1793 Parish Map of the Bai (Hai) River and Road to Rehe, China

This 1793 sketch map of Beijing and vicinity by Henry William Parish was engraved by Benjamin Baker and included in the first edition of George Leonard Staunton's 1797 An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China. It depicts the vicinity around Beijing, in North Zhili Province (北直隸, roughly today's Hebei), highlighting the areas traversed by the Macartney Embassy in 1793.

A Closer Look

The White River (白河) referred to in the title, transliterated as Peiho in Western sources, is today more commonly known as the Hai River (海河), meaning the 'sea river.' It flows out into the Bohai Sea, that is, the Yellow Sea, at a point here marked as 'Gulph of Peicheli' (Bei Zhili). Near the coast is a collection of buildings labelled Ta Coo (Dagu), the site of formidable forts protecting the river that would play an important role in the Second Opium War (1856 - 1860) and the Boxer Uprising (1900). The destination of the road leading out of Beijing (Pekin) noted here as 'Geho' was Rehe, a Qing summer palace complex at top-right. Various points along the route that were important to the embassy are marked, such as the Yuanmingyuan ('Yuen-min-yuen'), a Qing palace where the embassy briefly stopped, and Gubeikou (Cou-pe-keou), where the embassy passed through the Great Wall. More generally, villages, cities, trees, areas of cultivation, and other features are noted along the river and road, including places where the embassy's ships anchored.

The Macartney Mission

The Macartney Embassy was a diplomatic mission by Great Britain to the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing Dynasty meant to expand British trading rights in China and establish a permanent embassy in Beijing. Thirty-five years earlier, British traders of the East India Company (EIC) were confined to trading with an officially sanctioned set of Chinese traders in Canton (Guangzhou). Although the Canton System was profitable, the EIC found it too cumbersome and restrictive, while also feeling that a direct line to Beijing was necessary to resolve disputes, rather than working through several layers of intermediaries and bureaucrats. A mission led by Charles Cathcart had been sent to Beijing in 1787, but Cathcart died before reaching China and the embassy was abandoned.

George Macartney's mission left Britain in September 1792 with a retinue of translators, painters, secretaries, scholars, and scientists. The embassy traveled via Madeira, Tenerife, Rio de Janeiro, the Cape of Good Hope, Indonesia, and Macau, before moving up the Chinese coast and reaching Beijing on August 21, 1793. Macartney's second in command was George Leonard Staunton who served as the expedition's secretary and chronicler. Staunton's eleven-year-old son, George Thomas Staunton, nominally the ambassador's page, learned Chinese during the voyage, became very adept at the language, and served as a translator for the mission alongside the Catholic priests Paolo Zhou (周保羅) and Jacobus Li Zibiao (李自標). The younger Staunton later became chief of the East India Company's factory at Canton, translated works between Chinese and English, and helped found the Royal Asiatic Society.

The embassy was poorly managed from the beginning and, despite considerable pomp from the English perspective, appeared poor and rag-tag to the Qianlong Emperor. Partly through lack of preparation, partly through arrogance, and partly due to the emperor's distaste for the British, the embassy failed in all its primary objectives. This disappointing result was compounded by a now famous letter from Qianlong to King George III that chided the British monarch for his audacity in making demands of the Qing and his ignorance of the Chinese system, ending with a reminder not to treat Chinese laws and regulations lightly, punctuated with the memorable phrase 'Tremblingly obey and show no negligence!' (a common phrase used by the emperor in communications to his own subjects).

Macartney's Mission highlighted cultural misunderstandings between China and the West, and has often been taken as a turning point in Chinese history. Qianlong's dismissal of foreign objects as mere toys and his insistence of the centrality of China in the world's hierarchy of kingdoms have been seen as sign of Chinese intransigence and a harbinger of China's awful course in the 19th century. At the time the embassy visited, Qianlong had been in power for nearly sixty years and had increasingly turned over management of the empire to a small group of self-serving officials, particularly Heshen, remembered as the most corrupt official in Chinese history. In the countryside, overpopulation and famine provoked millenarian religious movements and uprisings. On the southern coast, the EIC began importing opium in larger and larger quantities, eventually causing a severe social and economic crisis throughout southern China. In retrospect, both Chinese and foreign historians of every ideological bent have seen the Macartney Mission as a missed opportunity for the Qing to recognize the tremendous changes taking place in Europe and address the underlying problems that would eventually sink the empire.

Publication History and Census

This view was sketched by Henry William Parish and was engraved by Benjamin Baker for inclusion in the first edition of George Leonard Staunton's An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China, published in London by George Nicol in 1797. It is independently cataloged in the holdings of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Royal Museums Greenwich, the University of Aberdeen, the National Maritime Museum, and the National Library of Australia, while the full Authentic Account is well-represented in institutional collections.