Ante-orientalism: French encounters with the Chinese from the mid-17th century to the Opium Wars

Amidst the large body of contemporary studies on cross-cultural encounters, those between the French and Chinese (or Europeans and Chinese) during the late 17th and 18th centuries (precisely when China is considered a greater civilization) are notably absent. Only critics of China or missionaries seem to consult the body of critical works that address French-Chinese cross-cultural encounters. In contrast, critics of cross-cultural encounters make reference to French-Chinese and European-Chinese encounters after the Opium Wars (mid 19th century), when more familiar forms of Western domination over Asian economic and political life (and representational forms) are assured through military strength.; The first three chapters of my dissertation, discussing missionaries and travelers in China during the Qing Dynasty, inverts the status of the French and provides a counter-example to those who would see all Western contact with East Asia within an Orientalist framework. Edward Said's seminal work, Orientalism, details how French and British representation of the Middle East supported more open forms of colonialist aggression, through textual exploitation and commodification of Oriental bodies. In the period I am studying, however, the French do not write of their contacts with the Chinese through the condemning gaze of the more advanced culture. Nor do they depict male sexual encounters with local women—a specific kind of discursive possession which prevails not only in Orientalist discourse but in texts of other cross-cultural encounters from this time. Instead of conquerors, the French are tolerated guests, impressed by China's superior civilization and civic structure.; The last two chapters of my dissertation takes us forward to the Opium Wars, with the emergence of representations of China that are more familiar to scholars of colonialist and post-colonialist texts. French travelers to China in the mid-19th century have largely forgotten the depth of France's previous admiration for China. Instead, they claim that China has been closed to civilization for 4000 years and is a country in decay. Some writers, notably Count Ludovic de Beauvoir, are nonetheless consistently critical of the barbarity (called “civilization”) that the French bring to China on opium gunboats.