Anglo-Chinese Encounters Before the Opium War: A Tale of Two Empires Over Two Centuries

355 Pages·2022·26.017 MB·English

by  Xin Iu

Routledge Studies in Modern History
ANGLO-CHINESE
ENCOUNTERS BEFORE
THE OPIUM WAR
A TALE OF TWO EMPIRES OVER TWO CENTURIES
Xin Liu
Anglo-Chinese Encounters Before
the Opium War
Anglo-Chinese Encounters Before the Opium War: A Tale of Two Empires
Over Two Centuries studies the fascinating encounters between the two
historic empires from Queen Elizabeth I’s first letter to the Ming Emperor
Wanli in 1583, to Lord Palmerston’s letter to the Minister of China in 1840.
Starting with Queen Elizabeth I’s letter to the Chinese Emperor and
ending with the letter from Lord Palmerston to the Minister of China just
before the Opium War, this book explores the long journey in between
from cultural diplomacy to gunboat diplomacy. It interweaves the most
known diplomatic efforts at the official level with the much unknown
intellectual interactions at the people-to-people level, from missionaries to
scholars, from merchants to travellers and from artists to scientists. This
book adopts a novel “mirror” approach by pairing and comparing people,
texts, commodities, artworks, architecture, ideologies, operating systems
and world views of the two empires. Using letters, gifts and traded goods as
fulcrums, and by adopting these unique lenses, it puts China into the world
history narratives to contextualise Anglo-Chinese relations, thus providing
a fresh analysis of the surviving evidence. Xin Liu casts a new light on
understanding the Sino-centric and Anglo-centric world views in driving
the complex relations between the two empires, and the reversals of power
shifts that are still unfolding today.
The book is not intended for specialists in history, but a general
audience wishing to learn more about China’s historical engagement with
the world.
Xin Liu is a Senior Lecturer and Chair of the China Research Center at
the University of Central Lancashire. She received her PhD and MBA
from the same university. Her other monograph, China’s Cultural
Diplomacy: A Great Leap Outward?, was published by Routledge in 2020.
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For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Research-in-Modern-History/book-series/MODHIST
Anglo-Chinese Encounters
Before the Opium War
A Tale of Two Empires Over Two
Centuries
Xin Liu
First published 2023
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2023 Xin Liu
The right of Xin Liu to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-74167-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-74170-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-15638-3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003156383
Typeset in Times New Roman
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
For Ben and Angi, my eternal inspirations

Contents
List of Illustrations x
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction: 1583–1840, from cultural diplomacy
to gunboat diplomacy 1
0.1 The old tale and a new narrative 2
0.2 Structure of the book 6
1 Where the tale of the two empires began 12
1.1 Once upon a time, a British monarch wrote a letter to
a Chinese emperor 13
1.2 The incomprehensible letters 16
1.3 European sceptre vs. Chinese dragon 26
2 The Tributary System and the first Anglo‐Chinese
encounters 36
2.1 The Tributary System and its implications on China’s
foreign relations 36
2.2 Ming China: Seen, presented and influenced by
Westerners 40
2.3 The Sino-speak vocabulary of outsiders and
foreigners 48
2.4 Exchange ideas, goods, or fire? 53
3 The earliest Chinese travellers to the Far West 64
3.1 Shen Fuzong and Thomas Hyde: The first exchanges
of a learned nature 65
viii Contents
3.2 Loum Kiqua and William Hickey: The first taste of
Chinese music and Chinese food 74
3.3 Tan Che-Qua and William Chambers: The first
Chinese artistic legacy that can still be seen in the UK
today 80
3.4 Huang Yadong and William Jones: The first English
letter exchanged between the two peoples 89
3.5 The first Chinese travellers who wrote about Europe
and Britain 93
4 Chinoiserie vs. Euroiserie: Mutual reflections of material
culture and perception gaps 102
4.1 The seemingly Yin-Yang flow between the two
empires in material culture 103
4.2 China’s Yuanming Yuan and Britain’s Kew Garden
and Brighton Palace 110
4.3 The British perception of Qing China and the
perception gap to the real Qing 116
4.4 The Chinese perception of the British Empire and the
perception gap to the real British 128
5 When the lion meets the dragon: Lost in translation or
beyond translation? 141
5.1 Tributary System Vs. Westphalian System: Mission
impossible for the Macartney Embassy to China 143
5.2 Gift or tribute: Two words, two worlds 146
5.3 To kowtow or not to kowtow, that is the question 155
5.4 Letters, letters 169
5.5 Change of the mutual perceptions between the two
empires 175
6 The Amherst Embassy to China, an insurmountable
generation gap between the two empires 191
6.1 The negative assets from the Macartney
Embassy 193
6.2 To kowtow or not to kowtow, was this still the
question? 201
6.3 The minion culture in the Qing court 209
6.4 Redrawing Self and Other: New knowledge produced
by the Amherst Embassy 218
Contents ix
7 From the Tea War to the Opium War 231
7.1 The story of tea and opium 232
7.2 The rhetoric war and trade war 237
7.3 The opium debates 244
7.4 Falling into the Thucydides Trap? 252
7.5 Postscript 258
Conclusion: The two great reversals – Historical
implications on the modern-day interactions
between a post-Brexit UK and a globalising China 270
Appendices 285
Index 326