British-Chinese Relations in the Nineteenth Century and Alicia Bewicke

British-Chinese Relations in the Nineteenth Century and Alicia Bewicke Littles Novel, A marriage in China The year was 1842, and Britain had just finished a prospering military campaign in China, a campaign that also int give the axe a rather humiliating defeat for the Chinese army. The first Opium warfare reestablished Britains profitable opium trade r emergees from India to China, and also established a new dash of British-Chinese relations, one that resulted in British support of the new colony of Hong Kong and semicolonial control over various treaty ports. The progressive optimism that this combined political and sparing control seemed to herald for the British Empire was reflected in a spot in the newly established Illustrated London News A oversized family of the human race, which for centuries has been isolated from the rest, is now about to bring down with them into mutual intercourse. considerable hordes of populations, breaking through the ignorance and superstition which has for ages enveloped them, will now come out into the open day, and enjoy the freedom of a more expanded civilization, and enter upon prospects immeasurably grander. (Illustrated London News, qtd. in Thurin 1) Voiced at mid-century, this statement paradoxically depicts the Chinese as both enveloped by backwardness, yet capable of domesticise and progress as ignorant, superstitious, and characterized as pest-like vast hordes of populations, yet also seen as equal partners with the British in a mutual intercourse. This varied and impertinent opinion could just have easily been voiced at the end of the nineteenth century. In a way, this statement can be seen as representative of the history or, more accurately, the story of the relationship between ... ...sm. therefore even areas of resistance are encoded within the text of compliance (Rule Britannia Women, Empire, and priggish Writing, Ithaca Cornell UP, 1995). Works Cited British Library Public composeue . 12 Oct 1999 . Campbell, Mrs. J. Weston. (Signed C. de Thierry.) The Sons of Han Chinese Emigration. Macmillans Magazine. 80 (May 1899) 58-66. Croll, Elisabeth J. tonic Daughters from Foreign Lands European Women Writers in China. London Pandora, 1989. Little, Alicia Bewicke. A Marriage in China. London F. V. White & Co., 1896. Round about My Peking Garden. London T. black cat Unwin, 1905. Mrs. A. Little. Obituary. The London Times. 6 Aug. 1926 17e. Research Library Group (RLG) Union Catalog (RLIN). 12 Oct 1999 . Thurin, Susan Schoenbauer. Victorian Travelers and the Opening of China, 1842-1907. Athens, OH Ohio UP, 1999.