Macartney Embassy Research Articles

Constructing British Selfhood through Depictions of China: The Art of the Macartney Embassy

Constructing British Selfhood through Depictions of China: The Art of the Macartney Embassy

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.

Presents and Tribute: Exploration of the Presents Given to the Qianlong Emperor by the British Macartney Embassy

Presents and Tribute: Exploration of the Presents Given to the Qianlong Emperor by the British Macartney EmbassyIn 1793, the British government sent a major diplomatic mission to China led by Lord Macartney. According to past interpretations of this, these presents received the full attention of neither the Qianlong emperor nor his court officials. However, this was not actually the case, and a host of Qing court archival documents reveal that great pains were taken to ensure that these precious gifts were conserved appropriately, and some of them even survive today.

Understanding the Chinese: British Merchants on the China Trade in the Early 1830s

This article examines a significant debate on China and the Chinese market held within the British mercantile community in the early 1830s. Occurring in the years before the East India Company's monopoly over China trade was abolished in 1834, this debate has received much less attention than the Macartney embassy and the rise of the opium trade. This article shows that, in order to suit their own economic interests, supporters of the EIC and the ‘free traders’ presented rival images of China and the China trade to lead the governing authorities and the wider public to understand the country and its people in a way most favourable to themselves. Compared to the earlier European accounts of China, which examined different aspects of Chinese civilisation and were at least to some degree academic, this debate within the British mercantile community was clearly aimed at influencing the country's commercial policy in China. Although neither side was genuinely interested in discovering the ‘real’ China, this competition in image-building was crucial to Britain's relations with China in the era leading to the First Opium War.

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.

William Alexander’s Image of Qing China

William Alexander was the official draughtsman of the Macartney Embassy. His pictures of China covered a wide range of themes. Each theme represented a certain purpose. Landscapes, architectural drawings, and portraits constituted the majority of the drawings, which reveal the Embassy’s enthusiasm for obtaining visual knowledge of a variety of aspects in the society of China. The drawings of still life, costume, native species, and religious ceremony occupied the remainder, and provided the audience with a more intricate impression of China. In comparison with other European and some earlier generation artists’ works, Alexander’s pictures convey a peculiar British idea of China at the time, and hint at the potential crisis between the two countries.

MALTHUS AND CHINA

ABSTRACTT. R. Malthus was deeply interested in how his principle of population operated in societies distant to, and different from, his own. In this respect, China served as an intriguing case, already famous in his own time for its large and dense population and the central regulation of a closed economy. Malthus drew on both centuries-old Jesuit material and recent accounts from the Macartney embassy to the Qianlong emperor to assess its past and present food–land–population dynamics. This article explores Malthus's interest in China in the context of British public and private commercial interest in opening its trade, not least interest from his own East India Company. Historiographically, Malthus's China has been critiqued as an early rendition of orientalist demographic transition, posing a dichotomy of East/West fertility and mortality change. In disagreement with this interpretation, this article argues Malthus's key distinction was not East/West but Old World/New World.

Chinese and British Diplomatic Gifts in the Macartney Embassy of 1793

Abstract This paper looks at the choice, reception and afterlife of both the Chinese and the British gifts given during Britain’s first embassy to China. Earlier studies have tended to fault the Qing court for understanding the gifts they received as tribute and failing to appreciate the scientific items given by the British. However, gift-giving was a highly charged political issue in the domestic politics of both countries at this time and the terms in which the argument was conducted differed widely. This paper argues that the Chinese term that has been translated into the English ‘tribute’ did not have the same resonance in China, and that instead the gifts were received by both sides as part of the negotiations that accompanied the embassy. The most successful gifts in this context were those with an accepted monetary value in the existing trade between the two countries, notably high-quality textiles. British military gifts were also of importance in shaping the outcome of the embassy. However, attempts to use the gifts to present the culture or wider philosophical outlook of the giver were much less successful in this diplomatic context. After the embassy ended the vast majority of gifts given by both sides became exotic items in royal collections where they added to the glory of the recipient rather than that of the donor.

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.

Going to War Against the Middle Kingdom? Continuity and Change in British Attitudes towards Qing China (1793–1840)

ABSTRACTThis article investigates British attitudes towards Qing China as a consequence of their early encounters from the Macartney embassy to the opium crisis. Examining this medium-term time span, to which previous scholarship has paid inadequate attention, shows the continuity and change in these attitudes through different historical contexts. With its focus on war-related discussions, this article reveals how the idea of war against the Chinese empire was developed and debated on the basis of these changing ideas. The First Anglo-Chinese War, to a great extent, could not have developed into the form and scale it did without these developments.

China in Early Romantic Periodicals

ABSTRACTThis essay is concerned with the understanding of China expressed through the wider periodical press. It shows that coverage of work relating to the rest of the world was substantial in the period, pointing out that the role of the periodical in mediating current knowledge about the globe has been substantially overlooked. The essay looks at the broader understanding of China in the period by looking at the representation of the Macartney embassy in a series of periodicals beyond the Quarterly and Edinburgh that have so far dominated our critical purview. Concentrating on reviews of Sir George Staunton's official Authentic Account (1797) of the Macartney Embassy of 1792–1794 and the spectrum of viewpoints it produced, it demonstrates the fluidity and ambivalence of periodical responses to China and the embassy and concludes that it would be wrong to assume that by the end of the eighteenth century, the ideological debate about China was settled.

Tools of Measurement for European Travelers – George Staunton’s An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China (1797)

Today the Macartney mission and the account of it written down by George Staunton is being widely regarded as a milestone in the way how the west viewed China and its people. However, such a travel report did not necessarily give an ‘objective’ account on another country or culture. Therefore it is important to consider the mindset of the travelers. The Europeans had specific knowledge about China already prior to their departure and especially what they believed to know about the attitude of the Chinese towards science and technology was important. The travelers of the embassy othered the Chinese, based on assumptions made by Enlightenment thinkers and philosophers who wrote extensively about China. This chapter will analyze the way that the Europeans othered the Chinese in that context. Two hundred years after the embassy, in 1992, the British Association for Chinese Studies presented several papers on the Macartney embassy. While the travel account has been object of studies in many different fields and papers from many disciplines were presented, none of them focuses on the underlying agenda of the Europeans; that is their approach towards science and technology. The embassy is correctly considered a collision of fundamentally different civilizations and ideologies. However, the question of in how far the approach towards science, technology and the relation that they share towards progress is responsible for this collision remains unanswered. In fact many science and technology studies focused on the advances of the sciences within a culture; the attitude of a culture towards science in general was on the other hand rarely an object of study.

British Government under the Qianlong Emperor’s Gaze: Satire, Imperialism, and the Macartney Embassy to China, 1792–1804

British Government under the Qianlong Emperor’s Gaze: Satire, Imperialism, and the Macartney Embassy to China, 1792–1804

Plagiarism and the Macartney Embassy to China (1792–1794): The Manuscript of Stephen Else

Plagiarism and the Macartney Embassy to China (1792–1794): The Manuscript of Stephen Else

Britain, industry and perceptions of China: Matthew Boulton, ‘useful knowledge’ and the Macartney Embassy to China 1792–94

Global history has debated the emergence of a divergence in economic growth between China and the West during the eighteenth century. The Macartney Embassy, 1792–94, the first British embassy to China, occurring as it did at the end of the eighteenth century, was an event which revealed changing perceptions of China and the Chinese by different British interest groups from government, trade, industry and enlightened opinion. Many histories of the embassy recount failures of diplomacy and cultural misconception, or divergent ideas of science. This article examines attitudes of British industry to the embassy through the part played in its preparations by the Birmingham industrialist, Matthew Boulton, and revealed in correspondence in the Matthew Boulton Papers. The article uncovers debate among different interest groups over the objects and skilled personnel to be taken on the embassy. Were the objects purveyors of trade or tribute, or of ‘useful knowledge’ and ‘industrial enlightenment’?

"Prisoners in Silken Bonds": Obligation, Trade, and Diplomacy in English Voyages to Japan and China

"Prisoners in Silken Bonds":Obligation, Trade, and Diplomacy in English Voyages to Japan and China Cynthia Klekar (bio) Formerly Portugal presented tribute; Now England is paying homage. They have out-traveled Shu-hai and Heng-chang; My Ancestor's merit and virtue must have reached their distant shores. Though their tribute is commonplace, my heart approves sincerely. Though what they bring is meagre, yet, In my kindness to men from afar I make generous return, Wanting to preserve my good health and power. —Qianlong, Emperor of China, 1793 (Macartney x) I The poem above, composed by the Chinese Emperor Qianlong to mark the arrival of Lord George Macartney's embassy in Jehol, China, in 1793, invokes a cross-cultural language of gift exchange, reciprocity, and obligation that informed early modern conceptions of international trade and diplomacy. In the mind of the emperor and in accordance with a long-standing Chinese cultural self-perception, Macartney's appearance at the Imperial Court, his letter from King George III, and the presents he offers register solely as a tributary offering: the gesture of a barbarian race to acknowledge and to celebrate China's cultural and religious superiority, and to reinforce the emperor's supreme virtue.1 Acknowledging precedent for the honor by invoking [End Page 84] Portugal's diplomatic standing as a country that has recognized China's greatness and therefore gained the privilege of a trading monopoly in Macao, the emperor interprets the gifts Macartney brings as a sign of deference to a more powerful and advanced society, one whose merit has extended across the globe. Although the gifts the English bring are viewed as "commonplace" and their commercial value in China "meagre," the emperor shows respect for the distance the embassy traveled and the tributary offering they transported by making what he considers an adequate and "generous return"—namely, his kindness. The English perceived the emperor's return of kindness, however benevolent and commensurate it appeared from the Chinese point of view, as an unequal exchange. Their mission—although they understood that China expected a tribute—was to gain in exchange for their innovative and scientifically advanced gifts a diplomatic trading treaty, commercial ports of trade, and compensation for the grievances of the English merchants. However, the emperor's language implies that his reciprocity derives solely from a benevolent nature, that he gives in return out of respect, not out of obligation. This distinction slyly displaces momentarily the obligation implicit in any gift exchange; in other words, Qianlong does not consider himself indebted to the English or required to make a return. Yet, almost simultaneously, the emperor does acknowledge an obligation, though not to the English. The emperor's return gift of hospitality is a submission required of him to a divine authority and to ancestral good fortune, both of which have endowed him with the power to give generously. Furthermore, the emperor anticipates a return for this obedience to authority as well—he gives adequately to the English to preserve the kingdom's honor and so that he may maintain in return "good health and power." Thus, the notion of the gift as an ostensibly disinterested gesture of civility—of an equal exchange between reciprocally respectful nations—becomes problematic: what the English viewed as civility the Chinese interpreted as a ritual of subjection. Qianlong articulates the complex intersections among trade negotiations, diplomatic gift exchanges, and cultural authority. The poem invokes notions of honor, reciprocity, and return, a vocabulary that in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century mercantile and political narratives repeatedly qualifies profit-based concerns in the relationships the English sought to establish and extend in the Far East. The English gave to the emperor in expectation of an equal return, an expectation that they articulated only in order to obligate the emperor to grant their requests. Although the English accepted his gifts and other amenities while in China, their expectation of an equal and satisfactory [End Page 85] return necessitated an ongoing diplomatic exchange that deferred the commercial negotiations they sought literally at their own expense. In this sense, the language of the gift, despite its ostensibly disinterested nature, created between the English and their would-be trading partners unequal relations...

Cherishing Men From Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and The Macartney Embassy of 1793

Cherishing Men From Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and The Macartney Embassy of 1793

Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793.

Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793.

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 bicen tenary of the Macartney mission to China. Edited by Robert A Bickers, pp. 93, front. London, The British Association for Chinese Studies in association with Wellsweep Press, 1993. £7.95. - Cherishing men from afar. Qing

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 bicen tenary of the Macartney mission to China. Edited by Robert A Bickers, pp. 93, front. London, The British Association for Chinese Studies in association with Wellsweep Press, 1993. £7.95. - Cherishing men from afar. Qing

Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793 (review)

430 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1996 Dali L. Young is an assistantprofessor ofpolitical science and the author o/Calamity and Reform in China (Stanford University Press, 1996.) mi James L. Hevia. Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of1793. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1995. xv, 292 pp. Hardcover $49.95, isbn 0-8223-1625-0. Paperback $15.95, isbn 0-8223-1637-4. There has been much renewed interest in the historical significance of the 1793 Macartney mission to Qing China in both the West and China. For example, Joanna Waley-Cohen, in her recent article on Chinese reactions to Western technology in the late eighteenth century ("China and Western Technology in the Late Eighteenth Century," American Historical Review 98, no. 5 [1993]: 1525-1544), has revised earlier assessments of Qing dynasty blindness to world developments in the eighteendi century and has shown how these erroneous assessments grew out ofWestern technological superiority after the nineteenth-century industrial revolution, which was then read back into the Macartney mission to China by later historians and diplomats. This misassessment in Western attitudes toward China, Waley-Cohen argues, was also due in part to the Qing court's need under the Qianlong emperor (r. 1735-1795) to reassert the "public Chinese attitude of superiority toward foreigners" in the factionalized domestic politics of1793 at the same time that it avidly employed Jesuit experts in the arts ofwarfare for its late eighteenth-century military campaigns against rebels within the empire. Hevia's book continues this revisionist trend by reevaluating the Macartney mission in light ofQing foreign relations and die development ofmodern European diplomacy. Cherishing Men From Afar explores Manchu and British imperial formations in the late eighteenth century as the cultural productions of two expansive imperialisms with equally universalist pretensions. Their different modes ofpolitical practice based on competing sets ofhierarchical relationships and political claims betray, according to Hevia, substantially different conceptual frameworks and signifying practices. Consequently, the Macartney embassy to the Qianlong court© 1996 by University was not caught up in a simple conflict between a "traditionalist" Chinese tribute ofHawai'i Presssystem and a "modern" European diplomacy whose driving force was an entrenched "culturalism" in the traditional Chinese political world. Instead, Hevia suggests that the Chinese "tribute system" model used by John K. Fairbank and Reviews 431 many others since has overdetermined the confrontation by essentializing it as an inevitable confrontation between tradition (China) and modernity (the West), thereby missing the specific historical challenges that a land-based Qing Imperium and a seafaring British empire each faced when they encountered each other for the first time in 1793. According to Hevia, the two modes of Qing and British diplomacy must each be unraveled in order to understand how the Qing framework for imperial ceremonies ofguest ritual and imperial audience and the British notion ofinternational relations interacted. In the process, we learn how European discourse on diplomacy between equal states was itselfa historical artifact ofEuropean global expansion whose naturalizing discourse of sovereign equality in effect legitimated discursive forms ofsymbolic violence (Western superiority / Qing arrogance) in 1793 before diplomacy was transformed into open warfare (free trade / Opium War) in 1839—an argument that of course derives from Edward Said's Orientalism but is now redeployed in Sino-Western relations. We also see how the Manchu cosmopolitical order for the production and negotiation ofimperial power was based on specific ritual and ceremonial procedures that informed how Qing officials would handle the requests of an emissary ofthe British empire. The strength of Hevia's account lies in its clear delineation ofdie basis for Manchu rulership in the Qing Imperium. In a realm filled with heterogeneous Manchu, Mongol, Tibetan, and other ethnic lords, the Manchu rulers successfully used lordship as the basis for organizing interdomainal relations and incorporated such lords under the Qing emperor's claims to political preeminence. Ritual and its attendant forms ofceremonial behavior (i.e., "disposition ofbodies" via the kowtow, etc.) were the cosmologica! forms ofpolitical interaction between lords that revealed their inclusion under the Qing and the negotiated forms of that inclusion. Accordingly, Hevia makes it clear how the Macartney embassy to China was perceived by the...