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"Macartney"
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British Clocks in Eighteenth-Century China: Presents, Tribute, or Trade?
It is commonly believed that most European clocks that reached China before the nineteenth century were sent to the emperor as diplomatic presents from European rulers, or were given to Chinese officials by European merchants in attempts to improve trading conditions. Although such presents had been given in earlier times, British records show that, by the eighteenth century when the export of clocks to China reached its height, most clocks, including the finest, reached China as private trade goods. Once in Canton (Guangzhou), the best clocks were bought by local Chinese officials for inclusion in their annual tribute to the emperor and senior members of the government in Beijing, where many of these clocks survive in the former imperial collection.
Journal Article
The perils of interpreting : the extraordinary lives of two translators between Qing China and the British Empire
\"The 1793 British embassy to China, which led to Lord George Macartney's fraught encounter with the Qianlong emperor, has often been viewed as a clash of cultures fueled by the East's disinterest in the West. In The Perils of Interpreting, Henrietta Harrison presents a more nuanced picture, ingeniously shifting the historical lens to focus on Macartney's two interpreters at that meeting--Li Zibiao and George Thomas Staunton. Who were these two men? How did they intervene in the exchanges that they mediated? And what did these exchanges mean for them? From Galway to Chengde, and from political intrigues to personal encounters, Harrison reassesses a pivotal moment in relations between China and Britain. She shows that there were Chinese who were familiar with the West, but growing tensions endangered those who embraced both cultures and would eventually culminate in the Opium Wars. Harrison demonstrates that the Qing court's ignorance about the British did not simply happen, but was manufactured through the repression of cultural go-betweens like Li and Staunton. She traces Li's influence as Macartney's interpreter, the pressures Li faced in China as a result, and his later years in hiding. Staunton interpreted successfully for the British East India Company in Canton, but as Chinese anger grew against British imperial expansion in South Asia, he was compelled to flee to England. Harrison contends that in silencing expert voices, the Qing court missed an opportunity to gain insights that might have prevented a losing conflict with Britain. Uncovering the lives of two overlooked figures, The Perils of Interpreting offers an empathic argument for cross-cultural understanding in a connected world.\" -- Publisher's description
BOOK
Constructing British Selfhood through Depictions of China: The Art of the Macartney Embassy
The Macartney Embassy, the first official British diplomatic mission to China, contributed to the visual record and understanding of China in Britain. The embassy artists were ambitious in their mission to deliver authentic visual knowledge of China to the British at the same time that they were subconsciously influenced by both the old chinoiserie tradition, and the nascent British Enlightenment thought process. In contrast to contemporary Britain’s scientific and humanitarian advancements, the embassy’s portrayal of China was pastoral, barbaric, and autocratic, allowing the British to revel in the humanism and progressivism of their own values and social system.
Journal Article
An Opera about the ‘Progress of Music’: Charles Burney, Domenico Corri's The Travellers (1806) and the Macartney Embassy to China 1792–1794
Premiered in London twelve years after the unsuccessful return of the first British embassy to China, led by Lord George Macartney, Domenico Corri's five-act ‘dramatic opera’, The Travellers, or Music's Fascination (1806), is a unique work exhibiting concrete connections to the embassy in its dramatic concept, musical and visual sources. This article explores how the subject of the opera – tracing the ‘progress of music’ from China to Britain – reflected the contemporary discussion about Chinese music, articulated most clearly by Charles Burney, who held a significant interest in the embassy's musical exchange. By incorporating a Chinese melody and ‘realistic’ visual representation connected to the embassy, the opera reconstructs certain ceremonies and musical experience witnessed by the members of the embassy. Interestingly, the opera balances first-hand knowledge of Chinese music and culture with an emerging imperialist view, and dramatises the aim of the embassy to show British advancement in the arts and sciences.
Journal Article
Macartney At Kashgar
First published in 1973. This book describes the career of Sir George Macartney, who spent twenty-eight years at the turn of the nineteenth century as British representative in Sinkiang, China's most westerly province. Macartney was in a unique position to observe political and diplomatic manoeuvres by the key players trying to establish a sphere of influence in China's strategically vital hinterland before and during the Chinese revolution.
eBook
A Faithful Interpreter? Li Zibiao and the 1793 Macartney Embassy to China
This paper is about the interpreter of the first British embassy to China. Li Zibiao was a Chinese Catholic priest who Lord Macartney recruited in Europe and brought with him to China. This account of his participation in the embassy aims to help us understand the role of the interpreter in intercultural negotiations in the late 18th century. Interpreting is something we tend to think of as invisible, but in these negotiations, where only a single interpreter was present, the interpreter had significant power. In effect, he acted as a mediator, shuttling between the two parties to enable each to accept the positions of the other so that the negotiations could come to a more or less successful conclusion. This position of power meant that the interpreter's own institutional and personal interests could also be important to the negotiations. Thus loyalty was crucial to how interpreting worked. Li's achievement during the negotiations was to create a situation where both Lord Macartney and the Qing officials were willing to accept him as a mediator and where he survived to tell the tale.
Journal Article
Macartney at Kashgar
First published in 1973. This book describes the career of Sir George Macartney, who spent twenty-eight years at the turn of the nineteenth century as British representative in Sinkiang, China's most westerly province. Macartney was in a unique position to observe political and diplomatic manoeuvres by the key players trying to establish a sphere of influence in China's strategically vital hinterland before and during the Chinese revolution.
eBook
William Alexander's Image of Qing China
William Alexander was the official draughtsman of the Macartney Embassy. His pictures of China covered a wide range of themes. Each theme represented a certain purpose. Landscapes, architectural drawings, and portraits constituted the majority of the drawings, which reveal the Embassy's enthusiasm for obtaining visual knowledge of a variety of aspects in the society of China. The drawings of still life, costume, native species, and religious ceremony occupied the remainder, and provided the audience with a more intricate impression of China. In comparison with other European and some earlier generation artists' works, Alexander's pictures convey a peculiar British idea of China at the time, and hint at the potential crisis between the two countries.
Journal Article
Burney, Macartney and the Qianlong Emperor: the role of music in the British embassy to China, 1792–1794
The embassy to China led by Lord George Macartney in 1792–94 set off with hopes of expanding and improving trade relations between the two countries. Macartney, hoping that music would be a major tool in his effort to establish favourable diplomatic and trade ties with China, entrusted all of the necessary musical planning and arrangements to Charles Burney, who also personally supplied a range of musical instruments for the journey. Although outwardly received with grand ceremony and grace by the Qianlong Emperor in 1793, the embassy ultimately represented a cultural clash of major proportions. This is evident from many contemporary accounts of the participants, who provide detailed descriptions that include mention of music, musicians and their roles. As it turned out, no amount of negotiation was sufficient to achieve the embassy's diplomatic ends, due to cultural misunderstandings on both sides of the encounter, which are also evident in the musical exchanges.
Journal Article