29 – Trade, Embassies and Communication: The English in China, 1715-1842 – Part III

Dr Robert Morrison, Sir George Thomas Staunton and the Amherst Embassy of 1816

The failure of the 1816 Amherst embassy to the Chinese court can be seen as a step toward worsening relations between the United Kingdom and China.  The tensions between the two nations were clear in the embassy’s dealings with the officials who accompanied them to the emperor’s palace outside Beijing, particularly when it came to the linguists who served with the embassy: Dr Robert Morrison and George Thomas Staunton.

Soo-ta-zhin noticed in the course of conversation that he remembered in the former British embassy a youth named Thomas Staunton, who spoke Chinese. ¹

The Jiaqing Emperor emerges not as a ruler imprisoned in an ossified ritualistic ceremonialism but one capable of reacting pragmatically to the complex and challenging political events that faced him. ²

On the eve of the Opium War … the imperial commissioner who had been sent to Canton to put down the British dominated opium trade, wrote to the emperor that a war against the British was likely to succeed because their tightly wrapped legs made it hard for them to bend and stretch so they would be unlikely to fight well on land.³

A Failed Embassy

It is tempting to write off the second British embassy to China.  William Pitt, Lord Amherst, the ambassador on this special mission to China arrived in Macao on July 10, 1816, and landed in Tianjin on August 12 with his party of 75.  Most of the embassy’s meetings with imperial officials in preparation for his encounter with the Jiaqing emperor (r 1760-1820)focussed on the fraught question of whether or not he would kowtow to the emperor.  In the end, no meeting took place, as his reluctance to attend court after overnight travel to the Old Summer Palace in Beijing was taken as a snub, and the embassy was summarily dismissed on August 29.  Travelling overland, and making observations as they did so, the British mission was back in Macao on New Year’s Day, 1817. 

This failed encounter did little to enhance Anglo-Chinese relations.  The period spent on the mainland in the run-up to the embassy’s forced departure does shed some light on the business of being a messenger when the two parties to negotiations have little common ground and many reasons for wariness.  The fact that the two main interpreters, Dr Robert Morrison and George Thomas Staunton were Chinese speakers associated with the East India Company (EIC) is evidence of the ways in which those serving as intermediaries can be perceived as compromised.

Dr Robert Morrison

Morrison was a Presbyterian missionary who had been in China since 1807.  He had learned both Cantonese and Mandarin to enhance his efforts at proselytization.  Since 1809 he had been working as a translator for the EIC, which gave him some security as he negotiated his way around the complexities of learning Chinese and making converts in a culture that was hostile to foreigners familiarising themselves with either its language or its people.

George Thomas Staunton

Staunton, of course, had learned Mandarin as a child.  After the Macartney embassy, he had returned to China in 1799 to work as a writer (clerk) for the EIC factory in Canton.  He had been promoted to interpreter in 1808 after he successfully handled the interpreting in a sensitive legal case involving the death of a Chinese man during a brawl on the waterfront involving a crowd of locals and some sixty British sailors.  His Mandarin was manifestly stronger than Morrison’s and he had more experience of interpreting in formal settings than his colleague.  He was also familiar with Chinese law, having translated the Qing legal code into English.

The two men had different approaches to translation and interpreting, which may have been a matter of personality, experience, or philosophy – or a combination of all three.  Morrison’s priority was the translation of the Bible into Chinese. He had a literal approach to translating from Chinese, which, when he was relatively new to Canton meant that his early translations made Qing officials sound odd.  His word-for-word approach posed a problem, for instance, when a straightforward comment in a letter from an official – on Morrison’s poor command of written Chinese, as it happens – came across in (opaque) English as a demand for the British to kowtow, when the writer was simply saying that he was not going to make a fuss about the badly written text:

Respecting the address that was presented; the manner of the composition was not perspicacious, the body and cut of it also was not perfectly suitable.  I compassionately consider that the foreigners do not understand the middle charming empire’s manner of composing; I therefore do not make a deep enquiry into the address (by demanding) three prostrations but return it.⁴

Morrisons’s unwieldy translation was partly the result of his use of synonyms: “charming middle empire” could have been rendered as “China”.   The reference to kowtowing was added by his over-reading of the term “kou” which means “enquire”.  Staunton had more experience in working with foreign languages and a practical commitment to ensuring that people’s messages were conveyed.  ⁵

Appointed to the Amherst Embassy

By the time Amherst sailed to China, Morrison and Staunton had known each other for several years.  Though they were contemporaries, they held different positions in the EIC, and Staunton, who had inherited his father’s title, was socially superior to Morrison, whose father had moved into the shoe trade having started out as a farm labourer. 

Their attitudes to the embassy were also different: Staunton had every reason to expect to play a key role in the mission and was displeased to learn, when he met with Amherst, that he had not been appointed to a diplomatic role; he was to be the embassy’s interpreter.  That was the role he had in mind for Morrison and other members of the Canton staff.  He felt that given his history, and his recent appointment as chief of the EIC factory, he should enjoy a higher status.  Having heard him out, Amherst decided that he would have two deputies, or commissioners, Henry Ellis, who had been named in London, and Staunton. Morrison was to be the embassy’s interpreter, with assistance as necessary from his colleagues Robert Toone and John Francis Davis

Tensions

Staunton was pleased with his promotion but also well aware that he was in a difficult situation.  He was known for his youthful participation in the Macartney embassy as well as his role in the EIC.  His account of how he reacted when the legate, Suleng’e, (Soo-ta-zhin to him) – who remembered the Macartney embassy and mentioned the British boy who could speak Chinese – highlights the awkwardness of his notoriety to the Chinese.

Whether the remark of Soo-ta-zhin was accidental, or was a preconcerted scheme to ascertain whether I meant to avow or to conceal my identity with the youth in question, it is difficult to say but it has afforded me an excellent and very natural opportunity of breaking a silence, which every succeeding interview with the Chinese has rendered more and more awkward and equivocal, though, as I wished to avoid such an interference in the conversation as must have superseded Mr. Morrison as interpreter, a suitable moment for introducing myself did not before occur.⁶

He clearly wanted Morrison to be the official interpreter for the embassy, but since it was well-known that he had an excellent command of Mandarin, the embassy’s Chinese interlocutors knew very that the deputy commissioner was following proceedings directly.

Morrison may have found it difficult to have Staunton effectively monitoring his work, but on the whole, he was fortunate that there were other Mandarin speakers with the embassy as their meetings were often tense.  Ellis’s account of the embassy often refers to Morrison’s role as interpreter and describes some of the difficulties he faced.  During one discussion of kowtowing, Suleng’e

… entered fully into the whole question, observing that our trade at Canton might materially suffer from the displeasure of the Emperor: another remark was made respecting the possible anger of his Imperial Majesty towards the King of England; this observation Mr. Morrison very properly refused to interpret.⁷

Morrison, in his memoirs, refers to himself in the third person, as he does in this relation of a lively discussion about why the authorities had not been told that Amherst’s ships had sailed back to Canton [Guangzhou]:

The Legate said that the tenor of his conversation, in frequent allusions to the ships, supposed their remaining; and if they were not to remain, it should have been said so: he supposed the Embassador intended it, and the fault rested with the person who had been the medium, turning at the same time to that person, and holding up his finger, he said, “It is your fault.” That person, a man of warm temper, and who had given his opinion against doing any thing that could be construed by the Chinese into a want of perfect candour, and against silence respecting the ships in particular, said, ” If I must be accused thus innocently, I’ll be the medium no longer;”⁸

Amherst asked Staunton to intercede; the legate – known as Kwang – apologised, and discussions resumed.

In his account of yet another meeting, Staunton comments on the ways in which his reputation complicated the embassy’s negotiations about their audience with the emperor.  The legate Chang remarked privately to Staunton

… that the emperor had just received a report from Canton, saying that I and those who had accompanied me, from Macao, were all merchants, and that therefore this was not a regularly constituted Embassy—that I had, in particular, acquired great wealth in trade, had a fine house, and an aviary; and had bought the situation which I now held in the Embassy. I must have been selected on account of the knowledge I had acquired of the Chinese customs, in the former embassy, and that it was therefore my duty to have exhorted the Ambassador to perform the ceremony, instead of which I had excited him against it.⁹

Staunton felt that the discussion should not involve just Chang and himself but Amherst as well; on hearing Chang’s views, Amherst denied that the legate had the right to opinions about the make-up of his embassy.

Reasons for the Failure of the Embassy

These incidents can be seen in any number of ways: as misunderstandings, as the result of Chinese suspicions of the embassy’s ambitions, as signs of Morrison’s and Staunton’s discomfort with their roles.  Whereas the Macartney embassy had an accommodating intermediary in Li Zibiao, Amherst depended on two men whose involvement in missionary work or trade, and knowledge of Mandarin probably meant that they were viewed with suspicion by the Qing officials.

It could well be that the legates and other officials were being deliberately obstreperous.  Maybe the Jiaqing emperor was well aware that insisting on having the British ambassador prostrate himself before him was one way of killing off an embassy he had not sought.  The situations of China and Britain had changed since the Macartney Embassy.  Britain had emerged as the victor of the Napoleonic wars, with a growing sense of imperial power, whereas the Chinese

… empire was in a more troubled state, subject to overpopulation, land shortages, frequent rebellions, attacks by pirates, and serious financial problems. The empire was also experiencing a currency crisis owing to the shortage of silver. To add to the emperor’s woes, during this period opium consumption in China was becoming more popular, largely driven by the increasing supply of the drug from British-controlled Bengal.¹⁰

An understandable wariness of the intentions of the British was not matched by any clear analysis of their priorities.  The Qing empire’s autocratic approach to knowledge and decision-making did not lend itself to speculation about what the United Kingdom might do next. The failure of the Amherst embassy can be seen as a step toward more aggressive British ways of enhancing trading conditions in China.  Indeed, an argument has been made that the rather negative accounts of their travels published by members of the embassy strengthened anti-Chinese feelings in the United Kingdom.  

Although it cannot be that the unfavourable impressions of China and the Qing conveyed to the public by the published accounts of members Amherst embassy had determined the outbreak of the Opium War, open conflict with China would probably not have been as or as acceptable without the evidence provided by these members Amherst mission. The British, moreover, probably would not confident enough to attack such a large and populous country had they not become convinced of China’s serious decay and weakness.¹¹

In 1839, the First Opium War saw British warships off the coast of China.  After a series of defeats, China had to make major concessions in the 1842 Treaty of Nanking: diplomacy had failed.

1. Staunton, G.T. 2009. Memoirs of the Chief Incidents of the Public Life of Sir George Thomas Staunton. Cambridge U.P. p.43.
2. Kitson, P.J. 2021 online. The Dark Gift: Opium, John Francis Davis, Thomas De Quincey and the Amherst Embassy to China of 1816 pp. 56-82, p. 57 in Kitson, P.J. and Markely, R. Writing China: Essays on the Amherst Embassy (1816) and Sino-British Cultural Relations (Essays and Studies). Cambridge U.P.
3. Harrison, H. 2021. The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators between Qing China and the British Empire. Princeton U.P. p. 11.
4. (Harrison, Op. cit. pp.185-186.
5. Ibid.
6. Staunton. Op. cit. pp. 43-44.
7. Ellis, H.1817. Journal of the Proceedings of the Late Embassy to China. John Murray. London, p. 95.
8. Morrison, Dr R. 1820. Memoir of the Principal Occurrences during an Embassy from the British Government to the Court of China in the Year 1816. London, p. 37.
9. Staunton. Op. cit. pp. 85-86.
10. Kitson Op. cit. p. 65.
11. Gao, H. The Amherst Embassy and British Discoveries in China in History, October 2014, Vol. 99, No. 4 (337) (October 2014), pp. 568-587 p. 587.