| 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. |
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.