“Prejudice against prejudices”: China and the Limits of Whig Liberalism

Abstract

This essay takes a critical look at the representation of China in the influential early nineteenth-century periodical the Edinburgh Review at an historically pivotal moment in relations between Britain and China and in the changing understanding and image of China in the West. Beginning with the Edinburgh's commitment to travel writing and self-conscious policy of cosmopolitanism and tolerance, the article reads the Macartney mission of 1793–1794 and its public representations in the context of Britain's historical relationship with China and of the conflicted history of China's reputation in the West. Finally, it exposes a limitation or blind spot in the Edinburgh's liberal ideology, suggesting the significance of this blind spot for the rhetorical and ethical method of the Edinburgh and for nineteenth-century British liberalism more generally, and the difficulties it faced accommodating foreign customs and values in a period of imperial expansion.