Britain, industry and perceptions of China: Matthew Boulton, 'useful knowledge' and the Macartney Embassy to China 1792-94

Journal of Global History

Volumn 1, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 269-288

  Berg, Maxine ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60950319739     PISSN: 17400228     EISSN: 17400236     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S1740022806000167     Document Type: Review

References (64)

1. E. L. Jones, The European miracle: environments, economies and geopolitics in the history of Europe and Asia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981;
2. Kenneth Pomeranz, The great divergence: China, Europe and the making of the modern world economy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
3. Joseph Needham and Wang Ling, Science and civilisation in China: vol. 4, physics and physical technology, part 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965, pp. 436-77;
4. Mark Elvin, The pattern of the Chinese past, London: Eyre Methuen, 1973, pp. 179-99;
5. James L. Hevia, 'The Macartney Embassy in the history of Sino-Western relations', in Robert Bickers, ed., Ritual and diplomacy. The Macartney mission to China 1792-1794, London: Wellsweep, 1993, pp. 57-79.
6. Jones, The European miracle, pp. 202-22;
7. Joel Mokyr, The lever of riches: technological creativity and economic progress, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 209-38;
8. David Landes, 'East is east and west is west', in Maxine Berg and Kristine Bruland, eds., Technological revolutions in Europe: historical perspectives, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1998, pp. 19-38.
9. For the most recent discussion see Simon Schaffer, 'L'inventaire de l'astronome. Le commerce d'instruments scientifiques au xviiie siècle (Angleterre-Chine-Pacifique)', Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 60, 4, juillet-août 2005, pp. 791-815.
10. A nother version of this article will be published as 'Instruments as cargo in the China trade', History of Science, 44, 2006, pp. 1-30.
11. On Chinese responses to the embassy as set within wider frameworks of Chinese science, and especially astronomy, see Harriet Zurndorfer, 'Comment la science et la technologie se vendaient à la Chine au XVIIIe siècle. Essai d'analyse interne', Études Chinoises, 7, 1988, pp. 59-90.
12. British Library, India Office Records (henceforth BL, IOR), 'An account of sundry articles purchased by Francis Baring Esq., Chairman ... consigned to the care of ... Lord Viscount Macartney', Lord Macartney's Embassy to China. Miscellaneous Letters 1792-5, Factory Records China and Japan 1596-1840, G/12/92, pp. 545-86.
13. The Catalogue of presents is reprinted in J. L.Cranmer-Byng, 'A case study in cultural collision: scientific apparatus in the Macartney Embassy to China, 1793', Annals of Science, 38, 1981, pp. 503-25, 520-3.
14. Birmingham Central Library, Matthew Boulton Papers, China Trade, Lord Macartney's Embassy, 1792, MS 3782/12/93 (henceforth BCL, MBP, Macartney's Embassy). On Matthew Boulton see H. W. Dickinson, Matthew Boulton, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1937.
15. Joel Mokyr, The gifts of Athena. Historical origins of the knowledge economy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002, pp. 9-15.
16. Holden Furber, Rival empires of trade in the Orient, 1600-1800, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976, pp. 131, 177, 175;
17. Hoh-Cheung and Lorna H. Mui, Shops and shopkeeping in eighteenth-century England, London: Routledge, 1989, p. 250;
18. Hoh-Cheung and Lorna H. Mui, 'Trends in eighteenth-century smuggling reconsidered', Economic History Review, 28, 1975, pp. 28-43, p. 42;
19. Also see Hoh-Cheung and Lorna H. Mui, 'Smuggling and the British tea trade before 1784', American Historical Review, 74, 1968, pp. 44-73;
20. David Mackay, In the wake of Cook. Exploration, science and empire, 1780-1801, London: Croom Helm, 1985, pp. 181-2.
21. See the case I have made for this invention of new British products in Maxine Berg, Luxury and pleasure in eighteenth-century Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
22. On Wedgwood's and Boulton's responses to Chinese products, see Robin Reilly, Wedgwood, 2 vols., London: Macmillan, 1989, vol. 1, pp. 87, 143;
23. Rose Kerr and Nigel Wood, 'Ceramic technology', in Science and civilization in China, vol. 5: Chemistry and chemical technology, part 12, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 740-72.
24. Mokyr, The gifts of Athena, pp. 28-77.
25. Frederick Wakeman, 'The Canton trade and the opium war', in John K. Fairbank, ed., The Cambridge history of China, vol. 10, part 1, 1978, pp. 163-212, esp. pp. 163-78.
26. Louis Dermigny, La Chine et l'Occident: Le commerce à Canton au XVIIIe siècle, Paris: SEVPEN, 1964, vol. 3, pp. 1101-28, sets out the events leading up to the Macartney Embassy;
27. H. B. Morse, The chronicles of the East India Company trading to China 1635-1834, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926, vol. 2, pp. 213-4.
28. Morse, The chronicles, vol. 2, p. 215.
29. P. J. Marshall, 'The Bengal Commercial Society of 1775: private British trade in the Warren Hastings period', Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, vol. 42, 1969, pp. 173-87;
30. Mackay, In the wake of Cook, pp. 181-2.
31. Dermigny, La Chine et l'Occident, vol. 3, pp. 1118-19;
32. Marshall, 'Britain and China in the late 18th Century', p. 20.
33. MacKay, In the wake of Cook, pp. 73-77.
34. 'Instructions of the East India Company to Lord Macartney', reprinted in Morse, The chronicles, vol. 2, p. 233,
35. Tseng-Tsai Wang, 'The Macartney Mission: a bicentennial review', in Bickers, Ritual and diplomacy, pp. 43-56, p. 48.
36. James L. Hevia, Cherishing men from afar: Qing guest ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1995, p. 61
37. Wang, 'The Macartney mission', pp.46-7;
38. J. L. Cranmer-Byng, An embassy to China. Being the journal kept by Lord Macartney during his embassy to the Emperor Ch'ien -Lung 1793-1794, London: Longmans, 1962, pp. 35, 338.
39. Marshall, 'Britain and China in the late 18th century', in Bickers, Ritual and diplomacy, pp. 11-30, pp. 14-16;
40. cf. Dermigny, La Chine et l'Occident, p. 1121.
41. Cited in Marshall, ibid., pp. 24-5.
42. Sir George Staunton, An authentic account of an embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China, Dublin, 1798, p. 32.
43. Cranmer-Byng, An embassy to China, p. 24;
44. Schaffer, 'L'inventaire de l'astronome ', pp. 791-2.
45. In Warren R. Dawson, The Banks letters. A calendar of the manuscript correspondence, London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1958, p. 665 (from Catalogue of Messrs. F. J. and A. E. Dobell, 15.49).
46. Zurndorfer, 'Comment la science', pp. 67-72.
47. Hevia, Cherishing men, p. 79.
48. See Marcia Pointon, 'Dealer in magic: James Cox's jewelry museum and the economics of luxurious spectacle in late-eighteenth-century London', History of Political Economy, Supplement, 31, 1999, pp. 423-51.
49. Schaffer, 'Inventaire de l'astronome', pp. 803-4.
50. On Samuel Garbett see P. W. Bebbington, 'Samuel Garbett 1717-1803', Birmingham University MComm Thesis, 1938, Birmingham University Library, p. 100.
51. On Boulton's friendship with Garbett (1715-1803) see Dickinson, Matthew Boulton, p. 39.
52. David Landes, The wealth and poverty of nations, London: Little, Brown and Company, 1998, pp. 335-49.
53. Cranmer-Byng, 'Lord Macartney's Embassy', pp. 136-7.
54. Macartney to Dundas, 9 November 1793, cited in Schaffer, 'L'inventaire de l 'astronome', p. 801.
55. Dinwiddie afterwards gave scientific lectures in Canton, but there is no indication whether he demonstrated the model engine. He did do so in India after the expedition when he travelled to Calcutta with some varieties of tea plants for the East India Company's botanic garden. BL, IOR, Lord Macartney to the Chair & Deputy at Canton, Canton, 23 December 1793, Factory Records. China and Japan. G/12/92, p. 381; William Jardine Proudfoot, Biographical memoir of James Dinwiddie, Liverpool, 1868.
56. BL, IOR, Factory Records China and Japan 1596-1840, G/12/92. An account of sundry articles purchased by Francis Baring Esq., Chairman ... consigned to the care of ... Lord Viscount Macartney, Lord Macartney's Embassy to China. Miscellaneous Letters 1792-95, pp. 545-86.
57. Margaret Jacob, Scientific culture and the making of the industrial west, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 106, 115;
58. Larry Stewart, 'A meaning for machines: modernity, utility, and the eighteenth-century British public', Journal of Modern History, 70, 1998, pp. 259-94;
59. On early industrial exhibitions see Toshio Kusamitsu, 'Great exhibitions before 1851', History Workshop Journal, 9, 1980, pp. 70-89.
60. These first provincial exhibitions started in 1837. Much more specialized and temporary exhibitions were common from the mid-eighteenth century. Robert Anderson, 'Workers and collections', unpublished paper for 'History of Science' seminar, Oxford, 18 May 2004.
61. Cited in Alain Peyrefitte, The collision of two civilisations: The British expedition to China in 1792-4, translated by Jon Rothschild, London: Harvill, 1993, p. 221.
62. Aeneas Anderson, An accurate account of Lord Macartney's embassy to China: carefully abridged from the original work with alterations and corrections by the editor who was also an attendant on the embassy, London: Vernor and Hood, 1797, p. 95.
63. Natacha Eaton, 'Between mimesis and alterity: art, gift and diplomacy in colonial India, 1770-1800', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 47, 2004, pp. 816-44.