George Staunton was intending to return to England in January 1808 for his second term of home leave, so he was cheered by the appearance of these two new students of Chinese. Since the factory would otherwise be without a Chinese interpreter during his two-year absence, he was eager to hand his mantle to Manning and Morrison—if, that is, they could be convinced to take it. In any case, he had only a few months to help them get settled before his departure, after which they would be left to their own devices.
Manning was a straightforward case, for he had come with the blessing of the directors in London and already had a position with the Company. Staunton set him up with a teacher and let him get to work on his studies right away. He was a popular figure around the factory and a great talker who seemed happy to have gained a toehold at the edge of China. But he was also restless. Manning was only learning Chinese for the sake of his planned explorations, so working for the factory was just the means to an end, and he did not want to stay in Canton any longer than necessary.
Morrison’s case was far more complicated. Staunton was eager to help him when he arrived in Canton, and offered to set him up with his own teacher, but the directors of the Company had been adamant that a missionary could not be allowed to live in the British factory, so the first issue became finding him a home. Fortunately, Morrison had his letter of introduction from James Madison. The American consul, a Rhode Island merchant named Edward Carrington, arranged for Morrison to live sub rosa in the American factory for the first few months after his arrival, sharing an apartment with the merchants of the ship on which he had come out. In order to stay there he had to pretend to be an American rather than a British citizen. He also had to stretch his small budget to rent out an extra room to keep his Chinese papers and books where none of the servants who came and went from the factory might see them.47
George Staunton introduced him to a tutor, a Roman Catholic named Abel Yun who spoke fluent Latin and came secretly to his quarters each day—though Morrison, whose money was rapidly running out, worried that Yun wanted to be paid too much. He also worried about the unexpectedly high prices he had to pay for food, for laundry, for a servant boy, for firewood, and especially for candles. He eventually moved into a dank ground-floor room of the American factory with cheaper rent. He also tried to save money—and, he hoped, set a cultural example—by eating only Chinese food, using only chopsticks, and wearing only Chinese clothes. He tried to become as Chinese as possible, even to the point of growing a braid and letting his fingernails grow. But the culture shock wore him down, and when he became ill he finally gave up and started shaving again, cut his nails, lopped off his braid, and resumed wearing his black preacher’s clothes from England. By then it was clear that he had to find financial support of some kind.
Fortunately for Morrison, a new president of the select committee, John Roberts, was sympathetic to his mission. It wasn’t mere benevolence behind Roberts’s support, though—his desire to help Morrison was wrapped up in his own fairly bigoted views of the Chinese, which were rather more contemptuous than the norm for a man in his position. A superior-minded Christian, Roberts hoped that Morrison might succeed in translating the Bible so he could give it to his Confucian counterparts and tell them, sneeringly, “This volume we deem the best of books.”48 Roberts became Morrison’s patron during his first year in China, providing the young missionary with a house in Macao for the off-season and, by his lofty standing as president of the Company’s select committee, preventing the Portuguese from driving Morrison out.49 On moral grounds it was something of a devil’s bargain, though. Morrison was uncomfortable having to rely so heavily on a man of trade—a man driven more by greed than by charity, more by arrogance than humility. He had been shocked by the opulent life of the supercargoes when he first arrived in Canton. “It would be impossible,” he wrote in a letter home, “for me to dwell amidst the princely grandeur of the English who reside here.”50 And yet there he was, living in a home provided by the most powerful and rich of them all. But without John Roberts’s patronage Morrison could never have gotten established, so he was grateful. It was not the last such compromise he would make.
As the Napoleonic Wars ground on, the importance of the East India Company’s trade in China climbed sharply. Though Britain had in the 1780s reduced its tax on tea imports to 12.5 percent to combat smuggling from continental Europe, the country’s pressing need for funds to finance its naval war against France forced the government to begin squeezing the East India Company harder once again—and it was able to do so, in part, because the vast presence of British land and naval forces during the war made smuggling into England virtually impossible.51 The British government started raising its tax on the Company’s tea in 1795, during the third year of the war, and continued pushing it upward every year or two. In 1802 the tax on tea imports reached 50 percent and then, in 1806, 96 percent (it would climb to an even 100 percent in 1819).52
At the same time, the Company’s income from the China trade was completely swamping its revenues from India: in the first decade of the 1800s, the imports from Canton provided two-thirds of the entire sales income of the East India Company in London. By the latter part of that decade the China portion of its trade was bringing in record profits while the India trade operated in some years at a net loss.53 The effect was, first, to create a huge increase in the government’s tax revenue from the China trade—to the point that by some estimates as much as one-tenth of Britain’s national revenue derived from the trade at Canton.54 By corollary, the growing reliance of the British government on its tax revenues from the Company’s tea also meant that the stability of affairs in Canton became a matter of serious national interest. Any interruption to the China trade could interfere with Britain’s ability to finance its war.
And so when tensions from the global conflict coalesced once again around Macao in 1808, the situation escalated far more quickly and dangerously than it had in 1802. The spark was a similar one: the British in Canton heard a rumor that France was sending troops to occupy Macao. This time, however, the British would respond even more preemptively, a reflection that the nature of the war had changed in the six years since 1802. By 1808, Napoleon had subsumed nearly the entire European continent into his Continental System, to the exclusion of British trade. In the summer of 1807 he defeated Russia as well, and the British had recently learned with great alarm that Napoleon was proposing to Tsar Alexander that they go on to attack India together.55 Meanwhile, although Britain held the upper hand on the oceans, French cruisers were everywhere. In Southeast Asia in particular, the French had a major naval force near Java and exercised virtual control over the port of Manila in the Philippines.56 All of which meant that Britain’s China trade, with Macao as one of its two keys, was not only more important but also more vulnerable than it had ever been before.
In contemplating the prospect of renewed hostilities over Macao, the British and the Chinese both had the precedent of 1802 to guide them. To the Qing government, the lesson of 1802 was that the Canton governor-general’s firm resolution in cutting off supplies to the British fleet had worked. The ships had left soon after. Notwithstanding the external factor of the Treaty of Amiens, the departure of the British fleet from Macao in 1802 had been reported to Jiaqing as a victory for the dynasty.57 So it was clear to the Chinese government that if trouble should arise again it only needed to hold firm and the British would back down. Meanwhile, the British supercargoes in Canton and the directors of the East India Company in London had been relieved to avoid any harm to their trade in 1802 and remained wary of their inability to control the forces of the Royal Navy. For them, the lesson of 1802 was that they should do everything possible to avoid provoking the Chinese government. Both sides thus acknowledged that China had the upper hand—which was, in its way, a recipe for peace.
However, not everyone understood the precedent of 1802 in the same way. In particular, John Roberts, the new president of the select committee (and Robert M
orrison’s patron), saw in the renewed tensions of 1808 a chance for Britain to seize an advantage over the local authorities. In his opinion, the lack of more forceful action on the Chinese side in 1802—the very fact that Chinese troops had not opened fire on the British fleet when it first refused to leave—were proof that the Qing government had no effective means (or will) to counter a display of British force. The others on the select committee came to agree with him, or at least followed his lead. And so in March 1808 the committee wrote secretly to Lord Minto, the new governor-general of Bengal, that they did not think there would be any consequences if the British should send in another naval fleet and this time capture Macao. “Should it appear expedient to counteract any intentions of the Enemy by anticipating them in the possession of [Macao],” they wrote, “. . . in our opinion neither embarrassment to our affairs or any serious opposition are to be apprehended on the part of the Chinese Government.”58 In fact, they even speculated that the Chinese authorities might welcome a British presence in Macao, since the Royal Navy would undoubtedly be better than the Portuguese at suppressing pirates. Later, Roberts added his assurance that “any objections or impediments on the part of the Chinese will be of a temporary nature.”59
A naval fleet under Rear Admiral William Drury, the commander of British naval forces in India, arrived in September 1808. This time, however, there would be no Treaty of Amiens to resolve the situation externally. The British were also without an interpreter, as Staunton had already left for England before the tensions erupted. Thomas Manning apparently did not yet have strong enough language skills. Thus in spite of the insistence of the directors that the Company staff should have nothing to do with missionaries, they were reduced to asking Robert Morrison to help with translation. He declined on principle, however; the London Missionary Society had sent him to China to save the souls of the Chinese, not to act as some kind of diplomatic interpreter. It turned out to be a good decision on his part, for the Portuguese priest the British wound up hiring in his place was arrested by the Chinese authorities in Macao, stripped naked, and beaten. So vicious was his treatment at the hands of the Chinese, even after his release from prison, that the select committee eventually had to pay to send him to Brazil for his own safety.60
Events unfolded quickly. On September 11, 1808, Drury sent a letter informing the Portuguese governor at Macao that he intended to occupy the city. The Portuguese governor refused him and appealed to the Chinese governor-general for protection. On September 21, Drury landed three hundred marines who quickly took control of Macao’s shore batteries, against much protest but no physical resistance from the Portuguese. In response, the Chinese governor-general ordered a shutdown of British trade in Canton, forcing the Indiamen of the Company fleet—which were still fully laden with their cargoes from England—to remove themselves to Macao along with the supercargoes, who had to abandon their factory in Canton. Drury then called in seven hundred more troops from India to shore up his position at Macao.61
Following the script from 1802, the Chinese governor-general then warned that if the British marines did not withdraw, the fleet and all British residents in Macao would be cut off from food supplies. At that point in the escalation, Drury balked. He had not intended to start a war, nor did his orders authorize him to do so. But John Roberts egged him on, insisting that the Chinese were in the wrong and Drury should acknowledge “the impossibility of giving way to the Chinese so long as they persevered in their haughty conduct.” A few days later, Roberts suggested that Drury should open fire to intimidate the governor-general. Drury ignored him.62
When the reports of the British invasion of Macao reached the Jiaqing emperor in Beijing, he was furious. He issued an edict to the governor-general in Canton that “such a brutal eruption at Macao indicates an affrontery without limit,” dismissing completely Drury’s claim that his force was merely trying to protect Macao from the French. “To invoke such a pretext is to freely insult the Chinese empire,” Jiaqing wrote. “It is important in any case to raise considerable troops, attack the foreigners, and exterminate them. In this way, they will understand that the seas of China are forbidden to them.”63 In response to the emperor’s orders, and in the surest sign yet that this would not be a repeat of 1802, the governor-general called up eighty thousand Chinese troops at Canton and ordered all of the coastal forts in the vicinity to prepare for war. Word reached Drury that Chinese troops were under orders to kill any Englishmen who remained behind in Canton and burn their ships.
Roberts tried to get Drury to bluff, saying he should threaten war without meaning to go through with it. He felt sure that this would be enough to scare the Chinese into submission. If Drury backed down, Roberts warned, it would only teach the Chinese that they could push the British around at will. It would “completely satisfy [them] of the hold they have upon us by means of our Trade.” But this time, in contrast to 1802, the roles of the Company and navy were reversed. This time, it was the naval commander who counseled prudence. “Threats without meaning is not my manner of proceeding,” Drury responded in anger to Roberts. “It is scratching with a pin or squirting dirty water, and is the disguise of impotence.” He warned Roberts of two grave dangers if the British should refuse to withdraw from Macao. First, that it might stir up the popular, nationalist sentiment of the Chinese, “which is always furious, implacable, irresistible.” He pointed out that the invasion of Macao had “already irritated the Chinese to acts of hostility” and insisted that they must “avoid lighting that spark of enthusiasm which a breath would blow into flames and which,” he admonished Roberts, “the Chinese are not destitute of, however contemptible they are in your mind.”64
Furthermore, Drury knew there was an even greater danger to British interests than roiling the popular anger of the Chinese people. It was the exact same specter that had broken through Macartney’s own vengeful musings on how easily a handful of British warships could wreak destruction on China’s coast. Namely, that if Britain should threaten military action on Chinese soil, the emperor could simply shut down their Canton trade for good—and if he did so, Admiral Drury warned, it “would exclude the English forever, from the most advantageous monopoly it possesses in the Universe.”
So Admiral Drury backed down. He refused to risk starting a war with China because he believed it could never end in peace. Against the continued goading of John Roberts (who when Drury wouldn’t threaten war, tried to do so himself, twice, with no effect), Drury asked for a détente, sending word to the governor-general that he would remove his troops from Macao and leave with his ships as long as the trade in Canton might be restored. The governor-general concurred. Drury even went so far as to acknowledge the offensiveness of his own actions and, to his own testament, commended the moral grounds of the Chinese governor-general’s response—which, Drury wrote, had been “dictated by Wisdom, justice and dignified manhood, in support of those Moral Rights of Man, of Nations, and of Nature, outraged and insulted.”65
Drury withdrew his marines from Macao, and six days later the Qing governor-general restored trade in Canton. The Company ships returned to their anchorage at Whampoa and began unloading their cargoes of woolens, cotton, and silver, and the supercargoes moved back into their factory. Tea was bought, and the taxes would flow again into the British government’s coffers. The dominant mood on the British side was relief. In India, Lord Minto was quick to point out that he had never authorized Drury to make war in China, insisting that “it was never in our contemplation to suggest the prosecution of actual Hostilities.” He said he “highly approved” of Drury’s decision to retreat.66
Back in London, meanwhile, the directors of the East India Company were likewise relieved that serious conflict had been avoided at Canton, but they were astounded that John Roberts seemed to have forgotten all of the lessons of 1802. He had, they declared, recklessly endangered “the property . . . of the Company[,] their footing in China and the most valuable trade they possess.”67 They said they
would rather see France in possession of Macao than suffer the risk of a rupture with the Chinese government. They agreed with Drury that a war with China would be purely self-defeating, and to underline that point they voted unanimously to fire John Roberts for having done his very best to start one.
Roberts was removed as president of the select committee and recalled home, while the rest of the committee were demoted and replaced with more junior personnel. Still, their lot was better than that of their Chinese counterparts. Contrary to Staunton’s hopes that the new emperor would be more favorably minded toward foreigners than his father had been, Jiaqing was outraged that his soldiers hadn’t shown more muscle when the British first landed their troops at Macao. Disgusted with the timidity of his officials at Canton for not having used the full forces at their disposal, he removed the governor-general from office and sent him into exile in the empire’s godforsaken northwestern frontier. He likewise punished several other lower officials, blaming them for being too compromising with the British—and thus making it perfectly clear to those who succeeded them just what sort of position the emperor expected them to take in the future.68
CHAPTER 4
Sea and Land
Imperial Twilight Page 12
