TNAG-2701-FCO40-3907-Memoirs-of-Sir-Percy-Cradock--diplomat-and-sinologist-1993 — Page 16

treaties but excellent to make war"

At court in Peking about this time the military-

conservative faction was strongly placed and also enjoyed

popular backing. A smaller faction, known as the "foreign

affairs group" had no love of the West, but were realists and

recognised that the only way to salvation was to modernise.

But this was usually a minority view; and its adherents tended

not to prosper in their careers.

Generally through the nineteenth century, although the

Manchu rulers displayed some dexterity in fending off the

more immediate Western threats, and even enrolled Western

help in suppressing the great internal revolts afflicting the

regime, like the Taiping rebellion in the mid-century, they

and their courts remained too frivolous, corrupt and

incompetent to take the measure of the challenge facing them.

And though individual Chinese statesmen and scholars

accurately diagnosed the disease and prescribed the remedy,

and there were in fact spasmodic modernisation movements, the

realists were usually lone voices against a chorus of angry

and blinkered conservatism. The imperial

The imperial tutor, Wo Ren,

reflected the view of the great majority when, in a memorial

to the Emperor in 1867, he questioned the need to

to "seek

trifling arts and respect barbarians as teachers, regardless

of the possibility that the cunning barbarians may not teach

us their essential techniques.

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So a great opportunity was missed and, for reasons

still not entirely explained, China's response to the

challenge was slow, partial and inadequate. The old learning

was too deeply embedded; Western technology was seen at best