CHINA AND BRITAIN
A Brief History
"The history of foreign diplomacy with China is largely a history of attempted explanations of matters which have been deliberately misunderstood"
(Arthur H Smith 1894)
The first British ships to reach Chinese waters were four trading vessels which arrived off the south-east coast in 1637. The British were comparative latecomers to the China coast. The Portuguese had established a position at Macao in the 1550s and other Europeans followed. The first Britons met an unfriendly reception but they persevered and trading links were established. By the end of the 17th century, the East India Company had set up a factory in Canton. The East India Company, in theory, had a monopoly of British trade to China.
Attempts to establish diplomatic contacts were less successful. In 1596, Benjamin Wood set out with three vessels and a letter from Queen Elizabeth to the Emperor of China. Neither he nor the letter arrived, and only one man returned from the expedition. The leader of the next mission, Colonel Cathcart, drowned en route to China in 1778. When the first ambassador Lord Macartney did eventually arrive in 1793 he accomplished nothing, though he did manage to obtain audience with the Emperor Qian Long. Even that success was beyond the subsequent missions of Lord Amherst (1816) and Lord Napier (1834).
In common with the rest of Europe, Britain enjoyed a vogue of chinoiserie during the 18th century. Chinese-style furniture, porcelain and decorations were popular. China, remote and mysterious, was seen as the origin of many good things. There was much admiration, which persisted well into the 19th century, for China's system of government and education. Exotic plants and designs came from China. The Royal Pavilion in Brighton is only the most famous of the many Chinese influenced buildings erected at this time. The Chinese had a somewhat different image of England as the following quotation, taken from a Chinese writing in the mid-eighteenth century, would suggest:
"England is a country which belongs to Holland. The clothing and appearance of the barbarians is much the same in every part of the country. The country is quite rich. The men mostly wear woollen cloth, and like to drink wine. The unmarried women lace up their hips in their desire to be slim. They wear their hair falling loosely over the shoulder, with short clothes and several coats one above the other. When they go out they put on an overcoat overall. They keep snuff in metallic wire boxes and carry them about with them."
The traders on the China coast were not having as easy time. The Chinese authorities saw little need for the goods Europeans brought and imposed strict controls on foreign merchants. An Imperial Edict commented that while China could do without foreign goods, "the tea, the rhubarb, the raw silk of the Celestial land are the sources by which the said nation's (ie Britain) people live and maintain their life". Mutual intransigence, with much insistence on rights, did little to help. Attempts by the British and other governments to put relations with China on a more understandable footing failed.
As the East India Company's preoccupations turned more and more to the government of its possessions in India, so its interest and control over the China trade declined. New and aggressive merchants, the forerunners of firms such as Jardines and Swires, increasingly successfully challenged the Company's monopoly.
It was the East India Company which had introduced the opium trade to China in order to balance Sino-Indian trade. Whatever the faults of the Company, it had attempted to keep some measure of control over its merchants. But with the ending of the monopoly in 1833, no such control existed over the new men who now began to dominate the China trade.
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