in the rather informal setting of a great tent in the grounds of the
summer palace at Chengde. Ceremonial protocol had been breached,
but not at the centre of the Chinese world in Beijing. Despite the
breach, the Macartney embassy was described as a tributary mission,
both on the banners accompanying it and in the official Qing records.
All attempts by Macartney to enter into meaningful negotiations were
blocked. In his first edict addressed to George III, the Qianlong
emperor commended the ‘respectful humility’ of the British monarch,
but rejected as ‘utterly unreasonable’ the request for a British repre-
sentative to be resident in Beijing. Qianlong continued:
Our dynasty’s majestic virtue has penetrated into every
country under Heaven, and Kings of nations have offered
their costly tribute by land and sea. As your Ambassador
can see for himself, we possess all things. I set no value on
objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your
country’s manufactures...^11Qianlong’s second edict, rejecting any liberalisation of trade, made
the point that the Chinese capital was ‘the hub and centre about
which all quarters of the globe revolve’, and so was hardly the place
for the conduct of trade. All private trade would continue to be con-
ducted at Canton; no new ports would be opened; and no ‘British
barbarian merchants’ would be permitted to establish a ‘factory’ on
Chinese soil.^12
Here the matter rested. The Chinese world order remained
intact, at least as far as the court was concerned. A Dutch mission fol-
lowing hard on the heels of Macartney was the last time a European
envoy kowtowed before a Chinese emperor. In 1816, a second British
embassy was summarily dismissed when it became clear that the envoy,
Lord Amherst, would refuse to conform to Chinese ceremonial—at a
time when Britain, following victory in the Napoleonic wars, was the
most powerful imperial power in the world.
A Short History of China and Southeast Asia