much of what was to follow.
The rebuff could
could not hold; Western, in particular
sustained. A member of
A member of Macartney's
British,
pressure was
entourage had remarked that Chinese prejudices were so deeply
rooted as only to be overcome by force. And so, eventually,
they were. After one war, an island, that of Hong Kong, was
ceded, in 1842. After another, that of 1856-60, a permanent
diplomatic mission was established in Peking. The character
of the succeeding period was
compulsion.
set-incomprehension
and
Nations, like people, form images of themselves and
those they deal with and are reluctant to change them. Their
truth is not the decisive factor. One thinker, Michel
Foucault, writes of truth in these situations as a function of
power: the stronger impose their vision. Britain and China
began with vastly distorted images of each other and with
great inequality of power. First contacts in such a situation
are likely to be clumsy and painful, a kind of blind-man's
buff. Or perhaps a better analogy would be the duel chosen by
the short-sighted Stuart gentleman in Aubrey's Brief Lives,
who, asked to decide the weapons for the encounter, specified
axes in a dark cellar. Sino-British relations in the
nineteenth century contained several such episodes.
Although the British, in the Chinese estimation, were
the fiercest and most dangerous of the sea barbarians, they
were by no means exclusive in their appetites. They sought
trade above all; but, having established the terms for their
trade, they were usually content that other powers should