From 1840 to 1842, Britain launched an unjust war of aggression against China, which also became the beginning of China's modern history of humiliation.
The Opium War and its subsequent series of unequal treaties of loss of power and humiliation of the country not only demonstrated the various acts of aggression and colonization of imperialism from the east, but also the beginning of the rise of nationalism in modern China and the beginning of the realization of the need for intellectuals to survive. Less than half a century before the outbreak of the Opium War, the British Ma Garni led a delegation to China in 1793, in the name of wishing the Qianlong Emperor a happy birthday, to open the Chinese market through negotiations, but to no avail. This is a major event in the history of Sino-Western exchanges.
In August 1793, Macartney and his party arrived in Beijing. On August 5 (June 23, 58th year of the Qianlong Dynasty), the British delegation arrived at the mouth of the Baihe River in Tianjin on a sixty-gun gunboat Lion and two accompanying vessels provided by the British East India Company, and then changed small boats into Dagu. Ordered to wait here, Tianjin Daoqiao Renjie and Tongzhou Vice Admiral Wang Wenxiong boarded the ship to greet him and prepared vegetables, vegetables, wine and meat to greet them. The delegation entered Tianjin and was welcomed by Liang Kentang, the governor of Zhili.
On August 9, the delegation left Dagu for Beijing, stopping in Tongzhou on the way and engaged in a ceremonial dispute with Chinese officials. On September 2, he left Beijing to meet the Qianlong Emperor at the Chengde Mountain Resort, and visited the Great Wall on the way. On 13 September, the mission arrived in Rehe, where it presented its credentials to the Representative of the Chinese Government, Hezhen, and again quarreled with him over etiquette. In the end, the two sides reached an agreement that Britain, as an independent country, would have to kneel on one knee and not have to kowtow.
In fact, the ceremony did not become an obstacle to the Sino-British meeting in 1793, and was not intensified until 1816 when the Amestrian mission came to China. By 1840, former U.S. President John F. Kennedy was in a position to return to the United States. Quincy. Adams blamed the Sino-British Opium War on the issue of prostration, and the controversy over etiquette was gradually elevated.
Adams naturally used etiquette as an excuse to rationalize colonization and aggression, even if he followed the logic of "civilized people teach barbarians" and believed that Britain demanded that China recognize its equal status according to the new concept of "sovereign state", then it can also be asked that when Britain colonized the world, it never treated the weak with the "principle of equality", so why did it ask China to practice "equal sovereignty"? After the Opium War, did Britain import the diplomatic etiquette of "equality" into China in order to establish "equal" relations with China?
No matter what kind of etiquette Ma Garni used in 1793, the Qianlong Emperor would refuse the request of the British envoys, not because China refused to trade, but precisely because China had long regulated foreign trade and treated all countries equally, and the British demand was essentially to overthrow the customization that China had implemented for many years, including the requirement to open Ningbo, Zhoushan and other ports, set up a small island near Zhoushan for British merchants to live in for a long time, allow British merchants to stay in Guangzhou, British ships enter and leave Macao, Guangzhou waterways and reduce taxes, and allow British missionaries The "universal rights" such as trade are special treatment for the British family, and some of the demands are no different from "colonization". As for restricting foreign businessmen to activities in Guangzhou, this should be the Qianlong Emperor's consideration of social security. If the British really wanted to trade and communicate according to the logic of the market and the logic of non-robbers, then was the British East India Company, which dominated Sino-British trade at that time, really follow the logic of the market?
The purpose of the Macartney delegation's visit to China is to solve the political problems caused by global economic problems, and also reflects China's rethinking or resistance to the international order after the Westphalian Peace Treaty in the West. Since the interests of the British East India Company and the Macartney Mission were in fact in conflict. If Macartney succeeded, the East India Company's monopoly and monopoly position would be greatly challenged.
In the Macartney mission, there are 95 diplomatic attachés and more than 600 soldiers, and the composition is quite diverse and complex, including the main and deputy ambassadors, scientific and technological personnel, medical officers, musicians, painters and other members, which derives from the study of political diplomatic etiquette issues, the history of science and technology, the history of medical treatment, the history of Sino-British music exchanges, the history of painting and other fields. And with the gradual increase in the scope of research, the historical significance of Macartney's visit to China has become more and more significant, and the subsequent Amestean visit and the Opium War have deepened the significance of the Macartney event.
In the 19th century, Europe despised the world's attitude and ignored Macartney's enlightenment background, but In fact, Macartney's diary had a high opinion of China. Because Macartney believes that China does not have a strong monotheistic religion or religious enthusiasm, but can build a relatively orderly rational and pragmatic cultural state, which is also the cultural characteristic of China. Macartney can be said to be the first person to come to China under the influence of the European Enlightenment.
According to the observations of the deputy ambassador of the mission, Staunton, he saw that the life of the Qing officials was completely different from that of the city of Paris. Originally, Europeans thought that China was the most important industrial and commercially developed country in the world, but according to the members of the envoy corps, the life of the Chinese residents was full of the habits of an agrarian society.
In his envoys' diaries, Macartney frequently described many impressive features in China, such as the accuracy of the mastery of ceremonies, the efficiency of the execution of government orders, the refinement of craftsmanship, etc., but Macartney finally concluded that the Qing Empire had degenerated from a highly civilized country to a semi-barbaric state, in part because of the route back to England. Unlike when visiting China, he first arrived in Guangzhou and then went north from Tianjin by sea, when Ma Garni returned to China, he took the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and stopped in Hangzhou and other places. Macartney saw uncivilized behaviors such as drowning babies along the canal, and the environment was also extremely poor and dirty, which greatly changed his impression of China, so he had a "semi-barbaric" saying.