《乾隆英使觐见记》书评

IT'S ABOUT SENSE OF PRIDE

George Macartney, (1737–1806) was an Irish-born British statesman, colonial administrator and diplomat. He is often remembered for his observation following Britain's success in the Seven Years War and subsequent territorial expansion at the Treaty of Paris that Britain now controlled "a vast Empire, on which the sun never sets". In 1792, he was appointed the first envoy of Britain to China. He led the Macartney Embassy to Beijing with a large British delegation on board a 64-gun man-of-war, HMS Lion. The embassy was ultimately not successful. (Reference: Wikipedia)This book is a collection of Macartney’s journals in China. It covers the dates from 15th June, 1793 to 10th January, 1794, presenting China as an oriental empire in its late years. What is to be valued, these records enable readers to comprehend the crashes between the West and the East, not only from macro-historical descriptions, but from details found in communications between people.In these journals, Macartney took down whatever he saw that were interesting, brilliant, disgusting or ugly; these include gorgeous scenery, delicious food, industrious folks, in-fighting between bureaucracies and so on. As a British envoy, his feelings and opinions represented western views of China in some degree. Meanwhile, as an on-looker, he realized the problems deteriorating in the Qing dynasty gradually. Thanks to Macartney, nowadays those dialogues happened among Chinese bureaucracies remain vivid and accessible to us, from which we know about the roots that led to China’s failure in the 19th century. Obviously, Macartney was not objective. He was amazed at China’s richness while he couldn’t understand why Chinese rulers refused to open up their country. Generally, his behaviors stood for British sense of pride, which was, unfortunately, caught in conflicts with Chinese sense of pride.