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Early encounters between Britain and China are best known for igniting the First Opium War. Yet they also produced an enormous archive of writings by Britons who spent time in China. Frustrated with the restrictions imposed by the Manchu rulers of the Qing Empire, and unable to live or travel elsewhere apart from Canton and Macao, these diplomats, traders, missionaries, travelers, and military officers devoted thousands of pages to understanding China, its people, and their civilization.
In China Hands and Old Cantons, John M. Carroll draws on this wealth of memoirs, ethnographic studies, travel accounts, narratives of military action, translations, and newspaper articles to trace Britons' wide-ranging, often thoughtful perspectives on China, long before anyone considered going to war. They discussed almost everything they saw and speculated about much of what they could not see-including the size of China's massive population, the extent of infanticide, the origins and practice of foot binding, and the legality and morality of the opium trade. They claimed that only those who had been there could truly understand the Middle Kingdom and that their firsthand experience gave them and their publications an advantage over those in Britain and elsewhere. Carroll brings a seminal period in the Anglo-Chinese relationship, which revolved around tea and opium, to life through the words of those who experienced it intimately.
List of contents
Introduction
1 The Crying Abuses: Explanations
Restricted China
Stationary China
Despotic China
The Tartars and Their Empire
Not Entirely Unreasonable
Themselves to Blame
Hood-winked
2 The Crying Abuses: Solutions
Visitors Weigh In
Intimidation or Restraint?
At Home
Improving Their Own Situation
Somewhere Else
3 Being There
Challenging the Jesuits
A Peculiar Monopoly
Interesting Evidence
Opinions Grounded upon Experience
The Terms Controversy
Setting the Record Straight
War, Hong Kong, and Beyond
4 Sizing Up China
An Immense and Unparalleled Population
A Horrid Practice
So Extraordinary a Custom
Footbinding and the War to Open China
5 The Opium Debates
Opium Mania
Opium in the Press
The Issues
James Innes
Setting the Record Straight, Again
Opium and War
Epilogue: China Freed
Bibliography
About the author
By John M. Carroll
Summary
This fascinating history explores the wide range of views of Britons in late-imperial China as they chafed under the restrictions imposed by the Canton System. John M. Carroll brings a seminal period in the Anglo-Chinese relationship, which revolved around tea and opium, to life through the words of those who experienced it intimately.
