Imperial Twilight

by Stephen R. Platt

  14. “Penal Code of China,” Edinburgh Review.

  15. For an in-depth study of British ideas on Chinese law in the era leading up to the Opium War, see Chen Li, Chinese Law in Imperial Eyes: Sovereignty, Justice, and Transcultural Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). The best long-range history of extraterritoriality in China, post–Opium War, is Pär Cassell’s Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

  16. Eliza Morrison, Memoirs of the Life and Labours of Robert Morrison, D.D. (London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1839), vol. 1, p. 136.

  17. William Johns, A Sermon, Preached in the Meeting-House of the Baptist Society in Salem . . . for the Benefit of the Translations of the Scriptures into the Languages of India and China (Boston: Lincoln & Edmands, 1812), p. 14.

  18. William W. Moseley, The Origin of the First Protestant Mission to China (London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1842), pp. 9, 12.

  19. Ibid., pp. 20, 24, 53–63, 108, 109, n. 1; see also A. C. Moule, “A Manuscript Chinese Version of the New Testament (British Museum, Sloane 3599),” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 1 (April 1949): 23–33.

  20. Marshall Broomhall, Robert Morrison: A Master Builder (Edinburgh: Turnbull & Spears, 1927), p. 39.

  21. William Brown to the directors of the London Missionary Society, April 12, 1806, quoted in Christopher A. Daily, Robert Morrison and the Protestant Plan for China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013), p. 96.

  22. Broomhall, Master Builder, p. 59.

  23. “Memoir of the Rev. Robert Morrison,” Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register, vol. 11, new series (January–April 1835): 198–220, see pp. 199–200. As to Morrison’s guilt, his diary from January 10, 1809, reads, “I spent the evening with Mr. Morton and family. By not applying to my studies my mind is uncomfortable.” Two days later: “I spent the evening with the family of the Mortons. Scarcely so devoted as I ought to be.” Eliza Morrison, Life and Labours, vol. 1, pp. 247–49 (which has error of “June” for “January”).

  24. George Thomas Staunton, Memoirs of the Chief Incidents, p. 37. Staunton notes that he studied for different purposes, and “much less exclusively and assiduously” than Morrison, who “attained ultimately to a much greater degree of proficiency.”

  25. Eliza Morrison, Life and Labours, vol. 1, pp. 163, 168.

  26. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 212, 245.

  27. Hosea Ballou Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926), vol. 3, p. 103, says Manning’s translations were nearly unintelligible; “very imperfectly”: Clements R. Markham, ed., Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet, and of the Journey of Thomas Manning to Lhasa (London: Trübner and Co., 1876), p. 260.

  28. William Milne, A Retrospect of the First Ten Years of the Protestant Mission to China (Malacca: Anglo-Chinese Press, 1820), p. 79.

  29. Morse, Chronicles, vol. 3, p. 134; Laurence Kitzan, “The London Missionary Society in India and China, 1798–1834” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto, 1965), p. 84; Susan Reed Stifler, “The Language Students of the East India Company’s Canton Factory,” Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 69 (1938): 46–82, see p. 62.

  30. Stifler, “Language Students,” p. 62.

  31. Eliza Morrison, Life and Labours, vol. 1, p. 288.

  32. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 286, 295 (quotation on p. 286).

  33. Lo-shu Fu, A Documentary Chronicle of Sino-Western Relations (1644–1820) (Tucson: Published for the Association for Asian Studies by the University of Arizona Press, 1966), vol. 1, pp. 397–98.

  34. Stifler, “Language Students,” p. 64; Kitzan, “The London Missionary Society in India and China,” pp. 87–88.

  35. Eliza Morrison, Life and Labours, vol. 1, pp. 414–17; Kitzan, “The London Missionary Society in India and China,” pp. 88–89.

  36. Peter Auber, China. An Outline of Its Government, Laws, and Policy: and of the British and Foreign Embassies to, and Intercourse with That Empire (London: Parbury, Allen and Co., 1834), pp. 221–22; Thomas Manning to his father, William Manning, February 12, 1808, Manning Papers, TM/1/1/44, Royal Asiatic Society, London; “veiled mysteries”: Manning to his father, August 18, 1808, Manning Papers, TM/1/1/46.

  37. Soup: Markham, Narratives, p. 230.

  38. Manning to his father from Canton, March 1, 1809, Manning Papers, TM/1/1/49.

  39. Morse, Chronicles, vol. 3, p. 72.

  40. “The Late Mr. Thomas Manning,” obituary in Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register, vol. 33, new series (September–December 1840), part 2, pp. 182–83.

  41. Manning to his father from Calcutta, April 28, 1810, Manning Papers, TM/1/1/51.

  42. Zhao Jinxiu’s deposition, as parsed in Matthew William Mosca, “Qing China’s Perspectives on India, 1750–1847” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 2008), p. 274.

  43. Manning to Lamb, October 11, 1810, in The Letters of Thomas Manning to Charles Lamb, ed. Gertrude Anderson (London: Martin Secker, 1925), p. 114.

  44. According to a letter Manning sent just before his departure, much of that intervening year was wasted in waiting for passports to travel through Bhutan, which made him so miserable he couldn’t even write to his friends. (“I gasp and breathe hard when I think how I waste my time here,” he wrote.) Manning to George Tuthill from Rangpur, August 27, 1811, Manning Papers, TM/2/3/7.

  45. Markham, Narratives, p. 215. The original manuscript of Manning’s narrative of his journey to Lhasa is in the Thomas Manning Papers at the Royal Asiatic Society in London. As Markham’s publication of that manuscript differs little from the original (entailing mainly minor changes in wording and the elimination of some of Manning’s constant judgments on the wine he drank), I will generally cite the published version below.

  46. Ibid., p. 217.

  47. Ibid., pp. 217, 242.

  48. Manning manuscript narrative, part 1, p. 9, Manning Papers, TM/10.

  49. Markham, Narratives, p. 230; Manning manuscript narrative, part 2, p. 7.

  50. Markham, Narratives, p. 260.

  51. Ibid., pp. 255, 256.

  52. Ibid., p. 259.

  53. Ibid., pp. 264–65. Description of audience hall based also on Sarat Chandra Das, Journey to Lhasa and Tibet (London: John Murray, 1902), pp. 166–67.

  54. Markham, Narratives, pp. 265, 266–67.

  55. Ibid., pp. 275–76.

  56. Ibid., pp. 238, 258, 275–76.

  57. Da Qing Renzong Rui (Jiaqing) huangdi shilu (Taipei: Taiwan Huawen shuju, 1964), juan 251, p. 14b.

  58. Markham, Narratives, p. 278.

  59. Da Qing Renzong Rui (Jiaqing) huangdi shilu (Taipei: Taiwan Huawen shuju, 1964), juan 251, pp. 14b–15a.

  60. Markham, Narratives, p. 293. He was not executed, but was exiled to Yili in the far northwest. See Mosca, “Qing China’s Perspectives on India,” p. 274.

  61. See Manning’s deposition from May 17, 1821, in “Third Report from the Select Committee appointed to consider the means of improving and maintaining the Foreign Trade of the Country. East Indies and China,” House of Commons, July 10, 1821, pp. 355–57.

  62. Murray A. Rubinstein, The Origins of the Anglo-American Missionary Enterprise in China, 1807–1840 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996), p. 95.

  63. Ibid., p. 114.

  64. Elphinstone to the Court of Directors, November 11, 1812, quoted in Su Ching, “The Printing Presses of the London Missionary Society among the Chinese” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1996), p. 48.

  65. Su, “Printing Presses,” p. 48.

  66. Robert Morrison, A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, in Three Parts (Macao: The Honourable East India Company’s Press, 1815), vol. 1, part 1, dedication page.

  67. Ibid., vol. 1, part 1, pp. 746–85.

  68. Prospectus for Morrison’s dictionary in the Literary Panorama and National Regi
ster, September 1818, cc. 1137–38.

  69. “Morrison’s Dictionary of the Chinese Language,” Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register 2, no. 9 (September 1816): 258–65, quotation on p. 265.

  70. “Missionary Chinese Works,” Quarterly Review (July 1816): 350–75, quotation on p. 371.

  CHAPTER 6 Hidden Shoals

  1. Staunton’s £20,000 salary: C. H. Philips, The East India Company, 1784–1834 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1940), p. 14, n. 6; “rather high play”: George Thomas Staunton, Memoirs of the Chief Incidents of the Public Life of Sir George Thomas Staunton, Bart., printed for private circulation (London: L. Booth, 1856), p. 40.

  2. Lord Castlereagh instructions to Lord Amherst (“General Instructions on Undertaking the Embassy to China”), January 1, 1816, UK National Archives, Public Record Office, Foreign Office records (hereafter PRO FO), 17/5/18.

  3. Hosea Ballou Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926), vol. 3, pp. 214–19.

  4. Amherst’s instructions: Ibid., vol. 3, p. 281.

  5. Douglas M. Peers, “Amherst, William Pitt, First Earl Amherst of Arracan (1773–1857),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004–13).

  6. Thomas Handasyd Perkins (in Boston) to Perkins & Co., Canton, July 15, 1814, in Thomas Greaves Cary, Memoir of Thomas Handasyd Perkins; containing Extracts from his Diaries and Letters (Boston: Little, Brown, 1856), p. 298.

  7. George Thomas Staunton, Miscellaneous Notices Relating to China, and Our Commercial Intercourse with That Country (London: John Murray, 1822), p. 240.

  8. Da Qing Renzong Rui (Jiaqing) huangdi shilu (Taipei: Taiwan Huawen shuju, 1964), juan 299, pp. 30b–31a.

  9. Morse, Chronicles, vol. 3, pp. 259–60.

  10. Staunton to his mother, July 12, 1816, George Thomas Staunton Papers, Rubenstein Library, Duke University, Durham, NC, accessed via Adam Matthew Digital, “China: Trade, Politics and Culture 1793–1980.”

  11. George Thomas Staunton, Notes of Proceedings and Occurrences, during the British Embassy to Pekin, in 1816 (London: Habant Press, for private circulation, 1824), pp. 5–8.

  12. Staunton to his mother, July 12, 1816, Staunton Papers, Duke University.

  13. Thomas Noon Talfourd, ed., The Works of Charles Lamb (New York: Harper and Bros., 1838), vol. 1, p. 173.

  14. Matthew Mosca, “Qing China’s Perspectives on India, 1750–1847” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 2008), p. 313.

  15. Staunton, Notes of Proceedings and Occurrences, p. 9; “natural indolence”: John Davis, quoted in Clements R. Markham, ed., Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet, and of the Journey of Thomas Manning to Lhasa (London: Trübner and Co., 1876), p. clix.

  16. “Embassy to China,” British Review and London Critical Journal 11, no. 21 (February 1818): 140–73, quotation on p. 141.

  17. Henry Ellis, Journal of the Proceedings of the Late Embassy to China (London: John Murray, 1817), p. 39.

  18. Ibid., pp. 440, 491.

  19. Robert A. Morrison, A Memoir of the Principal Occurrences during an Embassy from the British Government to the Court of China in the Year 1816 (London, 1819), p. 16.

  20. “Abel’s Journey in China,” Quarterly Review 21, no. 41 (January 1819): 67–91, quotation on p. 74.

  21. Lord Amherst dispatch of April 21, 1817, PRO FO 17/3/128.

  22. John M’Leod, Narrative of a Voyage in His Majesty’s Late Ship Alceste to the Yellow Sea (London: John Murray, 1817), pp. 27–47 (quotation modified from “I don’t know who ye are; what business have ye here?”).

  23. Ellis, Journal of the Proceedings of the Late Embassy, pp. 72, 91–92 etc.

  24. Quotation from Amherst’s instructions, PRO FO 17/3/21.

  25. Jiaqing’s instructions, dated July 16, 1816, are in Wenxian congbian quanbian (Beijing: Beijing tushu chubanshe, 2008), vol. 11, p. 352 (Jiaqing 21 nian Ying shi lai pin an, p. 20b).

  26. Amherst to George Canning, February 12, 1817, PRO 17/3/59; Jiaqing’s witnessing of Macartney’s kowtow is also mentioned in Staunton, Notes of Proceedings, p. 96.

  27. Ellis, Journal of the Proceedings of the Late Embassy, pp. 154, 157–58; Morrison, Memoir of the Principal Occurrences, p. 35. Beale’s aviary: Peter Fay, The Opium War, 1840–1842: Barbarians in the Celestial Empire in the Early Part of the Nineteenth Century and the War by Which They Forced Her Gates Ajar (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), p. 26.

  28. Amherst to Canning, February 12, 1817, PRO FO 17/3/59.

  29. Staunton diary 1793–94, entry for September 14, 1793, Staunton Papers, Duke University.

  30. Staunton diary 1793–94, entry for September 17, 1793; on Qianlong’s birthday being the occasion on which Jiaqing saw Macartney kowtow, see Ellis, Journal of the Proceedings of the Late Embassy, p. 110.

  31. George Macartney, An Embassy to China: Being the Journal Kept by Lord Macartney during His Embassy to the Emperor Ch’ien-lung, 1793–1794, ed. J. L. Cranmer-Byng (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1963), p. 131.

  32. As Amherst explained in his report to George Canning in February 1817, well after the fact, “I have since been given to understand that on an occasion subsequently to his first audience, Lord Macartney multiplied his bow nine times in conformity to the usual number of prostrations made by the Chinese.” Amherst to Canning, February 12, 1817, PRO FO 17/3/59.

  33. Lord Amherst to George Canning from Batavia, February 20, 1817, PRO FO 17/3/83.

  34. Lord Amherst dispatch of April 21, 1817, PRO FO 17/3/128; Amherst to George Canning, August 8, 1816, PRO FO 17/3/50; Amherst to Canning, February 12, 1817, PRO FO 17/3/62–65; Ellis, Journal of the Proceedings of the Late Embassy, pp. 93–97.

  35. Morrison, Memoir of the Principal Occurrences, pp. 32, 33.

  36. Amherst to Canning, February 20, 1817, PRO FO 17/3/86.

  37. Staunton, Notes of Proceedings, p. 99; Ellis, Journal of the Proceedings of the Late Embassy, p. 153.

  38. Staunton, Notes of Proceedings, pp. 102–3.

  39. Ibid., p. 103.

  40. English draft of Amherst’s letter, PRO FO 17/3/88–89; Amherst to Canning, February 20, 1817, PRO FO 17/3/86; Staunton, Notes of Proceedings, p. 103.

  41. Amherst to Canning, August 8, 1816, PRO FO 17/3/51.

  42. John F. Davis, “Sketches of China,” supplement to The Chinese: A General Description of China and Its Inhabitants (London: Charles Knight & Co., 1846), p. 86; Amherst to Canning from Batavia, March 8, 1817, PRO FO 17/3/90.

  43. Staunton, Notes of Proceedings, p. 112.

  44. Clarke Abel, Narrative of a Journey in the Interior of China, and of a Voyage to and from That Country in the Years 1816 and 1817 (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1818), p. 104.

  45. Ellis, Journal of the Proceedings of the Late Embassy, p. 178.

  46. Abel, Narrative of a Journey in the Interior of China, p. 106.

  47. Amherst to Canning, Batavia, March 8, 1817, PRO FO 17/3/92.

  48. Abel, Narrative, p. 107; Ellis, Journal of the Proceedings of the Late Embassy, pp. 179–80.

  49. Morse, Chronicles, vol. 3, p. 306; M’Leod, Narrative of a Voyage in His Majesty’s Late Ship Alceste, pp. 136–37. Staunton claimed that nobody was killed by the Alceste: see Staunton, “Extract of a Letter upon the Propositions entertained relative to the China Trade, in 1819,” in Miscellaneous Notices, p. 313.

  50. M’Leod, Narrative of a Voyage in His Majesty’s Late Ship Alceste, pp. 137, 144, 140.

  51. Abel, Narrative, p. 111.

  52. Jiaqing edict of JQ21/7/8 (August 30, 1816), in Da Qing Renzong Rui (Jiaqing) huangdi shilu, juan 320, pp. 6b–9a.

  53. Jiaqing edict of JQ21/7/3 (August 25, 1816), in Wenxian congbian quanbian, vol. 11, p. 357 (Qing Jiaqing 21 nian Ying shi lai pin an, p. 30a).

  54. M’Leod, Narrative of a Voyage in His Majesty’s Late Ship Alceste, p. 140.

  55. Jiaqing edict of JQ21/7/8 (August 30, 1816), in Da Qing
Renzong Rui (Jiaqing) huangdi shilu, juan 320, pp. 4b–6b (quotation on 6b); translation adapted from that of George Staunton, published in The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 89 (September 1819), as “Letter from the Emperor of China,” pp. 264–65.

  56. “The Late Embassy to China,” Times, August 11, 1818.

  57. “Chinese Embassy and Trade,” Edinburgh Review 29, no. 58 (February 1818): 433–53; Staunton, Memoirs of the Chief Incidents, p. 72.

  58. “Embassy to China,” Quarterly Review 17, no. 34 (July 1817): 464–506, quotations on pp. 464, 465.

  59. “Chinese Drama—Lord Amherst’s Embassy,” Quarterly Review 16, no. 32 (January 1817): 396–416, quotation on p. 412.

  60. Monthly Review, vol. 83 (June 1817): 222–23.

  61. Barry E. O’Meara, Napoleon in Exile; Or, A Voice from St. Helena. The Opinions and Reflections of Napoleon on the Most Important Events of His Life and Government, in His Own Words (London: W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1822), vol. 1, p. 471.

  62. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 472. Clarke Abel, Amherst’s physician, who met Napoleon shortly after this exchange, described how Napoleon’s eyes would seem to shift color during conversation. When serious and earnest he had what seemed, in Abel’s words, “a very dark eye.” Abel, Narrative, p. 316.

  CHAPTER 7 Boom Times

  1. John Murray Forbes, Reminiscences of John Murray Forbes, ed. Sarah Forbes Hughes (Boston: George H. Ellis, 1902), vol. 1, p. 139. Forbes says “fifteen or twenty ships,” but H. B. Morse gives a more precise size for the fleet as sixteen. Hosea Ballou Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926), vol. 4, p. 231.

  2. Peter C. Holloran, “Perkins, Thomas Handasyd,” American National Biography Online (Oxford University Press, 2000).

  3. Forbes, Reminiscences of John Murray Forbes, vol. 1, p. 90.

  4. Thomas T. Forbes to John M. Forbes, Canton, Jane 30, 1828, in Forbes, Reminiscences, vol. 1, pp. 92–95.

  5. His seat was Mitchell, Cornwall, which was abolished by the Reform Act of 1832.

  6. George Thomas Staunton, Memoirs of the Chief Incidents of the Public Life of Sir George Thomas Staunton, Bart., printed for private circulation (London: L. Booth, 1856), pp. 74–77.