How Britain’s First Mission to China Went Wrong
chinachannel.org
chinachannel.org
“Grand Choulaa” - this looks to me like the locals taking the piss.
Initially Macartney did not realize that he was supposed to prostrate himself before the emperor. Nor, when it was explained to him, was he willing to do so. Despite his great admiration for the prosperity and civilization of the Qing Empire, he viewed Qianlong as an equal to the king of England
Macartney would never have really considered Quianlong as equal to the King of Britain (England and Scotland became Britain a little earlier). I am also sure that Quianlong's people would have had exactly the same notion in reverse for exactly the same reason.
Undoubtedly, Macartney wanted equality only in the polite diplomatic fiction sense; his demand to have a Chinese official reciprocate to a portrait of King George III had no other purposes than to exalt the achievement of equality to the Chinese. Even had the Qing acquiesced, it would likely have only been a prelude to future downgrading of status.
Only one side would be justified, being an ancient civilization (as opposed to a recent-ish tribe that entered written history only after the Roman conquest), and the biggest economy of the world for many millennia...
Heads of states should be treat of equals, no matter if one country has been around for a couple of thousands of years, or only a bit over one thousand. Also whether it is a stagnant declining empire being left in the dust by other countries, or one of those countries leaving everyone else in the dust, sound also not matter.
Well, tell that to the British first...
During the age of empires British foreign policy was swaggering arrogance backed up by gun boat diplomacy.
It's weird been British in 2018, we are now a small damp mostly irrelevant island in the North Atlantic.
It's always been a bit weird being British - get used to it! As to irrelevance, you might like to reflect on the fact that around two billion people across the world watched a recent marriage in this parish.
Yes it is a bit damp here but on the bright side the weather rarely tries to kill you, nor does the land and nor does the flora and fauna. The nearest thing to a volcano is Castle Rock in Edinburgh OK - Dartmoor int al was formed from a pluton but that was some time ago as well. Our earthquakes are on the sad end of the log base seismic scale. The last tsunami (controversial but there was a major flood) might have been near Bristol and S Wales 100s of years ago. We have precisely one poisonous snake - the adder and they are very rare and keep well away and probably wont even kill you anyway (but it will smart a lot). We have a few poisonous plants but again you would have to be pretty stupid. Funnily enough I had to warn a Floridian about our stinging nettles - they laughed. They stopped laughing after brushing past a patch on a run.
Weird: yep. Irrelevent: no more than anyone else. Damp: I prefer "moist".
At best you can say that there were civilizations in the China area. But it wasn’t until ~220BC that the area was any sort of unified civilization (under the Qin dynasty).
While that is a couple of hundred years before Britons were unified under the Romans it still makes the Chinese at that time “a recent-ish tribe that entered history only after the Qin conquest”.
At least as much entering history as you appear to be crediting the British Isles - given that it was well known back to 1600BC for its strong tin economy and trading culture. That’s not even including the massive amount of known, detailed, and extensive historical evidence of civilization back to 4400BC (Stonehenge is ~3300BC, FYI).
Now were these things like post-Roman Britain? No, but neither was pre-Qin “China”, instead being a collection of warring competing civilizations... much like the Celtic states in England.
Long story short: you’ve bought into the mythology of China.
We have excellent arts and artifacts and poetry and philosophy of great sophistication from China centuries before that. Whether that was a single state or different kingdoms is as beside the point, as whether e.g. some British poets are English, others Scottish, etc.
I mean we have records and arts and artifacts in England before it was called that and unified back to the 6th century BC. We have evidence of massive sophisticated construction back to 3300 BC!
But are those "British"? If not then the point about the Qin dynasty is valid. If so then Britain has the same storied history as China (though not the volume of artifacts). It can't be selective standards for each.
Considering the track record of the East India Company in conquering Bengali piece-by-piece during the decades just before this mission, which the Chinese must have been aware of, I think it's totally understandable they were wary. Which must have been the subtext in them telling that no thanks, we do not want your products and really don't want to give you a permanent foothold on the Chinese soil.
The fact that the Brits kept on proceeding nevertheless, turning a large number of Chinese citizens into opium addicts while at it, kind of justifies this stance. Maybe the only mistake the Chinese made was not to start improving their military might at the earliest signs of warning, while they still had time.
Jesuit missions to China some two centuries earlier wowed Ming officials with technological wonders, high-quality illustrated works, and mathematical and mnemonic tricks. The British may have attempted to follow a similar model to impress the Qing court, not realizing (as noted in TFA) that representatives from other states were expected to behave in a different manner.
A great read on the early Jesuit missions to China (as well as insights into the late stages of the Ming Dynasty) is Ross Terrill's The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci
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“When foreigners who come seeking audience with me are sincere and submissive, then I always treat them with kindness,” Qianlong wrote. “But if they come in arrogance, they get nothing.”
The more I get to know China and the Chinese, the more I realize that these are still the lenses they see the world through.
yes. things haven't changed one bit,.
So, just like major Western powers see other western countries?
(Because for non-western countries, major western powers just see them just as areas to colonize, plunder, and steal from).
"Whatabout" is about putting things in perspective.
Accusations of whataboutism is about putting on blinders -- and examining only one thing at a time (the other side instead of yours usually), outside of any context.
In other works, avoiding "whataboutism" is the worst way to go about understanding anything.
Which makes sense, of course, as "accusations of whataboutism" were invented as a Cold War tactic, to dismiss any attempt of the "commies" to criticize back.
Whataboutism is just lazy. For example I could criticise a republican politician without it being an endorsement of a democratic one. Stick to the topic at hand - don't bring up a distraction.
In a way it's sorta a book about how narcissists can please other narcissists (without ever getting to maybe benefiting others rather than just pleasing them) - but I must admit that narcissistic-on-narcissistic is the case that is most likely to go wrong.
"In the early 1820s, the British East India Company began large-scale production of tea in Assam, India, of a tea variety traditionally brewed by the Singpho people.[5]"
Ask the Vietnamese, Tibetans, Koreans, Uighurs and Burmese about Chinese "isolationism".
Britain: I now control you. [My boats can reach you.]
China: You are now me. [You were on my border, now you're inside my border.]
The trappings of colonialism are remarkably similar.
Now, if what's inside your empire is equivalent to what's outside your empire, what's the motivation to expand?
Many empires start from the belief that they're superior to others, even if only philosophically, as a justification to expand.