Early books on China:
Towards the end of 1792, Lord Macartney and a large retinue of staff, servants, militia, musicians, artists, gardeners, a scientist and doctors, and a ship-load of expensive and, for the time, incredible gifts, set sail for China, representing King George III and the British Government lead by William Pitt. This was to become one of the greatest of formal meetings between cultures, a late-Enlightenment event, where the leading European power presented itself before the Qianlong Emperor, who regarded himself and his Empire as the centre of the world. Much has been written of this embassy, traces of its resonance perhaps still felt today.
As was the custom, an official account of the mission was written, in this case by Sir George Staunton, second secretary of the embassy, and published in 1797 to wide acclaim. Other members of the mission were not slow, with Aeneas Anderson, Macartney’s valet being first off the mark with his account in 1795, Sir John Barrow, household comptroller, later in 1804, another by the militiaman Samuel Holmes in 1798, and a memoir from the doctor and scientist James Dinwiddie published as late as 1868.
These accounts are immensely readable, well-illustrated, with Staunton’s official narrative accompanied by a folio of plates, and all a source of historical research that has not yet been exhausted. A description of the accounts can be read here, with the books and copies described being those in my own collection.
