Asian Empire and British Knowledge
Douban
China and the Networks of British Imperial Expansion
Ulrike Hillemann
sinopsis
What the British 'knew' about China changed fundamentally in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. During this period, China became a key focus of British commercial and missionary interests, creating urgent demand for new knowledge about the country. This change in British understanding of and views about Chinese language, culture, politics and economy has typically been examined through the lens of a European history of ideas. This book demands that we pay closer attention to how British imperial networks in India and Southeast Asia were critical mediators in the British encounter with China. Knowledge of China was not simply developed by literati in Scotland and London, but also in the spaces of the East India Company in Asia, in a world of complex and competing political, academic, religious and trading interests. Created in Britain's Asian Empire, it played a critical role in British relations with China leading up to the Opium War in 1840.
contenidos
Acknowledgements viii
List of Abbreviations x
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Britain and China – an overview 3
1.2 Methodological considerations 8
2 The Decline of Mythical China 16
2.1 The origin of language 17
2.2 Chinese style and British taste 21
2.3 A Chinese court at Brighton 27
3 At the China Coast 34
3.1 A diplomatic expedition 34
3.2 Chinese law and British rights 45
3.3 The unreliable interpreter 56
3.4 A barren land 64
3.5 Diplomacy and local knowledge 75
3.6 Trade and identity 81
3.7 British honour and opium 91
4 South and Southeast Asian Encounters 106
4.1 China’s neighbour 107
4.2 Chinese subjects for the empire 120
4.3 Co-operator and corruptor 130
4.4 British rule, Chinese societies 135
4.5 Educating the Chinese diaspora 141
5 Asian Networks and the British Isles 150
5.1 British Sinology
5.2 Saving China
5.3 Forces of free trade
6 Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index