Qianlong’s letter to King George III
Uploaded by Kerrytom on Aug 10, 2013
Qianlong is often criticized for not engaging more with the West and launching China more on the path to modernisation. This is most evident when Britain sent an embassy to China in 1793 led by Lord George Macartney to discuss the possibility of China opening up to more free trade with Britain. Qianlong rejected the idea of the opening up of China to trading more freely with Britain, and consequently the rest of the Western world, in his letter to King George III. “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”
This refusal to engage more with the West caused European’s view of China to change. There was a lot of admiration for China in the West up to this period for their inventions, but this view was changing because of China’s seeming unwillingness to improve or develop towards a more Western view of modernity. “In the late eighteenth century, Western views of China shifted from admiration to contempt” The West was starting to view China as inferior to themselves, “because at the time the West had come to define itself in terms of, and derive a strong sense of superiority from, its undoubted technological power” This change of opinion was dangerous for China because as the West grew more technological and consequently more powerful they realised China was stagnant and in relation to themselves, weak.
Even though King George’s embassy failed in getting China to open up for more trade with Britain, the information acquired by Macartney was invaluable. They discovered the low state of China’s medical and scientific knowledge, the indifference of the literati class to material progress, the poverty of the masses, and most importantly the backwardness of an army which still used bows and arrows and lacked modern firearms. At this time Britain was the strongest state in the world and discovering that China was not developing at the same rate as themselves meant that if Britain wanted, they could simply overpower China and force them to bend to their will. The Western nations were finding the restrictive trading at Canton very irritating and directly at odds with their free world market ideals. It can therefore be...