Asian empire and British knowledge : China and the networks of British imperial expansion

British knowledge about China changed fundamentally in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Rather than treating these changes in British understanding as if Anglo-Sino relations were purely bilateral, this study looks at how British imperial networks in India and Southeast Asia were critical mediators in the British encounter of China. What the British 'knew' about China changed fundamentally in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. During this period, China became a key focus of British commercial and missionary interests, creating urgent demand for new knowledge about the country. This change in British understanding of and views about Chinese language, culture, politics and economy has typically been examined through the lens of a European history of ideas. This book demands that we pay closer attention to how British imperial networks in India and Southeast Asia were critical mediators in the British encounter with China. Knowledge of China was not simply developed by literati in Scotland and London, but also in the spaces of the East India Company in Asia, in a world of complex and competing political, academic, religious and trading interests. Created in Britain's Asian Empire, it played a critical role in British relations with China leading up to the Opium War in 1840 'A timely and innovative analysis of the ways in which British interests engaged with, represented and 'manufactured' China' for British metropolitan consumption during the nineteenth century. It expands our knowledge of British imperial networks and activities in new and vital directions and points to significant legacies of the West's colonial engagement with the East.'- Alan Lester, University of Sussex, UK Front Matter....Pages i-x Introduction....Pages 1-15 The Decline of Mythical China....Pages 16-33 At the China Coast....Pages 34-105 South and Southeast Asian Encounters....Pages 106-149 Asian Networks and the British Isles....Pages 150-187 Epilogue....Pages 188-192 Back Matter....Pages 193-262