Empire: World History - 250. Victorian Narcos: Banished From Beijing (Ep 4)

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

How did the Macartney Mission fail so spectacularly? Where does the word ‘kowtow’ come from? Why were the diplomats banished from the Forbidden City? Listen as William and Anita continue the story of how the Macartney expedition completely failed to develop diplomatic relations with imperial China in 1793.  _____________ 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.mparpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durimple. Yes. So the last cliffhanger we left you on. Yes. Is it?

It's you again. No, yay, it's you again. So look, the last episode, we'd left you on the cliff edge, or rather mountain crag. The British ambassador to China would be British ambassador to China. Lord McCartney has finally made it to the summer kingdom of the great emperor, the great Qing emperor. And, you know, they'd been, how many months are they on the road? You said something. It's extraordinary.

A year, 12 whole months on the road to try and get to. to see this man. And if you have not listened to the last episode, go back and listen to it. It's very funny. But all these gifts, which were really important to impress the emperor, they've had to leave behind in the capital capital of Beijing, because, you know, it's a trek into mountainous territory and everything would have been smashed to pieces. And they've learnt their lessons from previous embassies where lovely gifts, they think, are smashed to pieces in bumpy rides. So they leave all their stuff in the capital, Beijing. They have just gone. a small group to go and greet the emperor, they have it in their minds that they're going to turn up.

They're going to be embraced and, you know, it's going to be fabulous and a brave new world is going to open up of trade links and everybody getting very, very rich. Not quite. We left it on a big butt, you know, really, a really very big butt. There is indeed a very big butt. And the butt is the cowtow. Now, in Chinese diplomatic protocol, there is no such thing as an ambassador to the court of China. There's merely submissive barbarians bringing tribute.

And the first thing they have to do before, they can be allowed to trade with the Middle Kingdom or to open diplomatic relations of any sort. They have to show their submission. And this is made very clear to the British embassy by the officials who have been delegated to teach them civilised behaviour. And I need to explain what the cowtow is. So the cowtow... Actually, it's passed into common parlance.

You know, don't kowtow to his bullying behaviour. It means don't sort of give in completely and acquiesce completely. But the actual kowtow is the lowest, humblest sort of bow. So you're on your knees. So, you know, your big butt or your bottom in between your legs. And on your knees and you lean down to the ground with your hands in front of you. between your legs. If you're sitting on your heels, that kind of thing.

Or, you know, if you're limber in between. So look, and then you go down, so your head touches the ground, hands either side, and you touch the ground a number of times. That is the cowtower. It's basically, it's as low as you can go in front of the Great Emperor, you know, to show that you are basically dust between his toes. That's what it is. And that is why it's not easy for a man representing

Great Britain to do that, is it, William? In the 18th century, no, they absolutely are forbidden from doing that by diplomatic protocols. So you have two, before anything else happens, you have two completely immovable and irreconcilable diplomatic protocols. The Chinese demand that you go flat on your face and worship the emperor. And George III has commanded that absolutely not. So McCarney initially tries to negotiate and there's a lot of haggling with the officials. Is it okay if he goes down on one knee rather than two?

Does he have to put his face on the ground? They spend a week knocking these ideas backwards and forwards. And they are completely unaware that this is absolutely the worst possible behaviour in Chinese eyes. It's really annoying them. It's like, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? There's one knee thing. And McCartney comes back, go, look, no, no, this is how we do it where I come from.

You know, in front of our king, that's what we do. It's like a great, you know, humbling thing. Go down on one knee in front of take the knee in front of the king. But the Chinese are having none of it. What's interesting, William, is that the Brits do not know how angry the Chinese are getting about this. They think they're having like a reasonable conversation. They're very polite to your face. But back in the, you know, backrooms of the imperial palace, they're like, what the hell are they doing?

Who's ever heard of going down on one knee? This is not negotiable. And particularly the emperor is incredibly angry and is about to kind of cancel all the audiences. As far as he's concerned, they've broken all diplomatic protocol already. And maybe they do sense this a bit because what happens, we only learn much later when young George Thornton is advising a future diplomatic mission is they basically decide to lie to their own bosses and to agree to kowtow. But don't tell anyone. not to tell the British that they've done it. Say we never done it.

And this only emerges in the Amherst mission, the next attempt to open diplomatic relations when the Chinese say, but the last lot did it in the end. And they said, no, no, no, no, absolutely didn't. We've got his book here. Young George Staunton, who is now a middle-aged MP or even a now rather senior MP, admits that there was fibbing going on. That he did do it. They did do it, but didn't include it in the official record of what went on.

So having, without realising it, completely pissed off every official in the Chinese court and made the emperor irate with fury, they finally get their audience and go down flat on their faces as they've been asked to do. I think they have a few gifts that maybe the weaponry or something. Portable things, swords and things, whatever you can carry. But not the biggies, not the big ticket items. they're not there. And they give what the Chinese regard as their tribute. And also, of course, the Chinese, as Jahangir had been centuries earlier in the Mogul, were incredibly disappointed by the presents because they were not only had they left the best ones behind,

but rumours of how wonderful these presents were going to be had gone ahead of them. And everyone is slightly like Christmas when, you know, you find everyone's given you the present you don't want. They brought the equivalent of socks. They brought socks to the emperor. Oh no, okay. Exactly. Oh, you shouldn't have. I never actually had socks became a thing anyway to give.

Right up to this point, McCartney has no idea of how offended the emperor is. We know because the Chinese record survive. And four days before the audience, the Chenlong emperor was already so furious about McCartney's dithering that he had issued an edict to his ministers expressing in great displeasure with the British and declaring that he would no longer show them any extra favours. And I think the officials just don't communicate this. So there's a lot of fibbing going on on both sides. The British are not telling their bosses what they're actually doing and the Chinese officials are not carrying the message from the emperor. Right. So I mean, when you say that the emperor has pretty much cut them off, what has he said

exactly that's not being transmitted, that he's not going to do a deal, he's not going to meet them again, they can do one with their socks and leave. I mean, how angry? How angry is he? The message that the Emperor gives to his officials is that he had originally planned to let McCartney stay for a while and enjoy the sights of Jehole, which I can witness from personal experience and well worth seeing this most gorgeous place. And it's a place that takes several days to see. And I've been to the audience hall there, which is this gorgeous sort of wooden miniature of the forbidden city moved to this hill station, the midwoods. Okay, describe it in words, because there are people who have not been to the

Forbidden City, me. And there are people who haven't been to this one in Jeolven. So what does it look like? The Forbidden City is sort of spectacular and vast. And it's like, you know, it's like something five or six times the size of Buckingham Palace with a whole succession of court chards finally reached the final audience hall. This in Jehol is a miniature version of that. And these lovely little wooden pavilions in woods. It's utterly heavenly. And when you go there today, you see all the Chinnong Emperor's robe. and all that sort of stuff on display there. It's wonderful. So, anyway, the message goes out from the emperor to the officials that the British embassy has caused his majesty great displeasure. They're told that they can keep the gifts that were planned for them, he says, and hold the meetings that had been promised,

but otherwise they were cut off. Now, this isn't clearly passed on, or certainly if it is passed on, it's done in such diplomatically oliginous way that the British just missed the point of it. and they don't realize that the emperor has ticked them off for, as he puts it, their presumption and self-importance. Right. Which is quite strong stuff.

No, no. But doesn't it get stronger with him? Because he says, you know, when they say, look, these aren't actually the proper gifts. The socks are not. They're just a token. We've got better things than the socks. And he says, look, strange and costly objects do not interest me. We possess all the things.

I set no value on objects strange or ingenious. and I have no use for your country's manufacture. I mean, that is a stinging rebuke. This also is relayed back to Britain because they can't sort of avoid saying that. Well, they can't trade. You've got no trade deal because he says he doesn't like any of your stuff. And then he adds, just to sort of add insult to injury, he says, when foreigners come seeking audience with me and when they are sincere and submissive,

then I always treat them with kindness as the emperor. But if they come in arrogance, they get nothing. So, certainly like going to see Trump at the moment if he was Zelensky. He gets a diplomatic ticking off. But again, with the kind of bullheadedness of the British of this period, are completely unaware that they have completely failed even before they got their audience. In the edict which the Chienong Emperor issues, the official edict to George III, he says that China has no need for increased trade with Britain

or indeed has no use for the establishment of a permanent British embassy. It's a total failure. Total failure. But because there's no one that can actually properly read Chinese with the exhibition, amazingly, they don't know that they have been given sort of nulpoise. Can I just say, dwell on this for one second, because they took 11-year-old little George with them, little George Staunton, who says, yes, Daddy, I speak fluent Chinese.

I've got all my homework. No one can read the rebuke. No one. So they must open this scroll and just assume. Wave. Thank you, sir. This is great. We'll take this back.

This is lovely. This must only say, love the socks. Can't wait to see the rest of it. That's what it says. They're happy. They think it's gone well. I mean, they imagine that they're now going to go down to Beijing. Everyone's going to see the presence and it's all going to carry on.

It's all going to be lovely. In fact, this script. this scroll that they've been getting says emphatically, that the request for a British ambassador to remain in the capital is, quote, not consistent with the customs of this our empire and therefore cannot be allowed. And he acknowledges the emperor that foreign missionaries have, on occasion, being allowed to live in Beijing.

And in fact, at this moment, Dinwiddie is hanging out with some foreign missionaries, some Jesuits in Beijing who are interested in his lenses and otterble. Because they're good. They're good lenses. Didn't we do thought really good stuff. But he says very clearly that these missionaries and anyone else who desires to live in the capital must adopt such a position that he must immediately put on Chinese dress, dwell with the society assigned to him and cannot return to his country. So these guys are there for life.

Wow. Can anyone read that out to them? Did they understand that? Did he understand it? No, he didn't even understand it. I think it's when they get to Beijing. We're going to come to that in a minute, that the penny begins to drop. Quite possibly because they meet someone who can reach Chinese. All right. So then what happens next? Because this is all just unfolding in a terrible way. And so the final paragraph of this edict, he lets it be known that he has given the British Embassy already an abundance of gifts and that they should simply be grateful and go home.

All these gifts which McCartney's been worrying about, the Chirnong Emperor merely notes that he'd accepted them, not because he actually wanted them, but merely as, quotes, tokens of your own affectionate regard for me. So the two most arrogant nations in the world with the two biggest empires have met, completely misunderstood each other,

and the whole thing has been a spectacular famer. And his final words are, in truth, as the greatness and splendor of the Chinese Empire have spread its fame far and wide, and as foreign nations from a thousand parts of the world crowd hither over the mountains and seeds to pay us homage and to bring us the rarest and most precious offerings, what is it that we can want with you here? And then this final words that you've already said, strange and costly objects, do not interest me. We possess all things. I set no value on objects, stranger or ingenious, and we have not the slightest use for your country's matter.

So can I just say it is the answer. It's meant to be a rhetorical question. What do you buy for the man who has everything? And the emperor answers it, nothing. Nothing that you've got. I've already got it. I don't care. But lovely Dinwiddie, who I have a soft spot for because he's a scientist.

I like a scientist. As anyone who listens to this podcast will know, he's just beavering away, putting up his stuff, putting up his lenses, putting up his planetarian. because, you know, he's brought it thousands and thousands of miles. And he's still, they are still thinking that these lusters and these globes and the clocks, I mean, clocks are really special in Britain. And, you know, he's setting everything up, putting it all in the right places to make, as he puts it, a very beautiful appearance,

which he thinks is, again, quote, much admired by the Chinese because the polite Chinese people around him are going, oh, no, it's terrific. It's good effort. Everyone's going to love this. Oh, this is going to be fabulous. Oh, well done you. However, the emperor does then deign to look at this stuff, doesn't he, when he comes back from jail? He first of all issues a second edict, which is even more damning than the first.

Oh, no. It indicates just because I think now, you know, the penny is not fully dropping. The embassy is beginning to realize that they're not being treated with the, they haven't been given the second audience. They haven't seen the emperor again. They were thinking they were going to come and stay for at least a year and make a great study and make France. Clearly, the upset that the British are not left already, the emperor then to make it even more clear, and not realizing that the British can't read the dex that he's giving them sense the second one. And he says that he has complete satisfaction with the existing trade arrangements.

In other words, the Brits are just stuck on one little stretch of river in Canton and can't move even into Canaan. on, never mind anywhere else in the empire, he says, and this is a wonderful assertion of self-confidence, the products of our empire are abundant and there is nothing we do not have. So we have never needed trade with foreign countries to give us anything we lacked. However, he went on, tea, porcelain and silk that China produced, he understood where essential needs for countries, like England that did not have. So patronising. And so out of the great good of our dynasty, we have long permitted foreign merchants to come to Canton and purchase such goods to satisfy your needs and allow you to benefit from our surplus. Trade, in other words, he's saying, had always been a favour on China's side to lesser nations.

And he then ends that by telling the King of England, George III, that England is just one of many countries that come to trade with us. And if I give Britain special treatment, then they will all want to. to have it as well. Yes. I mean, yeah. We let you, everyone else is going to want some. So this is crushing for McCartney. This must, because he must know, he's going to have to go back with nothing.

And after all this fuss, it's just going to be a disaster. They're still holding out for Dinwiddie to save the day. And only one hot air balloon ride will, you know, will really... Balloon over Beijing. I mean, they're going to love it. It's going to be amazing. Yeah. They will love it, exactly.

That's what they're still hoping. for. But on October the 1st, the emperor who has come down from Jeholl back to the capital, because it's now cold up in the capital. October is the beginning of the cold weather in Manchuria, comes down and he does a two-minute tour of this planetarium, which... Which should have taken hours. Which Dunwidi has set this up, so it takes hours and he can give lectures and teach them things that, you know, he spent a lifetime learning. Oh, poor Danwydie. And his comment, which he gives as he's leaving, is it is good enough to amuse children. That's the emperor's final crushing.

There's another really gorgeous thing. Because Dunwydie, you know, who's only sort of a minor apparatchik in the scheme of things, you know, if you're dealing with the great emperor, he has to watch. And he's watching from sort of almost around a corner with a mirror, the reflection, because you can't look directly at the emperor. So, you know, like, you know, when you've got this little pocket watch, you want to see if the boy in the class. really does like you and he's looking into this mirror and he sees the emperor doing this two minute dash around the stuff that has literally taken him a lifetime. 30 years, 30 years to put together. Two minutes and what he says is that he just has this inscrutable face and shows absolutely no emotion. Imagine how crushing that is to poor

and witty, who, you know, stayed behind to make it all perfect and all lovely. And 30 years of his life have gone into this for two minutes. A man who's just clearly bored. So that's October the 1st. And on October the 6th, the emperor notices that these barbarians are still there. He's dismissed them in Jeholl. I told you to go away. And so finally, on the 6th, they're literally kicked out.

So look, I mean, with what ostensibly feels very much like a, Airbnb overstay, where you've been told to go, you were told to go six days ago, why are you still here? Let's help you with your bags. Let's take a break. When we come back after the break, I know what happens next. Welcome back. So we are in Beijing and the first ever British Embassy to China has just been kicked out. Of their Airbnb?

They were told to leave six days earlier when they didn't realize. Because no one can read what they're being told. No one can't read it. And so the penny finally drops. Poor old Dinwiddie is not going to be able to float in a hot air balloon over the Chinese emperor. They're not going to be able to show their mastery of pyrotechnics and artillery. They brought a diving bell. They were going to go underwater.

Yeah, none of that's going to happen. And despite the protests of now completely hysterical Dinwiddie, the Chinese start packing everything up because the British are not doing it themselves. Yeah, let's help you. Let's help you out here. So I just start throwing all these lenses into boxes and Danwitty's screaming, no, no, let me put the wool and the cotton wool and everything else. In the journal, McCartney is still trying to put a good spin on it, but as one of his servants puts it in his diary,

we entered Beijing like paupers, we remained in it like prisoners, and we quitted it like vagrants. Oh, now they understand. It's pretty good, isn't it? Yeah. It is. And for a man, again, I described it as a posha, but he comes from a dignified family. He is the man who served in Russia. It is not like he's some hick off the boat. He knows about diplomacy, or he thinks he knows about diplomacy. And this was meant to be his one foot on Mars. He was meant to be that pioneer. And instead, he sort of chased off with his tail between his legs. Right. So then what happens to a proud man like that? So McCartney initially doesn't really, I mean, obviously tries to put as good as spin.

As he's heading back to England, he's trying to put a good as spin in it. But it's Staunton, George Staunton, who writes an honest account. The elder or the 11-year-old or the blabby 11-year-old who's spinning his pockets with the wall of China. His dad, okay, right. And Staunton's account, which comes out a few months after McCartney's the following year, reveals in the fullness the complete and utter diplomatic failure and humiliation that this entire embassy has been. And McCartney becomes a standing joke. I mean, so Staunton has written an account. However, I thought, actually, the one who really spills the beans is his valet. He's got a slightly sober version that it didn't go very well,

whereas McCartney might want to say, no, no, when as well as can be expected, Staunton takes that expectation down to a realistic level, that it wasn't as great as we thought it would be, and maybe next time don't send socks, but it is his valet who goes and says, basically, we were booted around the kingdom, we were told to get out, it was all awful, and that is the thing, the valet's account of this trip, is what hits the papers. And the papers then start making absolute merriment at McCartney's expense. He becomes a figure of fun. They start doing cartoons of McCartney, where he's a, you. he's really awkward and kind of all angular and trying to sort of kowtow in front of the emperor,

which he was told not to do. And he's surrounded by these cartoons, these visual depictions, with some of these overbloted Chinese officials who were just looking at him with nothing but disdain. So for a man who has already had the stress of almost two years of trying to prepare for, take, try and meet the emperor with all of these high promises of I'm the man who can do this, is now absolutely debased as a diplomat. I mean, his whole world comes crashing down and kind of there's something rather neat

that it's a kiss and tell from the valet that kind of does for him. It's rather like some Lady Diana's stories. Well, the butler. Or a butler doing their own account because even Staunton's account, and you're right, Staunton lowers the expectations, that it didn't go quite as well as we hoped it would. And little George, it turns out,

needs to do a bit more work on his Chinese. But, you know, it's the valet what's done it. I mean, it feels like it's total and complete humiliation with the caricatures and, you know, the laughter. Once people are laughing at you, it's like nowhere else to go. Or does he manage to save some, or does this embassy manage to save some shreds of dignity? The embassy doesn't, but you can say that in one way, the British or certainly the East India Company get the last laugh. because although the emperor is simply not interested in opening diplomatic relations, having an embassy in Beijing, giving any more access to the British than they've already got, they don't actually cancel the existing arrangements. It doesn't like they're so angry at the bad and barbaric behaviour that they closed down Canton.

And even as the embassy is being sent home in disgrace, and even as poor Dinwiddie's telescopes are being packed, the trade in opium is growing and growing. What had been a major deficit of the British, giving all their gold to the Chinese to buy the tea and having nothing to sell in return, that is being eroded by the sheer quantity of opium which is being sold, even as the McCartney Emmercy is heading back to London. So, I mean, you're suggesting that balance of payment is not as completely out of whack as it was. Tell me about the scale. I mean, what kind of money and what kind of import are we talking about? So what's happening is that the Chinese are consuming more and more opium. There's been this change in the way it's consumed. It used to be drunk or swallowed as pills. But the innovation that began in Java of smoking opium, what you do is take a little ball of opium and an expert in this rolls it around in a flame so that it nearly catches fire.

but doesn't. And then you put it into an opium pipe and smoke it. And this is highly intoxicating and highly addictive. And this is apparent in the sales of opium to China, which are increasing even as the embassy is retreating. So when the McCartney embassy is originally planned in the late 1760s and early 1770s, there's only about 200 chests of East India Company. opium, which is being sold to China. But by the time that the embassy is heading away, it's increased to 1,000. In other words, it's gone up five times. That continues so that by 1800, just 20 years later, the figure grows up to about 5,000 chests of opium. In other it increases again five more times. So this is the beginnings of the undermining of Qing China. So this

great edifice of a proud empire, which was so self-confident that they could say they had no interest in the Ghegores that the British were showing to them, is being undermined in multiple ways. First of all, the balance of payments that the Chinese have been very rich on the T-trade, but now Spanish silver, which is the currency that they use, is now beginning to flow out of China rather than into it. Secondly, there's a major problem of addiction, particularly in the upper classes, particularly in the Mandarin classes and the urban rich. It's now not only addictive, but fashionable and addictive. And it's making more and more of the population putting them out of work, really,

because all they want to do is lie back each day and horizontal and smoke their pipe of opium. But also, crucially, it's beginning to create a whole wave of criminality and violence associated with the cells. Because like a modern cocaine trade, you need to bribe officials, you need to deal through gangsters because it's illegal. And the gangsters are becoming richer and the officials are becoming more, more corrupt. So there's a crime way, because you need thugs to get it in. You need thugs to try and trade it. And we'll be seeing more of this in the next episode. But while the British have left with their tail behind their legs in one way, the traders are still there.

And remember that the traders are, and we'll be dealing with this more in the next episode, but the traders are actually not East India Company. They, these India Company make the opium, they grow it, they sell it at auction in Calcutta, and they leave it to others, often Indians, pass seats from Bombay, many of them, but also independent traders, many of whom are Scots. and they do the illegal trade. They're the guys liaising with the gangsters off the coast of China, not landing it officially in Canton, but in islands like Hong Kong and other offshore islands where the

gangsters hang out. This in time will lead not just China, but also the whole world of Southeast Asia to crumble under the face of these assaults. The growing criminality, the drain of silver, the undermining of society. and the crime wave that goes with it. So two proud empires have met face to face. They've completely misunderstood each other and it looks like the British have lost.

But in actual fact, the British are undermining everything that gave the emperor the reasons for his pride and the ability to look down on the British. Can I just ask one final thing because we're coming to the end of this podcast, but are they doing it with the desire to undermine this power base Or are they doing it just because of the money, honey? It's just the money.

The guys, the Brits who are selling this illegally off the coast of China are Scots, who are hard-headed businessmen, have got no interest in anything but self-improvement and making a fortune. There's a whole bunch of Parsis from Bombay, who they're collaborating with, who are often doing the hard work, buying the opium, both from the East India Company and from Indian growers in Malwa, and they're trading out through Karachi. in Bombay, which is why Karachi and Bombay initially become these very rich citizens, the opium trade, and indeed Singapore. So all the pieces are now in place for the humiliation and the undermining of Chinese society. And the end of this story is the complete colonial takeover of a great deal

of the Far East. Well, listen, the next episode, we are going to talk about two men who find themselves at the very heart of this illegal trade, names which may not be unfamiliar to you, even today, the names of Jardine and Matheson. So if you want to hear that a little bit early, you know what you have to do, you have to join our club, because then you get all of these things in one goes and listen whenever you like. Empowerpodduk.com is where you will find us. And in the club, you don't just get early access to episodes. You get reading lists. You get our newsletter. You've got a thriving community of listeners to chat to. So till the next time we meet, it is goodbye from me, Anita Arnhann.

And goodbye from me, William Durable.