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Britain's Second Embassy to China

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Britain's Second Embassy to China BRITAIN’S SECOND EMBASSY TO CHINA LORD AMHERST’S ‘SPECIAL MISSION’ TO THE JIAQING EMPEROR IN 1816 BRITAIN’S SECOND EMBASSY TO CHINA LORD AMHERST’S ‘SPECIAL MISSION’ TO THE JIAQING EMPEROR IN 1816 CAROLINE M. STEVENSON For Rex Published by ANU Press The Australian National University Acton ACT 2601, Australia Email: [email protected] Available to download for free at press.anu.edu.au ISBN (print): 9781760464080 ISBN (online): 9781760464097 WorldCat (print): 1232217390 WorldCat (online): 1232217587 DOI: 10.22459/BSEC.2020 This title is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). The full licence terms are available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode Cover design and layout by ANU Press Cover image: William Havell, Sunrise on the Grand Canal. Image courtesy of Bonhams, Sydney, and with acknowledgment of Sphinx Fine Art, London, original owners of the copyright. This edition © 2021 ANU Press Contents Acknowledgements . ix Note on Terminology and Romanisation and Monetary Values . xi 1 . Introduction . 1 2 . The Political Setting of the Amherst Embassy . 15 3 . Origins of the Amherst Embassy: Canton and Sir George Thomas Staunton . 33 4 . The View from London: John Barrow and Lord William Pitt Amherst . 63 5 . Amherst’s Preparations for the Embassy . 91 6 . The Voyage from Portsmouth to ‘Hong Kong’ . 123 7 . Up the Coast of China and Arrival at Tianjin . 143 8 . The Imperial Banquet of 13 August 1816 and Progress to Tongzhou . 173 9 . To Yuanmingyuan, Reception and Dismissal . 215 10 . Overland to Canton: The British Cultural Encounter with China . 245 11 . Aftermath: Britain’s Reaction to the Failure of the Amherst Embassy . 285 12 . Retrospect: Reflections on the Amherst Embassy . 299 Bibliography . 317 Appendix A: List of Persons and Their Salaries . 341 Appendix B: Presents and Cost of the Amherst Embassy . .. 345 Appendix C: The Total Cost of the Amherst Embassy . 349 Appendix D: Ball’s Secret Report (Commissioner of Teas at Canton) . 351 Appendix E: List of Chinese Officials Responsible for the Conduct of the Amherst Embassy . 355 Appendix F: Imperial Edict: ‘Ceremonies to Be Observed at the Audience of Leave’ . 359 Appendix G: Substance of an Edict Seen on the Walls of a Building in the 8th Moon of the 21st Year of Kia King . 361 Appendix H: Itinerary of the Amherst Embassy . 363 Appendix I: Morrison’s Letters to Amherst (1821) . 377 Index . 381 Acknowledgements My interest in Chinese maritime trade was sparked in 1970 when my husband, who was posted to the Australian High Commission in Kuala Lumpur, returned home from a trip to Sarawak with a small parcel wrapped in newspaper and tied with pink plastic string. Inside was a small celadon saucer decorated with two raised fish at its centre that, according to the shopkeeper of the antique shop in Sibu, had ‘come from China hundreds of years ago’. Further research revealed that it did indeed date from the thirteenth or fourteenth century and was one of the thousands of Chinese ‘Song fish plates’ exported throughout maritime Southeast Asia at this time. Thanks to this plate, my interest expanded to include later categories of Chinese export porcelains, culminating with a fascination for those wares brought to Britain during the eighteenth century at the height of the chinoiserie period. A further interest in the Canton trade, the British East India Company and British society during the Georgian and Regency period was a natural progression. The opportunity to formally pursue my interest opened up with a return to academic study after a lapse of over 40 years through the Master of Studies program at The Australian National University (ANU) in 2009. I wish to thank my daughter Alex for bringing this course to my attention, and to its academic advisor, Anna Robinson, for her guidance and friendship during the four years of the degree. The most stimulating course at this time concerned Western views of China conducted by Benjamin Penny at China in the World (CIW). Ben’s invitation to study for a doctorate at CIW and his suggestion that the Amherst Embassy required serious research struck a responsive chord. I had come across references to the embassy in my readings, but its details remained unrecorded due to the predisposition of scholars to gloss over ix Britain’S SECOND EMBASSY TO CHINA its importance as a significant event in Anglo–Chinese relations in the early nineteenth century. I was delighted to be given the opportunity to research the embassy in depth and this book is the result. I wish to thank Ben, Gillian Russell and Richard Rigby for their time and support. Gillian’s deep knowledge and enthusiasm for Georgian and Regency Britain was invaluable for assisting me in understanding the cultural context of British values and sensibilities of the period. Richard’s vast knowledge of China and Chinese diplomacy derived from personal experience in an earlier foreign service career similarly revealed insight into the diplomatic response of the British at the time of the Amherst Embassy. Research for this study was conducted at the National Library of Australia, Canberra and, in 2015, at the British Library and the National Archives, Kew. I am grateful for the financial assistance from CIW at this time and also for assistance in 2016 when I attended a conference at the University of Manchester to deliver a paper on the British selection of presents for the Jiaqing emperor. While in London, I stayed with my friends Elizabeth and Allan Kelly, and I cannot thank them enough for their wonderful hospitality and stimulating company. Friends in Canberra have been very generous with their time and offers to read and comment on my work. I especially wish to thank Louis Magee and Ian Hancock for their enthusiastic and helpful comments on the first draft of this study. Particular thanks to Joan Ritchie, whose proofreading skills at an early stage were of considerable assistance. The staff at CIW provided a most conducive atmosphere for study. Sharon Strange’s patience with formatting and help solving numerous computer problems is most appreciated. I also wish to thank Karina Pelling at CartoGIS, College of Asia and the Pacific, ANU, for drawing the maps included in this book. My final thanks, as always, go to my family. My son Bill and daughters Victoria and Alex remained a constant source of encouragement throughout the process of researching and writing this book. Special thanks go to my husband Rex, whose insights were invaluable and whose support made this possible. x Note on Terminology and Romanisation and Monetary Values Note on Terminology and Romanisation In general, Chinese place names, personal names and terms are rendered into pinyin unless they are domesticated into English or are so common in the English-language historical literature of the Canton trade system that it would be confusing to do otherwise. Thus, Beijing is referred to as ‘Peking’, although ‘Pekin’ was used by the British at the time. Guangzhou is referred to as ‘Canton’, and its port, Huangpu, 12 miles downstream, as ‘Whampoa’. The Zhujiang River is called the ‘Pearl River’, and the ‘Bogue’ or ‘Bocca Tigris’ refers to the Humen Strait situated at the start of the Pearl River. Chinese Government officials are referred to as ‘mandarins’; these include the Hoppo, the chief superintendent of customs at Canton, who oversaw the activities of officially appointed Chinese merchants, referred to as the Hong merchants. The names of Chinese merchants of Canton and Macao have been left in their romanised form. Identifications, as far as they are possible, follow Van Dyke (2011). Chinese and Manchu officials have been identified where possible. The names of the senior mandarins who greeted the British in northern China have been rendered into pinyin based on Fu (1966, vol. II, pp. 627–681). Their anglicised names are given in Appendix E. Original spellings such as ‘Embassador’ and British spellings of Chinese names have been retained in direct quotations. xi Britain’S SECOND EMBASSY TO CHINA Note on Present-Day Values of Money in the Period of the Amherst Embassy This study bases the value of the British Pound on the index agreed on in 2003 by the House of Commons Library, Bank of England and Office of National Statistics, where £10,000 in 1778 was approximately equivalent to £1 million in 2003 (Hague, 2004, p. 42). Figure 1: Lord Amherst in his peer’s robes. Note: Engraving by S . Freeman, published in 1846, after painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence in 1821 . Source: National Library of Australia . xii 1 Introduction In early August 1816, Lord William Pitt Amherst, designated British Ambassador of the Special Mission to the Chinese Empire, arrived off the coast of northern China on board the man-of-war, HMS Alceste. Disembarking from the embassy ships with his suite on 11 August, Amherst, then 43 years of age, travelled in a procession of Chinese junks to the port of Dagu where he stepped onto Chinese soil. His primary mission, in his capacity as the second British ambassador to arrive in China, was to proceed to the imperial court at Peking to seek the assistance of the Jiaqing emperor with placing British trade at Canton on a reliable basis. Recent disputes between provincial Chinese Government officials and members of the Select Committee of the British East India Company had stopped the important tea trade, risking the supply of tea to Britain and threatening a substantial loss of revenue for both Company coffers and the British Treasury.1 The personal intervention of the emperor was considered necessary to check the capricious and vexatious actions of the Canton Government and the Chinese Hong merchants who facilitated the trade.
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