The Yunnan,Guizhou And Sichuan Images In British Travel Writings Of China,1861-1914

In the late Qing Dynasty,the British grasped the dominance of travel to China through the two Opium Wars.Since the 1860s,the British have begun to devote every effort to exploring southwest C hina in pursuit of fulfilling the commercial colonization strategy to connect its colonies in India and Burma with those in China.Plenty of travelers came to Yunnan,Guizhou,and Sichuan(YGS)for exploring and traveling.During this progress,British people wrote a large number of travel writings,presenting a wealth of geographical exploration,landscape description,image narration,and ethnographic records,delivering diversified images of YGS to western readers,which is of great cognitive significance for understanding the local exchange history between China and Britain at that time.So far academia has paid little attention to the British southwest travel writings.Centered by the keywords in travel research such as place,gaze,other,and landscape,this dissertation takes images of YGS in the British southwest travel writings from 1861 to 1914 as the research content,starting with the textual group of southwest travel writings and selecting the works of major writers as the research objects according to the travel period and writing characteristics.Combined with the methods of Imagology in comparative literature and travel literature criticism,this dissertation discusses the diachronic multifaceted images of YGS constructed by the British through multiple gazes under the restriction of southwest travel rules,as well as the dualistic representation meaning of the multi-ethnic images of southwest China.The dissertation consists of an introduction,four main chapters,and a conclusion.The introduction presents the research object,academic research status,research theories and methods,explaining the research questions and content along with the significance and structure of the dissertation.The first chapter gives an overview of the western writings on travel to China in the 19th century and the British southwest travel writings in the period between 1861 and 1914.Through the diachronic and synchronic comparison of travel writings on China of British and other foreign writers,together with the comparison of those in YGS and other regions of China,this dissertation discusses the uniqueness of British travel activities and image writing,which constitutes the background and argumentative context of the later chapters.The second chapter expounds on the initial period of travel writings from 1861 to 1875.At that time,the rules of southwest travel formulated by China and Britain gradually took shape.Based on the travel writings of Blakiston,Cooper,and Margary,this chapter analyzes the restrictions and rules faced by the British in local travel,as well as the travel behavior and image shaping influenced by them.The third chapter explores the travel writings during the period of expansion from 1876 to 1895.Taking the works of Gill,Little,and Davies as the main objects,this chapter analyzes the multiple images of YGS that are generated by social collective imagination and individual realistic creation in the relationship of mutual gaze on local travel.The fourth chapter discusses the active period of travel writings from 1896 to 1914.Through the works of Bird,Wilson,Baber,and Hosie,this chapter examines the British travelers’ divided understanding and differentiated narration as well as the change of the western view of China’s image,in which the Han ethnic group is regarded as "the other" while the ethnic minorities as "the other’s other".The conclusion summarizes the main understanding of this research.Furthermore,the dissertation raises three issues to analyze.The first one is that the British in YGS need to follow the specific travel rules which are the products of British gunboat diplomacy and Chinese resistance against colonial aggression.The next is the existence of the "multiple gazes" phenomenon.It refers to the one-way gaze,mutual gaze,confrontational gaze,and identity gaze between the British and the local people in southwest China.The rich images of YGS shaped by this phenomenon participated in the cross-cultural construction of British colonial ideology.The last is the differentiated description of the images of Han and ethnic minorities in British travel writings of southwest China,which is called the British "dualistic image" view.From the perspective of "self-other-alien",this dissertation probes into the images of southwest ethnic minorities as a kind of primitive form of marginalized "other",which fall into the imperial tourists’ discovery,gaze,and description of colonization.