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On his travels through China and Tibet, Roman Catholic missionary Évariste Huc came across a novel way of telling the time.
Évariste Régis Huc was a Roman Catholic missionary who wrote of his travels through China, Tartary and Tibet at a time when such travels were rare for Europeans. The following anecdote tells how his party was momentarily stumped by a Chinese boy’s ability to tell the time by examining a cat.
Richard Cobden deplored the way that politicians in Britain justified their wars abroad by portraying other countries as barbarous and backward.
In 1856, Chinese authorities in Canton arrested twelve sailors on a ship out of Macau that was flying British colours, albeit without a current licence. The sailors were released but the British went ahead and bombarded Canton for three weeks anyway, saying that force was all the Chinese understood. Richard Cobden protested in the House of Commons.
Richard Cobden wanted to know why British policy towards China was so different to our policy towards the USA and European powers.
On October 8th, 1856, Chinese authorities in Canton arrested twelve sailors for piracy. Sir John Bowring, governor of Hong Kong, demanded their release, as their ship the Arrow had flown (albeit illegally) a British flag. On the 22nd the obliging Chinese delivered the suspects up; on the 23rd, the Royal Navy nonetheless began a three-week bombardment of Canton. The following February, Richard Cobden expressed his outrage in the Commons.
In 1840, Secretary at War Thomas Macaulay treated the Union Jack like a bully’s visiting card, but backbencher William Gladstone believed it deserved better.
In 1840, the British Government, outraged at Peking’s crackdown on the smuggling of opium by British merchants from Bengal, declared war on the Chinese Empire. On April 8th, William Gladstone rose in the Commons to denounce the Government’s belligerent attitude, deploring the execrable drug traffic and taking exception to the way Secretary-at-War Thomas Macaulay wrapped it in the Union Jack.
In 1840, the British Government declared war on the Chinese Empire over their harsh treatment of drug smugglers from Bengal.
The Opium Wars of 1839-42 and 1856-60 were a miserably low point in British history, as Jawaharlal Nehru makes painfully clear in this passage. Opium grown in India was smuggled into China by British merchants to feed the addiction of millions of Chinese, until the problem became so bad that the Chinese imperial government was obliged to step up efforts against the smugglers.
Following a historic embassy in 1792-93, Chien Lung, the Emperor of China, despatched a haughty letter rebuffing King George III’s offer of trade.
Glimpses of World History (1934) was written for his daughter by Jawaharlal Nehru while he was in gaol for protesting against a tax on salt. In this passage, the man who later became India’s first Prime Minister reflects on the fading of empires, recalling the groundbreaking Macartney embassy to China in 1792-93 and the haughty response by the Emperor, Chien Lung.
Aeneas Anderson, who accompanied Lord Macartney on Britain’s first embassy to China, shared a tale illustrating the Qianlong Emperor’s notion of fair play.
In 1792-93, George Macartney, 1st Earl Macartney, led England’s first embassy to China. The Emperor was obstructive throughout and haughtily declined King George III’s invitation to trade. ‘We entered Pekin like paupers’ wrote Macartney’s valet, Aeneas Anderson; ‘we remained in it like prisoners; and we quitted it like vagrants.’ But his farewell to his readers was intended to leave a favourable impression.