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The Macartney Mission

The assumptions of the Chinese world order were particularly offensive to Britain (the “red-haired barbarians” in some Chinese records). As the premier Western commercial and naval power, Britain bridled at its assigned role in the cosmology of the Middle Kingdom, whose army, the British noted, still primarily used bows and arrows and whose navy was practically nonexistent. British traders resented the increasing amount of “squeeze” extracted by the designated Chinese merchants at Guangzhou, through which Chinese regulations required that all Western trade be conducted. They sought access to the rest of the Chinese market beyond the southeast coast.

The first major British attempt to remedy the situation was the 1793–94 mission of Lord George Macartney to China. It was the most notable, best-conceived, and least “militaristic” European effort to alter the prevailing format of Sino-Western relations and to achieve free trade and diplomatic representation on equal terms. It failed completely.

The Macartney mission is instructive to examine in some detail. The diary of the envoy illustrates how the Chinese perception of its role operated in practice—and the gulf existing between Western and Chinese perceptions of diplomacy. Macartney was a distinguished public servant with years of international experience and a keen sense of “Oriental” diplomacy. He was a man of notable cultural achievements. He had served three years as envoy-extraordinary to the court of Catherine the Great in St. Petersburg, where he negotiated a treaty of amity and commerce. Upon his return, he published a well-received volume of observations on Russian history and culture. He had subsequently served as Governor of Madras. He was as well equipped as any of his contemporaries to inaugurate a new diplomacy across civilizations.

The aims of the Macartney mission to China would have seemed modest to any educated Briton of the time—especially compared with the recently established British dominion over the neighboring giant, India. Home Secretary Henry Dundas framed the Macartney instructions as an attempt to achieve “a free communication with a people, perhaps the most singular on the Globe.” Its principal aims were the establishment of reciprocal embassies in Beijing and London and commercial access to other ports along the Chinese coast. On the latter point, Dundas charged Macartney to draw attention to the “discouraging” and “arbitrary” system of regulations at Guangzhou that prevented British merchants from engaging in the “fair competition of the Market” (a concept with no direct counterpart in Confucian China). He was, Dundas stressed, to disclaim any territorial ambitions in China—an assurance bound to be considered as an insult by the recipient because it implied that Britain had the option to entertain such ambitions.³

The British government addressed the Chinese court on equal terms, which would have struck the British ruling group as affording a non-Western country an uncommon degree of dignity, while being treated in China as insubordinate insolence. Dundas instructed Macartney to take the “earliest opportunity” to impress upon the Chinese court that King George III saw Macartney’s mission as “an embassy to the most civilized as well as most ancient and populous Nation in the World in order to observe its celebrated institutions, and to communicate and receive the benefits which must result from an unreserved and friendly intercourse between that Country and his own.” Dundas instructed Macartney to comply with “all ceremonials of that Court, which may not commit the honour of your Sovereign, or lessen your own dignity, so as to endanger the success of your negotiation.” He should not, Dundas stressed, “let any trifling punctilio stand in the way of the important benefits which may be obtained” by success in his mission.⁴

To help further his aims, Macartney brought with him numerous examples of British scientific and industrial prowess. Macartney’s entourage included a surgeon, a physician, a mechanic, a metallurgist, a watchmaker, a mathematical instrument maker, and “Five German Musicians” who were to perform nightly. (These latter performances were one of the more successful aspects of the embassy.) His gifts to the Emperor included manufactures designed at least in part to show the fabulous benefits China might obtain by trading with Britain: artillery pieces, a chariot, diamond-studded wristwatches, British porcelain (copied, Qing officials noted approvingly, from the Chinese art form), and portraits of the King and Queen painted by Joshua Reynolds. Macartney even brought a deflated hot-air balloon and planned, without success, to have members of his mission fly it over Beijing by way of demonstration.

The Macartney mission accomplished none of its specific objectives; the gap in perceptions was simply too wide. Macartney had intended to demonstrate the benefits of industrialization, but the Emperor understood his gifts as tribute. The British envoy expected his Chinese hosts to recognize that they had been hopelessly left behind by the progress of technological civilization and to seek a special relationship with Britain to rectify their backwardness. In fact, the Chinese treated the British as an arrogant and uninformed barbarian tribe seeking special favor from the Son of Heaven. China remained wedded to its agrarian ways, with its burgeoning population making food production more urgent than ever, and its Confucian bureaucracy ignorant of the key elements of industrialization: steam power, credit and capital, private property, and public education.

The first discordant note came as Macartney and his entourage made their way to Jehol, the summer capital northeast of Beijing, traveling up the coast in Chinese yachts laden with generous gifts and delicacies but carrying Chinese signs proclaiming, “The English Ambassador bringing tribute to the Emperor of China.” Macartney resolved, in keeping with Dundas’s instructions, to make “no complaint of it, reserving myself to notice it if a proper opportunity occurs.”⁵ As he approached Beijing, however, the chief mandarins charged with administering the mission opened a negotiation that put the gap in perceptions in sharper light. The issue was whether Macartney would kowtow to the Emperor or whether, as he insisted, he could follow the British custom of kneeling on one knee.

The Chinese side opened the discussions in a circuitous manner by remarking on, as Macartney recalled in his diary, “the different modes of dress that prevailed among different nations.” The mandarins concluded that Chinese clothes were, in the end, superior, since they allowed the wearer to perform with greater ease “the genuflexions and prostrations which were, they said, customary to be made by all persons whenever the Emperor appeared in public.” Would the British delegation not find it easier to free itself of its cumbersome knee-buckles and garters before approaching the Emperor’s august presence? Macartney countered by suggesting that the Emperor would likely appreciate if Macartney paid him “the same obeisance which I did to my own Sovereign.”⁶

The discussions over the “kowtow question” continued intermittently for several more weeks. The mandarins suggested that Macartney’s options were to kowtow or to return home empty-handed; Macartney resisted. Eventually it was agreed that Macartney could follow the European custom and kneel on one knee. It proved to be the only point Macartney won (at least as to actual conduct; the official Chinese report stated that Macartney, overwhelmed by the Emperor’s awesome majesty, had performed the kowtow after all).⁷

All of this took place within the intricate framework of Chinese protocol, which showed Macartney the most considerate treatment in foiling and rejecting his proposals. Enveloped in all-encompassing protocol and assured that each aspect had a cosmically ordained and unalterable purpose, Macartney found himself scarcely able to begin his negotiations. Meanwhile he noted with a mixture of respect and unease the efficiency of China’s vast bureaucracy, assessing that “every circumstance concerning us and every word that falls from our lips is minutely reported and remembered.”⁸

To Macartney’s consternation, the technological wonders of Europe left no visible impression on his handlers. When his party demonstrated their mounted cannons, “our conductor pretended to think lightly of them, and spoke to us as if such things were no novelties in China.”⁹ His lenses, chariot, and hot-air balloon were brushed aside with polite condescension.

A month and a half later, the ambassador was still waiting for an audience with the Emperor, the interval having been consumed by banquets, entertainment, and discussions about the appropriate protocol for a possible imperial audience. Finally, he was summoned at four o’clock in the morning to “a large, handsome tent” to await the Emperor, who presently appeared with great ceremony, borne in a palanquin. Macartney wondered at the magnificence of Chinese protocol, in which “every function of the ceremony was performed with such silence and solemnity as in some measure to resemble the celebration of a religious mystery.”¹⁰ After bestowing gifts on Macartney and his party, the Emperor flattered the British party by “sen[ding] us several dishes from his own table” and then giving “to each of us, with his own hands, a cup of warm wine, which we immediately drank in his presence.”¹¹ (Note that having the Emperor personally serve wine to foreign envoys was specifically mentioned among the Han Dynasty’s five baits for barbarian management.)¹²

The next day, Macartney and party attended a convocation to celebrate the Emperor’s birthday. Finally, the Emperor summoned Macartney to his box at a theater performance. Now, Macartney assumed, he could transact the business of his embassy. Instead, the Emperor rebuffed him with another gift, a box of precious stones and, Macartney recorded, “a small book, written and painted by his own hand, which he desired me to present to the King, my master, as a token of his friendship, saying that the box had been eight hundred years in his family.”¹³

Now that these tokens of imperial benevolence had been bestowed, the Chinese officials suggested that in view of the approaching cold winter, the time for Macartney’s departure had arrived. Macartney protested that the two sides had yet to “enter into negotiation” on the items in his official instructions; he had “barely opened his commission.” It was King George’s wish, Macartney stressed, that he be allowed to reside at the Chinese court as a permanent British ambassador.

Early in the morning of October 3, 1793, a mandarin awoke Macartney and summoned him in full ceremonial dress to the Forbidden City, where he was to receive the answer to his petition. After a wait of several hours, he was ushered up a staircase to a silk-covered chair, upon which sat not the Emperor, but a letter from the Emperor to King George. The Chinese officials kowtowed to the letter, leaving Macartney to kneel to the letter on one knee. Finally, the imperial communication was transported back to Macartney’s chambers with full ceremony. It proved to be one of the most humiliating communications in the annals of British diplomacy.

The edict began by remarking on King George’s “respectful humility” in sending a tribute mission to China:

You, O King, live beyond the confines of many seas, nevertheless, impelled by your humble desire to partake of the benefits of our civilization, you have dispatched a mission respectfully bearing your memorial.

The Emperor then dismissed every substantive request that Macartney had made, including the proposal that Macartney be permitted to reside in Beijing as a diplomat:

As to your entreaty to send one of your nationals to be accredited to my Celestial Court and to be in control of your country’s trade with China, this request is contrary to all usage of my dynasty and cannot possibly be entertained. . . . [He could not] be allowed liberty of movement and the privilege of corresponding with his own country; so that you would gain nothing by his residence in our midst.

The proposal that China send its own ambassador to London, the edict continued, was even more absurd:

[S]upposing I sent an Ambassador to reside in your country, how could you possibly make for him the requisite arrangements? Europe consists of many other nations besides your own: if each and all demanded to be represented at our Court, how could we possibly consent? The thing is utterly impracticable.

Perhaps, the Emperor ascertained, King George had sent Macartney to learn the blessings of civilization from China. But this, too, was out of the question:

If you assert that your reverence for Our Celestial Dynasty fills you with a desire to acquire our civilization, our ceremonies and code of laws differ so completely from your own that, even if your Envoy were able to acquire the rudiments of our civilization, you could not possibly transplant our manners and customs to your alien soil.

As for Macartney’s proposals regarding the benefits of trade between Britain and China, the Celestial Court had already shown the British great favor allowing them “full liberty to trade at Canton for many a year”; anything more was “utterly unreasonable.” As for the supposed benefits of British trade to China, Macartney was sadly mistaken:

[S]trange and costly objects do not interest me. If I have commanded that the tribute offerings sent by you, O King, are to be accepted, this was solely in consideration for the spirit which prompted you to dispatch them from afar. . . . As your Ambassador can see for himself, we possess all things.¹⁴

Given this state of affairs, trade beyond what was already taking place was impossible. Britain had nothing to offer that China wanted, and China had already given Britain all that its divine regulations permitted.

Since it appeared that there was nothing more to be done, Macartney decided to return to England via Guangzhou. As he prepared to depart, he observed that after the Emperor’s sweeping rejection of Britain’s requests, the mandarins were, if anything, more attentive, causing Macartney to reflect that perhaps the court had had second thoughts. He inquired to that effect, but the Chinese were done with diplomatic courtesy. Since the barbarian supplicant did not seem to understand subtlety, he was treated to an imperial edict verging on the threatening. The Emperor assured King George that he was aware of “the lonely remoteness of your island, cut off from the world by intervening wastes of sea.” But the Chinese capital was “the hub and center about which all quarters of the globe revolve. . . . The subjects of our dependencies have never been allowed to open places of business in Peking [Beijing].” He concluded with an admonition:

I have accordingly stated the facts to you in detail, and it is your bounden duty to reverently appreciate my feelings and to obey these instructions henceforward for all time, so that you may enjoy the blessings of perpetual peace.¹⁵

The Emperor, clearly unfamiliar with the capacity of Western leaders for violent rapaciousness, was playing with fire, though he did not know it. The assessment with which Macartney left China was ominous:

[A] couple of English frigates would be an overmatch for the whole naval force of their empire . . . in half a summer they could totally destroy all the navigation of their coasts and reduce the inhabitants of the maritime provinces, who subsist chiefly on fish, to absolute famine.¹⁶

However overbearing the Chinese conduct may seem now, one must remember that it had worked for centuries in organizing and sustaining a major international order. In Macartney’s era, the blessings of trade with the West were far from self-evident: since China’s GDP was still roughly seven times that of Britain’s, the Emperor could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that it was London that needed Beijing’s assistance and not the other way around.¹⁷

No doubt the imperial court congratulated itself on deft handling of this barbarian mission, which was not repeated for over twenty years. But the reason for this respite was less the skill of Chinese diplomacy than the Napoleonic Wars, which consumed the resources of the European states. No sooner was Napoleon disposed of than a new British mission appeared off China’s coasts in 1816, led by Lord Amherst. This time the standoff over protocol devolved into a physical brawl between the British envoys and the court mandarins assembled outside the throne room. When Amherst refused to kowtow to the Emperor, whom the Chinese insisted on referring to as “the universal sovereign,” his mission was dismissed abruptly. Britain’s Prince Regent was commanded to endeavor with “obedience” to “make progress towards civilized transformation”; in the meantime, no further ambassadors were necessary “to prove that you are indeed our vassal.”¹⁸

In 1834, the British Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston sent another mission to attempt a grand resolution. Palmerston, not known for his expertise in Qing dynastic regulations, dispatched the Scottish naval officer Lord Napier with the contradictory instructions to “conform to the laws and usages of China” while, at the same time, requesting permanent diplomatic relations and a resident British embassy in Beijing, access to further ports along the Chinese coast, and, for good measure, free trade with Japan.¹⁹

Upon Napier’s arrival in Guangzhou, he and the local governor settled into an impasse: each refused to receive the other’s letters on the basis that it would be demeaning to treat with a figure of such low station. Napier, whom the local authorities had, by this point, christened with a Chinese name translating as “Laboriously Vile,” took to posting belligerent broadsheets around Guangzhou using the services of a local translator. Fate finally solved this vexing barbarian problem for the Chinese when both Napier and his translator contracted malarial fever and departed this world. Before expiring, however, Napier did note the existence of Hong Kong, a sparsely populated rocky outcropping that he assessed would provide an excellent natural harbor.

The Chinese could take satisfaction in having forced another round of rebellious barbarians into compliance. But it was the last time the British would accept rejection. With every year, British insistence grew more threatening. The French historian Alain Peyrefitte summed up the reaction in Britain in the aftermath of the Macartney mission: “If China remained closed, then the doors would have to be battered down.”²⁰ All of China’s diplomatic maneuvers and abrupt rejections only delayed an inevitable reckoning with the modern international system, designed as it was along European and American lines. This reckoning would impose one of the most wrenching social, intellectual, and moral strains on Chinese society in its long history.

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The Macartney Mission

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