Empire: World History - 249. Victorian Narcos: Doomed Envoy to China (Ep 3)

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

Who led the first British envoy to China? What did Europeans think of China in the 1700s? Why did the diplomats bring a huge planetarium as a gift for the Chinese emperor?  William and Anita continue the story of the build up to the Opium Wars with the story of the doomed British envoy to China.   _____________ Empire Club: Become a member of the Empire Club to receive early access to miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to live show tickets, bonus episodes, book discounts, our exclusive newsletter, and access to our members’ chatroom on Discord! Head to empirepoduk.com to sign up. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com.  Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk  Blue Sky: @empirepoduk  X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Senior Producer: Callum Hill Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Duripur. Previously on this podcast, we did an episode with Nandi Li Das about a mission that was sent. from Great Britain to the Great Mughals. And in this mission, Britain wanted to impress upon the great Mughal Empire just how great it was.

And they sent these presents that they thought were fabulous to the Mughal Court. And, well, frankly, poor Thomas Rowe found out very quickly that all his presents were crap. And the Mughals just couldn't get less. And it's worse than Portuguese have come up with really good ones. Really good presents. And, I mean, half of them were broken. There was a carriage. They got shattered on the way over.

And this has got echoes of that. where we're not talking about India today, we continue to talk about China because, Willie, we are concerned with opium and the opium war. So just tell us where we're picking up the baton from last time. So we had two episodes at the start of our Victorian narco series, and we set up the fact that in the 18th century, the British discovered tea, and that it went from something that a few smart-ass sort of courtiers in London were sipping as a fashionable item to being the mainstay of the entire British public. And this had dramatic effects geopolitically around the world. It led horrifically to the Caribbean slave trade

in order to grow enough sugar for people to put in their tea in the Caribbean slave plantations. And this is the focus of what we're doing on this series. It also led to a massive trade deficit with China. The Chinese were receiving all the gold that the East India was making in India, plus more to pay for the tea that they wanted then to sell to the British. And then on to the colonies. Remember, this is the same time as the Boston Tea Party and its East India Company tea that's being dumped in Boston Harbour because of, and this is obviously very topical at the moment, because of tariffs and tax on that tea. Anyway, the way that the British solved this problem was characteristically dodgy way for the imperial times. The East India Company began to

force farmers in Bihar and parts of Bengal to plant large quantities. of opium poppies. And while they couldn't themselves sell the opium to the Chinese, because then the Chinese would ban them from trading in the tea trade, they auctioned off their opium at the Keys in Calcutta and leaving it for private traders, many of them Indian, and a lot of them, Parsi. I were going to hear more about that in the next episode. So suddenly, in the course of 18th century, China moves from being a place on the very peripheral of British consciousness to its main trading partner. And it's very important for Britain that it has good relations with China, not least because the British government has found that it can tax tea very heavily and that

it's gaining a great deal of its revenue from the tea tax. So if something goes wrong with the tea trade, not only do the British not get a cup of tea, but more worryingly for the government, they haven't got any revenue or a great chunk of their revenue disappears. So with all this in mind, the British decide to send a mission to the Qing court in China to open, for the very first time, diplomatic relations with China, which sounds like a relatively straightforward thing to do. Well, they've done it before. They've done it successfully before. I mean, they're very good at missions. They're very good at ambassadorial visits. You know, the brigade and the epaulettes and all of that stuff has managed to impress many foreign potentate around the world. And so that's the playbook that they intend to go with here. That's the playbook they intend to go with. But what they haven't taken in is that the Chinese, for 3,000 years, have a very particular way of dealing with diplomatic missions, which the Chinese regard as begging missions to be admitted to their presence and all ambassadors, not representatives

of potential trading partners who must be treated with respect and care, but instead as barbarians coming to offer felty at the heart of the world, which is the Chinese court. But I mean, partially as well, talking about sort of the kind of relationships between these countries, China stands alone as a country that has been long respected by the British. I mean, they've kind of been in awe of them. There's a wonderful quote you pinged over to me by Adam Smith in the wealth of nations, which describes China as one of the richest, that is one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, most populous countries in the world.

world. And he, Adam Smith, you know, who is sort of a hero to many economists or, you know, sort of, what's the word I'm trying? Hello, Lolan Scott. Was that what you're looking for? No, never, never that. Never, ever that. But free marketeers, that's right. That's what the phrase I was looking for. But for him, China is the model. And I'd really think it'd be really helpful to our listeners and our viewers, hello, to describe the Qing Empire, because it is sort of China at the height of her powers. I mean, how wealthy, how wealthy, how influential is the Qing dynasty at this time. The first thing I'd like to do is just complete that thought that you open up there about the European attitudes to China because it was surprising

to me, I have to say, because I've spent a lot of the last 20 years reading about European attitudes to India, which are almost from the beginning resolutely racist and derogatory. There are occasionally travellers who say nice things about mogul buildings and mogul architecture and so on. And diamonds and Ruby's and spinels. I mean, they like the bling. They like the bling. But in general, you know, you get what you expect from 18th and 19th century travellers, which is, you know, Europe is the model of all things and everything else should conform to it and where India's different from Europe, they criticise it. What is fascinating is that partly because none of them have ever really been to China and they're just imagining it because the Chinese, very sensibly, like the Japanese throughout the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, have stopped people coming, except in the case of China for one. small waterfront in Canton, which is where foreigners are meant to come if they want to trade with China. And they're lock, and we'll hear more about this in a second. They're locked into these what they call factories, the East Indy Company term for a trading station. It doesn't mean a sort of dark satanic mill churning out cloth or anything.

It means a place where factors live, in other words, members of the East Indy Company Brotherhood. And when Europeans are writing about China at the same time as they're writing about degenerate oriental despots in Istanbul or or Delhi, they imagined to themselves an Eden in China. And so characters like Voltaire, for example, in his philosophical dictionary of 1765, writes, Confucius had no interest in falsehood. He did not pretend to be a prophet. He claimed no inspiration. He taught no new religion. He used no delusions. And so they see an image of themselves, the kind of philosophers of enlightenment, in the great philosopher of ancient China. fascinating as well because, you know, again, like you, I've looked at some early accounts of

what they think Indians are like. And there is a moral bankruptcy that's always associated with being a native from everywhere else. Basically, if you're not English, you're not as good. And I wonder if that stark gulf is because they don't go, they're not allowed in. But what they get back is the art of China. So chinoiserie and the beautiful paintings and silks and the porcelains. So in their heads, anyone who could have produced this must be like us. The fact, we can't do it. Let's just put a pin in that for a second. But they're worthy of us. And that certainly seems reflected in Western Europe at the time. And just to complete that Voltaire thought and echo exactly what you're saying, quite contrary to the idea of an Oriental despot or the

choice epithets they call the moguls and the Ottomans, Voltaire says, I have found in the Chinese nothing but the purest morality without the slightest tinge of shalotanism. There is no house in Europe he observed, the integrity of which is so well proved as that of the empire of China. Now, in actual fact, that's, of course, wrong that like in Europe and like in India, there are successive dynasties who are all quite different from each other. There are crap people everywhere, as Volta might have written today. Very much.

I think I'm very much chattelling. Yes. For my inner Volta. Yes. You go good, you got bad. I mean, you know, that's what happens. This is the background. So not only are they dealing with a world that they have imagined as a sort of ancient version of the philosophers of 18th century Europe, they're now finding themselves heavily in debt to this place and that they are buying a product, which is, you know, the ancient drink of China.

Tees is a deeply embedded part of Chinese literary culture. And there's a whole, as we discussed in the last episode, there's a whole Buddhist and literary and Mandarin world built around tea ceremonies and so on. So the British decide that they really need to open up an embassy in Beijing. They need to have good relations with the emperor. And perhaps remembering, because I was thinking exactly the same thing, we haven't discussed this affair, that the failure of the initial East India Company embassies to Jahangir, because they didn't have enough bling and didn't have enough. They brought rubbish. They brought rubbish. They pulled rubbish.

And an organ. Poundland. I mean, honestly, that stuff wasn't. They thought it would be very impressive. Exactly. So in this case, they go to quite incredible lengths to get the embassy out. And shall I go into the presents? Would you like to know?

Absolutely. Because that shopping list is gorgeous. I mean, I'd not be disappointed if this arrived. So there's a huge research sort of effort put into this embassy to make sure they don't messed it up. And the first problem is there's virtually no one in Europe that speaks Chinese or has ever been to China so that they've got a problem. But they then discover from somewhere that in actual fact the Jesuits opened up relations with the Chinese court and that even at this moment, I don't know whether the British are aware of this, but there are Jesuits at the

court in China. In Beijing, which is a place where foreigners are not allowed to go. So the Jesuits have this extraordinary past to get into a place, you know, forbidden city, which it does what it says on the tin, you really can't go there at all, but the Jesuits are allowed in. And the Jesuits are informing the Chinese, although the British don't know this, about Western discoveries and astronomy, they're having philosophical discussions with Chinese astronomers and all this sort of stuff. But the British realised that there must be people in Italy, at least, who speak some Chinese, and they send off an expedition there, and they find not only other people, they're out to some Chinese people in Italy who were brought back. And so they

bring them over to England and the ambassador, Lord McCartney, who we're going to hear about in the second, plus several in his entourage start trying to learn a bit of basic Chinese. And they plan having talked to these people, the sort of things that they think that the Chinese were like. And they create this gigantic planetarium, which has taken nearly 30 years to build. I was deemed the most wonderful piece of mechanism ever emanating from human hands by the, I think by the salesman who sold it the embassy. Well, I mean, but the thing is they're not wrong. I mean, it is an impressive bit of kit. I mean, to people who viewed, you know, the protein planetariums in Europe at the time, this was nothing short of magic. It suddenly opened up a world that had only belonged to science.

And actually, when it comes to innovation and science, Britain has a reason to puff out its chest. It is very, very good at lenses, lens grinding, all of these things. You know, they have good stuff to give here. What else? What else? Apart from the planetarium. Chemical and philosophical apparatus. I love that. Several brass field guns, a sampling of muskets and sorts, howitz and mortars, two magnificent lusters, which seem to be elaborate chandeliers. Vases, which you think slightly cold to Newcastle to China. Well, I mean, they do good vases in China, but, you know. Clocks, an air pump, wedgewood China, and artworks to Picting everyday life in England.

Just what they want. But you missed my favourite thing. My favourite thing was a hot air balloon. The hot air balloon. Again, these things which not, you know, in Europe, again, this stuff of magic, you know, Mongofiae and, you know, sort of taking off into the heavens, defying the gods, suddenly, you know, making the sky a highway that you can travel. This stuff in Europe was seriously impressive.

And what this British embassy thought is that if we show them this stuff, We could be friends. We should be friends. We like them. We think they're brilliant. Now, you just mentioned Lord McCartney. Before we go to Lord McCartney, we've got to tell you about this wonderful Scotsman, another of my two-nationals. Okay. Scotsman first. Surprise. Shocker. Yes, go on. And his name is James Denwitty. And he's an astronomer and a natural philosopher. And he's responsible for the planetarium and the whole term balloon. But that's not all. He's also responsible for bringing a diving bell. Yes. I forgot about that. It was sea and air, that's right, sort of, you know, that we've got command over both of those realms. Isdenwady, perhaps a distant uncle or something?

I mean, do we need to cover that off very quickly before we met? There are other relations turning up later in the series, but not on this level. And thank God, says the entire listenership of Empire. Now, can we talk about McCartney? I'm surprised you didn't want to talk about. There is a bit of a Scots thing here because although born in Ireland, George Lord McCartney was of Scots-Irish heritage. Was he a posho? He was a posho.

He's also been the ambassador to Russia. But he realizes the importance of this. Not only will it be the first ever time the Brits have gone to Beijing, gone to the Chinese court, no one has ever done that before. But on top of that, this is now the country, which is the most important economic partner of Britain. It's like Peter Mandelson trying to go and sort out Trump in Washington. Although Madison knows it's a tricky job, McCartney doesn't know this yet.

But you said something to me before when you were talking about this, is that it was tantamount to a mission to Mars. because it was the undiscovered planet and it was the one that, you know, sort of inhabits a huge part of the romantic brain of Europe, but to be there, to be the first person to set foot on Chinese soil is deeply intoxicating for McCartney. Now what he does is he wants to look good for the Martians.

Oh, I love this. So he tries to imagine himself, what will really impress the Chinese? And so he designs himself a sort of peacock outfit, which he thinks is, you know, what ambassadors to China should wear. And there's a lovely quote. It's a suit of spotted mulberry velvet. Oh, dreaming.

Spotted mulberry velvet. Dreamy. I like the spots. I mean, dreaming. It's like Anna Wintour tearing her hair out from the root. Spotted mulberry, you say. Yes. With a diamond star and a ribbon, over which he won the full habit of the order of the bath,

which was like the kind of OBE or the CBE or something much grander, the K-C-B of its day. with the hat and the plume of feathers which form part of it. Dressed up like a peacock, he felt certain to be able to make a grand impression in the country that he and most of his entourage to say nothing of his countrymen had only ever encountered in his imaginations. Now that is a lovely quote from, I should quickly say, The Wonderful Imperial Twilight by Stephen Platt. Can I just say it isn't a deeply scholarly book, but Stephen is also a deeply funny man. So he has a very sort of straight delivery.

And then he'll just say something like, you know, McCartney turned up. And you'll ask a question like, wasn't he a bit hot? He's going to like a forest. He's going to go into Asia in a mulberry suit. He goes, yes, bloody hot, sweating like a pig. Potty, mulberry velvet. I love it. Okay, so he's got his bags packed.

He's got his suit ready. He's got his presence. His diving bell, his hot air balloon. Who are the personnel that he's taking with him? And you mentioned in Woody, but that's only one person. There's a father and son combo I'm quite obsessed with. There's a father and son combo. They're very good.

This is Sir George Staunton and his son also helpfully called George. So George Senior and George Jr. But George Jr. is very junior. He's only 11, isn't he? He's just a kid. He's just a baby, isn't he? But he's a kind of wonderkind, and George Senior clearly thinks he's even more of a genius than he actually is.

And so I think he starts his Chinese lessons. Sounds like an Indian dad. My son is a genius. Yeah. It's exactly that. So Sir George Staunton is actually only McCartney's secretary. That's his official job. but he assumes a larger than life part in this because his son George will go on to become

and we will meet him in subsequent episodes the, or certainly he will appoint himself as the great British expert on China because he's one of the very few people in Britain that speaks Chinese and even fewer that have been to China after this expedition. Just very briefly, because being the mother of boys in that postcode, George Very Jr. has the distinction of he's been trained by the Jesuit, so that's where he gets his knowledge of China. age 11 he can't be very fluent, surely. That's one of the great things.

Dad clearly thinks that he's completely fluent in Chinese. And as we will see, that turns out not to be the case at all. Can I just tell you, every parent who has a child doing GCSE French as I do will know this. No, mum, I'm on top of it. I'm completely fluent. I can converse. You've just come back from a holiday process. I have, and we tested that theory out.

And let me tell you, it doesn't stand up to great scrutiny. Send the boy in for a baguette, comes back with a beanstalk. Anyway, on you go. So the thing that they're most proud of in this expedition is, of course, the letter from King George III, who is the king at this time. King George, for those who are not British and haven't sat watching the wonderful Alan Bennett play or movie of the madness of King George, was the famous king who both went mad and lost America, which is too unfortunate. You'll be back. Do do, do, do, do, do, do. Not yet and indeed in Hamilton.

That's it. But he has recently been resuscitated by Andrew Roberts, my contemporary at Cambridge, of a slightly different political persuasion to me. Slightly. And Andrew, actually, I thought, made a very good case. I enjoyed his book on George III for all the political differences. And he makes a very good case that George is an underrated king. Anyway.

That's another time. Yes, another time for that. I mean, he is just for those who don't know. He is in Britain always written off because of the madness of King George. He is somebody who just completely do lally. But actually, he was in brief marshalling a very difficult situation with an impossible son, who really was the bonkers member of the family. So this King George, who, you know, has been much maligned for mental health issues,

does understand better than most people how to smother somebody in diplomatic love, love bond them diplomatically. So he writes a letter where he refers to the Chinese emperor. Can I read a bit of it? Because it's just so good. I won't do it justice if I appreciate it. It's addressed to the Supreme Emperor of China. Worthy to live tens of thousands and tens of thousands of years.

Not just one tens of thousands, but tens and tens. It's not enough one. And he says, you know, why the English are coming over and why the mission was for the sake of discovery to better their own civilization and our own. You know, it's all such a good thing. And he talks about China in the most glowing terms, which we've already sort of discussed is pretty sincere. And above all, King George insists, our ardent wish has been to become acquainted with those celebrated institutions of Your Majesty's populace, an extensive empire which have carried its prosperity to such a height as to be the admiration of all surrounding nations. So again, you know, a tone taken with China

that is pretty unique. We're going to take a break. Join us after the break where we find out who the letter, who McCartney, and who the diving bell and balloon are going to be visiting. Welcome back. So before the break, we were talking about the prep, the Mulberry spotted suit. They're good to go. They are good to go. Tell us about who they're going to visit, because I don't feel we've really done justice to the man who is going to live for tens of thousands and tens of thousands of years. The Qing emperor, name him and describe him for us. So the Chianong emperor is one of the longest ruling figures in Chinese history, in fact, and rules from 1735 to 1796, which is almost a record.

Now, he's a Manchu, which is important. He is not ethnic Chinese. There are various points in Chinese history when the Chinese get conquered, first by, for example, the Mongols, the Yuan. And you have the Yuan dynasty. And this is the Manchu dynasty. And the Manchus are from, of course, Manchuria over the Great Wall. They are a military elite.

They don't share the top ranks of their kingdom with the ethnic Chinese, who are kept under. but they're very successful and it's important to recognize this in the story of the open wars which we're going to be looking at for the next few episodes and you can't understand in a sense

why the Chinese court behaves the way it does unless you realize that this is also an empire at the peak of its power and they've conquered great chunks of the area around China so they've conquered Shenzang which hasn't been in Chinese hands since the Tang period

and they conquered Tibet which within not living memory, but several centuries earlier had been raiding into the heart of China. So they've done very well militarily. And they are a military elite who are very proud of their military traditions. The Cheonong Emperor himself is a remarkable man. He's a calligrapher, a man of parts. And so it's the meeting. And this is what we have to keep in mind, because we know that the open war is coming and this is going to be the century of humiliation. but this is actually when this interaction begins,

the meeting of the two greatest empires in the world. And also very, I'm really glad you mentioned the foreshadowing. Normally I get cross with you. When you say, you get cross with me, even when I don't spoil the plot. I mean, about everything. But the century of humiliation, it really is important to know the height from which the Chinese fell, because they feel it, they know it, and they talk about it even today. And you know on Empire, what we try and do is we try and explain what's going on in the world today through the lens of history.

Like look at what happened before and might this be why people feel the way they do today? And that certainly is the case here. Before we get to the actual meeting, we haven't really done the voyage because it's not a hop, skip and a jump to China, is it? It takes a long, long time and it takes big, big ships, especially if you're taking the kind of kit they're taking. So, I mean, tell us about their months and months at sea. trying to get to China? It's quite important to take in that this is not just a British voyage to China and a British embassy. It's a joint British Crown Embassy with the East India Company. And people get very muddled by this. At this point in history, in the 1780s,

everything, all British interests east of the Cape Good Hope are controlled by a London company, the East Indy Company, which has an office in Ledenhall Street. It has a share price on the London Stock Exchange, and you can buy shares in it. And it has, at this point, a larger army than the British Army. They've actually got an army twice the size of the British Army. The British Army is about 100,000 men. The East India Company Army is 200,000 men. So there are two ships which set off.

One is HMS Lion, which is a government ship from the Royal Navy. And the other is the East India Company merchant ship, Hindustan. So perhaps Hindustan is the one that's got all the diving bells and so on on it. But this is a big embassy. There are 400 passengers on HMS land before you include the crew. And Hindustan carries 66 East India Company officials. This is huge. It's a really big.

And this should be something again. I mean, I don't think that's why they do it, because the East India Company have the best knowledge of merchant seaways. and, you know, they're very good at navigating this kind of water. But it is also, I wonder, a sort of a way of actually being incredibly impressive that, you know, you sort of turn up with these two extraordinary ships because, you know, Britain's very proud, quite rightly of its ships. We're talking 1792, big fluttering penance coming towards, you know, China, the harbour on the horizon.

This should be a really impressive entry to great fanfare with these two ships, they think. Because we've talked about this before, the Chinese have never really been. bothered themselves with sea. You know, they haven't. Other than that one moment, we did that nice episode. Yes. Last Christmas, not this Christmas,

but one Christmas ago, about the great admiral. Yes, but one admiral, William. I mean, but ships and sort of seas and because they are a very self-contained empire, and they sort of have everything that they want.

So notionally, the Brits are right. You know, you send these two great galleons over. It should be impressive. We have mastery of the seas. and under the seas and in the sky. Love us. That is the message even before you arrive or set foot on the soil.

Yes. So they go kind of a sunny odd route. They go via Madeira, Tenerife, Rio, the Cape of Good Hope, Java and Sumatra. All the party capitals, yes. All the party capitals. I don't think George Staunton is out at nightclubbing. He's still busy trying to get his Chinese grammar sorted out. And then they reach the Portuguese territory of Macarum.

It's worth remembering that the Portuguese have a little inlet of that. own on the coast of China, which has been there since the 17th century. They go up the coast, and in the summer of 1793, they sail up the LOC towards Tianjin. And they're met by Chinese official, who again showed no particular enthusiasm to receive this embassy, but go through the ancient diplomatic maneuvers that are written down in the Chinese textbooks for 2,000 years of how you receive, as they see it, barbarian envoys bringing tribute. And the first thing is that they haven't kind of realized quite how far Beijing is from the sea, because no Brit has ever been there. And then they discovered that the emperor isn't even in Beijing.

He's because he's a Manchu. He has gone up to the hills to Manchuria for the summer, or halfway to Manchuria to Jehole. Jehole. Jehole's an interesting place. It's sort of surrounded by mountains. It's very picturesque. It's very, you know. Have you been there?

I've only seen it on the Google. What's it like? I went on this trip. The first big trip I ever did was following Marco Polo. For Insanadu? And Zanadu is very, not very close, but fairly close to Jehole. And I took the same route that these guys are about to take. So you start at Beijing and then you head northwards through the Great Wall,

through these incredible mountains with the wall running over it. Yeah. And Jehole is a wonderful, much nicer in my taste. I have to say, I'm normally one that prefers everything Indian to things Chinese. But in terms of hill stations, I'd take Jeholl over any Indian hill station ever. It's on lakes surrounded by wooded mountains. Yeah. They have wonderful Mongol hotpots, is the kind of standard foods.

And the first of it, I'd ever come across one. They have those sort of funneled, bubbly things, and you drip bits of very, very thin beef or vegetables into the hot pot with your chopsticks. And so I thought it was an utterly delightful place. It's the on-trend way of eating, by the way, in London at the moment. Sort of, you know, dip your meat in the hot broth. So this would have been no surprise to the Cheered Long Emperor who would have regarded it as natural that the Brits would want to eat like him in this manner.

Well, they are now. It's taken a while, but they are definitely doing now. Anyway, so poor old Dinwiddie and his telescope. and things are left behind in Beijing. And they decide they might get damaged by the journey into the mountains. So they take a call. And they think the emperor must come back to Beijing. And they imagine that they're going to be in China for, you know, maybe a year

and a half or something. Right. They've been like some Napoleon arriving in Egypt. They've got their scholars. They've got their scientists. And this is a major opportunity for the British to study this new country. As you say, arriving on Mars. So they're in no hurry to kind of impress the emperor.

They're so confident the Chinese are going to be thrilled to open diplomatic relations with Britain, cancel all tariffs, welcome them into every port of the empire, that Dinwiddie is left behind to reassemble his planetarium of 20,000 moving parts. And Staunton, senior and junior, George and George, plus McCartney, head on through the Great Wall. And they are as impressed as I was by the Great Wall as they come to it. little George Staunton helps himself to some stones, which he puts into his... That is such a little George thing to do. I mean, little child thing to do, isn't that lovely? Well, McCarny, who's writing a very full journal because he realizes that this is going to be, as he imagines, hugely successful embassy is going to be a major part of British history

and that he must have a full logbook to record everything that happens. So he writes this entry saying that the Great Wall is the most stupendous work of human hands. was a sign not only of a very powerful empire, but a very wise and virtuous nation. Difficult to tell why he's particularly assumed this from the wall. The wall, of course, is now out of use because the wall was built to keep the Manchus out of China. But the mantis are now ruling China. Yes. Job done.

Job not done, yeah. So they head north from the wall into Manchuria, but what they call in 18th century British geography, Tartary, which is a lovely word. There's that Peter Fleming book, News from Tartary. And they find themselves, as I did in 1986 when I was going to Zanadoo, in something that looks a bit like the Swiss Alps. I mean, wonderful mountains with snow tops, lots of woods on the lower. Crystal blue lakes.

Clear air. All that sort of thing, crisp mornings. So they're all in very high spirits, and they think it's all going terribly well. They're very, very pleased. But you know what? It's not. It's really not going well. at all. Can I just say one other thing just before we get to the actual meeting where they're still

blissfully unaware that is going very wrong or it's about to go very wrong? But the other thing, I mean, we talked a bit about the Qing Empire at the height of its power. Did we mention that this is an empire of four and a half million square miles, which makes it larger than all of Europe put together? So no wonder they're impressed as they're making their way through the wall, it's bigger than all of Europe. So the scale of it, you know, just forget about it. Just forget about the clear air and the lakes for a moment, which are also very beautiful and lovely. It's huge and they know it. So they're almost right from the get-go dwarfed by the scale of this meeting. Everything is riding on this meeting that is first of all taking place in a city. They didn't want it to take place in because they're diving bell and their balloon and their planetarium are back in Beijing.

Ships are on the coast. This is miles away from the coast. They haven't even seen the ships. They've seen nothing. They've got to all this trouble. kind of weaponry they brought to the kind of they can't they can't haul cannon onto this it's not diplomatic what are they going to do so they're just plodding along you know and but what i love william is that they think they're going to turn up and just by force of mulberry suit we're here they've got none of their stuff we've come anyway do go on because i'm coming to the end of this and they've been on the road exactly a year now is one of the extraordinary things it's taken so long to leave London and travel via Rio

and all the party places that they were going to that they realised that as they approach Jehole, it's exactly a year since they set off from the Thames. And is it true to say that they don't even know they're going to get an audience until they get there? I think they assume, with their characteristic optimism, that they're going to be received,

and that the emperor's going to come and embrace them in a sort of enthusiastic manner. But from what I understand, and again, Stephen Platt, is very good on this, is that they don't have that cast iron guarantee. They're making this journey without any of their presence in a mulberry suit, spotted mulberry suit, but they don't know. But luckily when they arrive, I suppose to be polite, the emperor does grant them. But there is a big butt and we will find what that but is in the next episode.

Oh, it's such a big butt. Join us for the next episode of Empire when we talk. One of the biggest butts. Of diplomatic history. The history of diplomatic butts. Until the next time we meet is goodbye from me, Anita Arnann. And goodbye from me, William Duremberg.