What do you think?
Rate this book
555 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 15, 2018
a gigantic planetarium that had taken thirty years to build and was deemed "the most wonderful piece of mechanism ever emanating from human hands." There were giant lenses of every description. There were globes of the stars and earth, two carriages even more ornate than the king’s own (one for the emperor’s use in summer and the other for winter), "chemical and philosophical apparatuses," several brass field guns, a sampling of muskets and swords, howitzer mortars, two "magnificent" lustres (elaborate chandeliers that could illuminate a room) packed in fourteen cases, vases, clocks, an air pump, Wedgwood china, artwork depicting everyday life in England, paintings of military battles on land and sea, portraits of the royal familyas well as a hot-air balloon, all accompanied by a letter from King George III, respectful to the point of fawning ("the Supreme Emperor of China...worthy to live tens of thousands and tens of thousands thousand years"). Alas, none of this made much impression on the Qianlong Emperor:
"As the Greatness and Splendor of the Chinese Empire have spread its Fame far and wide, and as foreign Nations, from a thousand Parts of the World, crowd hither over mountains and Seas, to pay us their Homage, and to bring us the rarest and most precious offerings, what is it that we can want here?" In words that would sting the British for a generation, he added, "Strange and costly objects, sufficient to amuse children, do not interest me...We possess all things. I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your country’s manufactures."Amazingly, this was a feint, directly following the playbook - the millennia-old Book of Documents, which advises "When he does not look on foreign things as precious, foreigners will come to him". In secret the Emperor collected English clocks, wrote poems about telescopes, and advised his courtiers to observe the planetarium's assembly so that they could reproduce it afterwards.
those two terrible trades [opium and slavery] had in common that no matter how abhorrent they were in the eyes of God, even the most respectable of Britain’s trading houses did not hesitate to engage in them.Napoleon, imprisoned on St Helena, mentioned to his Irish doctor that the British should have made more of an effort to respect the customs of the Chinese (in the wake of the failed Amherst mission). The doctor replied that
it didn’t matter if the British had the friendship of the Chinese. They had the Royal Navy.At the time that Britain was considering going to war to defend the opium trade, the future four-time Prime Minister Gladstone (whose sister was an opium addict) gave an impassioned speech against it, saying, "a war more unjust in its origin, more calculated in its progress to cover this country with permanent disgrace, I do not know, and have not read of". In his personal diary he wrote "I am in dread of the judgements of God upon England for our national iniquity towards China". But with the support of Lord Palmerston and the Duke of Wellington, it was prosecuted without much fuss. (Despite the intense debate and general international condemnation of Britain, it is somewhat surprising that there was a second war just fourteen years later, although the book doesn't cover it.)
Napoleon’s eyes turned dark. "It would be the worst thing you have done for a number of years, to go to war with an immense empire like China," he said. "You would doubtless, at first, succeed, but you would teach them their own strength. They would be compelled to adopt measures to defend themselves against you; they would consider, and say, ‘we must try to make ourselves equal to this nation. Why should we suffer a people, so far away, to do as they please to us? We must build ships, we must put guns into them, we must render ourselves equal to them.’ They would get artificers, and ship builders, from France, and America, and even from London; they would build a fleet," he said, "and, in the course of time, defeat you."