Kowtow, 1816

The Chinese Master of the Universe, Celestial Emperor Chia Ch'ing, seemed singularly unimpressed by the British Mistress of the Seas. In the year of the Battle of Waterloo, he all but slammed the one door open to Britons in China--the East India Company's station at Canton. When the traders petitioned for relief, London decided to send an ambassador extraordinary to the potentate in Peking. What ensued had no parallel until last week (see below).

The chosen envoy was William Pitt Amherst, Earl of Arakan and nephew of famed soldier of the King, Lord Jeffrey Amherst. In July 1816, William Amherst reached the North China coast. He was most hopeful, as his secretary later recorded, that "the eclat of an embassy from the Crown of England" would persuade "Oriental barbarism" to grant commercial privileges. But the high & mighty mandarins who escorted him ashore and inland to Peking soon demolished his hope.

The silk-gowned, straw-bonneted officials wore different buttons according to their rank--from ruby red down through worked coral, smooth coral, pale blue, dark blue, crystal, ivory and gold. But they all talked the same line. They referred to presents from the British Crown as "tribute." They insisted silkily that matters of commerce could wait. Much more important--was the British ambassador ready to kowtow?

Degrading. Amherst knew about the kowtow--it consisted of kneeling and knocking one's head nine times on the ground before the Manchu Emperor. Thus the envoys of all the world acknowledged the supremacy of the Chinese sovereign. "Repugnant . . . degrading . . . inexpedient," the Britons had decided, "required for the obvious purpose of reducing us to a level with missions from Corea and the Lew-chew islands [i.e., Korea and the Ryukyus, including Okinawa] . . . should be refused."

Sometimes over English cherry brandy and again over Chinese tea, the mandarins insisted, the ambassador resisted. Amherst offered to kneel on one knee. Not enough. He would even kiss the Emperor's hand, as was the custom in England. The mandarins shook their heads in horror over what they plainly thought a disgusting custom.

Once they asked the ambassador to kowtow before the figure of a dragon; the imperial emblem. This struck the Occidentals as an Oriental trick that would somehow signify their subservience. Amherst offered to do so if a mandarin of equal rank would genuflect before a portrait of the British sovereign. "Inadmissible!" snapped the Chinese. Amherst played the idea a bit further. He would kowtow to the Emperor if it were guaranteed that any Chinese ambassador in London would make similar obeisance to the English throne. "Impossible!" snorted the mandarins.

They haggled for nigh a month as they traveled toward Peking. The Chinese grew testier. So did the British--they disparaged shark's-fin soup, complained of smelly peasants (like "putrefying garlic on a much-used blanket"), ridiculed the native opera ("the instrumental music, from its resemblance to the bagpipes, might be tolerated by Scotchmen; to others it was detestable"). Then, as they neared the walls of Peking, the troubled mandarins agreed that the troublesome ambassador might kneel before the Emperor on one knee and bow three times, repeating this homage thrice. The Canton trade, the British told themselves, was not worth any more appeasement.

Disrespectful. Perhaps it was a false agreement, as the Britons later suspected.

On the night his mission reached the capital, tired and travel-stained, the ambassador received an abrupt summons from Emperor Chia Ch'ing: appear immediately at the imperial residence. Amherst stood on his dignity and refused, pleading first fatigue, then illness. The Emperor promptly sent a court physician who reported back that the Briton was malingering.

Angrily, Chia Ch'ing ordered the mission to turn home without an audience.

So it was done. As Amherst withdrew from Peking, the snub was subtly underscored. In the streets he passed a beggar, who rose up deferentially. Amherst's mandarin escort instantly commanded the beggar to sit down again--"the British ambassador," dolefully observed his secretary, "not being now considered deserving respect even from the lowest class of society."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.