English Lessons: The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century China
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English Lessons: The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century China
410eBook
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Overview
Hevia analyzes British Foreign Office documents, diplomatic memoirs, auction house and museum records, nineteenth-century scholarly analyses of Chinese history and culture, campaign records, and photographs. He shows how Britain refigured its imperial project in
China as a cultural endeavor through examinations of the circulation of military loot in Europe, the creation of an art history of “things Chinese,” the construction of a field of knowledge about China, and the Great Game rivalry between Britain, Russia, and the Qing empire in Central Asia. In so doing, he illuminates the impact of these elements on the colonial project and the creation of a national consciousness in China.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780822385066 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Publication date: | 12/15/2003 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 410 |
| Sales rank: | 822,153 |
| File size: | 9 MB |
About the Author
James L. Hevia is Chair of the Curriculum in International and Area Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His book Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793 (published by Duke University Press) won the Joseph Levenson Prize from the Association for Asian Studies.
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English Lessons
The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century ChinaBy James L. Hevia
Duke University Press
Copyright © 2003 James L. HeviaAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9780822331513
Chapter One
Introduction: Imperialism, Colonialism, and China
THE TITLE OF THIS BOOK was inspired by a gruesome scene of public executions that took place in Beijing, China, in the autumn of 1900 (fig. 1). This photograph, along with three others, was published in a booklet by the Visitors' Inquiry Association in Brighton, the popular beach resort on England's south coast. On the cover, black letters against a deep red background proclaim Unique Photographs of the Execution of Boxers in China. When I first opened the slim booklet to this image, my eyes were drawn to and almost as quickly repelled by the beheaded bodies in the left foreground. As my gaze moved from foreground to background, I scanned the living bodies of a crowd pressing around another execution in progress, and it became possible to identify individuals and note differences. If one is somewhat familiar with photographs taken by Westerners in nineteenth-century China, the loose-fitting and unadorned clothes of most of the crowd may be familiar-this is the unmistakable dress of the laobaixing, the common folk of China. Other Chinese individuals in fancier uniforms cluster around the nextvictim of the executioner's sword. These are probably local police and government officials, responsible for carrying out the executions mandated by the foreign armies who suppressed the Boxer movement. As my gaze continued along this line to the left, it was suddenly arrested by an anomaly: three figures in uniforms quite different from the clothing of the others. At the time, I assumed that they were members of the British India army, soldiers of the Raj, who, along with units from seven other powers, occupied Beijing in the wake of the Boxer Uprising of 1899-1900.
A scrutiny of the other photographs in the booklet suggests that they were taken at Caishikou, a marketplace and public execution ground in the Outer, or Chinese city of the Qing capital, Beijing. The images record one instance of public executions of reputed Boxers. The one reproduced here is among many I later found in American and European archives that show Western military forces and diplomatic officials witnessing local executioners beheading purported Boxers.
Yet, identifying the source of the photograph and my initial observations of it do not yet explain the title of this book. Where do the English Lessons lie in these public executions reminiscent of those of Europe's ancien regime? What sort of pedagogical project, if any, can be found in this picture? Who are the students?
Given the source in which the photograph was printed, one group of students may have been the Brighton tourists who purchased the booklet. It was through media like this that English citizens learned about "civilizing missions" and the punishments of "savage" peoples who transgressed against "civilization." But the picture also reveals traces of another sort of lesson, one barely visible on the tattered paper bearing Chinese ideograms pasted to the pillar on the right. Much like those still to be found on telephone and light poles in contemporary Chinese cities, this one is an advertisement. In Chinese, it announces English-language classes available at a nearby school (Yingwen xuetang).
Juxtaposed to the execution scene, this posting provides an inkling of another sort of pedagogical project, one designed to teach natives how to behave in a white man's world of new and unfamiliar relations of power. It also signifies the complicated relationship between the forceful presence of European imperial troops in China and Chinese people who might consider learning English as a second language. There are probably other meanings that can be teased from it as well, but regardless of the interpretations that might be proposed, the advertisement itself embodies a kind of visual reminder of a historical fact: imperialism was always more than guns and goods; it was also a cultural process involving resistance to and accommodation of forces or entities attempting to achieve hegemonic control over specific geographic spaces. To be directed from the execution ground to the language class was to trace one kind of passage along the colonial divide separating Westerners from the "inferior" races of Africa and Asia. The kind of lessons learned in the English class was, perhaps, the softer side of empire, the side that coaxed and seduced others to participate in what was sometimes imagined as a joint enterprise. The harder side of empire lies to the left of the pillar, encoded in the violent dismemberment of those who defy the language of civilization and its stern rule of colonial law.
In the chapters that follow, these two sides of imperial pedagogy, the violence of arms and the violence of language, are explored. Guns not only force compliance, they also persuade. Words and images do not simply persuade, they also coerce. Although the Qing Empire was beset by multiple Western powers in the second half of the nineteenth century, the focus here is on Great Britain, whose diplomatic and military agents often thought of imperialism and colonialism as pedagogical processes, ones made up of teaching and learning by means of gun and pen. This was especially the case in China, where warfare and treaty making marked critical moments of British imperial pedagogy. It will be useful, therefore, to begin with a broad sketch of Anglo-Chinese conflict, beginning with the first Opium War (1839-1842) and ending with the Boxer Uprising of 1900, the occasion for this particular photograph of executions.
Euroamerican Imperialism in China
The initial Western military assault on the Qing Empire began in 1839 and resulted in an unprecedented opening of China to Euroamerican diplomatic, economic, and cultural penetration. Great Britain went to war with China because Qing government officials had seized and destroyed Indian opium. The opium belonged to English merchants who intended, in defiance of Qing law, to sell it in China. This Chinese government offense against private property and "free" trade was, however, only the most immediate cause of friction between the British and Qing Empires.
The deeper issue had to do with the desires of British diplomatic and commercial agents to open China to greater intercourse with an expanding British Empire. This was, of course, not a situation unique to China; in many other areas of the world the British and other European powers had similar objectives. What distinguished Qing China was its long-standing success at maintaining control over its coastal trade and of allowing local officials to manage foreign relations. British government officials wanted direct access to the Qing emperor and his government, preferably through the establishment of a legation in Beijing. Commercial agents wanted an end to the government-sanctioned monopoly guild of Chinese traders, the Co-hong, which Qing emperors had created for managing all European trade at the single port of Guangzhou (Canton). This system, merchants complained, had been established without negotiation or consultation; its "restrictions" were all the more onerous because these samemerchants were convinced that China's population was also interested in greater intercourse with the outside world-ready, as it were, to buy more than opium from European traders. The free trade convictions of British diplomats and merchants ultimately served to justify the use of force against the Qing and resulted in a whole new order of "foreign relations" between China and other powers, which quickly came to include France, the United States, Russia, Germany, and eventually Japan.
Principal instruments for creating the new order were treaties, usually couched in terms of promoting "peace, friendship, and commerce." Through these legal documents, the Qing government was forced to grant Westerners the host of rights they desired in China. The first of these was the Treaty of Nanjing, which ended the Opium War of 1839-1842. The agreement abolished the Co-hong, ceded the island of Hong Kong to Great Britain in perpetuity, opened the ports of Guangzhou, Amoy, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai to Western trade, and approved the permanent residence of foreign consuls and their families in these treaty ports. In a supplemental Treaty of the Bogue in 1843, Qing sovereignty was limited in these newly opened ports through three additional provisions. The first stipulated that British consuls could try their own subjects for crimes committed in China; that is, Euroamericans in China enjoyed "extraterritorial" legal rights. Second, the British were given the right to fix customs duties on their imports into China; they were set artificially low in the treaty itself. Third, Britain received most-favored-nation status, which meant that any privileges given to other powers would automatically go to the British without negotiation. The U.S. and French governments rushed in behind the British and concluded their own treaties in 1844. In addition to all the stipulations of the British treaties, the U.S. Treaty of Wanghsia called for revision in twelve years, and the French Treaty of Whampoa included the right to propagate Catholicism.
When the initial treaty settlement expired in 1856, the representatives of Euroamerican powers attempted to open discussions on treaty revision. The Qing government, however, was reluctant to accept fresh limitations on their sovereignty. Another war resulted in a British and French victory and the destruction of the emperor's Summer Palace (see chapters 2 and 3 for a fuller discussion). The treaty concluding the second Opium War in 1860 granted ten additional treaty ports, freedom of movement for Christian missionaries throughout China, and the right of the treaty powers to establish embassies in Beijing. In addition, China was required to pay indemnities to cover the cost of both wars.
Following the loss of a second major war with European powers in twenty years, the Qing government took action to strengthen itself. Various internal reforms were carried out and leaders attempted to transform the Qing military by acquiring new technologies from the West. As is discussed in greater detail below, these efforts proved to be only marginally effective. Qing influence in Southeast Asia was severed as a result of limited military successes against the French in 1884-1885. A decade later, the shortcomings of the self-strengthening efforts were graphically demonstrated when Japan defeated the Westernized Qing army and navy. By the end of the nineteenth century, Great Britain, France, Germany, and Russia had clearly defined spheres of influence on Qing territory and some observers could seriously discuss the possibility that China would soon be carved up into separate European colonies (fig. 2). This scenario seemed so likely, in fact, that the U.S. government, which in the past had been quick to take advantage of European military successes against the Qing, now called for an "Open Door" in China so that all of the powers would have an equal opportunity to exploit the China market.
Whether or not the American initiative in 1898-1899 stayed the hand of the other powers remains an open question. What is clear is that a Chinese reaction to Euroamerican encroachment soon materialized in the form of the Boxer Uprising, a popular movement supported by elements within the Qing ruling elite. In the summer of 1900, the Boxers and Qing imperial forces assaulted the legation quarter in Beijing and the foreign enclaves in Tianjin. The powers dispatched expeditionary forces, quelled the uprising, and dictated a draconian peace (see part 3). In the wake of the Boxer defeat, the dynasty again attempted to reform, this time directing its attention not only to technological Westernization, but to political reorganization. These efforts proved, however, to be too little and too late. In 1911 the Qing emperor and his imperial government, the primary objects of British pedagogy, ceased to exist as functioning political entities. They were replaced by the Republic of China, a nation-state modeled after those to be found in the West and Japan.
Assessing Western Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century China
It should be clear from this account that the Euroamerican assault on China had a major impact on the direction of Chinese history. Yet, precisely what that impact was and how to interpret it remains an issue today. For much of the early part of the twentieth century, most Westerners living in the treaty ports of China viewed the use of force against the Qing as a necessary and positive good (Bickers 1993a). Although often repelled by such attitudes, Chinese were attracted to the new military technologies and their underlying sciences, both of which had graphically demonstrated the sources of Western wealth and power and the causes of China's weakness. By the 1920s, Chinese nationalists and communists, the latter of whom would also see the Western assault as an instance of the development of international capitalism, could agree that the West had caused unjustified hardship to the Chinese people and irreparable damage to China as a nation. At the same time, they could also credit Western aggression and semicolonialism with awakening a new spirit among the Chinese and fostering a nationalism determined to end the unequal treaties that had been imposed by force on the Qing. This broadly based nationalist awakening was met with defensiveness or outright hostility by many Europeans and Americans inside and outside of China in the 1920s and 1930s (Cohen 1997: 251-254; Bickers 1999: 143-144).
Yet, hostility was not the only reaction to Chinese nationalism. In the United States, for example, another train of thought emerged that was based on notions of American exceptionalism. In this case, the exception was that the United States had not established concessions in China as the Europeans and Japanese had done, and had stood up for China at the high tide of Western encroachment with its Open Door Policy. Other Americans could point to the long-standing missionary enterprise in China, which, through its evangelical, educational, and medical efforts, was unselfishly helping to improve the condition of Chinese life. Taken together, these benign American activities were understood to constitute a special relationship between China and the United States.
Scholars in the United States, perhaps influenced by notions of American exceptionalism, in turn developed their own understanding of the Western presence in nineteenth-century China. Foremost among these historians was John K. Fairbank, who sought to steer a course between the "extremes" of Chinese nationalism and European reaction. A pioneer in the study of modern Chinese history, Fairbank shifted the historical focus from imperial warfare and hard-won "rights," staples of historians of the British in China (e.g, Eames [1909] 1974; Morse 1910-18), to Western contributions to the modernization of China, particularly those made by missionaries. In addition, he turned attention to new institutions, such as the Imperial Maritime Customs service (IMC), that had been created by the "treaty system," itself a vehicle for "modernizing" Chinese foreign relations and facilitating China's entry into "the family of nations." In the case of the IMC, Fairbank (1957, 1968) argued that the customs was one among many joint products of Sino-Western cooperation that emerged after the conflicts of the opium wars, and he coined the term "synarchy" to identify these. Fairbank and his followers also spoke of "China's response to the West," highlighting the processes by which a "Sino-centric" world order was undermined and cooperative programs of opening to the outside world were inaugurated. In this framework, Fairbank not only tended to erase imperialism and colonialism from the China scene (Barlow 1993: 238-247), but also argued (not unlike Karl Marx) that the Western encroachment into China had produced a positive and necessary good: it awakened slumbering Asian societies and stimulated them to throw off their stagnant past.
Continues...
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Table of Contents
List of Illustrations and Tables ixAcknowledgments xiii
Abbreviations xvii
I. Introduction: Imperialism, Colonialism, and China 1
Part I: Opium Wars and Treaties of Peace, Friendship, and Commerce 29
2. The Arrow War, 1856-1860 31
3. Violence and the Rule of Law in China, 1856-1858 49
4. Beijing 1860: Loot, Prize, and a Solemn Act of Retribution 74
Part II: Reterritorializing China, 1861-1900 119
5. Constructing a New Order 123
6. The Qing Empire in the Era of European Global Hegemony 156
Part III: Making China Perfectly Equal 185
7. A Reign of Terror: Punishment and Retribution in Beijing and Its Environs 195
8. Desacralizing Qing Sovereignty, 1900-1901 241
9. Mnemonic Devices: Memorializing the West as Victim and Hero 282
10. The Return of the Repressed, Recirculations, and Chinese Patriotism 315
Postscript 346
Bibliography 351
Index 375