[neither_color]

>We find your country is sixty or seventy thousand li [three li make one mile, ordinarily] from China Yet there are barbarian ships that strive to come here for trade for the purpose of making a great profit. The wealth of China is used to profit the barbarians. That is to say, the great profit made by barbarians is all taken from the rightful share of China. By what right do they then in return use the poisonous drug to injure the Chinese people? Even though the barbarians may not necessarily intend to do us harm, yet in coveting profit to an extreme, they have no regard for injuring others. Let us ask, where is your conscience? I have heard that the smoking of opium is very strictly forbidden by your country; that is because the harm caused by opium is clearly understood. Since it is not permitted to do harm to your own country, then even less should you let it be passed on to the harm of other countries -- how much less to China! Of all that China exports to foreign countries, there is not a single thing which is not beneficial to people: they are of benefit when eaten, or of benefit when used, or of benefit when resold: all are beneficial. Is there a single article from China which has done any harm to foreign countries?

>Suppose there were people from another country who carried opium for sale to England and seduced your people into buying and smoking it; certainly your honorable ruler would deeply hate it and be bitterly aroused. We have heard heretofore that your honorable ruler is kind and benevolent.

>We have further learned that in London, the capital of your honorable rule, and in Scotland, Ireland, and other places, originally no opium has been produced. Only in several places of India under your control such as Bengal, Madras, Bombay, Patna, Benares, and Malwa has opium been planted from hill to hill, and ponds have been opened for its manufacture. For months and years work is continued in order to accumulate the poison. The obnoxious odor ascends, irritating heaven and frightening the spirits. Indeed you, O King, can eradicate the opium plant in these places, hoe over the fields entirely, and sow in its stead the five grains [millet, barley, wheat, etc.]. Anyone who dares again attempt to plant and manufacture opium should be severely punished. This will really be a great, benevolent government policy that will increase the common weal and get rid of evil. For this, Heaven must support you and the spirits must bring you good fortune, prolonging your old age and extending your descendants. All will depend on this act.

Reading this was pretty sad. So many vain appeals to reason. "We know you know it's bad for you, you've banned it yourself, please stop dumping it on us." Unfortunately the people he wrote that letter to didnt see them as equals.

[geokon]

From the wiki page it seems like there was actually a very strong anti-war sentiment in the West at the time (this was not covered in my history classes!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War#Reaction_in_Br...

A lot of the complaints voiced by the pro-war people ironically hinge on feeling slighted by the imperial court and that the Qing "didnt see them as equals"

[LAC-Tech]

What's ironic? The Qing clearly saw them as inferiors. Read the letter.

[LAC-Tech]

Unfortunately the people he wrote that letter to didnt see them as equals.

Did that letter suggest the British were seen as equals? The phrase "barbarian" is used 16 times in the text...

---

"The kings of your honorable country by a tradition handed down from generation to generation have always been noted for their politeness and submissiveness."

"Privately we are delighted with the way in which the honorable rulers of your country deeply understand the grand principles and are grateful for the Celestial grace."

"This is the source from which your country has become known for its wealth."

"Since it is not permitted to do harm to your own country, then even less should you let it be passed on to the harm of other countries -- how much less to China!"

"We take into to consideration, however, the fact that the various barbarians have still known how to repent their crimes and return to their allegiance to us"

"Take tea and rhubarb, for example; the foreign countries cannot get along for a single day without them. If China cuts off these benefits with no sympathy for those who are to suffer, then what can the barbarians rely upon to keep themselves alive? Moreover the woolens, camlets, and longells [i.e., textiles] of foreign countries cannot be woven unless they obtain Chinese silk. If China, again, cuts off this beneficial export, what profit can the barbarians expect to make?"

"Our Celestial Dynasty rules over and supervises the myriad states, and surely possesses unfathomable spiritual dignity."

"May you, O King, check your wicked and sift your wicked people before they come to China, in order to guarantee the peace of your nation, to show further the sincerity of your politeness and submissiveness"

---

The constant, repeated subtext is that Britain is merely a far flung tributary nation of China. Lin states outright that all Britains wealth is derived from from China and needs Chinese good just to survive.

The Imperial Qinq court was completely delusional.

[inkyoto]

> Did that letter suggest the British were seen as equals?

No. Chinese emperors saw every other state outside the Celestial Empire as a tributary state and expected a full submission to the Chinese emperor, hence the language.

> The phrase "barbarian" is used 16 times in the text

«Barbarian» (蠻夷) was a term to refer to anyone else other than a direct subject of the Chinese Empire. Only the Chinese people were considered to be civilised, everyone else outside the Celestial Empire was not. As the opium wars progressed, one of the clauses in the follow-up treaty of Tianjin was forbidding the Chinese from the use of the 夷 character (meaning «a barbarian») to refer to the Westerners.

The word for «barbarian», 野蠻人 / 蠻夷 are still occasionally used as an insult between some Northern and Southern Chinese to refer to each other (as some Southern Chinese consider themselves to have descended from the true Tang Han Chinese and consider the Northerners to be bastard children of Mongolians, Manchu and the Han Chinese whereas some Northern Chinese consider the Southern Chinese to have descended from barbarian tribes, or Baiyue (百越) – the human history gets unpleasantly messy at times). Or as a pejorative to refer to Westerners, although mostly in the domestic nationalistic narrative.

> The constant, repeated subtext is that Britain is merely a far flung tributary nation of China […] The Imperial Qinq court was completely delusional.

Very much. In the historical context, the First Opium War was a disaster that had been waiting to happen and the British happened to be the trigger. The Daoguang Emperor was an exceptionally backward individual who flatly refused to grasp the understanding that the world had changed and self-imposed Chinese isolationist policies could not longer work, and that the Celestial Empire had fallen behind the progress. Most of his successors were just as myopic and delusional.

[darkerside]

It's a little funny because a word like barbarian carries so many connotations to us today, which is so different from even what Westerners back then would have known. And the connotations of the Chinese word might never have shared any of them.

[inkyoto]

Chinese characters do not always have a clearly defined, unambiguous, meaning when gazed upon on their own in isolation. But they do acquire a specific meaning when used in a specific context. Typically, when complemented with other characters (it varies across Chinese languages, e.g. Chinese words tend to be shorter in spoken Cantonese as opposed to spoken Mandarin due to the historical loss of multiple finals in the latter as the former has retained many original sounds from Middle Chinese, hence also the historical divide). The context is very important in the Chinese languages.

For example, 夷 (the main character compounding the word 蠻夷, a «barbarian») – on its own – means «wild» or «ferral»; it can also be used to refer to a massacre (夷族 or 夷戮), but it can also be used to mean «calm», as in 夷然 (a fringe written word).

Most translations to European languages have historically used approximations due to the lack of the comprehension of a culture unfamiliar to Europeans. Therefore, the Greek word for «barbaric» / «barbarian» has been used as the closest appoximation of the meaning of 夷, but not it does not equate to its true semantic meaning for a native speaker.

[masswerk]

BTW, barbarians were originally the non-Greek from the West, i.e. Europeans.

[LAC-Tech]

Thanks for this breakdown. Do you have confirmation that 蠻夷 was what was used in the original text?

[inkyoto]

I had not consulted the original text prior to replying, so I used a collective 蠻夷 as a guess. 蠻 and 夷 both translate as barbarian, an adjective and a noun (so to speak). 夷 is the character used in Archaic (Classical) Chinese that was used to write the letter (Archaic Chinese, which had a very different grammar and vocabulary was used for all written communication in China, Korea, Japan and Viet Nam until the early 20th century) to refer to barbarians whereas 蠻 has been used more recently.

In the text being referenced further down the thread the following words are used:

  眾夷 – crowd(s) of barbarians
  夷人 – barbarian(s), literally «barbarian person(s)»
  夷船 – barbarian ships
  外夷 – foreign barbarians
  夷 – barbarian(s)
  奸夷 – wicked / evil barbarians
  國夷 – barbarian countries/states, literally «country/-ies of barbarians».

蠻 is not found anywhere due to not being used in Classical Chinese.

Curiously, in Viet Nam, being written as 越南, the 越 refers to Baiyue or «one hundred yue (tribes)» (百越 that had formed an ancient Yue Kingdom and were considered barbarians at the time). And therefore 越 has had pretty strong barbaric connotations in the historical context for a long time. The actual name of the Viet Nam is, in fact, Nam Viet 南越, but words had to be swapped around at the behest of the Jiaqing Emperor of Qing to conform with the Classical Chinese grammar.

[websg-x]

No, 夷人(foreigner)，was used.

[LAC-Tech]

Source? It's probably classical chinese and I barely read any mandarin, but still curious :)

[websg-x]

"擬諭英吉利國王檄", https://kknews.cc/zh-tw/history/ybvzq2k.html has original and pretty good "白話文" translation.

[agumonkey]

Personally I read barbarians as describing ships enforcing trade, not the kingdom or its peaceful inhabitants.

[barry-cotter]

This was almost the absolute tail end of separate systems of international diplomacy and law. The British were working under the Westphalian system where there’s a pretense at legal though not practical equality. Under the Confucian system China was the hegemon and all others were subordinate. States either paid tribute and were civilised tributary states or were barbarians. See how the Macartnety Mission refused to pay obeisance and thus was refused leave to establish diplomatic relations in 1792.

https://blog.gale.com/the-george-macartney-mission-to-china-...

[noSyncCloud]

>The phrase "barbarian" is used 16 times in the text...

Are you trying to suggest that the phrase is inaccurate? If so, what justifications do you present?

[mercy_dude]

> see them as equals

That’s the history of the church and king much from 800AD. At its peak, the British stole 200+ trillion wealth rom India and its other colonies.

[agumonkey]

Agreed, quite a shame.