Of all the hoary myths that pervade US media writing on China, one that irks historians quite a bit is the hoary chestnut of an inert, uncompromising China being “opened” by the dynamic, technologically and politically advanced West in the 19th century.
Prefacing his review in this week’s The Nation, foreign policy author John Feffer compares the American government of 2007 with the days of the Jiaqing Emperor (r. 1796-1825), when the weaknesses of the Qing state were becoming all too apparent.
The article itself is a pastiche of recent publications on China, with a dollop of Yellow Peril to balance for flavor, warning Americans that we should not get too comfy in our place as the world’s preeminent power. I can accept Feffer’s larger point–about American obtuseness and arrogance–though his choice of language (”In place of opium, there are the distracting pleasures of Chinese goods for sale at Wal-Mart”) is unfortunate.
Contemporary China hands will no doubt have much to say about Feffer’s analysis of today’s China and its potential as an eater of worlds, but I’d like to take a moment to set the record straight on Feffer’s description of Chinese history.
“The glory of Our Empire shines on this universe with brilliance,” a ruler once declared in a letter to courtiers in London. “Not one single person or country is excluded from Our kindness and benevolence.” He had good reason to be pleased. His country sat astride the global economy. His army was large, his domains vast. He believed his country to be the center of the world, and a good chunk of the world agreed.
And yet, despite the fulsome satisfaction of this 1805 letter, its author, the head of the Manchu Qing dynasty and emperor of China, had cause for anxiety. Less than twenty years before, China had suffered a humiliating defeat in Vietnam and continued to have difficulty besting the Burmese, Tibetans and Zunghars. Trade with Europe was still expanding rapidly. But the European powers were quickly getting the upper hand by controlling shipping and financial flows, and China was developing a dangerous dependency on silver and opium. Until the late nineteenth century, China’s economy was the largest in the world, but then it headed precipitously downward. The Chinese knew practically nothing about the modern firearms with which Europe was taking over the world.
Did the advisers to the Jiaqing Emperor warn him of the coming conflict with Europe and the potential collapse of the Chinese Empire? Perhaps some courageous and far-seeing mandarin spoke of Europe’s rise, of the dangerous trajectory of the terms of trade, of the military modernizations of Britain, of the equally pernicious soft power of missionaries and merchants. The documentary evidence makes no mention of such a pundit. In 1816, after dealing with barbarians from Britain who refused to kowtow to the emperor, the Chinese court sent another letter to London: “The Celestial Empire has little regard for foreign things.” By the time China learned the value of foreign things and adopted the Japanese approach of “Eastern thought, Western machines,” it would be too late. The Chinese Empire had been carved up like a crisp Peking duck.
I’m not even sure where to begin.
TRADE AND OPIUM:
Feffer mentions two letters from the Qing Emperors, both of which seem variations on the famous missive from the Qianlong Emperor to King George III in 1793. It is true that Qianlong dismissed trade demands from British envoys with a cold “I set no value on objects strange and ingenious, and have no use for your country’s manufactures.” This was less about Qianlong’s arrogance and claim to supreme rulership (though, to be fair, that was part of it) than because the Qing Empire comprised a continent-size trading network in and of itself. There was little the British had (woolen sweaters in sub-tropical Guangdong, anyone?) that the Chinese actually wanted. At the time, in fact until the 1820s, China was doing quite well in foreign trade. Without a market for British goods, the British had to pay in silver resulting in a huge trade imbalance and net inflows of silver into China. Britain didn’t change this pattern by “controlling shipping and financial flows,” they changed it by turning Victoria into a heroin-peddling drug ‘queen-pin’. By 1838, foreign traders were smuggling nearly 40,000 chests of opium into South China every year (up from 4500 two decades earlier). Because smuggling is a cash business, silver began to pour out of South China causing enormous economic dislocations and hardships. This was not the triumph of Western liberalism, this was a crack economy run by a state-sponsored cartel.
VIETNAM, IRAQ, and MODERN FIREARMS
Feffer references the failed armed intervention into Vietnamese dynastic politics in 1788 and further military adventures in Burma, Nepal, and Xinjiang. Feffer even suggests that Iraq will serve the same role in the decline of the American empire that Vietnam did for the Qing. Maybe, but there was a key difference. When the last emperor of the Le Dynasty (in what was then Annam) was in danger of being toppled by the Nguyen family, Le called in his tributary chits from the Qianlong Emperor. Qianlong sent troops including General Sun Shiyi whose record of military and administrative incompetence probably deserves its own post. After taking the capital of Hanoi and putting Le back on the throne, Sun forgot to round up the Nguyen family, who counterattacked just after Sun sent his “mission accomplished” letter to Qianlong. 4000 of Sun’s troops were killed and the Le Family fled north. HERE’S THE DIFFERENCE: With his attempts at “regime stabilization” foiled, the Qianlong Emperor accepted–not without some equivocation at his military failure–that the mandate had passed in Vietnam, and gave his blessings to the new Nguyen family, who then ruled that country until the end of the Vietnamese monarchy. If only the Bush family could so readily admit when they’ve been beaten and move on. It took Qianlong one year to figure out that regime change wasn’t working in Vietnam, we’re well into year number four in Iraq.
As for the other conflicts, the Qing did have their troubles, troubles not helped by sending the same General Sun of the Vietnam debacle to handle military finances in campaigns against the gurkhas of Nepal. (This was Qianlong’s “you’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie” moment.) There is no doubt that military preparedness was at an all-time low, but lack of MODERN FIREARMS was not the problem. In fact, the Qing were able to conquer so much of Xinjiang, Tibeτ, and Mongolia in large part because they used modern cannons and firearms against people like the Zunghar Mongols who were relying on spears and bows. It was the Qing use of cannon that made them so formidable against the preceding Ming Dynasty, with the last Ming emperors scrambling in the early 17th century to overturn their “no foreign firearm manufacturing” edict just as the forces of Nurhaci & Sons were helping themselves to everything north of the Great Wall.
It was not until the fruits of the industrial revolution began to sweep through the British military (about three to four decades after the Qianlong letter) that British technology could play a decisive role in a military encounter with the Qing. Most notably, the use of steam-powered gunships gave the British a huge tactical advantage along the Chinese coast. Of course Qianlong didn’t know about these in 1793, Robert Fulton wouldn’t launch his first steamship until ten years later. The Qianlong Emperor was an arrogant and pompous jackass at times, but let’s not fault the man because the crystal ball was broken.
KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS FOREIGN
In fact, the Qing were well aware of the military technology and abilities of pre-Industrial Revolution Europe. They had been dealing with the Portuguese and Dutch for centuries and with the Russians well before that. Jesuit scientists at court created detailed plans for cannons, siege engines, and firearm manufacture as early as the 16th century. I’m not saying that there weren’t gaps in the Qing knowledge base, but the emperors and their officials were not total idiots either.
Two things changed, rather late I might add: A new system of global ‘free trade’ replaced the mercantile system of the 17th and 18th century and the advances in military and transportation technology that resulted from the Industrial Revolution. Can’t emphasize that enough. But both of these things occurred well after the Qianlong Emperor and at the tail end of Jiaqing’s reign. Again, let’s not bust these guys chops posthumously for things they couldn’t have predicted.
THE KOW-TOW
Let’s get this out of the way, because it’s one of those things non-historians like to throw randomly into writing on China: The Kow-tow. This is the nine prostrations with the knocking of the head three times on the ground that my students love to see me demonstrate each year. Folks, of the 17 European missions to the Qing Court between 1655 and 1795, only Lord Macartney (1793) refused to bow. If you think Qianlong was an arrogant S.o.B., then read what Macartney reportedly said as he was awaiting an audience with the emperor: “I will get on one knee before my king and two before my God, but the notion of a gentleman prostrating himself before an Asiatic barbarian is preposterous.” Quite the diplomat, that Macartney. Any wonder why Qianlong was so haughty in his dismissal? Macartney’s successor, Lord Amherst in 1816 didn’t care one way or the other about the kowtow, but was strongly encouraged by British traders in Canton not to do it lest the traders “lose their advantage in dignity” when negotiating prices with the local merchants.
Official Warnings
Feffer argues that no Qing officials warned the emperors of the coming danger from Britain. And in this, he’s partially right. High level discussion of the “British military threat” didn’t really occur until British warships were blockading the China coast. But there was considerable back and forth between the officials in Guangdong and the court regarding the arrogance and bellicosity of the foreign traders and alarm at the lawlessness and instability caused by British support for opium smuggling. I’m not sure what constitutes soft power more than hooking a nation on drugs. (By some estimates, 20% of Qing officials were addicts.) But for good measure, other forms of ’soft power’ didn’t escape the court’s notice. As early as 1665, the official Yang Guangxian wrote about the Jesuit missionaries at court:
“How can we abide these calumnies! They really aim to inveigle the people of the Qing into rebelling against the Qing and following this heterodox sect, which would lead all-under-Heaven to abandon respect for rulers and fathers…”
Of course, that could also have been sour grapes because Yang had just lost his job as court astronomer to the Jesuit priest Adam Schall von Bell. But the idea that missionaries were a form of soft power was not a foreign one to Qing officials.
In the late 18th and early 19th century, Qing officials wrote memorial after memorial decrying the state of affairs in the Empire and proposing reforms to fix these problems. Some of these letters were so critical that the writers came to grief. But few if any of these memorials dealt with “the coming war with Britain.” Why? Well, until about 1820, there wasn’t any evidence that Britain would be a serious threat. Prior to 1800, Britain really hadn’t shown that it had the ability to project military power into East Asia. (Witness the lack of reaction to the “sit down and shut up” dismissals of Macartney and Amherst.) Remember, in the late 18th century, Britain had a hard enough time projecting military power into North America and lost 13 colonies as a result. Between 1800 and 1815, the Napoleonic Wars shook Europe and tied up military resources. It was only after the IR that the balance of power shifted due to technological advances (notice a theme, here?).
It would be like blaming Japan for Pearl Harbor in 1941 simply because Hirohito didn’t see the atomic bomb coming in 1945.
Were the Qing emperors and officials arrogant? Absolutely. Did they think they did (or should, at least) rule “All Under Heaven?” Probably. Why do I write all my conclusions in ‘DonaldRumsfeldese’? No idea.
But the larger point is that this narrative of Qing obstinacy in the face of Western dynamism is an old wives tale that makes westerners feel better about what happened next: Namely, the imperialist dismantling of Qing sovereignty for the purposes of profit and filthy lucre. It’s the classic date rape defense: The Chinese didn’t know what they really wanted, so we gave it to ‘em anyway.
It’s a much more complicated story than that, and a fascinating one. But the old narrative has become the Freddy Krueger or Jason Vorhees of history class–the monster that will not die. And it’s sad to see an otherwise thought-provoking piece in The Nation prefaced by such bad history.
——————-
Sources and references
Immanuel C.Y. Hsu, The Rise of Modern China, 6th Edition (Oxford University Press, 2000)
Pei-Kai Cheng and Michael Lestz, The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection (W.W. Norton Company, 1999)
Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China (W.W. Norton Company, 1990)
Wm. Theodore deBary and Richard Lufrano, Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol. 2 (Columbia University Press, 1999)
35 responses so far ↓
1 ChinaHawk // Oct 20, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Wow, I am in complete agreement with Jottings here. Nothing to add, except to say that this monster will probably outlive cockroaches after nuclear winter.
I am reminded of the oft-repeated question “why China didn’t end up taking over the world, with so much lead on Europe early on”. We see the point raised about voyage of Zheng He or economical advances of Song. If the Song or Ming Chinese only knew that they were in a race with Europeans with a deadline set in 2007!
Ironically, it’s more likely that Song Chinese in 1007 also thought they were at “the end of history” and that they are on the “top of the world”.
2 by Davesgonechina // Oct 21, 2007 at 12:46 am
Nicely done!
3 Shu Jierui // Oct 21, 2007 at 12:52 am
J - Great post, very informative (among other things, I now know Jason’s last name). Unrelated but interesting, I just bought Spence’s new book, Return to Dragon Mountain - here’s the review.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/books/review/Benfey-t.html?ref=asia
4 The Humanaught // Oct 21, 2007 at 3:19 am
You never cease to awe me with how much you’ve got stuffed in that skull of yours man. Awesome post.
5 Anonymous // Oct 21, 2007 at 11:58 am
Interesting post. I genuinely appreciate the clarifications of historical fact, as I’m certainly no expert in the history of this period. At the same time, I’m not sure this rebuts the general point that China lost its way in this period or even before. Sure, we might not be able to blame the Qing emperors, they might not have been as inward looking as we suspected, but doesn’t the point stand - the Chinese were a declining power in this period.
6 Anonymous // Oct 21, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Wow! I didn’t like your anti-CCP stance, but you really know your stuff!
-Inst
7 花崗齋之愚公 // Oct 21, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Chinahawk,
We ever disagree? I tend to reject the question, “what happened to China” because it assumes a teleology of progress that includes an industrial revolution. There is too much contingency in history to assume a single track of development. Did Europe make a technological leap past China in the late-18th/early-19th centuries? Sure. But the answer as to why that happened is in Europe, not in China.
8 花崗齋之愚公 // Oct 21, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Jeremy,
Haven’t read it, yet. It’s on my Christmas list for this year.
Thanks for stopping by.
9 花崗齋之愚公 // Oct 21, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Ryan,
I think it’s less what I can fit in my skull than how much my bookshelf can hold. But thanks for the compliment.
10 花崗齋之愚公 // Oct 21, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Anonymous,
No, I would certainly agree that the Qing state was a declining power, but that does that mean China was a civilization in decline? That was the assumption in much of the literature on the subject in the 19th and early 20th centuries. But the two don’t necessarily go together.
Thanks for stopping by.
11 花崗齋之愚公 // Oct 21, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Inst,
Anti-CCP? Maybe, but not nearly as much as some out there in the China blogosphere. I’m willing to accept many of the good things that the CCP has accomplished while still being committed to pointing out areas for significant improvement. By the by, I’m equally, if not more, harsh regarding my own government.
Thanks for stopping by.
12 Froog // Oct 21, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Sorry, J, I found you unclear on Macartney. I agree he sounds like a pompous prick; but there’s some confusion in the terminology here.
Kow-towing, kneeling, and bowing are all forms of ‘prostration’, but all quite different. It sounds as though Macartney was objecting to kneeling, not to bowing. Did he not even bow, not even a little bit?
Are you saying that the earlier foreign missions bowed - or maybe knelt- but weren’t forced to do a full kow-tow? Did any foreign ambassadors kow-tow before a Qing emperor?
13 花崗齋之愚公 // Oct 22, 2007 at 3:11 am
Macartney and Amherst said they would bow (bend at the waist) and Macartney even said he would go to one knee. Qianlong actually agreed to this so long as Macartney bowed to him as Mac would to his own king. (Though Qianlong politely declined to have Mac kiss the royal hand as he would have KGIII.) That’s how Macartney was able to get his audience at all. Amherst was dealing with Jiaqing who was more circumspect (read: weaker) than his father and less willing to negotiate. Amherst also had other issues, but that’s a story for another time.
What both Macartney and Amherst refused to do was the full-kowtow, laid out on the floor. It’s my understanding that the other sixteen prior expeditions/missions had in fact done it, but with the British, there appeared to be an issue of pride at stake.
Point of fact, Napoleon himself (no stranger to pompous gestures of obeisance in his general direction) when he heard of the mission’s failure, criticized Amherst for the minister’s reluctance to go along with Qing protocol, saying that the court decided envoy protocol, not the other way around.
Hope this clears it up. The confusion over different gestures of submission is one reason that I give my little kowtow demonstration to my history students every time I teach Qing history. It serves the dual purpose of clarifying what I mean by kowtow and of course gives them a giggle at their teacher’s expense.
Thanks for stopping by.
14 Jon // Oct 22, 2007 at 4:46 am
You write:
It would be like blaming Japan for Pearl Harbor in 1941 simply because Hirohito didn’t see the atomic bomb coming in 1945.
I hope you have just got carried away with yourself writing this. Japan’s defeat in a war against the U.S. was almost certain, unless Germany defeated Russia. This looked likely in the fall of 1941, but much less so by Dec. 7th. Admiral Yamamoto thought as much and argued it forcibly in his famous remark that “…We would have to march into Washington and sign the treaty in the White House…”
I have always thought that the success of the attack on Pearl Harbor was largely due to the American attitude that it was a “bad idea” for Japan to attack the U.S. Americans thought the Japanese would be ground to powder, and so they were.
15 花崗齋之愚公 // Oct 22, 2007 at 6:07 am
Jon,
What I meant was that while it may have been apparent that the Japanese were going to lose (Do I not recall Yamamoto writing something on this soon before or after Pearl Harbor?), they could not have forseen that the final statement of their defeat would have come via the atomic bomb.
Would the Japanese government have acted differently if they knew of such a device and that it could/would be used? Maybe not, and it’s kind of specious counterhistorical anyway (which was largely my point). But neither could they be blamed for not knowing of something yet to be invented/unveiled.
This was in reference to the development of British naval technology in the years after the Qianlong emperor had died.
Sorry for the confusion. I could have and should have phrased that better.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
16 guest // Oct 22, 2007 at 8:43 am
I would be cautious about the idea that british manufacturing could not have been a successful in trade with the Qing empire circa 1800-1820 - looking at the main industrial products of britian at the period (cotton textiles, cheaply produced good quality iron, iron tools and implements, sophisticated and relatively inexpensive firearms). There is also the sucess of the british in the same period in becoming the major suppliers to a range of other formerly self contained economic systems (such as the newly independant south america).
17 Erique // Oct 22, 2007 at 9:49 am
I’m extremely happy to read a blog this well, written and informative. Especially one with the friendly tone of a very good professor. Wish I’d had a course from you when I was in school!
18 John // Oct 22, 2007 at 10:39 am
I can certainly understand the irritation of specialists when they confront journalists who venture into their territory. And I am grateful to GraniteStudio for his interesting insights into Qinq dynasty history.
But I wish that the author had read the piece a bit more carefully.
1) The article was a book review, not a “pastiche” of recent publications. This is an important distinction, since my primary goal was to review books. The excursion into history was by way of introduction.
2) I never treat the West’s opening up of China as a triumph of liberalism.
3) I acknowledge the use of opium in colonizing China as well as China’s commanding place in the world economy (the editors removed my citation of Maddison).
4) I never suggest that lack of modern firearms was a problem for China in conquering neighboring lands or putting down internal rebellions. The reference is to the confrontation between China and the West.
5) Of course there are differences between the U.S. in Iraq and China in Vietnam. It was but an example of China’s inability to conquer by force of arms alone.
6) I don’t write that the Qing were total idiots. Only that they didn’t anticipate the “value” of foreign things. It’s hardly radical history to point out that the Chinese empire was on the decline, that it could have used a good dose of reform (of its own design rather than imposed from the outside), and that Japan did a better job of preventing colonial powers from carving it up.
7) What “yellow peril” did I throw in for flavor? The review took issue with the “yellow peril” promoted by some recent books: of China’s intentions in the global south, of its growing military power, of its plan to initiate a war with the United States over Taiwan. It seems as though you attributed some of the arguments of the books to the beliefs of the reviewer.
I could have perhaps slipped in some colonial-bashing in the first part of the essay. But I was more interested in setting up a parallel between the United State of the 21st century and China of the 19th. Analogies are imperfect instruments. But what they sacrifice in historical subtlety, they gain in raising provocative questions.
19 無名 - wu ming // Oct 22, 2007 at 4:16 pm
well done, j. always a pleasure to read someone gainsay the tyranny of the teleology of the present (or, in this case, of the the recent past).
for the record, i would submit that the huge amount of wealth and slave labor expropriated by genocidal force in the new world played a far larger role in the rise of the west and the very inception of the industrial revolution than most eurocentric accounts of world history are willing to admit. pomeranz made a pretty solid case IMO that europe would have been running smack into the same ecological limits as china in the 19th century had not a continent of native americans not died off and left them centuries’ worth of spoils free for the taking.
as for the song and ming, i suspect they did not take over the south seas in large part because they saw no need to. europe’s expansionist powers were forced to resort to piracy to get asian goods precisely because they had a backwards economy for most of human history; as the producers of the world’s luxury goods, china and india historically had no need to practice much gunboat diplomacy (zheng he’s was an antipiracy mission, not one of conquest) because they could buy whatever they wanted on the open market.
and when the song decided to force the issue of local control in vietnam, and lost that battle, they had the sense to let it go and call it “loose reins.” anything to keep the business going, priorities and all that.
when america learns the wisdom of letting global centrality rest of rhetoric instead of always forcing the issue and proving ourselves impotent to act on our grandiose claims, we’ll all breathe a lot freer.
20 ChinaHawk // Oct 22, 2007 at 4:18 pm
@花崗齋之愚公
Hehe, you are right. Thanks again for bring critical thinking in historical analysis.
@ John
I do agree with your analogy between complacency and arrogance of United States of the 21st century and Qing empire of the 19th.
But it’s the details of the analogy that I would like to nickpick.
花崗齋之愚公 has made a excellent point about expecting Qing officials to “anticipate” industrial revolution.
Here is another example
“
And yet, despite the fulsome satisfaction of this 1805 letter, its author, the head of the Manchu Qing dynasty and emperor of China, had cause for anxiety. Less than twenty years before, China had suffered a humiliating defeat in Vietnam and continued to have difficulty besting the Burmese, Tibetans and Zunghars.”
The Dzungar or Zunghar was destroyed as a khanate and as a people by 1757. How did they cause trouble for Qing as late as 1805?
A different group of people did cause Qing trouble in Tarim. Prominent Afaqi Khojas in exile in Kokand did try to recapture Altishahr-”Six City State of Tarim Basin” from Qing. They were briefly successful under Jahangir led rebellion in 1820s during Daoguang emperor’s reign.
But they are sedentary Turkic Muslims and not nomadic Mongolian Zunghars. I doubt that Jiaqing Emperor lost any sleep over minor frontier trouble in Kashgar.
21 花崗齋之愚公 // Oct 22, 2007 at 4:33 pm
A follow-up to the authors comments:
I should say that I found the review to be thought-provoking and that it raised a number of important issues, and I said as much in closing my critique.
It should also be noted that my particular frustration here is with a particular robot error that occurs all too frequently when contemporary analysts and journalists make “excursions into history.”
The beginning of the review in question was but the most recent example, so if I paint with a broad brush, it’s to cover the wide range of misunderstandings I have seen on this subject. If it appears that I am overly harsh in my apprasial because I chose this review to make that point, then I apologize.
I should also like to point out, I have absolutely no problem with historical excursions by journalists. There are many, many China watchers and journalists covering China who use history quite effectively in their articles on contemporary subjects.
That said, I have taken the time to respond a little bit to the author’s comments.
1) The article was a book review, not a “pastiche” of recent publications. This is an important distinction, since my primary goal was to review books. The excursion into history was by way of introduction.
花崗齋之愚公: I’m not a fan of the “half-dozen books in 3500 words” style of review. It seems to me we get little more than what might be found perusing the dust jackets. But I understand that this an editorial decision and not the fault of the author’s.
2) I never treat the West’s opening up of China as a triumph of liberalism.
3) I acknowledge the use of opium in colonizing China as well as China’s commanding place in the world economy (the editors removed my citation of Maddison).
花崗齋之愚公: It is tough to give an abridged history of the Qing given the editorial constraints of a large publication, but the author writes, “The European powers were quickly getting the upper hand by controlling shipping and financial flows, and China was developing a dangerous dependency on silver and opium.”
European powers did not control shipping, that’s why so many turned to opium smuggling. If they controlled shipping they could have off-loaded their cargo at the Canton docks rather than off-shore into the “Fast Crab” smuggling boats that ran up and down the river. This is more symptomatic than anything, and perhaps you think I’m quibbling, but “China developed a dependence” sounds remarkably benign on behalf of the opium traders. This was not a passive process. A great deal of energy, marketing, and free samples went in to creating an addict base to support the opium trade.
While the author never mentions “Western liberalism” directly, the well from which the preface springs is the “China’s Response to the West” narrative, dominant in the 1950s and 1960s, which privileged western liberal values at the expense of the stagnant, autocratic Qing. This narrative has since become so ingrained in our mainstream writing on China, that it has become a kind of robot error. When we put forth the “Qianlong rejecting the British/The British come back and open China” story, we also need to look at the assumptions that went into crafting this narrative in the first place.
4) I never suggest that lack of modern firearms was a problem for China in conquering neighboring lands or putting down internal rebellions. The reference is to the confrontation between China and the West.
花崗齋之愚公: The quote was- “The Chinese knew practically nothing about the modern firearms with which Europe was taking over the world.”
Perhaps I missed where the author qualified that statement in his original review?
5) Of course there are differences between the U.S. in Iraq and China in Vietnam. It was but an example of China’s inability to conquer by force of arms alone.
花崗齋之愚公: I actually had little problem with the author’s use of this analogy, and I suggested as much. I’ve made my own Qianlong/George W. Bush jokes after a couple of pints at the local pub myself. (Karl Rove as Heshen always gets a laugh with the right crowd, but I digress.) The big difference I cited was a critique of the Bush administration: Even in his dotage, Qianlong was able to accept the reality of the situation and change course when “the redoubtable Vietnamese” defeated General Sun. President Bush has not shown the same wisdom when it comes to “the recalcitrant Iraqis.” I might add, however, that perhaps because of President Bush’s own recalcitrance, the Iraq adventure is proving far more costly to the US in terms of military commitment than Qianlong’s Vietnam invasion.
6) I don’t write that the Qing were total idiots. Only that they didn’t anticipate the “value” of foreign things. It’s hardly radical history to point out that the Chinese empire was on the decline, that it could have used a good dose of reform (of its own design rather than imposed from the outside), and that Japan did a better job of preventing colonial powers from carving it up.
花崗齋之愚公: I never accused the author of calling the Qing “idiots.” But as I mentioned earlier, this narrative of Qing obtuseness in the face of the British suggests that the Qing were unable/unwilling to comprehend what was happening around them. I allow that the Qing court had gaps in their knowledge of the world, but I’ve read this version of Maccartney/Amherst Take the Slow Boat to China once too often, and it’s time we got away from “smart, forward looking British” and “closed-minded, slow on the uptake” Qianlong. I used strong language to make that point.
I’m also wary of making China/Japan comparisons. This was a fun game among 20th century Asia-watchers. Even early 20th-century Chinese thinkers, many of whom were educated in Japan, played along. But the vast sum of differences between Tokugawa/Meiji Japan and Qing China make this question a difficult one to answer. At root, I think it’s still the “What happened to China that it became so backwards during the Industrial Revolution?” robot error, but with Japan replacing Britain as the measuring stick. For what it’s worth, did the 中体西用 dichotomy work out all that well in Japan either—or at least did it not have unintended consequences? I think the first part of the 20th century might suggest otherwise.
7) What “yellow peril” did I throw in for flavor? The review took issue with the “yellow peril” promoted by some recent books: of China’s intentions in the global south, of its growing military power, of its plan to initiate a war with the United States over Taiwan. It seems as though you attributed some of the arguments of the books to the beliefs of the reviewer.
花崗齋之愚公: As I said it was a flavor, a soupçon if you will, but I’ll accept that the author was sampling and summarizing when he wrote:
“China is using trade and no-strings-attached aid to inveigle its way into the hearts of Africans and Latin Americans. It is building up its military and risking a showdown with the United States, most likely over Taiwan. Internal weaknesses such as poverty and corruption threaten to undermine the current Chinese system and create international havoc.”
In referencing the “yellow peril” itself, and here I don’t want to abridge the reviewer’s comments too much, but I question the wisdom in juxtaposing these two sentences in the lead-in to Kurlantzick’s book:
“The “yellow peril” was once feared for the damage it could do near home. Washington strategists stayed up late at night worrying about Mao knocking down dominoes the length of the Asian littoral. There was also the Chinese influence in South Asia, and the Kremlin’s worries about the Soviet Union’s borders and millions of land-poor Chinese swarming into Siberia. But although China inspired the leadership of Albania, some Maoist guerrillas in Peru and a handful of French and American students in the 1970s, Beijing’s influence outside its neighborhood was marginal.
Now that the Big Red Checkbook has replaced the Little Red Book, China has expanded its reach into far-flung regions.”
I’ll assume here that it is Kurlantzick who suffers this particular malady, and that the reviewer was merely diagnosing the symptoms.
I want to thank the author for reading my critique, and I hope that he returns to this blog again. It’s not often that this little project of mine attracts such wide notice.
22 花崗齋之愚公 // Oct 22, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Wu Ming,
I’m walking out the door in about five minutes so I can’t respond more fully to your thoughtful commentary other than to say: “Leave it to a Song historian to call the 18th century ‘the recent past.’”
23 無名 - wu ming // Oct 22, 2007 at 5:30 pm
true, when one takes the song as “early modern,” it tends to shift the goalposts a bit. to be fair, though, the (fairbankian/reischauerian) teleology of the recent past that i was referring to was of mid-20th century inception, not 18th century.
24 無名 - wu ming // Oct 23, 2007 at 12:09 am
in response to “guest,”
china already had a thriving and exceptionally complex cotton industry, it’s not clear britain would have been able to beat the competition in the chinese market had they not focused on selling opium. the only way the british managed to supplant the indian cotton industry was through military conquest, after all. if there was an invisible hand, it certainly didn’t favor great britain in asia; gunboats did.
in fact, if there is a comparison to be made vis a vis the 19th and 21st centuries, perhaps we ought to compare great britain and america. like 1840s great britain, america wrestles with debilitating specie drain because it simply cannot compete on the world market. like great britain, america’s government is trying to secure the source of powerful mercantile interests’ profits (tea, silk, petroleum [and one could argue opium in both cases, although the current afghan setup is a great deal less above the table than jardine and matheson's golden age of drug trafficking]) through the exercise of unprovoked military force justified under the auspices of protecting international law and advancing civilization.
it remains to be seen whether the 19th century great game will play out the same way in the 21st century. i suspect that it won’t, and who knows, perhaps we’ll see a 21st century chinese reprise of eisenhower threatening to pull britain’s loans in response to the suez crisis, ere all is said and done in the persian gulf.
lots of good historical parallels out there to play with.
25 nanheyangrouchuan // Oct 23, 2007 at 12:40 am
“but that does that mean China was a civilization in decline? That was the assumption in much of the literature on the subject in the 19th and early 20th centuries. But the two don’t necessarily go together.”
花崗齋雜記, I’d be interested in hearing your views on the crushing of the Taiping Rebellion and the Boxer Rebellion giving traditional Chinese culture a bit longer of a lifespan.
As for the writer of the article you are referring to, his style is alot like a fiery poster named “pfeffer” at http://washingtonbureau.typepad.com/china/
With that being said, the saving grace of the US is that presidents don’t stay in power long enough to do lasting damage. Bush will be gone in 15 months and all he is really set on doing is dumping money into Iraq while China foots the bill to maintain the currency peg.
無名 :
How would that be any different from the even greater amounts of indigenous slave labor used by Chinese conquerors over the millenia? China didn’t start out as big as it is now and the Great Wall is a lasting testament to slave labor.
BTW, you don’t need slave labor for such big projects. Recorded Egyptian history shows that the Pyramids were built with compulsory civil service that came with sufficient food, water, housing and medical care.
And other than some pits, a rudder and an obviously forged map (simplified characters invented 500 years ago?), there is no other proof of Zheng He’s travels. And supposedly his travels were not some peace keeping anti-piracy mission but to find markets for Chinese products and to expand China’s influence. Also, the coast-hugging journey he would have taken was long traveled by Arab and African regional merchants.
26 花崗齋之愚公 // Oct 23, 2007 at 4:39 pm
NHYRC,
It’s always tricky when we’re doing counter-history. For example, were the Taiping Rebellion and the Boxers symptomatic of a weak state or a weak civilization?
It’s also fair to point out that both came about as a result of foreign aggression in China. The Boxers more obviously so, but for the Taiping, I recommend checking out Fred Wakeman’s classic Strangers at the Gate. Wakeman argues that the dislocations caused by foreign military actions in the 1840s softened up the ground and destabilized society to an extent that somebody like Hong Xiuquan could arise and consolidate his power base in Guangdong/Guangxi.
Thanks for the comment.
27 nanheyangrouchuan // Oct 23, 2007 at 10:00 pm
From what I understand, the foreign powers softened up the Taiping armies for the Qing. Would China have disintegrated if the Taiping held strong? That certainly would have made a mess for foreign commercial interests in China as well.
Could both uprisings be due to a weak society? Hard to say, but Chinese society was unprepared for what the worst of western society brought and those were the backlashes. But had the Taiping succeeded or the Boxers failed outright, China might have lost cohesion and the foreign powers certainly would have not let China come back together.
28 Peter N-H // Oct 23, 2007 at 10:56 pm
> THE KOW-TOW
Let’s get this out of the way, because it’s one of those things non-historians like to throw randomly into writing on China: The Kow-tow… of the 17 European missions to the Qing Court between 1655 and 1795, only Lord Macartney (1793) refused to bow… Quite the diplomat, that Macartney. Any wonder why Qianlong was so haughty in his dismissal?
Isn’t the thing that non-historians like to throw in usually exactly the idea that it was because Macartney didn’t kow-tow he didn’t get his deal, as seems to be implied here?
Isn’t this both false, and deliciously analogous to the situation with modern businessmen who, for instance, take a channel the Chinese government doesn’t like off their satellites and suddenly stop publication of a book by one of their publishing houses by a disliked author, and yet still fail to get the trade access they hope for?
Surely Macartney’s success did not depend, as seems to be implied here, on his willingness to kow-tow, but on other much more concrete factors. Indeed, hasn’t it already been demonstrated (Lord Macartney, An Embassy to China, J. L. Cranmer-Byng [Ed.], 1962) that the first draft of the ‘tremble and obey’ letter was completed only nine days after Macartney arrived in China and weeks before he even obtained an audience?
As you mention in passing, since the time of the Qianlong emperor’s grandfather Kangxi foreign mathematical knowledge and technical expertise had been running the calendar accurately. The portraits of the Qianlong emperor in which he most delighted had been produced by foreign painters using Western perspective techniques unknown to Chinese painting. The Qing had also had weapons cast and buildings constructed for them using Western technology, maps produced using Western cartographic knowledge, and Qianlong himself had used the Jesuits to produce his own suite of ‘Western-style’ buildings, fountains and a maze at the Yuangming Yuan.
Whether Qianlong should have been able from what he knew of Western science and art to extrapolate future military defeat isn’t so much the point as that the claim he made that everything his empire needed could be found within its own borders was utter piffle. The failure lay in not making the best of what was on offer to him, in not ’studying the barbarians to defeat the barbarians’ as was later briefly fashionable and which might be said to be the modern policy.
Just how effective that policy might be was later demonstrated by a Japan which within forty years of being forcibly opened to trade had started sinking foreign navies.
29 無名 - wu ming // Oct 24, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Just how effective that policy might be was later demonstrated by a Japan which within forty years of being forcibly opened to trade had started sinking foreign navies.
japan was never closed to foreign trade. chinese merchants did a booming trade in nagasaki for centuries, and the dutch managed the china-japan trade from nagasaki and fort zeelandia on taiwan to great profit.
and if you look at the 18th century chinese economy, it was getting along more or less without english goods and manufacture. if any party was dependent by that point, it was england, not china.
don’t let the teleology of what came next cloud your view of the historical moment. in 1795, britain was not in need of preparing defenses against, much less defeating, and its manufactures were not central to sustaining the qing empire.
30 花崗齋之愚公 // Oct 24, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Peter N-H,
Thanks for raising some excellent questions.
I wouldn’t say that Macartney’s mission hinged on the kowtow, but it didn’t help. As I mentioned, Qianlong actually acquiesced to Mac’s request to kneel as he would before his own monarch. That said, the standard narrative often blames Qianlong–unfairly–for being to rigid on points of protocol, when in fact this was clearly an issue on both sides. (You might want to check out the most recent work on this subject: James Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar)
BTW: “Tremble and Obey” is a trope that appears in a lot of imperial communications from this time.
The Jesuits did do a lot for the Qing emperors. In particular, you mention the contributions of Giuseppe Castiglione, who helped to design the Yuanmingyuan and whose western-style paintings of Qianlong and other scenes of court life are frequently displayed in the Forbidden City.
But the traders in Canton weren’t selling cannons or oil paintings. I don’t think Qianlong would have argued with you that there were certain items that the Europeans could produce that the Chinese enjoyed, just not enough to justify overturning the Canton system of trade or acquiescing to Macartney’s other demands
Was Qianlong predisposed to agreeing with Mac? No, and he wasn’t thrilled about the whole idea of the mission in the first place. Fact still remains though that Macartney did very little with his attitude to bolster his case.
I will also concede that there were several items brought by Mac that, in the right hands, would have been quite useful later on. The mission, clued in by the Jesuits about the Qing appreciation for European scientific instruments, brought with them mathematical instruments and chronometers, a planetarium and a telescope, and measuring tools for electrical and chemical experiments. What the market was in China for such instruments or how much more advanced these were than the ones already being used by the Jesuits at court, is a point worthy of discussion. But obviously these were useful items. The crates of Wedgwood pottery probably were not such a big hit.
But here’s my larger point: The narrative against which I am arguing often explicitly or implicitly implies that it was Qianlong’s stubborn refusal of Macartney’s reasonable demands that doomed China by being the first step leading the Qing into an unwinnable war with Britain five decades later. This narrative, paraphrased, sounds something like: “If only Qianlong had agreed to Mac’s reasonable requests way back, then Britain wouldn’t have had to skirt the existing trade regime by selling (more) opium, we could have sold the Chinese woolen sweaters and clocks instead. And all would have been right with the world.”
As I said in the post, it’s the classic date rape defense.
Never mind the upgrade in British industrial and military power over those fifty years as well as significant changes in patterns of trade between Britain and the Qing in the years leading up to the OW1, even if Mac had come bearing sliced bread and a Rolls Royce, not wishing to trade with another country shouldn’t be considered justification a) to continue pushing drugs or b) later going to war to ‘open’ a country by forcing them to agree to your trade regime or c) foisting a series of one-sided treaties on another sovereign entity in the name of ‘free trade and international law’.
By the way, I really appreciated your thoughtful comments, thank you for stopping by.
31 花崗齋之愚公 // Oct 24, 2007 at 4:39 pm
NHYRC,
From what I understand, the foreign powers softened up the Taiping armies for the Qing.
That was the story in Britain, helped in large part, if I recall correctly, through the self-promotion done by the British officer Charles “Chinese” Gordon who took over as the head of the “Ever Victorious Army” from Mass-native Frederick Townsend Ward. The EVA did do a lot to protect Shanghai from Taiping raids and such, but it wasn’t really a huge factor in the eventual defeat of the Taiping.
As to your point about the Taiping disrupting trade, well I suppose that was one reason the foreign community sided with the Qing. Why change a weak government with whom you already have several lopsided treaties and have it replaced by a group whose hatred of opium was legendary?
Your point regarding the Boxers is well-said. Many Qing officials, especially in the south, refused the court’s request to aid the Boxers. These officials feared that this was exactly the sort of pretext the foreign powers had been looking for to carve up China once and for all.
Thanks for stopping by.
32 Demosthenes // Oct 25, 2007 at 7:58 am
Best damned thing I’ve read all week.
(Except maybe “always a pleasure to read someone gainsay the tyranny of the teleology of the present.” Wu Ming, I love this sentence in ways both base and profound.)
33 Jonathan Dresner // Oct 30, 2007 at 12:47 am
Fantastic discussion. I’m smack in the middle of the McCartney-Opium-Taiping cycle of my Qing course at the moment, and I’m very grateful for my World History teaching experience: the industrial revolution so radically alters the economic and military balance of the world, but from the perspective of Chinese history, it just looks like a sudden collapse.
I’m not entirely sure that the “new Cold War” narratives which posit China as a rising superpower really connect to the Yellow Peril narratives; or rather, Yellow Peril means two very different things: geopolitical and immigration. Most people — and I think the author of the review falls into this category — think of the latter, and forget how much of the Yellow Peril discourse was about the former.
34 花崗齋之愚公 // Oct 30, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Demosthenes,
Thanks!
35 花崗齋之愚公 // Oct 30, 2007 at 7:08 pm
Jonathan,
Fair point. This might be more US history than Asian history, but I seem to recall an author (Dower, perhaps?) arguing that the motifs and tropes of the “Yellow Peril” from the late 19th and early 20th centuries dovetailed nicely into the “Red Scare” of the 1950s and 1960s.
Thanks for stopping by.
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