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Save for a small number of persons whose families had been associated with the China Trade, and others who derived their knowledge indirectly from their service in British India, very few individuals in the government in London possessed direct knowledge of the country, its officials and its people.
Worse still, for prospects of a better comprehension, for most Britons, as for most Europeans, China was a country yet steeped in fantasy. The 18th century craze for "Chinoiserie" had left them with a vision of Cathay, rather than knowledge of the real China. The willow pattern provided exotic vistas, and a romantic tale to accompany them, but there was a hotchpotch of other impressions in the popular mind. One of the early Protestant missionaries to China, William C. Milne, told his readers that when he went there in 1839, he carried with him the following notions:
Of ideas that most people in the West entertain about the Chinese, some of the elements may be said to be, odd manners, “pig-tails", cramped feet, long nails, fans, paintings, rice-paper drawings, processions, concentric balls, lanterns, chopsticks, eating rats, mice, and bird's nest soup, popular infanticide, and an utter want of benevolence.2
This admission is apt, but it is surprising that there was anything at all. At the time the War began, there were few books readily available on China. Saving a few works by missionaries working there, or in Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, the first up to date accurate account of the Chinese Empire in English had only just been published (1836).
Its author was John Francis Davis - later Sir John, and a future Governor of Hong Kong)3. His contribution to the wider knowledge of China is handsomely acknowledged in the Dedication of Sir Rutherford Alcock's celebrated book, The Capital of the Tycoon: A Narrative of Three Years' Residence in Japan, published in London in 1863. An eminent early Victorian China Consul and later H.B.M.'s Minister-Plenipotentiary in Japan, Alcock described Davis as "the author of the best and only popular work we possess on the Chinese Empire; and the first who succeeded in making the subject familiar to [British] readers in general."
212
Save for a small number of persons whose families had been associ- ated with the China Trade, and others who derived their knowledge indirectly from their service in British India, very few individuals in the government in London possessed direct knowledge of the country, its officials and its people.
Worse still, for prospects of a better comprehension, for most Britons, as for most Europeans, China was a country yet steeped in fantasy. The 18th century craze for "Chinoiserie" had left them with a vision of Cathay, rather than knowledge of the real China. The willow pattern provided exotic vistas, and a romantic tale to accompany them, but there was a hotchpotch of other impressions in the popular mind. One of the early Protestant missionaries to China, William C. Milne, told his readers that when he went there in 1839, he carried with him the following notions:
Of ideas that most people in the West entertain about the Chinese, some of the elements may be said to be, odd manners, “pig-tails", cramped feet, long nails, fans, paintings, rice-paper drawings, processions, concentric balls, lanterns, chopsticks, eating rats, mice, and bird's nest soup, popular infanticide, and an utter want of benevolence.2
This admission is apt, but it is surprising that there was anything at all. At the time the War began, there were few books readily avail- able on China. Saving a few works by missionaries working there, or in Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, the first up to date accurate account of the Chinese Empire in English had only just been published (1836).
Its author was John Francis Davis - later Sir John, and a future Governor of Hong Kong)3. His contribution to the wider knowledge of China is handsomely acknowledged in the Dedication of Sir Ruther- ford Alcock's celebrated book, The Capital of the Tycoon: A Narrative of Three Years' Residence in Japan, published in London in 1863. An eminent early Victorian China Consul and later H.B.M.'s Minister-Pleni- potentiary in Japan, Alcock described Davis as "the author of the best and only popular work we possess on the Chinese Empire; and the first who succeeded in making the subject familiar to [British] readers in general."
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