University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap This paper is made available online in accordance with publisher policies. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item and our policy information available from the repository home page for further information. To see the final version of this paper please visit the publisher’s website. Access to the published version may require a subscription. Author(s): Maxine Berg Article Title: Britain, industry and perceptions of China: Matthew Boulton, ‘useful knowledge’ and the Macartney Embassy to China 1792–94 Year of publication: 2003 Link to published version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1740022806000167 Publisher statement: None Journal of Global History, (2006) 1, pp. 269–288 ª London School of Economics and Political Science 2006 doi:10.1017/S1740022806000167 Britain, industry and perceptions of China: Matthew Boulton, ‘useful knowledge’ and the Macartney Embassy to China 1792–94 Maxine Berg Department of History, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK E-mail:
[email protected] Abstract Global history has debated the emergence of a divergence in economic growth between China and the West during the eighteenth century. The Macartney Embassy, 1792–94, the first British embassy to China, occurring as it did at the end of the eighteenth century, was an event which revealed changing perceptions of China and the Chinese by different British interest groups from government, trade, industry and enlightened opinion. Many histories of the embassy recount failures of diplomacy and cultural misconception, or divergent ideas of science.