. Hanway’s attack on the tea trade was an early example of the discourse on the dangers of Asian trade and empire. After the Seven Years War, this critique became strongly connected to the idea of the corrupting influence of the growing British Empire in the East and moved beyond


purely bullionist fears. It culminated in the parliamentary enquiry into Lord John Clive’s actions in India and the impeachment of Warren Hastings.55 The link of the China trade to the EIC meant that the meanings of China came to be influenced by these considerations. For example, the satirist Peter Pindar was able to use the then widely known ‘Ode to tea’ by the Chinese Emperor Qianlong as a foil for his criticism of the Warren Hastings trial. In his version ‘An ode to coffee’, he implied that while the wise Chinese Emperor knew how to properly celebrate the oriental beverage tea, the British only created havoc from their desire for coffee and other Asian products.56 Pindar’s primary goal was to attack the government, describing it as even more corrupt than the Asian princes. However it linked in with Hanway’s earlier criticism in that it emphasised that the British should leave Asian luxuries to the Asians, as they were hopelessly corrupting British virtues. China in this period had thus come to be associated with the dangers of the British expansionist activities in the East. For many Britons, tea and Chinoiserie formed the first contact with China. Robert Southey wrote in 1807, ‘Plates and tea wares have made us better acquainted with the Chinese than we are with any other distant people.’57 While it became integrated into the day-to-day life of Britons, the association with loftiness and almost fairy-tale figures may have made the political entity of the Qing Empire seem even more remote. Through the classicistic criticism of Chinoiserie and bullionist fears of the tea trade, it also acquired the meaning of a source of moral degeneration, which remained prominent also in the early 19th century in the context of Chinoiserie. This did not of course reflect the role played by art and consumer goods in China and Chinese concepts of beauty. In this sense, the associations made with China in the context of the fashion for the Chinese style were a form of aesthetic Orientalism. Chinoiserie with its ‘grotesque’ forms was considered to be the absolute other to the classicistic style, with its Roman and Greek models. In contrast to tea, it appeared impossible to integrate this into British culture as an indigenous style and thus it remained linked to the discussion about the problematic nature of the EIC’s involvement in Asia.

2.3 A Chinese court at Brighton In his armour room at Carlton House, the Prince Regent kept a lifesize effigy of Tippu Sultan. He had also commissioned paintings of the epic battle at Mysore.58 The conquest of India by the EIC and the British military clearly inspired George’s attitudes to Asia. This physical

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appropriation of the Indian monarch was however only one material response to the different nature of British contacts with Asia in this period. One of the most famous examples of British Chinoiserie is the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. As with other examples of Chinoiserie, the buildings, furniture and tapestry mainly created the idea of an exotic China that was a far away and not quite real country. It was this context which made it a prominent metaphor for criticism of the Prince Regent. However, the increasing contact with China at the turn of the century also created a new version of British Chinoiserie. The first expression of the Prince’s interest of Chinoiserie was the furnishing of one room at Carlton House in the Chinese style in 1792, the year the first British embassy to China left under the leadership of Lord Macartney. The Chinoiserie used there was mainly French inspired.59 The association of Chinoise style with leisure and luxury might have been the main attraction for the Prince, even if it was the embassy that had drawn his attention to China in the first place. However, when he decided to redecorate the Pavilion at Brighton ten years later, he opted for a different, new style of Chinoiserie, which was clearly inspired by the new contact with China, paying more attention to ‘authentic’ Chinese style. The Prince had acquired the Pavilion in 1783 when it was still a humble house. He mainly used it to escape from the formal and strict atmosphere of his father’s court and famously lived there with his illegitimate Catholic wife, Maria Fitzherbert. During the first years, the house was transformed in a neo-classical style by Henry Holland. After 1800, the prince turned away from this cool and sober style and towards a more eclectic and luxurious one. The interior design developed by the firm of John Crace seems to have tried to develop a new authenticity for the Chinoise style.60 It was strongly influenced by a new type of images arriving in Britain from China. Most prominent amongst them was the work of William Alexander, who had accompanied the Macartney embassy as a draftsman. After his return, he published the sketches he had made during the journey in two books.61 Earlier, a traveller to Canton, George Mason, had already published two books on Chinese export-paintings.62 In her essays on William Alexander, Mildred Archer claims that his drawings had shown the ‘real’ China to the British for the first time, which did not look like the Chinoiserie and Jesuit dreamland any more.63 However, these drawings also did not give an objective image of China, partly due to the choice of the depicted objects, but more particularly due to the style of the sketching. Rather, William Alexander mixed several sketches


and added Chinoiserie items to produce drawings that more closely fitted the expectations of his audience.64 The pictures therefore were not very authentic, despite what George Staunton, the second man on the Macartney embassy, claimed.65 A strand that was even more dominant in the drawings of William Alexander than Chinoiserie, was the method of ethnographic painting, which from the middle of the 18th century was influenced by the natural history paradigm. Late 18th century explorers such as the members of the Cook expedition had adopted this style of painting as a method of documenting newly discovered places in a seemingly objective way.66 One assumed that one could identify and put down on paper the differences between different groups of people, by attributes such as costumes or jewellery, and thereby assign them their place in the system of peoples.67 With descriptive techniques like these, the foreign was also normalised. The customs and manners of the others, which were represented in these pictures and the adjoining texts penned by Europeans were made to seem timeless. They were described as if their appearance and their actions never changed. In contrast to the observer, the observed object was thus situated in a different place in time.68 Alexander, in his book ‘Customs of China’ thus mainly depicts types, such as ‘A Chinese Soldier of Infantry, or Tiger of War’, rather than individuals. Alexander shows an anonymous Chinese soldier in front of his military post, wearing a yellow-red-striped uniform with a tigercap, shield and sword. He does not interact with others, but is shown to the observer in complete isolation as a type. The text on the opposite side places emphasis on its assertion that this kind of clothing and armament were typical for a soldier of this class.69 The text suggests that in this way one could recognise a ‘Tiger of War’ everywhere on account of this dress and these objects. The character of these ethnographic drawings and descriptions becomes even clearer if one compares the drawing and the text about a Chinese fisherman in the ‘Costume of the Chinese’ and a fisherman in ‘The Costume of Great Britain’, which was published only one year later by the same publishing house.70 The commentary in the ‘Costume of Great Britain’ hardly mentions the picture. Rather it narrates the history of fishing in Great Britain and the importance of this profession for the nation.71 The picture by Alexander, ‘A Fisherman and his family regaling in their Boat’ and its description is in stark contrast to this. The adjoining text describes in detail what can be seen on the drawing: ‘The female of the group, surrounded by her children, is smoking her pipe. One of these has a gourd fastened to its shoulders, intended to preserve

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it from drowning, in the event of its falling overboard.’72 Then the text speaks about their sleeping places, the Cormorants, the different fishing methods and the sluice that can be seen in the background.73 This kind of description emphasised the foreignness of the culture depicted and therefore the need for the author to explain every single detail to the viewer in order to make the picture comprehensible. Moreover, the language is that of a distanced, scientific observer who does not become personally involved but notes everything he sees objectively. The author reduces the description purely to the exterior, and the costumes of the Chinese are represented as timeless, very much in contrast to the text about Great Britain with its focus on historical development. George Henry Mason’s book ‘The Costume of China’ stood in a similar tradition.74 From his prolonged stay at a factory in Canton, he had brought with him a set of drawings by the Chinese draftsman Pu Qua, and he published them in 1804 with commenting texts, similar to the volumes by Alexander. Even though this time the prints were produced by a Chinese hand, nevertheless they were equally no ‘objective’ representation of Chinese reality. Rather they stood in the tradition of Chinese export watercolours, which had been produced since the middle of the 18th century for the Western market, probably as souvenirs for European merchants in Canton. They orientated themselves on the Western European painting tradition, not the Chinese one.75 For this they used the stereotypes of the Chinese that the Europeans had given them.76 They mostly depicted Chinese workers in simple jobs, such as moneychanger, barber, frog catcher or beggar. However, these drawings did not only stand in the tradition of natural history paintings but were also inspired by English genre-painting or ‘fancy pieces’, which were produced at the same time, and which show the English poor at their work. The most popular edition of these genre-paintings was the series ‘The Cries of London’ by Francis Wheatley. These pictures also do not show portraits of individual people. It is the activity that defines the identity of the represented person: the servant who plucks the turkey, the women who sell mackerel and so on.77 The majority of Alexander’s pictures represent Chinese of the lower ranks at their work: for example, ‘A Group of Trackers at Dinner’78 or ‘A Bookseller’.79 Members of the Chinese upper ranks were hardly shown at all. Significantly, Alexander did not include several sketches that he had made of them in his publication, in particular one of a Chinese scholar.80 Until 1841, these books published by Alexander and Mason were the only major ethnographic representation of the Chinese. It was only in 1827, between April and May, that two ‘Chinese ladies’ were


exhibited as a special attraction of a ‘Chinese exhibition’, where ‘genuine Chinese goods’ were sold. They were advertised as typical examples of their people, carrying out the superstitious practices of the Chinese. This short ethnographic display of Chinese people however has to be seen mainly in the context of the sale of Chinese goods and the entertainment industry of London, in which everything Chinese, from the Chinoise play to Chinese jugglers, was still very much in fashion. It is not known whether it attracted any attention from more scientifically interested men.81 These new representations of China in Britain were thus influenced by Chinoiserie as well as ideas on ethnographical painting. These images were used to give the interior design of the Pavilion in Brighton its more authentic character. Paintings based on the Mason and William Alexander books, which showed the ‘manners of the people’, were applied in the Ante-Room, and Chinese implements of war painted on the walls. Similar paintings decorated the Small Drawing Room. There were even some life-size statues adorned with Chinese costumes.82 Real Chinese wallpaper was used as well as a vast amount of Chinese export furniture and curiosities and fewer Chinoise accessories which had been manufactured in Europe. This more authentic style of Chinoiserie probably served two purposes. On the one hand, it satisfied the Prince’s interest in weapons as well as his pleasure in theatrical scenes and dressing up. On the other hand, this more authentic Chinese style and the depiction of Chinese people and their customs demonstrated the direct contact the British had with the Chinese Empire and their ability to observe them, thus expressing its power in diplomacy and trade. It was the short-lived expression of a truly British Chinoiserie. The plans for a Chinese style exterior, developed after 1802, were never executed. Rather, from 1805 onwards, the Prince seems to have been more fascinated with Indian architecture. Humphry Repton set out to develop plans for the grounds and the enlargement of the Pavilion as an Indian Palace. He might have been attracted by the association of Indian architecture with the sublime and the noble and glittering past of the Mughal Empire, which especially the Romantics relished. The British conquests in India probably played a role as well.83 However, the final Indian exterior was only developed by Nash from 1815 onwards.84 China, in this context held the meaning of pleasurable things, which could be collected and assembled with other novelties from around the world and from the past. The Chinese style, as well as the Indian, probably also served the Prince Regent as a setting in which he could imagine himself as a powerful monarch – much like the Chinese Emperor

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Qianlong and rather less like the idea of monarchy his father, ‘Farmer George’, had developed.85 After all, he had aspired in all his building work more to equal the ancient regime Bourbons than a constitutional British king.86 In its setting, Brighton, a place which came to be more associated with leisure than court and politics, the Pavilion was the expression of a lifestyle of luxury, moral laissez-faire and monarchical grandeur.87 As with other elements of Prince George’s self-image, his use of Chinoiserie did not necessarily achieve the desired effect. His association with this style, together with the increasing notion of China as an Oriental despotism, expressed for example in the reports of the second British embassy to China in 1816, contributed to the use of Chinoiserie-style sketches as a language of political satire. George was a favourite target for the caricaturists, especially in times when the reform movement gained in momentum. They commented on his culinary and drinking excesses, his embonpoint, his mistresses and his attempts to get a divorce from his wife Queen Caroline.88 Besides caricaturing George by military boots or as an overgrown child, the caricaturists often cast him as an Oriental despot, be it Nebuchadnezzar or, even more prominently, as a Chinese figure. Even in those cartoons where George was not shown clad in Chinese attire, the Chinoiserie interior of the Royal Pavilion was used as the backdrop for criticising him and his court living in Oriental pomp and splendour, spending money on grotesque and unnecessary fancies.89 China seems to have been still foreign enough to appeal to the Prince as the origin of lofty, luxurious and light-hearted surroundings. However, this otherness, which placed China half in the realm of fairy tales, half in that of an Oriental despotism, made it the perfect image for demonstrating how removed the Prince, and equally later as King George IV, and his Circle were from the real needs of his nation. By depicting the Prince and his circle in Chinese costume, or as a mythological Chinese character (Joss and Fum), his distance from his nation is even more exaggerated.90 This becomes evident in a cartoon by William Williams in 1822 where the King is shown as a Chinese Mandarin and the royal arms are transformed into a Chinese emblem, with dragons as supporters. While George liked to portray himself as a hero and saviour of the British nation, the caricaturists saw him as a regent without Britishness, without interest in his nation, amoral and with clearly despotic tendencies, not least in his spending pattern and his demand for public money.91 The association of China with Chinoiserie thus remained vivid in the British mind. Attempts to incorporate these new, more ethnographic images of China into the Chinoiserie interior design as in the


Pavilion were short-lived. This Chinoiserie meaning of China remained attached to notions of deformity and luxury. In the context of the caricatures of Prince George, this Chinoiserie China also became more politicised, representing dangerous excessive and absolutist tendencies, much as the Bourbon Court had done before the Revolution. The failure of the Amherst embassy and with it the rapid decline of the idea of the benevolent Chinese monarch probably contributed to this development.92 Above all, the use of Chinoiserie in this context shows its meaning as the complete other, something alien, with which a British monarch should not associate himself. China might be observed in ethnographic paintings, but in the minds of those concerned with British national identity, it should no longer infiltrate British homes. In the realm of theatre and, to a limited extent, interior design, the idea of an exotic, mysterious China nevertheless continued. The intellectual debates about China as well as Chinoiserie were both answers to the influx of reports about China as well as its consumer goods. They were two ways in which information on China and its consumer goods were incorporated into a British-centred dialogue. Both aspects contributed to the chain of associations which formed ‘China’ in British minds. However, the meaning of China could change depending on the context. It could be a stagnating civilisation, a metaphor for decaying British morals or an escapist fantasy. The influence of William Alexander’s paintings on Chinoiserie designs in the Royal Pavilion shows that the contact with China in the context of the British imperial expansion became increasingly important for the way in which China was imagined in Britain after the Macartney embassy and how new, allegedly scientific knowledge about it was constructed. Britons in Canton, in embassies to Beijing, and in India and Southeast Asia formed new ‘contact zones’ with China and the Chinese from the 1760s onwards, a process which intensified after 1790. This expansion brought a pluralisation of British experiences, in each of which they had to come to terms with what China meant and increasingly what Britain meant to China. Knowledge about Chinese language, law and religion was influenced by the local contact zones as well as the networks of Europe’s imperial expansion in Asia. As far as Britain was concerned, its points of reference for the meanings of China shifted from the European networks of literati and of fashion to those of its nascent Asian Empire.

3 At the China Coast

Within the space of 30 years the British monarch sent two embassies to the court in Beijing. From the 1760s, the British community at the China coast was growing, although never to large numbers. During the embassies and in Canton, the British had to take into account the reaction of the Chinese to the image of Britain and China formed by the British. This was a stark contrast to the philosophers, merchants or appreciators of Chinoiserie in Britain, who could create their own image of China quite unencumbered by any real contact. In particular, Canton was to become one of the main hubs in which knowledge about China was created, used and transferred to and from other regions of Asia and back to Britain from the 1760s to 1840s, radically changing the way China was understood in the British Empire. The search for knowledge about the Chinese Empire was central to the endeavours of the British in Canton as well as during the Macartney and later the Amherst embassies. They hoped that knowledge of Chinese customs, law and language would give them more agency in their dealings with the Chinese. Moreover, it would allow them to style themselves as ‘China experts’ who not only knew how to interact with this seemingly so peculiar country but also, especially towards the end of the period, to advocate what China needed for its own improvement. The geographical proximity to India and the institutional link between the EIC in Calcutta and the Select Committee in Canton meant an increasing influence of the British presence in India and the ideas developed in this context for this ‘contact zone’ in the south of China.

3.1 A diplomatic expedition The Macartney embassy holds a prominent place in reflections about British–Chinese relations and the image of China in this period. For 34

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the first time, a representative of the British Crown reached the court of Beijing and met the Emperor of China, who had held the position of a philosopher king in the European imagination. The narration of this contact developed many of the themes which were significant during this period of British–Chinese contact and the meaning of China developed in this ‘contact zone’. Some had already played an important role in Canton in the years after 1750, when the British first came to stay there, but with the embassy, and especially its ultimate failure, they were to become even more prominent after 1794. The 1780s brought significant changes in the structure of the British Empire and the role of the state in Eastern expansion. This was a result of the increasing importance of Asia for Britain, and with it the China trade. The main focus of these transformations was India, and thus connecting India and China even more strongly in the British imagination. The American War of Independence ended in 1783 and brought with it the loss of Britain’s largest settler colony. In Asia, the EIC had increased its debt significantly by its engagement in ever further wars and conquests, while stock market speculations in Britain added to its precarious situation. In this context, the gains from the tea trade became increasingly important to the British government. The Commutation Act, introduced in 1784, reduced the duties on China teas from 120 per cent to 12.5 per cent to limit smuggling and thus increased the excise revenue, while at the same time helping the shaken EIC. The British involvement in India became more lucrative due to the export of Indian textiles and later opium to China to pay for the tea. Finally, the increased need for an entrepôt for the China trade led to new, reinforced efforts to find a suitable spot in Southeast Asia and thus really started off British expansion into this region.1 At the same time, Pitt’s India Act established a stronger government influence on the EIC’s Indian affairs. During the Warren Hastings trial, the ambiguous role of the EIC in India had drawn public attention. The Company was accused of ruling its Indian possessions like an Asian tyrant and being a hoard of corruption.2 This, and just as importantly, its huge debts, led to the introduction of stronger government control over its political business in Asia. The Act established a Board of Control, which was appointed by the King and consisted of one of the Secretaries of State, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and four other members of the Privy Council. The Board was to supervise the political decisions and administration of the Company in India.3 As president of the Board, Henry Dundas soon established the importance and influence of this

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position. He was eminent in shaping the government’s Asia policy in this period. As a purely commercial enterprise, the EIC’s China trade was not touched by this new institution. Consequently, it acquired a growing importance for the Court of Directors as it was the only sphere in which they could act unhindered and achieve profit. The China trade gained particular importance when it became clear that the Indian possessions would not produce as much revenue as had been hoped.4 After the Commutation Act, the EIC had managed to establish a near monopoly for the European tea trade in Canton. In 1784, during ‘The Lady Hughes Affair’, a British gunner at Canton was hanged by the Chinese authorities after accidentally killing two Chinese. This brought to the attention of the British government that the China trade still stood on an unstable basis. They were concerned that the British neither had a source of information about nor influence on the Chinese Court, which had become such an important neighbour to the British in India.5 They realised that the state had to take a greater interest in this matter and decided to send an ambassador. It was believed that, in contrast to the merchants, he would be able to impress the Chinese Court due to his rank, and would leave them with a more positive view of the British. As a result, it was hoped that he would be able to ensure British predominance in the China trade. A collection of modern scientific instruments as presents were supposed to impress the Emperor of China of British advances in the sciences and thus demonstrate their power in the world.6 The British feared that others had played the diplomatic game better and had already maligned the British at Beijing. The French and the Portuguese had a presence at the Court of the Qing Emperor through their missionaries and Britain was afraid that the French might repeat their Indian game here, supporting a native power against them.7 However, as J. Cranmer-Byng has pointed out, the British were equally concerned about Russian activities in the region, both in connection to China and to Japan.8 The embassy, that was decided upon by Henry Dundas and William Pitt, was not simply a diplomatic enterprise. It was also an expression of the new importance of the science of men and nature, informed by Enlightenment patronage of explorers and scientific improvement of agriculture. The prime example of this was Captain Cook with his South Sea Voyages, but also expeditions such as the journey of the Bounty.9 Following this spirit, the Macartney embassy was equipped like a scientific expedition. Even in the letter of introduction from George III to the Chinese Emperor, the importance of scientific journeys was highlighted as a representation of the virtue of a ruler.10 Especially in the

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context of Chinese entry restrictions, a mission to the Chinese Emperor was an occasion not to be missed and Joseph Banks became strongly involved with the preparations for the embassy. Its entourage included two ‘botanic gardeners’, an expert in chemistry as well as a ‘natural philosopher’.11 The embassy, which embarked from Portsmouth on the 21 September 1792 under the leadership of Lord Macartney was thus both an attempt by the state to set the trade with China on a better footing and an attempt to discover the secrets of the Chinese flora, fauna and culture. The embassy has frequently attracted the attention of historians.12 It has been portrayed as a symbol for the beginning of a radical Eurocentrism with Macartney’s refusal to kowtow,13 as well as the clash of the progressive, rational Britain and the immobile, traditional China.14 James L. Hevia revised this idea by establishing the importance and meaning of ritual for both sides, showing that neither side had a more rational or irrational system of foreign relations. He argued that rather than understanding the embassy as a clash of cultures, one had to see it as the meeting of two ‘imperial formations’, each of which insisted upon the acceptance by the other side of its universal claim to sovereignty and its way to conduct international relations.15 While Hevia’s work has done a lot to leave the well-trodden paths that have dominated understanding of the embassy, his narrow focus on some vague British ‘enlightened bourgeois public sphere’ as the culture that shaped Macartney and caused him to perceive and interact with the Chinese in a certain way does rather ignore the influence of other factors on the embassy, such as British ideas on India as well as the fear of a Russian expansion in Asia. It is essential to consider in the following how these aspects shaped British ideas of China in the context of the embassy and how this expedition transformed British perceptions of what their country’s relationship with China ought to be. The idea of the good British character was central to this new relationship, to an even greater extent than Hevia has recognised. The image of China as the immutable empire, which was not interested in foreign commerce was so strong in the 18th century that for Adam Smith, China served as the prime example of a society that isolated itself from foreign trade. Why then did Pitt and Dundas think that an embassy might be successful? It was mainly the Russian example that was cited in this context. The Russian embassy from Peter the Great, under the ambassador Ismailov, had managed to obtain permission to trade in Beijing and to have an agent residing there. In addition to this, the conditions of their trade had been settled in a treaty – something no

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other European power had achieved.16 For the British, this constituted the proof that an embassy was the right method to gain concessions from the Chinese and indeed that the British had the right to a permanent mission in Beijing.17 While this had already been an important element in the planning of the Cathcart embassy, which was aborted after the death of the ambassador en route in 1787, it became even more important in 1792. At this point, there were already political tensions between Great Britain and Russia, when the British became aware of new plans by Catharine II to extend her influence and possibly territory in the Amur region, as well as planning an embassy to Japan.18 This made it even more important to gain influence on the Chinese before the Russians were able to do so in a diplomatic or military way. This British knowledge of the Russian approaches to China also had important consequences for the kowtow question as will be discussed later. However, the success of the embassy did not only depend on the Chinese actually being open to negotiations and diplomatic influence – it also depended on the assumption that the Chinese monarch could be understood as somebody who was worthy of the attention of the British King and who would understand the meaning of his letter and presents. While his country was considered to be in the decaying stage of an oriental civilisation, the emperor himself was seen by those who prepared the embassy as an enlightened, if oriental monarch, who was merely unaware of the corruption and oppression which his Mandarins at Canton were guilty of.19 This monarch was believed to be open to the benefit of trade and the rule of law and would clearly approve of George III’s support for expeditions and science to the improvement of mankind.20 Thus, Dundas and the other organisers of the embassy hoped that if only the Chinese understood the British position in the world, they would naturally be interested in coming to a friendly agreement with them, which would at least be equal to the one they had already established with the Russians.21 The primary goal of the embassy was thus to establish a relation of friendship between the two monarchs, and the recognition of each other’s position in the world. The changes in the conditions of trade towards such that were of mutual benefit would then follow naturally, since it was the duty of every sovereign to protect the exchange of commodities, which were spread out over the world.22 The ambassador who was to achieve this goal was clearly selected to adapt to the apparent Chinese disapproval of merchants as well as being somebody who had experience in dealing with more or less enlightened

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oriental despots. Lord Macartney, styled ‘cousin’ of the King, was a wellestablished member of the British aristocratic elite. Furthermore, he had been ambassador to the Court of Catharina II in Russia and governor of Madras, and George Staunton as his secretary had negotiated with Tippu Sultan. He was strongly influenced by Enlightenment ideas with their emphasis on systematisation, rational discussion and the ‘disinterested observer’.23 Thus the key personnel of the embassy had been formed by the intellectual climate in Britain as well as by their experience in and perception of India. In addition to the presents and the letter to the Chinese Emperor, the British saw the direct and uninterrupted communication with the Chinese as central to the success of the embassy. Since there were no Britons who could speak Chinese, so-called Chinese ‘linguists’, who had some knowledge of English conducted the necessary transactions in Canton, while Jesuits served as interpreters in more difficult cases. The British had great doubts about the ability and the loyalty of both and therefore did not want to rely on any interpreters appointed by the Chinese government.24 After all, those persons should not be able to destroy the first demonstration of the true British character to the Chinese. Macartney’s experience in Madras probably also played a role. In the EIC’s territories in India, the question of the truthfulness of native interpreters and language teachers increasingly became an issue and was one of the major reasons for William Jones’s efforts to learn Sanskrit.25 In a similar way in China, it was felt that the lack of knowledge of the foreign language became a problem, in particular at the point where the relationship between the countries exceeded that of trade. However, the only interpreters the British could find for this expedition were two Chinese converts from the Roman Catholic College of Propaganda at Naples.26 During the months at sea, they taught two members of the embassy, the scientist John Barrow and the 12-yearold son of Sir George Staunton, George Thomas Staunton, rudimentary knowledge of Chinese. Whereas it seems that the former did not make a great progress, the young boy became familiar enough with the language to be able to occasionally act as a writer for the embassy. During the audience at Jehol, he was presented to the Chinese Emperor and spoke a few words of Chinese to him.27 During their stay in China, the higher ranking members of the embassy saw their opinion about the problem of native interpreters reinforced.28 In this context, the Chinese were represented as either unreliable or timid, weak and corrupted by the fear of a despotic government. The Jesuit missionaries were shown to be partly affected by

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that fear as well, since they were also dependent on and therefore corrupted by this government. Only the innocent young Englishman and the Chinese interpreter, who had attached himself so much to the British that he was only called ‘Mr. Plumb’ and was described as often passing for a European,29 could actually provide the service Britain needed. The ambassador, Lord Macartney, therefore underlined the need of the British to learn Chinese in order to become independent of the unreliable and sometimes false Chinese and the biased Catholic missionaries: We therefore almost entirely depend on the good faith and goodnature of the few Chinese whom we employ, and by whom we can be but imperfectly understood in the broken gibberish we talk to them. I fancy that Pan-ke-qua or Mahomet Soulem would attempt doing business on the Royal Exchange to very little purpose if they appeared there in long petticoat clothes, with bonnets and turbans, and could speak nothing but Chinese or Arabic.30 Once the embassy had met with the Chinese who would accompany them to the audience with the Emperor, Macartney quickly started to evaluate the officials. By categorising them, he wanted to make sure that he was treated with respect by the Chinese side as well as identifying whom he could trust.31 In particular, he noted the difference between the Manchus and the Chinese in his effort to make sense of the China that was presented to him. Here, his Indian experience was to be crucial. The Manchus, in Macartney’s mind, like the Mughals, were foreign rulers who had established a tyranny of a handful ‘over more than three hundred millions of Chinese’.32 Despite perceived knowledge, he argued, the Manchus had not become Chinese, but rather remained true to their origin, as was typical for Oriental monarchs: ‘A series of two hundred years in the succession of eight or ten monarchs did not change the Mogul into a Hindu, nor has a century and a half made Ch’ien-lung a Chinese.’33 Although he praised the government through which the four successive Manchu emperors managed to stabilise the empire despite this imbalance, the Chinese had suffered under this rule. Since the conquest by the more barbarous Tartars, Macartney stated, the Chinese civilisation had deteriorated, while Europe had developed its arts and sciences every day. He also attributed the negative character strains he noticed in the Chinese, especially their tendency to lie, to the fact that every Chinese with aspiration had to attach himself to a despised Tartar.34

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Now, however, the Chinese began to ‘feel their native energies revive’. And it was thus only a matter of time before the Chinese would rise against their Tartar tyrants, but if this were to take the form of a violent revolution rather than that of a gentle and gradual change, a new catastrophe would await them: ‘Thus then the Chinese, if not led to emancipation by degrees, but let loose on a burst of enthusiasm would probably fall into all the excesses of folly, suffer all the paroxysms of madness, and be found as unfit for the enjoyment of freedom as the French and the negros.’35 One wonders who was supposed to lead the Chinese to emancipation, since Macartney obviously did not trust the Manchu emperors to control the situation much longer; and, as he points out in another part of his diary, Britain would certainly be the primary benefactor of a revolution in China.36 In such an event, the British would pay back all the humiliations received by the Chinese, as they had done with the Indian Rajas and Nawabs.37 Macartney thus established a system through which he could create a China that he could understand and that would help him not only during his immediate mission, but which would also give the British an insight into the long-term developments in China and a possible British role in its future. His estimation of China’s political future however was more influenced by his view of the events in India than by any proper assessment of the situation in the Qing Empire. Macartney thus gave China a new political meaning. One of the most important features in this context was Macartney’s understanding of the kowtow ceremony, which officially established a new relationship between Britain and China. While Macartney’s preconception of China undoubtedly played an important role in his position towards the question of the kowtow, the ceremony he did conduct in the end, and which has been considered as such a significant sign of the new eurocentrism, was a result of the contact zone. In his instructions, Henry Dundas had after all only vaguely told Macartney to ‘conform to all ceremonials of that Court which may not commit the honor of your Sovereign or lessen your own dignity, so as not to endanger the success of your negotiations.’38 Macartney’s refusal to comply with the ceremony of the kowtow had two connected reasons. To an enlightened Englishman, a ceremony like the kowtow smacked too much of irrational pomp, associated with absolutism, tyranny and Asian slavishness.39 This rationalisation of ceremonies also seems to have filled them with more meaning. Where earlier ambassadors had gone through the kowtow or the hand kiss of the Algerian bey without attributing too much to it, it was now considered an act of submission and thus humiliation of the British monarch.40

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However, Macartney’s attitude to the kowtow was also a consequence of his understanding of the Chinese system of foreign relations. He had closely studied all the available reports of the former European embassies to China. The Russian precedent played a crucial role in the set up of the embassy. Similarly, it seems to have served Macartney as the key example of successful negotiations with the Chinese Emperor. According to the Scot John Bell, who had travelled with the Russian embassy, the Russian ambassador, Ismailov, had initially refused to kowtow, however had apparently then complied with the ceremony after he had negotiated that a Chinese ambassador to the court of the Tsar would equally conduct the appropriate ceremonies.41 It was thus not just Eurocentric arrogance towards foreign customs when Macartney demanded the reciprocity of ceremonies from the Chinese, rather than of simply kowtowing. It had been the Russian, after all, who, after changing the ceremony in this way, had managed to negotiate a favourable settlement with the Chinese.42 From this precedent, Macartney drew the conclusion that the Chinese only negotiated on an equal basis with powers whom they acknowledged as being above their normal ‘tributary’ states, and that this had to find its expression in the ceremony during the audience with the Emperor. When the Chinese negotiators refused Macartney’s suggestion of using the etiquette of the English court at the audience, the British ambassador suggested the Russian solution: he would kowtow if a Chinese of equal rank with him would perform the same ceremony before the picture of the British king; unlike Ismailov’s arrangement however, this did not leave the reciprocity to a vague future.43 As Hevia has argued, the Qing guest ritual was an adaptable instrument through which the dynasty defined its relationship with other powers. While the goal was to constitute a supreme lord–lesser lord relationship, the ritual itself could be modified to acknowledge the special status of the other power to a certain extent.44 It appears that when the embassy arrived in Jehol, the summer residence of the emperor, neither the emperor nor his close advisers were aware of Macartney’s intentions.45 When these came to the attention of the emperor, his grand councillors seem to have made an attempt to press Macartney to comply with the ceremony,46 but then, for reasons still not entirely clear, decided to allow Macartney to conduct the English ceremony. However, one alteration was made; the kissing of the emperor’s hand was too irreconcilable with Qing traditions and therefore had to be dropped. Thus, both sides had been able to modify their respective rites to the extent that the audience, which was a defining event for the relationship of the

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two countries, could proceed. However, a ceremony, such as this audience, was never only important in its ritual content for the participants, but also in its effect on and reception by the audience.47 In contrast to inter-European relationships, the audience in this case was sharply divided into the English-speaking recipients of the ceremony and the Qing officials. Each of them was thus able to retain some authority over their interpretation of it, at least for the time being. The Qing documents, particularly the poem by the Qianlong Emperor directly after the audience, did not indicate that the audience had included anything out of the ordinary and that the British had indeed come to acknowledge the superiority and virtue of the Qing.48 In Macartney’s eyes, however, the first official contact with the Chinese Empire had been established during the audience and the Chinese Emperor had acknowledged the special position of the British in the world. Especially his steadfastness in the negotiations had shown the Chinese what kind of nation they were dealing with.49 When the embassy ultimately failed to reach any of its diplomatic goals, Macartney sought the causes in the political realm on the Chinese side, rejecting the idea that either the immutable Chinese traditions or his own, European, expectations could possibly have caused the misadventure. The alteration of the ceremony at the audience had proven to Macartney that Chinese customs were indeed changeable.50 As has been noted, the embassy did not only have a diplomatic mission, but was also supposed to bring new knowledge about China. Therefore, from the moment the Macartney embassy reached China its members set out to measure and categorise the landscape, the harbours, the plants, animals and the inhabitants of China.51 In their reports, they presented themselves as objective observers, distancing themselves from the Chinese they watched.52 However, the Chinese were suspicious that the British were actually not just interested in Chinese civilisation but looking for military intelligence. The British researchers ignored this connotation and attributed the obstructions to their enquiring minds to the Chinese character, which they described as ‘suspicious’ and ‘jealous’ halting progress. However, these texts cannot hide that the members of the embassy were at the same time an object of curiosity and study to the Chinese. Wherever the embassy went, its members saw crowds of Chinese watching curiously, which had to be kept at bay by the Chinese guards.53 At their quarters at Beijing, they had to cope with streams of visitors, who studied all the curious items of ‘use and convenience’ which the Europeans had brought with them, like dressing-tables, shaving-glasses

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and pocket instruments. The chief Mandarin of the Emperor’s orchestra even asked for permission to copy several of the musical instruments the embassy orchestra had brought with it. Initially, Macartney was delighted by this inquisitiveness since it showed that the Chinese accepted that they had a lot to learn from the British. The problem was however that he was unable to control this investigation. He had to ask the accompanying Mandarins to channel the number and quality of the visitors who wanted to see the picture of the British king and queen. With respect to other objects of Chinese curiosity, he was unable to put up any restrictions, and they thus suffered from the ‘eagerness of their curiosity, and from their awkwardness in handling them’.54 The British saw this attention as a positive process for as long as they could see themselves in the position of a teacher; however, they felt uncomfortable as soon as they could no longer control this. This feeling of discomfort shows the ambivalence of the ‘contact zone’ where the object of study might at any time leave its assigned role. Through the contact with the Chinese and China, the members of the embassy could claim to have gained first-hand knowledge about them, which was verified by the eyes and ears of British gentlemen, who could act as objective observers. Back in Britain, their reports thus became a new legitimate source of knowledge on China and the Chinese. For the first time it became possible to construct a China according to the ideas of the new natural history and the stadial theory. The Chinese in this context were transformed from being more or less equals (as they still were in the diplomatic part of the embassy), to being mere objects of study; this increased the distance between the British and the Chinese as well as heightening their foreignness. By being able to create new valid knowledge on China, the members of the embassy could also contribute to a better estimation of China by ascertaining its place in the order of civilisations.55 It gave the British the feeling that they now ‘understood’ China, at least to a certain extent, making future approaches possible as well as initiating further British studies of China. In Britain itself, the embassy as a diplomatic venture remained highly contested. Especially the opponents of the Pitt government criticised the mission. In the eyes of Peter Pindar and William Winterbotham, the British government had bowed before an Asian tyrant and endangered British national honour by the ridiculous outfit and behaviour of the embassy. According to them, the main reason for the embassy was the longing for Asian luxuries. This brought the risk that even the ambassador himself as well as his monarch turned Asiatic and gave up British liberties.56

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The embassy formed a ‘contact zone’ of its own between the British and the Chinese, which had its effects on the British ideas about China in Britain as well as in Canton. The idea that the British now had better knowledge about the Chinese would be of crucial importance for any further interactions. Furthermore, for a short time the British hoped that a diplomatic channel to the court in Beijing could indeed be established, if the time was ripe. The Macartney embassy thus hardly formed the end in British attempts at peaceful diplomacy with the Chinese. However, the new connection between Britain and China still attracted the criticism of those who saw the Asia trade in luxuries as a threat to British liberties. The Macartney embassy had only briefly opened a ‘contact zone’ between Britain and the Chinese Empire. It had had its origin primarily in the British contact with the Chinese Empire in Canton and the remainder of this chapter will discuss the multiple meanings of China created by the British in this ‘contact zone’ and the relations of power, knowledge and identity in this outpost between the two empires.

3.2 Chinese law and British rights On the 18th of June 1799, George Thomas Staunton, the young boy who had kneeled before the Emperor of China as a member of the Macartney embassy, bid farewell to his parents at Portsmouth and sailed for China again. As the only child of a not very prosperous gentry family, his father had managed to secure him the position of secretary of the EIC in Canton mainly due to his knowledge of Chinese. Staunton thus arrived in Canton to take up his position. The sensitive young boy had received a very special education by several house teachers, and had never attended any public schools. Only rarely had he had the company of other children, such as his cousins.57 This upbringing had little prepared him for the community in which he was to live in Canton. He found his duties, which mainly consisted of copying the factory records, mindless, and he regarded his fellow Britons there as ignorant. Their leisure activities, such as horse and boat racing did not appeal to him, and in his letters home he complained about the total lack of culture in the European community at Canton.58 This British community into which Staunton found it so hard to settle had evolved from the 1750s onwards, when the EIC had allowed its supercargoes to stay in China for more than one season. It was very small – in 1828, there were only a total of 25 people on the employment list of the EIC in Canton.59 In addition to this, there were several

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country traders, increasing in number, but still no more than 53 private English traders and 52 Parsees in 1833.60 The EIC employees would stay in China for long periods, often as long as 15 or 20 years, hoping to acquire enough money for a good life in Britain after their return. They were only allowed to travel back to England on important occasions, or as member of the Select Committee, to take home leave on average every three years.61 The British presence in China was not an imperial one, nor even a trading post protected by the military. This as well as the small number of Britons in Canton meant that the Qing government’s organisation of foreign trade shaped the life of the British in China to a great extent. Over the years, the Qing government had developed a set of rules to control these strangers at its coast. Trade was restricted to Canton alone, and the Europeans were only permitted to reside there during the trading season. Moreover, they were not allowed to bring their wives and children with them, to carry arms, to own property or to have any contact with the Chinese population other than the Hong merchants. Outside the trading season, between April and September, the British had to live on Macao, where their families stayed for the entire year. Here they had to come to an arrangement with the Portuguese authorities.62 This system suited the interest of the Qing dynasty who wanted to keep the coastal frontier calm while concentrating on consolidating their power in Central Asia. Furthermore, they also only had rather a confused notion regarding the origin and culture of these European foreigners.63 As a Central Asian people themselves, they probably also had little interest in maritime trade and thus adopted the restrictive system of the late Ming dynasty which had been developed to keep the Japanese pirates at the coast under control.64 However, this situation was a continuous cause of complaint for the British. Restrained to stay in the factories, prohibited from entering the city itself and met with hostility by the locals, a tension built up that was likely to erupt. If an incident occurred that involved the wounding or even the killing of a Chinese or a European, the British even felt more at the mercy of the local authorities. Sometimes, as in the case of an Englishman, Mr. Pigot, who had killed a Chinese in 1820, all sides might work together to guarantee the smooth continuation of trade. On that occasion, in order to avoid confrontation, the Hong merchants and the Cantonese government agreed to accept that a man who had committed suicide would be seen as the guilty party, thus settling the case, despite the fact that they knew that he had not actually been the real culprit. Certainly, there was some meaningful dialogue between both sides, but

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this never made the British stop seeing the Chinese authorities in a negative light as ‘the Other’. The very fact that the Chinese were prepared to accept such subterfuge served yet again to prove to the employees of the EIC the two-faced character of the Chinese; clearly these were people who would accept anything as long as they were able to keep up appearances. This image provided a convenient justification for the morally somewhat dubious actions of the EIC employees themselves – a pattern that was to occur repeatedly.65 The contact EIC employees had with Britain was limited to letters, which took up to more than six months to arrive. It was thus to the Governor-General in India that the EIC servants looked for support and for guidelines in situations of crisis. In most cases, however, the Select Committee made its own decisions, assuming later approval by the Court of Directors. However, the contacts with the Court of Directors and the EIC in India meant that the servants of the EIC in Canton were influenced in their attitudes towards the Chinese by ideas that were influential in the Indian context as well. The president of the Select Committee was considered by the Chinese as the person responsible for the actions of all British in the port. This repeatedly led to conflicts, for example in cases where a member of a country-ship had caused trouble with the Chinese authorities or on the few occasions when a ship of the British navy entered the port. The officers of these ships would not accept any orders from the Select Committee, while the Chinese held the Select Committee responsible for the conduct of the navy ships.66 With the growing importance of British trade in Canton, however, the Select Committee increasingly saw themselves as representatives of the British. To a certain extent, they also considered themselves to occupy the role of representatives of all Europeans in Canton. During a conflict with the Chinese authorities in 1831, for example, they issued a public announcement stating that they would stop trade if no solution was to be found. They added authority to this proclamation by calling themselves ‘REPRESENTATIVES of the BRITISH NATION in CHINA’.67 They were also accepted as representatives of British interests by the country traders, as long as they supported their goals.68 The ‘free English’, or country merchants, for example, considered the rigid measures taken by the majority of the Select Committee against the Chinese in 1830/1831 as beneficial to the entire community. When the Court of Directors disapproved of the measures of the Select Committee and called them back, the country traders expressed their regret.69 The Select Committee was apparently also used as an accepted arbitrator in cases of

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dispute between Britons and Chinese, especially where country traders were concerned.70 This was a view the Court of Directors in London did not share.71 As far as they were concerned, the China trade was purely an economic issue and thus it was more important to keep the EIC trade going than to act in the alleged interests of the British nation in general. In the direct neighbourhood of the British were the factories of the other European trading companies, most notably the French, Dutch, Danish and those of the Americans. The Europeans often acted jointly in cases where they saw their interests in danger. For example, during the ‘Lady Hughes Affair’, all European traders joined the British stoppage of trade to exert pressure on the Chinese.72 However, there was fierce competition between the European traders for a share in the Chinese market. Several of them were concerned about a possible success of the Macartney embassy which might improve the British conditions in Canton. The Dutch were so worried in fact that the VOC (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie) sent an embassy to Beijing the year after the British.73 After 1785, the British had managed to gain predominance in the European China trade and thus began to see themselves as leaders of the Europeans. While the employees of the EIC in Canton thus saw themselves to a certain extent as members of a European group in contrast to the Chinese and other Asian traders, the Hong merchants nevertheless also constituted a respected part of the trading community. There seems to have been good and friendly contact between EIC employees and the Hong merchants. Puankequa, for example, the most prominent Hong merchant in the late 18th century, was famous for his banquets for Western merchants and sea captains. On the first day, the banquet would be in Western style, with knives and forks. This was followed by a Chinese opera, which included actors in Western dress. The next evening, the meal would be served Chinese style, followed by further entertainment such as acrobatics and fireworks.74 Other Hong merchants maintained similar amicable intercourse with the foreign merchants. The brother of the Hong merchant Puankequa II, for example, nicknamed ‘the Squire’, was well known for his affinity to Westerners.75 These social encounters were accompanied by the recognition of the Hong as sometimes very able, but almost always respectable, businessmen. This was especially important due to the long crisis of insolvencies of several of the Hongs.76 In order to keep the trade going, it became necessary for the EIC Select Committee to lend huge sums to the insolvent

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Hongs, in the hope to avoid their bankruptcy. To justify this to themselves and to their superiors in London, they had to evoke the image of a trustworthy Chinese merchant. For the EIC employees at Canton, the image of the treacherous Chinese merchant, which had been introduced by the Jesuits, therefore was not dominant.77 On the contrary, when the Hong merchant Coqua faced serious financial difficulties, the Select Committee expressed their confidence in him and argued in favour of helping him. James Molony, a member of the Select Committee, suggested that the President might be requested to consider Coqua in the arrangements for the ensuing Season as an act of charity to a deserving man the son of an old Hong Merchant, who had suffered in the liberal assistance & confidence, which he had placed in an Englishman; but more particularly to a man who had universally gained the esteem of ourselves & predecessors by his upright conduct in his transactions with the Hon’ble Company, his urbanity of manners, & the ready & correct communications, which he ever afforded.78 This was not confined to a single incident in the case of this particular merchant, but applied in several cases.79 The case of Coqua is interesting, because he is one of several Hong merchants who were charged by the Canton government with collaborating too closely with the British. In order to appear as a trustworthy business partner to the British, he opened himself to attacks from Chinese officials, who always tried to keep foreigners and Chinese as far apart from each other as possible.80 Building a trusted relationship with the Hong was thus a crucial strategy of the EIC Select Committee to ensure the smooth running of their trade and in order to make the Hong merchants overlook some of the laws and regulations of their country. Nevertheless, the idea of the treacherous Chinese never seems to have been far away. However, social contacts as well as the common commercial interest meant that the Hong merchants and the Chinese employees were not necessarily seen and imagined as a distant, negative ‘Other’. Chinese and European merchants formed a community which was based on communication, interchange and mutual respect. The Hong merchants therefore were the main source of information about Qing politics and its norms. However, British attitudes towards the Hong could change as soon as the Chinese government became involved, so that information acquired from the merchants was thus not always considered to be reliable.

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The reports and letters of the Britons in Canton make it clear that they were very much aware of their absolute minority position at the fringe of the Chinese Empire. The small size of the community also meant that a dynamic evolved and networks were created that were sometimes quite different from the ones back in Britain. The Select Committee was frequently more open to suggestions by country traders and missionaries of a hard line against the Chinese than the Court of Directors in London wished. The Court was mainly interested in satisfying its stakeholders by making a profit, ensuring the tea supply for Britain and maintaining and extending its dominant position in the tea trade in Canton. Their main objective therefore was that the trade proceeded without any larger interference, that the quality and price of the tea was good and that they were in a position to raise the funds for paying the commodities they bought in Canton. Consequently, they urged their servants in Canton more than once not to take recourse to harsh measures if events did not go according to their will. Of course, they wrote, one had to take care that one did not give up any privileges, but in general, little advantage was to be expected from too severe a conflict with the Chinese; rather one should accept the status quo and make allowances for ‘Chinese habits’.81 For the Select Committee however, these habits and the restrictions on foreigners did not just present economic problems. The defence of national dignity and independence grew increasingly important in the situation in Canton. The EIC merchants at Canton were hardly the laureates of an idea of China as the perfect commercial society and state. As merchants they would have preferred a greater variety of merchants from whom they might purchase, enabling them to reduce the prices. While it was possible for the employees of the EIC in Canton to view the Hong merchants as part of a group with common interest, namely trade, the Chinese government, local as well as central, was identified as a threat to British interests and identity. This idea had been around almost since the 1760s, but became more dominant from the 1780s onwards. Now it served as a focal point for an increasingly aggressive attitude of EIC employees in Canton towards the Qing authorities. Episodes such as the ‘Lady Hughes Affair’ had shown the Select Committee that the Chinese local government was quite willing to resort to military power if they felt that this was necessary. This feeling of insecurity, in all likelihood heightened by an inability to fully understand the methods and reasons of the local government, increased the necessity to describe the Cantonese government and its officials as irrational and corrupt.

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Of course, the idea of Chinese despotism was already widespread at the time and the employees of the EIC might have picked this up before their journey to Canton. After their arrival in Canton, this was found to be a suitable concept to define the Chinese authorities. The situation of the authorities in Canton and the Hong system certainly did lend itself to some abuse and arbitrary measures, through which officials might increase their personal income.82 However, the employees of the EIC and the free merchants in Canton condensed this occasional abuse into the defining characteristic of the Cantonese government and the Chinese in general. Effectively, this put them in a position where they could simply describe the Chinese authorities as the ‘negative Other’ – whenever any of their actions did not suit the interests of the British or indeed of the EIC.83 This idea of the corrupt and arbitrary Chinese officials became stronger during times of crisis and it also grew more intense over time. An important element of the idea of the arbitrary Chinese officials was the attitude of the EIC employees at Canton to Chinese law.84 It is in the changes to this attitude that we can trace how the idea of arbitrariness and a lack of justice grew stronger from 1800 onwards. To a certain extent, this corresponded to the increasing rejection of Indian law in the context of British rule in India by the Liberals and Utilitarians. Here, Indian law was increasingly seen as source of Asian despotism and the decay of society; hence it had to be strongly modified, or even either replaced by English law or at least reformed according to Benthamite ideas of utility.85 At the same time, ideas about the law of nations were influenced by Emmerich de Vattel’s argument that the facilitation of trade was part of the ‘necessary laws’ of nations, which all states had to submit to as laws of nature. While Vattel acknowledged the right of nations to refuse to trade in special goods if they deemed these harmful, most adherents of free trade ignored this caveat.86 Both traditions influenced British understanding of Chinese law and their attitude towards it. In the Qing Empire, the position of foreigners in the legal system had evolved over time. During the Ming and early Qing reign, it was clearly stated that crimes committed by foreigners on Chinese soil had to be tried according to the Chinese Penal Code. This rule was amended in 1743, stating that foreigners did not have to go through the procedures ‘concerning detention and obtaining a confession’ which were used for Chinese. While this had been intended to accommodate the wishes of the foreigners, it led to several complaints from the 1800 onwards, because the Europeans felt themselves excluded by this

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from appellate review and communications with the judges which were open to ordinary Chinese.87 Apart from this modification, the Qing authorities insisted on their right to try offences that had occurred on Chinese soil. During the ‘Lady Hughes Affair’, the supercargoes of the EIC were horrified by the actions of the Chinese and the Chinese legal system. They considered it impossible for themselves as Englishmen to subject themselves to this system, ‘as a conformable compliance to these notions seems to us so contrary to what Europeans deem humanity or justice and if we voluntarily submitted to it must appear to all that we gave up every moral and many principle to our Interest.’88 They demanded clarification from their superiors in London regarding the question of the extent to which British subjects on country-ships had to obey the Select Committee.89 This might have been an attempt to secure for themselves permission to practice extraterritorial law in China.90 However, it did not mean a complete rejection of possible Chinese legal sovereignty91 since this request was also meant to protect the Select Committee from charges at home in the event of handing over a British subject to the Chinese authorities. The Committee therefore suggested a compromise with the Chinese: In cases of murder, the European should be judged in the presence of a Chinese magistrate, and if found guilty, should be handed over to them. In the event that he was found not guilty, the British would be able to then protect him.92 The Chinese did not formally accept this compromise and thus similar cases repeatedly led to severe tensions between the Europeans and the Chinese in Canton. Nevertheless, during the next larger incident in February 1800, where a Briton wounded a Chinese, the President of the Select Committee, Richard Hall, acknowledged the jurisdiction of the Chinese courts to a certain extent. The facts of the case were that a sailor had shot and wounded a Chinese, who had allegedly tried to cut the anchor cable of the ship ‘Providence’. While the Chinese finally refrained from a conviction on account of bodily harm, the captain of the ship, John Dilkes, demanded that the Chinese be punished by a Chinese court for his attack on the ship. However, the Cantonese authorities refused this. In the context of this incident, Hall asked the Cantonese Viceroy for a copy of the Chinese law, since ‘the English being unacquainted with the Laws and Customs of China, were continually liable to involuntary infringements of them.’93 This may have been intended mainly as a gesture of acknowledgement towards the Viceroy,

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who had been helpful during the affair, or just an attempt to get a better knowledge of the general situation. Nevertheless, it clearly shows that the president of the Select Committee still considered the Chinese legal system to be rational and understandable, and a system which could be applicable to the British. Knowledge of Chinese law remained an important factor in the following years. One of the most important steps in this context was the translation of the ‘Ta Tsing Leu Lee’, the laws of the Qing dynasty, by George Thomas Staunton in 1810. This work established its meaning in two different contexts: for the general interested public in Great Britain on the one hand and the EIC in London and Canton on the other. In Canton, the information on Chinese law was seen in a practical light; something that could be used in discussions with the Cantonese authorities, or to predict their actions as well as the character of these authorities. Cases such as the ones mentioned above, in which the Chinese cooperated with the British, even led to the idea that the Chinese law could be more flexible than the written Penal Code suggested.94 At the same time however, similar to the developments concerning India, the British in Canton developed a growing contempt for Chinese law. The British increasingly assumed English laws and ideas of international law to be universal and tried to elude the influence of the Chinese jurisdiction and state power in all matters, not just in murder cases.95 Due to the nature of the contact in Canton, the British here did not so much discuss the possible changes of Chinese law, but rather emphasised what they saw as rights according to a law of nations. Thus the employees of the EIC in Canton moved into opposition to their superiors in London, who wanted to keep peace with the Chinese as far as possible. For headquarters, China was still only an economic field, not an area for political intervention according to the ideas of international law. This contrast became particularly evident in the context of a small incident in 1817 during which the Chinese authorities evicted the illegal print shop of the EIC in Canton. The Select Committee seems to have tried to prevent the Chinese from entering by force and defended this before their superiors in London with the argument that property was inviolable according to the English law. The Court of Directors rebuked them, indicating that the Chinese government was hardly bound by English law. The only thing the British at Canton could demand was to be protected by the Chinese law in the same way as other foreigners were.96 The answer of the Select Committee contained one of the

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central arguments for the validity of the British norms in contact with the Chinese: The disposition to depress Foreigners by the most vexatious conduct and restrictions has frequently rendered it incumbent upon them to resort to their individual exertions for relief [. . .] and as they unquestionably do not participate in the full advantages of the Laws of China their relation to those Laws has generally been considered different from that of a Native – the entrance of a house without notice or the display of authority for the act is a circumstance which has always been deemed unjustifiable.97 The British employees of the EIC thus saw themselves excluded from the security of the Chinese law, since it did not accord to foreigners those laws which the British considered universal. From here it was only a small step to ideologically completely deprive the Chinese of the right to execute their own law in their own territory. In order to check the growing opium trade, in 1817, the Chinese authorities demanded the right to search all foreign ships in the harbour of Canton, a request which the Select Committee refused, probably for that very reason. During the debate, which spanned the next two years, the employees of the EIC found the formula which was to determine the conduct towards China up to the Opium War: they argued that of course according to the law of nations every country had the right to search the ships in their harbour to avoid smuggling; ‘China however acknowledges no laws except her own, no Powers beyond the confines of her own dominion.’98 In reverse, the British were excused from acting according to the Chinese laws or the international law of nations. The cruelty and injustice of the Chinese was now mentioned more often. For example, in 1821, the Select Committee described the execution of an American, who had killed a Chinese, as ‘sacrifice to the inhumanity and injustice of the Chinese’.99 Describing the Chinese and their legal system in these terms made it seem impossible for a Briton to subject himself to Chinese laws. In contrast to the Chinese, the Britons portray themselves as safe-keepers of justice and humanity. Giving in to the Chinese therefore would not only endanger the life of the individual concerned but also the British identity of all Britons in the port. In this firm stand against the Chinese authorities, the country merchants stood alongside the Select Committee. They also vehemently argued for the right of foreigners to petition at the Canton city gates and called for more rights for foreigners under Chinese law. At the same

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time, however, they made it clear that they could not possibly accept Chinese law the way it was. Specifically they claimed that this was not possible because Chinese law worked on the assumption that the foreigner wanted to assimilate himself to Chinese culture – an impossibility for the British. In the Canton Register, the free traders also followed the argument of the majority of the Select Committee that since China did not adopt other parts of the rules of international contact, such as opening all its ports to trade, other aspects of the law of nations equally did not apply. This was particularly highlighted in respect of the local authorities in Canton, who were described as even more corrupt than those in the rest of the country. Time and again the Canton Register wrote against the idea of an unchanging China, with immutable laws, which had been propagated by the Jesuits as well as by the Chinese authorities: And all these beautifully NEW regulations, are made by the sole authority of the Governor of Canton, without even reporting them to the Supreme Government. People may admire as they please the wisdom, and justice, and the perpetuity of Chinese Institutions, but certainly these NEW regulations, are little calculated to exhibit any one of these three admired qualities. There revolutionary enactments, of a provincial Governor, will, ere long, (perhaps by this said Governor himself,) be styled, the unchangeable laws of the Celestial Empire!100 In the context of the ‘Lady Hughes Affair’, it was still seen as more or less self-evident that there was a tradition of Chinese law which had to be taken into account and with which one had to try to compromise. In the following period, the British acquired more knowledge of Chinese law through which they thought they could classify Chinese actions and to thus make them more predictable. At the same time, this was used to highlight the cruelty of the Chinese legal system and its failure to adhere to the principles of British law. This made it easier to the British at Canton to represent their disregard of the Chinese law as legitimate. Following this, they increased their efforts to vehemently demand from the Chinese authorities that they should have the right to judge British subjects themselves and thus avoid Chinese sovereignty of law.101 The ‘contact zone’ in Canton thus for the first time highlighted the question of Chinese law outside of a philosophical debate about the nature of the Chinese state. Here, Chinese law became one of the features which illuminated its ‘Otherness’. This ‘Otherness’ was no longer

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exotic and solely served to explain Chinese society. Rather its distinctiveness was considered to result from its despotic government and its refusal to participate in the international world order, as defined by the British. These ideas regarding the question of the extent to which China was part of the order of international law were to become a crucial element in the debates in the metropolis in the context of the end of the EIC monopoly in 1834 and even more so in the context of the Opium War. In the following years, unofficial compromises were sometimes found. However, increasingly a discourse developed which classified Chinese law as inhumane and portraying those enacting it as both cruel and corrupt. Following the developments in India, a meaning of the Chinese legal system was established which categorised it as part of an Asian despotic system. Consequently, no room was left for compromise. Any negotiations now could be interpreted as an attack on British identity. It was therefore increasingly easy to assert the universal validity of the law of nations in order to justify breaching Chinese trading laws. In this context, the British developed a meaning of China which was excluded from and isolated itself from all other nations, an isolation that was solely due to China’s unnatural refusal to accept universal norms. This discourse of self-sought exclusion would be crucial in the run up to the Opium War.

3.3 The unreliable interpreter The use of the translation of the Chinese Penal Code shows that British knowledge of and attitude to Chinese language was one of the fundamental changes in this period in Canton. Bernhard Cohn considers the years 1770–1785 as the decisive period, in which the British set out to acquire knowledge of Indian languages to further their rule of India. The grammars, dictionaries and teaching aids for Indian languages according to him ‘converted Indian forms of knowledge into European objects’. This epistemological project then helped the British ‘to issue commands and collect ever-increasing amounts of information’, needed for their dominance of India.102 The question of the use of English and vernacular languages, language teaching and translation has become central to several analysis of imperialism. Language and language politics are discussed as medium of power, through which cultural imperialism is propagated. This involves both, the introduction of English as the language of education and

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administration in the colonial setting, and the adaptation and appropriation of one of the local languages as ‘standard’ language by the colonial masters.103 Particularly in the context of translations, the power over the meaning of words is crucially linked to the power over the mind of a population. In the ‘contact zone’ in Canton, knowledge of the Chinese language was a struggle over power on both sides. While the Chinese tried to prevent the foreigners from learning Chinese, the British in this period set out to acquire knowledge of the Chinese language. They tried to categorise it and use it to study Chinese culture, ultimately independent of Chinese or Jesuit aides, or to transfer European religious and scientific ideas to the Chinese. In Canton, as will become clear, one of the most important features of this knowledge of the Chinese language was that through it the British tried to gain influence over the Chinese authorities and agency over the representation of Britishness. The British thus turned the power of the use of Chinese language and the self-representation of the British into yet another tool in the struggle with the Chinese authorities, next to the economic power of the stoppage of trade. As in the case of law discussed above, the insistence to acquire the Chinese language, and to be allowed to use it, showed a development of the idea that the British had the right and the duty to determine the conditions of contact and that the Chinese could not be trusted. At the same time, the Chinese understood the knowledge of language and especially literacy as a tool for the dominance over the ‘uncivilised’.104 As discussed in the context of the Macartney embassy, very few Britons had knowledge of Chinese and ‘linguists’ conducted the business in Canton in pidgin English.105 This however was a system which was met with no great sympathy by the British in Canton. They often saw Chinese interpreters as unreliable and believed that they were an obstacle to petitions to the Viceroy due to their fear of the Chinese authorities and their dishonesty.106 They also considered the Jesuits more inclined towards the interests of their own nation than towards the British.107 Despite these problems, no real effort was made by the Company to change the situation. The only attempt in the 1750s to educate an Englishman, James Flint, in Chinese and use him as an interpreter ended in his expulsion from China by the Chinese authorities.108 After this episode, the EIC officials feared that a further attempt to get a reliable English interpreter would lead to even more restrictions on trade. With the lack of linguistic skill, the idea remained that unreliable

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and timid interpreters were responsible for a good amount of the problems faced by the British in Canton. This situation only changed after 1800. The Macartney embassy had led to a short increase in interests in Chinese in Britain as well as in Canton.109 Nevertheless, the lamentation about the lack of knowledge about China is common to almost all publications on China and the Chinese language in this period.110 It was seen as a problem concerning the trade with China, but also to the spread of the Christian faith in it, and as a danger to national pre-eminence. In 1822, John Francis Davis, EIC employee and later first governor of Hong Kong, still despaired of the ‘singular listlessness’ of his countrymen in Canton concerning the learning of Chinese language and literature. In contrast to this, ‘the French, for nearly a century before, had been pursuing their research with diligence and success.’111 Not only did this give them advantages in the pursuit of knowledge and in contact with China, as John Barrow feared, but within the whole region of East Asia, where Chinese was used as the language of communication.112 Even though the French and other Catholic nations had this advantage, their accounts could not be trusted in the eyes of the British. It was seen as the mission of the English nation to give the first accurate account of the Chinese.113 But for this it was necessary for Englishmen to learn Chinese, if possible in the country itself.114 These reflections, together with the Protestant missionary eagerness to spread the gospel amongst the large population of China in their native language, led to several attempts to promote the study of the Chinese language in the early 19th century, primarily in the periphery. By this point, William Jones had done his groundbreaking studies on the Indian languages, furthering a new philology. His studies had been primarily inspired by the need for the British to understand Sanskrit and Hindi and thus to become independent from the presumably unfaithful native translators in their ruling of Bengal. Since his ideas on language were to become crucial in shaping British ideas on China and the Chinese language in the periphery, they are discussed here briefly. Even before he arrived in India as a judge on the Bengal Supreme Court, Jones had been an Oriental scholar renowned for his translations from Arabic and Persian, and his Persian Grammar. Like his contemporaries, he considered Latin and Greek to be the most perfect languages, but in contrast to them he insisted that the Oriental literature also had something to offer. Consequently, he did not pursue his language studies in order to add to the philosophical study of language, but rather to come to a better understanding of Persian and Arabic literature.115 Jones, therefore, as Hans Aarsleff has argued, first attempted to separate

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the study of language from the study of the mind, by trying to pay more attention to detailed knowledge of the different languages before comparing them.116 This was already his main idea in his Grammar of the Persian Language, which he published before he left for India.117 His ‘discovery’ of Sanskrit, which was to become the core of his later influential theory of language, and a focal point for the study of the relationships of language and people, was inspired by his work in India.118 He therefore only developed his comparative philology fully in contrast to etymology based on conjecture during his stay in Bengal. In relation to the ‘Tartar’ dialects, he stated in his discourse ‘On the Tartars’ that he only lectured on this topic reluctantly, ‘because I have little knowledge of the Tartarian dialects; and the gross errours of European writers on Asiatick literature have long convinced me, that no satisfactory account can be given of any nation, with whose language we are not perfectly acquainted.’119 Thus, in Jones’s opinion, only etymology that derived from demonstrable facts and came to a posteriori conclusions could produce any reliable information about the relation of languages and of nations.120 In his reflections on the Chinese however, one can see little of these ideas of careful investigation. Without having knowledge of the language, he attempted to add them to one of the groups of nations he had developed from his study of language. Relying on Jesuit reports on Chinese religion, law and writing, he argued that they must have received their religion as well as their letters from the Indians, and that they were therefore part of the Indo-European family.121 Only later did he modify his opinion on this issue, claiming that this relation was ‘no more than highly probable’.122 For the time being, Chinese had escaped the negative associations which were soon made with languages thought not to belong to the Indo-European family.123 But even within this new system of language families, the Chinese were thought to be uninventive and unoriginal, a people who had acquired the more sophisticated parts of its law, religion and writing from another nation. Until the 1830s, Jones’s ideas about language and its study as a scientific historical tool had almost no followers in Britain itself but was only picked up on the Continent, where it influenced the reflections of Herder and Schlegel.124 However, in the periphery of British expansion, the debate about the connection between Chinese and Sanskrit continued, and Jones’s more factual approach to the study of language found its adherents. It was there that the philological study of Chinese by the British began. George T. Staunton was the first person of whose knowledge of Chinese the Select Committee made some use. During the temporary absences of George Thomas Staunton, the Spanish Augustinian, Father Rodriguez,

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worked for the Company as interpreter and also taught interested members of the factory. In 1807, he was joined by Thomas Manning, who had tried to study Chinese in England and France but due to lack of opportunities and the Franco-English hostilities had sought an appointment with the Factory in Canton. His final goal had been to be employed by the Imperial Court as an astronomer or physician. His plans however were frustrated by the anti-Christian sentiment of the Chinese government at the time, and he departed for Bengal and Tibet in 1810. The gap left by him and the expulsion of Father Rodriguez from China was filled by Robert Morrison, the first British Protestant missionary to China.125 Bengal and Southeast Asia became important sites alongside Canton for learning Chinese and the construction of British knowledge about the Chinese language. While the British study of Chinese was established in different contact zones of the British expansion, the actors nevertheless stood in constant contact with each other and thus developed connected ideas on Chinese studies. Not surprisingly, one of the first influences in the British spheres in India and China on how one should understand Chinese was William Jones’s ‘new philology’ and the pre-eminent position of Sanskrit within it. Following his ‘discourse on the Chinese’, the main protagonists in the field of Chinese studies from 1790 commented on the connections between Sanskrit and Chinese. By this they positioned it in relation to the new triad of ‘original languages’: Sanskrit, Greek and Latin.126 John Davis did not reject the idea of a Sanskrit influence on Chinese, believing that the Chinese initials and finals derived from it. For him however this did not lead to the conclusion that the Chinese language was more or less a variation of Sanskrit but reaffirmed that it ‘is still the language of the Chinese’.127 So while Jones still placed Chinese within the IndoEuropean language family, the later students of Chinese rejected the influence of Sanskrit on it, thereby positioning it within the Asian languages, but also emphasised its singularity. The absolute otherness of Chinese, and consequently of the people who spoke it, was a predominant feature of the texts written about the Chinese language. Davis also pointed towards the extraordinary structure of Chinese, as did the missionary William Milne.128 The idea that Chinese was completely distinct from any other language was hardly new. When it was first suggested that the Bible should be translated into Chinese for missionary purposes, the strongest opposition was that, due to the nature of the language, it was impossible to translate.129 The proponents of the plan put forward that the Jesuits

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had already translated some parts of the Bible but also pointed out that the British had been able to translate the letter of King George III to the Emperor of China. William Moseley, the chief force behind the project, even suggested that Chinese was easier to learn than any European language.130 While Chinese remained a ‘peculiar’ language, different from all others, people in the metropolis, but even more those in the periphery, who were interested in a growing British influence in China, constructed a Chinese that was also understandable and possible to learn. They made clear, however, that for the purpose they wanted to acquire the knowledge of the language, it could only be learned in the periphery.131 In Canton, ever since the time of James Flint knowledge of the Chinese language had been a question of power. Whereas one of the ideas that gave rise to the foundation of the College of Fort William had been that the mastery of indigenous languages would make the British more independent from contact with the corrupting influence of the Indians,132 in China it was the question of becoming independent of the false and corrupted Chinese interpreter and mediator, who neglected British interests. The more British trade with China grew as well as British power in the region, and the better acquainted with the Chinese language they became, the more the British mistrusted Chinese interpreters. It became a sign of status to provide one’s own interpreters and translations of official documents. After all, in some cases, this was the only possibility to submit petitions and complaints to the Chinese officials as long as Chinese writers were too afraid of possible punishments to translate them for the British. Moreover, as Robert Morrison pointed out, they suspected that the reason the Chinese insisted on their own translation was that by this they could ‘put into a foreigner’s mouth the style of an abject dependant, not merely to feed their vanity, but that they may treat him as such.’133 Here, as in other circumstances as well, the British soon became obsessed with the Chinese categories of ranking. As soon as Staunton and Morrison had learned that there were three kinds of style in Chinese, ‘a high, a low, and a middle’, this became an important feature in dealing with Chinese texts or translations into Chinese.134 After lengthy negotiations, John Fullarton Elphinstone, member of the Select Committee, finally got the concession from the Chinese that the British would be allowed to submit notes that were translated by themselves.135 By this, the EIC, and later the second British embassy to the Court of China tried to prevent ‘wrong’ translations by the Chinese and the Jesuits. This attitude also meant turning away from the

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acceptance of Chinese standards in official correspondence, which had been guaranteed by the Jesuits, who quite often had been the translators of such letters. The importance of this topic can be seen in the example of a dispute with the Chinese authorities in 1822. It involved a letter to the Hoppo of Canton with an application to the emperor to remove the duties on Company goods, which had been destroyed in a fire. Letters, which were to be presented to the emperor, according to the agreement with the Chinese authorities, had still to be written in English and be translated by official translators. The first suggestion of such a letter from the Hong merchants was refused after a translation from the Chinese by Robert Morrison. The Select Committee argued that expressions were used in the letter, which were unnecessary and of which they had disapproved for a long time. One of the expressions they objected to, was ‘Ee’, or in pinyin ‘yi’, which the British translated as ‘foreign Barbarians’. George T. Staunton, they argued, had already replaced this degrading term long ago with the neutral ‘Yuen Kih’ (visitor or Guest from remote Parts). Moreover, the use of the phrase ‘the wares of our Barbarian King’ implied that the king of Great Britain was himself little more than a merchant. Furthermore, to address the Chinese Emperor as ‘heaven’s grace’ was too pompous, even by Chinese standards.136 Morrison rejected the wording in the letter, which the Hong merchants had suggested, because he feared it would damage the Chinese image of the British character. Instead of seeing it as a correct address to a Chinese official and the Chinese Emperor, he only recognised avarice and bootlicking. According to his interpretation, the Hong merchant only wanted to flatter the Hoppo, who himself acted like a slave towards the emperor. They tried to get the British, with the aspect of financial gain, to use humiliating phrases and by this ‘the ideas of the Christian foreigners is perpetuated, which conceives of them, as men lost to every social and generous feeling, men whose strongest passion is the love of gain.’137 Exactly this, however, had to be avoided. Melodramatic Morrison asked in his letter to the Select Committee: ‘shall we sacrifice character for the sake of gain? If we do sacrifice character and honor shall we gain more? No, is probably in the first the proper answer. No, in the second, the true one . . .’138 The Select Committee agreed with Morrison and wrote a letter to the Hong merchants, in which it represented the relief by the Emperor not as mercy of the ‘Divine Prince’, but as necessary on the basis of law and justice. Finally, and here the influence of the missionary/translator becomes evident: ‘For Princes and statesmen as well as poor people

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Natives and Foreigners, all are God’s creatures and all finally accountable to him.’139 When the Select Committee had to realise that the Hong merchants did not accept the objections but simply sent the first letter, it became even more evident how important the representation of the British was for the Committee. Now everything that was within British possibilities should be done to limit the disastrous impression the letter had to have at the imperial court, and to represent the British character in the right way. The Select Committee feared especially that if this practice could go through further misrepresentations were bound to follow.140 It was even considered to send a letter from the British dominion in India via Tibet to Beijing, an option that had not been used so far.141 The main reason for this activism was certainly the fear that the Chinese authorities in Canton might worsen the conditions of trade in Canton and the British would have no possibility to contact Beijing directly and thus evoke relief or punishment. Communication with the imperial court was however not the only aim. Important was also that the Chinese had a positive image not just of the EIC but of the British in general, without which, one feared, the court would never attempt to improve trading conditions. It has to be remarked, however, that the British in Canton did not think they could achieve this by complying with Chinese forms, as they were provided by the Chinese in Canton or the Jesuit missionaries, but only by behaving according to what they thought to be the British character and universal norms of conduct. Any adoption of Chinese terms was seen as a humiliation, which could only result in weakening the person who used them. The country merchants also soon considered it important to have European translators. They often hired the German missionary Karl Gützlaff to act as their interpreter and in 1830, John Morrison, the son of Robert Morrison, was appointed translator to the ‘British merchants’ in Canton. The Canton Register expressed the hope that with better communications the conditions of trade in Canton would also improve.142 The Register also continuously debated the question of whether the Chinese term which was normally translated as ‘Barbarians’ was indeed an insulting term or not. Like the Select Committee, the British country merchants were preoccupied with how the language the Chinese used to address them impacted on their dignity. In a peculiar article, which mixed evangelicalism and the interests of free trade, it was argued that the question of what ‘Ee’ or ‘yi’ really means and whether it was offensive was not just a question of philology. The use of such a word was, on the contrary, ‘pernicious to the welfare of mankind’. For if one used

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an offensive word like that to describe someone, one considered him as inferior and would not hesitate to harm or kill him. Drawing parallels from the Greek use of the word ‘barbarian’ to the treatment of slaves and the Africans by Europeans it asked for an immediate stop of the use of this word.143 The foreigners in Canton were seemingly thus considered to be in a situation that could be as precarious as that of the African slaves if they continued to allow the Chinese to call them ‘Barbarians’. At the same time, the Canton Register did not hesitate to declare that the Chinese were barbarians and that one should not believe anybody who ascribed them any degree of civilisation.144 All three groups of Britons in Canton thus hoped to shape their contact with the Chinese more according to their wishes by communicating with them through the medium of British interpreters. Central to this question was the issue of British identity and the importance given to it for the contact situation. Therefore, a change of the language used for communication from one that the Chinese dictated to one that was conform to British ideas of contact was important. By doing this the British hoped to achieve a stronger position towards the Chinese. To get the command of the Chinese language necessary, the British formed their own understanding of the nature of Chinese and the way one could learn it. The major influence in this context was the ‘new philology’ developed by Jones in India and the interaction with their Chinese teachers. This led to the development of a meaning of China as different from all other nations, but which could be accessed and influenced through the knowledge of its language. As becomes particularly evident in the context of translations, the Protestant missionaries to China, while small in numbers, had a considerable influence on the EIC’s and country traders’ ideas of China in the periphery. However, the missionaries were crucial for British ideas of China not only as interpreters of language but also of Chinese religions.

3.4 A barren land The religions of China had figured dominantly in European ideas about China since the start of the Jesuit mission. The Jesuits had claimed that the ancient Chinese held theist beliefs in one God, which might indicate the direct descendent of the ancient Chinese from the ‘sons of Noah’. They also introduced the notion of the ‘three religions of China’: Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism.145 Confucius, according to Jesuit reading, had reinstated the belief in this ‘Lord of Heaven’ after it had

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been lost in the corruption of time. The adherents of deism turned this argument against the Jesuit intentions and styled Confucius as one of the best examples for their argument that moral truths only needed reason and the observance of nature, not direct divine revelation through the Bible.146 The comparative study of religions began, as Peter Harrison has shown, during the 16th to the 18th century. In this period, the development of natural sciences influenced the thinking about religion, which now developed into an object that could be studied by applying reason. At the same time, the realisation that a majority of human kind lived without the revelation of Christianity made the question more urgent whether all religions had a common Judeo-Christian origin or whether God simply revealed himself to mankind through nature. This prompted an increased concern with other religions and their comparison. This evolution in the context of the religious and political upheavals in England in the 16th and 17th century meant that ‘the whole comparative approach to religion was directly related to confessional disputes within Christianity.’147 It was thus common for Protestants to identify elements of Catholicism with heathen practices in order to criticise them.148 This was a feature which was still dominant in the approaches of the Protestant missionaries to foreign religious practices at the end of the 18th and in the early 19th century. The Judeo-Christian framework continued to provide the main template for the perception of foreign religions. In the 18th century encounter with Asia, the British worked with the founding premises that Asiatic people were adherents of clearly distinguishable religions, each of which was believed to have had a historical founder, a set of doctrines, sacred texts and priests.149 As the Jesuits, the Protestant missionaries would look for these elements in the ‘three Chinese religions’, and judge whether they fulfilled the criteria the Christian religion set. In this context, in Canton, in particular, the writings of Confucius were to become important as a presumed ‘Chinese bible’. The presence of the Protestant missionaries in the context of the ‘contact zone’ in Canton, brought a new importance of the religious category for the meaning of China. This is also true for the ‘contact zones’ in India and Southeast Asia, who however differed with regard to which Chinese religion was emphasised and in the ways in which the British saw themselves interacting with this religious meaning. The first large-scale British Protestant missionary movement developed at the end of the 18th century was driven by a mixture of

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religious beliefs and the growth of the second British Empire.150 The London Missionary Society (LMS) had been founded in 1795 as a non-denominational body at first but increasingly became mainly congregational. Their first goals were the South Sea and India. A mission to China, however, was also contemplated at a very early stage. Due to the importance the evangelicals placed on the process of conversion, the ‘Otherness’ of the Chinese became very significant for this group, however, it also acquired a different quality. To them, there was almost no greater difference than that between those who had experienced the personal conversion and those who had not, between a real Christian and a pagan.151 Thus, the Rev. William Moseley, one of the first promoters of a translation of the Bible into Chinese as a tool to convert that empire to Christianity, saw China as a highly civilised nation. Nevertheless, since it was not Christian, it suffered from gross immorality, sacrificing to idols and murdering children.152 His reasons for the importance of converting China to Christianity were threefold: First, it was a perfect object, because it was the most civilised heathen nation and therefore was ready for conversion and, as it contained nearly one third of humankind, there was a prospect of an ‘abundant harvest’. Secondly, converting the Chinese was the only way of saving them from damnation, and thirdly, conversion was ‘the only method of effectually securing the advantages of a free trade’.153 This statement clearly shows the two impulses that would drive the mission to China. On the one hand, there was the religious motivation, which Brian Stanley has emphasised, such as the importance the evangelicals attributed to the spread of the gospel, the weakening of the Calvinist mistrust of any kind of propagating the gospel and the near coming of the last age of history. Additionally, in Stanley’s opinion, the revolution in France and the Napoleonic Wars created an atmosphere in which the apocalyptic strand of the evangelical movement became even stronger. Thus conversion and salvation of the heathens, who had had no chance to learn about the saving message of the Gospel, became even more pressing.154 In a similar way, Andrew Porter has pointed to the importance of theological considerations and the strong Christian belief of the missionaries for the development of the British Protestant Mission. He thus emphasises their ambivalence in engaging directly with the imperial state, or even their ability to be empire builders.155 The trope of China as a huge kingdom, comprising nearly one third of humankind made it a high priority on the list of the missionaries: if only they could convert this country, they would be a lot closer to their goal of the salvation of all mankind. Even though this religious motivation was very strong in the context of the

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China mission, Moseley’s statement does also point to the fact that right from the beginning there were also some rather more worldly considerations. As Susan Thorne has argued, the missionary movement was not just a religious movement which found a convenient platform in the British Empire, but also provided the middle-class with a model of what they saw as the right way to deal with the newly acquired territories which had a large non-European population, emphasising morality and sincerity.156 This book follows Thorne’s argument to the extent that the missionary movement was deeply connected with the British expansion, not just on an organisational level, but also on an ideological one.157 In the early period under scrutiny here, the missionaries began to acknowledge, if sometimes reluctantly, that an engagement with British imperial or colonial government was difficult to avoid.158 Even if they tried to distance themselves from the immediate goals and methods of a colonial government, or even more, the white settlers, they significantly contributed to the idea that Britons had a divine duty for improving and regulating the lives of non-European people. In China, where no colonial context existed, it was however less a question of how to justify rule over a foreign population, but rather of showing the right way to interact with a non-European country. They also established the idea of a responsibility for the moral well-being of heathens worldwide, forming an immediate connection between the British Christians and them. In so doing, they aimed to position themselves in contrast to those morally dubious people who were merely interested in trade and strategic questions. Commerce was not the providential tool of God to spread the Gospel yet. Rather the spread of the Gospel was there to help British commerce. In the evangelical mind, improved commercial relations with China would only result in benefit for the British, not necessarily for the Chinese. The moral improvement of the Chinese could only be reached through their conversion to Christianity.159 The aim of Moseley’s statement therefore was probably to gain support for the mission from those interested in trade with China and to show that the mission would not only benefit those who believed in the necessity to save souls. It was to point out that the evangelical way of interacting with this faraway empire would bring the solution to a problem the EIC with its mere interest in trade and the government had failed to solve. As Moseley put it in a footnote The many fruitless embassies from Holland, France, Russia and England, demonstrate the inutility of flattery, presents, and intreaty.

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These have for centuries past been tried in vain. And their laws and customs are such that unless Christianity illuminate their minds, they may be tried for as many centuries more, with no better effect.160 When Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary, arrived in Canton on an American ship on 20 April 1807, he had already learned some Chinese in London, from a Chinese stranded there. Morrison seems to have been full of enthusiasm when he reached his destination. According to William Milne, his first step consisted of trying to live like the ‘natives’. He let his fingernails grow, wore Chinese dress, shoes and ‘tail’ and ate with chopsticks.161 Nevertheless, he soon abandoned this project of assimilation and together with it the hope to be admitted to the Chinese Court at Beijing as a natural scientist.162 The explanation he gave was that the Chinese had grown too suspicious of Europeans who did not dress and act like the European merchants, so he adopted the common European dress in Canton – a white jacket and a straw hat.163 This change of clothes however also signified the transformation in Morrison away from an 18th century idea about China as a cultivated nation that valued education and philosophers. He now favoured the idea of a China that, even though still civilised, was dearly in need of being rescued by the British in almost every aspect, and which was corrupt and ruled by a despot, rather than by philosophers and a benevolent monarch. Morrison even thought that the former Chinese taste for European science and philosophy had to them only been ‘a rare-show: and I should suppose that they are now quite tired of it’.164 Additionally, the China that Morrison now encountered was one that did not permit the missionary to assimilate himself to a certain degree, in contrast to what he seems to have expected from the Jesuit accounts and to what he deemed appropriate for a missionary. The circumstances of the ‘contact zone’ in Canton thus began to transform the missionary ideas of China. The missionaries now had to negotiate the way they attributed meaning to China with the different groups of Chinese they encountered and the representatives of the British there. A British-centred missionary monologue about China was no longer possible. First of all, as a British subject, Morrison was under the power of the EIC Select Committee in Canton, which did not really rejoice in the presence of a missionary there, whose actions could disturb the Chinese authorities at Canton.

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With the EIC, Morrison found an arrangement thanks to his interest in and later his knowledge of the Chinese language.165 With the help of George T. Staunton and John William Roberts, the President of the Select Committee in 1808, Morrison gradually became accepted by the EIC in Canton, resulting in his appointment as translator for the Company in 1809.166 After several attempts, Morrison succeeded in hiring Chinese servants and Chinese teachers, two Roman Catholic Chinese.167 His teachers and servants were the only ones Morrison could interact with freely since the EIC did not want him to preach openly and thus maybe draw the rage of the Chinese authorities on him. His teachers were thus the most important persons for informing Morrison’s view on China, the Chinese and the Chinese language. Morrison established a daily rhythm of worship, holding services at home and reading the Bible together with his Chinese aides, thus trying to create an environment similar to the one he knew from home.168 Even though he had clearly been sent to China to learn Chinese and translate the Bible, both he and the supporters of the LMS at home seem to have expected nevertheless that he would still act like every other of their missionaries, preaching and trying to gain converts.169 Evangelicals like Robert Morrison, shaped by Enlightenment ideas, tried to win their converts by rational discussions as they were convinced that every rational being, if it only knew about Protestant Christianity, had to accept it as the only possible way of life.170 Both aspects required the missionary to have contact and especially to interact with those defined as ‘the Others’ to whom he had been sent. However, it was only with his Chinese teachers and servants that Morrison was able to get into closer contact in this way. Even though they were seen as distinct and different, due to their religion,171 they were mainly presented as equals with whom one could conduct a rational discussion.172 It was only when they refused to accept the wisdom presented to them that Morrison described them as irrational, arrogant and stubborn. Whereas in the run-up to the China mission it had been seen as an asset that China was already a civilised country and thus prepared to receive Christianity, Morrison now saw it as a defect. This was a typical stance of the evangelicals in Britain, who saw intelligence as a hindrance of feeling, which was however needed to experience faith.173 He thus wrote after one of the discussions with his servants and Chinese teacher on religion, during which he had failed to convince them: ‘The people here possess much worldly wisdom – much

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self conceit: they are too wise to learn: they are full of deceit and guile.’174 In order to convert the Chinese, Morrison and his fellow missionary Milne started to print tracts for the distribution to the Chinese. In these tracts, they tried to translate Christianity for the Chinese, explaining the historical context of the Bible and the meaning of Christianity, thus trying to span the gap between the world of the Old Testament and the newly rediscovered areas. Morrison planned amongst others, a Commentary to the New Testament in the ‘same manner as those on the books of Confucius’, ‘An abridgement of the Gospel History and planting of Churches in the first ages’, ‘A volume of Dialogues – with a man worshipping at the tomb of his ancestors; with a priest in a temple, with a person newly converted on the reasons of his change of faith etc.’175 Milne even prepared a tract, tailor made for the perceived image of the Chinese as even greater sinners than the rest of human kind.176 Nevertheless, the idea of equality before God meant that Chinese who adopted Christianity, could become members of one worldwide Christian community. The letters of the first Chinese convert, Liang Fa, printed in the Missionary Chronicle, tried to produce the idea of a worldwide Christian community, thus making the Chinese less foreign. The insertion of Chinese ‘translations’ of concepts such as ‘venerable teachers’ for ‘teachers of the Gospel in England and elsewhere’, would however still underline the otherness of this people who were to be converted.177 Despite these attempts to reach a wider public through the printed word, the restrictions imposed by the Chinese as well as by the EIC prevented Morrison from interacting with the Chinese in the way and to the extent he seems to have deemed as appropriate for a missionary. He could argue about religion with his Chinese aides, but he could not distribute the Bible to the Chinese masses or preach to them openly. He saw himself as the ‘servant’ of the heathens,178 who however refused ‘seeking to know what they shall do to be saved’. With the exception of very few converts, the Chinese could thus not be characterised as a people who was glad to accept the humanitarian benevolence of the British. Morrison described them as degenerated heathens, in dichotomy to the good evangelical Christians. The failure of the Chinese in Canton and Macao to interact with Morrison in the way he had expected and to take on the role assigned to them in the missionary worldview made it impossible to familiarise them and include them in the ‘members of the one family of Christ’.179 This failure may have been partly because they saw no reason for engaging with this foreign religion as well as the

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persecutions of Christianity by the Chinese Empire180 and partly because of the institutional barriers which prevented regular direct contact. This resulted in frustration on Morrison’s side and made it impossible for him to ascertain his self-image as a missionary of the only right belief, which would eagerly be accepted. This seems to have led to a feeling of isolation which he often mentioned in his letters.181 Thus he wrote to the LMS headquarters, for example, Yours is a happy land. It abounds with all the means of instruction, edification and comfort which a Christian can desire. Far different are our circumstances abroad. You look around you and rejoice in thousands on thousands assembled this day to praise God and hear of his great salvation. Here millions are wandering as sheep without a shepherd. None cares for the soul of his brother and few care for their own182 The arrival of the missionaries in the ‘contact zones’ meant that they acquired a new legitimacy to speak about Chinese religions and to create knowledge about them. William Milne thus, for example, dismissed the information provided by the European literati about China, since these writers had not judged the nations of the East through Christian eyes,183 and thus they had not been able to come to a really valid interpretation and judgement of them. This was despite the fact that the Protestant missionaries seem to have silently used the Jesuit reports in their description of, for example, the ‘three religions’, or even that most Europeans reports about China were based on Christian, albeit Catholic missionary accounts. This new legitimacy to speak about Chinese religion, and even more important, the Chinese reaction to the Christian mission, placed further emphasis on the alleged moral corruptness of the Chinese and especially its government, and also opened a new platform on which to discuss the question of the rank of Chinese civilisation.184 Even more importantly, it brought a new definition of the relation between British and Chinese. As we have already seen, as in the context of Morrison’s advice to the Select Committee, this was defined by the idea of the brotherhood of man and the equality before God, but also by the gap between those who were true believers and those who were not. The firm belief of the evangelicals in the importance of the personal experience of conversion, made it impossible for them to contemplate a mission strategy of accommodation like the Jesuits had

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practiced. Accordingly, they had no interest in understanding any aspect of Chinese worship and tradition as an original monotheism or as a philosophical tradition that could be accepted to co-exist with Christianity. Thus, Robert Morrison, as well as William Milne, turned particularly against Confucius. They attempted to make sense of the Chinese religions by adopting the three main categories that had already been used by the Jesuits: Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, but saw them all as equally bad expressions of heathenism and idolatry. After one of the typical discussions with his aides about Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, Morrison concludes, for example: ‘The two sects did not pay sufficient attention to morals, and Kung-fu-tsi neglected religion, but Jesus united them both in their highest perfection.’185 William Milne’s verdict after reading the Four Books by Confucius was even harsher, emphasising the need of a religion of salvation for men. These books are the Bible of the Chinese. But alas! After having read and examined them repeatedly with tolerable care, from beginning to end, how little can be discovered illustrative of the perfections of deity! How little suited to the state of man as an immortal creature! Scarcely a sentence adapted to his condition as a sinner! Even in point of morals, though there is much that is good; much that is beautifully expressed; yet how defective, and how ill suited to conduct men to virtue and to happiness! With respect to futurity they leave man entirely in the dark.186 Since Confucian doctrines were not a divine revelation, nor did they claim to be one, Confucianism could not be a good religion. As a mere philosophical guide to life in society they lacked the necessary morality and prospect of the eternal salvation of the soul, something that was only provided by the Christian religion. Thus Confucianism did not prevent idolatry but rather helped it flourish.187 Furthermore, the missionaries also described Christianity as the only religion that could make men valuable members of the society in this life.188 Thus, Milne vehemently rejected the opinion of one Chinese that all religions are more or less the same. The only true religion, he emphasised, was the Christian one189 and there was no way to a happy, fulfilled and moral life without it. This was certainly directed against the deists, Unitarians and anti-religious thinkers back in Europe, but also clearly made the Chinese the ‘Other’ (together with the European Unitarians), and described them per definition as an amoral people.

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Morrison and Milne also refuted that ‘T’een’ was an appropriate translation for ‘God’, since, they argued, the Chinese used this term for the Supreme Being, but also for heaven in opposition to earth.190 This was a clear rejection of the Jesuit arguments, who had interpreted ‘T’een’ as remainder of the idea of one god. The Protestant missionaries, quite in contrast to the accommodation ideas, also founded an ‘Ultra-Ganges Missionary Union’, which, besides mutual support and the support of the missionary school system, was also supposed to ‘give our mutual testimony against errors in doctrine or worship, which may creep in.’191 The idea of China as a foreign and amoral society was strengthened when the missionaries observed and reported the religious practices of the Chinese. In these observations, the Christian tradition served as the framework according to which Chinese religious practices were to be judged. The lack of a priest preaching a sermon to the crowds disturbed them greatly, as well as the lack of a community participating in the service. To their eyes, everyone seemed to worship his idol individually, seemingly without any deeper involvement, and especially without forming a union with the other worshipers. Thus Morrison revealed his shock in his first published report to the LMS headquarters: ‘There is nothing social in their worship, nor any respect shewn by those who are not engaged. One is praying, another is talking and laughing, a third cleaning utensils & &.’192 This non-existence of a service comprising a priest and a sermon was not only seen as a lack of respect of faith, or its sincerity, but was also considered to be an explanation and reason for the Chinese despotic political regime, which seemed to place so much importance on the ranking of its officials. When Robert Morrison reported to Dr. Burder, in the LMS headquarters, on the embassy to China he had accompanied, he mentioned what he saw as a ridiculous insistence of the Chinese concerning who was allowed to sit and who was not at an official meeting. In England, he continued, these things were much more relaxed, because of the Protestant religion, and the services in which the sermons reminded the people of equality after life.193 The despotic government, the inequality of its inhabitants and their amoral behaviour such as lying and cheating were thus all traced back to a lack of the right religion. The missionaries thus made sense of what they observed according to their religious background, forming a meaning of China as a place in dire need for salvation through Christ. In Morrison’s and Milne’s view, a reform of society towards more freedom always had to start with the moral improvement of the individual members of society through a real conversion to Christianity. This was

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in their eyes true for Britain as well as China. Expressing this point of view, William Milne stated the importance of a mission to China For, notwithstanding that various attempts had been made, in different periods of the church, to introduce the Gospel into that country [China, U.H.], still the thick shades of Pagan darkness hung over its immense population, who, to the present hour, have neither tasted the sweets of political freedom, nor beheld the reviving beams of the Sun of Rightneousness.194 Morrison compared China with a ‘barren land’, a ‘desert’ in contrast to the ‘fruitful plains of British Israel’, which could only become fertile again through the help of the British missionaries.195 China is described by the missionaries as an awful country – infertile, dark and the land of Satan,196 and thus set in stark contrast to a positive image of the evangelical Britain. However, one should not forget that for the missionaries in particular, China was not necessarily fixed in this state, thus not completely the ‘Other’, but rather resembled an earlier state of Britain. As Robert Morrison put it However, this [the state of China] does not induce me to despair; I remember Britain – what she was, and what she now is, in respect of religion. It is not 300 years since national authority said that ‘the Bible should not be read openly in any church’ by the people, not privately by the poor – that only noblemen and gentlemen, and noble ladies and gentlewomen might have the Bible in their houses.’ – I remember this, and cherish hope for China.197 When the evangelicals in the metropolis first thought about a mission to China, they already created it as a space set apart from their own community by its lack of faith, but they still believed that it was civilised and would react positively to the message they wanted to give them. Apart from that, it was seen as the unknown other. When the first missionaries arrived in China they formed new knowledge about China, especially its religion. In their attempt to fit China into the cultural frame they knew, they created the idea of an extremely heathen China, describing all the negative effects that came with this lack of faith. From their experiences in the contact zone and the knowledge they could accumulate there, the missionaries created a China whose inhabitants suffered under a despotic system and their adherence to idolatry. Due to the lack of the

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right religion, they had corrupted morally to the point where they even refused to accept the saving religion presented to them.198 To acknowledge the benefits of the Chinese religions or philosophy, as the Jesuits had partly done and which some Enlightenment philosophers had picked up on so eagerly, was impossible to the British missionaries. And, in contrast to other writers who had stated the degenerating state of Chinese art and science, for example, the benevolent Christian could not suffer to leave the Chinese in this state of darkness and let them die a spiritual death. Where the EIC was still mainly concerned with questions of trade, law and sovereignty, the missionaries desperately sought a possibility to improve the moral well-being of the Chinese and make them better human beings. In this way, the British saw themselves as being as responsible for the well-being of the Chinese as for that of their dependent population in India or the English poor at home. This was based on the firm belief that trade for mutual benefit was not the only relationship the British should establish with non-European populations, and that there is a responsibility, which is not intrinsically linked and restricted to the exercise of political or economic power over these peoples. Rather it was a moral influence that was wanted and the acknowledgement of one’s own world view even by those over whom one did not rule. Through their links with the EIC merchants in Canton and Morrison’s official position as a translator, this view of China had a significant influence on the Select Committee’s attitudes to China in the long run.

3.5 Diplomacy and local knowledge In 1815, the EIC lost its monopoly for trade with India. In addition to the direct effects this had on the Indian trade, it also resulted in a new influx of country traders into the China market. The country traders who came now were more certain of their position. After all, their associates in Britain had already won one great battle against the monopoly of the Company.199 Additionally, the great war against Napoleonic France was over, and with it the insecurity on the oceans. During the war, the British had attempted to occupy Macao, allegedly to save it from French attack, but had to hand it back to the Portuguese in the end. Now, the China trade was still an unsolved problem, one that had increasing importance for the EIC, both as an economic investment and a method to remit the money back from its government in India. John Barrow thus deemed the time to be right to push for another embassy to the Emperor of China. In addition, a new embassy could give

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Barrow’s former pupil, protégée and friend, George Thomas Staunton, the assignment of a lifetime, that of an ambassador to China. In his analysis of the failure of the Macartney embassy, John Barrow emphasised in his letter to the Earl of Buckinghamshire, then President of the Board of Control, the lack of faithful, British translators as one of the fundamental causes. He even described ‘Mr. Plumb’, the Chinese convert who had translated for Macartney as a Catholic, who did not want or dare to really help the ‘Heretics’. Now, however, in George Thomas Staunton Britain had somebody who had a good command of the Chinese language, ‘an advantage which can only be duly appreciated by those who have had the mortification of experiencing the intrigues and chicanery which are put in practice when communications are to be held with this jealous and corrupt Government through the intervention of Catholic missionaries.’200 During the ensuing correspondence, the Court of Directors as well as the Select Committee supported the idea of another embassy. The events surrounding the affair of the British capture of the American war ship ‘Doris’ culminated in a situation where the Select Committee wanted a clear signal showing that they had the full support of their sovereign. The Court of Directors had an obvious strong interest in the stability of its only remaining monopoly trade, and Chinese support for their American competitors during the Doris affair was worrying. Furthermore, they were afraid that a recent British expedition against Nepal might have caused animosity at the Chinese Court. They suggested that not Staunton should become ambassador, but rather an envoy from Britain, who was unknown to the Chinese and thus in their eyes clearly not associated with trading activities.201 For the British government, the public revenue derived from the tea imports was the main incentive to try another embassy to secure this lucrative trade.202 The choice for the ambassador fell on Lord William Amherst. George Thomas Staunton, like his father, only became the second man of the embassy, Minister Plenipotentiary, who in the case of the death of the ambassador would succeed to his position. As with the Macartney embassy, the idea of a more or less enlightened monarch on the Chinese throne, who did not know about the corruption and oppression in Canton, was crucial. The letter from the Prince Regent to the Emperor of China again used the language of equality and reciprocity, with which friendly relations between the two countries should be established. However, this time the Emperor of China was no longer addressed as ‘the Supreme Emperor of China’, ‘worthy to live tens of thousands and tens of thousands Years’,203 but simply as ‘high mighty and glorious Prince

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the Emperor of China our Brother and cousin’,204 not even making an attempt to satisfy Oriental sentiments. Interestingly, in times of free trade rhetoric in Britain, the EIC did not ask for an increase of British imports into China. By this time, the bullion question was already solved to a large extent by the country trade and the import of opium. Rather, they hoped for a stabilisation of the present situation, a guarantee of all the privileges they already possessed.205 The British government however added to the original proposal of the directors that every opportunity should be taken to enquire how the consumption of British manufactures in China could be increased.206 The model for the embassy was clearly the Macartney embassy, and again the British government left it open to the ambassador how he would deal with the kowtow question, while they hoped he could follow the Macartney precedent.207 In contrast to the first embassy, which had avoided every association with the EIC in Canton, the Amherst embassy took several of the British subjects from there on board. Most notably George T. Staunton, who at the time was President of the Select Committee. In order to relieve Staunton from the duties of a translator if necessary, Robert Morrison, John Davis and Francis Toone joined the embassy.208 After hesitations, the Select Committee also allowed Thomas Manning to become part of the group.209 These were all people who had lived in Canton for years and had experienced several clashes with the local authorities, as well as good social contact with some Chinese, like the Hong merchants and Chinese teachers. From their minority position, they had developed the theory that the only way to acquire any concessions from the Chinese was to make clear that the British were a powerful nation who would not bow to them. They also, due to their knowledge of Chinese, considered themselves to be ‘China experts’ who understood the history, rules and customs of the Chinese people and the Qing government. This was especially true for Staunton, who after all was the only one who had been a member of the first embassy as well. It is argued in this chapter that the influence of this group with what was considered to be local inside knowledge was crucial to the development of the embassy. The issues and influences outlined above, such as the question of language, law and the role of the missionary, were thus integral to the embassy. As with the Macartney embassy, the kowtow question again played a central role in the negotiations with the Chinese after the landing of the embassy in China and figured as the main concern in the later publication of journals by the members of the embassy. In contrast to the first

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embassy, where Macartney seems to have decided mainly on his own how to proceed, Amherst became the object of conflicting advice on this issue by George T. Staunton and Henry Ellis as second and third commissioners. While Ellis also had been in Asia before, mainly in India and Persia,210 he made a point of adopting the position of the Court of Directors and the British government towards the kowtow question. It seems to be that for them, at least at the outset of the embassy, the kowtow was a possibility, if the ambassador could gain concessions in return. It was probably still fresh in their memory that the Russian embassy under Gavril Golovkin had been sent home in disgrace without even reaching Beijing because they had not been willing to kowtow.211 Ellis’s argument was that China had already sunk so low that whatever ceremony the British adhered to at the audience did not really matter. Since China was no longer a civilisation of equal rank to the British, it could hardly diminish its dignity: The ceremony, consisting of nine prostration, though not formerly without example in Europe [footnote on Byzantine U.H.], was certainly repugnant to individual feeling and to the practice of modern European courts; at the same time, viewed as an usage belonging to oriental barbarism, it could scarcely be deemed advisable to sacrifice the more important objects of the embassy to any supposed maintenance of dignity, by resisting upon such a point of etiquette, in such a scene.212 Staunton, in contrast, advised Amherst to stay firm on the kowtow question and not submit to it under any circumstances. He supported his argument with his knowledge and experience of the Chinese character: A kowtow would only be ‘a sacrifice of national credit and character’ without any benefit to be gained.213 Ellis attributed this position probably correctly to Staunton’s experience in Canton, which he deemed not transferable to the question of the audience with the Emperor of China. Where the EIC in Canton could use the stoppage of trade as an instrument in the power struggle, which had an immediate effect on the interests of the local merchants and government, their position in Beijing would be a lot weaker. Therefore, Ellis urged conciliation, since the only prospect of success for the embassy was to make a favourable impression on the Emperor. If it was necessary to adopt the strange customs of the court, then this had to be done.214 He nevertheless acknowledged Staunton’s local expertise and conceded that in every aspect concerning the Chinese character and usages Staunton clearly

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could have the last word.215 Similarly, during his description of the negotiations with the Chinese on the kowtow question he often referred to the way in which Staunton and Morrison formulated British concepts and demands as being agreeable to Chinese customs.216 In the end, Amherst followed the local advice and refused to kowtow.217 During the negotiations on the kowtow question, the Macartney embassy was frequently cited as a precedent. And whereas during the Macartney embassy both sides were able to interpret the solution they had found the way they deemed appropriate, during the Amherst embassy the differing ideas on the meaning of the ceremonial during the audience came to the forefront and had to clash. Amherst and the members of his embassy insisted that Macartney had never kowtowed. On the other side, the Chinese asserted that he had submitted to the Manchu ceremony.218 After all, as Hevia has shown, as far as the Qing officials were concerned, the alteration of the kowtow during the Macartney embassy had not changed the meaning of the ceremony as such.219 The Chinese insistence on a fact which the British clearly assumed to be false irritated them highly and made every further interaction insecure. The only way the British could understand this was by seeing their stereotype of Chinese falseness reaffirmed. This breakdown in trust then influenced all engagements with the Chinese during the embassy and figured large in the reports.220 A combination of the strong position on the kowtow question by Staunton and the assumption that any claim made by the Chinese which deviated from Macartney’s account was a lie, and made because lying was part of the Chinese nature, led to the complete failure of the embassy. Amherst reached Beijing on the morning of the 29th August and was told that the emperor immediately wanted to see him. When he declined this on the grounds that he was not feeling well and the rest of his entourage had not yet arrived, the emperor commanded that the embassy had to leave immediately, without an audience.221 For the Jiajing Emperor, this was probably the only logical conclusion he could draw. For the Qing officials, the insistence not to kowtow and Amherst’s pledge for illness in order to avoid the hurried reception were indications that he did not understand proper ceremonial relations. The emperor thus accepted the gifts from George III and in his letter to the English king attributed the failure of the embassy to the lack of understanding and sincerity of the ambassador.222 Further, the emperor had just survived an assassination attempt and the rebellion by a group that called itself the Eight Trigrams. He was probably aware of the problems the British occasionally caused in Canton.223 The refusal

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by the British to comply with the ceremony, and their insistence on an apparent lie, probably had in the eyes of the emperor removed any belief that the embassy might be a sincere expression by the British king of his acknowledgement of the Qing overlordship, or even a peaceful intention towards the Qing Empire. For the British, the failure to even gain an audience with the emperor meant that this time the non-achievement of the goals of the embassy could hardly be attributed simply to intrigues by the Canton officials and the Mandarins. These were however not excluded from the explanation. The idea that in an Oriental despotic government, no inferior would dare to tell his superior an unpleasant truth to the point that falseness became their second nature was used to account for the failure. Drawing on the edict issued by the Jiajing Emperor after the return of the embassy, it was clear to the British that ‘Duke Ho’ who had been responsible for the embassy had failed to report the intention of Amherst not to kowtow to the emperor in time.224 The main result of the embassy however was the complete breakdown of the idea of the rational and enlightened Chinese monarch, who would remove the grievances of British trade if only he knew about them. In his letter to George Canning about the failure of the embassy, Amherst draws a picture of an unreliable monarch, different in every aspect from the dignified accounts of Qianlong: I shall have to substitute a detail (as far as I shall enter into it) of hurry and confusion, of irregularity and disorder, of insult, inhumanity, and almost of personal violence, sufficient to give to the court of the Emperor Kia-King the manners, character, and appearance of the raving camp of a Tartar Horde.225 The emperor had lost his image as an enlightened Chinese Emperor and transformed himself into an uncivilised Tartar. This was a characterisation of the Court and the Emperor every other member of the embassy subscribed to as well.226 In addition to the characterisation of Jiajing as a weak and corrupt oriental despot, Amherst saw the reason for the failure of the embassy as resulting from the eternal characteristics of China’s foreign policy. Since, until the arrival of the British, the Chinese in their history never had to deal with an equal or superior power, they had naturally become arrogant and would not even change this attitude and the policies resulting from this if they were conscious of their weakness and afraid of the other power.227 Falseness and arrogance as unchanging characteristics of the Chinese thus hindered in his eyes the free and fair

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intercourse the upright Briton wanted to establish, for the best of both sides.228 Again, China was depicted as refusing to leave its self-chosen isolation. In contrast to this negative image of the Chinese, Amherst and his colleagues could represent the British in a positive light as steadfast and upright. The mortification of virtually being kicked out of the Chinese Empire without even an audience was turned by them into a triumph of Britishness. Staunton explained to the Court of Directors, for example, but subject to these unlooked for disadvantages I apprehend no Event could have been better calculated to make an impression on the Chinese, beneficial to the British Character and Interests than the splendid example of firmness and motivation which under circumstances of the most trying nature, the conduct of the British ambassador has exhibited and which, I trust, it may be permitted me to add, is in perfect unison with those principles of conduct which were adopted at Canton during the preceding discussions.229 The idea of China which the Select Committee had developed in Canton seemed to be legitimised by the occurrences of the Amherst embassy. The image of a China with which one could negotiate and establish relations on an equal basis had disappeared. Where the Macartney embassy had created the idea of direct state to state contact with China, which only had to be followed up, its successor had destroyed the possibility of even thinking of such a relation for the time being. As a consequence, the Select Committee of the EIC in Canton once more saw themselves as the sole representation of British interests in China. They also found themselves reassured in the attitude they increasingly developed towards the Chinese authorities, which was less based on diplomatic negotiations, appealing to reason, but more on the demonstration of power and the conviction that the idea of British greatness had to be brought home to the Chinese.

3.6 Trade and identity Following the failure of the Amherst embassy, the EIC remained the only effectual representative of British interests in Canton, while the growing trade, particularly the country trade and opium smuggling, increased the tension between the British and the Chinese authorities. The last years of the EIC monopoly on the China trade were marked by conflict with the Cantonese authorities. The idea that relations with the

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Chinese could only be changed by a show of strength on the British part became predominant. British identity and its acceptance by the Chinese authorities became even more important during these years. Robert Travers has recently pointed out that in India, the British mainly defined themselves in opposition to ‘Asian despotism’, while in the metropolis, the main point of reference for British identity was the opposition to France, absolutism and Catholicism. He argued that it was from this identity that the EIC employees in India drew their justification for conquest in India in order to free the Indians from the Asiatic despotism they were living under.230 In India, the main focus was the expansion of the power of the EIC. In Canton, ideas regarding Asian despotism and particularly the corruption and falseness of the Chinese were at the forefront of the image in contrast to which the British sought to define themselves. It was considered crucial for the interaction between the British and the Chinese to establish the ‘right’ image of Britain in Chinese minds. References to British national characteristics are abundant in the letters the EIC Select Committee sent back to the headquarters in London. Britishness was mainly defined in terms of an upright and steadfast character and as morally incorruptible. A key element of this identity was the dignity of the British monarch and the strength of the British nation in military and trade matters. While the question of identity had been strong throughout the British presence in Canton, its importance increased during the 1820s and 1830s. More aggressive trading interests were linked to feelings of national honour and a rhetoric of national dignity was now used to justify an ever-increasing aggressive attitude towards the Chinese authorities in Canton. This shift was partly due to the fact that during the final years of the EIC monopoly of the China trade, the so-called country merchants became more influential in Canton. Despite the fact that they were British subjects, they were not under the control of the EIC and developed a different understanding of China, which could conflict with the meaning assigned to it by EIC servants. Like the employees of the EIC in Canton, the British country merchants belonged to a transnational trading network, connecting Britain, India, China and Southeast Asia. The trading houses, which set themselves up in Canton from the 1800 onwards were firmly connected to the East India Agency Houses. Most of them were of Scottish origin, working within a network of Scottish families.231 Their economic interests required a better way of importing into China, which connected them with the interests of British manufactures, and like

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them they found the advocates of their case in the works of Smith, Bentham and Mill. At first, the country trade and the EIC trade at Canton complemented each other. The country trade provided the EIC with the money necessary to replace the problematic bullion. In return, the EIC acted as bank for the country merchants by issuing bills on London for them. With the increase of the country trade, however, the country merchants like Jardine and Matheson developed interests which could not be satisfied by cooperation with the EIC.232 The position of the country traders in Canton was characterised by more insecurity than that of the EIC members. Due to the monopoly of the EIC they were not officially allowed to be there in the first place. Most of them thus came with ‘adopted nationalities’, as did, for example, James Matheson as Danish consul or Thomas Beal as Prussian.233 They also did not have the financial, military and administrative backing which the Select Committee was provided with by the EIC. Consequently, it was even more important for them to define themselves as British (despite their adopted nationalities) in order to qualify for support by the British crown. As a way of improving their knowledge base, they set up one of the first English journals on the Chinese coast, the Canton Register.234 In this periodical, they exchanged trading news, but also used it to justify their breaking of Chinese law by depicting the Chinese as an immoral and cruel people.235 With the Register they also attempted to establish themselves as the only authoritative source of knowledge about China and the Chinese character: ‘Much error has been propagated in the world, by the superficial information sent forth by those who can only look on the surface of society; and who see men only in a sort of Holiday dress.’236 They supported the veracity of their view of China by quoting ‘native informants’ or ‘old veteran Chinese’ as authorities as well as emphasising their local knowledge.237 In several cases, they corrected reports on China published in other European or Strait magazines by pointing out that due to their residence in China they were the only ones who had access to the correct information.238 While in many respects the country merchants profited from the Hong system in Canton, they were also more likely to come into conflict with it. Since they were not allowed to trade tea back to Europe, their main trade was cotton and, increasingly, opium export from India into China. However, the first could hardly be sold in China and the second was contraband. The opium trade led to a range of different contacts between the free traders and the local Chinese in contrast to those of the

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EIC. The opium trade mainly took place at Macao and increasingly after 1821 at ‘outer anchorages’, such as the island of Lintin. They further traded by way of ‘outside’ merchants, called ‘shopmen’ who originally were only supposed to sell small items to the foreigners. To open new markets, Matheson and Jardine started to send ships up the coast for clandestine trade.239 On these trips, the crew was sometimes accompanied by the German Protestant missionary Karl Gützlaff, who worked as a translator and who used the opportunity to spread Christian tracts in other parts of China. The trade as well as the missionary activity were clandestine operations which had to rely on the goodwill of the Chinese population. Attacks by local Chinese were thus more easily provoked and also more dangerous to their trade than they were for the EIC. The outrage about the annual proclamations by the Viceroy warning the local population against the vices of the foreigners was therefore far greater amongst the country merchants than it was amongst EIC employees. Moreover, the country traders tended to view the Hong merchants as the problem in the interaction with the local authorities rather than as good trading partners.240 At the same time, they showed little moral scruples at selling a drug like opium. As the Canton Register argued, it depended only on human virtue whether or not the buyer would abuse the drug, not on whether or not it was supplied.241 The country merchants argued that it was only Chinese pride and other ‘evil passions’ which had formed such an unnatural exclusion from trade and, even more, from social intercourse with all other nations.242 Consequently, they demanded, echoed in the Canton Register, a far more aggressive policy against this evil, irrational and unnatural government than large parts of the EIC. The Select Committee, after all, still advocated simply reforming the Hong and were often hesitant to take actions against the Chinese officials. At this point, however, even the country traders did not yet support a war against China to ‘open’ it up for trade. Rather, the contributors to the Canton Register seem to have been infected by the missionary spirit of the evangelicals with whom they were in close contact; although instead of spreading the Bible, they wanted to acquaint the Chinese with the prophets of free trade and Utilitarianism. In response to a pamphlet by Lieutenant Colonel de Lacy Evans, who had argued in favour of a military attack to open up China, they called ‘for a few hundred Utilitarians, and Political Economists, with a dozen steam presses, to cast off a few millions of Pamphlets, in Chinese, on the greatest happiness principle, and the principles of free Trade’.243 However, one of the subsequent issues stated that after consulting a few texts by Adam Smith, Malthus, M’Culloch

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and Mill, these were found to be too much confined to the European context and examples to be simply translated. Therefore, the Canton Register called for somebody to write an essay targeted at a Chinese audience, keeping in mind that ‘a high regard for honor and morals is not compatible with the pursuit of wealth either individual or national’ in Chinese philosophy.244 With the contraband opium trade, the Indian agency houses and their counterparts on the China coast gained an increasing stake in this illegal trade, firmly connecting the British presence in both regions. With their growing economic power the country traders also exerted increasing pressure on the EIC to work for a change in trading conditions at Canton.245 At the same time, their trade aggravated tensions with the Chinese government, which increasingly became aware of the opium trade and the ensuing problems for the Chinese economy and population.246 For the EIC the possibility of a complete loss of the trade monopoly, in the event that they should be unable to satisfy the demands of the British public and parliament, had been hanging over them like the sword of Damocles since 1814. The EIC still had the largest market share in the European and Western trade in Canton but the Americans in particular were becoming stronger. During these years, the EIC feared that the Chinese might favour the Americans over the British, easing trade restrictions for them.247 In addition, the British in Canton increasingly perceived themselves as being part of a strong Asian Empire, which made the dependent situation in Canton progressively less tolerable. At a time when Bentinck and his men set out to reorganise Indian administration and the Indian elite,248 it became inconceivable that their fellow EIC employees in Canton should have to submit to seemingly arbitrary Chinese laws. In the conflicts from the second half of the 1820s onwards, the British increased the chasm between themselves and the Chinese while provoking them deliberately. For the British at Canton, the meaning of the Chinese authority as despotic and humiliating became fixed and they were determined to establish their equality with the Chinese. In these situations of crisis, the idea of the dignity of Britain and the British character and the threat to it by actions of the Chinese authorities were of major importance. All these elements came to bear on the conflict between the Select Committee and the Chinese officials from 1829 onwards. Discussions of the Select Committee with the London headquarters reflect two opposing strategies, one more conciliatory, the other more aggressive

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towards the Chinese, based on two different images of China. The immediate cause of the dispute was the reduction in the number of Hong merchants from eleven to seven due to bankruptcy, the seventh one pending. At the same time, the Chinese authorities tried to restrict the activities of the outside merchants. These Chinese merchants had originally only been allowed to sell small items, but in fact they engaged in large scale trade, particularly with the country traders. These two changes made trade considerably more difficult for the country merchants as well as for the EIC, who saw the reluctance by Chinese officials to secure a sufficient number of Hong merchants as a direct attack on their trade. The EIC feared that this policy was aimed at forcing the British out of their dominant market position.249 The actual impulse to take action came from Bombay, from the country trade, in the form of a memorandum to the Select Committee, signed by 44 Parsee merchants of Bombay.250 They complained that the restriction of the outside merchants in combination with the reduced number of Hongs might make it very difficult for them to sell their cotton in Canton.251 A decision was taken by the Committee to delay bringing the company ships to Whampoa at the beginning of the new trading season. The Committee then used the occasion to present the Viceroy with a full list of grievances which they wanted to see redeemed before they would be willing to start the trade again. It ranged from the demand to establish new Hongs to the reduction of the Port tax and the abolition of the system of the security merchant. In his first response, the Viceroy agreed to give further incentives to new Hong merchants and order the old owner of one of the almost bankrupt firms, who had fled, to back to Canton. However, this was not sufficient for the Committee and they decided to continue their protest.252 In contrast, the president of the Select Committee, H. C. Plowden had argued for a more conciliatory approach from the beginning and now wished to acknowledge that the Viceroy actually seemed to be willing to resolve the problem of the small number of Hongs. He was only prepared to support any further actions of the Committee if these were carried out according to the ‘Principles of Moderation and Justice’. He considered the insistence of the Committee to stop all trade until all their demands were addressed as un-English, presenting the Viceroy as a man of caution with whom one could negotiate: ‘It is to be regretted that the temper and caution displayed by the Viceroy has not been reciprocated in our proceedings, and that we have assumed, and are now using, the weapons usually employed by the Chinese themselves.’ He in particular criticised the tone of ‘assumption and demand’ in the

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letters by the Committee which, in combination with few precise problems they were able to specify, made the Committee’s position seem unjustifiable.253 The dispute between the president and the Committee escalated further. They supported their arguments with two different versions of what it meant to be British and two different images of the Chinese character. Plowden urged a settlement with the Chinese while the rest of the Select Committee hoped to achieve a change of the entire system by staying firm. They presented the local Chinese government as ‘haughty and arbitrary’ and one which could only be made to conform with the ‘principles of reason and justice’ by not giving in. Since the ‘encroaching spirit of extortion’ was inseparable from the ‘Chinese Character’, it could only be kept in its boundaries by firmness and decisions. The members of the Select Committee argued that the latter were inherent traits of the British character and had brought them the estimation of the Chinese, above all other nations. An early retreat, therefore, would destroy this image irreparably and with it the security of trade at Canton.254 In addition, they asked for ships of war to be sent from India to support their claims and to demonstrate to the Chinese that they had the backing of their sovereign. This was a measure which had been carefully avoided before so as not to provoke the Chinese.255 The president vehemently refused these measures. At the end of January 1830, Plowden took leave and sailed to Britain. A month later the Committee finally agreed to resume trade after another response by the Viceroy which promised to install new Hong merchants and to look into the matter of the entrepôt fee. The committee was convinced that their measure had left a lasting impression and that the Viceroy and the Chinese government were sufficiently interested in the continuation of trade to make the necessary changes in the future.256 The Bengal government did not send ships of war. After Plowden had made his report in London, the Court of Directors angrily refused to sanction the measures of the Committee and after another turbulent year they recalled them in May 1830. An aggressive approach towards the Chinese government was not desired by the EIC headquarters as long as the trade continued.257 In distant London, and by old China hands such as Plowden, even the local Cantonese government could still be seen as more or less reliable, a government with which negotiations could be conducted within the frameworks of the Chinese trading system. A complete change of the system might have been desirable, but was considered unrealistic due to the immutable character of the Chinese and was not to be attempted for fear of endangering the trade

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in general. In Canton itself, the majority of the Committee members had been more strongly influenced by the country traders, who as has been shown, generally advocated a more aggressive attitude towards the Chinese government. As a minority they might also have felt a stronger need to show the firmness of their position, which they saw as a main attribute of the British character, and to demonstrate that they were not defenceless and at the complete mercy of the Chinese government. In this context, the Chinese government was necessarily described as corrupt and arbitrary. However, to those, like Plowden, who advocated a conciliatory approach, all aggressive behaviour towards the Chinese was branded ‘un-British’. What was essentially a conflict about access to the Chinese market was thus narrated by the British as a conflict about British identity and the way it was perceived by the Chinese. The conflict with the Chinese authorities in the following year showed even more clearly how questions of the conditions of trade and the pressure by the country traders merged with the necessity of the EIC employees in Canton to reassure their identity and economic interest against real or perceived threats by the Chinese officials. This particular conflict centred on four issues. Firstly, three Parsees had killed Captain Mackenzie of the Dutch ship Vrouw Helena and the Cantonese Viceroy demanded that they were handed over to the Chinese authorities to be tried. Secondly, the president of the Select Committee, William Baynes had brought his wife to Canton, in contravention of Chinese regulations. Thirdly, the Viceroy stated that foreigners at Canton were not allowed to use Sedan chairs and complained that one writer of the EIC factory had done so; and lastly, the British were upset by a proclamation posted in Chinese all around Canton, allegedly referring to the depraved morals of the foreigners and calling on Chinese merchants and linguists to educate and civilise these foreigners.258 Again, it was the country merchants who urged the Committee to act against these proclamations. They complained that these were written in insulting language and thus lowered the foreigners in the estimation of the lower order of Chinese society, thereby creating a climate in which violence against foreigners was considered acceptable.259 The Committee agreed with the free British merchants on this issue and wrote a note of complaint to the Viceroy. Using several Chinese proverbs they seemingly tried to show the Viceroy that they hardly needed education in Chinese culture and civilisation, especially not by badly educated linguist and Hong merchants.260

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The issue of the Sedan chairs also sat at odds with their self-understanding which they wanted to see accepted by the Chinese. The Committee informed the Viceroy that all supercargoes and writers of the EIC were sons and brothers of country gentlemen. They explained that Mr. Astell, the writer who had used the Sedan Chair, was the son of a former head of the Court of Directors and Member of the ‘Great Council of the British Nation’: ‘How talk of his overstepping his rank by sitting in a chair!’ they exclaimed irritated.261 To counter the threat by the Viceroy of capturing those responsible for the death of Captain Mackenzie and removing the British women by force, the EIC Committee ordered armed British seamen up to the factory.262 The Viceroy, who obviously did not want an armed conflict, tried to calm the British in his next answer, but did not move in the substance of any of the questions. The prohibition on foreign women and the use of Sedan Chairs by foreigners was an old custom and therefore should remain. As to the proclamations, they were not meant as insults but rather they were intended to urge the Chinese to help the foreigners, who came to a land of which they knew nothing. Their misinterpretation of the proclamation really only showed their ignorance of Chinese civilisation. He nevertheless promised that the issue of the foreign women was not important enough to use military force to evict them. The Committee for the moment felt that the Viceroy, while not yielding on any of the points, had at least assured their security and that of the factory in general.263 In November 1830, the new president and a new second member of the Select Committee, Majorbanks and Davis, arrived in Canton to replace the Committee members who had revolted against the former president. However, they were equally opposed to too conciliatory a position towards the Viceroy. They thought that this would be against the impression of steadfastness the British always wanted to present. This seemed particularly important to them since the year 1831 brought events, which the EIC employees understood to be even greater humiliations. During their absence from Canton outside the trading season, the Fooyuen (Governor) and the Hoppo had destroyed the landing the EIC had built in front of their factories without direct permission by the government. Furthermore, the merchants informed them that one of the linguists had been arrested and threatened with execution because he had not interfered with the construction of this place. While questioning the linguists, the Fooyuen had ordered the picture of George III to be

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uncovered, and had seated himself in front of it. The outrage amongst the members of the EIC was great. They felt insulted in their national dignity and feared for their security since the Chinese authorities had so easily walked into the factory. At the same time, an imperial edict with new, stricter regulations for foreigners in Canton was published. The British saw a conspiracy to destroy their trade and national honour. To act decisively against these insults was even more important since the Select Committee saw itself as an authority amongst the Europeans at Canton.264 They thus tried several channels to protest against these measures and asked the Supreme Government at Fort William for support through navy ships. After several attempts, John Davis managed to pass an address to the Viceroy who clearly denied the allegation that he had insulted the King of England, stating that he had been unaware of the nature of the portrait. He acknowledged that the EIC had built an additional landing place but also stated that in the future they were still only allowed to address the Viceroy through the Hong merchants. The Committee saw themselves as the victors in this conflict, since the measures they adopted satisfied the local authorities ‘that we will not submit to oppression, though we have every disposition to conduct our affairs amicably if possible.’265 When finally the navy ships from India did arrive to protect British interests in Canton, it was thus only left to them to present the letter by Governor-General Bentinck to the local government and to obtain an answer to it. For the moment, the Select Committee and the naval forces from India agreed that there was no further need for action, even though there was still no security for the trade in Canton against the ‘grievances of the most severe and oppressive character’.266 In the years after opening the India trade to free merchants, the growing influx of British subjects as country traders into Canton made it increasingly important for the Select Committee to present themselves as those who safeguarded British interests and the safety of British subjects. ‘Britishness’ was defined as steadfastness, upright but with peaceful and commercial character. Like the Select Committee, a true Briton would defend the honour of Britain and the security of its trade. While they provoked the Cantonese government on several occasions, by bringing women to Canton and using Sedan chairs, in particular their toleration of and reliance on the illicit opium trade, they always portrayed themselves as the injured party, wronged by an arbitrary, malicious and aggressive government. They could thus justify an increasingly aggressive approach to the restrictions in Canton, through which they probably hoped to pacify the demands of the

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country merchants as well as securing their tea trade. This was particularly emphasised by their repeated demand for naval support from India, a measure they had avoided in all previous years and that was not appreciated by the Court of Directors in London. This wish to present themselves as protectors of British interests in Canton and as freedom loving Britons collided with a Qing government which was increasingly worried by internal uprisings and the silver drain blamed on the growing opium trade.267 The Select Committee however had no interest in considering the reasons for the Chinese emphasis on not changing the existing regulations concerning foreigners. They could hardly question the opium trade since they relied on it to finance the tea trade and they feared the loss of the charter and their special position in Canton. Moreover, the harsher measures by the Cantonese government probably made them feel more insecure and made it even more important for them to reassure themselves of their British identity, which linked them to a strong world power, represented in nearby India. In this context, the alleged insult of the British King’s portrait was particularly worrying. At the same time, the acceptance of the more or less conciliatory responses by the Viceroy showed that the prime interest of the Select Committee was still to keep the trade going. This also allowed them to present themselves as those who could after all negotiate with the Chinese officials. Nevertheless, it was this Committee which had to preside over the end of the EIC monopoly and the Select Committee itself in 1834.

3.7 British honour and opium When rumours reached the Hong merchants in 1831 that the EIC might be abolished, they asked the British to nominate a representative who would be responsible for all the British in the port. The British government took this as a welcome pretext to finally establish an official representation in Canton. The China Act of 1834, which abolished the EIC monopoly in China therefore also established the office of Chief Superintendent in Canton. He was to supervise the British subjects in the port and his main obligation was to protect the British trade with China and represent British interests in the port of Canton.268 The country merchants feared that George Staunton might be selected for this job and continue the conciliatory line towards the Chinese government which he and Plowden had stood for during the time of Select Committee. However, the King’s choice finally fell on William John, 9th Lord Napier, a Captain of the Royal Navy with no prior experience of China.269

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Many historians have seen the end of the EIC monopoly in China as the decisive turning point in British–Chinese relations, from which it was only a matter of time until an outbreak of open hostilities between the two empires.270 Glenn Melancon has recently cautioned against this perceived automatism. He has pointed out that no member of the British government was interested in opening hostilities with China in 1834, and that even the Superintendents, with the exception of Napier, were cautious in their approach to the Chinese authorities.271 In terms of trade, Michael Greenberg has shown that the change was not as dramatic as the country merchants would have had the public believe. Even before 1834, half of the British trade with China was already conducted by private merchants.272 According to him, the private merchants mainly hoped for stronger political support against the Chinese than the EIC, and particularly its headquarters in London, were prepared to give. However, the opening of the trade also meant increasing numbers of Britons trying to push into the market, both for tea and opium, thereby disturbing the balance which had existed before.273 While it is certainly important to point out that there is no inevitable trajectory between the end of the EIC monopoly and the Opium War, the new situation after 1834 resulted in a number of developments, in the ‘contact zone’ in Canton, which in the end made the war imaginable and justifiable to the British public. The information networks in Canton shifted and thus brought a different set of images of China to the forefront. The subsequent Superintendents of Trade each tried to create a narrative of British presence at the coast of China and specifically of legitimate British trade with China which justified their newly established institution. At the same time, they now also had to represent those British traders who were deeply involved in the opium smuggling. The result was the development of a meaning of China in the official correspondence with London which made the idea of a military attack against China appear justified and desirable. After the end of the monopoly, the tea trade quickly became an object of speculation and shipments of tea to England increased by 40 per cent in 1835. However, most of those who had entered into this speculation failed and only those with previous knowledge and contacts, like Jardine Matheson & Co., were able to profit from the opening of the China trade with England.274 The EIC did not disappear completely from the China market, as they were allowed to keep a Finance Committee at Canton which issued Bills on England to those who wanted to ship goods from China to London of a value of up to 600,000 pounds. This practice made William Jardine furious, but he achieved little against it in the years

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leading up to the Opium War.275 On the other side of the trade, the Hong merchants ran into increasing difficulty as they could no longer rely on the financial support of the Company and their assured demand for tea. Thus, in the years following the end of the EIC monopoly, the trade in Canton did not necessarily improve but moved into a series of turmoil and troubles.276 The fall of the EIC monopoly meant that British and American merchants tried to push even more opium into the Chinese market. By the end of the 1830s, opium accounted for 20 per cent of total Indian revenues.277 At the same time, the Chinese government became increasingly aware of the outflow of specie and the resulting ‘silver famine’, which to a large extent came to be associated with the illegal opium trade.278 Chinese officials now mainly associated opium addiction with the unruly lower classes and soldiers and it was increasingly seen as a threat to the stability of the empire.279 James Polachek has given a detailed study of the inner-Chinese debate on this issue, showing that enforcement of the opium prohibition was only adopted as policy towards the end of 1836. Before that, the idea of solving the Canton trade problem by way of the legalisation of opium was favoured by many, particularly in the Southern Provinces.280 The year 1834 also saw the end of the early modern system of British representation in China, which operated through a private trading company.281 The superintendents were officers of the British Crown and as such could not communicate with the Chinese Government through the medium of the Hong merchants without endangering the dignity of the British Crown. While the British government at this time certainly did not want an armed conflict with China, the instructions also made it clear that they did want a Crown representative in Canton, accepted by the British merchants as well as by the Chinese authorities.282 The trope of British dignity therefore moved more into the centre of British– Chinese relations than ever before. This also meant, crucially, that the long-standing relatively smooth communication and information channel between the Select Committee as the de facto representatives of the British in the port and the Hong Merchants could no longer continue in the same way. The Superintendents now had to listen more carefully to the opinions of the former country merchants, especially Jardine and Matheson, whom they now officially represented, at least in their legal trade operations. Cut off from the Hong merchants, at least in official correspondence, the information networks of the country merchants now came to dominate the image of China in this ‘contact zone’.

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The events that followed the arrival of the first British Chief Superintendent at the China coast already showed the resulting shift in the meanings of China amongst the British in Canton. This shift was not simply due to the influence of merchants like Jardine and Matheson. Rather, the tropes and meanings developed by the Select Committee played a significant role, as will be discussed below. However, the person of the first Superintendent as well as the intentions of Palmerston to have a representative of the British Crown in Canton meant that the more conciliatory approach, favoured by the likes of Plowden, disappeared completely at this point. Napier’s formative period in the Navy had been during the Napoleonic Wars, mainly on the coasts of France, Spain and the Mediterranean in general.283 From this period, he adopted a discourse of opposition to tyranny. Napier also brought the habitus of the Royal Navy to British–Chinese relations, which previously had only been conducted by merchants or gentlemen-merchants. When Napier arrived in Macao in July 1834, he refused to communicate his presence through the Hong merchants and insisted on a meeting with the Viceroy. To achieve this, he went to Canton without waiting for permission to do so. Several attempts to deliver his letter directly to the Viceroy failed. The situation escalated as Napier commanded the two ships of war, which had accompanied him from Britain, to Canton. The Chinese authorities put Napier under house arrest and stopped the trade, which slowly turned the British trading community against Napier, especially the Parsee merchants. When Napier finally decided that the only thing he could do was to return to Macao, the Chinese authorities delayed his journey. Weakened by fever, Napier reached Macao and died on 11 October 1834.284 Much has been made of the influence of the country merchants, especially Jardine and Matheson, on Napier’s aggressive approach against China.285 Melancon has refuted this by highlighting that Napier had already decided on a ‘forward’ strategy against China on route from Britain, before having met Matheson.286 While it is undoubtedly important to point this out, Melancon fails to explain how Napier arrived at his decision. It certainly did not appear out of a vacuum, as Melancon describes it. Tracing Napier’s knowledge of China and the way he justified which image of China to use reveals how the British imperial expansion transformed and multiplied images of China, and more particularly how ideas formed in Asia interacted with those from Britain. Napier’s image of China was probably influenced by the discussion in Britain about the end of the monopoly, in which the country merchants

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and their supporters in Britain had a strong voice.287 On his voyage to China, he carefully studied the brief the Foreign Office and the Directors of the EIC had prepared for him, and which seems to have consisted mainly of the Records of the EIC.288 In contrast to the brief for Macartney, the works of the Jesuits with their positive appraisal of China seem not to have been included in Napier’s preparation for his new positions. The meanings of China formed by the Select Committee and discussed above were thus highly influential for Napier’s decision.289 This included the idea of parts of the Select Committee that the only way to achieve better trading conditions was to take a firm stand against the Chinese authorities. This fitted very well with the personal ambitions of Lord Napier, who, from the very moment he had persuaded the King to appoint him, pushed for the extension of his power to that of a full ambassador;290 an ambition, which Palmerston rejected vehemently.291 On his journey from Britain and during his initial stay in China, Napier clearly adopted those meanings of China which had been developed in the ‘contact zones’ in Canton and Southeast Asia, which shows that these meanings had already been transferred to the British Isles to a considerable extent. His personal ambition and his experience in the British navy during the Napoleonic Wars led him to choose the idea of China developed by those eager to change the status quo of British–Chinese relations. Even after his arrival in Canton, he supported most of his decisions by pointing towards the records of the Select Committee.292 While the country merchants certainly were an influence on him, Napier also doubted at times their loyalty to his course.293 Napier described the Chinese population as industrious and natural sales men, who were only suppressed by their tyrannical government: The house of every Chinaman in these extensive suburbs, is a shop of one sort of another. Every man is constantly at work; nobody seen loitering about and idle; and, in fact, every man is a merchant [emphasis UH]; yet does one of these same Edicts [ordering Napier to obey Chinese customs and traditions] speak of the ‘petty affairs of commerce’, - as if commerce were a matter of no concern to the empire!294

His entire approach was based on the assumption that the Chinese people could be persuaded to support the British against their own government. In particular, Napier again picked up on Macartney’s interpretation of the position of the Manchu dynasty in China: ‘If the Emperor refuses on demand – remind him that he is only an Intruder

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and that it would be his good policy to secure himself on his throne by gratifying the wish of his people.’295 He was so sure of the good disposition of the Chinese population that he claimed that a military strike against China could end without any civilian bloodshed, as the Chinese population would not oppose an English attack against their Manchu governors.296 He therefore also issued a declaration to the people of Canton explaining that he was sent by the King of Great Britain and as requested by the Chinese Viceroy, despite John Davis urging not to do so.297 The response from the Chinese authorities in Canton was short and threatening, calling for Napier to be beheaded. However, Napier saw himself justified as allegedly the people of Canton took no note of this demeaning proclamation.298 Napiers description of the Chinese as industrious salespeople is typical for the period between the end of the EIC monopoly and the Opium War. It should be noted that there was a particular emphasis on the inherent capacity of the Chinese for trade, rather than as field workers, as in Southeast Asia, or as craftsmen, as in earlier descriptions of China by the Jesuits. After the Napier-debacle, George Best Robinson, a former member of the Select Committee, became the Chief Superintendent. He decided to remain relatively un-active and waited for instructions from London on how to proceed further. However, one should not interpret this as a definitive decision against a more aggressive policy against China, as some historians have done.299 One of Robinson’s first acts was to send a series of essays about the state of China, which he had requested from Gützlaff, to Palmerston. Robinson had explicitly chosen Gützlaff to provide this information because the latter ‘adopting the Dress, habits and what is more surprising, the language of the people, has associated with them on a familiar footing in various places, known formerly to no European and now only to a few.’300 In 1835, Karl Gützlaff, who had accompanied the country merchants on their smuggling trips up the coast became the second interpreter for the Superintendents. His influence on British ideas on China was to be significant. Gützlaff had been born in Pyritz in Pomerania in 1803. He first went to Asia for the Netherlands Missionary Society with the intention of working as a missionary in the interior of Sumatra. After a meeting with Robert Morrison in London, he began to be interested in China. When he had to abandon his original plan of working in Sumatra due to unrests, he came to Java in 1827, where he met William Medhurst, who was working there for the LMS mission

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to China amongst the Chinese diaspora, and started to learn Chinese. From there he moved to Siam, where he worked amongst the Chinese there. He adopted a Chinese name and tried to assimilate himself completely to the Chinese style of life. He made his first approach to China on a Chinese junk from Siam, travelling up the Chinese coast as far as Tientsin. On his return to Macao, he met with Robert Morrison, and from there he embarked on his next journey up the coast on the Select Committee-sponsored trip of the ship ‘Amherst’ as interpreter to Hamilton Lindsay. His third journey was on the Sylph, a ship owned by Jardine and Matheson to smuggle opium. Afterwards, while working as occasional interpreter for the British merchants Gützlaff repeatedly attempted to enter into China’s interior, getting as far as Fukien. However, his presence increasingly attracted the attention of the authorities.301 Thus, Gützlaff was very much a product of the networks of empire, which also linked the Dutch and British imperial presence in Asia. Even though of German origin, Gützlaff soon associated himself fully with the English. In his tracts, he always speaks of the English in terms of ‘we’ and ‘our nation’ or ‘our sovereign’.302 This was in addition to his attempts of submerging himself in the Chinese life style. Country merchants and their interpreter, Gützlaff, had different access to information about China than the EIC Select Committee, which had mainly cooperated closely with the Hong merchants. These new networks of information were with the Chinese out merchants along the coast, the places the smuggling boats visited and information about the central government acquired through them. The image of China created through these networks of information was that of a weak Empire, that was unable to cope with its coastal defence, and of a population very interested in commerce that would willingly surrender to anybody attempting to defeat the corrupt Mandarins who halted commerce and the spread of Christianity.303 With the end of the Select Committee, this image became even more prominent in the official correspondence between Canton and London, which now was a correspondence between an officer of the crown and the Foreign Office. At the same time, a group of British merchants, led by Jardine, Matheson and James Innes, relentlessly argued for a more aggressive policy against the Chinese government, openly discussing military action in the Canton Register and lobbying the British government to send a naval force to China.304 The essays written by Gützlaff discussed Chinese military power, the possibility of opening trade with other ports along the Chinese coast

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and the way Britain should interact with the Chinese authorities.305 Gützlaff based his arguments mainly on observations he had made during his journeys up the China coast and his forays into the Chinese interior, and on official Chinese publications which he had probably acquired during these trips and through contacts in Canton. In these essays, Gützlaff developed a narrative which justifies foreign power over China and the Chinese. He characterises the Chinese government and its Mandarins as corrupt, arrogant and in perpetual fear of foreign attacks on the empire, desperately trying to hold an empire together which they were no longer able to control. In contrast to this, the common people are described as friendly, industrious and eager to trade with the British and to accept their goods as well as their religion. He emphasised that the Chinese Empire, especially the coastal regions, was dependent on the trade with Britain. In this context, Gützlaff also separated the ruling Manchus from the Chinese population, characterising the former as not industrious and wanting skills. Both were presented as timid, taking flight at the first sight of a firearm.306 The idea of an industrious population that was eager to interact with the British and that was only hindered by its corrupt authorities was also at the centre of other efforts by the British community in Canton and Macao to change British–Chinese relations. Explicitly following the example of India, Gützlaff and the country merchants, with the support of the Superintendent of trade, set up the ‘society for the diffusion of useful knowledge in China’ in November 1834. In the inaugural proceedings, printed for general distribution in Asia and Britain, the Jesuit image of China was finally refuted, while still allowing China its special position amongst the Asian countries: The favourable accounts of the Chinese empire, given by the Jesuits, have engendered in many the belief that the state of literature and morals in China is far superior to that of other countries. Hence, to attempt improvement here, would only serve to degrade a nation which has reached the climax or human perfection. On this misrepresentation, most absurd and mischievous theories have been built. [. . .] While we must reject such views as false, we cannot regard the Chinese as incapable of rising and viewing with the most enlightened nations of the earth. Of all the Asiatics we regard them as the most prepared for the reception of useful knowledge.307 The hopes of those behind this enterprise were directed towards the ‘common people’ who did not have the arrogance of the ‘learned

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Chinese’.308 The ‘Morrison Education Society’, set up by the same group of people, shortly afterwards in February 1835, had a similar aim, namely to educate the Chinese population. It wanted to establish schools in China, where Chinese children would learn Chinese as well as English and read English books and the Bible.309 Another attempt to win over the Chinese by raising their esteem of the British nation was the establishment of a hospital at Macao.310 Civilising the Chinese thus became part of the attempt to open China to British trade, particularly the opium import. The huge effort of collecting and translating information about China in these years, mainly by Gützlaff, led to the feeling on the part of the British in the ‘contact zone’ that China was no longer the unknown entity, but rather that they understood China and its politics and could engage with China on its own terms. As James Polachek has pointed out, these improved information networks led the British in Canton to believe that the opium trade would be legalised sooner or later.311 The harsh approach by Commissioner Lin, however, more or less took them completely by surprise. This also highlights the fact that the British only had access to the information networks at the coast, but had little understanding of politics of the Qing court in Beijing. In 1836, the fraction of the court in Beijing in favour of strict oppression of the opium trade gained power. Charles Elliot, who had been appointed Chief of the Trade Commission in China by Palmerston replacing George Robinson in 1836, decided not to be too alarmed by the first warning signs: steps taken by the Canton authorities to punish Chinese smugglers and opium traders and to evict British opium merchants in 1837.312 He was still certain that the Chinese economy depended too heavily on foreign trade to interrupt it significantly, despite the rhetoric of the Chinese officials.313 The main concern for Elliot and Palmerston during these years was to convince the Chinese authorities to accept Elliot as a representative of the British crown, and by this, to accept at least the equality of Britain to the Chinese Empire. Elliot certainly hoped to solve the impending trading crisis through more communication, and acceptance of his status by the Chinese authorities. However, the British metropolis and the periphery of its empire clashed in their views how this could be achieved. Palmerston, in the few letters he wrote to Elliot, worked on the assumption that Britain’s might and power had to be accepted naturally by all people in the world. Elliot, by contrast, tried to negotiate with the ambivalences of the ‘contact zone’, where British power was known to a certain extent, but where the Chinese authorities still hoped to contain

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this power.314 After the Napier disaster and Robinson’s attempt to simply lie still until directions would come from England, Elliot decided that the best way forward would be to re-open the communication channel through the Hong merchants and use the word ‘pin’ on letters to the Viceroy despite its translation as ‘petition’.315 He even maintained this practice after Palmerston had interdicted it, who claimed that both diminished the dignity of the British crown.316 Elliot only responded by finding ways around Palmerston’s demand. For example, arguing that Chinese officers of the same rank as himself addressed the Viceroy in the same way.317 Slowly progressing in this way Elliot gained communication with the Chinese authorities, mainly through the Hong merchants. In 1838, he even achieved direct communication with the Viceroy, an achievement that would soon be lost again during the increasing tensions of the following year.318 To Elliot and Palmerston, it was of the utmost importance that the Chinese authorities should recognise the representative of the British Crown in his full dignity, thus acknowledging the dignity of the monarch he represented. This was also important to give him authority over the British subjects in Canton, who on the one hand wished more support from Britain for their aggressive strategy against China’s trade conditions, but on the other hand, did not want to be told what they ought to do, or be restricted in their increasingly dangerous opium smuggling.319 In Elliot’s letters to Palmerston, the question of how to communicate with the Chinese authorities and his role as Superintendent is almost more prominent than the growing crisis in Canton. The establishment of the Superintendence thus had made it crucial for the British government and its representative that the Chinese government should recognise it as equal, as everything else would mean a loss of honour and dignity. Elliot’s actions in 1839, which certainly aggravated the crisis, were thus a logical sequel to the Napier episode, and to a great extent, the result of the political wish of Palmerston. While the latter did not desire a war with China, at the same time, he wanted to see the British flag finally honoured by the Chinese. Local knowledge about Chinese customs and Elliot’s initial attempts to accommodate these in his dealings with them were no longer accepted in the metropolis. The crisis about opium smuggling reached a new climax in March 1839, when the court in Beijing decided to send Lin Tse-hsu, an associate of the so called Spring Purification Party, to Canton with special powers to enforce the anti-opium legislation and to end the opium trade.320 He demanded that all opium should be handed over to him by the foreign merchants. In December 1838, the crisis had been solved

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by a partial handover and negotiations through the Hong merchants. In March 1839, however, the situation escalated due to the determination of Commissioner Lin to end the opium trade and the decision of Charles Elliot to interfere. Elliot did not consider the merchants capable of negotiating with the Chinese in this situation.321 Elliot famously took it upon himself to guarantee compensation of any property the British merchants handed over to the Chinese, collected all the opium and passed it to Commissioner Lin on 21 May 1839 who destroyed an estimated 2 million pounds worth of opium.322 Most works on the Opium War emphasise the economic motive of the growing British Empire for military action, highlighting the way in which opium had become a central trading good for the support of Britain’s Asian expansion, while remaining prohibited in China.323 They are divided about the role of opium, seeing it either as central to the conflict or suggesting that the conflict might have erupted in any event as the expanding British Empire and the restrictive policies of the Chinese Empire collided.324 Glenn Melancon has correctly pointed out that the final decision to go to war had as much to do with the politics of the Melbourne government in London as with the situation in Canton. According to him, the main reason for the cabinet’s decision was to safeguard British honour internationally.325 Certainly, as far as the economic interest of British merchants and British India in the opium trade were concerned, this clampdown on the trade was the ultimate catastrophe. However, it were the meanings of China which had developed in the ‘contact zone’ in Canton that determined the way Elliot dealt with the tensions and actions which the Qing court’s new policy on opium produced. On the one hand, he relied on the good will of the Chinese population, constructed as above as industrious, commercial and oppressed by corrupt Mandarins.326 On the other, for a long time the idea of the corrupt and duplicitous nature of Chinese officials led Elliot to doubt that official declarations would actually be acted upon.327 The understanding of the Chinese legal system developed in the previous decade also meant that at the height of the crisis, in June 1839, he refused to compromise with the Chinese over the handover of a murderer, something which had still been possible in 1820.328 This was closely connected with the attempts by Elliot and the merchants to develop a narrative of legal trade and British dignity in Canton. In a memorial to Palmerston in May 1839, the British merchants emphasised that the trade in opium had been quasi-legal and fully tolerated by the Chinese authorities at the China coast, who had

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profited considerably from it.329 At the same time, Elliot was worried by the potential threats the opium trade posed to both the economy of the British Empire and the dignity of the British crown. He repeatedly warned Palmerston that the over reliance of the British trade with China on opium smuggling could endanger the entire trade with that country.330 However, for a long time similar to the British merchants he tried to describe the opium smuggling as a more or less legal trade, conducted with the full knowledge of the Chinese authorities. The more it became clear that the Chinese authorities might indeed clamp down on the opium trade, the more Elliot got worried about the dignity of the British flag if it was seen to be protecting an illegal trade. After the May crisis, which led to the destruction of British opium, he increasingly emphasised that his main interest was to secure a ‘honorable trade’ between the two countries, which could however also include the legalisation of the opium trade.331 He was probably concerned about the loss of the tea trade, which was important for British revenue as well as the British population, who consumed this good en masse. While Elliot was acutely aware of the economic importance of opium for the British in India and in London, he also believed that this revenue could only be saved in the long run if the trade became legal. Any further reliance on smuggling could only be dangerous.332 This was also Palmerston’s concern when he finally mentioned the opium trade in his correspondence with the Superintendents: ‘her Majesty’s Government cannot interfere for the purpose of enabling British subjects to violate the laws of the country to which they trade.’333 In general, however, Palmerston seems to have decided to ignore the fact that opium smuggling formed the very basis of both, British economic interests in Asia and the problems with the Chinese, thus avoiding the moral dilemma. Elliot’s decision to join the besieged British merchants in Canton and to guarantee the opium handed over was part of the attempt to save what he defined as the legal trade in Canton. Even more than that, it was an expression of his authority and position. Wearing full naval uniform he tried to emphasise to the Chinese authorities and to the British merchants that British trade with China was not just a private matter conducted by merchants, but a matter of great concern to Britain and the British Empire. For those in Canton, military action had long been an option. While they sometimes argued against a war, they increasingly claimed that the British had to show their power to the Chinese to achieve their aims. The country merchants and even the EIC Select Committee had


demanded a show of force since the mid 1820s, even if they had not at that time advocated a full-scale war. The merchants certainly had an increasing economic interest in changing trading conditions in China, especially after 1837, a trading interest which linked them to the rest of the British Empire in Asia. The desire of the missionaries to ‘open China’ to Christianity conveniently coincided with the discourse of the merchant community that China had to be opened to international trade. However, they always had difficulties reconciling military action to protect the opium trade with Christian doctrine and thus often argued against war.334 Most Britons in the ‘contact zone’ in Canton had created the image of a Chinese population as willing and natural traders, open to new ideas, suppressed by arrogant and corrupt Mandarins, a population which would welcome a military invention by the British. Since Napier, the Superintendents had held an ambivalent position towards the use of force against the Chinese. However, both Robinson and Elliot were busy gathering all necessary intelligence for such a step. Their assessment of their own role, especially under Elliot, as a direct envoy of the British Crown rather than just a mere merchant, gave even greater importance to honour and a narrative of a supposedly legal trade, sometimes including opium in Canton. However, by May 1839, there was no way in which Elliot could still assume that the Chinese authorities would finally acknowledge his position and treat him as he deemed appropriate. At this point, the Chinese under Commissioner Lin and the British under Elliot had decided that compromise was not possible. While Lin assumed that he had gained the upper hand over the foreigners,335 Elliot believed that nothing but a military campaign against the Chinese Empire, including the demand for compensation for the opium, could re-establish trade on a secure footing. In his view, this military action could be a ‘swift and heavy blow’ as opposed to a largescale war, which would become inevitable if the British did not show the might of their power now.336 A central element in Elliot’s considerations was the idea that the Chinese population would welcome such an attack on those disrupting trade.337 Until the British government in India or Britain decided to send sufficient warships, stoppage of trade was the only weapon Elliot had, a situation from which the Americans profited greatly.338 Throughout 1839, armed encounters between the British and the Chinese increased and there was no sign of a change of Chinese politics. In June 1840, a British fleet arrived in the sea of Macao and Canton, which marked the beginning of the Opium War.339 The images of China

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which had been created in Canton and transferred back to Britain contributed to a great extend to the pressure under which the Melbourne ministry finally decided to go to war. The first major attack on China by a European power ended with China’s defeat in 1842, sealed by the treaty of Nanjing. As a result of the war, the island of Hong Kong was ceded to the British which created a new ‘contact zone’ between the British, British Indian subjects and the Chinese, under British imperial rule. It also abolished the Cohong system and allowed certain access for the British to the Chinese interior. Thus, in 1842, the Canton system and its networks of information came to an end for good. Canton was a long way away from the Royal Pavilion in Brighton and the imagination of the Prince Regent as a mythical Chinese character. Here, at the edge of the Chinese Empire, the Chinese were daily social contacts for the British, and the decisions of the Qing officials had direct effect on their lives. Consequently, the meaning of China these Britons held differed from what might have been prevalent in other parts of the British expansion or indeed in Britain itself. The close contact between the employees of the EIC, the country merchants and the missionaries meant that they influenced each others’ views on China and the Chinese more strongly than this was the case between their counterparts in Britain. Especially questions of national honour and the acquisition and the creation and use of knowledge about the Chinese as a means to gain power were more significant in Canton. They tried to assemble knowledge about Chinese language, law and religion in order to empower the British community in their interactions with the Chinese. In particular towards the end of the period studied this meant that they tried to impose British norms on Qing officials and to ensure that Britain was represented according to the British image of themselves. Britons who had lived in Canton considered themselves ‘China experts’ and tried to establish themselves as such in British public opinion. In the crucial years before the Opium War, the knowledge about China which the British held to be true, therefore, had to a great extent been created in the specific conditions of the ‘contact zone’ in Canton. These ‘local experts’ however had very limited access to Chinese intellectual and political networks. For example, they seem to have been unaware of any of the four principal academies in Canton, such as the Xuehai Tang, founded in 1820 by the Governor-General Ruan Yuan and several Chinese foreign-trade merchant philanthropists.340 They were also strongly influenced by knowledge created in other parts of Britain’s


Asian Empire, in India and Southeast Asia. In particular, ideas developed about language, indigenous law, conversion and education in India were transferred and applied in the Chinese context. India also served as an example when it came to analysing the political situation in China. Particularly in the period after 1834, when the idea of a military strike against China was increasingly favoured, the Manchus were equated with the Mughals in India. This made it possible to imagine the Chinese as oppressed people, needing to be freed from the corrupt Mandarins and who even had to be educated and enlightened by the British for their own good. On the eve of the Opium War, China had become part of the imagination networks of the British imperial expansion, linking it to India and other Asian cultures rather than viewing it as a civilisation on a par with Europe. However, Britain’s imperial expansion did not only provide patterns by which the British in Canton formed their ideas and knowledge of China. It also created other ‘contact zones’ with the Chinese and the Qing Empire, which strongly influenced British thoughts about China.

4 South and Southeast Asian Encounters

The British Empire and its European rivals were not the only expanding empires in Asia in the second half of the 18th century. In the 1750s, the Qing Empire under Qianlong had expanded to include the large western area, the Xinjiang province, into its territory. Qianlong had also tried, albeit not very successfully, to ensure Chinese military supremacy over Burma and Vietnam in the 1760s and 1780s. In the 1790s, he managed to tighten his grip on Tibet and defeat the Gurkhas in Nepal. At the same time, Chinese immigration from the southern provinces to Southeast Asia increased.1 Within the same 50 years, Britain began to establish its empire in India, starting in Bengal which bordered on Nepal. From Bengal and Madras, the British tried to extend their influence into Burma and Vietnam. The unsolved question of the China trade and the Napoleonic Wars brought the British to Southeast Asia. Where those expanding empires and the networks of their populations met, new contact zones sprang into existence in which the British meaning of China was shaped and transformed. Under the conditions of the ‘contact zone’ in India, the insecurity and ‘information panics’2 of an expanding power were pivotal for British ideas about Chinese religion, language and customs. Moreover, the British here came into contact with the central Asian extension of the Chinese Empire, where the Manchu emphasised other aspects of their culture than in Southern China. While the ‘contact zone’ on the Indian border was to diminish in importance over this period, the increasing expansion of Britain in Southeast Asia was to make this an important ‘contact zone’ between the British and the Overseas Chinese. Here, for the first time, the British had contact with the Chinese without the restrictions imposed by the Qing Empire and often in a situation where they were the colonial power. 106

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These factors made Southeast Asia one of the prominent sites for the formation of British knowledge on China and the Chinese.

4.1 China’s neighbour Ever since the EIC had gained supremacy in Bengal in 1765, they found themselves distant neighbours to the Qing sphere of influence. While China was never the main focus of the British in India, it still figured prominently in the reflections connected with the new North eastern border.3 This neighbourhood was mainly characterised by a complete lack of information. From the 1770s onwards, the Company tried to fill the white map with knowledge on the state of affairs between the Bengal frontier and that of the Chinese Empire. These explorations fitted in well with the general programme of the Company in India, which was to assert British power not just by way of military, diplomatic and economic means, but also by gaining information about those whom they wanted to rule or subject to the influence of the Company.4 However, this also meant that they quickly came into conflict with the rulers of the neighbouring areas, such as the expanding kingdom of the Gurkhas.5 The Company almost considered Bengal’s old trading connections as being their inherited right, which entitled them to expand their economic influence towards the region that separated them from China, especially Nepal and Tibet. Thus, from the 1770s onwards, the British employees of the EIC in India started to collect information about China in the context of the intelligence-gathering that accompanied the British conquest of India.6 While in Canton issues of translation, national dignity, law, religion and commerce dominated the meaning of China in the eyes of the British, in India this was influenced by the anxieties of an expanding power, the need for military information and the fears and suspicions resulting from the lack of it. Also, such information as the British were able to obtain came from different sources: from the Tibetans and from the Nepalese but hardly ever directly from the Qing officials or the Han Chinese. The China the British had to come to terms with was a distant empire which nevertheless acted as a restrictive force for British action in the region. To the few British who went into the Chinese sphere of influence, not protected by the Canton system and the knowledge built up in this context, this encounter could be more threatening on a personal level than to those in Canton. Thomas Manning for example, an eccentric British traveller, finally decided to abandon his attempt to enter

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China through Tibet because he feared for his safety and life.7 Most of the time there was no direct contact and China was more of a rumour, a chimerical threat to British interests, the exact influence of which in the Himalayan region the British found difficult to establish.8 Without Hoppos, Viceroys and Hong merchants, the will of those who restricted British progress into the Himalayas and North-West China seemed to be even more diffuse. The first attempt to understand China’s North-West expansion was made under Warren Hastings’s governorship. In these early years, little was known about the countries beyond Bengal’s frontier or about the power relations amongst them. Hastings and his colleagues of the EIC were particularly interested in finding out the extent to which the Chinese really exercised influence in these mountainous regions bordering Bengal. On the one hand, the strategists of the EIC seem to have wondered how far they might be able to extend their economic and political influence without colliding with the Chinese Empire. On the other hand, Hastings was fascinated by the idea of finding another entrance to China and access to the Chinese market. In this context therefore, and more so than in Canton, China was seen as a major power in Asia, while its position as a desirable economic market continued. This latter point was not just important in relation to possible trade with China through the Himalayas but also due to the EIC system of remitting their money back to Britain via the tea trade in Canton. These aspects would be crucial for the British perceptions of the countries they encountered between Bengal and China, mainly Tibet and Nepal. In these contacts, ideas about Chinese religion and language again played a crucial role. However, different influences produced chains of associations which made up the images of China which served a very different political situation than in Canton. In 1774, the young Scottish EIC servant George Bogle set out on a diplomatic mission to the Panchen Lama in Tibet, thus making himself the first Briton to reach the ‘mountain kingdom’. As Kate Teltscher recently described, this led to a journey of culture-crossings, which would briefly connect the two empires and four cultures.9 In 1772, the Company had interfered in a conflict between Bhutan and Cooch Behar on the side of the latter. As a result, the Panchen Lama, alarmed by the possibility of a British occupation of Bhutan, sent a letter to Warren Hastings, asking him to end any hostilities against the Bhutanese.10 For Hastings, this was a welcome occasion to establish closer relations with Tibet, something the Court of Directors had hoped for since at least 1768.11 The main object was to expand British trade into Tibet, Nepal


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and China, and to collect information about these regions. He thus sent Bogle to Lhasa to open ‘mutual and equal communication of trade’ between Tibet and Bengal. In addition, he was to gather information about the roads between Bengal and Lhasa, the communication between Lhasa and its neighbour, their government, revenue and manners.12 In a memorandum on Tibet, Hastings emphasised that he was particularly interested in having ‘any facts relative to the state of Tibet with respect to China and Tartary.’13 The Qing had continuously extended their influence over Tibet from the early 18th century onwards, tightening their control on innerTibetan affairs in 1750. Tibet was of a considerable importance for the Qing, since they tried to consolidate their rule over the Central Asian Mongolians by their public embrace of Tibetan Buddhism.14 Bogle, however, never met any official of the Qing Empire during his journey and stay in Tibet. Still there was a constant presence of the idea of Chinese power. On the one had, Bogle accepted Chinese overlordship over Tibet, on the other, he doubted that the Chinese influence could actually restrict British interests in the region. Accordingly, Bogle considered that the reference to Chinese power only served as a pretext for the Tibetan authorities to hinder his progress.15 The expedition first came to a halt at Tassisudon, the capital of Bhutan. Shortly before his arrival, the EIC envoy had received a letter from the Panchen Lama. This letter stipulated that Bogle would not be permitted to proceed further into Tibet. The reason given was that the Emperor of China did not permit the Lama to admit any foreigners from India into his domain. Bogle considered this to be a mere pretext, although he was unable to conjecture upon the real cause of the unwillingness of the Lama to allow him to proceed. He even maintained this suspicion when the Deb Rajah in Tassisudon confirmed the Lama’s argument. According to Bogle, he only ‘magnified the affair of China’.16 In the end, Bogle was allowed to proceed to Dechenrubje, where the Panchen Lama resided, but was unable to procure the permit to proceed to Lhasa. Bogle considered the reason for this to be the ‘jealous and suspicious temper’ of the Gesub Rimboché, who conducted government business during the minority of the Dalai Lama as a Regent in Lhasa, and his fear to draw the anger of the Chinese, who were as ‘jealous and suspicious as himself’.17 This contrasts with his representations of the Tibetans and Bhutanese as ‘noble savages’ and his positive account of the Lama as a wise, noble leader.18 In his negotiations with the Lama about the commencing of trade, Bogle tried to counter the constant references to the sovereignty of the Chinese emperor over Tibet as a hindrance to trade. He tried to assure the Lama

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that he was to be considered the ruler of the country in all affairs, despite the formal overlordship of the Chinese Emperor.19 In this, he responded to a certain degree to the attempts of the Panchen Lama to conduct his own foreign policy, independently of the Chinese Emperor and the Lhasa Regent.20 At the same time, Bogle hoped to profit from the connection of the Lama with the Emperor of China. In his report about the trade in Tibet, Bogle highlighted the strong trading links between Lhasa and China.21 Even more promising, the Panchen Lama had suggested that on his next journey to Beijing he would ask for a passport for Bogle to proceed to the Chinese capital. Bogle happily accepted the offer of support, even though he was sceptical of the chances of success.22 In the end, this attempt to reach China from the West came to nothing. The Panchen Lama died in Beijing in 1780, without having been able to procure the permit for Bogle to go to China. It is likely that the Lama did not address the wishes of Warren Hastings during his stay in Beijing, but reports by the gosein, Purangir, who accompanied him, emphasised that the Panchen Lama had actually spoken warmly in favour of his British friends.23 The Company therefore continued to see Tibet as a possible route to China and hoped to establish stable trade even after the deaths of both – the Lama and Bogle – had put an end to the first successful establishment of contact. In 1783, Hastings sent Samuel Turner to Tibet on the pretext of congratulating the Tibetans on the discovery of the 6th incarnation of the Lama in the body of a young child. Turner met with even stronger resistance to his wishes than Bogle had, which he also mainly attributed to the influence of the Chinese authority over the country, which in his opinion had spoiled the Tibetans’ character. Nevertheless, he still had high hopes for a commercial connection between Bengal and Tibet in the future and was sure that in the end this would give them the opportunity to send an envoy to Beijing.24 An understanding of China’s religions specific to the British in Bengal was an important factor in these considerations. The hope was that the Lama as a mediator would have sufficient influence on the Emperor. In the reports, Qianlong’s interest in Tibet and the Lama is mainly explained by his religious veneration of the Lama, showing him to be a deeply religious person. In Canton, as well as in Britain, Confucianism was seen as the major spiritual influence on the Chinese, while Buddhism and Taoism were considered to be superstitions mainly followed by the lower orders. In contrast to this, the encounters in the ‘contact zone’ on the border of British power in India led to Buddhism


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being seen as a much more important feature of Chinese religious life. This is the only context in which Bogle refers to the ‘Tartar’ origin of Qianlong, giving this as a reason for him being a Buddhist. Bogle is not concerned with the question of how Buddhism relates to the other Chinese ‘religions’, Taoism and Confucianism, but seems to accept Buddhism as the main religion of China.25 He might well have lacked a deeper prior knowledge about China and thus had to base his understanding of Qianlong’s and Chinese religiosity on the accounts of the Panchen Lama who of course was mainly concerned with Qianlong as a Buddhist monarch. Bogle therefore also emphasises the dependence of the Chinese emperor on the Panchen Lama. According to him, Qianlong did not undertake any expedition without consulting the Lama.26 Here, Bogle clearly accepted the Lama’s version of the relationship between the Chinese emperor and the Tibetan Lamas. As Evelyn Rawski has pointed out, the Qing emperors in general and Qianlong in particular, tried to stress the subordination of the Lamas to them, while the Lama tried to emphasise the Lama–patron relationship between him and the emperor, thus establishing his spiritual power over him.27 Bogle translated these Central Asian power relations into those of medieval Europe: To him, the Panchen Lama was a better and wiser Pope while the Chinese emperor could be equated with the German emperor.28 During the Macartney embassy, these aspects would become important again. Since the reception of Macartney took place in Chengede, the Manchu Residence, Qianlong presented himself there as the patron of Tibetan Buddhism and thus conveyed this image to Macartney. In his observations on Chinese religion, Macartney therefore concluded that the Tartars follow the religion of Fo, as it is practiced by the Dalai Lama. He clearly separated the Buddhism of the court from that followed by the masses, which he considered to be simple idolatry. At Chengede, he was also confronted with Qianlong’s representation of himself as an incarnate ruler, an idea which followed Mongol patterns of rule legitimisation. Without being able to understand the political implications of this claim, Macartney attributed it to the extravagant superstition of a successful monarch, equating it to Alexander’s claim to divine descent.29 China thus still held the meaning of a huge potential market, closed due to the suspicious and jealous nature of the Chinese. However, this could be overcome by a mediator like the Lama, who would be able to address the religious side of the ruling Manchu. The religious devotion of the Chinese Emperor, Qianlong, was therefore far more emphasised in this ‘contact zone’ than it was in Canton. Another main difference

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was that for the EIC in India, the meaning of China as a major, and expanding, Asian power was of great importance, whereas in Canton, hardly anybody considered China under this aspect. Already during the Bogle mission, this facet had become important in the description of Qianlong. Bogle characterised him as having ‘a violent and imperious temper’. He wrote that during Qianlong’s conquests in Central Asia, the monarch had used ‘arts unworthy of a great monarch’ to subdue his enemies. The Scot predicted that in the near future there would be a rupture with Russia, in which the Chinese could not be victorious. Qianlong would nevertheless attempt the fight due to his haughty personality.30 It is highly likely that Bogle adopted this view of Qianlong as a violent, war-loving conqueror from the Lama, who appears to have given him a less than positive picture of the Chinese Emperor.31 In Bogle’s report, this characterisation of a warmonger had mainly been restricted to the Emperor himself. However, with the growing crisis between the British and Nepal on the one side and between the Nepalese and the Chinese on the other, the meaning of a military power to reckon with was increasingly attributed to the Chinese in general – independent of their emperor. The conquests of the Ghurkha Kingdom in Nepal since the 1760s first brought the British into a potential direct conflict with the Chinese Empire.32 As in Canton, a potential conflict between the two Empires meant that British identity and its acceptance by the Chinese became important. In the Himalayas, however, the British presented themselves differently to their countrymen at the South China coast. The new Ghurkha power in Nepal led to several border conflicts with the EIC in Bengal as well as some with Tibet.33 In particular, the new rulers frustrated British trading interests in Nepal.34 In 1791, the Gurkhas invaded Tibet because the Tibetans had not paid the indemnity agreed upon after the first attack in 1789. They captured Shigatse and plundered the monastery of the Panchen Lama at Tashilhunpo. This time, however, a Chinese force arrived to secure their protectorate Tibet before the Gurkhas could retreat with their booty. The Chinese defeated the Gurkhas, who were forced to agree to give up their loot and send tribute missions to Beijing once every five years. The Chinese used the occasion to strengthen their hold on Tibet, influencing the way a new Dalai Lama was selected. The Tibetans had already asked the British for help in the conflict of 1789. In 1792, they hoped for British neutrality, while the Ghurkhas sought their support. Cornwallis, however, then the Governor-General of Bengal, seems to have been little prepared to enter into a war in the Himalayas. He only agreed to send Colonel Kirkpatrick


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to Nepal to mediate between the fighting parties. However, by the time he arrived, the Gurkahs had already surrendered to the Chinese and he could do no more than to try and assure the goodwill of the Gurkhas to the Company despite their lack of armed support.35 However, his mission gave rise to speculation about the way the Chinese perceived the British actions in the region and about Chinese expansionist plans. The Chinese were obviously considered to be a more dangerous military power than, for example, the Gurkhas. The greatest possible threat to the British, however, was that a military conflict between the Company and the Chinese in the Himalayas might induce the Chinese to cut off trade with the British in Canton.36 The almost complete lack of information about Chinese intentions in this region and the kind of intelligence they had about the British led to British insecurity about what to expect from the Chinese. There was the image of the Chinese Empire as land hungry and expansionist. As Kirkpatrick remarked in his report in 1811 in retrospect: ‘This Government [the Bengal] now beheld for the first time, the extraordinary spectacle of a numerous Chinese force, occupying a position, which probably afforded it a distant view of the valley of the Ganges, and of the richest of the East India Company’s Possessions.’37 However, reassuring both himself and British pride, he immediately added It is true, that the military character of that people was not of a stamp to excite, under any circumstances, much fear for the safety of those Possessions from their future enterprises. Least of all had we any thing to apprehend from this quarter at the period in question, when we had just significantly humbled our most formidable enemy, and were at complete peace throughout India.38 This self-image of a peaceful yet unbeatable strong power in India was what the British servants of the EIC accordingly tried to promote in their dealings with the Chinese. The contact in the periphery of the British expansion meant that, like their colleagues in Canton, they feared more than anything that the Chinese might have a view of them which did not correspond with the image they had of themselves. In contrast to the EIC in Canton, however, the self-image they wanted the Chinese to accept was less influenced by the idea of showing British might and power than by wanting to convince the Chinese of the noble and peaceful character of the British. Lord Macartney and George Staunton claim that the Chinese indeed suspected that British troops had been employed to help the Gurkhas

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and that therefore the commander of the Chinese troops in Tibet, Fu-k’ang-an, tried to influence the Chinese Court against the British. Even though Macartney had not heard about the conflict with the Gurkhas before his departure, Macartney denied any British involvement in this during the embassy and also exaggerated the distance between the British realm in India and the Chinese sphere of influence.39 However, this did little to set the minds of the Company in India at rest on this issue. They noticed with growing unease that after their victory over the Gurkhas, the Chinese set up military posts along the Southern frontier of Nepal and turned the country of the Raja of Segwin into their protectorate. The Chinese now had a military presence in a territory immediately joining the EIC in Bengal. Furthermore, the Chinese presence in the region put a final stop to all trade communications with Tibet.40 The chimera of Chinese power and the rumours about its possible actions against the English in the Himalayas as well as in Canton were the dominant factors for British action in the Nepalese War in 1814– 1816.41 Amid the preparations for the war as well as during it, the lack of access to either the Chinese information order or to the Tibetan was particularly problematic. China hung over the entire affair like a spectre. Lord Moira feared the invasion of a mighty Chinese army, concerned about the outcome of the war as well as for commerce in Canton. He also worried about what might happen if the Company were to occupy the Gurkha territory and thus have a common border with the Chinese Empire.42 In this context, China was still seen as a mighty empire of almost equal standing with the British. Francis Buchanan for example, who had gone to Kathmandu with Captain Knox in 1801, declared: ‘a frontier . . . of seven or eight hundred miles between two powerful nations holding each other in mutual contempt seems to point at anything but peace.’43 During the war, several attempts were made to acquire more information about the Chinese attitude towards the invasion of Nepal by the Company.44 At the same time, the lack of access to Chinese information in this ‘contact zone’ with the Chinese meant that the ‘Chinese’ remained unidentifiable and ambiguous. This becomes clear in the instructions given by Lord Moira to Lieutenant Colonel Bradshaw for the event that he should encounter Chinese troops during his campaign. Due to the ‘loose rumour’ that the Nepalese had actually applied for Chinese help, it could be expected that the British would encounter Chinese troops, which should not be engaged in battle, if at all possible. The difficulty, however, lay in identifying ‘real’ Chinese troops as


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opposed to Nepalese troops pretending to be Chinese in order to avoid British attacks:45 In this event, desired that the answer to be returned by Major General Marley should be to the following effect: That under the uncertainty which existed, whether such an intimation came from a Chinese officer, or was an artifice of the enemy, he could not suspend operations, and that, deeply as he would lament doing any unintentional injury to any Chinese troops, whatever opposed him in the field must be considered as a Goorka force, and treated accordingly.46 The Chinese did not interfere in the Nepal War on the side of the Nepalese. Despite the agreement under which the Nepalese had surrendered to the Chinese in 1792, the Chinese do not seem to have thought of Nepal as an important part of its frontier-security system, but were primarily concerned with the safety of Tibet.47 However, this was not the image the British held of Chinese interests in the region. In their minds, an expanding power like the Chinese Empire would jealously guard its influence over Nepal against any contact between Nepal and Britain. Here, the experience with the exclusionism of the Canton system merged with reports of Qing expansion under Qianlong into Central Asia into the idea of an expansionist empire that would block every route through the Himalayas. The image of the supposedly suspicious and mighty power of the Chinese Empire also continued after the signing of the peace Treaty of Segauli, which ended the Nepalese War. Rumours reached the British via their Resident at Kathmandu that now indeed a Chinese army was marching towards Nepal, perhaps to punish the Nepalese for going to war with the British and then making peace with them without informing the Chinese properly. The crisis resolved itself without further consequences, since the Chinese withdrew soon after. Nevertheless, this incident gave Lord Moira another reason to believe that it was of the utmost importance to explain to the Chinese the peaceful intentions of the British towards the Chinese Empire. He hoped to send an English agent to Lhasa, who would be able to show the Chinese the ‘open and candid dealings of an English Officer’, quite in contrast to those of the treacherous Nepalese. He also informed Lord Amherst in detail about the war, should he be asked during his embassy to the court. Apparently, however, the Qing officials did not think it necessary, or were not sufficiently informed, to question Lord Amherst about this issue.48

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Not only in their contact with the Chinese army in this context, but also in their interaction with the Nepalese, the British tried to conjure up the image of a close friendship and smooth relations with the Chinese Empire.49 The hope was obviously to make it clear to the Nepalese that they had no chance in playing the Chinese and the British against each other. In this case, China was not so much depicted as a decaying Asian civilisation, but rather as a potential ally. One of the results of the Nepal War was the establishment of a permanent British Residency in Kathmandu. For the EIC, the Residency was a means to ensure peace with Nepal and favourable trading condition with this Himalayan country. To strengthen British influence on the Gurkha Kingdom, the members of the Residency soon set out to find information about the kingdom and its relation to its neighbours. Brian Houghton Hodgson, assistant to the Resident and later Resident in Kathmandu until 1843, was particularly busy in this respect.50 China continued to play a significant role in British interactions with the Himalayan state and in all its attempts to form knowledge about the Himalayan region. On the one hand, it remained a rival of political influence on the Nepalese and continued to be considered a constant threat to British interests in the region; and the Resident closely observed Chinese power in Tibet and its relations to Nepal. The British in Bengal kept a particularly close eye on Nepalese attempts to enlist Chinese support against the British and feared that British actions or those of their allies in this area could be considered offensive by the Chinese.51 On the other hand, trade with China through the Himalayas still fascinated the British in the North of India. Brian Houghton Hodgson contemplated the trading routes through the Himalayas for British goods in the 1830s and envisaged great trade surpluses through this route. He hoped to bypass the trading restrictions with China by using the long-established trade routes between Nepal, Tibet and China and recorded routes from India to China.52 However, this trade would still only be restricted to the Company’s Indian subjects.53 Hodgson hoped to also use this route for the opium trade to Mongolia and China, thus providing an additional route for this trade which might be less dangerous than the contraband trade via Canton.54 Increasingly, Russian influences in the region also drew the attention of the British. Thus Hodgson was also particularly interested in the Russian trade connections in Nepal and with China. He hoped that by utilising trading routes through Nepal, Indian traders would be able to undersell Russians in Szechuan in items such as English wool, handware and glassware, thus finally discovering a more rewarding outlet for


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English goods for those areas of China to which the British did not have access from Canton.55 However, Hodgson’s interest in Nepal and the Himalaya region went further than mere trade issues. To further British understanding of the region and ultimately to further British influence, he conducted intensive research into the ethnography, languages and nature of the region. He mainly acquired information from local informants on law, religion, languages and the nature of Nepal.56 He categorised the people of Nepal into different tribes. He paid particular attention to the ‘military tribes of Nepal.’57 His main enquiries were directed towards Nepal, but whenever possible he also tried to gain further information and books from China.58 Although his main interest lay in the Indian cultural influence on Nepal, he also traced some elements of Newar culture to the Chinese. In particular, he considered the ethnographic origin of the main Nepalese tribes, in particular the Khas to be Tartarian or Mongol.59 His linguistic and ethnographic research even led him to argue ‘that the Indo-Chinese, the Chinese, the Tibetans, and the Altaians, have been too broadly contra-distinguished, and that they form in fact but one great ethnic family, which moreover includes what are usually called the Tamilian or Dravidian and the Kol and Munda elements of Indian population, as well as nearly every element of the population of Oceania.’60 To support this argument, he also made a physionomic comparison of the Tibetan and Nepalese people arguing that their physical characteristics equally showed all the people mentioned above to be of one ethnic family, often drawing comparisons between them and the Chinese.61 Hodgson’s research thus complemented his understanding of the Himalayan region as a pass between the two great cultures of India and China. From his point of view, the Mongolians were again of far greater importance than the Han Chinese and frequently he hardly distinguished between Mongols and Chinese.62 Hodgson’s interest in the languages of the region between Bengal and China was linked to the attempts of another group in these years to exploit the proximity of the British in Bengal to China: the Baptist missionaries at Serampore, led by Joshua Marshman. He had arrived in Serampore in 1799 to support the Baptist mission, which until then had been represented solely by William Carey. As in Canton, the arrival of missionaries in the periphery meant that the study of language became pre-eminent. Of course, the main focus of missionary study was the languages of India.63 The global claim of the missionaries, however, made them interested in the adjoining countries, preparing for the further

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expansion of the Christian faith. Marshman thus sought to profit from the Chinese population in Calcutta as well as from the reports from Nepal and Burma regarding the proximity of the Chinese Empire.64 He managed to secure a teaching position in 1805 for Joannes Lassar, an Armenian Christian from Macao who had learned Chinese as a child.65 Thus, the first ever formal British teaching position for Chinese was established neither in London nor in Canton, but rather in Calcutta.66 With Lassar’s help and the mission press in Serampore, Marshman published a Chinese translation of St. Matthew’s gospel in 1810 and a full Bible in 1822, even before Morrison could finish his project.67 He also produced a translation of Confucius’s work and a Chinese grammar, which paid great attention to positioning Chinese in the context of Greek and especially Sanskrit. Elmer H. Cutts has pointed to the political connection of this missionary project. First of all the establishment of a Professorship at the College of Fort William shows that the Company, or at least their representatives on the spot, were interested in the knowledge of Chinese. This becomes even more evident when one considers that GovernorGeneral Lord Minto, who was not all that favourably inclined towards the missionary project, was a great supporter of this work. Marshman even dedicated his translation of Confucius to him, thanking him for his encouragement of the study of the Chinese language in Bengal.68 Cutts believes that these attempts to establish a British faculty for Chinese studies at Calcutta were merely there to furnish a possible second British Embassy to Beijing with a British interpreter.69 However, it probably also had wider implications, in the context of British ideas on China in Bengal discussed above. Marshman, for instance, constantly paid great attention not only to the Chinese Empire and its language itself, but also to its influence on its neighbouring countries. For example, following an observation on the spread of Sanskrit as well as Chinese elements into the languages of East Asia, he stated that ‘to those who reflect on this intermixture of the Sungskrit with the Chinese system in the languages of these countries, one fact will appear evident, that not a step can be effectually taken in the investigation of the language of any of the countries beyond Bengal, without some acquaintance with both the systems.’70 When he first learned about the LMS sending out a missionary to China, he defended the continuation of his studies of Chinese at Serampore with its closeness to China and the multitude of Chinese living in Calcutta. He compared it with a Fort, where the ‘experienced general’ could assemble and prepare his forces for the ‘grand assault at the first favourable opportunity’. As long as the Chinese Empire was


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closed to foreigners, he argued, this was the best option, better than waiting in vain in Canton.71 In his correspondence with the BMS (Baptist Missionary Society) in Britain, he also laid down a scheme of how the missionaries could establish stations in Burma, which would bring them practically to the Chinese border. From there, it wouldn’t be a problem in the eyes of Marshman, to send ‘the scriptures in separate books presented neatly like Confucius, into the very heart of China!’72 Like his fellow countrymen from the EIC, he saw the countries east of Bengal as a passage to China well into the 1820s. Except for these plans by the missionaries, which were never realised, the idea to use this route, or the one through Tibet, for diplomatic communication with China was abandoned. It was only contemplated one more time, by the Select Committee in Canton in 1822.73 With it, the perception of the Chinese Emperor as a Tibetan Buddhist, and his relation to the Dalai Lama became less important again. It seems to have been of interest mainly in its political implications. The importance of Tibetan Buddhism as a religion of the Manchu Emperors played no great role for the missionaries, who concentrated their work and their translations on the ‘Chinese Bible’ – the Four Books of Confucius. This was also true for Joshua Marshman.74 Tellingly, his teacher came from Macao and his main source of Chinese books equally seems to have been the country trade with South China. Buddhism was increasingly seen as a mainly Indian religion. Hodgson had an exchange with the French Professor for Sinology, Abel Rémusat, about some aspects of Buddhism. He claimed, that as the latter extrapolated his information from Chinese works, he was bound to misunderstand some of the central concepts of Buddhism as ‘No wonder, . . . , if I discovered very many things inscrutably hidden from those who were reduced to consult barbarian translations from the most refined and copious of languages upon the most subtle and interminable of topics.’75 China as a Central Asian power remained of a certain interest in the 19th century, mainly due to the increasing British fear of Russian activities in the region.76 The question of how the Chinese Emperor related to British presence in India resurfaced again during the Opium War, in particular when the Sikh under General Zorawar Singh invaded and occupied Western Tibet, which was still under Chinese overlordship. Hodgson had long suspected that the Nepalese were trying to enlist Chinese help against the British, particularly after they had learned of the conflict between the British and the Chinese Empire in Canton.77 Being at war with the Chinese on the South China coast,

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the British in India had little interest in opening a second frontier with the Chinese Empire in the Himalayas and feared that the Chinese might do exactly this with the help of the Nepalese.78 In this context, J. D. Cunningham 1842 still described China as a ‘consolidated empire’ in contrast to the ‘contests of barbarous peoples’, arguing that none of Britain’s Indian allies or subordinate states should try to invade Chinese territory.79 For the Anglo-Indian British, China and the Chinese always remained an indirect presence; one they were connected to through letters to and from Canton, rumours at the borders of Bengal and economic interests. Knowledge about Chinese religion, ethnic origin and language were used to assess a potentially dangerous neighbour and to gain influence over it. The image of China formed in this context, while influenced by reflections in Britain and India on the despotic nature of Asian governments, was mainly shaped by contact with people under the Chinese sphere of influence in Central Asia. However, if we move further along the routes of the second British Empire in the East, we inevitably reach what is now termed Southeast Asia.80 Where Hastings had sought access to China through the Himalayas, Alexander Dalrymple and his successors hoped to find a solution to the British China trade through entrepôts in the Malayan Archipelago. They attempted to use the networks of traders in this region to overcome Chinese restrictions on European trade. By doing this, they encountered the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, and, as in Penang, briefly in Malacca and Java and then in Singapore, the Chinese increasingly became their subjects. The remainder of the chapter explores how a different meaning of China was shaped in the context of these ‘contact zones’ and the significance this had for other British encounters with China.

4.2 Chinese subjects for the empire One Briton who travelled the routes which connected the British presence in Asia was John Leyden. He was a Scottish linguist and poet who had contributed to the study of old Scottish literature. He befriended Sir Walter Scott and helped him with the collection of the oral traditions of the Highland Scots. Not gaining an appointment as a minister in a church as soon as he had hoped, he looked for better opportunities in the service of the Empire and joined the EIC as medical staff in Madras. There, he soon became a member of the Mysore survey under Major Mackenzie. After collecting and standardising the cultural tradition of Scotland, he thus went on to catalogue and collect the South


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Indian landscape, history and cultural tradition. In October 1805, he went from India to Penang for health reasons. There, he met Thomas Raffles who had just arrived a month earlier from England to fill the position of assistant secretary to the Governor Philip Dundas. Raffles’s interest for Malay and the development of British rule in Southeast Asia coincided with Leyden’s fascination with languages in general and his interest in issues of colonial rule. Leyden lived in Raffles’s home during the 12 weeks of his convalescence and soon the two became friends. His visit to Penang inspired Leyden not only to study Malay, but also to attempt to learn Chinese.81 The result of his stay on this Southeast Asian island was an article in the Asiatic Researchers, entitled ‘On the Language and Literature of the Indo-Chinese nations’. Here, he classified the languages of the people between India and China according to their historic relationship, by this also attempting to establish their degree of civilisation.82 He used Chinese as a language of comparison to the languages in Southeast Asia, to determine the relation of these people to China.83 His reference to the Chinese language itself makes clear that in Penang he had developed an understanding of Chinese that was quite different from that of Canton or Marshman’s in Bengal. While the British in those places had been aware that there were different Chinese dialects, they nevertheless came up with the idea of one main Chinese language, the Mandarin, which they endeavoured to study and which was the basis for their Chinese-English grammars and dictionaries. The only admission of the variety of languages in China was Morrison’s ‘Vocabulary of the Canton dialect’, for the practical use of the EIC employees at Canton. This however did not lead to any doubts that one could make general assumptions and study ‘the Chinese’.84 Thus Morrison’s dictionary is entitled ‘A Chinese – English dictionary’, not considering the dialects of China as being fundamentally different.85 In contrast, Leyden explained that it was hardly possible to say anything about the connection of Chinese and the other languages of the region, since there was such a plurality of Chinese languages: In the course of some enquiries that I made among the Chinese of Penang, I found that four or five languages were current among them, which were totally distinct from each other, and the names of several others were mentioned. I was informed that the principal Chinese languages were ten in number; but I have found that considerable variety occurred in the enumeration of their names, and suspect that they are considerably more numerous in reality.86

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After his return to India, Leyden asked Raffles to send him some copies of the books of Confucius for further study. We do not know whether Leyden would have developed into another ‘China-expert’ with a Southeast Asian provenance had he not died five years later in Java at the age of 36.87 Leyden, in his background and his way of employment, is emblematic for a number of those Britons who were involved in the British expansion in Southeast Asia. Like him, Colin Mackenzie and John Crawfurd, who were prominent in the context of the Java expedition and later the administration of Singapore, were Scottish and like him they had done their first imperial service in India.88 Thomas Raffles had started his career in the East in Penang. Nevertheless, the patronage of Lord Minto, Governor-General of Bengal, and his contact with further AngloIndians also soon connected Raffles to the Company’s rule in India and the concepts that were evolved in that context. It was this group, as well as the Protestant missionaries, who met with the Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and from this encounter developed a specific meaning of China. As in the other ‘contact zones’, the Chinese language, law, religious beliefs and the definition of Britishness were the main fields in which the meaning of China and the Chinese was developed in the encounter in Southeast Asia. In contrast to Canton and Bengal, in Southeast Asia, the British encountered a population of Chinese origin rather than the Chinese Empire. It was here that the British first came to rule over a Chinese population, but also to co-operate with them to further their expansion. The British attempt to see the Chinese population as distinct from Chinese rule was to become one of the characteristic elements of the British attitude in this period and of significant importance during the debate about the EIC’s monopoly, and, as we have seen, in the run up to the Opium War.89 The strongest development of this meaning of China emerged in Southeast Asia. The ideas about Chinese language, tradition and population developed in Southeast Asia had considerable influence on the formation of ideas on China in Britain itself. After all, the first ordinary professor for Chinese at a British university, Reverend Samuel Kidd had never entered China but had only studied Chinese in Southeast Asia.90 This notwithstanding, this crucial contact zone has been mainly overlooked in the discussion of British attitudes to China.91 In the entrepôts of the European powers in Southeast Asia, two expanding networks met; the Chinese trade and labour immigration and the European trade, missionary and colonial expansion.92 From the 17th century onwards, Chinese immigration into Southeast Asia had


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increased significantly. Only in the later part of the 18th century did this migration become more entangled with the European presence in the region.93 Carl A. Trocki has divided this migration into five periods, from the 17th to the 20th century. According to him, the period between 1800 and 1830 was marked by a rapid increase in Chinese settlements and the junk trade, following the impulses of the European expansion in the region. Particularly, British capital and British consumers enabled a massive increase in migration. In these years, the British also started to become increasingly aware of a numerous Chinese population in Southeast Asia. After 1830, Trocki argues, the junk trade gradually declined, pushed aside by European networks.94 At the same time, the colonial European powers in Southeast Asia increasingly tried to control the settlements of the Overseas Chinese in their colonies and thus transformed the economic systems of the Chinese into one more integrated in the world capitalist market. To achieve this control, they created the idea of ‘respectable’ Chinese as collaborators, who would exercise control over their Chinese subjects.95 The Chinese migrants were organised in kongsis, which according to Trocki, mainly served an economic purpose and gave the Chinese an institutional framework which allowed them to settle and trade in Southeast Asia so successfully.96 The migrants were almost entirely male. They often left a wife back in their Chinese village to whom they sent money. It was also assumed that they would ultimately return to their place of origin. However, the Chinese migrants often took a second local wife and frequently remained abroad.97 The children of these mixed marriages in most cases spoke the local language, for example Malay, but would still see themselves as Chinese. Thus, a Peranakan or Baba society came into existence, a society of mixed Malay and Chinese background, who however still considered themselves to have a Chinese identity.98 British expansionist interests in Southeast Asia had started over 40 years before Leyden’s journey to Penang with Alexander Dalrymple, a young Scottish writer for the EIC in Madras. He had studied travel reports intensively before going out, especially Edward Kimber’s Life and Adventures of Joe Thompson and Jan Nieuhoff’s account of the Dutch embassy to Peking.99 The promises as well as the difficulties of the China trade were therefore already in his mind when he set out to India, combined with the idea of the struggle for dominance between Britain, France, Spain and the Netherlands. As his lifelong obsession with the Southern Continent and the North-West passage showed, one of his fundamental beliefs was the possibilities and advantages provided by discovery of land, people and new commodities. As an up-and-coming

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young employee, he furthered these studies in a more systematic way by reading the files of the EIC as well as travel reports in Madras. One of the most influential of these seems to have been a Spanish history of the Philippines, from which he learned that the Sulu Archipelago had once served as a trade centre for trade with China, Japan and Southeast Asia.100 He devised new schemes to improve the trade of the EIC and partly also the export of British manufactured goods.101 Driven by his wish for discovery, he pushed through a voyage to the South Eastern Islands, in the schooner Cuddalore, to explore a possible new route for the China ships of the EIC and a trading centre. The travel reports and EIC records had already convinced him of the necessity of a British port in this area, a conviction probably encouraged by conversations with country traders in Madras. This journey was significant in several ways. On the way to the Sulu Archipelago, Dalrymple had to stop over at Canton, where he encountered problems with the Chinese authorities, since he did not want to pay the duties applicable to trading ships. This might have reinforced his relatively negative opinion of the Chinese which he had formed in Madras.102 Furthermore, while at Sulu, he closely observed the trade going on there, which did not quite meet the expectations of a busy trading port which he had formed by reading the Spanish history of the region. He did however encounter two Chinese junks which traded there, and was thus convinced that the decline of the trade was solely the fault of the Sultan.103 There, he could also acquire the information of what the supposedly self-sufficient Chinese empire was interested in buying, namely ‘Pearls, Mother of Pearl, BirdNest, Beetle-nut, Sea-Slug, Cockles, Lacka-wood, Ebony, Agal-Agal’.104 When he returned to Madras in 1762 he was sure that the solution to the British trade in Asia was an entrepôt in the Sulu Archipelago, by which one could circumvent the problems with the Chinese at Canton.105 Rather than being discouraged by observing the meagre trade at Sulu, he believed in what he had read and was convinced that it only required the British to transform this place back into the buzzing trading knot it had once been. Dalrymple’s next move, the attempt to establish this entrepôt at Balambangan, was an endeavour to give the British a foothold in this trading network. The main motive was to create an investment opportunity for the British in the Asian networks of commerce, rather than providing an outlet for the products of the nascent British industry.106 Dalrymple however was also concerned with British manufacturing interests, employing the myth of the large demand for British


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woollen goods in Northern China. He argued that if one could trade British woollen goods to the Chinese junks at such an entrepôt, the Chinese merchants could sell them directly at the northern Chinese harbours, where they would actually be needed. Dalrymple seems to have got the idea of Chinese need for woollen goods from Prake’s dedication to Thomas Cavendish, in his 1588 translation of Juan Conzalez de Mendosa’s The History of the Great and Mighty Kingdom of China.107 Due either to a lack of better information or to the idea of an unchanging China, he merged this almost two hundred year-old information with scant bits of gossip from Canton108 and with the demands of the British manufacturers for new markets to create the idea of a trading opportunity in China. Dalrymple returned to London in 1765 since he saw no opportunity to further his scheme from India. Dalrymple’s scheme was however only put into practice in 1772/1773, under the command of John Herbert. Dalrymple had lost his leadership of the enterprise through a stubborn fight with the Directors over the conditions of his employment. During this episode, he published his plan in order to increase the pressure on the Company.109 As the Dalrymple project showed, Southeast Asia had become interesting to the British as a possible door into the China market as well as an outlet for Indian products. However, it was only after 1780 that the efforts to establish a base in the region were increased, to a large extent due to strategic considerations.110 The war with the French served as a strong impulse for this from the 1790s onwards. The British acquired Penang in 1786. During the Napoleonic Wars, they occupied the Dutch colonies Malacca in 1795 and Java in 1811, fearing that they might otherwise fall into French hands. After the end of the war, these possessions were returned to the Dutch to help the Netherlands to recover economically and thus create a buffer state against possible new French aspirations on the continent. The temporary possession of these places was, however, crucial for further British involvement in the region. Thomas Stamford Raffles had been governor of Java from 1811 to 1815 and this period had convinced him of the profit that could be made in this area if the British could dictate the terms of trade. The final result of this period of increased trade by British merchants in Southeast Asia, especially by the Indian agency houses, was the establishment of the EIC factory on Singapore in 1819.111 With the Anglo-Dutch treaty in 1824, Malacca was ceded again to the British. This expansion was, in the first instance, dominated by political considerations during the Napoleonic Wars. Especially for the EIC agents and the country traders in the region, however, the economic

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advantages of possessions in the region also played an important role. Here the rhetoric of free trade was used to legitimise the British expansion against the Dutch monopoly, but sometimes also that of the EIC, in the region. Connected with this was the accusation that the Dutch had neglected to improve the native population, or even worsened their condition.112 The notion of an earlier, higher, civilisation which had now decayed was dominant in this context. The contemporary Malays and Javanese were deemed to be at a very low stage of civilisation by now, in contrast to their glorious past.113 Accordingly, the British justified their presence in the region by highlighting that they would improve the condition of the native population. This argument could be directed not only against other European rivals, but also against the Chinese. The reasoning, however, varied between the maritime entrepôts Malacca, Penang and Singapore on the one hand and the more agricultural Java on the other. The main actors in this expansion were agents of the EIC, such as Thomas Raffles and John Crawfurd. Most of them had been formed in the service of the EIC in the colonial Indian context, rather than in the more trade-oriented one of Canton. At the same time, the Protestant missionaries left Canton for Southeast Asia. In Southeast Asia, they encountered next to the local population sojourners, traders and recent settlers, such as the Arabs and the migrant Chinese. The Chinese presented to them a non-indigenous population, who just very recently had started to flow into this region in larger numbers as settlers and traders. Since there was no state power behind this process, the Chinese were no direct competition to the British presence in Southeast Asia – in the sense that the Dutch and the French were. Quite in contrast, they provided the workforce and established trade links the British needed to fully use their new acquisitions in the region. As Carl Trocki has pointed out, the British thus did not understand them as a separate movement, with a pattern and history only marginally linked to the Europeans, but rather they saw only how they related to their own expansion.114 It was difficult for the British to make sense of the cultural diversity they encountered in Southeast Asia.115 The British traders and servants of the EIC could see both the Javanese and the Malay-speaking population as natives who belonged to an ancient, but decayed, culture.116 In contrast, the Overseas Chinese were still clearly seen as members of the Chinese Empire, even though it was acknowledged that some of them had lived in the Straits for generations and intermarried with Malay women. Next to their distinction into native population,


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sojourners and later settlers, the British ranked the different peoples they encountered on a scale of civilisations.117 To describe the main characteristic of the Chinese, the British agents of the EIC used the trope of the industrious worker.118 They were described as perfect workers and colonial citizens. The industrious Chinese thus resembled the ideal of the working member of the lower classes, who was industrious and well behaved.119 The Chinese were considered to be naturally hard working and law abiding. For example, John Crawfurd described how the Chinese arrived in Southeast Asia with only ‘the coat on their backs, a bundle of old clothes, and a dirty mat and pillow to sleep on’. However, according to him, they quickly improved their situation through personal skill, dexterity and ingenuity.120 One of the main explanations by the British of the industrious habit of the Chinese followed the Malthusian argument of population pressure. ‘The abundance of population in China’ was thus one of the main explanations for their emigration.121 For Crawfurd, the reason for the industry of the Chinese also followed the patterns analysed by Malthus: the security of life and property in China, in combination with a fertile country, had produced ‘an immense population, and the pressure of population against the means of subsistence has, by necessity, begot a patient and systematic industry unknown to other Asiatic nations.’122 He does not discuss, however, that for the newly arrived immigrants from China, who often were bound to their employers through the credit-ticket system, there was hardly any option other than to work extremely hard to re-pay their debts. In most cases, they had little choice but to accept the employment they were assigned by those who had paid their passage. The kongsis, instead of giving new arrivals the option to quickly earn themselves a share in the plantation or mining enterprise, could turn into an instrument of repression by the better established Chinese.123 Adaptations to economic necessity were thus described by the British as inherent natural characteristics of the Chinese. This view made it easier for the British to make use of the system of Chinese migration and not to feel morally obliged to intervene in the exploitation of the new Chinese immigrants. The Javanese and Malays who refused to partake in these mining and plantation jobs were thus seen as lazy and indolent.124 Without support from their government, the local rulers or traditional, localised social networks, the Chinese also presented the ideal new working population for the British possessions in Southeast Asia. It seemed to be possible to transplant the Chinese wherever they were

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needed for the British imperial project.125 Some, such as the travel writer Alick Osborne, could imagine Southeast Asia might turn into a second America, attracting an industrious Chinese population, in the same way America had attracted European settlers. And as America had prospered under the European influence, the Chinese in Southeast Asia ‘mainly contributed to excite and support the energies of the native population, and have diffused the impetus of their own activity wherever they have settled, and that protection only is wanted to accumulate them in any numbers, to create, it may be said, a second China.’126 The self-reliant Chinese thus needed no more than British protection and would then sustain themselves and produce profit for the British Empire.127 With a population like this, under British rule, the British could succeed in improving this region and bring it to its full potential. Interestingly enough, the huge market and industrious agrarian population of China served as a positive example, although this ‘second China’ would flourish under the benevolent protection of the British rather than Chinese despotism. In the minds of those concerned with British trade and colonies, the Chinese occupied a middle ground between slaves and British settlers. With the abolition movement gaining increasing momentum and the slave revolts in the French colonies, slaves were considered to be more and more problematic.128 At the same time, the discussion about the EIC restrictions on immigration of Britons into India in 1813 and 1830s shows the doubts the British EIC servants had about the influx of the British lower orders into its Asian possessions. In accordance with the contemporary debate about the uncivilised lower classes in Britain, they were seen to be unruly – unable to live together with the Indian population peacefully.129 In contrast, the Chinese were considered to be industrious and law abiding, voluntarily moving to wherever one gave them protection and the possibility to work. The most extreme example of this image was the plan to introduce Chinese workers in the West Indies. One of Raffles’s correspondents saw Chinese plantation workers as a possible bulwark against revolutionary African slaves. As free cultivators they would be more industrious than slaves and due to their diligent character they could become proprietors themselves under British guidance.130 They thus could build a community with a set of interests and habits that connected them more closely to the British landowners than those of the slaves. In 1814, Captain Layman published a similar proposition in the Gentlemen’s Magazine. After a failed first attempt in 1811, he suggested that the Chinese had to


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be settled in the West Indies in groups, with Chinese wives, so that they could keep their Chinese characteristics. He also claimed that during the first project, one had selected the wrong Chinese: Lazzaroni-men from Macao, who already had been corrupted by the Portuguese city. Only the real Chinese from the countryside, much like the idealised British peasant, had the qualities that made him a good worker. His natural habit of industry was at the same time supported by his wish for gain.131 This was a characteristic repeatedly ascribed to the Chinese; it could be positive, as in this context, or negative, referring to the corrupt Chinese Mandarins. As settlers and immigrants, as well as traders, the Chinese were thus considered by some Britons to have a far greater resemblance to the active Europeans than the lazy Malays or Javanese. Additionally, Alick Osborne thought that they adapted more easily to the European culture than the Muslim Arabs or Malays.132 However, most British observers agreed quickly that the industry of the Chinese lacked the moral quality of that of the British: the Chinese only pursued gain, not improvement.133 In the context of cultural and ethnic diversity of Southeast Asia, Chinese physical characteristics became increasingly important.134 John Crawfurd, who had served the EIC in Penang, Java and later as Resident of Singapore described the Chinese he encountered in Southeast Asia thus: ‘A Chinese is at least two inches taller than a Siamese, and by three inches taller than a Cochin Chinese, a Malay, or a Javanese; and his frame is proportionably (sic!) strong and well built . . . . Their superiority in personal skill, dexterity, and ingenuity are still greater.’135 There seems to have been an agreement that while these physical characteristics, and also the mental quality, might have resulted from the special circumstances of the Chinese Empire, they were hereditary by now. There were diverging opinions on how these characteristics were affected by intermarriage with Malay women in Southeast Asia: In this context, it was debated whether interracial marriage was positive or rather destroyed the purity, and with it the positive characteristics, of a group. Minto, during his visit to Malacca, considered the Chinese influence on the Malay population as an improvement: The Chinese emigrants never bring women with them, but foregather with Malay females – mostly slaves – and leave them behind when they go home. At Malacca they have married the daughters of these Malay mothers and these, inter-marrying, have, in a number of generations, converted the Malay coarse clay into fine China, . . .136

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Crawfurd, in contrast, believed that these unions of Chinese and Malays were only destroying the positive characteristics of the Chinese: Many of the Chinese return to their own country, and the first intention of every emigrant is probably to do so, but circumstances detain a number of them in the islands, who, intermarrying with the native of the country, generate a race inferior in energy and spirit to the original settler, but speaking the language, wearing the garb, professing the religion, and affecting the manners of the parent country.137 The question of the inherent characteristics of the Chinese race had become important in Southeast Asia, but never entered the debate in Canton.138 Here, it served mainly as an argument for the assessment of the different cultures the British encountered and their usefulness for the British imperial project, rather than to classify the Chinese in the context of theories of race and the natural history of man, as it would become important in the metropolis in these years. The British EIC agents had, for the moment, formed an idea of the Chinese as ideal colonial subjects, which were useful objects as long as the native population had not developed enough. This idea would remain strong during the 19th century.139 Opium smoking was mentioned occasionally, but the idea of the lazy, undisciplined Chinese Opium wreck would only develop gradually to become in certain contexts a stronger trope than the idea of the industrious Chinese.140 Chinese agricultural and mining workers and small traders were not the only members of the Chinese migrant community. Rich Nan yang Chinese, Captain Chinas and Chinese landlords, however, did not fit very well into the British idea of a perfect colonial subject. This became a major issue for the first time during the British occupation of Java. This thus became an important ‘contact zone’ between the British and the Chinese which shows the ambiguity of the early colonial encounter between the two groups and the way this shaped the British meaning of the Chinese, putting them into a more negative light.

4.3 Co-operator and corruptor During the British occupation of Java, the role of the Chinese in the Dutch colony played a crucial part in debates about British government of the island. This was one of the first places where the EIC had to come to terms with a significant and well-established Chinese


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population in their endeavours to establish a strong colonial government. Java was also the first opportunity for Raffles, in the position of Lieutenant-Governor to recommend himself for further promotion in the EIC service. Additionally, Lord Minto, who had led the attack on Java, and Raffles tried to defend this action before the Court of Directors and the Board of Control by highlighting the economic potential of Java.141 In his attempt to show that Java was a worthwhile colony, Raffles decided to introduce major reforms, during which he had to tackle the strong position of the Chinese on the island, both as landholders and tax farmers. To understand the way the British EIC agents shaped their idea of the Chinese in this context, we first have to understand the Chinese–Dutch relations before Java fell into British hands, since in the case of Java the transfer of ideas between the two European empires, the Dutch and the British, became important in assessing the Chinese. The Dutch EIC had founded Batavia in 1619 and gradually became an imperial power there, especially with control of the north coast of Java. At the end of the 17th century, increasing numbers of Chinese immigrants came to Java.142 The Dutch, on the one hand, made use of the Chinese for their trade and exercise of power on Java. On the other, they grew increasingly suspicious of this separate force, especially after the uprising that led to the massacre of Chinese in Batavia in 1740.143 Therefore the Dutch government, for example, prohibited the regents to lease their villages to the Chinese or to let them settle in their Regencies.144 This did not mean, however, that in practice, the Dutch themselves did not farm out large areas to the Chinese.145 The negative attitude towards the Chinese was reinforced during the reform attempts of the VOC (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie) at the turn of the century. Here, British ideas about land revenue became influential. They were especially made known through Dirk van Hogendorp, who had met Cornwallis in Bengal and had been impressed by his zemindari revenue system. Hogendorp mainly advocated that the Javanese cultivators should hold the property of the land they were working, thus encouraging their productivity. Together with Raffles and H. W. Muntinghe, he connected British and Dutch ideas on imperial expansion and colonial administration.146 Marshall Daendels, Governor-General of Batavia under the French rule, also toyed with ideas of land reform, but finally decided that the Javanese were not ready for it.147 The transfer of some ideas on land possession and revenue from British Bengal into the arsenal of ideas of the Dutch reformers meant that the Chinese proprietors and tax collectors were now considered to be even more problematic. They were no longer needed as

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intermediaries if the government wanted to collect the revenue directly from those who cultivated the land. Moreover, they owned land which the Dutch especially preferred to see in European hands. Some Dutch, like Hogendorp, thus demanded that Chinese immigration should be controlled, that they should pay higher taxes and only be allowed to acquire uncultivated land.148 These attitudes to the Chinese on Java also became crucial for the British position towards its new Chinese subjects after their conquest in 1811. Raffles collected all sorts of information during his time in Penang and Malacca on Dutch Java,149 picking up the Dutch ideas on the Chinese there. The report ‘Considerations on how to deal with the Dutch Possessions in the East Indies if they should be captured’,150 already warns of the Chinese in Java and includes all the negative characteristics the Dutch attributed to the Chinese. Not only due to their diligence and industry, but also because of their deceitful character and use of corruption, the report claims, the Chinese had become extremely rich and politically influential. Their strong position on the island, however, brought it no good. The Chinese transferred most of their gains back to China, thus draining the country of its riches. They also suppressed the native population, who being of a ‘slower though less crafty genius’ could not compete with them. In their treatment of these dependent natives, the Chinese were allegedly even worse than the Dutch: ‘Bad as the Dutch have been, they rise high in the Scale in comparison with the Chinese, who in their gross and unfeeling treatment of the unfortunate Native are guilty of overbearing and gripings that Europeans cannot acknowledge or even to the full extent be acquainted with.’151 The Chinese were thus not only a threat to the economic profit of the colonial government due to their greediness and export of money, but also because of their deceptive charm. Their victims would notice too late how they became dependent on the Chinese. From industrious workers, the Chinese had turned into the dangerous ‘Other’, amoral and seductive. After the surrender of Java to the British, Lord Minto appointed Raffles Lieutenant-Governor of Java. The Council, with whose support he should govern, consisted of Colonel Gillespie, commander of the British forces, and the two Dutchmen H. W. Muntinghe and Jacob William Cranssen.152 Following Minto’s advice to introduce a land revenue system in Java based on the principles of free trade and cultivation to finance the government, Raffles appointed a commission in 1812 to look into these matters. Raffles hoped that through these reforms he could make Java a profitable colony and persuade the Court of Directors


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and the Board of Control not to hand it back to the Dutch.153 Colin Mackenzie, who had already served as survey-general in Madras, was appointed head of the Commission, while the other members were Dutch and had belonged to the Dutch colonial government: Frederik Jacob Rothenbuhler, Jan Knops and Pieter Herbertus Lawick van Pabst. The main aim of the Mackenzie Commission was to establish whether there was a system of land property and who held the rights to land and revenue.154 From this, a new system of land rent could then establish direct access to the land by the EIC revenue and control over the land, bypassing the Javanese regents. Influenced by British ideas on property rights, Raffles hoped that in the new system, which allowed a secure system of land rent and taxes, the peasants would increase their productivity because they could now be certain that they could keep a large proportion of the results of their labour. Breaking the feudal power of the Javanese Regents would also allow the British to collect the revenue in cash.155 The reform should also ensure that the specie available on Java would circulate freely and could be ‘withdrawn from the hands of Chinese farmers and monopolists’.156 The result was thus a peculiar mixture of Dutch and British ideas on state administration and the imperial project. The British mainly tried to introduce the systems they had developed in India. Mackenzie seems to have favoured the ryotwar system whereas Raffles preferred in the beginning the village system, in which the bekels, or village chiefs, would hold the land lease.157 As we have seen, similar ideas had already circulated amongst the Dutch on Java, through the tracts by van Hogendorp. Additionally, Raffles, Crawfurd and Mackenzie were convinced that the Javanese had originally been a Hindu culture, now corrupted by Islam.158 The principles of the organisation of society, which the British believed they had discovered in India, constantly served as a foil to their study of Javanese land rights. This made it possible for the British to quickly conceptualise Javanese society as well as to transfer the systems they had developed in India.159 The point of reference was the ancient Javanese society, which the new Chinese immigrants did not belong to. The latter could thus only be seen as intruders, who did not possess the moral qualities of the British to support the Javanese in their improvement process. Along with these influences, the Dutch mistrust of a strong Chinese power in the Javanese countryside was again reflected in the reports of the Dutch members of the Mackenzie commission and so found its way into British governmental decisions. While Mackenzie hardly mentioned the Chinese in his final report, van Pabst, Knops and Rothenbuhler were clear in their negative verdict on them. They all

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agreed that the regents should receive a part of the land they had ruled over before as private property and that the rest should be sold; preferably to Europeans, but also to the Javanese and non-European foreigners. The only exception to this should be the Chinese. The Dutch were clearly worried about the large numbers of Chinese arriving each year and about the accumulation of land by certain Chinese families. They created the image of a never-ending stream of Chinese immigrants, who were mostly ‘the out Cast (sic!) of the Nation, robbers, gamblers &’. Also, their industrious habit and their ability to live frugally were considered dangerous.160 Rothenbuhler took great care to dismiss the idea of the very industrious Chinese as a myth, claiming that the districts in their possession were only flourishing because the natives there were already freed from the feudal services, not because of good management by the Chinese.161 Nevertheless, Raffles recognised the sale of the lands of Besuki and Panarukan to the Captain China of Surabaya, Han Tjan Pit by Daendels in 1810. Here, the idea of private property, and especially the economic problem of how to compensate the proprietor in the case of an annulment of the contract, overruled the wish to remove the Chinese landholder.162 As becomes clear from these accounts, there was a thin line between the idea of the Chinese as a model workforce and as dangerous competitors. They could only be considered in a positive light for so long as they helped the British to improve a country and increase their profit. If they seemed to assume too much power themselves, they were described to be even less capable than other European powers to do the best for the host country and therefore could claim no legitimacy to rule the natives there. The British thus readily accepted the negative Dutch stereotypes of the Chinese on Java, especially of the moral inadequacy and oppressive nature of the Chinese. This diminished the Chinese claim to land and trade, which their industry and skill in agriculture could give them. For, the British argued, unlike themselves the Chinese were using these positive attributes only for self-gain and not for moral and scientific improvement. John Crawfurd, for example, who never completely joined Raffles and the Dutch in his condemnation of the Chinese on Java, thought of the Chinese as good traders, industrious workers and good middlemen between the natives and the Europeans. Nevertheless, to him they were still on a far lower level of civilisation than the European nations, even if they were number one amongst the ‘Asian nations’. Their commercial activity, their manual skill and their ability to build ships might have been


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superior to all other nations of Asia, but were still not comparable to the Europeans.163 Above all, however, they lacked a moral agenda in their industry, such as the progress of science or the improvement of the people: ‘They are the least conscientious people alive; the constant prospect of gain or advantage must be presented to them to induce them to fulfil their engagements, which they will always evade when their judgment is not satisfied that an adherence to them will be certainly profitable.’164 Crawfurd thought that the Chinese should not have too direct a power over the natives. He believed that the Chinese were necessary since ‘the Indian islanders [are U.H.] quite unequal to the details of a business of any degree of complexness’, but due to their moral depravity they should not collect taxes directly, but be allowed to hold revenue farms, provided these were sold publicly and competitively.165 At the end of 1813, Raffles adopted the ryotwar system, after favouring the village system until this point.166 In this model, there was even less room for the Chinese as landlords or tax farmers, since it was based on the idea of the village as the basic module of Javanese society, where the peasants had had the right to vote for their bekels, or village headmen, from time immemorial.167 However, many of the reforms Raffles decided upon were only partly introduced. Nevertheless, they set the tone for further developments under his Dutch successors.168 In their attempt to establish colonial rule over the island, the British were more successful than the Dutch. For central Java this meant mainly that they took over the administration of the toll-gates and markets. These were, after all, farmed out to the Chinese.169 Also, the demand by the British government of moneyed land rent instead of one paid in goods meant that the Javanese became increasingly dependant on the Chinese moneylenders170 who had been described as so morally corrupt by the Dutch and British commentators. British expansion in Southeast Asia did not stop with the return of Java to the Dutch. In Penang, Malacca and especially Singapore the British continued to rule over a Chinese population. This brought with it a renewed effort to define the role of the Chinese in Southeast Asia and ways to govern them.

4.4 British rule, Chinese societies As in Java, the main attention of the EIC servants in Malacca, Penang and later in particular in Singapore was on the ‘native’ population. Raffles claimed that he had chosen Singapore for the new settlement due to its supposed important role as the old capital of the ‘Malayan

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empire’.171 In spite of this however, Singapore became mainly a ‘Chinese’ city. In Java, as we have seen, the idea of the industrious Chinese was turned into a negative one, partly due to Dutch influence, partly because of the land reform which made them a disruptive element. After the return of Java to the Dutch, Penang and Singapore became the main centres of British interest in Southeast Asia, where they again had to deal with an ever-increasing Overseas Chinese population.172 Malacca remained important even after the return of the island to the Dutch due to the networks of the British Protestant missionaries. These places were mainly seen as trading ports, thus issues of land property did not initially play a significant role here. Also, the Chinese communities with which the British had to deal were mainly city dwellers, even though of course Malacca, Singapore and Penang also had a population of Chinese agricultural and mining labourers.173 In their contact with these Chinese and in the process of governing them on these islands, the dual question of the need for ‘industrious’ Chinese and the danger of a too powerful Chinese population remained. At the same time, the study of Chinese language and culture was considered to be important in this context. But without the strong influence of Dutch reformers and the land property question, it took other forms. First of all, the idea of the Chinese as industrious mine workers, who could be brought in according to need, was very strong. Accordingly, the British soon participated in the trade of Chinese workers, not just to Trinidad, but also within Southeast Asia.174 Equally important however was the categorising of the Chinese as traders with access to the network of the junk trade and especially to Chinese harbours like Amoy which were closed to the Europeans. Discussing the opportunities of Penang and other islands under the rule of the Siamese, Raffles mainly emphasised the trade with China from these ports.175 Here, he is clearly positive about the presence of the Chinese: ‘the contiguity of its principal Port to China has led to the establishment of a numerous Chinese population, which has given to its commerce the same stimulus which that enterprising people produce wherever they are allowed to colonize.’176 In his History of Java, Raffles demonstrated his different attitudes to the Chinese as traders and as landholders on Java: The objection which have been made to the political influence of the Chinese and Arabs in the Easter Islands, do not equally apply to them as traders. In this last capacity, and subject to regulations which prevent them from uniting the power of a chief with the temper of


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a merchant, and despotism with avarice, their value cannot be too highly rated.177 Crawfurd’s praise of the Chinese as traders was equally high. In contrast to Raffles, he did not believe in a sufficient ability of the Malays and Javanese to improve. Rather, he saw the Chinese as the only people who had already advanced far enough through the stages of civilisation to be able to conduct extensive trade. Following the arguments of the free trade adherents, whom he would support strongly during the debate over the China monopoly of the EIC, he even made the Chinese traders a positive example for Europeans. The native governments were granting them the right to trade, he argued, because they followed only commercial goals and had no political ambitions or monopolistic trading companies like the Europeans.178 Raffles, however remained extremely suspicious of the Chinese. While they were welcome as traders, he noticed that they always tried to get the farming of port duties into their own hands and quickly developed a monopoly on trade. Raffles explained this phenomenon using the idea of the Chinese as the complete ‘Other’, the incomprehensible. The reason for the success of the Chinese and their monopolistic tendency was, according to him, that the Chinese formed a separate society wherever they went, due to their ‘peculiar language and manners’. The only way to check the ambitious Chinese was, he thought, to encourage the native population to develop and become industrious and useful.179 The British thus sought diligent workers, opium-consumers and traders for their new colonial acquisitions, yet remained suspicious of these helpers whom they wanted to attract, but could not really understand or assimilate. Closer contact with the Chinese in Southeast Asia also meant that an image of a more pluralised Chinese culture developed. The Chinese immigrants in Southeast Asia were mainly organised in kongsis. Often, however, the kinship which found its expression in surname groups and language affiliations was equally important for the organisation of Chinese communities and distinct kongsis.180 Such cultural differences bewildered the British, who had always imagined China as a unity. One of the main characteristics, which had startled enlightenment thinkers such as Hume, had been the unity of the Chinese character and culture within such a large country.181 The politically interested, such as Macartney, had accepted the Manchu presence in China but hardly the diversity of the languages and cultures within China itself.182 Raffles felt that on Singapore he had to react to this difference with town planning measures. When he returned to Singapore in October

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1822 from Bencoolen, he ordered a series of changes through which he wanted to clearly express his authority over the place. His return to Singapore was especially marked by his split with William Faquhar, who had been Resident there since 1819. Raffles changed several of the administrative measures introduced by the latter, such as taxes on gambling and his allocation of land to new settlers.183 With regard to the Chinese, Raffles directed that they were to settle in an area in west of the river, adjoining the commercial quarters. By this time, he had resigned himself to the fact that the Chinese were to constitute the major part of the population of Singapore. For the newly created Chinese campong, Raffles directed that in its organisation, it should differentiate between the cultural and provincial distinctions of the Chinese immigrants as well as the sojourners and the permanent settlers.184 This was to prevent fights between the different groups. This categorisation also developed further the idea that Chinese from some provinces were more troublesome than others, and that certain provinces produced better workers.185 This also meant that the British formed a categorisation of the Chinese beyond Chinese–Manchu distinctions. These categories were used to identify good workers for their empire and to attempt to create peaceful subjects. In the beginning, the British EIC employees gave the Chinese direct governance. Each Chinese group had to appoint a ‘Captain China’ who was to be responsible for the group, collected their taxes and in large parts administered the law.186 While Raffles generally introduced British law in the colony, he wanted it to be modified according to the usages and habits of the people.187 He also still considered the law of the Qing Empire to have some relevance to the Chinese. In his stand against the legalisation of gambling, Raffles quoted Staunton’s translation of the Chinese Penal Code to point out that gambling was prohibited even in China and thus should not be allowed to the Chinese in Singapore either.188 This was to change over the years. The first full English translation of the Four Books of Confucius by David Collie at the AngloChinese College at Malacca was greeted in 1828 by the Canton Register as a step forward for the good government of Chinese subjects of the British in the Straits of Malacca. By this time, Singapore had been merged with Penang and Malacca into the Presidency of the Straits Settlement and had been granted the Royal Charter of Justice, abandoning the concept of indirect rule over the Chinese community through the ‘Captain China’ system as well.189 The Canton Register argued that it was only a knowledge of Chinese and the Chinese classics by the government officials that could prevent the oppression of the Chinese by


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the ‘Captain Chinas’. Thus it was argued that the Chinese language should become more of a requirement for judges in the Straits.190 Thus the thinking which had been characteristic for the ‘Orientalist’ attitude of the British in India, held by such as William Jones, had arrived in the Straits and was promoting British studies of Chinese. However, for the time being, it had little influence on either judicial practice or the knowledge of Chinese by officials in the Straits Settlements.191 The study of the Chinese language largely remained in the hands of Protestant missionaries. It was also their fight against all ‘idolatrous’ societies which first brought the idea of secret societies to the attention of the British. The fact that the British now wanted to rule over the Chinese, in combination with missionary zeal, strengthened the development of the idea of the ‘secret societies’ or Triads as a typical expression of Chinese cunning. It was in the context of Southeast Asia that the British first understood the kongsi and the Heaven-and-Earth societies as a central part of Chinese culture, which under the denomination of ‘Triad societies’ were to become a crucial element in the image of the deceptive, secretive and cruel Chinese over the coming decades. According to Carl Trocki, kongsis could be formed on the basis of surname groups or the home province, but could also simply follow the economic and social needs of a group of Chinese from different backgrounds. While some of them were ‘secret’ and followed triad rituals, they were not identical to the ‘secret’ societies in China. This had, however, been the image which European observers since the early 19th century created. They explained the unrests amongst the Chinese in Singapore as an overflow of ancient animosities between Triad societies in China, thus ignoring the economic reasons behind these fights.192 The first to make the idea of Chinese secret societies prominent in the English-speaking public was the Protestant missionary William Milne, who had come to Malacca in 1815 to establish the China mission there, outside of the restrictions of Canton.193 He seems to have somehow learned about the ‘secret societies’ of the Chinese on Malacca. In the posthumously published article in the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic society, he mentions some Chinese, with whom he seems to have discussed this topic, but it is not clear in which context and from which sources he received his information. Milne established that the Secret societies originated from China, where they had been formed in their struggles against the Manchu. He particularly described the ‘Coelestoterrestrial Society’, which, he wrote, had been formed to overthrow the Emperor Jiaqing.194 This rebellion had been closely followed by those British who had an interest in China. Milne saw several similarities

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between this secret society and the freemasons in terms of secrecy and organisation. Where, however, the British Freemasons consisted of a ‘respectable body of men’, the Chinese aimed at overthrowing society and had degenerated into an alliance of banditti. Milne thus arrived at a very negative description of the purpose of the secret societies in Southeast Asia: ‘In foreign colonies, the objects of this association are plunder, and mutual defence. The idle, gambling, opium-smoking Chinese (particularly of the lower classes), frequently belong to this fraternity.’195 Most of the other Britons who were in contact with the Overseas Chinese had noticed their organisation in kongsis. Up to this point, the secret societies played no important role for the British perception of the Chinese. With Milne’s article, the notion of the secretive, deceptive Chinese was reinforced by the idea of these dangerous secret societies, which brought the conflicts of China to the European colonies in Southeast Asia. In the early years of the Straits Settlement, there seems to have been a certain amount of confusion over the distinction between ideas of the ‘kongsi’ and the secret societies. The problem for the colonial government of a secret association of the Chinese was, however, quickly picked up in the 1820s by Strait government officials. John Patullo, a Straits Settlement magistrate pointed out the threat of these societies to the stability of the British government, but also described them as a typical characteristic of the cunning Chinese: ‘Indeed the very formation of such societies indicate secret combinations, and amongst such an intriguing race as the Chinese, opposition to law and good Government and the protection of their brethren under any circumstances.’196 The Chinese, from being seen as model workers slowly turned into a colonial population that inspired ‘information panics’ amongst their colonial masters. The Chinese, in the context of Malacca, Penang and Singapore thus had the image of a good and industrious working population and commercially aware traders. As soon as they assumed some sort of power position in trade or administration, the British still saw this as a profitable working arrangement, but also feared the structures they did not comprehend. This was increased by their feeling of exclusion because the majority of them did not understand the Chinese languages and the social organisations of the Chinese. This would become increasingly important in the context of the Triad riots during the 19th century. We cannot, however, understand the full significance of Southeast Asia for the British meanings of China if we focus only on encounters


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between the EIC agents and the Chinese in these places. The Protestant missionaries were especially significant in this context. The evangelical mindset and interests, together with the specific network the missionaries belonged to, added a different element to the British meaning of China and the Chinese in Southeast Asia. Evangelical sympathies and the circumstances of British communities in the periphery meant that the ideas developed by the missionaries also became relevant for the other British groups. Raffles, for example, was strongly influenced by evangelical ideas and the Clapham sect, thus partly providing the support of the EIC for the missionary efforts and as we have seen in the context of the triad question, missionary opinion could be very influential as apparently objective scholarship.

4.5 Educating the Chinese diaspora In 1812, William Milne sailed from Britain to Asia. A fellow Scotsman, but in contrast to Leyden, he had not had the opportunity to study at Edinburgh University and to mingle with intellectual celebrities such as Walter Scott. Milne, born in 1785 in Aberdeenshire, had worked as a shepherd and farmhand before receiving the call to become a missionary. The LMS sent him to the Gosport academy in Hampshire, where he got his only formal further education. After this, he was sent straight to China to support Robert Morrison, who had repeatedly asked for another missionary to help him. In the beginning, he seems to have planned to stay at Macao and Canton with Robert Morrison to learn Chinese, but the Portuguese authorities did not allow him to remain in Macao, probably spurred on by the Catholic clergy. Morrison and Milne then resolved to put into practice an idea Morrison had long cherished – to start the conversion of China with the Chinese settlers in the Malayan Strait. The missionaries thus chose the Strait as a missionary venue for the first time directly because of the Chinese living there. Soon afterwards, they would extend their missionary efforts to the Malays as well, but the Chinese would always form an important part of their work in this region, aiming at mainland China.197 Milne’s first trip to Southeast Asia led him to Batavia. Without the restrictions of the Chinese authorities and the suspicions of the EIC, he was more free in his intercourse with the Chinese population and thus could report a successful interaction back to Morrison and the LMS.198 Consequently, the image he had of these Chinese, free from the oppressive Chinese government, was much more positive, describing

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them as ‘diligent, sagacious people, well skilled in mechanical labours, and exquisitely so in commercial transactions. Their superiority to the Javanese and Malays in these respects is probably the cause of the competency which they enjoy.’199 He thus supported the idea that the Chinese were diligent and industrious and perfect workers as soon as they were freed from the bad influences of their despotic government. In these regions, which were under European governments, the missionary could move and interact more freely with the targets of his mission, and live according to his self-image as preacher to the heathens, and their improver. In this ‘contact zone’, the response of the ‘natives’ and their refusal to be converted, of course remained a source of constant frustration,200 but the missionary could now imagine himself to be doing everything he could to spread the message of the gospel. One of the methods for this was to set up charity schools, mainly for poor children. This missionary focus added to the construction of the Chinese as a subject population, shifting the emphasis from them as willing workers to their necessary improvement. However, the circumstances of the ‘contact zone’ obliged the missionaries to adopt their concepts of education and improvement to the reaction of the Chinese, introducing Chinese ideas about education into their system. In March 1815, Milne, together with his wife and children, set out to Malacca, which was then handed over from the English to the Dutch. One of the first things Milne did when he settled in Malacca was to set up a school for Chinese children. The idea of the plurality of Chinese dialects was to become significant for the set-up of the schools. The first was for boys, who were taught reading, writing and arithmetic in the Hokkien dialect, which most Chinese at Malacca spoke. In the following year, 1816, he opened a second school for Cantonese-speaking boys.201 The system he used for teaching was that of the Lancasterian plan.202 This was not simply an introduction of the ‘latest Western teaching methods’ to the Chinese in the Malayan Strait.203 The Lancasterian system, designed by Joseph Lancaster, had been approved by the King and introduced a new method of education based less on physical punishment, and more on spurring the children on by competition. To understand its implications for the Malayan Strait Chinese, one has to consider the context in which it was invented.204 It was in particular designed for the education of the poor in Britain. It was cost effective, being based on the ‘monitoring system’ in which older children taught younger ones. Due to the denomination of Lancaster, who was a Quaker, the supporters of his system came mainly from the dissenting and evangelical circles, organised in the British and Foreign School


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Society. The wide support it received resulted from the growing concerns of late 18th century Britain regarding the question of educating the poor. The increasing number of lower classes in English cities, combined with the unrests during the time of the radical reform movement, left parts of the middle and upper classes wondering whether education might not be the best medium to stabilise the social order. The curricula were therefore mainly restricted to writing, reading, basic arithmetic and Bible studies. Some still feared, as had been a common opinion during the 18th century, that too much education for the poor would endanger the social order. But the new Sunday Schools and the schools after the Lancasterian system were mainly seen to be forming the children of the poor into obedient, clean workers, who knew their place in society.205 Apart from being seen as a good system to help and control the English poor, the Lancasterian system was soon considered to be a model for the schooling of British population abroad, for example in India, as well as for the education of those who had recently come under British control. The British and Foreign School society was founded in 1814 to promote the new system, as its name indicated, not only in Britain but also abroad. Evangelical pressure resulted in a clause in the East India Company Charter Act of 1813 which not only allowed missionary activities in India but also acknowledged the ‘duty of this country’ for the spread of ‘useful knowledge’ amongst the natives of India.206 Non-European subjects should not only learn to read and write but also to appreciate Western sciences and religion.207 Thus, when Milne introduced this system to educate the Chinese population of Malacca, it had several implications. Even though Malacca was first occupied by the British and then the Dutch, in the beginning the introduction of the missionary schools had little connection with colonial rule. Morrison and Milne saw education as an integral part of preparations for the conversion of China, which would in their eyes lead automatically to an acceptance of British superiority in science and the arts by the Chinese. Conversion remained Morrison’s main aim, even when he later supported Raffles’s plans for a secular school at Singapore.208 It was only later that the missionary schools in the Malaysian Strait, especially for the Malays, were seen as a duty of the British government for the moral improvement of its subjects.209 However, the introduction of a new education system also meant that the missionaries saw the Chinese school system, formerly highly praised by the Jesuits and the literati of the Enlightenment, as insufficient.210 In the first instance, the schools were justified on the ground that there

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were not enough schools for Chinese children at Malacca, and that those existing, due to their distance from the Chinese mother country, were of an inferior quality. The whole system of instruction was criticised, especially the fact that the children had to learn Chinese classics by heart, such as the Four Books of Confucius, without having them explained. Similarly, instruction in writing characters was seen as deficient, because the teacher did not explain the different components of the characters.211 The general and widespread education in China itself could, at this time, still serve as a model for general education in England, despite its moral deficiencies which were due to its lack of Christian revelation.212 The missionaries in Malacca and Penang, however, did not try to bring the Chinese schools there back to the standard of mainland China. Rather they de facto declared the British, Christian system to be better suited for education, thus undermining the reputation of the Chinese system. Due to this transfer from the home mission to the colonial context of the Malayan Strait, the missionaries focused on the Chinese lower classes, which they wanted to shape into something like a model English poor: modest subordinates with Christian morality. While the missionaries thus also supported the idea of the Chinese as a subordinate group, they focused less on their industry and characterisation as good workers. In this context, the moral formation of the Chinese was the important element. The adoption of the Lancasterian system meant that its focus on teaching through the Bible and with Christian texts was also transplanted, aimed at dismissing the use of Chinese classical texts in schools. The main focus was not simply a philanthropic one, trying to teach the children how to read and write so that they could improve their prospects in life. Rather, it was important to the missionaries to exercise control and ensure that the Lancasterian system was used, which in their view would root out the vices of the Chinese heathen traditions. This becomes evident from a number of statements of later missionaries in the region. Rev. Sam Dyer, missionary in Penang, delighted in 1828 in the two schools after ‘the British system’ which he had managed to introduce at his missionary station: The children read nothing but Christian books, and not a single objection has been made to this. Not a word is said about their own classical works; indeed, the system effectually remedies the evil which subsisted in my former schools. The teachers allowed the children to read their own books in my absence. The schools can, also, be much


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more vigorously superintended on the British system, and they are tenfold more under my control.213 However, especially in the early years of the missionary schools, it seems to have been a great problem to teach without the Chinese classical texts. ‘Lucius’ (probably Milne) reported in the Indo-Chinese Gleaner, that in the Chinese missionary schools at Malacca they had used the Chinese standard books as teaching material, because otherwise the parents would not have allowed their children to visit the school.214 And even though he did not approve of this measure, because he thought the Chinese classics too complicated for school children, he admitted that a Chinese should have some knowledge of these works.215 Thus, even though the aim might have been a well-educated, clean and Christian Chinese, who, like his English counterpart, would stay at the place in society that the British thought proper for him, the missionaries had to negotiate their ideal with the Chinese. They thus produced Chinese students well acquainted with the Chinese classics, who would usually refuse to be converted.216 Setting up these schools, which were supposed to control and shape the new generation of better Chinese, was only possible for the missionaries in a colonial context of the Malayan Strait, which did not have to be strictly British, but could be Dutch. The missionaries’ attempt to spread their Western religious world view needed European military and strategic power behind it and even then their ideas quite often became hybridised and changed against their will.217 In mainland China, where no sympathetic Christian European government protected them, these schools could not exist. The only attempt to set up a school there in this period, by a converted Chinese, was soon ended by the Chinese authorities.218 The Chinese Empire was also the main target of Morrison’s and Milne’s biggest project, the Anglo-Chinese College at Malacca. Morrison argued in favour of choosing Malacca as the position of the College, because there was a large Chinese community, which also had good trade contacts with China, thus making an infiltration of China possible.219 One of the ideas for this College was to further educate the Chinese who had been taught in the missionary schools so that they could become ‘native’ missionaries for the Mission in China.220 However, it was also supposed to educate Europeans in Chinese language, history and literature, so that they could serve as missionaries. And for this task, as Morrison described it, they had to transform themselves almost into

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those whom they had to convert: ‘the teacher of Christianity must make himself conversant with their opinions, their habits, their superstitions, their literature, and their history. If he knows not what they know, however versed in the learning of Judea, Greece, and Rome, he will, to them, appear ignorant, and unqualified to be their instructor.’221 He thus partly transformed the idea of the Dissenting Academies, especially at Gosport, where future missionaries were trained for their mission,222 into an institution adapted to the circumstances of the China mission. Another model for him was the College of Fort William in Calcutta.223 Furthermore, there seems to have been some interchange with a similar institution founded by the Baptist missionaries at Serampore.224 In its dual purpose, the college was a typical product of the ‘contact zone’, trying to transform the Chinese into European Christians and the European missionaries into people who could be accepted by the Chinese. As these models show, the College always sat uneasily between worldly and religious claims to it. While Morrison and Milne assured their superiors in London of the religious character of the College, they emphasised its worldly importance to financial supporters from the EIC.225 Thus it was a prime example of the entangled relationship of missionaries and EIC, philology and religion, Indian precedents and European influence, expansionist interests and fascination with a foreign culture. Despite the reciprocity in education Morrison advocated, as well as the assimilation of the European missionaries, he still tried to ensure the dominance of the European character of the institution. It was mainly Europeans who were supposed to cultivate the Chinese culture, while Chinese teachers were only there to help them.226 In addition, European students were supposed to learn the Chinese language, and then were free to apply it to every field they wanted, be it religion, literature or commerce. For the Chinese students however, there seems to have been a much stricter curriculum, consisting of the English language, ‘geography, history, arithmetic, and such other branches of learning or science, as time may afford, together with moral philosophy, and Christian theology, and Malay’.227 This referred of course to European history, science and geography. This showed that the aim of the program, in addition to preparing the scholars for Christianity, was to make them accept the European view of the world, or more particularly the Protestant British one. They should recognise that Chinese achievements in history and science were inferior to British, and that China was everything but the ‘middle kingdom’. This becomes evident if one looks at the books Morrison wrote in Chinese, partly for the College, partly for general use


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for the mission, such as a book on general geography228 and one called ‘A voyage round the world’, in which a Chinese man travels to Europe and discovers that China is neither the only nor the greatest civilisation on earth.229 Even though the Chinese were supposed to be taught English, Morrison still favoured the ‘orientalist’ approach of the English in India, making special reference to the topic of dissertation at the College of Fort William: ‘It is easier to diffuse the literature and science of the western nations among the natives of India, by translating European books into their own tongue, than by instructing them in the European languages.’230 Thus, the main emphasis was on learning the language and culture of China in order to enable future missionaries and teachers to ‘point out his [men’s] errors, and to convey more correct information to his mind’. The co-education of Europeans and ‘natives’ was supposed to increase the benefits of such an education. China, however, was also still a great unknown country, waiting to be explored by the Europeans. At the introductory speech for the College, it was described as: ‘the amplest field on the face of the globe, for the researches of the Naturalist, the Historian, the Antiquarian, and the Philosopher’.231 In a similar way, the set-up of the College showed that Morrison still saw the Chinese Empire as a civilised country, and therefore the approach to its conversion, whether to Christianity, or an open trade policy, had to be based on rational argument and the enlightenment of China. It was not enough to identify the decaying state of China’s art and culture: for Morrison it was clear that the inhabitants of the empire had to be convinced of the awful state of their art and culture and helped out of it. Thus, they had to be educated, either at the Anglo-Chinese College at Malacca or through tracts distributed amongst travelling Chinese. In contrast, this task made it necessary for the British to learn more about the Chinese culture itself. This would enable them to point out its flaws to the Chinese as well as to ‘translate’ this culture to their countrymen at home, always pointing out the defects which the British had the moral duty to diminish. Thus, the missionary schools in the Malaysian Strait and the AngloChinese College at Malacca brought to the forefront an idea of a Chinese population that had to be improved in a similar way to the English lower classes or at least had to be educated in order to be saved from its degenerated state.232 However, this was not simply for their own good, but was also to lead the Chinese Empire to acknowledge western superiority and to relinquish their superstitious views. It was intended to persuade them to accept the meaning the British missionaries assigned to them.

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The Anglo-Chinese College remained the central focus point for the Protestant China Mission and British Sinology until 1842. Walter Medhurst was trained at the College, who later founded the London Missionary Society Press in Shanghai and worked amongst the Chinese and Malay in Java. In his double role for the Malay and the Chinese mission, he is a typical product of this contact zone in Southeast Asia. Primarily interested in the China mission when he arrived, he also studied Malay and tried to spread the gospel amongst them.233 Next to his work on Malay language, he wrote books on the Chinese and worked on the second translation of the Bible into Chinese with Charles Gützlaff. His interest and understanding of the Chinese language resulted from the Southeast Asian contact zone. In Batavia, he produced a dictionary for the Hokkien dialect.234 His justification was that amongst the Chinese he had met in Southeast Asia, almost none spoke Mandarin, but rather their local dialect, in many cases Hokkien.235 He based his work on a local dictionary of the Hokkien dialect which he had acquired in Southeast Asia. He relied on native teachers rather than the works of Robert Morrison to assure its correctness.236 Printed with the money of the EIC and supported by Olyphant & Co, a firm involved in the country trade between India and China, this dictionary was mainly intended for the use of future traders and missionaries. The dictionaries and translations produced by Morrison, Milne and Medhurst served the pioneers of institutional Sinology in Britain as learning material. Most of them were taught at the Anglo-Chinese College, focusing on these local dialects, including Samuel Kidd and James Legge.237 In India, China could be an inscrutable power, potentially threatening the expansions of the British power, a force much like the Sikhs, the Afghans or even the Russians. Here the idea of the Chinese emperor as a Buddhist monarch became important. At the other end, in Southeast Asia, the immigrant population of this empire turned into the perfect tools for the British Empire. In Southeast Asia, the assumptions about the inherent character of the Chinese were crucial, whether they were attributed to the still half-civilised conditions in the Chinese home country or to racial characteristics. The Chinese language was studied to understand the laws of this new colonial population, to break the power of the Captain Chinas’, and, as in the case of the Protestant missionaries, to morally reform and educate the Chinese population. Here, the idea of a diverse Chinese culture figured prominently and influenced the study of its language and culture. The rank of the Chinese on the scale of civilisation


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became equally more important in order to determine the relation of the Chinese to those whom the British saw as native population of Southeast Asia. While the Chinese were still considered the highest ranking Asian people on this scale, they nevertheless clearly had not achieved the heights of the European nations. In Southeast Asia, thus, the Chinese were created as the perfect subject people, as long as they were ruled by the benevolent and good British government. The EIC servants and missionaries spent a considerable portion of their life in Asia and communicated along the networks that connected the different points of British presence there. Their main fix point was however still Britain itself, to which they eventually wanted to return. If they managed to survive the tropical climates long enough to come back to Britain, they brought with them a meaning of the world shaped in contexts different from those who had remained in Britain. Next to tea and porcelain they thus brought a different meaning of China and newly created knowledge about it back home.

5 Asian Networks and the British Isles

Thomas Stamford Raffles returned to Britain in 1824. A shipwreck on the way home destroyed all his papers, yet this did not hinder his further contribution to the production of knowledge on Asia in the metropolis. He became a founding member of the zoological society and one of the presidents of the language institution which George Staunton and Robert Morrison set up for the study of Chinese and other Asian languages.1 In July 1826, Raffles died of a prolonged illness, but his activities during the short period he had in Britain after his return shows how the interests and activities of the periphery were brought back to the metropolis with the returning servants of the EIC, the military personnel and the missionaries. Raffles, and later John Crawfurd also continued to be spokesmen for British interests concerning China or the Chinese, inspired by their encounters with the Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. In the years after the Macartney embassy, the meaning of China in the metropolis was more than ever before transformed by the new knowledge and new images of China which had been formed in the ‘contact zones’ of China and Southeast Asia. In Britain, especially in London, the different networks which formed the British expansion came together and connected. They were joined by more traditional links with the European continent, such as with France and Germany. This chapter considers Britain as a ‘contact zone’ to show how these different influences shaped the British world. It discusses how the idea of the existence of British ‘China experts’ and scientifically provable knowledge about China crucially transformed the meaning of China in Britain on several levels. In this ‘contact zone’, two meanings of China existed, partially overlapping. One was influenced by the aesthetic discourse on China in the 150

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context of Chinoiserie, which could still be a signifier for pleasure, partly existing only in the realm of fantasy, which could however also be connected to critic on the society and monarch. This discourse still was very influential in the popular perception of China, but was now partly transformed by new images coming from China, as discussed in the first chapter. The other meaning was connected to attempts to categorise and construct the political and historical entity China, which in the end could incorporate China into the mental map of British expansion. Here we have to determine the reasons why certain individuals and groups considered it useful to attach themselves to this meaning of China, which was influenced by the encounter in Canton, India and Southeast Asia.2 The transfer of ideas from the ‘contact zones’ in Asia also meant that they were transformed to meet metropolitan needs and answer to the ideas on Asia that dominated the discussion there. One of the fundamental developments in this period, which influenced all these fields, was the development of a scientific Orientalism, creating Western scholars as authorities for Asia. Crucial to this was the institutionalisation of the study of Sanskrit, Hindi and Chinese as academic disciplines as well as the foundation of various specialised societies such as the Royal Asiatic Society. The European interest and research into Sanskrit and the ensuing comparative studies of the IndoGermanic languages and its relationship to colonialism has been well documented and discussed.3 The renewed interest for the Chinese language and culture, its institutionalisation and its role in the discussion about the nature of language in general in the early 19th century has, however, received little attention.4 In the second part, this chapter studies therefore the beginning of a more academic study of China in the metropolis. The main focus of British interest in Asia was India, which shaped the options available to those interested in institutionalising the study of China in Britain, but also increasingly influenced the way China was understood in the metropolis. In this context, the idea developed that one could now establish an objectively true knowledge about China. As will be argued, the conditions of the metropolis meant that this knowledge was only disputed within the European scientific community, not between the British and the Chinese, as in the ‘contact zones’ of Asia. Along with these developments, the British in the metropolis after the years of the Macartney embassy increasingly understood China to be connected to Britain and the vital British interests and British role in the world. Foremost amongst those who furthered this idea of China were

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the Protestant missionaries and those who demanded free trade with China. The debate about the abolition of the EIC monopoly in 1834 was the high and turning point for this understanding, which is discussed in the last part of this chapter. During this debate, two different ideas about the geo-political entity China were brought into the field. In the end, a meaning gained momentum which opened the way to the Opium War. The new encounters with China in Asia shaped the understanding of the Britons in these local contact zones. When these Britons returned home, and in their letters to relatives and employers in the British Isles they transported back and transformed it in the process. In Britain, especially in London, the early years of the 19th century saw the establishment of institutions and societies which were dedicated to the study of Asia and which were closely linked to Britain’s imperial interest in the region. The imperial networks spanned the metropolis as much as the British presence in Asia. In the years after the Macartney embassy, the study of China received new interest in these contexts. The encounters in Asia had created new ‘China experts’ who influenced the debates about the end of the EIC trading monopoly to China and the Opium War. These two debates highlight how ideas on free trade and the materialistic interests of the British in the East merged with the new knowledge formed about China and resulted in the end in the idea that the Chinese Empire, the former model state, could now be a legitimate target for war and conquest.

5.1 British Sinology When Robert Morrison set out for China in 1806, he was the unknown son of a Scottish boot-tree maker.5 When he returned to Britain for a year in 1824, he was so well-known that he had trouble managing his busy schedule, travelling the country from top to bottom. He also travelled to France to meet his fellow Sinologue Abel Rémusat and his students Heinrich Julius Klaproth and Stanislas Julien.6 The highlight of his stay was certainly the audience with King George IV, to whom he presented his translation of the Bible into Chinese. This audience had been made possible by Morrison’s friend from Canton, Sir George Staunton. Staunton himself, even though he was now working on his career as an MP, had relied in a similar way on his knowledge of Chinese for his social advancement. First, his rare knowledge had gained him a place at the EIC factory in Canton. From there, he had hoped to become the next ambassador to China, but had had to be content with the position


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of secretary. After his return to Britain, he used his knowledge of Chinese language and culture to establish himself as an expert on all matters relating to China. The likes of Morrison and Staunton shaped the new academic debate about China, which partly followed the established themes such as questions about Chinese language, civilisation and religion, but also added new fields, such as race theory. The discussion on Chinese language in Britain was heavily influenced in this period by those who had participated in the British imperial expansion in the East. With them they also brought the British ‘Canton’ school of sinology, which formed itself in contrast to the continental idea of the study of China.7 In Europe, however, the study of Chinese language held a different meaning from that in the ‘contact zones’ in Asia. Here, the academic discussion about the nature of the Chinese language and its incorporation into the study of philology became more significant.8 The first attempts to institutionalise the study of Chinese in Britain itself were closely linked to the formalisation of the education of EIC employees and their training in Indian languages in Wellesley’s College of Fort William. Governor-General Wellesley in 1800 set up this college to train the employees of the EIC in Indian languages and to provide them with further education. His rash execution of this institution found little support in the Court of Directors, not least because the Court feared losing control over the establishment and its patronage if they agreed. Stricter control over the education of the young servants as well as the wish to send them out to India later led to the first establishment for the teaching of Indian languages in Britain itself, at the East India College at Haileybury. This was supposed to safeguard them from the temptations of the Indian style of life and radical ideas at a young age.9 At Haileybury, the aspirants for EIC postings were taught a variety of Eastern languages, such as Persian, Hindi and Sanskrit. However, Chinese was not included in the syllabus. Nor was there a separate institution for teaching this peculiar language. In 1817, there had been a suggestion by the EIC Select Committee to establish such a school in Britain;10 the reasons in favour of learning Chinese in Britain, according to James Molony, President of the Select Committee at the time, were the same as those given in the case of Indian languages: ‘I am not aware of any circumstance peculiar to the China Establishment, which does not apply to the Presidencies of India.’11 However, this argument did not prove successful, and it failed in the same way as the idea of giving Morrison a professorship of Chinese at Hantford College.12 In Britain itself, there was still a difference between the need for knowledge about

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India and China, which did not exist for those in the ‘contact zones’ in Canton, India and Southeast Asia. When Morrison met Staunton in England in 1824 they decided to combine their efforts to establish the teaching of Chinese language in Britain. Much like the Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca, the resulting institution had a predominantly missionary background. It was announced that it should provide training in ‘all the languages of the heathen, with a view to the propagation of Christianity among them’.13 When the ‘Language institution’ was set up, its head personnel consisted of the evangelical interest in the EIC and in government: President was Baron Bexley, Vice-presidents Sir George Staunton, Sir Stanford Raffles and Sir George Henry Rose. William Wilberforce and Lord Teignmouth completed the set as contributors.14 Morrison donated his 1000 volume Chinese library to the institution as well as a museum. During his stay in England, he taught several people Chinese there.15 Soon after Morrison left Britain for China, this attempt to give Britain an institutionalised setting for the teaching of Chinese and Chinese culture failed. Until his death in 1834, Morrison tried, from Canton, to find a new home for his library, in the end even advocating a sale of it for the benefit of his family.16 Morrison had hoped, that since the King had built himself a retreat in Brighton in the Chinese style, he might also patronise Chinese studies in his country.17 However, neither royal interest, made visible by the audience, and nor the growing British interest in China were yet sufficient enough to sustain such an effort. The King’s failure to take any interest in endowing a chair of Chinese at a British university despite his apparent interest in Chinoiserie shows that the aesthetic sphere of contact with China was still very separate from the scientific one. As with Haileybury College and other institutions, mainly private sponsorship was needed for their success. The main possible sponsors – the EIC and the LMS, however seem to have considered the language training for Chinese in Asia as sufficient. The Chinese language was not a major tool for the EIC to rule and therefore the instruction in it did not have to be controlled in the metropolis. The knowledge of the Chinese language as a medium of power was in the period before the Opium War only considered to be important in the ‘contact zone’ in Canton, Bengal and Southeast Asia, where, as we have seen, it played a crucial role in the struggle about power and identity, which the Court of Directors did not approve of. In France, matters were quite different. There, the first chair in Sinology had been established in 1814, with the young Abel-Rémusat as professor at the Collège de France. The creation of the chair had been


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promoted by Silvestre de Sacy, the French orientalist. Already in 1813, Chrétien Louis Joseph de Guignes had published a Latin-French Chinese dictionary, in the completion of which Napoleon allegedly had held some interest.18 Institutionalised French Sinology thus had its foundation in the imperial interests of the state and was not initiated by the French who had had contact with China, be it in commercial or imperial context. Nevertheless, the missionary activities of the Jesuits and the resulting publications were still an important starting point for this new academic Sinology, despite the loss of their reputation in France.19 Next to France, Russia had established itself as the second centre for European studies of Chinese, due to its neighbourhood to the Chinese Empire. It profited from the orthodox mission in Beijing, where Chinese was studied and taught. A chair for Chinese language in Russia itself was only established in 1837 at the University of Kazan.20 Both European centres of Sinology attracted the Germans who at the time discovered the study of Chinese and Tartarian languages. There were even chairs established in Bonn (1816) and Munich (1833).21 The German Julius Klaproth was the most notorious of these European scholars. He had been a member of the Academy of Science and professor for Asian languages in St. Petersburg. As an interpreter he accompanied the Russian embassy to China in 1805. After his return to Germany, he was appointed professor for Eastern languages in Bonn, but was allowed to study and work in Paris with Abel Rémusat and became a frequent contributor and co-editor of the Journal Asiatique.22 These two centres of early Chinese studies were watched with attention by some Britons regarding the question of an academic study of Chinese in Britain itself. Especially the French interest and progress in the subject worried them. As in other fields, it was enmity with its Gallic neighbour that made it seem necessary in the mind of interested Britons that Britain rather than France should excel in this field of scholarship and master the language which could be so important in the further expansion in Asia. John Barrow, after his return from the Macartney embassy – a self-proclaimed spokesman on all matters relating to China – was one of the first to be alarmed by the state of things: The French, aware of the solid advantages that result from the knowledge of languages, are at this moment holding out every encouragement to the study of Chinese literature; obviously not without design. They know that the Chinese character is understood from the Gulph of Siam to the Tatarian Sean, and over a very considerable part of the great Eastern Archipelago: that the Cochin Chinese, with

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whom they have already firmly rooted themselves, use no other writing than the pure Chinese character, which is also the case with the Japanese.23 Even this rivalry, however, was not enough to promote a greater investment in Chinese language studies in the metropolis. Trade with China was deemed to be a sufficient contact with China, which should be enhanced by the establishment of diplomatic relations. Yet in the eyes of the Court of Directors and the Government neither the requirements of trade nor of diplomacy seemed to necessitate the provision of largescale Chinese language education in the metropolis. The LMS probably deemed their involvement in the Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca as sufficient for a field that was still largely closed to their mission. To this was added the still prominent idea of the difficulty and otherness of Chinese. Staunton and Morrison repeatedly had to argue against those who thought that it was impossible to study Chinese in Europe due to its difficulty. The lack of interest in comparative philology in Britain in the years before 1830 also contributed to the failure of interest in Chinese from an academic point of view, in contrast to Germany and France, where the comparative study of languages for example inspired Wilhelm von Humboldt’s interest in Chinese and his ensuing debate with Abel Rémusat.24 Only in 1837, did Staunton manage to persuade the University College London, against considerable resistance, to appoint a Professor of Chinese. This post however was given up again after the death of the appointed Professor, Samuel Kidd, in 1843.25 The lack of institutionalised study of Chinese in the metropolis did not mean that the British were excluded from the transnational networks of those who were about to lay the foundations for the academic and scientific study of Chinese in this period. Morrison, as mentioned, visited the French sinologists in Paris. The meeting itself seems to have been friendly enough, Morrison even presented Rémusat and his students with some of his works.26 The previous and following battle in the pages of the Asiatic Journal and the Journal Asiatique however shows that two very different scholarly traditions had met each other. The debate was about how one had to study Chinese, and what constituted correct Chinese. This debate shows how the participants tried to establish objective standards for the study of Chinese language and literature. Through these standards they could define who had the true knowledge about China and its language. They thus developed knowledge of China over which the Europeans could


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consider themselves masters and which allowed them to make China understandable, independent of Chinese mediators. While this only had an effect in the European sphere of communication, it nevertheless transformed the meaning of China in the European mind, respectively to the different standards developed in Britain, France, Russia and Germany. Already in a letter about the meeting in France, Morrison was quite derogatory about the quality of Rémusat and his students’ Chinese – they were only more zealous in their studies than the British.27 Later on, especially Julius Klaproth would turn against Morrison, claiming, for example, that Morrison’s dictionary was not at all his own work, but rather that of his Chinese aides. Morrison, he implied, could neither speak nor read Chinese sufficiently.28 When several people, like P. P. Thoms, rushed to Morrison’s defence in the pages of the Asiatic Journal, Klaproth countered that only the ‘senseless patriotism’ of Morrison’s countrymen and some incompetent judges had given Morrison a reputation which he did not deserve. He followed this by pointing out that several Characters in the dictionary were assigned incomplete or wrong meanings.29 His final judgement was telling beyond the rants Klaproth was notorious for: ‘For this reason, Dr. Morrison’s work may do well enough at Canton and Macao, whilst it provoked the dissatisfaction of the sinologists of Europe.’30 Klaproth’s teacher Abel Rémusat had made similar accusations in the preface of his Chinese grammar: Morrison, in his opinion used too many Anglicisms and his dictionary was only made for use at Canton or Macao, not for more literary and academic study.31 Morrison’s fellow missionary, Gützlaff, came to his defence and held the knowledge of those on the spot against European academic expertise: ‘Frequent blunders in the assertion of European sinologists shew the vast superiority of those who are on the spot, and who, in case of doubt, can consult natives.’32 The chair in Paris was mainly dedicated to a theoretical study of Chinese by reading and translating its literature, thus creating a presumably scientifically based knowledge about Chinese language, its literature, philosophy and religion. The education of personnel for the French expansionist interests in Asia was only of secondary concern until 1843.33 Rémusat’s main interest was the philosophical study of languages, especially the search for a universal grammar, which would explain the relations between theory and language.34 Rémusat was interested in describing Chinese according to its own grammatical terms. He tried to extract the real, inherent structure of Chinese from the study of Chinese classics.35 Nevertheless, he still used the Latin grammar as

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a reference point to show that Chinese was not completely different from all other languages, but also adhered to the principles of a universal basic grammar.36 He thus established an authoritative set of rules according to which Chinese could be understood. At the same time, he refused to accept the authority of the Chinese themselves to judge about the grammatical details of their own language. One of his major points of criticism of Morrison’s grammar was that he had not taken the example sentences from the Chinese classical books and extracted the rules of grammar from them, but rather relied on a Chinese teacher. Rémusat and Klaproth were mainly interested in questions of grammar, the nature of ancient Chinese and the written ‘Mandarin’ Chinese and the translation of Chinese literature and philosophy. The dialects and colloquial languages of China only played a minor role. Away from the conditions of the ‘contact zones’ in Asia, the French and German scholars had to rely on earlier works, mainly by the Jesuits, and Chinese thus turned into a language that could be studied in a similar way to Latin and Greek, addressing similar questions. Thus, an idea of Chinese language and a study of Chinese culture developed, that was influenced only very indirectly by contact with Chinese, but based on the study of ‘classical’, mainly historical, texts. The Chinese could not question nor transform the discourse developed about China and the Chinese language under these circumstances. The lack of political and private patronage meant that British Sinology remained centred in Canton and especially Southeast Asia. This, together with the missionary interest in reaching all levels of Chinese society, led to the fact that contemporary Chinese as well as dialects such as Cantonese and Hokkien were important parts of the study, also in its institutionalised manifestations in Southeast Asia. Additionally, the Chinese teachers and aids had a great influence on the work. While the ‘Canton/Southeast Asian’ school and the continental European Sinologists differed in how Chinese should be studied, they still had the common goal of forming knowledge which would allow unravelling the mysteries of the Chinese. Abel Rémusat’s grammar should help future students to better understand the character of the Chinese people.37 John Francis Davis similarly argued that the use of translations of Chinese literature would help to understand the character of this peculiar people.38 In Europe, the knowledge of Chinese was the ultimate tool to discover China, to finally make it available to the penetrating eyes of the European observer, be it missionary or academic. Thus, Henry Thomas Colebrook, at the opening session of the Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, explained how the progress


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of knowledge of the Chinese language had opened China for the study of the British (long before the Opium Wars would allow them to enter the country): This field of research, which is now open to us, may be cultivated with confident reliance on a successful result; making us better acquainted with a singular people, whose manners, institutions, opinions, arts and productions, differ most widely from those of the West; and through them, perhaps, with other tribes of Tataric race, still more singular, and still less known.39 For a different purpose, but in a similar trope, at the Annual Meeting of the LMS in 1824, Joseph Butterworth, a Methodist publisher and politician, praised Morrison who by the will of God had been able to learn Chinese and thus provided the mission with a key to the Chinese Empire, which had before been tightly sealed from their efforts.40 While the mastery of the language was seen to open China to the European observer, in this context, the foreignness of China was once more emphasised. Linguistically, its complete otherness was the most important feature.41 But now Europeans could overcome this otherness with the help of their rational minds or God. The land that could thus be discovered ‘differ most widely from those of the West’. Its foreignness and strangeness could now be demystified, described in linguistic terms and classified. This re-invention of Chinese language in Europe could take place without the disturbances of the ‘contact zone’, where the Chinese authorities refused to accept British re-interpretations of Chinese words such as ‘barbarian’ and tried to hinder the foreigners in learning the language in the first place. The contest in Europe was thus not with the Chinese authorities about identity, representation and the power over words, but rather between the eternal rivals France and Britain on who could create knowledge about China, solve its secrets, which would allow Britons or Frenchmen to become the predominant scholars in the field but also to gain influence in the region of East and Southeast Asia. Language thus remained one of the prominent sites on which China was defined. It was now a tool through which the secrets of China could be lifted and its claim to high civilisation either partly re-affirmed or dismantled, its difference described. The rank of Chinese civilisation was the other main interest of debates about Chinese culture, which mainly took place within the Royal Asiatic Society and the Asiatic Journal. As with the debate about Chinese language, the discussions about Asia in

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general in this period were dominated by those who had served the British expansionist interests in the East, be it as EIC employees, country traders or missionaries. The early years of the 19th century thus marked the beginning of the domestication of knowledge formed during the British imperial expansion in the East. The most prominent institution in this context was the Royal Asiatic Society. More than 25 years after William Jones had founded the Bengal Asiatick Society, its counterpart in the metropolis was finally inaugurated. As Colebrook made clear in his introductory remarks, the society’s main purpose was to assist Britain’s civilising mission.42 With the foundation of the society, the study of Asia found its first institutionalised home. While the respective chairs at the universities concerned themselves mainly with the Biblical Orient, the Royal Asiatic Society could become an authority for the study of greater Asia – including Australia. Its members were to a large extent men who either had been in EIC service in Asia or had worked for them at home. The study of Asia was thus mainly not in the hands of those who had come to it through academic interest such as Wilhelm von Humboldt, but was conducted by those who had forged the Empire abroad.43 Societies like the Royal Asiatic Society and the journals were protected areas in which the material ‘discovered’ in the contact zones could be turned into undisputable knowledge, stating facts about Asia without the possibility of response by the Asians. The main focus of the society certainly lay on India, but its co-founder had been George Thomas Staunton, and matters concerning China appeared repeatedly in the Transactions of the Society. China was in this context by its geographical position and the link provided by the EIC and trade once more included in British ponderings about India. And as the problems with the establishment of a chair of Chinese studies had shown, a larger British concern for China only existed if it was somehow linked to greater Asia and the study of mankind. This equally applied to the far more political Asiatic Journal or mainly missionary sponsored institutions, such as the Oriental Translation fund. There was a vivid exchange between the Asiatic Societies of Calcutta, London and Paris. Where formerly Egypt or ancient Greece had formed the main comparison, now India held this position. This was due to the British prominence in India, which had formed the experience of many as well as the exchange with the Calcutta Asiatic Society. Connected with this, and of equal importance was the idea of India as the origin of civilisation, which had begun with William Jones and had now mainly found its adherents amongst the German romantics.44 Chinese history had


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thus no longer necessarily to be aligned with the story of the Bible and the distribution of mankind after the deluge. Rather, the question of its connection to India became crucial to understanding its history and culture. William Jones was the first to argue that the Chinese were descendants of an Indian warrior caste.45 John Francis Davis supported this claim in his paper for the Royal Asiatic Society in 1823. He used the Indian laws of Manu as the authoritative point of reference and drawing on this showed the incoherence with the Chinese historical annals. Additionally, he took the position of an observer, gifted with superior logic, to point out that Chinese historical accounts could not possibly be accurate. All claims by the Chinese to high antiquity of their civilisation thus had to be refuted.46 Even for somebody like Davis, who had lived for years in the ‘contact zone’ of Canton and learned Chinese there, the main point of reference when addressing the metropolitan audience was thus India. This was even more important for Julius Klaproth. As a German, living in Paris and St. Petersburg, whose articles in the French Journal Asiatique were regularly translated and published in its British counterpart, he was a typical medium for the transfer of ideas. In his article in the Asiatic Journal in 1832, he clearly picked up the romantic notion of India as the cradle of civilisation and its association with beauty and perfection, but rejects a link between China and India. In order to refute the idea of a common origin between the Chinese and the Indians, he set the romantic notion of the ‘poetic and speculative mind of the inhabitants of the banks of the Ganges and Jumna’ against the dry and prosaic genius of the Chinese. Additionally, he argues that the Chinese accounts of their ancient history were probably quite adequate, since the Chinese otherwise would have invented a more flattering story. As a proof of the total difference and unconnectedness of the Chinese with the Indians, and thus the Europeans, he also used arguments inspired by comparative physiognomy. For Klaproth, the different racial features of the Indians and Chinese were the best proof against their common history. Further supporting the idea of the complete otherness of the Chinese, he depicts them as ugly and entirely different from the Europeans, describing their exterior characteristics: ‘the pig-eyes, the protuberant cheek-bones, the pug-nose, and the square flat face’. This, in his opinion, stood quite in contrast to the Indians, ‘with whom, excepting in respect to colour, we find the features of the European race.’47 For both of them it was clear that the Europeans had to be the judges over the value of sources on Chinese history. Klaproth claimed that

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the Chinese neglected some sources on their ancient history because Confucius did not mention them. This blinding veneration of the Chinese sage could only be overcome by Europeans, who could value these texts despite the fables they contained.48 Davis equally set out to demonstrate which ‘facts’ could be relied on respecting Chinese history, excluding most Chinese sources. Once these facts were known, he argued, the European researcher could conduct further targeted research into Chinese history.49 Closely linked to the debates of Chinese history were those about Chinese religion. Both focused on the question of origin. Christianity was also in the metropolis the main reference frame for the study of the Chinese religions. In the metropolis, their connection to India was however of equal importance. The discussions about Chinese religions in publications such as the Asiatic Journal or the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society were not primarily conducted by the Protestant missionaries, but by those EIC employees who had learned Chinese, or scholars of Chinese, like Klaproth, and other self-styled experts on Asia. It was thus more an historical interest that inspired these debates. The idea of the ‘Three Chinese religions’, Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, had already manifested itself.50 With regard to both Buddhism and Taoism, the question of the connection between India and China was the major field of enquiry. While it was accepted by now that Buddhism had come to China from India, the exact circumstances were still a matter of interest. In general, the accounts of the spread of Buddhism in China were based on translations of old Chinese texts. According to them, Emperor Ming of the Han dynasty had dreamed of a saviour from the West and sent an emissary to look for him, who then brought back the lore of Buddha from his travels. The Jesuits had already included this account into their works, but now new translations were made available to a wider public through prints and articles, such as in the Asiatic Journal.51 The Indian origin of Buddhism therefore remained important for further attempts to reveal more about this religion. In the metropolis, Indian Buddhism served as the main point of reference to explain Chinese Buddhism, rather than its Tibetan variation. A contributor in the Asiatic Journal, for example, stated that the Asiatic Societies of Calcutta, Paris, London and St. Petersburg had done much to remove the errors and insufficient knowledge that had prevailed in respect to Buddhism. Nevertheless, he refuted the latest attempt by Karl Neumann, a German Sinologue, by translating the ‘Catechism of the Shamans’ from the Chinese as flawed, due to the lack of Neumann’s understanding of Chinese as well as the Brahmanical system. He thus rejected Neumann’s


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idea that Buddhism was the Lutheranism of the Hindus.52 While there was no such obvious connection as with Buddhism, there were also attempts to trace Taoism to India, by comparing what was considered to be Taoist doctrine with the scripts of Hinduism.53 History and religion had been prominent fields for the description of China since the early Jesuit reports. Klaproth’s allusion to the physiognomy of the Chinese marks the development of another category in the way Europeans attributed meaning to the differences of mankind in this period and ranked the thus constituted groups. As Nancy Stepan and Roxanne Wheeler have shown, the turn from the 18th to the 19th century marked the beginning of ideas of race that would shape this category until well into the 1960s. In the 16th and 17th century, the differentiation of mankind had mainly operated with the categories of religion, geography and clothing. In the late 17th and 18th century, attention was paid to the skin colour and physiognomy. Within the period discussed the idea developed that skin colour was fixed and not only a result of the different climates on earth and its effect on the bodily fluids. In this context, the ranking of mankind according to the skin colour began, seeing white as the most perfect form, and black as the lowest.54 In addition, at the close of the 18th century, the new science of comparative anatomy studied the complexity of the mental organisation and internal mechanisms of anatomical structures in man, which could also be read from the facial angle of the skull.55 Walter Demel has shown that the classification of the Chinese as ‘yellow’ only developed in the 18th century finally becoming permanent in the 19th century.56 In the earlier period, the theorists still differed heavily as to which colour of skin they attributed to a people and in the conclusions they drew from this.57 Particularly in the 16th and 17th century, when the Chinese were still thought to be culturally equal, they were described as ‘white’ most of the time. As the opinion on the Chinese became more negative they were increasingly seen as ‘yellow’ or coloured in some way, normally ‘black’ or ‘brown’. Yellow probably finally became the colour that was attributed to the Chinese, because one saw them as not as civilised as the Western Europeans, but also not as primitive as the Africans and therefore looked for an intermediate colour that suited this position. Furthermore, Demel points out, according to the psychology of colour, ‘yellow’ corresponded particularly with ambivalence and lack of transparency which was often seen as a dominant characteristic of the Chinese.58 John Barrow was one of the first Britons who were to pay closer attention to the physiognomy of the Chinese. In contrast to the other members of the Macartney embassy, he uses it as a factor to determine

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the position of the Chinese amongst the different people. He described them as slightly taller than the Tartars, with small slant eyes, high cheekbones and pointed chins. In respect to the skin colour, Barrow still defined it as ‘between fair and dark complexion, which we distinguish by the word brunet or brunette’.59 He however also emphasised that one of Chinese legates who accompanied the embassy had a face that differed in nothing but the form of the eyes from that of a European.60 John Barrow was one of the first in Britain, who tried to position the Chinese in relation to other peoples and migration patterns on account of their physiognomy, and not just their language or religion. Barrow assumed that due to similarities of physiognomy, character and costumes between the peoples, the Chinese had made extended sea voyages in earlier times and that some of the Indian tribes in South America and California were descended from them, as well as the inhabitants of the island Sakhalin and of some parts of Africa. He claimed that the Chinese had the biggest similarities with the Hottentots. He explained this by common descent and justified his argument by observation and study of their external characteristics: both peoples had, according to Barrow, an upper eyelid that was bent towards the nose and did not have an angle there as the Europeans had. Furthermore, both had small limbs, flat noses and a long distance between the slanting eyes. The temperament, skin colour and the voices were also identical. Only the hair was different, which could be the result of mixing the Chinese with the Mosambicans.61 In this way, the Chinese, as well as the Hottentots, had been definitively classified and were now distinguishable from other people. The Chinese may have shared common ancestors with the Hottentots, but clearly not with the Europeans. In spite of classifying the Chinese according to external characteristics, this in themselves did not yet determine anything, as the comparison between the supposedly barbarian Hottentots and the more civilised Chinese showed. For Barrow the form of government and not racial characteristics determined the character and level of civilisation of a people. In the case of the Chinese, this was oriental despotism, which was however already more civilised than the form of government of the Hottentots. In this, Barrow was still part of the tradition of the 18th, not the 19th century.62 His account was to be significant for the early British writers about race and the new science of comparative anatomy. For James Prichard, the early racial theorist, the Chinese formed a people on its own, distinct from the Mongolian race. Significantly, he did not use a comparison of their external features nor of their anatomy to


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prove this but rather the arguments of comparative philology. For him, the monosyllabic language of the Chinese and Indo-Chinese nations were proof enough that they formed a race of their own. He adopted Barrow’s description of their physiognomy, including the skin colour, which he thus saw as close to a European brunette, which could darken through exposure to the sun.63 William Lawrence in contrast followed the German anthropologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in grouping the Chinese with the Mongolian race.64 His attention was mainly focused on what he calls the Mongolian tribes, which he associated with Genghis Khan, Attila and Tamerlan. To define the racial features of the Mongolian race, he used the skulls, skin colour and other physical features of the Calmucks and Burats. He also referred to Barrow’s description of the Tartars and the Chinese and used them to show that both people clearly belong to the same race.65 In his discussion of the intellectual qualities of the different races, the still high reputation of the Chinese and Japanese civilisations stood in this context in uneasy relation to his derogative view of all non-white races. It however led him to explain the presumed phenomenon of the lack of Chinese development for the first time with inherent, unchangeable racial characteristics: While the empires of China and Japan prove that this race is susceptible of civilisation, and of great advancement in the useful and even elegant arts of life, and exhibit the singular phenomenon of political and social institutions between two and three thousand years older than the Christian era, the fact of their having continued nearly stationary for so many centuries, marks an inferiority of nature and a limited capacity in comparison to that of the white races.66 A scholarly discourse thus began to be formed about the physical characteristics of the Chinese and the rank that followed from this in the development of humankind. One should however not overestimate the importance of this discourse. As we have seen earlier in Crawfurd’s writings, these Chinese physical characteristics were important in the ‘contact zone’ of Southeast Asia to establish the relationship between the Chinese and the other ethnic groups there. In the metropolitan context, scholars tried to find a place for the ‘Asians’ in their theories of mankind, which were however primarily aimed at and derived from the study of Africans and American Indians. It also had seemingly no influence outside these scientific debates. The question of race, in this 19th century sense of the word, played no role in the debates about

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Chinese–British relations until the 1840s. The descriptions of the few Chinese visitors to Britain in the early 19th century paid very little attention to their physical characteristics. No allusion is made to the colour of their skin being ‘yellow’, and only in one case their physiognomy is described as ‘Of the Tartarian mould’.67 To assess the correct position of China on the rank of civilisation was one of the prime objectives of these discussions about Chinese history, religion and race. The level of Chinese civilisation and the status of its culture had long been a matter for debate, especially since most British commentators felt it had been exaggerated by the Jesuits.68 John Barrow most prominently used his role during the Macartney embassy to produce more legitimate knowledge about the Chinese to assess their rank on the scale of civilisations. As the subtitle of his book on the Macartney embassy stated, in his report he wanted to ascertain the place of ‘[. . .] this extraordinary empire’ on the ‘[. . .] scale of civilised nations’. For this, Barrow looked at the typical criteria according to which one could classify a nation, like language, their religion, the development of their science, their arts and form of government.69 In this context, the new and allegedly more objective knowledge collected by the British in the ‘contact zone’, such as Staunton’s translation of the Chinese Penal Code, was deemed to be crucial. The use of this new information varied significantly in Britain from that in Canton. In the metropolis, it was mainly seen as a tool to better establish the stage of the development and nature of Chinese civilisation.70 The translation was supposed to improve British knowledge of Chinese civilisation, since, as Staunton established with reference to Gibbon, ‘The laws of a nation form the most instructive portion of its history.’71 He argued with Montesquieu and William Jones that laws always had to be culturally specific and had to be based on tradition.72 Precisely for this reason, the Chinese laws reflected the peculiarities of Chinese culture and could provide foreigners with a window onto the underlying principles of this civilisation. Reviewers of Staunton’s work in the Asiatic Journal, 20 years after its first publication, in the context of the debates about the end of the EIC trading monopoly could identify similarities between Indian and Chinese law. Nevertheless they emphasised the singularity of the Chinese system and the Chinese culture.73 For Staunton, the characteristic of Chinese culture was mainly the patrimonial principle which he deemed to be the founding concept of Chinese society, government and law. The study of the laws of a culture was also used in this context to determine the level of its civilisation. In Staunton’s opinion, the Chinese Penal Code clearly showed


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that China was an ancient and advanced civilisation however characterised by Asian despotism. It still did not have the characteristics of a commercial society which the stage theory saw as the highest stage.74 In his preface, Staunton thus clearly argued against the ideas of the Utilitarians such as Bentham and Mill, who supported the idea of a universal standard for the assessment of laws.75 The ideas of both William Jones and his Utilitarian opponents were to a large extent concerned with the consolidation and legitimisation of British rule in India.76 However, as in the Indian case, the attack on Chinese law, influenced by Anglicists and Utilitarian ideas, became increasingly predominant. The Asiatic Journal thus raised the criticism that though the principles of law might have been formed in accordance with Chinese culture, they inevitably led to despotism and corruption and therefore could not simply be accepted as a cultural expression of the Chinese.77 Chinese civilisation was thus more and more considered to be flawed and similar to other Asian despotisms. Staunton’s translation of the Chinese law also influenced James Mill in his assessment of the state of India’s civilisation.78 Mill relied on both Barrow’s and Staunton’s texts, but significantly no longer on any Jesuit authorities.79 He came to the conclusion that, like India and other Asian nations, China was a long way from being the advanced civilisation the Jesuits had described. He considered it both to be deficient in the sciences and innovation, as well as treacherous, insincere and unclean. In some aspects, the Chinese had an advantage over the Indians, specifically in their industriousness and in the progress made in relation to crafts.80 This idea of China as the most advanced of the contemporary Asian nations thus found its way also into the writings about Asia in the metropolis. The industriousness of the Chinese was here however, in contrast to Southeast Asia, not seen in connection to their capabilities as settlers or workers, but rather as an advantage that could level some of the negative effects of their culture and explain why China had not yet decayed to the extent of India under Mughal rule. This was also a position John Davis took in his memoirs on China designed for the metropolitan audience. For him, China clearly held the prime position amongst the nations of Asia, whose earlier achievements in political stability and wealth were mainly due to its northern geographic situation. However, similar to James Mill, China was in his eyes largely in deficit in comparison to Europe. As for Barrow and Mill, his criteria were its retarded progress in science, the arts, the failure to provide security of property, the rights of women and the lack of a good and well-established moral and political philosophy.81

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These debates meant a further shift in the meaning of China for the British in the metropolis. China was now more clearly located within an Asian context, mainly due to the new attention India received within the debates about the origin of civilisation. The knowledge formed in the networks in Asia meant that the British now believed to have more valid knowledge about it. Knowledge production about China for the British had to take place in the ‘contact zones’ of Asia, as the problem of the study of Chinese language makes clear. A mere textual bases, which Rémusat and also Klaproth considered to be sufficient was lacking authenticity in the eyes of the British. The new knowledge about China was used to revisit the old sites of debate about China: its antiquity, religion and its link to other civilisations and finally, its level of civilisation. The main tendency of the late 18th century was continued here, supported by allegedly new and more objective knowledge. The claim by the Chinese and the Sinophiles in Europe to China’s antiquity and high civilisation was attacked, Confucianism and Taoism placed in one line with other superstitious Asian religions. In terms of its civilisation, it was made clear that while China might still be one of the most developed civilisations in Asia, it was far from reaching European or British level. This was crucial to support the idea that Britain was unquestionable on the highest level of civilisation, a status China to which long had been a claimant. These discussions were also not only theoretical speculations like some of its predecessors in the 18th century. As the next sections show, they established a meaning of China that could seemingly objectively be shown to be at a lower stage of civilisation compared with Britain. This status thus could call for and allow an intervention in Chinese affairs by the British. The Protestant mission created with their own networks of information and knowledge distribution a meaning of China that resulted in an even more urgent call for British evangelical action in China. On the other hand, the debate about the EIC company monopoly and later about the legitimacy to go to war with China would revisit many of the topics addressed above and make the question of Chinese civilisation a crucial element in the discussions about British–Chinese relations.

5.2 Saving China In the periphery, the missionaries faced frustration and isolation in their missionary enterprise. They co-operated with the EIC and the British and Dutch Residencies. They collected information on religion, but also


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on day-to-day politics of the countries they were concerned with, especially China. Their letters and reports, carefully edited, brought these ideas from China and Southeast Asia back to Britain, where they were inserted in a context that reflected the concerns of the metropolis. The audience which the missionaries reached was one which probably had very little previous contact with China, whether by way of the Jesuit reports or perhaps even by the fashion for Chinoiserie. As William Milne formulated it, the Jesuit accounts had been written in a foreign language, they were too long and too expensive to furnish the British public with information of China. This deficit had to be filled by the missionaries in his opinion.82 Through publications like the Evangelical Magazine and the Missionary Chronicle, but also through a variety of societies such as the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS), the British and Foreign School Society, an Association in Manchester formed on behalf of the funds of the Anglo-Chinese College83 and the London Missionary Society and its local branches these people continuously received information about China. It seemed to them authentic and true, since it was based on the local expertise of the missionaries and their religious integrity. The new knowledge about China thus became embedded in a set of reports from all countries of the world which had come into the interest sphere of evangelicals. This gave the readership of these magazines the impression of a worldwide network which worked for the salvation of mankind, with the English at its centre. The most prominent expression of this view were certainly the anti-slavery campaign and the fight against the sati in India. The information brought to this audience from China was shaped to meet the needs for fundraising, both of money and men, and the politics of the periphery. Thus, even though the mission made little progress in terms of converts, most reports in the Missionary Chronicle and the Evangelical Magazine highlight the positive aspects and the supposed progress of the mission. When the Chinese increased the prosecution of Roman Catholics in the country and the emperor issued an edict against Christianity, Morrison decided to continue in Canton, but still was rather worried about the prospect of the mission. In his letters to the LMS however, he asked not to publish this information, so as not to alarm the EIC’s Directors.84 The Evangelical Magazine even decided to print a rather positive note on the edict, conjuring up the power of the word of God and claiming ‘that it will be impossible for the Emperor of China, or his officers, to prevent the circulation of the Scriptures in that empire, as many thousands of the Chinese annually visit Penang, Java, and other parts of the world, where the Bible may be put into their

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hands, and by them be introduced into the country.’85 In the annual reports of the LMS and the BFBS, the lack of converts was made up for by the praise of Morrison’s translations and how he ‘mastered’ this difficult language.86 The information the British evangelical audience received was however not only a bit more positive but also concentrated to an extreme extent on a religious perspective. The very first report by Morrison which was printed in the Missionary Transaction was a description of the superstitious practices of the Chinese.87 Even more focused is the letter series which Morrison wrote for the Evangelical Magazine called ‘Remarks on the language, history, religions, and government of China’, published in 1825. It was the first really extensive coverage by a British magazine on China, inspired by Morrison’s home visit in the same year. Even though the title promised a wide range of information on the country, the letters were only concerned with the religions of China, and the mission to it.88 However, when he tried to reach a broader audience, as with his ‘China: A dialogue for the use of schools’, to gain more support for the missionary cause, and especially his Anglo-Chinese College at Malacca, Morrison included more details about Chinese history, language and society. In this little book for children, he translated Chinese history into a European-Christian history, equating events of the one with the other. By doing this, he completely dismissed the claim that the antiquity of Chinese history could question the chronology and validity of the Bible.89 The information he produced about China thus should make this country more familiar and understandable to his audience.90 He also presented China as a civilised country, which had produced a lot of good learning, continuously emphasising that the British had no right to despise the Chinese on accord of their ‘foolishness’ and ‘vices’ but rather had to love them as one of God’s creatures that had taken the wrong way. Moreover, only those Britons who had ‘reformed’ themselves into good and moral Christians had the right to point out the faults of another people. A bad Englishman, who claimed to be a Christian was in Morrison’s eyes as bad as a pagan Chinese.91 Since the evangelicals were good Christians, China appeared on the mental map of this part of British society as a country in need of the British benevolence. To show its inhabitants the message of the Gospel, even against their will,92 was a divine duty for the British. In sermons which Morrison preached during his stay in England in 1825, he depicted the Chinese as imprisoned by Satan, prisoners who are ‘hugging their chains’.93 This necessity to help the Chinese did not just result from the higher state of civilisation of evangelical British or the fact that


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they had been Christians for centuries. Because they were Christians, they were sincere and good people, of whose involvement everybody would benefit and whose benevolence towards ‘wretched creatures in all nations’ was a Christian duty.94 Morrison evoked the idea not of difference between the different cultures and nations, but of unity, using the same language as the abolition for slavery campaign had done: Do we too maintain the infidel opinion, that we are a superior race; and that God did not make of one blood all nations of men, and thus contradict and blaspheme the Bible! Do we still hold the silly opinion that geographical limits, a river, a mountain, or an imaginary line, destroys the brotherhood of the family of man?95 The only difference in his eyes lay in the amount of possibilities to learn about the right faith in different parts of the world.96 This brotherhood of the family of man meant, however, that the spiritual well-being of the Chinese had to be as important to a Christian as the salvation of the enslaved African or the Indian widow. In Britain, there was certainly a stronger focus at the time on the antislavery question, the conversion of the Pacific islanders and the fight against the sati in India. Nevertheless, the Protestant Mission to China and its reports back home meant that the moral improvement of China had moved onto the agenda of the evangelicals. China was not a distant, mythical country anymore. Its inhabitants were brethren suffering in the darkness of ignorance. The influence of evangelical thought in the political arena, as through the Clapham sect, made this meaning of China especially important during the debates on the renewal of the EIC charter in 1813, and even more so in 1832–1834 and in the run-up to the Opium War.

5.3 Forces of free trade In the summer of 1831, a petition to the House of Commons ‘from British subjects residing in China’ reached Britain. Headed by Matheson, Wright and John Robert Morrison, the country traders in Canton complained about the repressions by the Chinese Hong merchants and Chinese government and the misrepresentation of the foreign merchants by them. Their main argument was that for the trade to continue, an international treaty with China was necessary and furthermore that ‘a higher authority is required, emanating directly from his Majesty’, to show that the British at Canton had not lost the protection of their

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sovereign.97 Resulting from the interests, dissatisfactions and discourses of the Canton contact zone, it arrived in a country struggling with the post-war situation and the call for reform. Most historians now emphasise the continuities rather than the ruptures during what has been labelled ‘the Age of Reform’. They discuss how the reforms often safeguarded the old order rather than the beginning of a trajectory towards a new, mainly bourgeoisie, one.98 Nevertheless, the defining features of this period are certainly the debates on free trade, laissez faire and the criticism of ‘Old Corruption’. Boyd Hilton and Anthony Waterman have shown how some of these ideas on free trade were the result of a marriage between Scottish political economy and evangelical thought, which interpreted the law of the market as God given and as a moral trial and incitement for moral improvement.99 These free trade ideas could be used to justify an ‘informal imperialism’ rather than peaceful anti-imperialism.100 However, as Anna Gambles has pointed out, this ‘Christian political economy’ and liberalism was not uncontested. Rather, there was a substantial orthodox Tory, later Conservative opposition, which was anti-individualistic, in favour of economic protectionism and monopolies of trade, with a historically based empirical approach to economic and social issues which contrasted with the more theoretical approach of their contemporaries.101 The debate about the end of the EIC monopoly for the China trade was one of the prominent sites for these controversies between free trade advocates and their Conservative adversaries, even though it tends to be somewhat neglected in historiographies of this period. When the EIC charter came up for renewal in 1833, the question of the nature of the Indian government and the settlement of English people in India was central to the debate in the newspapers and parliament. This time, however, the EIC trade monopoly with China, which had only been a peripheral issue in 1813, became one of the dominant topics. In the last decade before the 1830s, China had acquired an economic importance for a number of groups whose financial and patronage interests lay mainly outside of or at odds with the EIC system. The country trade became more and more profitable and the method of remitting profits to London by the way of the EIC bills was no longer satisfactory. Increasingly, the traders used other methods, such as bullion or American bills on London, which to a great extent made them independent from the EIC.102 Private merchants also increasingly avoided the EIC monopoly by shipping British manufactures to China through continental European or American agents. In the eyes of many,


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this dangerously strengthened the American China trade.103 In these circumstances, it became even more interesting to have the tea trade as a medium of remittance. As the petition cited above shows, however, the central focus of the country traders was the question of the restrictions the EIC could impose in Canton and the lack of a voice that would support their requests. An end to the EIC monopoly could at least end their double status of illegality and provide their presence with some reliable basis from the British side. The most significant group fighting against the EIC monopoly was that of the Manchester manufacturers and businessmen. Especially after the successful opening of the Indian market to British cotton, they saw China as the next huge market that they could export their products to. This no longer stood mainly in the context of finding a way to counterbalance the tea import, which had been the main question for Dalrymple and his contemporaries. With new confidence in the quality of British cotton products, the Lancashire manufactures and Manchester merchants were looking for new markets for their products in the East. This went hand in hand with the concerns of the free trade advocates who argued in favour of the necessity to abolish all trade restrictions to avoid the problem of a lack of domestic demand and in order to keep Britain’s growing population in work.104 At the same time, an opening of the tea import trade to all British merchants could increase the commercial profits of trading cities such as Liverpool and Manchester, which were mainly excluded from the tea import which the EIC conducted via London.105 For these groups, China acquired the meaning of a perfect market that was now more detached from British interests in India, an interest to which the EIC and its restrictions on trade were clearly seen as an obstacle. After all, in their eyes, the company had utterly failed in selling British products to China. This was a typical position formed in the metropolis. Even the country traders, who supported the end of the EIC monopoly, did not expect an increase in the sale of British manufactures to China.106 The end of the EIC trade monopoly to China has often been seen as the natural consequence of the trajectory of the ‘Age of Reform’, which generated little opposition.107 Recently, Anna Gambles pointed out that the supporters of the EIC did challenge the assumptions of the free traders about the potential market for British goods in China.108 By closely studying both sides of the debate, we can gain an understanding of how two different meanings of China were used, shaped by the beliefs of the different groups as well as their political and commercial interests. The main lines were those of free trade involvement versus

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monopolistic mercantilist distance from the Chinese state. Similar to the academic debate about Chinese religion, literature and race in the pages of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, this discussion was led by those who had either served British interests in Asia or had strong financial connections with the British expansion in the East. There could no longer be an approach to China in the British public sphere that was unconnected to the networks of Britain’s Asian Empire. As much as being an economic argument the debate about the end of the monopoly on the China trade and the EIC administration in India was therefore also a decisive debate about the nature of Britain’s relationship with Asia. The Empire had by this time become an integrated part of British self-definition, especially the new conquests in Asia.109 As the charter debate showed, however, there was no clear agreement about the future expansion policy and Britain’s relation to Asia. Particularly the question of the nature of international relations with an extra-European power and legality in this context became important. China thus became the test case of whether there were universal natural laws dictating the market and international relations, or whether they were solely determined by the sovereign of a realm and historical development. The controversy over the EIC’s charter was one of the most prominent contact points between the knowledge and meaning produced outside mainland Britain, in Asia, and the development of ideas which mainly resulted from internal British politics, such as the Reform Bill and the Poor Law. The campaign against the monopoly of the EIC only really began with the agitation of James Silk Buckingham, who as editor of the Calcutta Journal had so angered the EIC government with his extremely critical articles that they finally evicted him from India.110 Back in Britain, he set out to rally the merchants and manufacturers in the industrial and commercial towns in the north against the EIC charter. He was joined by the advocates of free trade, who also campaigned for the Reform Bill, Catholic Emancipation and the repeal of the Corn Laws.111 The EIC was attacked as a prominent example of ‘Old Corruption’ and its supporters as the typical exponents of those forces that worked against parliamentary reform.112 Free trade per se included reciprocity, thus always implying a certain understanding of international relations, which was less defined by the sovereignty of the state or empire than by the natural laws of trade. This required a China that would open its gates to trade. For free trade supporters, the reciprocity of trade and the free competition were necessary to reach the best possible outcome for mankind and of course the largest


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profits for themselves. China’s constant refusal to bow to these theories or to British influence dominated British public discourse on China in the 1830s. Those with economic and political interest in a different trade policy in Britain as well as in Asia gave room to the reports of those in the contact zones in Canton and Southeast Asia who wanted free trade with China, like Jardine, Matheson and Crawfurd. They argued that until now the British had been deceived by the Chinese assurances of power, their glamour and spectacles. Especially the embassies, which formerly had been hailed as bringers of new knowledge about China, were now seen as naïve and easily impressed believers.113 In their opinion, only the free, if illicit, trade of the country merchants with the Chinese population at Canton had finally revealed the truth of the falsehood and lack of substance of any of the claims made by the Manchu government. Only the unfortunate adherents of the EIC system still believed these claims, partly because they were as false and full of corruption as the Chinese.114 The timid, but arrogant and false character of the Chinese government thus called for the use of force, which would be successful due to the inferior and weak status of the Chinese government, both in terms of armament and its grip on its country. Here, in the metropolis, the analogy with India, which Macartney had put forward for the first time after his embassy, became dominant once more. Crucial for the comparison was that the Tartars were again seen as a foreign power ruling over the Chinese like the Mughals in India. An anonymous writer stated that That government, like some of the governments which we have destroyed, or but nominally preserved in India, is foreign to the people over whom it exercises dominion; and though some centuries have elapsed since the Tartar progenitors of the actual ruling class in China invaded that country, there still remains as marked a difference between the rulers and the ruled, as between the Mahomedan governing class and the Hindoo people in some provinces of India.115 The only reason the Tartars were still in power was the ‘timidity of the conquered race’. To keep them in this state, the Tartars prohibited every intercourse with foreigners. ‘All appearances are false, or a word from so powerful a government as that of Britain, addressed to the people of China, would dissolve the Chinese government.’116 The supporters of free trade drew the conclusion that as the Chinese government was weak, deceptive and not accepted by the population, consequently it was not deemed necessary to obey its laws. Another

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line of argument was based on the idea of the natural laws of trade. Crawfurd in particular argued that monopolies could never hold: British restrictions on the export of wool could not hinder the trade, thus an ‘imbecile government’ like the Chinese would not be able to prevent the opium trade, even if they really wanted to. The ineffectiveness of man-made laws in contrast with ‘natural laws’ of free trade was a sufficient argument for Crawfurd to justify the violation of Chinese trade laws.117 However, this deconstruction of the Chinese government necessitated the construction of a new agent in British–Chinese relations. Here again the ideas from the contact zones in Canton and Southeast Asia were imported into the metropolitan context. The free trade supporters focused on the ordinary Chinese, who, according to the new knowledge about China, were not anti-commercial, but in contrast extremely inclined to business. Thus, for example, Gützlaff or Hamilton Lindsay recounted in the Asiatic Journal how they were cheerfully received by local Mandarins and businessmen during their trip up the China coast while the higher authorities called them ‘deceitful barbarians’.118 John Crawfurd promoted this idea, writing that ‘They [the Chinese] are in the Eastern what the Hollanders are, or rather were, in the Western world.’119 Thus the Chinese were viewed as being hardly different from the British or Dutch, but restricted by their government and lacking any moral development. The free traders in general created the idea of a China that was not the complete other, not a ‘peculiar’ nation, but was subject to the same laws of commerce and international relations as the rest of the world. If its government did not comply with these laws, it was unnatural, hindering improvement and, in extreme cases, justifying the use of force for the sake of Britain and of the Chinese population. The evangelical influence together with the commercial and strategic interests of the periphery and the free trade ideas in Britain turned British perception of China from one of the complete other into one that one could attack, colonise and improve, because it was principally subject to the same laws of nature and civilisation and thus could be judged and understood by the British. This went hand in hand with the idea that through the study of Chinese language and history one could now understand China, albeit still seeing it as culturally very different from Europe. Thus it became almost the duty of the British to improve the lot of the Chinese population, which had suffered from the restrictions on the benefits of a reciprocal relationship with the British both by their government and the EIC monopoly. Crawfurd wrote thus


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This conduct [the monopoly U.H.] has not been more injurious to ourselves, than to the nations it has so long deprived of the advantages derivable from a free intercourse with Europe . . . That the immeasurable superiority of the people of Europe in knowledge of all sorts, should hitherto have had so little influence upon their Asiatic brethren, is entirely owing to the jealous systems of commercial policy that have obtained amongst us.120 The question of abolishing the monopoly was thus not just a question of economic and social benefit to the British, but also a measure for ‘forwarding the civilisation of the Eastern world’, and it was the British Parliament which had the opportunity and the duty to achieve this.121 The benefits of free trade for society were thus merged with the civilising mission of the British, an issue over which evangelicals and free traders joined their efforts. The adherents of free trade have traditionally been seen as victors in this debate. This does not mean, however, that their opinions were unopposed at the time, nor that criticism of them ceased after 1834. The EIC supporters belonged to the ideological spectrum of the orthodox Tories, later Conservatives,122 who had developed an alternative political economy, adverse to the evangelical free trade liberalism of their fellow Conservatives, Lord Liverpool, Robert Peel, Henry Goulburn and the like. Their economic protectionism was aimed at preserving the constitutional status quo. Therefore, any measures which might devalue property, such as a repeal of the Corn Laws, were seen as dangerous impingements on private property by the state. In their eyes, it was not competition but rather experience and the continuation of the revolutionary settlement of 1688 that provided the best society. At the same time, they believed that through tariffs the government could preserve social stability by providing sufficient consumers for British products. Equally, they saw the Reform Act as dangerously unbalancing the system of virtual representation, which also included the residents in the British colonies. In addition to this, the abolition of the EIC’s administration in India would mean direct control by the British government over Indian patronage.123 In the context of the charter debates in 1813, but even more so in 1834, the supporters of the EIC constructed the idea of a China that corresponded to their protectionist model of the state and international relations. They thus tried to justify the continuation of the EIC trading monopoly with China, in which they frequently also held a personal interest as employees or stockholders of the EIC.124 Like the Free Traders,

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they claimed to have the only true knowledge about China, which differed significantly from that of the former group. They claimed to have derived this knowledge from the experience of those on the spot. For example, Thomas Fisher, member of the London missionary society, clerk in East India House and a frequent correspondent with Robert Morrison, claimed the authority of the missionary as a prominent China expert in his essays about the EIC charter.125 This was despite the fact that he disagreed with Morrison precisely on the question of the advisability of the continuation of the EIC’s monopoly.126 In a similar vein, Montgomery Martin argued that the manufacturers, who were campaigning for free trade, had no knowledge about the real conditions at Canton. This could only be acquired by those on the spot, mainly the EIC servants. He conveniently ignored the support by some of the country traders for the position of the free traders.127 Since the Conservatives thought that it was the fundamental role of the state to protect and form its economy for the benefit of its citizens, it seemed only natural to them that China should have the right to exclude trade if it wanted to. Montgomery Martin, proprietor of the EIC and author on colonial questions, arrived at this conclusion from typical reasoning about the relationship of the state, liberty and free trade. According to him, liberty was maintained by the right balance of the legislature and the institutions of a nation. In other words, the constitutional settlement secured property through the controlling power of the unreformed parliament. Free trade could never guarantee this freedom, since, by its nature, it is dependent on the will of another state, which might even be hostile, to allow reciprocal trade.128 In the mind of the Conservatives, free trade could not possibly be the dominant guideline for external relations, since every state would try to protect its economy in the event of hostilities. In their view, international relations were not defined by natural laws, due to which reciprocity could be expected and demanded. Every state had the right to decide that free trade was not the right measure at a particular time. China, Montgomery argued with references to Klaproth, was a state of great antiquity, largely self-sufficient, which despised foreign trade. And a sovereign of its realm could with all legitimacy decide to reject foreign trade.129 Thus, Britain could hardly rely on China opening itself up for free trade nor demand it. Similarly, Henry Ellis, who had accompanied the Amherst embassy, made it clear that there were no natural laws of trade and international relations from which the British could derive any legal claims against China. In arguing this, he used the increasingly predominant idea of a positive law of nations: since there were


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no treaties with the Chinese, the British could not demand any lifting of the restrictions on trade.130 While the abolition of the EIC monopoly for the trade to India might have really opened the market for British products, this could not serve as an example for the China market, since it was at the discretion of the Chinese government and the Hong merchants whether they wanted to import more British cotton and wool. The end of the EIC trade monopoly would thus hardly make any difference in this respect.131 The Conservatives also vehemently criticised the smuggling activities by the British country merchants and the attempt of Lindsay and Gützlaff to trade at other Chinese ports further up the coast.132 The Chinese refusal to open its gates to reciprocal trade for them meant that the trade on the British side could also only be conducted by a monopolistic company, such as the EIC. They were the only ones who united the British interests on the spot and thus safeguarded them against the monopolistic actions of the Hong merchants.133 The claim that China had the full right to exclude from its territory whomever it wanted went hand in hand with the argument of the EIC supporters that China was still a highly civilised country. The silent reasoning behind this assertion was that in contrast to some Indian states, or the Australian tribes, China had such a high and still flourishing civilisation that the British could hardly be so arrogant as to claim that they had a right to tell China how to act. Thus Thomas Fisher recalled to his readers, ‘The Chinese, it will also be recollected, are not savages, though many of them are pagans; but are an educated and eminently literary nation, having possessed the art of printing for now nearly 1000 years.’134 The only way to interact with the Chinese was thus to appeal to their reason, rather than resorting to the use of force.135 The natural resources of China were quite well developed, leaving little for the British to improve. An exception to this was, of course, the moral character of the Chinese. Fisher agreed with other evangelicals that the Chinese lacked the divine inspiration of Christianity. He vehemently argued however that the mission could never be furthered by military means, which would only damage the reputation of the British and with it that of Christianity.136 Thus, China was considered by the Conservatives to be a civilised and sovereign country, and one which had the right to organise its trade in whichever way it wanted. Nevertheless, it was made clear that China was very different from a European country. The trope of Chinese otherness was highlighted in this context in order to emphasise the need of experts to deal with this country – experts only the EIC

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could provide.137 Ellis saw the EIC as the only way to deal with a government, ‘so totally different, from the rest of the civilized world, in the laws and usages regulating international intercourse’.138 Martin also justified the EIC monopoly and the costs of maintenance for the factory at Canton, by arguing that the EIC servants worked under very special conditions at Canton. He particularly emphasised the lack of diplomatic representation and the hostility of the Chinese to commerce in general. In contrast to Fisher, he regarded the Chinese as only semi-civilised, due to their mistrust of foreigners, highlighting the difficulties which the EIC servants managed to overcome.139 Chinese otherness was therefore used as an important argument against the idea of the free traders that institutions such as the EIC factory at Canton were unnecessary financial burdens on the consumers, because they served no real economic purpose.140 As Anna Gambles has pointed out, the Conservatives considered the fall of the EIC trade monopoly and the potential end of its administration in India as a major constitutional issue, since direct rule over India by the Crown brought the danger of increased patronage at the hand of the Crown, thus threatening the balanced constitution of Britain.141 According to this argument, the monopoly on the China trade was particularly important because it was crucial for the finances of the EIC administration in India. Thus, in the eyes of the Conservatives, considering the question of the China trade solely under commercial aspects was a crucial mistake the free traders made.142 Only by being independent, in terms of finances as well as political, could the EIC prevent the British Empire from the fate of the Spanish or Portuguese, where the Crown had gained too much power through its new possessions.143 In the context of the EIC monopoly, it was not anti-imperialism the Conservative accused their adversaries of, but rather too aggressive an attitude towards the sovereignty of a foreign state. The EIC supporters had constructed the image of a mighty, sovereign and at least a half-civilised empire with a government and a population that was averse to external trade. In addition, it was the complete other in terms of its culture and character, so different that contact with it could only be handled by experts, such as the EIC servants. Direct contact with this peculiar and arrogant people would only endanger British national honour and the orderly conduct of trade which was so important for the welfare of the British Empire in India. In the Conservative image of China, there was no industrious commercial-minded population suppressed by its government. Nor did the idea of Tartar invaders suppressing the Chinese play any significant role. While the supporters


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of the end of a monopoly were quite open about the fact that they saw the threat of force at least as the only way to deal with the Chinese, the Conservatives argued against this. They argued that it would be contrary to international law to enter into such an unprovoked war. Secondly, in their image of China, the Chinese were not so weak that they might not fight back, and thirdly, the Russians might profit most from such an attempt by using the ensuing chaos to occupy parts of China in the North.144 From this perspective, there was no reason why China should open its gates to free trade, nor why it could be forced to do so. The EIC, which had conquered India under various pretences which were intended to legitimise their meddling in the affairs of Indian states, now insisted on international law and the advisability of peace to safeguard their last and most profitable trading monopoly. When the question of the renewal of the EIC charter came before the Houses of Parliament from 1829 onwards, it soon became clear that those supporting the trade monopoly of the EIC had lost the battle over the continuation of the monopoly as well as the meaning of China. In February 1830, Select Committees of both Houses were appointed to look into the question of ‘the affairs of the Company and the trade between Great Britain and China’. All the way, the work of the Committees and the discussion in Parliament were clearly overshadowed by the question of the Reform Bill.145 The first, separate report on the question of the China trade, however, was already concluded in 1830. It claimed to lay down impartially the results of the interviews with traders and former EIC servants. Nevertheless, it already displayed a clear bias towards ending the monopoly.146 In particular, the idea of the industrious and commercial Chinese population had clearly found its way from Southeast Asia to London. On the character of the Chinese it said that they were ‘intelligent, industrious and persevering’. This character mark was ‘strikingly manifested in the Chinese settler on the Eastern islands, whose object in emigrating is the accumulation of wealth with a view of returning into their own country, to which they have a strong attachment.’147 The end of the monopoly for trade to China met with little resistance during the parliamentary debate, even from George Staunton and Sir Robert Inglis in the Commons or Lord Ellenborough in the Lords, and was passed by the Lords in August 1833.148 The end of the EIC’s trading monopoly was a decisive turning point in the way the British saw their relation with China in the sense that the Crown was now immediately involved in the trade and diplomatic relations with China. While the two embassies had failed to establish

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a direct representative of the Crown in China, the government now decided to do so unilaterally in Canton. Of course the Trade Commission was not yet a full-fledged diplomatic mission. Glenn Melancon has argued that it was constructed with peaceful intentions to accommodate the Chinese and it was claimed that it was established due to the wishes of the Viceroy of Canton.149 Nevertheless, it was to hold full control over British subjects in China, including jurisdiction and the right to levy duties.150 The establishment of a direct representative of the British Crown with jurisdictional powers had not been negotiated with the Chinese, because the British government was convinced after the Amherst embassy that it would not be possible for diplomatic embassies to China to be successful. Neither, however, did it choose to evade the problems with the Chinese by re-locating the trade to an island outside the Chinese Empire, as Staunton had suggested. The end of the EIC’s commercial branch also had the effect of turning it into no more than a mere administrative unit for the rule of India.151 Thus, it ended a special early modern way to conduct trade and foreign policy outside Europe. The British state took immediate control over its policy and representation in this region, forcing a British representative upon the Chinese, if necessary. Clearly, therefore, this diplomatic break cannot be seen as ‘China’s entry into international relations’, as Greenberg has put it, but rather it must be construed as a one sided attempt by the British to establish relations under the terms they thought proper. The Macartney embassy had opened the possibility to negotiate with China within a European system of international relations, from sovereign to sovereign, while still accepting the Chinese as an equal partner. The second embassy under Lord Amherst had resulted in a significant damaging of the image of the Chinese Emperor. In 1833, the British government tried to complete its control over the British trading to China and thus Britain’s China relation, ignoring the special circumstances in Canton which would make it impossible for the new institution of Superintendency to function without the use of British military power.152 This does not mean that the British government at this point had already decided on a ‘forward policy’ which would lead to opening China by military means. An open war in the Far East was considered to be expensive and might have the undesirable effect of opening China not just to the British but also to its rivals, including Russia.153 The intense public debate about the end of the EIC monopoly, the fact that there was now a representative of the British crown in Canton as well as the opening of trade, however, did significantly increase the interest of


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the British public in British relations with China. Over the course of the next six years, new efforts were made to bring more knowledge about China into the public sphere of the British Isles. The new publications and attempts to collect information on China followed the pattern set during the period discussed. John Davis returned from Macao in 1835 because he felt that the present system of superintendents was doomed to fail. In Britain, he became one of the prominent ‘China-experts’, and in 1836, he published a ‘General description of the empire of China’. Characteristically, while his claim was to write a systematic history of China, which could replace the works of Jesuits such as Du Halde’s, its main focus is not China as such, but rather the history of its interaction with the Europeans, especially the English. He deals with this in the first three chapters and also in the more general discussion of Chinese geography, customs and manners. The English experience at Canton and during the two embassies is predominant.154 Equally, George Staunton continued to promote British study of Chinese.155 His translation of the Chinese Penal Code also remained the authoritative reference work for all negotiations with China.156 The missionaries in the periphery continued to play their role as mediators of knowledge about China. Karl Gützlaff and William Medhurst both published histories and descriptions of China. Like Davis, Medhurst focused to a considerable extent on the history of the relationship between Europeans and China.157 Gützlaff in contrast attempted a historical, geographical and ethnographical description of China that was more or less only focused on China itself. Nevertheless his book was also clearly supposed to provide the British public with knowledge about China which could then form the basis for their judgement about the necessity and form of further interaction with that empire.158 His accounts also re-introduced the image of the deceitful, debased Chinese opium smoker.159 More prominent, however, especially in his later works is still the idea of the commercially inclined and industrious Chinese.160 The ‘opening up’ of China was now the next step on the agenda of those who had worked for the repeal of the EIC monopoly. This became even more important since the opening of trade had increased and diversified the British economic investment in trade to China.161 With the end of the EIC monopoly an internal goal for a campaign for changed trading conditions had disappeared. The only remaining factor was the Chinese government itself, which, according to the consensus after the Amherst embassy, could not be approached by way of diplomatic means.

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News about the surrender of opium to Commissioner Lin reached the London Newspapers in August 1839.162 The country merchants and those who had similar aims in Britain saw their opportunity to press for a military engagement by the British state. Melancon has shown how this coincided with interests mainly resulting from British internal politics which in the end led to the decision by Palmerston to go to war with China.163 The alliance which had been formed to lobby for the repeal of the EIC charter between the country merchants in Asia and the manufacturing and trading interest in Manchester and Liverpool was now used to press for a military solution to the conflict at Canton.164 The debate in favour or against the Opium War centred on the question of its legality and its morality, focusing on the question of whether the opium trade in itself was immoral.165 It also put the question of British honour into the foreground once more. In this context, the government and the parliamentary opposition argued as to whether a war would reinstate Britain’s honour or rather further undermine it.166 It thus emphasised certain aspects of ideas about China which had already been discussed during the debate in 1834 and before that in Canton. The notion that international law was not applicable to China since it itself did not act according to it became even more important.167 In this context, the British opium merchants and their supporters emphasised that the Chinese had tolerated the opium trade for years. Their attempt to finally suppress it was therefore portrayed as a treacherous and hypocritical act, showing the degraded nature of the Chinese culture as such.168 Also the military weakness of the Chinese, an idea that had found its way into the metropolitan debate via the Macartney embassy and the reports about the conflicts in Canton, was now crucial.169 More than everything else, however, the actions of Commissioner Lin were described as an attack on British honour and its position in the world.170 Succumbing to his actions might, according to George Staunton, even endanger Britain’s Indian Empire.171 At the same time, missionary influence meant that the morality of the opium trade was increasingly discussed, even before the crisis in 1839. Walter Medhurst decried the destructive effects of the drug on the Chinese population. He drew his information from his experience in Southeast Asia and one trip up the China coast and vividly described the harm inflicted by opium on the Chinese.172 In A. S. Thelwall’s publication, we can see evangelical zeal combined with the interests of those merchants unhappy with the competition in the China trade through the opium smugglers. He described the destructive effects of the drug strongly.173 The main thrust of his publication was to reach a parliamentary decision against the British opium


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trade, arguing that this decision would open China for the trade with other British goods. Like others connected to the evangelical cause he was afraid that the association of the opium trade with Christian Britons would bring the Christian cause into disrepute with the Chinese.174 The missionary environment and their supporters thus re-emphasised the image of a population that had to be saved by the British and that was no longer capable of doing so of its own accord. Medhurst and others drew parallels with the abolition of slavery to mobilise their fellow countrymen against the opium trade.175 The Chinese population was portrayed as mentally weak, undisciplined and craving for sensational satisfaction in this context, ready to succumb to the pleasures of opium, victimised by the opium trader.176 Far from the idea of the industrious worker, the Chinese and China were described as declining in productivity, turning into a failing country.177 China and opium abuse with its dangers to the stability of society became synonyms in these years, which would become even stronger throughout the Victorian period.178 Despite the evangelical disapproval of the opium trade, the war that followed was not unwanted by them and the missionaries lobbied hard to gain advantages for their mission from the peace settlement.179 In addition to this, the missionary discourse on China in the context of opium created the image of a population in need of British help, which was unable to morally improve itself. Those in favour of the war claimed that opium had no more harmful effects than gin in Britain and that the Chinese were well able to decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to use the drug.180 Others accepted the destructive effects of the opium use and the problematic nature of the opium trade but thought that the war was necessary nevertheless to defend national honour.181 Next to the growing importance of the question of the morality of the opium trade, the opponents of the war used similar arguments to those in 1834, emphasising the sovereignty of the Chinese empire and its right to regulate trade as it saw fit, while condemning the illegality of the opium smuggle.182 The supporters of the EIC saw the crises as proof that the new system had failed, while at the same time justifying the continued revenue from Opium farming in India.183 The debate about the Opium War therefore served as one of the last bastions in their fight against the free traders. In this context the Chinese served as a positive counter-image to the free traders and Palmerston’s superintendents: Throughout their while proceedings, the local authorities, and especially the Imperial Commissioner, have, in the execution of a very difficult measure, evinced a combination of firmness, gentleness, and

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straightforwardness, which offers a mortifying contrast to the vacillation, intimidation, and hesitation, which have marked the conduct of the British Superintendent from first to last.184 As we have seen, this was a position that did no longer exist amongst the British in Canton, who had prepared a more aggressive policy throughout the 1830s. As in 1833, the conservative forces supporting the rights of the Chinese Empire as a sovereign country against the free traders lost the battle for public opinion as well as the vote in parliament. Commissioner Lin had allegedly insulted an officer of the British crown, and destroyed British Crown property. As Melancon has described, the Melbourne government finally decided to send troops to China to avoid the accusation that they watched passively while British honour and property was attacked by the arrogant Chinese.185 In the decades after the Macartney embassy, the meanings of China formed in the contact zones in Asia had become prominent at home. They shaped the ideas of British society and politics from the embassy to the Opium War and beyond. The idea of China in the metropolis became divided. On the one hand, it was perceived as a metaphor for entertainment, luxury and excess, on the other, as a central element in the economic and power system of the British Empire. The genealogy of knowledge about China in the metropolis was fundamentally interlinked with the British imperial expansion in the East. A separate set of knowledge in the academic context, as on the European continent, did not develop. China therefore became intrinsically associated with India and British expansion in the mind of many Britons. With the monopoly debate of 1834 the knowledge of China formed in the peripheral contact zones became for the first time prominent in British parliamentary debates and the accompanying public discussion in Britain itself. China, once mainly being associated with entertainment, leisure and utopian ideas was now firmly established as a political and economic interest for Britain and the trade in opium. The position of a Superintendent, appointed by the British Crown itself, established a permanent direct political relationship on the British side with China, which also made the idea of a violation of British honour by the Chinese conceivable in London. Even if the government had no wish in 1834 to push for an opening of China with military means and thus potentially to disturb the status quo, a war with China had become imaginable in the metropolis as well. The massive publication activity of those who returned from Asia to Britain in the years after 1834 meant that


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the idea ‘to open China’ gained a strong position in the British public sphere. The debate, which had started with the goal of abolishing the EIC monopoly on the tea trade, therefore did not stop in 1834; rather it only slightly changed its target until it found a new reference point in the opium trade crisis of 1839. The economic importance of the China trade for the British Empire, both opium and tea certainly cannot be overemphasised and it is unlikely that the British government would have passively witnessed its long term suppression. Palmerston might not have wished for another expansive war, but at the same time he was also adamant that the Chinese Empire would at last have to accept British power in the world, expressed in the person of the Chief Superintendent. The contemporary discussion about the motives for war, however, shows how difficult it was for the government to justify military action in order to provide protection for an illegal traffic in drugs. Only the dramatic change of the British image of China in the metropolis, based on what was seen as the new knowledge about China which had been formed in the epistemological framework of the British imperial expansion, made it possible to declare war on this former model of civilisation, the mythical Cathay.

6 Epilogue

The first British–Chinese War ended with the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842. The Qing Emperor had to pay to the British compensation for the war costs and for the destroyed opium. The Hong system was to be abolished, five ports opened to the British merchants and Hong Kong to be ceded to the British Empire.1 The treaty also insisted on the equality between officers of the British Queen and those of the Chinese Empire. It even stipulated exactly in which form the British officers and merchants were allowed to address their Chinese counterparts. Never again should Britons be humiliated by Chinese officials demanding ‘petitions’.2 The webs of empire were prominent in the set up of the first British colony on Chinese soil. The instructions for the governor of new Crown Colony were adapted from those for New Zealand.3 A central question in the early discussion about the establishment of Hong Kong was how to treat the Queen’s new Chinese subjects. The Chinese negotiators tried to achieve that all Chinese subjects should remain under Chinese jurisdiction. It was a concept that was not wholly foreign to the British. Raffles, after all, had first given the Chinese in Singapore the right to live under Chinese jurisdiction. In the end, however, this had been changed and the Straits Settlements as well as the Chinese diaspora population in Mauritius now served as examples for Chinese allegedly living happily under British laws.4 After a prolonged debate with the Chinese negotiators and between Henry Pottinger and London, no mention of administration of Chinese law in Hong Kong by Chinese officials was made in the Supplementary Treaty of the Bogue in October 1843, as the British feared that this would undermine their sovereignty in Hong Kong.5 However, the ordinance developed by John Davis, who became governor of Hong Kong in 1844, allowed punishment of Chinese criminals according to the laws of China, but by British courts. 188

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He justified this by pointing to the special cultural circumstance of the new colony, where so many inhabitants came from mainland China.6 Questions, which had in a similar manner been debated in the context of the Straits Settlements, thus surfaced again in the context of Hong Kong. John Davis even described Singapore as the ‘prototype’ for Hong Kong, not only as a free port, but also because it was populated mainly by Chinese.7 Part of this legacy was to treat the Chinese as useful workers. However, they had to be closely watched and would only really understand the language of their own culture when it came to punishment. Hong Kong became a new ‘contact zone’ between Chinese and British, in which British ideas and knowledge about China were formed, as well as slowly evolving into a new centre for the opium trade.8 Access to the treaty ports and possession of some parts of Chinese soil meant that the British could now consider China ‘opened’. The British believed that they could define how the Chinese had to interact with European powers and that they could impose their image of China on them. Hong Kong therefore attracted all those who had eagerly been waiting in front of the closed gates, bring with them the connections of the British imperial expansion. The Anglo-Chinese College moved to the new British possession in 1843. The original plan was to reorganise the College substantially and to add a preparatory school.9 When the new British government did not give sufficient funds, it was transformed into the Hong Kong theological seminar. It was led by James Legge, who had come to Hong Kong from Malacca and who would later become the first professor for Chinese at the University of Oxford.10 In addition to this, the missionary society set up branches in the various treaty ports. The first British governor, Sir Henry Pottinger granted money to the Morrison Education Society with the aim to educate the personnel needed for the new colony.11 Other elements of a colonial society, such as a botanical garden, were soon established. As soon as possible those connected with the new British presence in China ventured into the interior of the land to gather more information about this ‘peculiar’ country. As Fa-ti Fan has described, the new power relations and ‘contact zones’ soon changed the way the British formed scientific knowledge about China.12 From the late 18th century onwards, the British have to be thought of as people, whose intellectual and cultural developments can only be understood in the context of its imperial expansion and the global spread of the British people. The epistemology shaped during the British imperial expansion in the East was distributed through the networks of

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those involved in British strategic, economic and missionary interests in the region and adapted to the use in relation to other Asian cultures. It had seemingly become impossible for the British to think of and to describe the Chinese culture, language, religion or its political entity in a different context. The cultural and intellectual history of British–Chinese relations emerged therefore from the 1760s within a field of British Asian interests. It produced an image of the Chinese as either willing subjects of the British Empire or as an obstacle to progress. Knowledge of Chinese language, law and religion was formed to enable British influence on China, and ultimately, to justify the use of force against the Chinese. The question was no longer how China could serve as a model for Britain but rather how it fitted into British expansionist interests, militarily, culturally and economically. As a result, China and the Chinese had been incorporated into the mental map of the British expansion in a variety of ways long before the Opium War. In this period, the meanings of China for the British developed in the different ‘contact zones’ in Bengal, Southeast Asia, Canton and Britain in which the British encountered the Chinese Empire, the Chinese people, or their goods. While the intellectual developments in Britain or Europe clearly had an influence in these ‘contact zones’, the encounters with specific groups of Chinese and the power relations on the spot were just as important. The process by which the Chinese were assigned a specific position in the British world view was no simple one-way flow of ideas from the metropolis to the periphery. Knowledge created in the context of discovery and colonial rule found its way back to Britain, where it influenced theories about the nature of mankind, which in turn shaped the perception of those who went to China and Southeast Asia. India was at the centre of British Asian interests. It had an influence on British understanding of China in several ways. For Lord Macartney, his encounter with the Indian situation shaped his political assessment of China. The conquest of Singapore and other parts of Southeast Asia grew directly out of the British bridgehead in Bengal and Madras. In a different way the relatively close British military presence in India meant that the Britons in Canton felt they could present themselves with more self-confidence. For the study of Chinese language and the education of the Chinese, ideas formed in India, in the context of the College of Fort William for example, could be as influential as those coming directly from the metropolis. Particularly in the field of education, experience in India often served as a model for missionary activities in Southeast Asia.

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There was however never a unifying ‘Orientalism’, which equated all Asian countries. Ideas about China remained strongly indebted to the heritage of enlightenment thinking about China and influenced by the Jesuit reports. Thus the meanings of China had quite a different intellectual genealogy from those, for example, of the Middle East. China remained singled out as an ancient and high civilisation that might have been comparable to European ones, but which now had lost its momentum. By separating the zones in which knowledge about China was produced and used it becomes evident that it was only within a European sphere of communication that the British could develop the idea of a China they could study, influence or even rule. In the context of Southeast Asia, it became easier to see themselves as masters over the Chinese, and as possessing knowledge of their culture and language than in Canton, but even here the resistance of the Chinese, for example, to accept the European education system unmodified and the multitude of their dialects and secret societies led to the feeling that the British were excluded from information vital for their security and interests. An unchallenged ‘Orientalism’ could and did therefore only exist within Europe itself. The study of the different interactions of the Britons in the various ‘contact zones’ has also highlighted the importance of the British selfimage and its acceptance by other people during the Britain’s imperial expansion. This was especially true with regard to China. Its former position as an equal or superior civilisation made it impossible simply to ignore Chinese ideas about the British. By establishing the right image of themselves the British hoped to influence this power without using military means and to ascertain their identity. The image could differ, however according to the circumstances. In the context of the British expansion of power from Bengal, China was seen as a mighty power, a war with which would be potentially costly and a high risk. Accordingly, the British tried to present themselves to the Chinese in Tibet and Nepal as a great, but peaceful power, emphasising the idea that they only led wars to defend themselves. A similar self-image was presented to the Chinese Emperor in the Macartney and Amherst embassies. However, the EIC and the country merchants in Canton hoped to convince the Chinese government that Britain was a great power with superior military means, which would protect its citizens under all circumstances. This found its expression in rejecting the use of the word ‘yi’ in official documents as well as calling for warships if British honour was deemed to have been violated. The idea of Britain as a great Asian power thus

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became a crucial element of British identity in the East, evolving during this period with the growing influence of the British in India and their military victories against Indian and French enemies. At the same time, British identity was defined in contrast to the Chinese. While the Chinese were seen to be as crafty and industrious as any good Briton, they were considered to lack the moral aptitude which would have made Chinese rule positive for the people of Southeast Asia. Here, a Briton, who through superior knowledge and his high moral standard improved the lot of the native population, was clearly contrasted with the Chinese, who had almost equal possibilities but only worked for self-gain. In each of these ‘contact zones’ the British thus developed differing ideas of what it meant to be British, depending on the ‘Other’ they found themselves confronted with and the influence of the British presence in the region. However, the view of Britain as a strong, militarily victorious and just ruling power in India became central to the idea of Britishness in Asia, even if it was emphasised in differing ways. Those Britons who returned to Britain, often after having lived abroad half their lives, brought home with them the meanings not only of Britishness formed in Asia, but also their networks, knowledge and interests. The second British Empire therefore created a knowledge of China which spanned the different points of British imperial interest in Asia and moved it away from the knowledge structures created by its French and German contemporaries.

Notes

1

Introduction

1. See: D. E. Mungello, Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology (Stuttgart, 1985); D. M. Jones, The Image of China in Western Social and Political Thought (New York, 2001), pp. 14–28; on the early modern contact between Europe and China and the Jesuit mission see also: J. D. Spence, Chinese Roundabout. Essays in History and Culture (New York, London, 1992), pp. 11–49, 78–84; J. D. Spence, The China Helpers. Western Advisers in China 1620–1960 (London, Sydney, 1969), pp. 3–33; J. D. Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (London, Boston, 1985). 2. D. Porter, Ideographia. The Chinese Cipher in Early Modern Europe (Stanford, 2001), pp. 3–9, 34–132. 3. On Chinoiserie see: W. W. Appelton, A Cycle of Cathay. The Chinese Vogue in England During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (New York, 1951); H. Honour, Chinoiserie: The Vision of Cathay (London, 1961), pp. 90–120; Porter, Ideographia, pp. 133–193. 4. L. Dermigny, La Chine et l’occident. La commerce a Canton au XVIIIe siecle, 1719–1833 (4 vols., Paris, 1964), Vol. I, p. 19. 5. R. Markley, The Far East and the English Imagination, 1600–1730 (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 4, 30–136. 6. P. A. Van Dyke, The Canton Trade. Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700– 1845 (Hong Kong, 2005), p. 5. 7. M. Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800–42 (Cambridge, 1951), p. 3. 8. Dermigny, La Chine, Vol. III, pp. 931–934; H. V. Bowen, The Business of Empire. The East India Company and Imperial Britain, 1756–1833 (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 241–246. 9. See: H. V. Bowen, ‘Tea, Tribute and the East India Company, c. 1750– 1775’, in S. Taylor, R. Connors and C. Jones (eds.), Hanoverian Britain and Empire. Essays in Memory of Philip Lawson (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 158– 177; R. Connors, ‘Opium and Imperial Expansion: The East India Company in Eighteenth-Century Asia’, in S. Taylor, R. Connors and C. Jones (eds.), Hanoverian Britain and Empire, Essays in Memory of Philip Lawson (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 248–267; Bowen, Business of Empire, pp. 222–234. See also for an overview: G. Blue, ‘Opium for China: The British Connection’, in T. Brook and B. T. Wakabayashi (eds.), Opium Regimes. China, Britain, and Japan, 1839–1952 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 2000), pp. 31–54, esp. pp. 32–36. 10. E. H. Pritchard, The Crucial Years of Early Anglo-Chinese Relations, 1750–1800 (Washington, 2000), pp. 121–141. See also for a detailed account, also of the flexibility of the system: Van Dyke, Canton Trade, pp. 5–33. 11. Greenberg, British Trade, pp. 10–12, 26–27.

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Notes

12. Bowen, Business of Empire, pp. 222–234. 13. This is also true for Morse’s book on the history of the international relations of China and the west: H. B. Morse, International Relations of the Chinese Empire (London, 1910–1918), pp. 41–117, see also: J. B. Eames, The English in China (London, 1909), pp. 584–585, which was mainly written as a guide for further British policy towards China at the time. 14. G. Graham, The China Station: War and Diplomacy, 1830–1860 (Oxford, 1978), pp. 12–64. 15. P. W. Fay, The Opium War, 1840–1842 (New York and London, 1975), pp. 2–98; H.-P. Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War (Cambridge, 1964), pp. 1–62; T. Chung, China and the Brave New World. Study of the Origins of the Opium War (Durham, NC, 1978); B. Inglis, The Opium War (London et al., 1976), pp. 15–76; M. Collis, Foreign Mud: Being an Account of the Opium Imbroglio at Canton in the 1830’s & the Anglo-Chinese War that Followed (New York, 1947), pp. 9–88; J. K. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast: The Opening of the Treaty Ports: 1842–54 (Cambridge, MA, 1953), pp. 57–73. 16. Greenberg, British Trade. 17. H. B. Morse, Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China 1635–1834 (Oxford, 1929). 18. Pritchard, Crucial Years, pp. 111, 118. 19. Dermigny, La Chine. 20. See for example: Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, pp. 1–12. 21. G. Melancon, ‘Honor in Opium? The British declaration of War on China, 1835–1840’, International History Review, 21, 4 (1999), pp. 854–874; G. Melancon, ‘Peaceful intentions. The First British Trade Commission in China 1833–5’, Historical Research, 72, 180 (2000), pp. 33–47; G. Melancon, Britain’s China Policy and the Opium Crisis. Balancing Drugs, Violence and National Honour, 1833–1840 (Aldershot, 2003). 22. Compare especially W. R. Berger, China-Bild und China-Mode im Europa der Aufklärung (Köln, 1990); A. Hsia, Chinesia: The European Construction of China in the Literature of the 17th and 18th Centuries (Tübingen, 1998); G. Blue, ‘China and Western Social Thought in the Modern Period’, in T. Brook and G. Blue (eds.), China and Historical Capitalism. Genealogies of Sinological Knowledge (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 57–110; J. Ching and W. Oxtoby (eds.), Discovering China. European Interpretations in the Enlightenment (Library of the History of ideas, Vol. VII, Rochester, 1992); J. D. Spence, The Chan’s Great Continent (London, 1998), pp. 92–100; W. Demel, Als Fremde in China (München, 1992); S. Zhang, ‘British Views on China During the Time of the Embassies of Lord Macartney and Lord Amherst (1790–1820)’, PhD thesis (Birkbeck College, University of London, 1990); R. Ballaster, Fabulous Orients. Fictions of the East in England 1662–1785 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 193–252. For Asia in total see: J. Osterhammel, Die Entzauberung Asiens (München, 1998). 23. R. S. Dawson, The Chinese Chameleon – An Analysis of European Conceptions of Chinese Civilization (London, 1967), pp. 132–154 mainly focuses on the later period of the mission in China; Blue, ‘China and Western Social Thought’, p. 72. 24. C. Mackerras, Western Images of China (2nd edn., Oxford, New York, 1999), pp. 39–58.

Notes

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25. Appelton, Cycle of Cathay, p. 140; see also: Dawson, Chinese Chameleon, p. 132. 26. Appelton, Cycle of Cathay, pp. 169–170. 27. Spence, The Chan’s Great Continent, pp. 51–61. 28. W. Demel, ‘Europäisches Überlegenheitsgefühl und die Entdeckung Chinas. Ein Beitrag zur Frage der Rückwirkung der europäischen Expansion auf Europa’, in T. Beck, A. Menninger and T. Schleich (eds.), Kolumbus’ Erben. Europäische Expansion und überseeische Ethnien im Ersten Kolonialzeitalter, 1415–1815 (Darmstadt, 1992), pp. 99–145, esp. pp. 114–116. 29. Spence, The Chan’s Great Continent, pp. 41–80. 30. P. J. Marshall and G. Williams, The Great Map of Mankind (London, 1982), pp. 67–74, esp. pp. 91–94. 31. Porter, Ideographia. 32. N. J. Girardot, The Victorian Translation of China. James Legge’s Oriental Pilgrimage (Berkeley et al., 2002). 33. C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914. Global Connection and Comparison (Oxford et al., 2004). 34. T. Harper, ‘Empire, Diaspora and the Languages of Globalism, 1850–1914’, in A. G. Hopkins (ed.), Globalization in World History (New York, 2002), pp. 141–166; see the volume in general for a new approach by historians to globalisation: A. G. Hopkins (ed.), Globalization in World History (London, 2002). 35. K. Wilson (ed.), A New Imperial History. Culture, Identity and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660–1840 (Cambridge, 2004); C. Hall (ed.), Cultures of Empire. Colonizers in Britain and the Empire in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. A Reader (Manchester, 2000); D. Kennedy, ‘Imperial History and Post-Colonial Theory’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 24, 3 (1996), pp. 345–363. 36. T. Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race. Aryanism in the British Empire (Basingstoke, New York, 2002). 37. A. Lester, Imperial Networks. Creating Identities in Nineteenth-Century South Africa and Britain (London, New York, 2001), p. 5. 38. C. Hall, ‘Histories, Empires and the Post-Colonial Moment’, in I. Chambers and L. Curti (eds.), The Post-Colonial Question. Common Skies, Divided Horizons (London, New York, 1996), pp. 65–78, esp. pp. 70–76; see also on the importance of different spaces and places in the empire: M. Ogborn and C. W. J. Withers (eds.), Georgian Geographies. Essays on Space, Place and Landscape in the Eighteenth Century (Manchester, 2004). 39. P. Howell and D. Lambert, ‘Sir John Pope Hennessy and Colonial Government: Humanitarianism and the Translation of Slavery in the Imperial Network’, in D. Lambert and A. Lester (eds.), Colonial Lives Across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 228–257; L. Brown, ‘Inter-Colonial Migration and the Refashioning of Indentured Labour: Arthur Gordon in Trinidad, Mauritius and Fiji (1866– 1880)’, in D. Lambert and A. Lester (eds.), Colonial Lives Across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 204–227; Z. Laidlaw, ‘Richard Bourke: Irish Liberalism Tempered by Empire’, in D. Lambert and A. Lester (eds.), Colonial Lives Across the British

40.

41. 42.

43.

44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

56.

57.

58. 59.

Notes Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 113–144. P. D. Morgan, ‘Encounters Between British and “Indigenous” Peoples, c. 1500–c. 1800’, in M. Daunton and R. Halpern (eds.), Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600–1850 (London, 1999), pp. 42–78, esp. pp. 56–62. T. R. Metcalf, Imperial Connections. India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860–1920 (Berkeley et al., 2007), esp. pp. 1–15. C. Hall, Civilising Subjects. Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830–1867 (Cambridge, 2002), see also: K. Wilson, The Island Race. Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century (London, New York, 2003). F. Cooper and A. L. Stoler, ‘Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda’, in F. Cooper and A. L. Stoler (eds.), Tensions of Empire. Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1997), pp. 1–58. H. Kaelble (ed.), Vergleich und Transfer. Komperatistik in den Sozial-, Geschichtsund Kulturwissenschaften (Frankfurt, 2003), esp. pp. 369–468. M. Werner and B. Zimmermann, ‘Vergleich, Transfer, Verflechtung. Der Ansatz der Histoire croisée und die Herausforderung des Transnationalen’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 28 (2002), pp. 607–636. H. Saussy, Great Walls of Discourse and Other Adventures in Cultural China (Cambridge, MA, London, 2001), esp. pp. 1–15, 15–34. E. Said, Orientalism. Western Conceptions of the Orient (4th edn., London, 1995). See on this also: Girardot, Victorian Translation, pp. 14–15. H. Hägerdal, ‘The Orientalism Debate and the Chinese Wall: An Essay on Said and Sinology’, Itinerario, 21, 3 (1997), pp. 19–40, esp. p. 27. Jones, Image of China, esp. pp. 1–14, 37–64, 67–96. E. F. Irschick, Dialogue and History. Constructing South India, 1795–1895 (Berkeley a. o., 1994). H. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London, 2004), esp. pp. 102–122. C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India 1780–1870 (Cambridge, 1996). C. Windler, La diplomatie comme expérience de l’autre. Consuls francais au Maghreb (1700–1840) (Genève, 2002), pp. 30–31. M. S. Dodson, ‘Orientalism, Sanskrit Scholarship, and Education in Colonial India, ca. 1775–1875’, PhD thesis (University of Cambridge, 2003), pp. 25–26; M. S. Dodson, Orientalism, Empire, and National Culture. India 1770–1880 (Basingstoke, 2007). B. Latour, Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford, 2005); B. Latour, Science in Action. How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society (Cambridge, MA, 1987). For further reflections on the importance of location for the production of knowledge see: P. Burke, A Social History of Knowledge. From Gutenberg to Diderot (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 53–80. M. L. Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York, 1992). Wilson, Island Race, p. 4.

10.1057/9780230246751 - Asian Empire and British Knowledge, Ulrike Hillemann

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2

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The Decline of Mythical China

1. See: L. M. Brockey, Journey to the East. The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724 (Cambridge, MA; London, 2007). 2. See on the question of translation of culture: Saussy, Great Walls of Discourse, pp. 15–34. 3. See on the early period of information transfer through the Jesuits and the Jesuit mission: Mungello, Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology; Berger, China-Bild, esp. pp. 52–85; Spence, The Chan’s Great Continent, pp. 83–88, 95–99; Spence, Memory Palace. See also for the British context, how China could be imagined as a positive model: R. Batchelor, ‘Concealing the Bounds: Imagining the British Nation Through China’, in F. A. Nussbaum (ed.), The Global Eighteenth Century (Baltimore, London, 2003), pp. 79–92. 4. On the natural world see R. Drayton, Nature’s Government. Science, Imperial Britain, and the ‘Improvement’ of the World (New Haven, London, 2000), pp. 67–78; Marshall and Williams, Map of Mankind, pp. 85, 91–94, 175–176. 5. A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (2 vols., London, 1776), Vol. II, Book IV, pp. 279–280. 6. See on this issue: C. A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1788–1830 (London, 1989); Drayton, Nature’s Government, pp. 69, 85–94. 7. H. Home, Lord Kames, The Gentleman Farmer Being an Attempt to Improve Agriculture, by Subjecting It to the Test of Rational Principles (Edinburgh, 1776), p. xiv. 8. On the idea of progress in the enlightenment and its influence on the idea of language see: D. Spadafora, The Idea of Progress in Eighteenth-Century Britain (New Haven, London, 1990). 9. For the ideas about Chinese language in the 17th and early 18th century see: Porter, Ideographia, pp. 34–49; J. Knowlson, Universal Language Schemes in England and France 1600–1800 (Toronto, Buffalo, 1975), pp. 23–27. 10. Porter, Ideographia, pp. 133–192. While Porter makes some interesting interpretations of the phenomenon of Chinoiserie, he does not convincingly prove why the associations with Chinoiserie should give a better explanation of the decreasing evaluation of Chinese than a study of the change of the epistemology at the time. 11. Knowlson, Universal Language, pp. 143–149. Only in this context the idea of a universal language, derived from a common primitive one, found some supporters. 12. U. Ricken, Sprachtheorie und Weltanschauung in der europäischen Aufklärung zur Geschichte der Sprachtheorie des 18. Jahrhunderts und ihrer europäischen Rezeption nach der Französischen Revolution (Berlin, 1990), p. 22. 13. See: H. Aarsleff, The Study of Language in England, 1780–1860 (Minneapolis, London, 1983), pp. 17–24. 14. J. Harris, Hermes, or a Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Language and Universal Grammar (London, 1751), pp. 372, 407–425. See also: Ricken, Sprachtheorie, pp. 41–42. 15. The search for an universal language continued however also at the end of the 18th century, esp. during the French Revolution: Knowlson, Universal Language, pp. 143–209.

198

Notes

16. W. Warburton, The Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated. In Nine Books (4th edn., 3 vols., London, 1765), Vol. III, p. 91. 17. T. Percy, Miscellaneous Pieces Relating to the Chinese (London, 1762), p. 11. 18. Ricken, Sprachtheorie, p. 44. 19. L. Monboddo, Of the Origin and Progress of Language (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1774), Vol. II, pp. 5–6, 20–21. 20. Ricken, Sprachtheorie, pp. 43–44; Monboddo, Origin, pp. 86–93. 21. Monboddo, Origin, Vol. II, p. 426. 22. See W. P. Klein, ‘Die linguistische Erfassung des Hebräischen, Chinesischen und Finnischen am Beginn der Neuzeit. Eine vergleichende Studie zur frühen Rezeption nicht-indogermanischer Sprachen in der traditionellen Grammatik’, Historiographia Linguistica, 28, 1/2(2001), pp. 7–39, 53–54. 23. Monboddo, Origin, Vol. II, pp. 438–439. 24. Ibid., pp. 434–439. 25. Percy, Miscellaneous Pieces, p. 10. 26. See also: A. Gerbi, The Dispute of the New World. The History of a Polemic, 1750–1900 (rev. and enl. edn., Pittsburgh, 1973), p. 152. 27. A. Appadurai, The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge, 1986), esp. pp. 3–63. 28. Maxine Berg has argued that the creation of a consumer market in novelty goods through Asian trade stimulated European invention and thus aided the industrial revolution: M. Berg, ‘In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods in the Eighteenth Century’, Past and Present, 182 (2004), pp. 85–142; CLXXXII (2004), pp. 85–142, esp. pp. 99–132. 29. O. Goldsmith, The Citizen of the World; or Letters from a Chinese Philosopher Residing in London, to His Friends in the East (2 vols., Dublin, 1762), Vol. I, p. 56. 30. Honour, Chinoiserie, pp. 68–82. 31. On English Rococo Chinoiserie see: Ibid., pp. 125–143. 32. See for example the title of the design books: W. Halfpenny, New Designs for Chinese Temples, Triumphal Arches, Garden Seats, Palings etc (London, 1750); W. Halfpenny, Rural Architecture in the Chinese Taste (London, 1752); W. Halfpenny and J. Halfpenny, Chinese and Gothic Architecture Properly Ornamented (London, 1752); T. Chippendale, The Gentleman and CabinetMaker’s Director (London, 1755); S. W. Chambers, Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines and Utensils (London, 1757); P. Decker, Chinese Architecture, Civil and Ornamental (Farnborough, Gregg, 1968). See also: Porter, Ideographia, p. 141. 33. Honour, Chinoiserie, pp. 153, 155. 34. J. Cawthorn, ‘Of Taste’, Poems (London, 1771), pp. 110–118, esp. p. 115. 35. Porter, Ideographia, pp. 134–135. 36. J. Pillement, The Ladies Amusement or Whole Art of Japanning Made Easy. Illustrated in Upwards Fifteen Hundred Different Designs . . . Consisting of Flowers, Shells, Figures, Birds, Insects, Landscapes, Shipping, Beasts, Vases, Borders, etc. (Facsimile edn., London, 1959), p. 4; Porter, Ideographia, pp. 139, 171. 37. Chambers, Designs, p. 15. 38. S. W. Chambers, A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening (Dublin, 1773), p. 63. 39. See also on the distinctive foreignness Chambers evokes: Porter, Ideographia, pp. 174–181.

Notes

199

40. W. Mason, An Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers, Author of a Late Dissertation on Oriental Gardening (London, 1773), p. 16. 41. See also: I. Chase, ‘William Mason and Sir William Chambers’ Dissertation on Oriental Gardening’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 35 (1936), pp. 517–529, esp. p. 528f. 42. The World, XXVI (28 June 1753), quoted in: Porter, Ideographia, p. 171. 43. On 18th century ideas on taste see: J. Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination. English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1997), pp. 88–94, 98–111. 44. See also: P. Lawson (ed.), ‘Tea, Vice and the English State, 1660–1784’, A Taste for Empire and Glory. Studies in British Overseas Expansion, 1660–1800 (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 13–15. 45. Greenberg, British Trade, p. 3. 46. J. B. Du Halde, The General History of China: Containing a Geographical, Historical, Chronological, Political and Physical Description of the Empire of China . . . (4 vols., London, 1736), Vol. II, p. 10. 47. H.-C. Mui and L. H. Mui, The Management of Monopoly: A Study of the English East India Company’s Conduct of Its Tea Trade, 1784–1833 (Vancouver, 1984), p. 133. 48. J. Hanway (ed.), ‘An Essay on Tea. Considered as Pernicious to Health; Obstructing Industry; and Impoverishing the Nation . . .’, A Journal of Eight Days Journey from Portsmouth to Kingston Upon Thames; Through Southampton, Wiltshire etc. . . . (London, 1756), pp. 200–361. 49. On the balance of trade idea in mercantilism see: D. A. Irwin, Against the Tide. An Intellectual History of Free Trade (Princeton, 1996), pp. 34–38. 50. B. Kowaleski-Wallace, ‘Tea, Gender, and Domesticity in Eighteenth-Century England’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 23 (1994), pp. 131–145, esp. pp. 135–138. 51. J. S. Taylor, Jonas Hanway. Founder of the Marine Society. Charity and Policy in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London, Berkeley, 1985), esp. pp. 52–57. 52. Porter, Ideographia, p. 198. 53. Ibid., pp. 194–198. 54. Hanway, ‘An Essay on Tea’, p. 300. 55. On the insecurity about the British expansion in this period and the wealth that came with it see: Wilson, Island Race, pp. 49–51, 56; P. J. Marshall, ‘A Free Though Conquering People’. Britain and Asia in the Eighteenth Century. An Inaugural Lecture in the Rhodes Chair of Imperial History Delivered at King’s College London on Thursday 5 March 1981 (London, 1981), pp. 6–10; T. W. Nechtman, ‘A Jewel in the Crown? Indian Wealth in Domestic Britain in the Late Eighteenth Century’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 41, 1 (2007), pp. 71–86. 56. P. Pindar (ed.), ‘Ode to Coffee’, Works (London, 1812), Vol. 4, pp. 183–185. 57. J. Simmons (ed.), Robert Southey: Letters from England (Gloucester, 1984), p. 192. 58. J. Morley, Regency Design 1790–1840. Gardens, Buildings, Interiors, Furniture (London, 1993), pp. 342–343. 59. Ibid., p. 336. 60. J. Oinkel, The Royal Pavilion Brighton (New York, 1983); pp. 34–38; J. Morley, The Making of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton: Designs and Drawings (London, 1984), pp. 114–119.

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Notes

61. W. Alexander, The Costume of China (London, 1805); W. Alexander, Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese (London, 1814). 62. G. H. Mason, The Costume of China (London, 1800); G. H. Mason, The Punishments of China (London, 1801). 63. M. Archer, ‘From Cathay to China. The Drawings of William Alexander, 1792–4’, History Today, December (1962), pp. 864–871, esp. p. 870f., M. Archer, ‘Works by William Alexander and James Wales’, in S. Simmonds and S. Digby (eds.), The Royal Asiatic Society: Its History and Treasures (Leiden, 1979), pp. 118–122, esp. p. 119. 64. F. Wood, ‘Closely Observed China: From William Alexander’s Sketches to His Published Work’, British Library Journal, 24, 1 (1998), pp. 98–121, esp. p. 108; P. Connor and S. Legouix Solman, William Alexander: An English Artist in Imperial China (Brighton, 1981), p. 27. 65. G. L. Staunton, An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China (2 vols., London, 1797), Vol. II, p. 233. 66. Peter Manson has pointed out the importance of exotic and ethnographic painting in the 16th and 17th century. Even though the drawings for example by Albert Eckhout (1607–1665) are partly already ethnographic and not just exotic representations, the difference to the pictures of the late 18th century is evident. The earlier paintings still stood in the symbolic tradition and they were less relevant for the exploration of the world. See: P. Mason, Infelicities. Representations of the Exotic (Baltimore, London, 1998), pp. 43–63; B. Smith, Imagining the Pacific. In the Wake of the Cook Voyages (New Haven, London, 1992), pp. 28–36, 81; B. Stafford, Voyage into Substance. Art, Science, Nature and the Illustrated Travel Account, 1760–1840 (Cambridge, MA, 1984), p. 51. 67. B. F. Tobin, Picturing Imperial Power. Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth-Century British Painting (Durham, London, 1999), pp. 146–147. 68. Pratt, Imperial Eyes, p. 64. 69. Alexander, Costume, No. 2. 70. W. H. Pyne, The Costume of Great Britain (London, 1808). 71. Alexander, Costume, No. 42. 72. Ibid., No. 12. 73. Ibid. 74. Mason, Costume. 75. C. Clunas, Chinese Export Watercolours (London, 1984), pp. 11, 24. 76. Ibid., p. 32. 77. Tobin, Picturing Imperial Power, pp. 140–143. 78. Alexander, Costume, No. 2. 79. Alexander, Picturesque Representations, No. 23. 80. William Alexander: A young Chinese Scholar (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London); William Alexander: Chinese girl (Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art, London). 81. Times, 9 April 1827, p. 1, Issue 13248, col. A; Times, 8 May 1827, p. 1, Issue 13273, col. A; Times, 21 May 1827, p. 2, Issue 13284, col. E. 82. J. Dinkel, The Royal Pavilion Brighton (New York, 1983), pp. 34–38; J. Morley, The Making of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton: Designs and Drawings (London, 1984), pp. 114–119.

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83. Dinkel, Royal Pavilion, p. 43. 84. Ibid., pp. 43, 51–53. 85. L. Colley, Britons. Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (3rd edn., London, 1996), pp. 220–223, 243–250. 86. Dinkel, Royal Pavilion, p. 46. 87. Ibid. 88. See also on the satirical attacks of George: M. Paris, ‘Contestation ou consolidation du pouvoir? Aspects de la manipulation de themes traditionels dans la satire politique, Londres 1819–20’, History of European Ideas, 3, 3 (1982), pp. 273–280, esp. p. 275f. Paris notes that the satirists mainly play with the moral theme of the King who is not able to fulfil his role as good and moral King, father of the nation and his family, a stereotype which will become predominant during the reign of Queen Victoria. 89. S. Parissien, George IV. The Grand Entertainment (London, 2001), pp. 339–354. 90. On ‘Fum’ as a nickname for George see: Ibid., p. 351. 91. On the Prince’s and his brother’s attempt to style themselves as heroes of the British nation and their failure to appeal to the same sense of Britishness as the majority of the population see as well as on the cartoon by William Williams: Ibid., pp. 268–281, 351. 92. At this point, the Edinburgh Review, however, in contrast to the members of the embassy, still gave a positive image of a father-like Chinese Emperor in order to highlight the failings of the embassy and the EIC with which it was connected: Brockey, Journey to the East, Vol. LVIII, February 1818, p. 438.

3 At the China Coast 1. Bayly, Imperial Meridian, pp. 98–99. 2. H. V. Bowen, ‘British India, 1765–1813, the Metropolitan Context’, in P. Marshall, J. (ed.), The Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 2001), Vol. II, pp. 530–551. 3. C. H. Philips, The East India Company, 1784–1834 (Manchester, 1961), pp. 23–34. 4. Bowen, Business of Empire, pp. 222–234. 5. ‘Instructions to Lt.-Col. Cathcart, Nov. 30th 1787’, in H. B. Morse (ed.), The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834 (Oxford, 1926), Vol. 2, pp. 160–167, esp. p. 160; H. Dundas, ‘Instructions to Lord Macartney, Sept. 8, 1792’, in H. B. Morse (ed.), The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China 1635–1834 (5 vols., London, 1926), Vol. 2, pp. 232–242, esp. p. 232. 6. On the role of the scientific instruments during the encounter of the embassy see: S. Schaffer, ‘L’inventaire de l’astronome. Le commerce d’instruments scientifique au XVIIIe siècle (Angleterre-Chine-Pacifique)’, Annales Histoire, Sciences sociales, 60, 4 (2005), pp. 791–816, esp. pp. 796– 807; J. Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar. Qing Guests Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793 (London, 1995), pp. 77–78, 147–148. 7. ‘Cathcart Instructions’, p. 164; Dundas, ‘Instructions to Lord Macartney, Sept. 8, 1792’, p. 238.

202

Notes

8. J. L. Cranmer-Byng, ‘Russian and British Interests in the Far East, 1791– 1793’, Canadian Slavonic Papers, X, 3 (1968), pp. 357–375. 9. Drayton, Nature’s Government, pp. 66–81. 10. P. J. Marshall, ‘Britain and China in the Late Eighteenth Century’, in R. A. Bickers (ed.), Ritual and Diplomacy: The Macartney Mission to China 1792–1794 (London, 1993), pp. 11–30, esp. p. 15. 11. See also: Ibid., p. 15. 12. See for example: R. A. Bickers (ed.), Ritual and Diplomacy. The Macartney Mission to China 1792–1794, Papers Presented at the 1992 Conference of the British-Association-for-Chinese-Studies Marking the Bicentenary of the Macartney Mission to China (London, 1995); A. Peyrefitte, L’Empire immobile ou le choc des mondes (Paris, 1989); A. Singer, The Lion and the Dragon: The Story of the First British Embassy to the Court of the Emperor Quian Long in Peking, 1792–1794 (London, 1992); H. H. Robbins, Our First Ambassador to China: An Account of the Life of George, Earl of Macartney (London, 1908) to name just a few. Additionally, it has been mentioned in almost every book on Sino-British relations. 13. Osterhammel, Die Entzauberung Asiens, p. 380. 14. Especially: Peyrefitte, Choc; Pritchard, Crucial Years, pp. 379–384; J. L. Cranmer-Byng (ed.), ‘Introduction’, in An Embassy to China. Being the Journal Kept by Lord Macartney During His Embassy to the Emperor of Ch’ien-lung 1793–1794 (London, 1962), pp. 1–60, esp. pp. 34–38. 15. Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar. 16. M. Mancall, Russian and China. Their Diplomatic Relations to 1728 (Cambridge, MA, 1971), p. 223, for details on the Treaty of Nerchinsk between the Russian and the Qing Empire (1689) see: pp. 156–158. 17. ‘Cathcart Instructions’, p. 161. As Mark Mancall mentions briefly, the British based their demand for an embassy in Beijing on the precedent of the Russian ecclesiastical mission: Mancall, Russian and China, pp. 272–273; Demel, Als Fremde in China, pp. 142–143. 18. B. J. L. Cranmer, ‘Russian and British Interests in the Far East, 1791–3’ Canadian Slavonic Papers, X, 3 (1968), pp. 357–375, esp. p. 375. 19. Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar, p. 78. 20. I. George, ‘Letter from King George III to the Emperor of China’, in H. B. Morse (ed.), The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China 1635–1834 (5 vols., London, 1926), Vol. II, pp. 244–247. 21. H. Dundas, ‘Instructions to Lord Macartney, Sept. 8, 1792’. Ibid., pp. 232– 242, esp. p. 240. 22. Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar, esp. pp. 76, 80–82; I follow Hevia’s argument of the importance of the ritual in the Macartney embassy for the British side, even though diplomatic relations before 1815 did not necessarily require the ‘recognition of the equality of their sovereigns’ but quite often also the recognition of their different status. 23. Ibid., pp. 62–65; P. J. Marshall, ‘Lord Macartney, India and China: The Two Faces of the Enlightenment’, South Asia. Journal of South Asian Studies, 19 (1996), pp. 121–133. 24. On earlier distrust of the Chinese and Jesuits as interpreters see S. R. Stifler, ‘The Language Students of the East India Company’s Canton Factory’, Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, LXVIII(1937),

Notes

25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46.

47.

48. 49. 50. 51.

203

pp. 46–82, esp. p. 49, n 9; G. Anson and R. Walter, A Voyage Round the World in the Years 1740–1744 (London, 1748), pp. 417, 424–425. D. Ludden, ‘Orientalist Empiricism: Transformations of Colonial Knowledge’, in C. Breckenridge and P. van der Veer (eds.), Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament. Perspectives on South Asia (Philadelphia, 1993), pp. 250–278, esp. p. 255; Bayly, Empire and Information, p. 288. Staunton, Account, Vol. I, pp. 39–41, 395–396. Stifler, ‘Language Students’, p. 46. Staunton, Account, Vol. I, p. 451; Vol. II, pp. 14, 142–143. Ibid., Vol. II, p. 592. Cranmer-Byng, Journal, p. 210. Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar, pp. 90–94. Cranmer-Byng, Journal, p. 236. Ibid., p. 237. Ibid., pp. 222–223. Ibid., pp. 239–240. Ibid., pp. 212–213. See quote from his notes in: Marshall, ‘Lord Macartney, India and China: The Two Faces of the Enlightenment’, p. 127. Dundas, ‘Instructions to Lord Macartney, Sept. 8, 1792’, p. 236. Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar, pp. 74–79. On the history of European embassies and the kowtow question see: Demel, Als Fremde in China, pp. 127–136. Windler, Diplomatie, p. 435. Demel, Als Fremde in China, pp. 132–133; J. Bell, Travels from St. Petersburg in Russia, to Diverse Parts of Asia (2 vols., Glasgow, 1763), Vol. II, pp. 3–4. Thus also the argument in Staunton, Account, Vol. II, p. 131. Cranmer-Byng, Journal, pp. 84–85, 99–100. Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar, pp. 30–56; for a critic of this position and Hevia’s reply to it see: J. W. Esherick, ‘Cherishing Sources from Afra’, Modern China, 24, 4 (1998), pp. 135–161; J. W. Esherick, ‘Tradutore, Traditore’, Modern China, 24, 3 (1998), pp. 328–332; J. Hevia, ‘Postpolemical Historiography: A Response to Joseph W. Esherick’, Modern China, 24, 3 (1998), pp. 319–327. Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar, pp. 163–166. J. Barrow, Travels in China Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey Through the Country from Peking to Canton (London, 1806), p. 118. For the European context see on this: J. Paulmann, Pomp und Politik: Monarchenbegegnungen in Europa zwischen Ancien Régime und Erstem Weltkrieg (Paderborn, 2000), esp. p. 17. Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar, pp. 170–178, 223–224. Cranmer-Byng, Journal, p. 214. Ibid., pp. 152–153. See a map of one part of China with the provinces: ‘A Chart, on Mercartor’s Projection Containing the Track and Sounding of the Lion, the Hindostan, and Tendres, from Turon-Bay in Cochin-China to the Mouth of the Peiho River in the Gulph of Pe-tche-lee or Pekin by J. Barrow’, in Staunton, Account, Vol. III; see also the maps by J. Barrow and Henry William

204

52.

53.

54. 55. 56.

57. 58.

59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

65.

66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

Notes Parish in Staunton, Account, Vol. III; Cranmer-Byng, Journal, pp. 66–67, 83, 106; British Library, Manuscript Department: Mss Add. 35174 (Alexander, William: A journal of the Lord Macartney’s Embassy to China, 1792–94. Journal of a Voyage to Peking, the Metropolis of China, in the Indostan Indiaman, accompanying Lord Macartney as Ambassador to the Emperor of China), p. 22a; Staunton, Account, Vol. II, pp. 165–167; Vol. II, pp. 21–22, 274–276. T. M. Tsao, ‘Representing China to the British Public in the Age of Free Trade, ca. 1833–1844’ (State University of New York, Stony Brook, 2000), pp. 28–33. E.g. Staunton, Account, Vol. I, pp. 517–518; Vol. II, p. 384; S. Holmes, The Journal of Mr. Samuel Holmes, Sargent-Major, During His Attendance, as One of the Guard on Lord Macartney’s Embassy to China (London, 1789), p. 98; A. Anderson, A Narrative of the British Embassy to China (Basilea, 1795), p. 95. Cranmer-Byng, Journal, pp. 104–105. See especially: Barrow, Travels, pp. 3–4. P. Pindar (ed.), ‘Odes to Kien Long I, II, III’, Works (London, 1812), Vol. 2, pp. 361–374; P. Pindar (ed.), ‘A Lyric Epistle to Lord Macartney, Ambassador to the Court of China’, Works (London, 1812), Vol. 2, pp. 349–358; Anderson, Narrative; W. Winterbotham, An Historical, Geographical and Philosophical View of the Chinese Empire. To Which Is Added, a Copious Account of Lord Macartney’s Embassy, Compiled from Original Communications (London, 1795). G. T. Staunton, Memoirs of the Chief Incidents of the Public Life of Sir George Thomas Staunton (London, 1856), pp. 3–27. China through Western Eyes, Manuscript Records of Traders, Travellers, Missionaries & Diplomats, 1792–1942, Part 2: Sources from the William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, Reel 27, Papers of George Leonard & George Thomas Staunton, 1743–1801: George T. Staunton, Letter to mother, Canton, 25 January 1811; Staunton, Memoirs, pp. 25–26. Morse, Chronicles, Vol. IV, p. 164. Ibid., Vol. IV, p. 346. On the employees of European East India Companies in Canton until 1833 see also: Dermigny, La Chine, Vol. I, pp. 353–369. Pritchard, Crucial Years, pp. 133–134. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, pp. 10–13. For the development of maritime trade in China see: W. E. Cheong, The Hong Merchants of Canton: Chinese Merchants in Sino-Western Trade (Richmond, 1997), pp. 1–17. BL, APAC, CFR, Secret Consultations, IOR/G/12/273, dated 29 November 1820; 4 December 1820; 5 December 1820; 6 December 1820; 8 December 1820; 13 December 1820. Morse, Chronicles, Vol. III, pp. 9–13, 67–68. Canton Register, 26 May 1831. Ibid., Vol. 3, No. 4, dated 15 February 1830, p. 13. Ibid., Vol. 3, No. 24, dated 4 December 1830, pp. 105–106. For example: Ibid., Vol. 1, No. 8, dated 18 February 1828, p. 31. For example: BL, APAC, CFR, IOR/G/12/196, Separate Secret Letter to China from the Court of Directors, dated 12 March 1817.

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205

72. Morse, Chronicles, Vol. II, pp. 94–110. 73. Demel, Als Fremde in China, pp. 109–111. 74. F.-T. Fan, British Naturalists in Qing China. Science, Empire, and the Cultural Encounter (Cambridge, MA; London, 2004), p. 32. 75. Ibid. 76. On the background for the general insolvency of the Hong merchants for the period till 1798 see: Cheong, Hong Merchants, pp. 246–289. 77. On the image of the treacherous Chinese merchant see: Demel, Als Fremde in China, pp. 152–160; see also Mui and Mui, The Management of Monopoly, pp. 19–20. 78. BL, APAC, CFR, Secret Consultation, IOR/G/12/27, dated 1 March 1817. 79. For example: BL, APAC, CFR, Secret Consultation, IOR/G/12/272, dated 20 February 1818. 80. On the suspicion of the Qing government of Hong merchants see also: F. J. Wakeman, Strangers at the Gate. Social Disorder in South China, 1839–1861 (2nd edn., Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1997), p. 48. 81. BL, APAC, CFR, IOR/G/12/196, Extract Secret Letter to China, dated 7 April 1818; BL, APAC, CFR, IOR/G/12/196, Separate Secret Letter to China from the Court of Directors, dated 12 March 1817. 82. The corruption of local officials in general was certainly a problem that several Chinese literati of the time were concerned about. See: J. M. Polachek, The Inner Opium War (Cambridge, MA; London, 1992), esp. p. 37. On the wide spread of corruption and its partial acceptance by the emperor during the Qing dynasty see: N. E. Park, ‘Corruption in Eighteenth-Century China’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 56, 4 (1997), pp. 967–1005. 83. Morse, Chronicles, Vol. III, pp. 202–203; BL, APAC, CFR, Secret Consultation, IOR/G/12/196, Letter from Charles Grant and Thomas Reid to the Earl of Buckinghamshire, dated 28 July 1815; BL, APAC, CFR, Secret Consultation, IOR/G/12/273, dated 11 November 1821. For a very positive view of the Canton system see the American writer W. C. Hunter, The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton Before the Treaty Days 1825–44 (Taipei, 1965), p. 26. 84. See also: G. W. Keeton, The Development of Extraterritoriality in China (London et al., 1928), pp. 47–70. 85. On the debate about the law in India see: E. Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford, 1959), pp. 1–80, 140–233; Metcalf, Imperial Connections, pp. 17–18. 86. On Vattel and his influence see: F. Ruddy, International Law in the Enlightenment. The Background of Emmerich de Vattel’s Le Droit des Gens (New York, 1975), esp. pp. 111–115, 281–285. On the development of ideas on the law of nations in this period see also: A. Nussbaum, A Concise History of the Laws of Nations (New York, 1954), pp. 147–185. 87. J. D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (London, 1990), pp. 123–128. 88. BL, APAC, CFR, Consultations, IOR/G/12/79, dated 4 February 1785. 89. BL, APAC, CFR, Consultations, IOR/G/12/79, dated 4 February 1785; Keeton, Extraterritoriality, p. 42. 90. Ibid. In 1787 an Act 1787 finally gave the EIC this right: Keeton, Extraterritoriality, p. 44. 91. Keeton points this out in a footnote: Keeton, Extraterritoriality, p. 42. 92. Ibid.

206

Notes

93. BL, APAC, CFR, Consultations, IOR/G/12/128, dated 22 March 1800. 94. On a further example, the Neptune affair, see: P. Tuck, ‘Law and Disorder on the China Coast: The Sailors of the Neptune and an Affray at Canton, 1807’, in R. Harding, A. Javis and A. Kennedy (eds.), British Ships in China Seas. 1700 to the Present Day (Liverpool, 2004), pp. 83–98, esp. pp. 92–93. 95. On the increased rejection of Chinese law by the Europeans see also: Keeton, Extraterritoriality, pp. 47–70. However, he mainly fails to notice the conflict between the EIC in Canton and Court of Directors in this point. 96. BL, APAC, CFR, IOR/G/12/196, Extract Secret Letter to China, dated 7 April 1818. 97. BL, APAC, CFR, Letter by the Select Committee, Secret Communications, IOR/G/12/272, dated 2 December 1818. 98. BL, APAC, CFR, Secret Communications, IOR/G/12/272, dated 25 July 1819. 99. BL, APAC, CFR, Secret Consultation, IOR/G12/273, dated 22 November 1821. See on the cruelty of the Chinese legal system also: Mason, Punishments. 100. Canton Register, Vol. III, No. 8, dated 15 April 1830, p. 31. See on their attitude to Chinese law also: Canton Register, Vol. I, No. 21, dated 24 May 1828, p. 82; Canton Register, Vol. I, No. 24, dated 14 July 1828, p. 72; Canton Register, Vol. III, No. 17, dated 25 August 1830; Canton Register, Vol. V, No. 10, dated 18 July 1832, p. 69. 101. See also Keeton, Extraterritoriality, pp. 69–70. 102. B. S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of knowledge: The British in India (Princeton, 1996), p. 21. 103. See for example: J. J. Klor de Alva, ‘Language, Politics, and Translation: Colonial Discourse and Classical Nahuatl in New Spain’, in R. Warren (ed.), The Art of Translation. Voices from the Field (Boston, 1989), pp. 143–162; A. Pennycook, English and the Discourses of Colonialism (London, New York, 1998); J. Fabian, Language and Colonial Power. The Appropriation of Swahili in the Former Belgian Congon, 1880–1938 (Cambridge, 1986); G. Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest. Literary Study and British Rule in India (Dehli, 1998); M. S. Dodson, ‘Translating Science, Translating Empire: The Power of Language in Colonial North India’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 47, 4 (2005), pp. 809–835; D. Lelyveld, ‘The Fate of Hindustani: Colonial Knowledge and the Project of a National Language’, in C. Breckenridge and P. van der Veer (eds.), Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament. Perspectives on South Asia (Philadelphia, 1993), pp. 189–214. 104. See: Wakeman, Strangers at the Gate, p. 49. 105. Stifler, ‘Language Students’, p. 48. 106. See for example: Ibid., p. 49, n. 9; Anson and Walter, Voyage Round the World, pp. 417, 424–425. On the system of linguists see: Van Dyke, Canton Trade, pp. 77–93. 107. Anson and Walter, Voyage Round the World, p. 425. 108. Stifler, ‘Language Students’, p. 50. 109. See for example: A. Q. Montucci, The Answer of A. Montucci . . . to the Conductors of the Critical Review and Monthly Magazine, Concerning Their Review of a Title-Page and Prefatory Letter, Accompanying Proposals for a Treatise on the Chinese Language (1801); J. Hager, An Explanation of the Elementary Characters of the Chinese . . . Anlysis . . . Ancient Symbols and Hieroglyphics (London, 1801).

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110. See for example: W. Milne, A Retrospect on the First Ten Years of the Protestant Mission to China (Now, in Connection with the Malay, Denominated, the UltraGanges Missions. Accompanied with Miscellaneous Remarks on the Literature, History and Mythology of China) (Malacca, 1820), pp. 43–48. 111. J. F. Davis, Chinese Novels. Translated from the Originals; to Which Are Added Proverbs and Moral Maxims, Collected from Their Classical Books and Other Sources. The Whole Prefaced by Observations on the Language and Literature of China (London, 1822), pp. 1–2. 112. Barrow, Travels, p. 615. 113. Davis, Chinese Novels, p. 5. See also: J. Marshman, ‘The Works of Confucius; Containing the Original Text, with a Translation’ to Which Is Prefixed a Dissertation on the Chinese Language and Character (Serampore, 1809), pp. ii–iii. 114. Milne, First Ten Years, p. 50. 115. G. Cannon, The Life and Mind of Oriental Jones: Sir William Jones, the Father of Modern Linguistics (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 25, 39, 46. 116. Aarsleff, Study of Language, p. 127. 117. W. Jones, A Grammar of the Persian Language (London, 1771), pp. iv, xiv–xv. 118. See also: Ballantyne, Orientalism, p. 26. 119. W. Jones (ed.), ‘The Fifth Anniversary Discourse, on the Tartars’, Discourses Delivered at the Asiatick Society 1785–1792 (with a new Introduction by Roy Harris edn., Tokyo, 1993), pp. 71–102, esp. p. 71. 120. Aarsleff, Study of Language, pp. 129–134. 121. W. Jones (ed.), ‘The Seventh Anniversary Discourse, on the Chinese’, Discourses Delivered at the Asiatick Society 1785–1792 (with a new Introduction by Roy Harris edn., Tokyo, 1993), pp. 95–113, 137–161. 122. W. Jones (ed.), ‘Discourse the Ninth on the Origin and Families of Nations’, Discourses Delivered at the Asiatick Society 1785–1792, with a New Introduction by Roy Harris (Tokyo, 1993), pp. 185–204, esp. p. 186. See also: Aarsleff, Study of Language, p. 136. 123. See, esp. for the following years: J. Joseph, E., ‘A Matter of Consequenz: Humboldt, Race and the Genius of the Chinese Language’, Historiographia Linguistica, XXVI, 1/2 (1999), pp. 89–148, esp. p. 96. 124. Aarsleff, Study of Language, p. 139. See also: R. Schwab, La Renaissance oriental (Paris, 1950), pp. 52–53. 125. Stifler, ‘Language Students’, pp. 50–65. 126. On the new triad: Joseph, ‘Consequenz’, p. 93. 127. Davis, Chinese Novels, p. 38. 128. Ibid., pp. 1–2; General Plan of the Anglo-Chinese College Forming at Malacca (Malacca, 1818), p. 7. 129. W. W. Moseley, The Origin of the First Protestant Mission to China (London, 1842), p. 20. 130. Ibid., p. 113. 131. See for example: Milne, First Ten Years, p. 356; British and Foreign Bible Society, The Second Report of the British and Foreign Bible Society (London, 1806), p. 77. 132. Bayly, Imperial Meridian, pp. 142, 150. 133. E. Morrison, Memoirs of the Life and Labours of Robert Morrison (London, 1839), Vol. II, Appendix, p. 14. 134. See for example: Milne, First Ten Years, p. 89.

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Notes

135. Stifler, ‘Language Students’, p. 66. 136. BL, APAC, CFR, Select Committee Consultations, IOR/G/12/274, dated 17 January 1822. See on a further discussion of the problematic of the translation of yi/barbarian: L. H. Liu, The Clash of Empires. The Invention of China in Modern World Making (Cambridge, MA; London, 2004), pp. 31–69. As this paragraph shows, she is however wrong in dating the beginning of this conflict to 1832, see pp. 41–42. Rather, it was already problematic at least from the Macartney embassy onwards. 137. BL, APAC, CFR, Select Committee Consultations, IOR/G/12/274, dated 17 December 1822. 138. Ibid. 139. BL, APAC, CFR, Select Committee Consultations, Draft Letter to Hong Merchants, IOR/G/12/274, dated 17 December 1822. 140. BL, APAC, CFR, Select Committee Consultations, IOR/G/12/274, dated 24 December 1822. 141. Ibid. 142. Canton Register, Vol. III, No. 23, dated 15 November 1830, p. 99. 143. Ibid., Vol. III, No. 21, dated 24 May 1828, p. 82. 144. Ibid., Supplement to the Canton Register, dated 21 June 1828. 145. T. H. Barrett, ‘Chinese Religion in English Guise: The History of an Illusion’, Modern Asian Studies, 39, 3 (2005), pp. 509–534, esp. pp. 511–516. 146. Marshall and Williams, Map of Mankind, pp. 108–111, 116–117. 147. P. Harrison, ‘Religion’ and the Religions in the English Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1990), p. 3. 148. Ibid., pp. 130–146 et passim. 149. Marshall and Williams, Map of Mankind, p. 98. 150. For the importance of the pre-history of the mission during the 18th century see: A. Porter, Religion Versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914 (Manchester, 2004), pp. 15–38. 151. D. W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (London, 1989), p. 5. 152. W. W. Moseley (ed.), ‘A Memoir on the Importance and Practicability of Translating and Printing the Holy Scriptures in the Chinese Language’, The Origin of the First Protestant Mission to China . . . (London, 1842), pp. 95–116, esp. pp. 98–99. 153. Ibid., pp. 96–98. 154. B. Stanley, The Bible and the Flag: Protestant Missions and British Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Leicester, 1990), pp. 58–61. 155. Porter, Religion Versus Empire, pp. 11, 316–330 and passim. 156. S. Thorne, Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in Nineteenth-Century England (Stanford, CA, 1999), esp. pp. 36–44, 73–79. 157. Thorne’s simple equation of the missionary movement with the rising middle class is however problematic, see also: A. Burns, ‘Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in Nineteenth-Century England by Susan Thorne (Review)’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, XXIX, 2 (2001), pp. 172–174. 158. Porter, Religion Versus Empire, pp. 64–90. Porter is right to remark that despite this the priority of missionaries was never to build the British Empire, but rather only to use it for their purpose. See: Porter, Religion Versus Empire, pp. 116–117.

Notes

209

159. On the relationship between the missionaries and trade, see: A. Porter, ‘ “Commerce and Christianity”: The Rise and Fall of a Nineteenth-Century Missionary Slogan’, Historical Journal, XVIII (1985), pp. 76, 597–621. Stanley attributes this combination of Christianity and Commerce not to a link between the missionaries and the middle-class opposition, but rather to the intrusion of Benthamite ideas into the belief of the nineteenth-century Christians (pp. 74–76). In the earlier period under discussion here the missionaries did not yet believe in the benefit of commerce for the spread of the Gospel and often tried to disassociate themselves from the traders. However, they still sometimes, as in this case, tried to show where the general benefits of a mission to Britain could be [see Porter, ‘ “Commerce and Christianity”: The Rise and Fall of a Nineteenth-Century Missionary Slogan’, esp. pp. 601–602; Porter, Religion Versus Empire, p. 95]. 160. Moseley, ‘Memoir’, p. 98, footnote 4. 161. Milne, First Ten Years, pp. 64–65; B. Harrison, Waiting for China. The Anglo-Chinese College at Malacca, 1818–1843 and Early 19th Century Mission (Hong Kong, 1979) p. 52; Morrison, Memoirs of Robert Morrison, pp. 187–189. 162. Harrison, Waiting for China, p. 52; SOAS, CWM, South China. Incoming Correspondence, Box 1, 1803–1817, R. Morrison to G. Burder, dated 11 December 1809. 163. Morrison, Memoirs of Robert Morrison, p. 188; Milne, First Ten Years, p. 64. 164. SOAS, CWM, South China. Incoming Correspondence, Box 1, 1803–1817, R. Morrison to G. Burder, dated 11 December 1809. 165. The Select Committee at Canton would even defend his presence against their superiors in London, who were much more suspicious of the presence of a missionary who might irritate the Chinese. His knowledge of Chinese was indispensable for the periphery. BL, APAC, Secret Consultation, IOR/G/12/271, dated 12 October 1815. 166. M. A. Rubinstein, The Origins of the Anglo-American Missionary Enterprise in China, 1807–1840 (London, 1996), pp. 83–87, 92. 167. Morrison, Memoirs of Robert Morrison, Vol. I, p. 163. 168. SOAS, CWM, South China. Incoming Correspondence, Box 1, 1803–1817, R. Morrison, dated 1 April 1809. On these services see also: Rubinstein, Origins, p. 82. 169. Morrison, Memoirs of Robert Morrison, pp. 200, 202, 211, 382; Milne, First Ten Years, pp. 123–127. 170. B. Stanley (ed.), ‘Christian Missions and the Enlightenment: A Reevaluation’, Christian Missions and the Enlightenment (Cambridge et al., 2001), pp. 1–21, esp. p. 12. 171. His earlier language teachers were Roman Catholics, which seems to have it made easier to hire them (Rubinstein, Origins, p. 78). Even if Morrison sometimes saw the Catholic missionaries as fellow soldiers for Christ, he often enough tried to teach his Chinese teachers that Protestantism was the only true religion: Morrison, Memoirs of Robert Morrison, pp. 165–166, 168–169. 172. See for example: SOAS, CWM, South China. Incoming Correspondence, Box 1, 1803–1817 (Duplicate from and abstract of the original letter) R. Morrison to LMS, dated 14 December 1809.

210

173. 174. 175.

176.

177. 178. 179. 180.

181. 182.

183. 184.

185. 186.

Notes Kate Teltscher has described a similar pattern for the Lutheran missionaries in India in the 18th century: K. Teltscher, India Inscribed. European and British Writing on India (Dehli, 1995), pp. 96–97. B. Hilton, The Age of Atonement. The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795–1865 (Oxford, 1988), pp. 19–20. SOAS, CWM, South China. Incoming Correspondence, Box 1, 1803–1817, R. Morrison to LMS, dated 2 April 1815. SOAS, CWM, South China. Incoming Correspondence, Box 1, 1803–1817, R. Morrison to the BFBS (British Foreign and Bible Society), dated 27 January 1814. See: Transactions of the London Missionary Society, Vol. IV, 1818, p. 377. A different version of the translation of Christianity into the Chinese context can be seen by the first Protestant Chinese convert, Liang Fa, whose religious tracts were patterned according to Ming-Ch’ing’s morality books, and were inspired by concepts of his Confucian and Buddhist upbringing, such as the idea of personal failure, sin and salvation (see: R. P. Bohr, ‘Liang Fa’s Quest for Moral Power’, in J. K. Fairbank and S. W. Barnett (eds.), Christianity in China: Early Protestant Missionary Writings (Cambridge, MA, 1985), pp. 35–47, esp. p. 46). On the adaptation of the form of traditional Chinese texts for the publication of Christian ones for a later period see also: E. S. Rawski, ‘Elementary Education in the Mission Enterprise’, in S. W. Barnett and J. K. Fairbank (eds.), Christianity in China. Early Protestant Missionary Writings (Cambridge, MA; London, 1985), pp. 135–151, esp. p. 146; on Liang Fa and the influence of his tracts on Hong Xiuquan, the leader of the Taiping Rebellion, see: J. D. Spence, God’s Chinese Son. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan (London, 1996), pp. 16–18, 30–33, 51–78. Missionary Chronicle, October 1827, p. 441. Transactions of the London Missionary Society, Vol. IV, 1818, p. 124. Teltscher, India Inscribed, p. 105. On the anti-Christian tradition in China and the political background to the edicts and persecutions of Christians in the late 18th and early 19th century see: P. A. Cohen, China and Christianity: The Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Antiforeignism 1860–1870 (London, 1966), pp. 20–34, esp. 33–34. Next to the fear of heterodoxy and its association with moral as well as political unrest, the association of Christianity with the expanding European powers in the region seems to have been one major reason for the persecution of Christianity by the Chinese state. See also: Rubinstein, Origins, p. 81. SOAS, CWM, South China. Incoming Correspondence, Box 1, 1803–1817, R. Morrison to LMS, dated 22 December 1812; Printed in: Transactions of the London Missionary Society up to 1817, London, 1818, pp. 123–124. Ibid., pp. 7–8. See on this in the context of the American Mission to China also: M. A. Rubinstein, ‘The Wars They Wanted. American Missionaries’ Use of the Chinese Repository Before the Opium War’, American Neptune, XLVIII, 4 (1988), pp. 271–282, esp. pp. 277–279. Transactions of the London Missionary Society, Vol. III, London, 1813, p. 340. Ibid., Vol. IV, London, 1818, p. 377.

Notes

211

187. See also: Evangelical magazine, August 1825, p. 323 and Milne, First Ten Years, p. 27. See Dawson, Chinese Chameleon on a brief statement on missionary attitudes to Confucius, p. 134 and on later missionary verdicts and on Jones, Image of China, p. 63. 188. Indo-Chinese Gleaner, Vol. VI, October 1818, p. 198. 189. Transactions of the London Missionary Society, Vol. IV, 1818, p. 261. 190. Ibid., pp. 150–152. 191. Indo-Chinese Gleaner, Vol. IX, July 1819, p. 170. 192. Transactions of the London Missionary Society, Vol. III, London, 1813, p. 273. 193. SOAS, CWM, South China. Incoming correspondence, Box 1, 1807–1817, R. Morrison to G. Burder, dated 16 January 1817. 194. Milne, First Ten Years, p. 6. See also p. 16. For this combination of political as well as religious ideas, see for example: SOAS, CWM, China. Personal, Box 3, R. Morrison to T. Fisher, dated 24 February 1831. 195. Published in: Transactions of the Missionary Society, Vol. III, London 1813, p. 457. 196. SOAS, CWM, China. Personal, Box 3, R. Morrison to T. Fisher, dated 9 December 1830. 197. Missionary Chronicle, May, 1820, p. 211. 198. On the connexion of Morrison’s judgement of the Chinese and their lack of the Christian religion see also: L. Kitzan, ‘The London Missionary Society and the Problem of Conversion in India and China, 1804–34’, Canadian Journal of History, 5, 2 (1970), pp. 13–41, esp. p. 34. 199. Greenberg, British Trade, p. 85. 200. BL, APAC, CFR, IOR/G/12/196, Letter from John Barrow to the Earl of Buckinghamshire, dated 14 February 1815. 201. BL, APAC, CFR, Secret Meeting Court of Directors, IOR/G/12/196, dated 19 April 1815, Letter from W. F. Elphinstone and John Inglis to the Earl of Buckinghamshire, dated 3 March 1815. 202. Letter from the Right Honble Lord Castlereagh to the Right Honble Lord Amherst, dated 1 January 1816, in Morse, Chronicles, Vol. III, p. 279. 203. George, ‘Letter from King George III to the Emperor of China’, p. 244. 204. Ibid., p. 278. 205. BL, APAC, CFR, IOR/G/12/196 Copy of Letter from Secret Commercial Committee to Lord Amherst, dated 17 January 1816. 206. H. Ellis, Journal of the Proceedings of the Late Embassy to China (2nd edn., 2 vols., London, 1818), Vol. I., p. 76; BL, APAC, CFR, IOR/G/12/196, Copy Letter from Lord Castlereagh to Lord Amherst, dated 1 January 1816. 207. BL, APAC, CFR, IOR/G/12/196, Copy Letter from Lord Castlereagh to Lord Amherst, dated 1 January 1816. 208. BL, APAC, CFR, IOR/G/12/196, Copy of a Secret Commercial Letter to China, dated 27 September 1815. 209. BL, APAC, CFR, Secret Consultation, IOR/G/12/272, dated 24 November 1817, Letter from the Select Committee at Canton to the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors. 210. R. M. Healey, ‘Ellis, Sir Henry (1788–1855)’. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online edn., Oxford, 2005). 211. Ellis, Embassy, Vol. I, p. 79. 212. Ibid., Vol. I, p. 77.

212

Notes

213. G. T. Staunton, Notes of Proceedings and Occurences During the British Embassy to Pekin in 1816 (P. Tuck, Britain and the China Trade 1635–1842, London, New York, 2000), Vol. X, pp. 31–32. 214. Ellis, Embassy, Vol. I, p. 80. 215. Ibid., Vol. I, p. 129. 216. Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 106–107, 148, 161. 217. BL, APAC, CFR, IOR/G/12/197, W. Amherst to George Canning, President of the Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India, dated 22 March 1817. 218. Ellis, Embassy, Vol. I, p. 139. 219. Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar, pp. 223–224. 220. See for example: Ellis, Embassy, Vol. I, pp. 135–136. 221. BL, APAC, CFR, IOR/G/12/197, W. Amherst to George Canning, dated 8 March 1817. 222. Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar, pp. 214–216. 223. Ibid., p. 214. 224. BL, APAC, CFR, IOR/G/12/197, W. Amherst to George Canning, President of the Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India, dated 22 March 1817. 225. BL, APAC, CFR, IOR/G/12/197, W. Amherst to George Canning, dated 8 March 1817. 226. BL, APAC, CFR, IOR/G/12/197, G. Staunton to the Chairman of the Court of Directors, not dated; Ellis, Embassy, Vol. I, pp. 277, 437–439; R. Morrison, A Memoir of the Principal Occurrences During an Embassy from the British Government to the Court of China, in the Year 1816 (London, 1820), pp. 179–181. 227. BL, APAC, CFR, IOR/G/12/198, W. Amherst to Chairman and deputy Chairman of the Court of Directors, dated 3 May 1817. 228. Ibid.; see also: BL, APAC, CFR, Extract Canton Secret Consultation, IOR/G/12/196, dated 12 February 1816. 229. BL, APAC, CFR, IOR/G/12/197; Staunton to the Chairman of the Court of Directors, not dated. 230. R. Travers, ‘Ideology and British Expansion in Bengal, 1757–72’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 33, 1 (2005), pp. 7–27. 231. Greenberg, British Trade, pp. 35–37. 232. Ibid., pp. 85–103. 233. On the development of the private trade and its relation to the EIC in Canton see: Ibid., esp. pp. 18–40; on the nationality issue: p. 83. 234. Tsao, ‘Representing China’, pp. 36–37. 235. See amongst others: Canton Register, Vol. I, No. 2, November 1827, p. 6; Canton Register, Vol. I, No. 8, dated 18 February 1828, p. 31; Canton Register, Vol. II, No. 9, dated 2 May 1829, p. 43. 236. Canton Register, Vol. I, No. 11, dated 15 March 1828, p. 41. See also Canton Register, Vol. I, No. 7, dated 11 February 1828, p. 26; Canton Register, Vol. III, No. 15, dated 2 August 1830, pp. 63–64. 237. See for example: Canton Register, Vol. I, No. 41, dated 13 December 1828, p. 3. 238. Ibid., Vol. I, No. 11, dated 15 March 1828, p. 42; Ibid., Vol. I, No. 20, dated 17 May 1828, p. 79; Canton Register, Vol. III, No. 21, dated 16 October 1830. 239. Greenberg, British Trade, pp. 136–141. 240. See for example: Canton Register, Vol. I, No. 38, dated 3 November 1828. Despite this image which they used, the country traders had to admit that

Notes

241. 242. 243. 244. 245. 246.

247. 248. 249. 250. 251. 252. 253. 254.

255. 256.

257. 258. 259. 260. 261. 262. 263. 264.

213

Canton was one of the best places to transact business in the world. See: Greenberg, British Trade, p. 61. Canton Register, Vol. I, No. 18, dated 3 May 1828, p.71. See also: Greenberg, British Trade, pp. 41–42. Canton Register, Vol. III, No. 18, dated 6 November 1830, p. 76. Ibid., Vol. IV, No. 10, dated 13 May 1831, p. 41. Greenberg, British Trade, pp. 112–143. Polachek, Inner Opium War, pp. 101–125; D. A. Bello, Opium and the Limits of Empire. Drug Prohibition in the Chinese Interior, 1729–1850 (Cambridge, MA; London, 2005), pp. 115–138. Greenberg, British Trade, p. 84. Stokes, English Utilitarians, pp. 150–168. Morse, Chronicles, Vol. IV, pp. 199–200. Greenberg, British Trade, p. 177. See also: Ibid., pp. 176–177. BL, APAC, CFR, IOR/G/12/281, Letter from the Select Committee to the Court of Directors, dated 18 October 1830; 14 December 1829. BL, APAC, CFR, Secret Consultation, IOR/G/12/276, dated 25 December 1829. BL, APAC, CFR, Secret Consultation, IOR/G/12/276, dated 11 January 1830, Select Committee, letter to Lord Cavendish Bentinck, dated 11 January 1830. Ibid. BL, APAC; CFR, IOR/G/12/281, Letter from the Select Committee to The Court of Directors, dated 24 February 1830. For a detailed account of the occurrences see also: Morse, Chronicles, Vol. IV, pp. 197–221; Indeed, the two governor-generals in this period, Li Hung-pin and Lu K’un were rather conciliatory towards the British and turned a blind eye on their involvement in the opium trade in contrast to the wishes of the emperor. This was also true of the main supporter of the 1836 campaign to legalise opium, Juan Yuan, who had been Liang-Kuang viceroy between 1817 and 1826; see: Polachek, Inner Opium War, pp. 109–112, 115–116; on the problematic of opium smoking and its prohibition in this period see also: J. D. Spence, Opium Smoking in Ch’ing China (reprint in Britain and the China Trade 1635–1842, London, New York, 2000), Vol. XI, 2, pp. 158–161. See also: Greenberg, British Trade, pp. 72–73, Melancon, ‘Peaceful Intentions’, p. 37. BL, APAC, CFR, IOR/G/12/281, Letter from the Select Committee to the Court of Directors, 15 December 1830. Canton Register, 16 October 1830, No. 21. BL, APAC, CFR, Canton Consultations, IOR/G/12/244, dated 19 October, 1830. Ibid. BL, APAC, CFR, Canton Consultations, IOR/G/12/244, dated 20 October, 1830. BL, APAC, CFR, Canton Consultations, IOR/G/12/244, dated 23 October 1830; 25 October 1830. BL, APAC, CFR, IOR/G/12/287, Letter from the Select Committee to the Court of Directors, dated 31 May 1831; Morse, Chronicles, Vol. IV, p. 282.

214

Notes

265. BL, APAC, CFR, IOR/G/12/287, Letter from the Select Committee to the Court of Directors, dated 7 September 1831. 266. BL, APAC, CFR, IOR/G/12/287, Letter from the Select Committee to the Court of Directors, dated 7 November 1831. 267. See: Polachek, Inner Opium War, esp. pp. 103–109; Bello, Limits of Empire, pp. 115–116. 268. PRO, FO 17/476, Memorandum by Mr Hepper on the China Act. 269. J. K. Laughton; rev. Lambert, Andrew, ‘Napier, William John, Ninth Lord Napier of Merchistoun (1786–1834)’. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online edn., May 2007, Oxford, 2004). 270. Greenberg, British Trade, p. 191; Inglis, The Opium War, p. 89; Collis, Foreign Mud, pp. 107–125. 271. Melancon, Britain’s China Policy. 272. Greenberg, British Trade, p. 175. 273. Ibid., p. 178. 274. Ibid., p. 187. 275. Ibid., pp. 187–188. 276. Ibid., pp. 188–191. 277. On the increasing opium trade and its links with British revenue in India see: Inglis, The Opium War; Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914, p. 137. 278. Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, p. 85; Polachek, Inner Opium War, p. 104. 279. Z. Yangwen, The Social Life of Opium in China (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 87–97. 280. Polachek, Inner Opium War, pp. 103–120. 281. Greenberg, British Trade, p. 191. 282. PRO, FO 17/13, Palmerston to Elliot, dated 22 July 1836. 283. Laughton, ‘William John Napier’. 284. For a narrative account of the episode see: Fay, The Opium War, 1840–1842, pp. 67–79. 285. Greenberg, British Trade, p. 192; Fay, The Opium War, 1840–1842, p. 69. 286. Melancon, Britain’s China Policy, p. 37. 287. See chapter 5.3. 288. PRO, FO 17/476, dated 25 January 1834. 289. PRO, FO 17/476, Napier to Palmerston, Canton, dated 9 August 1834. 290. PRO, FO 17/476, Napier to Palmerston, London, dated 28 December 1833. 291. PRO, FO 17/476, Palmerston to Napier, London, dated 30 December 1833. 292. See for example: PRO, FO 17/4/6, Napier to Palmerston, Canton, dated 9 August 1834; PRO, FO/677/3, Napier to Palmerston (Private), Canton, dated 14 August 1834. 293. Fay, The Opium War, 1840–1842, p. 73 294. PRO, FO 17/6743, Napier to Palmerstion, dated 14 August 1834. 295. PRO, FO 17/6/43, Napier to Palmerston, dated 14 August 1834. 296. PRO, FO 677/3, Napier to Palmerston, Private, dated 14 August 1834. 297. PRO, FO 17/7, Proceedings of the Superintendents of British Trade in China, dated 29 August 1834. 298. PRO, FO 17/7, dated 1 September 1834. 299. Melancon, Britain’s China Policy, pp. 49–55; Graham, The China Station: War and Diplomacy, 1830–1860, p. 65.

Notes

215

300. PRO, FO 17/09, Robinson to Palmerston, dated 27 February 1835. 301. H. Schlyter, Der China-Missionar Karl Gützlaff und seine Heimatbasis (Lund, 1976), p. 17; C. Gützlaff, Journal of Three Voyages Along the Coast of China in 1831, 1832, & 1833 (London, 1834). 302. Gützlaff, Three Voyages, p. 75; PRO, FO 17/09, dated 21 February 1835, ‘Observations on the Stoppage of Trade at Canton’; PRO, FO 17/10, Macao, dated 1 July 1835, ‘Remarks on Official Correspondence with Chinese Government’. 303. Ibid., pp. 174–189, 205–206, esp. pp. 249–250, 297–309; Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, pp. 82–83. 304. Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, pp. 83–84. 305. PRO, FO 17/09, dated 21 February 1835, ‘Observations on the Stoppage of Trade at Canton’; ‘Statistical Account of the Chinese Empire’; ‘Essay on the Present State of Our Relations with China’; ‘An Essay Upon the Military Power of the Chinese Empire, It’s Means to Defence etc.’; dated 12 April 1835, ‘Trade to All the Ports of the Chinese Empire’; dated 16 April 1835, ‘Financial System of the Chinese Empire’; dated 1 August 1835, ‘Remarks on Official Correspondence with the Chinese Government’; PRO, FO 17/10, Macao, dated 1 July 1835, ‘Remarks on Official Correspondence with Chinese Government’. 306. PRO, FO 17/09, ‘An Essay Upon the Military Power of the Chinese Empire, It’s Means of Defence etc’. 307. PRO, FO 17/09, ‘Proceedings Relative to the Formation of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China, Canton 1835’. 308. Ibid. 309. PRO, FO 17/09, 25 February, Canton, Minutes of the Establishment of the Morrison Education Society. 310. PRO, FO 17/09, Robinson to Palmerston, Macao, dated 22 April 1835. 311. Polachek, Inner Opium War, p. 120. 312. Greenberg, British Trade, pp. 199–201; Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, p. 91. 313. PRO, FO 17/15, Elliot to Palmerston, Macao, dated 27 July 1836; FO 17/20, Elliot to Palmerston, Macao, dated 21 February 1837; PRO, FO 17/26, Elliot to Palmerston, Macao, dated 20 April 1838. 314. Polachek, Inner Opium War, pp. 103–113. 315. PRO, FO 17/10, Macao, dated 26 July 1835, Minute. 316. PRO, FO 17/13, Palmerston to Elliot, dated 22 July 1836. 317. PRO, FO 17/27, Elliot to Palmerston, Canton, dated 31 December 1838. 318. Graham, The China Station: War and Diplomacy, 1830–1860, pp. 73–83; PRO, FO 17/27, Elliot to Palmerston, Canton, dated 31 December 1838; Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, pp. 69–81. 319. Greenberg, British Trade, p. 196; PRO, FO 17/27, Elliot to Palmerston, Canton, dated 31 December 1838. 320. Polachek, Inner Opium War, pp. 127–135. 321. Melancon, Britain’s China Policy, p. 77; PRO, FO 17/31, Elliot to Palmerston, Canton, dated 30 March 1839. 322. For a narrative of the events, see: Graham, The China Station: War and Diplomacy, 1830–1860, pp. 65–87 and PRO, FO 17/31, Elliot to Palmerston, Canton, dated 30 March 1839.

216

Notes

323. Chung, China and the Brave New World. Study of the Origins of the Opium War; Greenberg, British Trade; Inglis, The Opium War, pp. 167–205; Fay, The Opium War, 1840–1842, pp. 180–195; Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, pp. ix–xii; Collis, Foreign Mud. 324. For the latter position, see for example: Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War; Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy; Morse, International Relations of the Chinese Empire. 325. Melancon, Britain’s China Policy, pp. 1–6. 326. PRO, FO 17/31, Elliot to Palmerston, Canton, dated 18 May 1839. 327. PRO, FO 17/22, Elliot to Palmerston, Canton, dated 19 November 1837. 328. PRO, FO 17/32, Elliot to Palmerston, Hong Kong, dated 27 August 1839. 329. PRO, FO 17/31, Memorial by British Merchants to Lord Palmerston, Canton, dated 23 May 1839. 330. PRO, FO 17/20, Elliot to Palmerston, Macao, dated 21 February 1837; FO 17/22, Elliot to Palmerston, Canton, dated 19 November 1837. 331. PRO, FO 17/32, Memorandum by Elliot on 11 September 1839 to Commanders of British Vessels; FO 17/32, Elliot to Palmerston, Macao, dated 18 July 1839. 332. PRO, FO 17/20, Elliot to Palmerston, Macao, dated 21 February 1837. 333. PRO, FO 17/25, Palmerston to Elliot, Foreign Office, dated 15 June 1838. 334. See also: Fay, The Opium War, 1840–1842, pp. 80–97; P. W. Fay, ‘The Protestant Mission and the Opium War’, Pacific Historical Review, 40, 2 (1971), pp. 145–161; Rubinstein, ‘Wars They Wanted’, esp. pp. 279–282. 335. Polachek, Inner Opium War, pp. 131, 151. 336. Canton, dated 3 April 1839, Foreign Dept, Consultation No. 74, dated 26 June 1839, No. 18, FO 17/31. 337. See also: PRO, FO 17/31, Canton Elliot to Palmerston, dated 18 May 1839. 338. Graham, The China Station: War and Diplomacy, 1830–1860, pp. 94–95. 339. Ibid., pp. 95–119. 340. Ibid., p. 119; S. Mann and P. A. Kuhn, ‘Dynastic Decline and the Roots of Rebellion’, in J. K. Fairbank (ed.), The Cambridge History of China (Cambridge, 1978), Vol. X, pp. 107–162, 158–160.

4

South and Southeast Asian Encounters 1. C. A. Trocki, Opium and Empire. Chinese Society in Colonial Singapore, 1800– 1910 (Ithaca, London, 1990), p. 15. 2. On the concept of ‘information panic’ see: Bayly, Empire and Information, p. 143. 3. See also: K. Labh, ‘China as a Factor in the Policy of British India Towards Nepal’, Journal of Indian History, 55, 3 (1977), pp. 177–188; esp. pp. 177–183. 4. Bayly, Empire and Information, pp. 56–57. 5. On the Gurkha conquest of Nepal see: K. Pradhan, The Gorkha Conquests. The Process and Consequences of the Unification of Nepal, with Particular Reference to Eastern Nepal (Calcutta, 1991), pp. 89–152; L. F. Stiller, The Rise of the House of Gorkha (New Dehli, 1973). 6. See for example: Bayly, Empire and Information, esp. pp. 56–142. 7. C. R. Markham, Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet, and of the Journey of Thomas Manning to Lhasa (London, 1876), pp. clviii, 278–280.

Notes

217

8. D. Woodman, Himalayan Frontiers. A Political Review of British, Chinese, Indian and Russian Rivalries (London, 1969), pp. 22–34. 9. See on the Bogle mission: K. Teltscher, The High Road to China. George Bogle, The Panchen Lama and the First British Expedition to Tibet (London, 2006). 10. BL, APAC, MSS EUR E 226/1. 11. A. Lamb, British India and Tibet, 1766–1910 (2nd revised edn., London, New York, 1986), pp. 4–7. 12. BL, APAC, MSS EUR E 226/5. 13. BL, APAC, MSS EUR E 226/7, on Bogle and the mission see also: K. Teltscher, ‘Writing Home and Crossing Cultures: George Bogle in Bengal and Tibet, 1770–1775’, in K. Wilson (ed.), A New Imperial History. Culture, Identity, and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660–1840 (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 281– 296; Teltscher, High Road to China. 14. E. S. Rawski, The Last Emperors. A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1998), pp. 244–263. 15. BL, APAC, MSS EUR E 226/23; BL, APAC, MSS EUR E 226/1; BL, APAC, MSS EUR E 226/30; BL, APAC, MSS EUR E 226/11; see also: K. Teltscher, ‘The Lama and the Scotsman: George Bogle in Bhutan and Tibet, 1774–1775’, in F. A. Nussbaum (ed.), The Global Eighteenth Century (Baltimore, London, 2003), pp. 151–164, esp. pp. 157–161. 16. Markham, Narratives, pp. 45–46 (Report to Warren Hastings, Tassisudon, 16 July 1774). 17. Ibid., p. 132. 18. Teltscher, ‘The Lama’, esp. pp. 157–161. 19. Markham, Narratives, pp. 151, 134, 194–196. 20. Teltscher, High Road to China, pp. 85–86. 21. BL, APAC, MSS EUR E 226/11. 22. BL, APAC, MSS EUR E 226/31; BL, APAC, MSS EUR E 226/34; BL, APAC, MSS EUR E 226/23. 23. S. Cammann, Trade Through the Himalayas. The Early British Attempts to Open Tibet (Princeton, 1951), pp. 70–74; Teltscher, High Road to China, p. 220. 24. S. Turner, An Account of an Embassy to the Court of the Teshoo Lama, in Tibet: Containing a Narrative of a Journey Through Bootan, and Part of Tibet (London, 1800), pp. 253, 367, 373. 25. A. Lamb (ed.), Bhutan and Tibet. The Travels of George Bogle and Alexander Hamilton, 1774–1777 (Hertingfordbury, 2002), Vol. I, Extract from Bogle’s letter to Hastings, written on 27 April 1775 from Paro in Bhutan, p. 222. 26. BL, APAC, MSS EUR E 226/31; BL, APAC, MSS EUR E 226/34. 27. Rawski, The Last Emperors, pp. 261–262. 28. BL, APAC, MSS EUR E 226/31. 29. Cranmer-Byng, Journal, pp. 232–233. Rawski, The Last Emperors, pp. 247–249, 263. 30. BL, APAC, MSS EUR E 226/23. 31. Ibid. 32. Stiller, Rise; Pradhan, The Gorkha Conquests. 33. For a new interpretation of these conflicts see: B. A. Michael, ‘Statemaking and Space on the Margins of Empire: Rethinking the Anglo-Gorkha War of 1814–1816’, Studies in Nepali History and Society, IV, 2 (1999), pp. 247–294. 34. K. C. Chaudhuri, Anglo-Nepalese Relations. From the Earliest Times of the British Rule in India Till the Gurkha War (Calcutta, 1960), pp. 34–65.

218

Notes

35. R. Dhanalaxmi, British Attitude to Nepal’s Relations with Tibet and China (1814–1914) (New Delhi, 1981), pp. 17–23; Lamb, British India, p. 19. 36. W. Kirkpatrick, Account of the Kingdom of Nepaul: Being the Substance of Observations Made During a Mission to That Country, in the Year 1793 (London, 1811), p. vii. 37. Ibid., p. vi. 38. Ibid. 39. J. Barrow, Some Account of the Public Life and a Selection from the Unpublished Writings of the Earl of Macartney (2 vols., London, 1807), Col. II, pp. 203–204. 40. Turner, An Account of an Embassy, p. 442. 41. Dhanalaxmi, British Attitude, pp. 25–31; on the war see also: Michael, ‘Statemaking’; N. R. L. Rana, The Anglo-Gorkha War (1814–1816) (Kathmandu, 1970). 42. Lamb, British India, pp. 30–37. 43. BL, APAC, IOR/H/644, F. Buchanan to J. Adam, dated 19 August 1814. 44. BL, APAC, IOR/H/516, W. Moorcroft to J. Adam, in Papers Respecting the Nepaul War (London, 1824), p. 89. 45. The British accused the Nepalese to be of such a treacherous character that they pretended to have British troops towards the Chinese, dressing their troops in red, and to have Chinese support towards the British by assuming the dress of Chinese officials: BL, APAC, IOR/H/644, Letter from Capt. Hearsey to J. Adam, dated 24 August 1814. 46. BL, APAC, IOR/H/516, Secret Letter from Lord Moira to the Secret Committee, dated 2 August 1815, in Papers Respecting the Nepaul War, p. 722. 47. Labh, ‘China as a Factor’, p. 182; Dhanalaxmi, British Attitude, p. 27. 48. BL, APAC, Board’s Collection, Bengal Political Letter, F4/552, dated 16 November 1816, Narrative of Proceedings Connected with the Advance of a Chinese Force Towards the Frontier of Nipaul; Lamb, British India, pp. 34–36. 49. BL, APAC, Board’s Collection, Bengal Political Letter. 50. On Hodgson see: G. Van Driem, ‘Hodgson’s Tibeto-Burman and TibetoBurman Today’, in D. M. Waterhouse (ed.), The Origins of Himalayan Studies. Brian Houghton Hodgson in Nepal and Darjeeling 1820–1858 (London, New York, 2004), pp. 227–247; K. L. Pradhan, Brian Hodgson at the Kathmandu Residency, 1825–1843 (Delhi, 2001). 51. See for example: BL, APAC, F/4/1485, f293; F74/1384, Extract Political Letter from Fort William, dated 15 December 1831; BL, APAC, MSS EUR Hodgson 9 (159); BL, APAC, R/5/50, B. Hodgson to W. Maddock, dated 22 November 1839; IOR/R/5/50, B. Hodgson to H. Torrens, dated 10 October 1840; See also: Dhanalaxmi, British Attitude, pp. 32–50. 52. BL, APAC, MSS EUR Hodgson 3 (43). 53. BL, APAC, Board’s Collection, Fort William’s Political Consultations, F4/1324, dated 26 March 1830. 54. BL, APAC, Board’s Collection, Fort William’s Political Consultations, F4/1380, dated 28 October 1831; 26 March 1830. 55. BL, APAC, Board’s Collection, Fort William’s Political Consultations, F4/1380, dated 28 October 1831. 56. BL, APAC, Board’s Collection, Fort William’s Political Consultations, F4/1324, dated 10 June 1831; 10 December 1830. 57. BL, APAC, MSS EUR Hodgson 9; MSS EUR Hodgson 6.

Notes

219

58. BL, APAC, Board’s Collection, Fort William’s Political Consultations, F/4/1330, dated 31 July 1827. 59. B. H. Hodgson, Essays on the Languages, Literature, and Religion of Nepal and Tibet (London, 1874), pp. 30–33; MSS EUR Hodgson 6. 60. Hodgson, Essay on the Languages, p. 68. 61. Ibid., pp. 76–82. 62. See also: BL, APAC, IOR/R/5/50, B. Hodgson to H. Torrens, dated 20 October 1840. 63. On the Serampore mission and its link to the EIC see: D. Kopf, British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance. The Dynamics of Indian Modernization, 1773–1835 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1969), pp. 55, 71–74. M. A. Laird, Missionaries and Education in Bengal, 1793–1837 (Oxford, 1972), pp. 44–178. 64. BMS, IN/19A, J. Marshman to J. Ryland, dated 20 August 1806. 65. BMS, IN/19/A, J. Marshman to J. Ryland, dated 25 May 1806. 66. E. H. Cutts has pointed towards some of the political implications of this position, mainly arguing that it was meant to equip the next embassy to China with a translator: E. H. Cutts, ‘Chinese Studies in Bengal’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 62 (1942), pp. 171–174; esp. p. 174. For example, Marshman dedicated his translation of Confucius to Minto: Marshman, Confucius, p. iii. 67. T. H. Barrett, Singular Listlessness: A Short History of Chinese Books and British Scholars (London, 1989), pp. 61–62. 68. Marshman, Confucius, p. iii. 69. Cutts, ‘Chinese Studies’; p. 174. 70. J. Marshman, Elements of Chinese Grammar, with a Preliminary Dissertation on the Characters and the Colloquial Medium of the Chinese Ta-hysh of Confucius with a Translation (Serampore, 1814), p. 170. 71. Letter Marshman (Periodical account to Ryland, Serampore, dated 20 August 1806, Angus Library, Baptist Missionary Society, IN/19A). 72. BMS, IN/19/A, J. Marshman to J. Ryland, dated 24 July 1811. 73. BL, APAC, IOR/G/12/274, Select Committee Consultations (24 December 1822); Lamb, British India, p. 42. 74. Marshman, Confucius. 75. Hodgson, Essays on the Languages, p. 110. 76. See on this: Woodman, Himalayan Frontiers, pp. 37–83. 77. Pradhan, Brian Hodgson, p. 105; BL, APAC; IOR/R/5/50, B. Hodgson to H. Torrens, dated 18 June 1840. 78. Dhanalaxmi, British Attitude, pp. 42–48; Pradhan, Brian Hodgson, pp. 110, 137; BL, APAC, IOR/R/5/51, B. Hodgson to India, W. H. Macnaghten, dated 5 September 1841; 6 September 1841; BL, APAC, IOR/R/5/50, B. Hodgson to H. Torrens, dated 20 October 1840. 79. Lamb, British India, pp. 53–57. 80. On the term ‘Southeast Asia’ see: J. D. Legge, ‘The Writing of Southeast Asian History’, in N. Tarling (ed.), The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia (Cambridge, 1992), Vol. 1, pp. 1–50; esp. pp. 1–2. 81. On John Leyden see: J. Reith, Life of Dr John Leyden. Poet and Linguist (Galashiels, 1908); V. M. Hooker and M. B. Hooker (eds.), ‘Introductory Essay’, John Leyden’s Malay Annals (Kuala Lumpur, 2001), pp. 1–80.

220

Notes

82. J. Leyden, ‘On the Language and Literature of the Indo-Chinese Nations’, Asiatic Researches, 10 (1808), pp. 158–290; see on the essay also: Hooker and Hooker, ‘Introductory Essay’, pp. 26–30. 83. See also: Van Driem, ‘Hodgson’s Tibeto-Burman and Tibeto-Burman Today’, pp. 233–235. 84. R. Morrison, Vocabulary of the Canton Dialect (Macao, 1828). 85. R. Morrison, A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, in Three Parts (Macao, 1815). Morrison only adds a table that should help readers to find words in the dictionary according to their Cantonese pronunciation (p. xv). 86. Leyden, ‘On the Language and Literature of the Indo-Chinese Nations’, pp. 266–267. 87. Hooker and Hooker, ‘Introductory Essay’, p. 11. 88. See: C. M. Turnbull, ‘Crawfurd, John (1783–1868)’. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online edn., Oxford, 2004); P. G. Robb, ‘Mackenzie, Colin (1753–1821)’. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online edn., Oxford, 2004). 89. Tsao, ‘Representing China’, p. 42; Du Halde also already made a short notice of the industrious habit of the Chinese workers, but sees it mainly as a result of their hardship in live: Du Halde, General History, Vol. II, pp. 123–126. 90. Barrett, Singular Listlessness, p. 71 91. Zhang, ‘British Views’, pp. 159–160. Only takes note of the 1807 scheme to bring Chinese workers to Trinidad and the positive reception of the Chinese in this context without further discussing the circumstances of these endeavours. 92. See also: Trocki, Opium and Empire, p. 27. On the system of Chinese junk trade with Southeast Asia at the example of Siam see: J. Cushman, Fields from the Sea. Chinese Junk Trade with Siam During the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (Ithaca, 1993). 93. Trocki, Opium and Empire, p. 15, for an overview see also: L. Pann, Sons of the Yellow Emperor (London, 1990), pp. 23–42. 94. Mark Frost has recently pointed out that while European maritime technology became more important in the trade in Southeast Asia, the Chinese junk trade remained significant in several areas and many links between Southeast Asian trading places with Chinese settlements in Southeast Asia equally stayed in the hands of the Chinese. See: M. R. Frost, ‘Emporium in Imperio: Nanyang Networks and the Straits Chinese in Singapore, 1819–1914’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 36, 1 (2005), pp. 29–66; esp. p. 37. 95. Trocki, Opium and Empire, pp. 30–35. 96. Ibid., pp. 11–28. 97. For a later period, the global network nature of Chinese emigration has been emphasised, breaking down the opposition between the idea of assimilation of emigrated Chinese on the one hand and their preserving of their original culture on the other. See for example: A. McKeown, ‘Conceptualizing Chinese Diasporas, 1842 to 1949’, Journal of Asian Studies, 58, 2 (1999), pp. 306–337. 98. See for Singapore: M. Freedman, The Study of Chinese Society. Essays by Maurice Freedman (Standford, 1979), pp. 84–89; G. Wang, The Chinese Overseas. From Earthbound China to the Quest for Autonomy (Cambridge, MA;

Notes

99. 100. 101. 102. 103.

104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110.

111.

112.

113.

114. 115. 116. 117.

118.

221

London, 2000), esp. pp. 55–60; G. Wang, China and the Chinese Overseas (2nd edn., Singapore, 1992), pp. 4–6; Frost, ‘Nanyang Networks’, esp. pp. 33–37. H. T. Fry, Alexander Dalrymple (1737–1808) and the Expansion of British Trade (London, 1970), p. 2. Ibid., p. 21. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid., p. 36. Ibid., p. 48; A. Dalrymple, Oriental Repertory (London, 1793), Vol. 2, p. 567; on the Chinese trade at Jolo see: J. F. Warren, The Sulu Zone 1768–1898 (Singapore, 1981), pp. 1–9. Dalrymple, Oriental Repertory, Vol. I, p. 567. BL, APAC, MSS/EUR/Orme Mss/67, Memoir of Sooloo. A. Webster, Gentlemen Capitalists. British Imperialism in South East Asia 1770– 1890 (London, New York, 1998), p. 20 and passim. Fry, Alexander Dalrymple (1737–1808) and the Expansion of British Trade, pp. 27, 44. A. Dalrymple, A Plan for Extending the Commerce of This Kingdom, and of the East-India-Company (London, 1769), p. 7. Ibid., pp. 66–93. See also: A. Frost, The Global Reach of Empire. Britain’s Maritime Expansion in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, 1764–1815 (Carlton, Victoria, 2003), pp. 165– 180, 189–207. On the British interest in Southeast Asia see: N. Tarling (ed.), ‘The Establishment of the Colonial Régimes’, The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia (Cambridge, 1992), Vol. 2, pp. 5–78, esp. pp. 13–19; N. Tarling, AngloDutch Rivalry in the Malay World 1780–1824 (Cambridge, 1962); Webster, Gentlemen Capitalists. British Imperialism in South East Asia 1770–1890, pp. 42–77. Tarling, ‘The Establishment of the Colonial Régimes’, p. 13; J. Crawfurd, History of the Indian Archipelago. Containing an Account of the Manners, Arts, Languages, Religions, Institutions, and Commerce of Its Inhabitants (3 vols., London, 1967), Vol. III, pp. 219–254, 267–268. M. C. Granroth, ‘European Knowledge of Southeast Asia: Travel and Scholarship in the Early Modern Era’ (University of Cambridge, 2003), pp. 222–226; A. Reid, ‘Historiographical Reflections on the Period 1750– 1870 in Southeast Asia and Korea’, Itinerario, XVIII, 1 (1994), pp. 77–89, esp. pp. 79–80. Trocki, Opium and Empire, p. 24. Granroth, ‘European Knowledge of Southeast Asia’, p. 4. Ibid., pp. 222–226. BL, APAC, Raffles Collection, MSS/EUR/D/199/6, Considerations on the Commerce and Policy in the Indian Archipelago, 1817, pp. 189–284. See also: M. C. Quilty, Textual Empires. A Reading of Early British Histories of Southeast Asia (Clayton, 1998), esp. pp. 41–82. Alexander Dalrymple had already begun to use this trope. See: A. Dalrymple, Journal of the Schooner Cuddalore, Oct. 1759 on the Coast of China (3rd edn., London, 1787), pp. 9–14, 96–97; this is a trope with a long duree: for a discussion of these ideas on Chinese in contrast to the native Malay,

222

119. 120.

121. 122.

123. 124.

125.

126. 127. 128.

129. 130. 131. 132. 133.

Notes and the effect of this discourse on British rule in Southeast Asia later in the 19th century see: Metcalf, Imperial Connections, pp. 50–56. However, in the early 19th century, the ‘lazy Malay’ is contrasted with the ‘industrious Chinese’ rather than the Indian. J. De Vries, ‘The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution’, The Jounral of Economic History, 54, 2 (1994), pp. 249–270, esp. pp. 258–260. Mr. Crawfurd’s statement (Extract from the Third Report of the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company), Appendix to: Anonym, The Foreign Trade of China Divested of Monopoly, Restriction, and Hazard by Means of Insular Commercial Stations (London, 1832), p. 106. A. Osborne, Notes on the Present State and Prospect of Society in New South Wales with an Account of Manilla and Singapore (London, 1833), p. 92. Crawfurd, History of Indian Archipelago, Vol. III, p. 157. On Malthus’ idea on immigration, the Chinese and the growth of their population see: T. R. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population (8th edn., London, 1878), pp. 98–111. Trocki, Opium and Empire, p. 46. See: S. H. Alatas, The Myth of the Lazy Native. A Study of the Image of Malays, Filipinos and Javanese from the 16th to the 20th Century and Its Function in the Ideology of Colonial Capitalism (London, 1977), pp. 83–85; Trocki, Opium and Empire, p. 46. See also the British plans to settle Chinese in Assam for the tea production in the late 1830s. The Chinese as the more civilised and more industrious population were believed to be able to cultivate the tea plant better than the indigenous, savage population. In addition, the tea plant that was native to Assam was also considered to be a wild species, useless for professional tea plantation. It was thus believed that only the Chinese tea plant was cultivated enough and that only the Chinese could bring the cultivation to the wildness of Assam (J. Sharma, ‘The Making of “Modern” Assam, 1826–1935’ PhD dissertation (University of Cambridge, 2002), pp. 54–56); J. Sharma, ‘British Science, Chinese Skill and Assam Tea: Making Empire’s Garden’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 43, 4 (2006), pp. 429–455, esp. pp. 444–446. Osborne, Notes, p. 94. See also Raffles’s opinion on the industrious Chinese in this context: Memoir, Appendix, pp. 9–10. On the debate about the idea of the free Chinese labourer as a substitute for African slaves in the metropolis see for example: J. Macqueen, The Colonial Controversy, Containing a Refutation of the Calumnies of the Anticolonists . . . in a Series of Letters (Glasgow, 1825), pp. 133–144; Anonym, Considerations Submitted in Defence of the Orders in Council for the Melioration of Slavery in Trinidad . . . (London, 1825), pp. 113–114, 185. Asiatic Journal, Vol. I, New Series, January–April 1830, pp. 25–28, 224. BL, APAC, Raffles Collection, MSS/EUR/E/109. The Gentleman’s Magazine, June 1814, pp. 33–40, 561–568. Osborne, Notes, pp. 92–95. See for example: Crawfurd, History of Indian Archipelago, Vol. I, p. 136; T. S. Raffles, The History of Java (2 vols., London, 1817), Vol. I, pp. 224–225.

Notes

223

134. A more detailed account of the ideas on the Chinese in the early race theory will be discussed in the last chapter. 135. J. Crawfurd, ‘Mr. Crawfurd’s Statement. Extract from the Third Report of the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company’, in Anonym (ed.), The Foreign Trade of China (London, 1832), pp. 105–110, esp. p. 106. 136. Quote from: C. W. Wurtzburg, Raffles of the Eastern Isles (London, 1954), p. 140. 137. Crawfurd, History of Indian Archipelago, Vol. I, p. 135. 138. See also on Crawfurd’s Racism: Quilty, Textual Empires, pp. 76–82. 139. R. J. C. Young, Colonial Desire. Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London, New York, 1995), p. 69. 140. Trocki establishes the image of the opium wreck as the dominant one for the 19th century: Trocki, Opium and Empire, p. 1. See also: Spence, The Chan’s Great Continent, pp. 124, 146. 141. J. Bastin, The Native Policies of Sir Stamford Raffles in Java and Sumatra. An Economic Interpretation (Oxford, 1957), p. 9. 142. L. Blussé, Strange Company: Chinese Settlers, Mestizo Women, and the Dutch in VOC Batavia (Verhandelingen van het Koniklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Landen Volkenkunde, 122, Dordrecht, Riverton, 1986), pp. 80, 90–91. On the Chinese on Java in this from the late 17th to the early 19th century see: P. Carey, ‘Changing Javanese Perceptions of the Chinese Communities in Central Java, 1755–1825’, Indonesia, 37 (1984), pp. 1–49. 143. Blussé, Strange Company, p. 5; A. Kumar, Java and Modern Europe. Ambiguous Encounters (Richmond, 1997), pp. 30–32, 199–201. 144. Bastin, Native Policies, p. 27. 145. V. Purcell, The Chinese in Southeast Asia (2nd edn., London, 1980), p. 408. See also on Dutch attitudes to Chinese: Kumar, Java, pp. 372, 437–438. 146. Bastin, Native policies, pp. 13–15. 147. Ibid. 148. Ibid., p. 22; Dirk van Hogendorp quoted in: Raffles, History of Java, Vol. I, pp. 226–227. 149. Wurtzburg, Raffles, pp. 127–128. 150. BL, APAC, MSS/EUR/E/104, Raffles Collection: Considerations on How to Deal with the Dutch Possessions in the East Indies If They Should Be Captured, pp. 33–110. 151. Ibid., pp. 97–98. 152. Wurtzburg, Raffles, p. 173. 153. J. Bastin, ‘Sir Stamford Raffles’s and John Crawfurd’s Ideas of Colonizing the Malay Archipelago’, Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, XXVI, 1 (1953), pp. 81–85, esp. pp. 82–83. 154. Bastin, Native Policies, p. 32. 155. Ibid., pp. 23–25, 44. 156. T. S. Raffles, Substance of a Minute . . . on the Introduction of an Improved System of Internal Management and the Establishment of a Land Rental of the Island of Java (London, 1814), p. 18. 157. Bastin, Native Policies, p. 33. 158. On Raffle’s romantic notions of Javanese past see: Quilty, Textual Empires, pp. 63–70.

224

Notes

159. See for example: BL, APAC, MSS EUR/Mack/Private/21, Observations on the Nature and Resources of the Territories Under the Authority of the Sultan of Mataram . . . by John Crawfurd, 1812; BL, APAC, MSS EUR/Mack/Private/35, Report of the President, dated 11 August 1812, J. Mackenzie to S. Raffles; Raffles, Substance of a Minute, pp. 98–115. 160. BL, APAC, MSS EUR/Mack/Private/24, Summary of a Report on the State of Java by Mess Knops & van Pabst, pp. 85–87. 161. BL, APAC, MSS EUR/Mack/Private/35/6, F. J. Rothenbuhler to Lieutenant Colonel Mackenzie, dated 30 May 1812. 162. J. Bastin, Raffles’ Ideas on the Land Rent System in Java and the Mackenzie Land Tenure Commission (Verhandelingen van het koninklijk instituut voor Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde, S-Gravenhage, 1954), Vol. XIV, pp. 30–33. 163. Crawfurd, History of Indian Archipelago, Vol. III, pp. 170, 178. 164. Ibid., Vol. I, p. 136. 165. Ibid., Vol. III, p. 73. 166. On this change, see: Bastin, Native Policies, p. 35. 167. See for example: Raffles, Substance of a Minute, pp. 34–35. 168. M. Kuitenbrouwer, ‘Aristocracies Under Colonial Rule: North India and Java’, in C. A. Bayly and D. H. A. Kolff (eds.), Two Colonial Empires (Dordrecht et al., 1986), pp. 75–94; esp. p. 84; Bastin, Native Policies, pp. 52–58. 169. M. C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia Since c. 1200 (3rd edn., Basingstoke, 2001), pp. 148–149. On the ambivalence between Raffles’s ideas about the Chinese and their continuing influence and position on Java see: L. E. Williams, ‘Indonesia’s Chinese Educate Raffles’, Indonesie, 9, 4 (1956), pp. 369–385, esp. pp. 375–379. However, it is difficult to conclude that this was the fundamental cause of a change in Raffles’s attitude to the Chinese. See on this critique of Williams’s article also: J. Bastin, ‘Raffles and the Chinese of Indonesia and Singapore’, Indonesie, 10 (1957), pp. 259–261. 170. Bastin, Native Policies, p. 57. 171. Granroth, ‘European Knowledge of Southeast Asia’, pp. 246–251. 172. N. Tarling, British Policy in the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago, 1824–1871 (Oxford, 1969), pp. 9–18. 173. J. C. Jackson, Planters and Speculators. Chinese and European Agricultural Enterprise in Malaya, 1786–1921 (Singapore, 1968), pp. 1–22. 174. See for example: BL, APAC, IOR, Home Miscellaneous, H/669, from D. Maingy to R. Fullerton, dated 23 April 1826. 175. See on Raffles’s different attitude to the Chinese in Singapore also the brief discussion by Bastin: Bastin, ‘Raffles and Chinese’. 176. BL, APAC, Raffles Collection, MSS/EUR/D/199, Considerations on the Commerce and Policy in the Indian Archipelago. 177. Raffles, History of Java, Vol. I, p. 204. 178. Crawfurd, History of Indian Archipelago, Vol. III, p. 186. 179. Raffles, History of Java, Vol. I, pp. 226–228. 180. Trocki, Opium and Empire, p. 16; Jackson, Planters and Speculators. Chinese and European Agricultural Enterprise in Malaya, 1786–1921, p. 3; Y. ChingHwang, ‘Early Chinese Clan Organization in Singapore and Malaya, 1819– 1900’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, XII, 1 (1981), pp. 62–92.

Notes

225

181. D. Hume (ed.), ‘Of National Characters’, Essays Moral, Political and Literary (Oxford, 1963), pp. 123, 202–221. 182. Cranmer-Byng, Journal, pp. 221–230. 183. C. M. Turnbull, A History of Singapore 1819–1988 (2nd edn., Singapore et al., 1989), pp. 17–21. 184. On the different groups of Chinese who migrated to Singapore in the early days see: Wang, China, pp. 167–171. Wang notices, that most of them came from other parts of the Southeast Asia, a fact the British only partly acknowledged. 185. Wurtzburg, Raffles, pp. 609–611, see also Crawfurd on this: Crawfurd, History of Indian Archipelago, Vol. I, p. 137. 186. Freedman, Chinese Society, p. 94. 187. Turnbull, History of Singapore, p. 22. 188. T. S. Raffles, ‘Regulation, No. IV of 1823. A Regulation Prohibiting GamingHouses and Cockpits, and for Suppressing the Vice of Gaming at Singapore’. Singapore. Local Laws and Institutions, 1823 (London, 1824), pp. 10–12. 189. Turnbull, History of Singapore, p. 33. See also on the relation of English law and Chinese custom law: Freedman, Chinese Society, pp. 94–95. 190. Canton Register, No. 28, dated 19 June 1828, p. 112. 191. Turnbull, History of Singapore, p. 36; Freedman, Chinese Society, p. 95. 192. Trocki, Opium and Empire, pp. 11–28. 193. Trocki is thus wrong to assume that ‘The European literature on secret societies began with T. J. Newbold’s article in The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1841.’ Ibid., p. 20; K. Bolton and H. Christopher (eds.), Selected Writings (Western Accounts of the History, Sociology and Linguistics of Chinese Secret Societies, 6 vols., London, New York, 2000), Vol. I, p. xiv. 194. W. Milne, Some Account of a Secret Association in China Entitled: The Triad Society (London, 1825), pp. 241–248. 195. Ibid., p. 241. 196. Patullo to Anderson, ‘Report on the Hoeys’ (1829), SSR, X 5, p. 173, quoted in: Trocki, Opium and Empire, p. 23. 197. See on this Milne: Milne, First Ten Years, pp. 137–170; Harrison, Waiting for China, pp. 11–14, 20; W. H. Medhurst, A Dictionary of the Hok-Keen Dialect of the Chinese Language (Macao, 1832) pp. v–vi. 198. This pattern would stay the same for his successors as Missionaries to Penang, Java, Malacca and Singapore: Missionary Chronicle, April 1820, pp. 170–171. 199. Transaction of the London Missionary Society, Vol. IV, 1818, p. 256. 200. See for example: Missionary Chronicle, June 1820, p. 307. 201. See also: Harrison, Waiting for China, p. 24, on the importance attached to teach at local schools in the vernacular see: Porter, Religion Versus Empire, pp. 105–106. 202. Transactions of the London Missionary Society, 1818, p. 450. 203. Harrison, Waiting for China, pp. 134–135. 204. Since this work deals with ideas on the Chinese, the question of the Malayan population and the missionary efforts directed towards them will not specifically be dealt with. 205. Laird, Missionaries, pp. 5–11. 206. Ibid., pp. 67–68.

226

Notes

207. S. Sivasundaram, Nature and the Godly Empire. Science and Evangelical Mission in the Pacific, 1795–1850 (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 66–71; Laird, Missionaries, pp. 68–71. 208. SOAS, CWM, South China. Incoming Correspondence, Box 2, 1818–1829, R. Morrison to A. Hankey, dated 14 November 1822. 209. Missionary Chronicle, March, 1828, p. 118; Harrison, Waiting for China, p. 139. 210. For a later period in Singapore see for this argument: Missionary Chronicle, February 1828, p. 74. R. Morrison, Dialogues and Detached Sentences in the Chinese Language; with a Free and Verbal Translation in English (Macao, 1816), pp. 114–115. 211. Indo-Chinese Gleaner, Vol. XI , January 1820, pp. 265–270. 212. The Gentleman’s Magazine, May 1833, p. 388. 213. Missionary Chronicle, August 1828, p. 364. 214. On the importance of a classical Chinese education for the communities of overseas Chinese see: Wang, Chinese Overseas, pp. 81–82. 215. Indo-Chinese Gleaner, Vol. XIII, July, 1820, p. 377. 216. On the adoption of the Chinese school system in the missionary schools, see: Rawski, ‘Elementary Education’, esp. pp. 135–140. She states the necessity to include the Chinese curriculum into missionary schools, especially at the beginning of the missionary schools, whereby she concentrates in her study on the time after 1840 and on the Chinese mainland, not the beginnings in the Malayan Strait. On the general ambivalence of missionary education in the context of empire see a.o.: Porter, Religion Versus Empire, pp. 317–320. 217. On the appropriation of missionary education by the local population in other areas see also for example: Sivasundaram, Nature, pp. 59–64. 218. Evangelical Magazine, June 1829, p. 263. 219. Missionary Chronicle, January 1821, p. 41. 220. Milne, First Ten Years, p. 138. 221. Missionary Chronicle, January 1821, p. 43. 222. Ibid. August 1824, p. 369. See on Gosport also: Sivasundaram, Nature, pp. 71–74. 223. Missionary Chronicle, January 1821, p. 43. 224. Harrison, Waiting for China, pp. 151–154. 225. See for example: SOAS, CWM, South China. Incoming Correspondence, Box 2, 1818–1829, R. Morrison to LMS Headquarter, dated 14 November 1820; BL, APAC, CFR, IOR/G/12/273, R. Morrison to Select Committee, dated 18 March 1822. See also: Ibid., pp. 46–53. 226. Harrison, Waiting for China, pp. 46–53. 227. Ibid., p. 2. 228. SOAS, CWM, South China. Incoming Correspondence, Box 1, 1803–1817, R. Morrison to BFBS, dated 27 January, 1814. 229. SOAS, CWM, South China. Incoming Correspondence, Box 2, 1818–1829, R. Morrison to G. Burder, dated 9 March 1819; also: Missionary Chronicle, April 1820, p. 169. 230. Anglo-Chinese College, at Malacca. General Plan of the Anglo-Chinese College, Forming at Malacca (Malacca, 1818), p. 6. For the continuing importance of Indian language teaching in India as well as the importance of

Notes

231. 232. 233.

234. 235. 236. 237.

5

227

translations or writings in ‘native’ languages in the Indian context see: Dodson, ‘Translating Science’, esp. pp. 819–832. Anglo-Chinese College, at Malacca, p. 7. See also: Harrison, Waiting for China, p. 152. R. A. Bickers, ‘Medhurst, Walter Henry (1796–1857)’, in H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004), Vol. 37, pp. 686–687. Medhurst, Hok-Keen Dialect. Ibid., pp. v–vi. Ibid., p. ix. Girardot, Victorian Translation, pp. 36–42.

Asian Networks and the British Isles 1. Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stanford Raffles, FRSb, Particularly in the Government of Java 1811–16, and of Bencoolen and Its Dependencies 1817–1824, with Details of the Commerce and Resources of the Eastern Archipelago and Selections from His Correspondence, By His Widow (1829), pp. 568–574, 584–600. 2. Drayton, Nature’s Government, p. 171. 3. See for example: Aarsleff, Study of Language, pp. 129–134; Cannon, Oriental Jones; Said, Orientalism. Western Conceptions of the Orient, pp. 123–150; S. Pollock, ‘Deep Orientalism? Notes on Sanskrit and Power Beyond the Raj’, in C. Breckenridge and P. van der Veer (eds.), Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament (Philadelphia, 1994), pp. 76–134. 4. See however: H. Walravens, Aleksej Agafonov: ein unbekannter russischer Ostasienwissenschaftler des 18. Jahrhunderts: eine Biobibliographie (Hamburg, 1982); H. Walravens, Zur Geschichte der Ostasienwissenschaften in Europa. Abel Rémusat (1788–1832) und das Umfeld Julius Klaproths (1783–1835) (Wiesbaden, 1999); H. Walravens, Julius Klaproth (1783–1835) Leben und Werk (Wiesbaden, 1999); P. Demieville, ‘Apercu historique’, Acta Asiatica, 11 (1966), pp. 56–110; V.-V. Barthold, La découverte de l’Asie. Histoire de l’Orientalisme en Europe et en Russie (Paris, 1947), pp. 150–176; H. Franke, Sinology at German Universities (Wiesbaden, 1968); Stifler, ‘Language Students’; Barrett, Singular Listlessness. 5. Morrison, Memoirs of Robert Morrison, Vol. I, p. 1. 6. Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 251–281. 7. These different approaches are thus already evident at the beginning of the 19th century, while Girardot dates them to the second half of the century: Girardot, Victorian Translation, pp. 524–526. 8. I use the term ‘Sinology’ to describe the beginning of a specialised study of China and the Chinese language in Europe which started to supplant the Jesuit scholarship on China by advocating new standards for the production of knowledge and slowly establishing ‘China studies’ as an academic field. The term itself seems only to have come into use later in the 19th century: see: H. Franke, ‘In Search of China: Some General Remarks on the History of European Sinology’, Europe Studies China. Papers from an International Conference on the History of European Sinology (London, 1995), pp. 11–26, esp. p. 12.

228

Notes

9. On Fort William see: Kopf, British Orientalism, pp. 71–74; S. K. Das, Sahibs and Munshis: An Account of the College of Fort William (Calcutta, 1978); B. B. Misra, The Central Administration of the East India Company, 1773–1834 (Manchester, 1959), pp. 386–393. On Haileybury see Ibid., pp. 297–402. 10. BL, APAC, CFR, Secret Consultation, IOR/G/12/271, dated 17 February 1817. 11. Ibid. 12. SOAS, CWM, South China. Incoming Correspondence, Box 1, Morrison, 1803–1817, R. Morrison to Headquarters, dated 5 July 1815. 13. Missionary Chronicle, January 1826, p. 41. 14. Ibid., January 1826, p. 41. 15. SOAS, CWM, Home. Incoming Correspondence, Box 4, 1822–1826, R. Morrison to Headquarters, dated 8 December 1825. 16. After Morrison’s death, George Staunton gave it to the University College, London, as an incentive for the establishment of a Chair in Chinese studies in 1837. Today, it forms part of the collection of the SOAS. See: Barrett, Singular Listlessness, pp. 68–69. 17. Anonym, China: A Dialogue, for the Use of Schools Being Ten Conversations, Between a Father and His Two Children, Concerning the History and Present State of That Country, by an Anglo-Chinese (London, 1824), pp. 118–119. 18. Demieville, ‘Apercu historique’, pp. 78–79. 19. On the beginning of Abel Rémusat’s study of Chinese see Walravens, Geschichte der Ostasienwissenschaften, p. 14. 20. Barthold, La décourverte de l’Asie, p. 305. 21. See Walravens, Geschichte der Ostasienwissenschaften on Julius Klaproth and the circle of German scholars in Paris at the time, esp. p. 177. On the establishment of a chair for Chinese and Armenian in 1833, see Walravens, Julius Klaproth, p. 8. 22. Walravens, Julius Klaproth, pp. 6, 14–21. 23. Barrow, Travels, p. 615. 24. J. Rousseau and D. Thouard, Lettre édifiantes et curieuses sur la langue chinoise. Un débat philosophico-grammatical entre Wilhelm von Humboldt et Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat (1821–1831) (Villeneuve-d’Ascq, 1999). 25. Barrett, Singular Listlessness, pp. 68–72. 26. Morrison, Memoirs of Robert Morrison, pp. 282–284, 316–317. 27. SOAS, CWM, Home. Incoming Correspondence. Box 4, 1822–1826, R. Morrison to Headquarter, dated 14 January 1824. 28. Asiatic Journal, Vol. II, 1830, pp. 201–204; Vol. III, pp. 223–227. 29. Ibid., Vol. III, 1830, p. 227. 30. Ibid., p. 317. 31. J. P. A. Rémusat, Elémens de la grammaire chinoise, ou Principes généraux du kou-wen ou style antique, et du kouan-hoa c’est à dire, de la langue commune généralement ustiée dans l’Empire chinois (Paris, 1822), p. xviii. 32. Asiatic Journal, Vol. VIII, 1832, p. 96. 33. Demieville, ‘Apercu historique’, p. 83. 34. This interest becomes especially evident in his discussion with Humboldt about the Chinese language: Joseph, ‘Consequenz’, p. 93–104. 35. Rémusat, Elémens de la grammaire chinoise, p. xx. 36. Joseph, ‘Consequenz’, pp. 102, 118. 37. Rémusat, Elémens de la grammaire chinoise, p. xx.

Notes

229

38. Davis, Chinese Novels, pp. 9–15. See also on Abel-Rémusat: Asiatic Journal, Vol. VIII, 1832, pp. 294–295. 39. H. T. Colebrooke, ‘A Discourse Read at a Meeting of the Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, on 15th of March 1823’, Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1 (1823), pp. xvii–xxiii, esp. p. xxi. 40. Missionary Chronicle, August 1824, p. 371. 41. For the later 19th century see also: Girardot, Victorian Translation, pp. 2–5. 42. Colebrooke, ‘Discourse’, p. xviii. 43. See for example the list of donation for the Royal Asiatic Society: Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. I, 1827, pp. 600–640. 44. K. P. Murti, India. The Seductive and Seduced ‘Other’ of German Orientalism (Westport, London, 2001), p. 4. 45. Jones, ‘Seventh Discourse’, pp. 140–147. 46. J. F. Davis, ‘Memoir Concerning the Chinese’, Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1, May (1827), pp. 1–19, esp. pp. 1–3. 47. Asiatic Journal, Vol. VII, 1832, pp. 31–33. 48. Ibid., p. 41. 49. Davis, ‘Memoir’, pp. 1–3. 50. See for example: Asiatic Journal, Vol. 9, 1832, pp. 302–316. See also: Barrett, ‘Chinese Religion’, pp. 516–519. 51. Asiatic Journal, Vol. 5, 1831, p. 71. 52. Ibid., Vol. 6, 1831, pp. 260–266. 53. See for example: Ibid., Vol. IX, 1832, pp. 302–316. 54. R. Wheeler, The Complexion of Race. Categories of Difference in EighteenthCentury British Culture (New Cultural Studies Series, Philadelphia, 2000), pp. 14–32, esp. p. 28; W. Demel, Wie die Chinesen gelb wurden. Ein Beitrag zur Frühgeschichte der Rassentheorie (Kleine Beiträge zur europäischen Überseegeschichte, Bamberg, 1993), pp. 16–24; N. Hudson, ‘From “Nation” to “Race”. The Origin of Racial Classification in Eighteenth-Century Thought’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 29, 3 (1996), pp. 247–265, esp. p. 256. 55. N. Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain 1800–1960 (London, 1982), pp. 9–15. On the emergence of the skull as a focus point in this study of human variety and the context of the natural history of the late 18th and early 19th century see also: B. Dietz and T. Nutz, ‘Naturgeschichte des Menschen als Wissensformation des späten 18. Jahrhunderts. Orte, Objekte, Verfahren’, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, 32, 1 (2005), pp. 45–70, esp. pp. 51–61. 56. Demel, Rassentheorie. 57. Ibid., p. 20. 58. Ibid., pp. 27–30. 59. Barrow, Travels, p. 184. 60. Ibid., p. 184. 61. Ibid., pp. 48–49. 62. See on the idea of the possibilities for foreign people to develop, a.o. Wheeler, Race, esp. pp. 289–290. 63. J. C. Prichard, Researches into the Physical History of Mankind (2nd edn., 2 vols., London, 1826), Vol. II, pp. 320–323. 64. See: T. Bendyshe (ed.), The Anthropological Treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Late Professor at Göttingen and Court Physician to the King of Great Britain. With Memoirs of Him by Marx and Flourens, and an Account of His

230

65. 66.

67. 68. 69.

70.

71.

72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80.

81. 82. 83. 84.

85. 86. 87. 88.

Notes Anthropological Museum by Professor R. Wagner, and the Inaugural Dissertation of John Hunter, M.D. on the Varieties of Man (London, 1865), pp. 264–270. W. Lawrence, Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Man (London, 1819), pp. 530, 557. Ibid., p. 483. See also: p. 315 on the association of the Chinese to the Mongolian race and p. 290 as well as on the idea of the yellow skin colour of the Mongolian race. See: Times, 13 July 1824, p. 2; Times, 9 April 1827, p. 1; Times, 11 April 1831, p. 2. Marshall and Williams, Map of Mankind, pp. 85, 91–94, 175–176. Barrow, Travels, pp. 3–4; See on the categories for placing a nation on the scale of civilisations: H. M. Höpfl, ‘From Savage to Scotsman. Conjectural History in the Scottish Enlightenment’, The Journal of British Studies, XVII, 2 (1978), pp. 19–41, esp. p. 20. Edinburgh Review, No. 32, August 1810, pp. 477–478; The Canton register mainly addressed the question of the Chinese civilisation in relation to its attitude towards trade. One commentator even complained about the lack of a comparative discussion of the rank of Chinese civilisation in Canton. See: Canton Register, No. 37, 18 October 1828. E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Dublin, 1788), Vol. II, p. 3; G. T. Staunton, Ta Tsing Leu Lee: Being the Fundamental Laws and a Selection from the Supplementary Statutes, of the Penal Code of China (1810), p. xv. Staunton, Penal Code, pp. xvii–xix, xxiv–xxv. Asiatic Journal, Vol. VI, 1831, pp. 101, 140. Staunton, Penal Code, p. xi; Edinburgh Review, No. 32, August 1810, pp. 481– 489. J. Majeed, Ungoverned Imaginings. James Mill’s The History of India and Orientalism (Oxford, 1992), p. 125. Ibid., pp. 16–19, 22. Asiatic Journal, Vol. VI, 1832, p. 141. On the theory of the scale of civilisation and Mill’s History of British India see: L. Zastoupil, John Stuart Mill and India (Stanford, 1994), pp. 12–13. See also: Zhang, ‘British Views’, p. 127. J. Mill, The History of British India (H. H. Wilson, 5th edn., 10 vols., London, 1858), Vol. II, pp. 154–155. See also on Mill’s ideas about China: Zhang, ‘British Views’, pp. 128–130, 226–227; Jones, Image of China, p. 67. Davis, ‘Memoir’, pp. 16–17. Milne, First Ten Years, pp. 45–49. Evangelical Magazine, November 1824, p. 493. SOAS, CWM, South China. Incoming Correspondence, Box 1, Morrison, 1803–1817, R. Morrison to Headquarters, dated 1 May 1816, and dated 2 April 1812. Evangelical Magazine, 1813, p. 37. Ibid., July 1824, pp. 314–315; Annual Meeting of the Bible Society, May 1814. Transactions of the London Missionary Society, Vol. III, London, 1813, p. 271. Evangelical Magazine, July 1825, pp. 273–276; August 1825, pp. 322–325; September 1825, pp. 365–369; October 1825, pp. 410–412; November 1825, pp. 455–457; December 1825, pp. 501–504.

Notes

231

89. Anonym, A Dialogue for the Use of Schools (London, 1824), pp. 9–19. 90. See for example: Ibid., pp. 72–74; on the responsibility of the British towards them: pp. 3, 101–103. 91. Ibid., pp. 23–24, 102–103. 92. R. Morrison, Regard to the Affairs of Others. A Discourse, Delivered at Hoxton Academy Chapel, February 6, 1825 (London, 1825), pp. 37–38. 93. Ibid., p. 33. 94. Ibid., pp. 6, 12–13. 95. Ibid., p. 28. 96. Ibid., p. 32. 97. Petition to the house of commons from British subjects residing in China, 24 December 1830, in: Anonym, The Foreign Trade of China, pp. 95–104. 98. See a summary in: P. Harling, The Waning of ‘Old Corruption’: The Politics of Economical Reform in Britain, 1779–1846 (Oxford, 1996), pp. 5–6; M. J. Turner, The Age of Unease. Government and Reform in Britain, 1782–1832 (Stroud, 2000), pp. 250–255, 270; P. Mandler, Aristocratic Government in the Age of Reform. Whigs and Liberals, 1830–1852 (Oxford, 1990). See for an opposite view: J. Phillips and C. Wetherell, ‘The Great Reform Act of 1832 and the Political Modernization of England’, American Historical Review, 100, 2 (1995), pp. 411–436. They show that the Great Reform Act indeed can be interpreted as the beginning of consistent partisanship. 99. Hilton, Age of Atonement; A. M. C. Waterman, Political Economy and Christian Theology Since the Enlightenment (New York, 2004), pp. 88–162. 100. B. Semmel, The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism: Classical Political Economy, the Empire of Free Trade and Imperialism, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, 1970). 101. A. Gambles, Protection and Politics. Conservative Economic Discourse, 1815– 1852 (Suffolk, Rochester, 1999). 102. Greenberg, British Trade, pp. 156–165. 103. Bowen, Business of Empire, pp. 256–357. 104. B. Hilton, Corn, Cash, Commerce. The Economic Policies of the Tory Governments 1815–1830 (Oxford, 1977), pp. 76–77. 105. M. J. Turner, ‘Before the Manchester School: Economic Theory in Early Nineteenth-Century Manchester’, History, 79, 256 (1994), pp. 216–242, esp. pp. 218–224; A. Redford, Manchester Merchants and Foreign Trade, 1794–1858 (reprint 1973 edn., Manchester, 1934), pp. 108–118. 106. D. Eyles, ‘The Abolition of the East India Company’s Monopoly, 1833 Unpubl. PhD Thesis’ (University of Edinburgh, 1955), p. 103 107. Philips, The East India Company, 1784–1834, pp. 276–298; Tsao, ‘Representing China’, p. 58; Eyles, ‘Abolition’, pp. 304–305. 108. Gambles, Protection and Politics, pp. 188–189. 109. See also: B. Gordon, Economic Doctrine and Troy Liberalism 1824–1830 (London, Basingstoke, 1979), pp. 67–69; K. Wilson, Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 1715–1785 (Cambridge, 1995), p. 277. 110. Philips, The East India Company, 1784–1834, p. 289. 111. Eyles, ‘Abolition’, p. 173. 112. On ‘Old Corruption’ see: Harling, The Waning of ‘Old Corruption’: The Politics of Economical Reform in Britain, 1779–1846; Eyles, ‘Abolition’, p. 184. 113. Anonym, The Foreign Trade of China, p. 15.

232

Notes

114. Edinburgh Review, No. CIV, January 1831, pp. 292–295; Anonym, Chinese Monopoly Examined (London, 1830), pp. 27–46. 115. Anonym, The Foreign Trade of China, pp. 12–13. 116. Ibid., pp. 13–16. 117. Observations on the Influence of the East India Company’s Monopoly on the Price and Supply of Tea; and on the Commerce with India, China, etc. Reprinted, . . . , with Corrections and Amendments, from the Edinburgh Review, No. CIV (London, 1831), p. 15. 118. Asiatic Journal, Vol. XIII, 1834, p. 101. See also: Tsao, ‘Representing China’, pp. 41–50; Westminster Review, Vol. XX, No. 39, January 1834, pp. 27–37. 119. Observations, p. 14. 120. Ibid., p. 31. 121. Ibid. 122. This work follows the general usage of the term ‘Tory’ before 1830 and the term ‘Conservative’ for the 1830s and later; see also: Gambles, Protection and Politics, p. 6. 123. Ibid., pp. 2–22, 161. 124. Fisher, for example was a writer in the EIC house, Montogomery Martin proprietor of the EIC. 125. The Gentleman’s Magazine, April 1833, p. 291. 126. SOAS, CWM, China. Personal. Box 3, R. Morrison to T. Fisher, dated 10 October 1833. 127. M. Martin, The Past and Present State of the Tea Trade of England, and of the Continents of Europe and America, and a Comparison Between the Consumption, Price of, and Revenue Derived from, Tea, Coffee, Sugar, Wine, Tobacco, Spirits, etc. (London, 1832), pp. 10–11. A similar attempt to disqualify the petitioners and other public opponents of the EIC: Asiatic Journal, Vol. II, 1830, pp. 187–191. 128. Martin, Past and Present State, pp. 4–5. 129. Ibid., pp. 6–10. On a similar view see: The Gentleman’s Magazine, February 1834, p. 124. 130. H. Ellis, Series of Letters on the East India Question, Addressed to the Members of the Two Houses of Parliament, Letter 1 (2nd edn., London, 1830), p. 29. On development towards positive law of international relations see: Nussbaum, Law of Nations, pp. 164–185. 131. Ellis, Series of Letters on the East India Question, p. 35. 132. The Gentleman’s Magazine, February 1834, pp. 126–129. 133. Martin, Past and Present State, pp. 5–11. 134. The Gentleman’s Magazine, February 1834, p. 123. 135. Ibid., May 1833, p. 389. 136. Ibid., April 1833, p. 296; May 1833, p. 392. See also: Asiatic Journal, Vol. I, New series, 1830, p. 108. 137. Similarly, the difference of Indian culture was also stated as a reason in support for the continuing EIC administration of India. See: W. S. O’Brien, Considerations Relative to the Renewal of the East-India Company’s Charter (London, 1830), pp. 25–30. 138. Ellis, Series of Letters on the East India Question, p. 41. 139. Martin, Past and Present State, pp. 128–129.

Notes

233

140. Similar views were frequently expressed, see for example: Asiatic Journal, Vol. XXVII, January 1829, pp. 2–3; Vol. XXVIII, December 1829, pp. 678–685. 141. Gambles, Protection and Politics, pp. 159–161. 142. Ellis, Series of Letters on the East India Question, pp. 22, 55; Martin, Past and Present State, p. 1; Asiatic Journal, July 1829, p. 57. 143. See for example: Martin, Past and Present State, p. 11. 144. The Gentleman’s Magazine, 1 February 1834, pp. 126–128; Martin, Past and Present State, p. 203. 145. Philips, The East India Company, 1784–1834, p. 287. 146. Report from Committees: Seven Volumes; East India Company’s Affairs, session 5.2–23.7. 1830, Vol. V, No. 644: First Report from The Select Committee on the Affairs of THE EAST INDIA COMPANY (China Trade). 147. Ibid., p. iv. 148. Ibid., Vol. XX, 20 August 1833, sp. 790; Vol. XIX, 5 July 1833, sp. 210; Eyles, ‘Abolition’, p. 260. See also: Melancon, Britain’s China Policy, pp. 17–22. 149. Ibid., pp. 35–37. 150. Eyles, ‘Abolition’, pp. 294–295. 151. Philips, The East India Company, 1784–1834, p. 295. 152. Act to Regulate the Trade to China and India, 28 August 1833. 153. Melancon, Britain’s China Policy, p. 58. 154. J. F. Davis, The Chinese: A General Description of the Empire of China and Its Inhabitants (2 vols., London, 1836), Vol. 1, p. 2; passim. 155. Barrett, Singular Listlessness, pp. 68–72. 156. PRO, Manuscript, FO 97/96 Copy of Communicated by Sir Alex Johnston to the Duke of Wellington, 3 March 1835. 157. W. H. Medhurst, China: Its State and Prospects, with Special Reference to the Spread of the Gospel (London, 1838), pp. 220–545. 158. C. Gützlaff, China Opened; or, A display of the Topography, History, Customs, Manners, Arts, Manufactures, Commerce, Literature, Religion, Jurisprudence, etc. of the Chinese Empire (London, 1838), pp. iii–iv; C. Gützlaff, A Sketch of Chinese History, Ancient and Modern; Comprising a Retrospect of the Foreign Intercourse and Trade with China. Illustrated by a New and Correct Map of the Empire (London, 1834). 159. Gützlaff, Three Voyages, pp. 103–158. 160. Ibid., see voyages two and three, pp. 159–321. 161. See Greenberg, British Trade, pp. 196–197. 162. Times, 2 August, 1839, p. 3, Issue 17110, col. A. 163. Melancon, Britain’s China Policy, pp. 83–130. 164. Greenberg, British Trade, p. 195. 165. J. F. Murray, The Chinese and the Ministry. An Inquiry into the Origin and Progress of Our Present Difficulties with China and into the Expediency, Justice, and Necessity of the War (London, 1840), pp. 11–23; Anonym, Some Pros and Cons of the Opium Question with a Few Suggestions Regarding British Claims on China (London, 1840). 166. Melancon, Britain’s China Policy, pp. 115–130. 167. H. Lindsay, Is the War with China a Just One? (London, 1840), pp. 6–7, 38–40; Anonym, The Rupture with China and Its Causes; Including the

234

Notes

168.

169. 170. 171.

172. 173.

174. 175. 176. 177. 178.

179.

180. 181. 182.

183. 184. 185.

6

Opium Question, and Other Important Details: In a Letter to Lord Viscount Palmerston . . . By a Resident in China (London, 1840), p. 43. A. Graham, The Right, Obligation, & Interest of the Government of Great Britain to Require Redress from the Government of China, for the Late Forced Surrender of British-Owned Opium at Canton (Glasgow, Edinburgh, London, 1840), pp. 3–5, 9–19; Anonym, Pros and Cons, pp. 18–20; S. Warren, The Opium Question (London, 1840), p. 76. Barrow, Travels, pp. 405–412; Warren, The Opium Question, p. 107. Anonym, Pros and Cons, pp. 29–43; Warren, The Opium Question, pp. 108–113. G. T. Staunton, Corrected Report of the Speech of Sir George Staunton on Sir James Graham’s Motion on the China Trade in the House of Commons, April 7, 1840 (London, 1840), pp. 14–15. Medhurst, China, pp. 56–57, 83–85. A. S. Thelwall, The Iniquities of the Opium Trade with China; Being a Development of the Main Causes Which Exclude the Merchants of Great Britain from the Advantages of an Unrestricted Commercial Intercourse with That Vast Empire (London, 1839), pp. 1–21. Ibid., pp. 124, 173–178; Medhurst, China, pp. 90–92. Medhurst, China, p. 94. Ibid., pp. 83–87; Asiatic Journal, The Opium Trade, Vol. XXX, New Series, September–December 1839, p. 228. Medhurst, China, pp. 85–88. T. Brook and B. T. Wakabayashi, ‘Introduction: Opium’s History in China’, in T. Brook and B. T. Wakabayashi (eds.), Opium Regimes. China, Britain, and Japan, 1839–1952 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 2000), pp. 1–30, esp. p. 8. R. Philip, Peace with China! Or, the Crisis or Christianity in Central Asia: A Letter to the Right Honourable T.B. Macaulay, Secretary at War (London, 1840); on the ambivalent relationship between the missionaries and the opium trade see also Rubinstein’s analysis of the American and British publications in Canton: Rubinstein, ‘Wars They Wanted’, esp. pp. 279–282. Anonym, Rupture with China, p. 33; Warren, The Opium Question, pp. 83–86; Anonym, Rupture with China, pp. 4–8. Staunton, Corrected Report, pp. 9–11. Murray, The Chinese, pp. 7–11; Asiatic Journal, China, 1840, Vol. XXXII, New Series, May–August, pp. 61–66; T. H. Bullock (ed.), The Chinese Vindicated, or Another View of the Opium Question; Being in Reply to a Pamphlet by Samuel Warren . . . (London 1840), esp. p. 2; pp. 88–94. Asiatic Journal, China, 1840, Vol. XXXII, New Series, May–August, p. 60. Ibid., p. 64. Melancon, Britain’s China Policy, pp. 83–130.

Epilogue

1. Melancon, Britain’s China Policy, pp. 83–130. 2. PRO, CO 129/1, Article XI, Treaty between Her Majesty and the Emperor of China, Signed, in the English and Chinese Language, at Nanking, 29 August 1842.

Notes

235

3. G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong, 1841–1962. A Constitutional History (Hong Kong, 1964), pp. 23, 36. 4. PRO, CO 129/3, Extract of a letter from Sir Henry Pottinger to the Imperial Commissioners and Viceroy, Hong Kong, 17 September 1842; PRO, CO 129/3, Extract of a letter from the Imperial Commissioners and Viceroy to Sir Henry Pottinger, Taokwang, 7 September 1842. 5. PRO, CO 129/3, Pottinger to Aberdeen, Hong Kong, 13 June 1843. 6. Endacott, Government and People, pp. 27–38; PRO, CO 129/7, Sir John Davis to Lord Stanley, Hong Kong, 21 October 1844; Ordinance to establish supreme court of judicature at Hong Kong, 21 August 1844, Paragraph 3. 7. PRO, CO 129/4, John Davis to Lord Stanley, Athenaeum, London, 21 December 1843; see also: PRO, CO 129/4/64, Memorandum upon constituting Hong Kong a Free Port, with reference more immediately to the privileges at present enjoyed by Singapore. 8. C. Munn, ‘The Hong Kong Opium Revenue, 1845–1885’, in T. Brook and B. T. Wakabayashi (eds.), Opium Regimes. China, Britain, and Japan, 1839–1952 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 2000), pp. 105–127, esp. p. 107. 9. PRO, CO 129/2, Samuel Dyer et al. to Henry Pottinger, Hong Kong, 18 August 1843. 10. Girardot, Victorian Translation, p. 42. 11. Harrison, Waiting for China, pp. 103–115. 12. Fan, British Naturalists in Qing China. Science, Empire, and the Cultural Encounter, pp. 61–90.

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Index absolutism, enlightened, 7 Adam Smith, 37, 84 aesthetic discourse on China, 150 age of reform, 172–3 Alexander, William, 28–30, 33 Altangi, Lien Chi, 22, 24 American China trade, 93, 172–3 Americans, 48, 76, 85, 103 American War of Independence, 35 Amherst embassy, 33–4, 76–81, 115, 178, 182–3 Amoy, 136 Anglo-Chinese college, 145, 147, 156, 169–70, 189 Anglo-Dutch treaty, 125 anti-slavery campaign, 169, 171 Appelton, William, 7 Asiatic Journal, 156, 159–60, 167, 176 Baba society, 123 Balambangan, 124 Banks, Joseph, 37 Barrow, John, 39, 58, 75–6, 155, 163–7 Batavia, 131, 141, 148 bekel, 133, 135 Bencoolen, 138 Bengal, 4, 22, 58–60, 87, 106–14, 116, 120–1 Bengal Asiatick Society, 160 Bentham, Jeremy, 51, 83 Bentinck, Lord Cavendish, 85, 90 BFBS, 169 Bhutan, 108, 109 Bible Chinese Bible, religions, Conficius, 64–5, 72, 119 chronology of the, 3, 17, 19–20, 161, 170 distribution of the, 70, 84, 169 education, 99, 143–4 translation, 60–1, 66, 69–70, 118, 148, 152 Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 165

BMS, 119 board of control, 35, 76 Bogle, George, 108–12 Bogue, Supplementary Treaty, 188 Bombay, 86 Bradshaw, 114 Brighton, 27–8, 31–2, 104, 154 British Empire, 6–13, 35, 101–3, 180–6, 188–92 British and Foreign Bible Society, 169 British and Foreign School Society, 169 British honour, 101, 184, 186 British imperial expansion, 1–2, 7–8, 13, 33, 105, 113, 122, 126, 131, 151, 186–91 British Isles, 1–2, 152, 183 British merchants, 6, 63, 88, 93, 97, 101–2 British missionaries, see under missionaries British navy, 47, 95, 103 Britishness, 14, 57, 81–2, 90, 122 British Parliament, 27, 172, 174, 177, 181, 184, 186 British peasant, 129 British products, 173 British Residency, 116, 168 British trade, 92 British treasure, 26 Brown, Capability, 24 Buchanan, Francis, 114 Buckingham, James Silk, 174 Buckinghamshire, Earl of, 76 Buddhism, 64, 72, 110, 162–3 buddhist monarch, 148 bullion, 172 bullionist, 26–7 Burder, Dr., 73 Burma, 106, 118–19 cabinet makers, 23 Calcutta, 14, 34, 118, 146

254

Index 255 Calcutta Asiatic Society, 160, 162 Calcutta Journal, 174 California, 164 Calmucks, 165 Campong, 138 Canning, George, 80 Canton, 12, 14, 34, 55, 92, 102 British representatives, 5, 47–8, 81, 91–6, 182 Chinese authorities, 50, 81–2, 86–91 Chinese language, interpreters, 57–8, 61, 63–4, 121–2, 142, 153, 158 Chinese law, 51–5, 85 country traders, trading houses, 82–3 EIC employees, 45–6 mission, 67–70 Opium trade, 100–3 trade, 4, 36, 46, 50, 82–3, 85, 93 Canton Register, 55, 63–4, 83–5, 97, 138 Captain China, 130, 138–9, 148 Carey, William, 1, 117 caricaturists, 32 Carlton House, 27–8 Cathay, 7, 16, 187 Cathcart embassy, 38 Cavendish, Thomas, 125 Cawthorn, James, 23 Central Asia, 46, 115, 119 Chambers, William, 23–5 charity schools, 142 Chengede, 111 chief superintendent, 91, 94, 96, 187 chief of trade commission, 99 China Act, 91 China experts, 104, 150, 178, 183 China image Canton and embassies, 37, 47, 49, 70, 74, 92, 94–5, 97, 103 diaspora, 120, 128, 134, 139, 140–1 Europe and Britain, 16, 17, 32, 180, 182–3, 185, 190 mytical, enlightened, 17–18, 80, 98 China’s north-west expansion, 108 China trade, see EIC China trade Chinese army, 116 Chinese character, 87, 164

Chinese classics, 145 Chinese diaspora, 5, 97, 120, 141, 188 Chinese immigration, 106, 123, 127, 131–4, 137 Chinese language, 57, 60 Chinese law, 45, 51–5, 83, 85, 166–7 Chinese Penal Code, 51, 53, 56, 138, 166, 183 Chinese proprietors, 130–1 Chinese religions, 3, 16, 64–5, 71–2, 75, 110–11, 119, 162 Chinese school system, 143 Chinese settlements, 123 Chinese societies, 135 Chinese students, 146 Chinese tax collectors, 131 Chinese traders Southeast Asia, 85–6, 90, 122, 129, 134, 136–7 chinoiserie, 7–8, 16, 18, 21–34, 151, 154, 169 Chippendale, Thomas, 22 christian political economy, 172 civilisations, scale of, 7, 14, 127, 164, 166 Clapham sect, 141, 171 Clive, John, 27 coastal frontier, 46 Coelestoterrestrial Society, see heaven and earth society Cohn, Bernhard, 56 cohong system, 4, 104 Colebrook, Henry Thomas, 158 College of Fort William, see Fort William Collie, David, 138 colonialism, 9, 151 Commissioner Lin, see Lin, Commissioner Commutation Act, 35 comparative anatomy, 161, 163–4 comparative philology, 59, 151, 156, 161, 165 comparative study of religions, 65 Condillac, Etienne, 19 Confucianism, 64, 72, 110, 162, 168 Confucius, 3, 23, 64–5, 72, 110, 118–19, 122, 138, 162, 168 Conservatives, 172, 177–81 constitution of Britain, 180

256

Index

contact zones, 1, 11–15, 33, 186, 189–92 Cooch Behar, 108 Cook, James, 29, 36 Cooper, Frederick, 9 Coqua, 49 Corn Laws, 174, 177 Cornwallis, Charles, 112, 131 costume of the Chinese, 29–30 costumes, 164 cotton, 86, 173, 179 country merchants, 63, 84–6, 90–1, 93, 96–8, 102, 104, 124, 171, 173, 175, 179 country trade, 47, 50, 63–4, 75, 81, 83–4, 88, 124, 148, 160, 171–3, 178 Court of Directors, 36, 47–8, 50, 53, 76, 78, 81, 87, 89, 91, 108, 131, 153, 156 Crace, John, 28 Cranmer-Byng, J., 36 Cranssen, Jacob William, 132 Crawfurd, John, 122, 126–37, 150, 165, 175–6 cruelty and injustice, 54–5 Cuddalore, 124 Cumberland, 23 Cunningham, J. D., 120 Cutts, Elmer H., 118 Daendels, Herman Willem, 131, 134 Dalai Lama, 109–12, 119 Dalrymple, Alexander, 120, 123–5, 173 Danish, 48, 83 Davis, John Francis, 58, 60, 77, 89–90, 96, 158, 161–2, 167, 183 Defoe, Daniel, 7 Descartes, 18–19 despotism, 7, 51, 82, 167 diligent workers, 137 Dilkes, John, 52 diplomacy, 5–6, 31, 45, 75 dissenting academies, 146 divine duty, 170 Doris affair, 76 Dravidian elements, 117 drawings, ethnographic, 28–30

Du Halde, Jean-Baptiste, 183 Duke Ho, 80 Dundas, Henry, 35–41, 121 Dutch, 48, 97, 123, 125, 131–6, 142 Dyer, Sam, 144 East Asia, 118 Eastern Islands, 136, 181 East India, 132 Agency House, 82 College, 153 Company Charter Act, 143 East Indies, 132 economic protectionism, 172 edict against Christianity, 169 Ee, 62–3 Egypt, 16, 18, 20, 160 EIC bills, 172 Calcutta, 34 charter, 171–8 China Trade, 3–6, 23–6, 35–6, 48, 75, 83, 86, see also trade employees, 47 employees in canton, 2, 47–54, 84–5, 88–91, 104 headquarters, 24, 87 in India, 4–5, 34–9, 82, 107–16, 126, 177 monopoly, 4, 14, 56, 75, 81–5, 91–3, 152, 172–83 Select Committee, 48–52, 68, 81–5, 97 Southeast Asia, 125–30, 135, 138 Eight Trigrams, 79 Ellenborough, Lord, 181 Elliot, Charles, 99–103 Ellis, Henry, 78, 178, 180 Elphinstone, John Fullarton, 61 embassy, 5, 34–7, 61, 78, 118, 175 English law, 51, 53 Enlightenment, 16–17, 69, 75, 137, 147 European imperialism, 8 European scientific community, 151 Evangelical Magazine, 169–70 evangelicals, 66–9, 84, 142, 169–72, 177

Index 257 Evans, Lacy de, 84 extraterritorial law, 52 Fa, Liang, 70 Faquhar, 138 Father Rodriguez, 59–60 finance committee, 92 Fisher, Thomas, 178–9 Fitzherbert, Mary, 28 Flint, James, 57, 61 Fo, 111 foreign office, 5–6, 95–7 Fort William, 61, 90, 118, 146–7, 153 Four Books of Confucius, 72, 138, 144 see also Confucius France, 67, 123, 150, 154, 157 Freemasons, 140 free trade, see trade French, 36, 48, 75 French Revolution, 6 Fu-k’ang-an, 114 Fukien, 97 Fum, 32 Ganges, 73, 113, 161 garden architecture, 22 garden, Chinese, 24–5 Genghis Khan, 165 genre-painting, 30 George III, 23, 36, 38, 61, 79 George IV, 152 German, 192 Germany, 150 Gesub Rimboché, 109 Gibbon, 166 Gillespie, Robert, 132 Girardot, Norman J., 8, 10 Goldsmith, William, 22 gosein, 110 gospel, 74 Gosport academy, 141, 146 Goulburn, Henry, 177 Governor of Canton, 55 Governor-General in India, 47 Greece, 16, 23, 146, 160 Greek, 58, 64, 118 Greek grammar, 20 Greenberg, Michael, 5, 92, 182 Guignes, Louis Joseph, 155

Gurkha Kingdom, 112, 116 Gurkhas, 106, 107, 112–14 Gützlaff, Karl, 63, 84, 96–9, 148, 157, 176, 179, 183 Haileybury, 153–4 Han Chinese, 117, 162 Hantford College, 153 Hanway, Jonas, 26–7 Harris, James, 19 Hastings, Warren, 27, 35, 108–10, 120 heaven-and-earth societies, 139 Herder, 59 Hevia, James L., 37, 42, 79 hieroglyphic writing, 19 Himalayas, 112–16 Hindi, 58, 153 Hindu culture, 133 Hinduism, 163 histoire croisée, 9 history of man, natural, 7, 17, 130 Hodgson, Brian Houghton, 116–19 Hogendorp, Dirk van, 131–3 Hokkien dialect, 142, 148, 158 Holland, 67 Holland, Henry, 28 Hong Kong, 58, 104, 188–9 Hong Kong theological seminar, 189 Hong merchants, 4, 46–9, 62–3, 84–7, 93, 100–1, 171, 179 Hong system, 51, 83, 188 Hoppo of Canton, 62 Hottentots, 164 Houses of Parliament, 181 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 156, 160 India, 82, 90–1, 101–7, 116, 151, 160, 168, 175 India Act, 35 Indian agency houses, 85, 125 Indian law, 51 Indo-European language, 60 Indo-Germanic languages, 151 industrious Chinese, 127–8, 134, 136, 142, 181, 183 informal imperialism, 172 Inglis, Robert, 181 inhumanity, 54 international law, 53–6, 181, 184

258

Index

interpreter, 56 Chinese, 40, 57 truthfulness, 39 Irschick, Eugene, 10 Islam, 133 Ismailov, 37, 42 Japanese pirates, 46 Jardine, 5, 83–4, 92–7, 175 Java, 120, 125–6, 130–6, 169 Jehol, 39, 42 Jesuits China image, 6, 28, 49, 55, 64, 98, 143 and Chinese religion, 64–5, 72–3 as interpreter, 39–40, 57, 61–2, 167 mission to China, 3, 10, 16, 39, 63–4 reports, 7, 17, 26, 59, 71, 169, 183 Jiajing, 79–80 Jones, William, 10, 39, 58–60, 64, 139, 160–1 joss, 32 Journal Asiatique, 156, 161 Julien, Stanislas, 152 junk trade, 123, 125, 136 Kames, Lord, 18 Kathmandu, 114–16 Kew, garden of, 23 Kidd, Samuel, 122, 148, 156 Kimber, Edward, 123 Kirkpatrick, Colonel, 112–13 Klaproth, Julius, 152, 155, 157–8, 161–3, 168, 178 Knops, Johannes, 133 Knox, Captain, 114 Kol, 117 kongsi, 123, 127, 137, 139–40 kowtow, 37–8, 41–2, 77–80 lacquers, 3, 21 Lady Hughes Affair, 36, 48, 50, 52, 55 Lambert, David, 9 Lancashire, 173 Lancasterian system, 142–4 landlords, Chinese, 135 land reform, 131, 136 land rent system, 133 landscape garden, 24

language, 2, 17–20, 56–63, 121, 137–40, 145–8, 152–67 original, 3, 19, 60 universal, 3, 18–19, 26 Lassar, Joannes, 118 Latin, 58 Latin-French Chinese dictionary, 155 Latour, Bruno, 11 law of the market, 172 law of nations, 51–6 Lawrence, William, 165 laws and customs of China, 52 Layman, Captain, 128 Lazzaronimen, 129 legal trade, 102 Legge, James, 8, 148 Leibniz, Gottfried, 17 letter to the Chinese Emperor, 39 Leyden, John, 120–3, 141 Lhasa, 109–10, 115 Liberalism, Liberals, 51, 172, 177 Lin, Commissioner, 99–103, 184, 186 Lindsay, Hamilton, 97, 176, 179 linguists, 39, 57 Lintin, 84 Liverpool, 173 Liverpool, Lord, 177 LMS, 66 Anglo-Chinese College Malacca, 156, see also Anglo-Chinese College Gosport academy, 141 mission to China, 118, 141 mission to Southeast Asia, 96–7, 141 Morrison, 71, 73, 159, 169–70, see also Morrison Locke, John, 19 London Missionary Society, see LMS Macao, 4, 46, 75, 84, 97, 99, 103, 118–19, 129, 141 Macartney embassy, 28, 34, 37, 40–3, 45, 182 British self image, 191 drawings (Alexander), 28–9, 33 interpreters, 39–40, 76 kowtow, 37, 41–2 scientific expedition, 36, 43–4 Mackenzie, Colin, 88–9, 120, 122, 133

Index 259 Mackerras, C., 7 Madras, 106, 124, 133, 190 Malacca, 120, 125–6, 129, 132, 135–47, 154, 156, 170 Malayan Archipelago, 120 Malayan Strait, 142, 145 Malthus, Thomas Robert, 84, 127 Manchester, 173 Manchu, 40, 95–8, 105, 119, 137, 139, 175, see also Qing Mandarin (linguistic), 121, 148, 158 Mandarins (admin.), 23, 38, 44, 80, 97–8, 103, 105, 129, 176 Manning, Thomas, 60, 77, 107 Marco Polo, 16 Marshman, Joshua, 117–21 Martin, Robert Montgomery, 180 Mason, George, 25, 28–31 massacre of Chinese in Batavia, 131 Matheson, 5, 83–4, 92–7, 175 Mauritius, 188 M’Culloch, 84 Medhurst, William, 96, 148, 183–5 Melbourne government, 101, 104, 186 Mendosa, Conzalez de, 125 merchants, see trade metropolis, 2, 8–9, 82, 150, 156, 173, 175, 186 Middle East, 191 Mill, James, 83, 85, 167 Milne, William, 60, 68–74, 139–48, 169 Ming, 51, 162 Minto, 118, 122, 129–32 missionaries, 50, 77, 103–4, 146 baptist, 117, 146 British, 74–5 and British expansion, 67 Catholic, 40, 71, 76 French, Portuguese, 36 and influence on the British Isles, 168, 183–5, 189 Jesuit, 3, 39, 63, see also Jesuits protestant, 2, 58, 60, 64–6, 68–73, 84, 122, 136, 152 at Serampore, 117–18, 146 in Southeast Asia, 122, 126, 139–45, 154

Missionary Chronicle, 70, 169 Moira, 114–15 Molony, James, 49, 153 Monboddo, Lord, 19, 20 moneylenders, Chinese, 135 Mongolians, 109, 116–17, 165 monopoly, see EIC monosyllabic language, 165 Montesquieu, 166 moral philosophy, 167 Morrison Education Society, 99 Morrison, Robert, 60–3, 68–79, 96–9, 118, 121, 141–59, 169–71, 178 Morse, H. B., 6 Mosambicans, 164 Moseley, William, 61, 66–7 Mughal empire, 31 Mughal rule, 167 Mughals, 40, 105, 175 Munda, 117 Muntinghe, H. W., 131–2 Muslim Arabs, 129 Mysore, battle of, 27, 120 Nan yang Chinese, 130 Napier, William John, 5, 91–6, 100, 103 Napoleonic Wars, 5, 66, 75, 94–5, 106, 125 Nash, John, 31 natural history of man, 17 natural laws, 176–8 nature of mankind, 190 naval forces, 90 Nepal, 76, 106, 107–18 Nepalese war, 114–15 Netherlands, 123, 125 Netherlands Missionary Society, 96 networks, 8, 99, 150, 168, 174, 189 Neumann, Karl, 162 Newar culture, 117 Nieuhoff, Jan, 123 north-eastern border, 107 Oceania, 117 old corruption, 174 opium, 4, 93, 101 opium abuse, 137–40, 183–5

260

Index

opium import, 99 opium merchants, 99 opium prohibition, 93, 99–101 opium smuggling, 81, 92, 100, 102, 184–5 opium trade, 4–5, 54, 83–5, 90–3, 99–103, 176, 184–9 Opium War, 1–5, 92–3, 101–5, 119, 152, 184–90 oriental despotism, 32 orientalism, 8, 10, 27, 151, 191 origin of civilisation, 168 orthodox mission in Beijing, 155 Osborne, Alick, 128–9 ‘other’, 11–12, 23, 51, 72, 74, 132 outside merchants, 86 Overseas Chinese, 12, 106, 122–3, 126 Pabst, Lawick van, 133 Pacific islanders, 171 Palmerston, Lord, 5, 94–6, 99–102, 184–7 Panarukan, 134 Panchen Lama, 108–12 parliament, see British Parliament Parsee, 4, 46, 86 patrimonial principle, 166 Pavilion, Royal, 31–3 Peel, Robert, 177 Penang, 120–6, 129, 132, 135–40, 144, 169 Penny brothers, 22 peranakan society, 123 Percy, Thomas, 19–20 periphery, 2, 8–13, 58–9, 99, 141, 150, 190 persecutions of Christianity, 71 Persian language, 58–9, 153 Persian literature, 58 Philippines, 124 philosopher king, 35 physiognomy, 163–5 Pigot, Mr., 46 pin, 100 Pindar, Peter, 27, 44 Pit, Han Tjan, 134 Pitt, William, 35–7, 44 Plowden, H. C., 86–8, 91, 94 Plumb, Mr, 40, 76

political economy, 84, 172 political philosophy, 167 Poor Law, 174 porcelain, 2–3, 21–6, 149 Porter, David, 3, 7, 24, 26, 66 Portuguese, 36, 75, 129, 141, 180 Pottinger, Henry, 188–9 Pratt, Mary Louise, 11 Prichard, James, 164 Prince Regent, 27–8, 31, 76, 104 Pritchard, Earl, 6 prosecution of Roman Catholics, 169 protestant missionaries, see under missionaries providence, 52 Prussia, 83 Puankequa, 48 Purangir, 110 Qianlong, 27, 32, 43, 80, 106, 110–12, 115 Qing, 36, see also Manchu Empire, 27, 41, 91, 106–7, 109, see also Chinese Empire guest ritual, ceremony, 42, 79, see also kowtow legal system, penal code, 51–3, 138 trade restrictions, 1, 4, 46 Quaker, 142 Qua, Pu, 30 Quesnay, Francois, 3 race, 163–4 racial characteristics, 161, 164–5 Raffles, Thomas, 121–2, 125–6, 128, 131–43, 150, 154 Raja of Segwin, 114 Reform Act, 177 Reform Bill, 174, 181 Rémusat, Abel, 119, 152, 154–8, 168 representative, see under Canton Repton, Humphry, 31 rights of women, 167 rites controversy, 17, see also Qing Roberts, William, 69 Robinson, George Best, 96, 99–100, 103 Rothenbuhler, Frederick Jacob, 133–4 Royal Asiatic Society, 151, 159–60, 174

Index 261 royal charter of justice, 138 Royal Pavilion, 28, 32–3, 104 Russia activities in Asia, 36–8, 116, 119, 181 Catharina II, 38–9 embassy to China, 37, 42, 78, 155 Peter the Great, 37 sinology, 155 trade connections, 116 ryotwar system, 133, 135 Sacy, Silvestre de, 155 Said, Edward, 10 Sakhalin, 164 salvation of mankind, 169 Sanskrit, 39, 58–60, 118, 151, 153 sati, 169, 171 satire, 32 Schlegel, Karl Wilhelm, 59 Scott, Sir Walter, 120, 141 secret societies, 139, 140 Sedan chairs, 88–90 Select Committee, 46, 47, 50, 52–3, 62–3, 68–9, 76–7, 81–7, 96–7, 102, 153 self-image, British, 12, 32, 71, 113, 142, 191 Serampore, 117–18 settlers, 126 Shigatse, 112 shopmen, 84 Sikhs, 119, 148 silk, 2–3, 16, 21–2, 26 silver bullion, 4, 26 silver famine, 93 Singapore, 120, 122, 125–6, 129, 135–43, 188–90 sinology, 148, 152–5, 158 sinophilia, 6, 17, 168 skin colour, 163, 165 skulls, 165 slave revolts, 128 Smith, Adam, 17, 83 Socrates, 3 sojourners, 126 South America, 164 Southeast Asia, 4, 60, 95–6, 105–6, 121–9, 140, 148, 151, 169

South Eastern Islands, 124 Southey, Robert, 27 South Sea Voyages, 36 sovereignty, Chinese, 52, 180 Spain, 123, 180 Spence, Jonathan, 7 spring purification party, 100 stadial theory, 17, 19, 44 Stanley, Brian, 66 Staunton, George, 29, 39, 113 Staunton, George Thomas, 39, 45, 69, 76–81, 91, 150–6, 160, 166–7, 181–4 Stepan, Nancy, 163 stereotypes, 30 Strait magazines, 83 Straits of Malacca, 138–41 Straits settlement, 138–40 see also Chinese immigration Sulu Archipelago, 124 Supercargoes, 4, 52 superintendent, 92, 96, 98, 100–3, 182, 186 Szechuan, 116 Tamerlan, 165 Taoism, 64, 72, 110, 162, 168 tapestrie, 23 Tartar, 40–1, 59, 80, 109, 111, 175, 180 Tashilhunpo, 112 Tassisudon, 109 Ta Tsing Leu Lee, 53 tax farmers, Chinese, 135 Teignmouth, 1st Baron, 154 Thelwall, A. S., 184 theories of mankind, 165 Tibet, 13, 106–7, 109–10, 116 Tibetan Buddhism, 109, 119 Tientsin, 97 Tiger of War, 29 Tippu Sultan, 27, 39 Toone, Francis, 77 Tories, 172, 177 trade disruption, 57, 78, 86, 99, 103 free trade, 66, 77, 83–4, 126, 132, 152, 171–8, 181, 185–6 monopoly, see under EIC

262

Index

trade – continued natural laws of, 174, 178 opium trade, 54, 77, 83–5, 90–3, 99–103, 176, 184–7 restrictions, 57, 173, 179, 185 with Southeast Asia, 123–6 tea trade, 25–7, 36, 50, 83, 91–2, 101, 108, 173, 187 through Nepal, Tibet, 108, 110, 116–17 see also country trade trade commission, 99, 182 Treaty of Nanjing, 104, 188 Treaty of Segauli, 115 triad riots, 140 triad societies, 139 Tse-hsu, 100 Turner, Samuel, 110

Viceroy, 52, 84, 86, 96, 100, 182 Vietnam, 106 village system, 133, 135 VOC, see Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie Voltaire, 17

Ultra-Ganges Missionary Union, 73 Unitarians, 72 universal grammar, 157 University College London, 156 university of Kazan, 155 Utilitarianism, 51, 84, 167

Xinjiang, 106 Xuehai Tang, 104

Vattel, Emmerich de, 51 Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, 48, 131

Warburton, William, 19–20 Wealth of nations, 17 Wellesley, Marquis of, 153 West Indies, 22, 129 Whampoa, 86 Wilberforce, William, 154 Wilkins, John, 18 Winterbotham, William, 44 women, 90 Wright, Matheson, 171

yi, 62–3, 191 Yuan, Ruan, Governor-General, 104 Yuen Kih, 62 zemindari revenue system, 131 Zorawar, 119

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