Amherst Embassy Research Articles

Lord Macartney’s Duelling Fates: Writing, Reading and Revising the Macartney Embassy, 1792–1804

Recent scholarship on early Sino-British relations has begun challenging the longstanding projection of inevitability upon the First Anglo-Chinese War (1839–1842) by illuminating diverse opinions within each side rather than highlighting an inherent tension between “modern” Britain and “traditional” China. However, the assumption that the Macartney Embassy (1792–1794) served as the first major step toward war has gone largely unchallenged because its diplomatic drama and economic disputes appear to affirm the British and Qing Empires’ supposedly irreconcilable differences. This article examines Britons’ reactions to the Macartney Embassy through travelogues, periodicals, and diplomatic documents to reconstruct the Embassy free from the hindsight of war and the imposition of free trade upon the Qing in the Treaty of Nanjing (1842). It argues that late eighteenth-century Britons variably conceived of the Embassy as a success, dismissed it as inconsequential, or weaponized it for domestic political criticisms. They accordingly supported both optimism in the future of Sino-British relations and a deferent stance toward Britain’s Qing counterparts. The idea that the Embassy exemplified hostility between Britain and China only came about through John Barrow’s reactionary writings during the early nineteenth century that sought to defend Macartney’s conduct by foregrounding the Qing’s apparently impolite behavior. Barrow’s views took root after accounts of the Qing’s treatment of the Amherst Embassy (1816–1817) depicted this behavior as a pattern. In this way, Britons’ initial reactions to the Macartney Embassy complicate clear notions of a linear, causal relationship between the Embassy and the war. They rather suggest that these notions were invented through a misuse of hindsight by early nineteenth-century Britons and solidified by later historians.

“The Wound Inflicted by Poor Ellis”: The Amherst Embassy of 1816, John Murray, and China

Previous articleNext article No Access“The Wound Inflicted by Poor Ellis”: The Amherst Embassy of 1816, John Murray, and ChinaPeter J. KitsonPeter J. KitsonUniversity of East Anglia Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Wordsworth Circle Volume 51, Number 2Spring 2020Romantic Asia: British Cultural Encounters with China and India, 1790–1830 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/709196 Views: 100Total views on this site © 2020 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Amherst Embassy to China: A Whimper and a Bang

ABSTRACTThe Amherst embassy of 1816–17 has usually been considered little more than a failure. Recent studies, however, have shown how the embassy provided invaluable first-hand information about a China in decline and thus paved the way for more confrontational British views of the Middle Kingdom. But there is little evidence that the embassy had any significant impact on British attitudes towards China. It largely reconfirmed or reinforced pre-existing impressions, especially for the members who had already spent time there. Nor did the embassy cause much of a stir in Britain, and China was rarely the topic of sustained discussion there until the 1830s. Yet the embassy matters in several important ways that have often been overlooked. One is the lessons that were learned and applied from the Macartney embassy, both before and during this second British embassy. Another is how the East India Company's officers in Canton were able to influence the practice of British diplomacy in China. Far from viewing the embassy as a failure, these ‘men on the spot’ considered it a splendid example of British firmness and resolve when dealing with the Qing authorities. Focusing on the failure of the embassy also overlooks the interplay between local knowledge and experience in Canton and that in the rest of China, even if the expedition to and from Peking mainly confirmed earlier assumptions about China and its people.

Writing China: Essays on the Amherst Embassy (1816) and Sino‐British Cultural Relations. Edited by Peter J. Kitson and Robert Markley. Boydell. 2016. ix +193pp. £30.00.

Writing China: Essays on the Amherst Embassy (1816) and Sino‐British Cultural Relations. Edited by Peter J. Kitson and Robert Markley. Boydell. 2016. ix +193pp. £30.00.

Writing China: Essays on the Amherst Embassy (1816) and Sino-British Cultural Relations, ed. Peter J. Kitson and Robert Markley

<i>Writing China: Essays on the Amherst Embassy (1816) and Sino-British Cultural Relations</i>, ed. Peter J. Kitson and Robert Markley

Writing China: Essays on the Amherst Embassy (1816) and Sino-British Cultural Relations. Edited by Peter Kitson and Robert Markley. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2016. Pp. ix+193.

<i>Writing China: Essays on the Amherst Embassy (1816) and Sino-British Cultural Relations</i>. Edited by Peter Kitson and Robert Markley. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2016. Pp. ix+193.

The “Inner Kowtow Controversy” During the Amherst Embassy to China, 1816–1817

ABSTRACTThe Amherst embassy has a long-standing reputation as a diplomatic failure in Britain’s early relations with China. This analysis concentrates on a greatly overlooked aspect of the Amherst mission—the controversy within the embassy’s leadership about whether to perform kowtow before the Jiaqing emperor. George Thomas Staunton, basing his arguments on some “local inside knowledge,” successfully prevailed on Amherst to refuse to kowtow. This decision directly resulted in the rejection of the embassy from Beijing. To explain this unpleasant outcome, both sides of the controversy downplayed the importance of their decision and, instead, constructed a capricious image of the Chinese emperor, which helped to lay the foundations for the deterioration of Sino–British relations in the run up to the Opium War.

The Amherst Embassy and British Discoveries in China

AbstractThe Amherst embassy to China has long been viewed as a major diplomatic failure in Britain's early relations with China. This article concentrates on the greatly overlooked aspect of the Amherst mission: the delegation's discoveries in China after the official proceedings were concluded. Since the embassy was given unprecedented freedom of movement during its four‐month return journey from Beijing to Canton, British observers were able to explore the interior of China and to communicate more fully with the Chinese government and people than ever before. As a consequence, the Amherst embassy not only provided valuable first‐hand observations which increased and improved Britain's knowledge of China, but developed the view that the Qing government was the chief obstacle to the progress of Chinese civilization and to the general welfare of the Chinese people. These important perceptions laid the foundation for future changes in Sino‐British relations and led, indirectly, to the outbreak of the Opium War.

Art. IX.—Observations on the Expediency of opening a Second Port in China, addressed to the President and Select Committee of Supracargoes for the, management of the Affairs of the Honourable East India Company in China

The following Memoir, bearing date the 2nd July, 1816, was written on the occasion of Lord Amherst's Embassy to Pekin. A few copies were printed at the Company's press at Macao, early in the year 1817, for private circulation only, and were very sparingly distributed, so that this memoir has now become scarce, and not to be found, except in a few public and private libraries. The publication of it, therefore, at the present moment, when our relations with China are exciting an intense interest, seems highly desirable. The time is now come when we are called upon to decide what new privileges we have to demand of the Chinese: and since a more unrestricted intercourse with that country is looked for, it becomes an object of the first importance to ascertain at what Ports these privileges may be best obtained; for on that decision the future interests of the trade depend. It will be found that this memoir enters upon that subject with a minuteness of detail and fulness of illustration, not even attempted in any other publication. And though the principles laid down and course of arguments employed, may seem exclusively confined to the state of the trade under the control of the East India Company, yet they will be found, in fact, equally applicable to the circumstances of the trade at the present moment, and to contain matter eminently worthy of the attention of the public. It has been deemed advisable not to alter the original text, but to add a few notes, marked thus, where any change of circumstances in the trade, or matter furnished by more recent information, seemed to render such observations necessary. For greater ease of reference, the Chinese names of places have been altered and adapted to the orthography of Arrowsmith's map.—Edit.

VI. Geographical Notice of the Frontiers of the Burmese and Chinese Empires, with the Copy of a Chinese Map

The great interest which now attaches to the geography of the Burmese empire and to its relations with the Chinese, seems to call for as much information as can by any means be procured on these subjects from different quarters. In the Chinese library of the East-India Company at Canton is a MS. map, chiefly compiled from the labours of the missionaries; and as its extreme accuracy can be vouched for with respect to those parts of the empire through which Lord Amherst's embassy passed, it is entitled to a degree of credit, which is not hastily to be awarded to Chinese maps in general. An exact copy has been taken from this map of the western part of Yun-nan province. Our latest geographical knowledge of the Burmese country is contained in a map recently published at Calcutta, with the permission of the Bengal government; and as that portion which relates to the Chinese frontier was likely to have been obtained from Burmese sources, it may be worth while to compare it with the Chinese map. As far as relates to the names of places, the Chinese character is the only sure guide within their own territory. Little accuracy can be expected from, or stress laid on, the names written by one set of strangers, the English, and obtained by them through the mouths, or the writing, of another set of strangers, the Burmese. Notwithstanding this difficulty, however, it will perhaps be found that a considerable degree of correspondence exists between the two maps.