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seemingly well prepared for paying imperial honours. Surgeon Cree relates in his diary that upon the signature of the Treaty of 1842 on board the British flagship on 29 August, a plain yellow flag was hoisted at the main and saluted with twenty-one guns. On September 14 following he noted that "all ships of the Expedition hoisted the yellow flag at the main - the royal standard of China - and at noon fired a royal salute of twenty-one guns."
50
There was a distinct awareness of the fineness of the country itself. Of Central China, Sir John Davis declared that “it yields to none in the whole world, and is equalled by very few."5 Lieutenant Wyndham Baker of the Madras Artillery also waxed lyrical on the subject.52 Even Sir Henry Pottinger, the Plenipotentiary responsible for forcing the Treaty of Nanking upon the Chinese, had called China "this superb country,” in his despatch to the British Foreign Secretary announcing the event. Several decades earlier, Sir Henry Ellis, member of the Amherst Embassy in 1816, had written that "it was impossible to travel through the Emperor of China's dominions without feeling that he has the finest country within an imperial ring-fence in the world."54
53
None of the books and letters consulted contains the derogatory or offensive terms for Chinese in use later in the century. British sailors jocularly used the term “Fokies" for their opponents,55 and referred to the mandarins as “mad-marines,"56 but the Chinese themselves are not here dismissed as “Chinks,” “Chows," "Heathen Chinee” or “Mongolians" (as they so often were at a later time, in those English-speaking countries to which they had gone in search of gold or employment) but invariably as "the Chinese" or "Chinamen." Indeed, many of the authors pay tribute to the honesty and good manners of the ordinary people.
In short, our naval, military and civilian writers of the period were still generally respectful of China, its Court and its inhabitants.57
These facts are worth keeping in mind when considering the Opium War. We should be careful to view the conflict in the context of its own time, and not of that later period when Western attitudes towards China had changed for the worse.
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seemingly well prepared for paying imperial honours. Surgeon Cree relates in his diary that upon the signature of the Treaty of 1842 on board the British flagship on 29 August, a plain yellow flag was hoisted at the main and saluted with twenty-one guns. On September 14 following he noted that "all ships of the Expedition hoisted the yellow flag at the main - the royal standard of China - and at noon fired a royal salute of twenty-one guns."
**50
There was a distinct awareness of the fineness of the country itself. Of Central China, Sir John Davis declared that “it yields to none in the whole world, and is equalled by very few."5 Lieutenant Wyndham Baker of the Madras Artillery also waxed lyrical on the subject.52 Even Sir Henry Pottinger, the Plenipotentiary responsible for forcing the Treaty of Nanking upon the Chinese, had called China "this superb country,” in his despatch to the British Foreign Secretary announcing the event. Several decades earlier, Sir Henry Ellis, member of the Amherst Embassy in 1816, had written that "it was impossible to travel through the Emperor of China's dominions without feeling that he has the finest country within an imperial ring-fence in the world."54
53
None of the books and letters consulted contains the derogatory or offensive terms for Chinese in use later in the century. British sailors jocularly used the term “Fokies" for their opponents," and referred to the mandarins as “mad-marines,"5" but the Chinese themselves are not here dismissed as “Chinks,” “Chows," "Heathen Chinee” or “Mongolians" (as they so often were at a later time, in those English-speaking countries to which they had gone in search of gold or employment) but invariably as "the Chinese" or "Chinamen." Indeed, many of the authors pay tribute to the honesty and good manners of the ordinary people.
In short, our naval, military and civilian writers of the period were still generally respectful of China, its Court and its inhabitants.57
These facts are worth keeping in mind when considering the Opium War. We should be careful to view the conflict in the context of its own time, and not of that later period when Western attitudes towards China had changed for the worse.
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