Representing China to the British public in the age of free trade, c. 1833--1844

This dissertation studies anew nineteenth-century British imperialism in China by focusing on, for the first time, British representations of China and the Chinese that widely circulated along the “Eastern” trade routes during the Opium War period from 1833 to 1844. I examine such popular representations as integral parts of Britain's changing imperial policy in “Eastern Asia.” In my study, I analyze how various publications about China gave form to the British empire's constantly evolving trade practices, missionary activities, national and parliamentary concerns, diplomatic crises, colonial policies, and military actions in this formative period of “free trade” with the “celestial empire.” As such, the plethora of printed matters about Chinese affairs were not simply transparent records of “facts” for historical reconstruction or “reactions” of the British public to the government's China policy as historians have traditionally assumed. Rather, they were statements of the nation's imperial projects that could, through their specific styles, appeal to an empire-wide public and muster their support, both economic and political. Additionally, they are statements of imperialism that last and still influence both our present efforts in critiquing Orientalism and our historiography of the Opium War and the “opening” of China.; There were two crucial lines of changes in British representations of China on which the dissertation focuses. The first line was the increasing politicization and publicity of the China question through print and other media after the East India Company's monopoly in the British China trade was abolished in 1834. This empire-wide publicity project was instrumental in transforming the China question from the Company's affairs into a matter of “public” concern and in bolstering the new agenda of extending “free” and “individual” enterprises to China. The second line of representational changes was the rise and fall of different genres that served to support different approaches to dealing with China or different national agendas in response to the political exigencies of the time such as the opium question. Such genres included the embassy narrative, the “individualistic” travel narrative, the objective pamphlet, the military narrative, and the multimedia exhibition of the “Chinese World in Miniature.”...