Listening to NPR this evening, today’s installment of the series “China Rising” looks at the China-Africa connection through the life and career of British army officer and adventurer Charles “Chinese” Gordon (1833-1885). Gordon took over for Frederick Townsend Ward against the Taiping in 1862 and was later killed by the forces of Mahdi Mohammed Ahmed in Khartoum in 1885.
While I’m no huge fan of Charles Gordon, who was nothing if not a relentless self-promoter with delusions of grandeur and a true product of the colonial system, he was hardly the vanguard of British narco-imperialism suggested by the report. First of all, it was Lord Elgin, not Gordon, who burned the Yuanmingyuan palaces in the 1860 Anglo-French Expedition. The report continues to ominously suggest that “Gordon later fought in one of history’s bloodiest rebellions in which tens of millions of Chinese died.” Yeah, but Gordon’s involvement with the Taiping Rebellion was on the side of the Qing (more or less) and the business interests of the Shanghai treaty port (a bit more than less). Taking over for Ward, Gordon led the Ever Victorious Army, an adhoc outfit armed with European and American weapons, in a tenuous alliance with Li Hongzhang