![]() ![]() When Macartney arrived, Chinese authorities announced that he was bringing humble tribute from a foreign king. Macartney brought gifts for the Emperor, and presented a request from King George III that the Emperor facilitate greater foreign access to Chinese markets and allow a British ambassador to reside in China’s capital. The head of the mission was Lord George Macartney. The long-term effects of China’s policy became evident in 1793 when Britain sent a mission to China to establish official diplomatic and trade relations. Chinese policy continued to reinforce the economic and intellectual isolation that marked the character of China’s civilization over the succeeding centuries. But the Chinese authorities forbade foreign travel elsewhere in the country. Later, China did permit limited exceptions to the ban on private trade and allowed Europeans to set up trading posts at Canton on the coast of China. Like many people in self-satisfied societies, the Chinese, unnerved by interaction with foreign cultures and races, were alarmed by the pernicious influence of barbarian ideas. Also, there was a more fundamental motive against foreign contacts. But by now many Chinese officials were objecting to the high cost of such expeditions. Previous restrictions on private commerce with foreigners had, however, exempted such official voyages as those of Admirals Zheng and Zhou to collect tribute from foreign people whom the Chinese saw as inferior subjects. Another reason was to put economic pressure on Japan which needed Chinese imports, but which China looked upon as a hostile nation. Chinese authorities believed that suppression of trade for a limited period would result in an end of piracy as a lucrative business. One reason was widespread piracy of Chinese merchant vessels. The Emperor ordered the destruction of all private ocean-going vessels and he let the giant ships of his navy rot at their moorings.Ĭhinese restrictions on foreign trade had actually begun a generation earlier with a series of piecemeal measures. His Edict of Haijin banned all trade and interaction with the outside world. ![]() There is also strong evidence that another Chinese mariner, Admiral Zhou Man sailed along the west coast of America, perhaps reaching as far as Peru and Chile.īut although Emperor Xuando had authorized Admiral Zheng’s last voyage in 1430, the same Emperor in 1434 suddenly suspended all further official voyages. An inscription on a monument commemorating one of the voyages says that “from the edge of the sky to the ends of the earth there are none who have not become our subjects and slaves.”Īdmiral Zheng took his ships south into the East Indies, then west along the southern coast of Asia and down the east coast of Africa. ![]() Such a maritime capability could have given China control of the world’s seas, and made the Chinese Empire a global power.īut the purpose of these voyages was not conquest but to display to the world the great might of China and to demand tribute from other countries. Some of the ships were far larger than any other ships afloat. In 1430, his successor, Emperor Xuando, ordered what was to be Zheng He’s last voyage which lasted to about 1433.Īdmiral Zheng had commanded the largest fleets in the world at that time, each with one-hundred to three-hundred ships carrying sometimes over 25,000 men. Six of these expeditions took place between 1405-1424, by order of Emperor Yonglo (also known as Zhu Di). The 1434 Edict of Haijin came right after a series of large Chinese naval expeditions under the command of the great Chinese admiral Zheng He. It soon became a tempting target for the militarily advanced, imperialistic, colonial western nations of that period. As a result, China, which at that time was beyond doubt the world’s most advanced country, gradually became what historians sometimes call an “arrested civilization.”Ī few centuries later, by the 1800s, China’s long-running, self-satisfied policy of isolation had generated a backward, weak and stagnant nation. In that year he issued the Edict of Haijin that closed China off from the rest of the world. Probably the worst decision in human history was that of the Chinese Emperor Xuando (also known as Zhu Zhanji) in 1434. This illustration from the British Library’s collection of Western Drawings shows Lord Macartney’s first meeting with the Qianlong Emperor in 1793. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |