Challenges to the Chinese world order
Apart from the Russians, only two eighteenth-century European mis-
sions were received at the Qing court before the famous embassy of
Lord Macartney arrived in 1793. Both were from Portugal—one in
1727, the other in 1753. Neither dented the tributary system, even
though each established a small precedent. On the first, the ambassa-
dor succeeded in presenting his credentials in person, rather than
through the intermediary of Chinese officials. On the second, protests
that this was not a tributary mission were apparently acknowledged,
but not recorded. This was not an accidental omission. Chinese
bureaucrats regularly wrote reports that envoys had performed exactly
as Chinese protocol demanded, even when they had not. They even
redrafted correspondence from foreign rulers that did not sound suffi-
ciently submissive. This preserved Chinese convictions about their
place in the world, but at the expense of distorting what the world was
really like.
The Macartney embassy provided the first official contact
between a British king and a Chinese emperor. By the second half of
the eighteenth century, Dutch power had declined and Britain was the
rising hegemonic European power. Of these developments the Qing
court seems to have been largely unaware. In the meantime, however,
European knowledge of China had improved, mainly through the writ-
ings of Jesuits serving at the Qing court. At any rate, the Macartney
mission was the first to attempt to impress upon the Chinese that it
represented not a tributary barbarian kingdom, but an empire of equiv-
alent standing and status as that of the Qing. Lord Macartney insisted
in handing over his letter from George III to the emperor in person,
and refused to perform the kowtow as demeaning both to himself and
to his king and country.
Even so, the Qing court managed to preserve the Chinese world
order. Lord Macartney was allowed to present his letter on one knee,
Enter the Europeans