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subordinate status in all things, including the favour of tribute missions and foreign trade.76
Rev. W. Ellis, in Gutlaff's Three Voyages (1834) wrote, ‘A grave Chinese author, profoundly skilled in the literature of his own nation, congratulating himself that he was not born in our barbarous countries of the West observes, "for then I must have lived in a cave under-ground, - eaten the bark and roots of trees, worn leaves and long grass for my covering, - and been really a beast though in the shape of a man."77
Western sojourners in China could not fail to observe the fact that, as the great missionary translator-scholar W. H. Medhurst wrote in 1838, 'The Chinese assume to be...the only civilised and powerful nation in the world ...,'78 an attitude that appears to have characterised official and peasant, merchant and coolie alike. As Parkinson commented in 1937, 'With such invincible ignorance it is difficult to cope.'+79
At the same time, trying to be objective about Chinese disdain, Lord Macartney, England's first ambassador to China, wrote in 1794 of his own countrymen: 'Is there any country on the globe that Englishmen visit where they do not display that pride of themselves and that contempt of others which conscious superiority is apt to inspire?'80
The Impending war
By 1839, the situation had not changed a whit. Each party to the impending hostilities was boxed in by its own ideas and limitations, in the case of the Westerners fanned by the many irritations accompanying their lives and mercantile dealings at Canton under the restrictions imposed by Chinese officials.
These prompted one of the historians of the military side of the War to opine that 'The opium question was to be regarded merely as a spark blown into a mine, and no more to be considered the primary cause of the war than the match which ignites the train...'81 But at least one of his brother officers had deplored going into a war in which the opium question was an unworthy element.82
And at this point, on the verge of War, we must regretfully take leave of the China of the old China Trade,83
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subordinate status in all things, including the favour of tribute missions and foreign trade.76
Rev. W. Ellis, in Gutlaff's Three Voyages (1834) wrote, ‘A grave Chinese author, profoundly skilled in the literature of his own nation, congratulating himself that he was not born in our barbarous countries of the West observes, "for then I must have lived in a cave under-ground, - eaten the bark and roots of trees, worn leaves and long grass for
my covering, - and been really a beast though in the shape of a man."77
-
Western sojourners in China could not fail to observe the fact that, as the great missionary translator-scholar W. H. Medhurst wrote in 1838, 'The Chinese assume to be...the only civilised and powerful nation in the world ...,'78 an attitude that appears to have characterised official and peasant, merchant and coolie alike. As Parkinson commented in 1937, 'With such invincible ignorance it is difficult to cope. +79
At the same time, trying to be objective about Chinese disdain, Lord Macartney, England's first ambassador to China, wrote in 1794 of his own countrymen: 'Is there any country on the globe that Englishmen visit where they do not display that pride of themselves and that contempt of others which conscious superiority is apt to inspire?'20
The Impending war
By 1839, the situation had not changed a whit. Each party to the impending hostilities was boxed in by its own ideas and limitations, in the case of the Westerners fanned by the many irritations accompanying their lives and mercantile dealings at Canton under the restrictions imposed by Chinese officials.
These prompted one of the historians of the military side of the War to opine that 'The opium question was to be regarded merely as a spark blown into a mine, and no more to be considered the primary cause of the war than the match which ignites the train...'81 But at least one of his brother officers had deplored going into a war in which the opium question was an unworthy element.82
And at this point, on the verge of War, we must regretfully take leave of the China of the old China Trade,83
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