Lord Amherst's Embassy to the Jiaqing Emperor, 1816

Abstract

The Amherst Embassy to the Qing court in 1816 remains little researched in comparison with the earlier Macartney Embassy (1792-94). This dissertation offers the first comprehensive account of the Embassy and reassesses its importance for Anglo-Chinese relations in the period before the First Opium War of 1839-42. It addresses why the British thought the Amherst Embassy would succeed where the Macartney Embassy had failed and how the latter’s legacy led the British to misjudge the response of the Jiaqing court. Largely ignored primary sources, in addition to the East India Company records, have provided important new insights into British motivations for dispatching the Embassy and for assessing Amherst’s role as the leader of the mission. The popular view that Amherst was indecisive and overly influenced by the Second Commissioner, George Staunton, in refusing to kotow before the Jiaqing emperor thereby consigning the Embassy to its premature dismissal, is rejected. Amherst emerges as an effective leader whose options were constrained by earlier flawed assumptions about British standing in China, ambiguous and conflicting instructions and an uncompromising Qing court determined to reinforce the protocols of the tributary system. The intense diplomatic encounter endured by the Amherst Embassy is examined within a traditional historical approach of causes, responses and outcomes although aspects of the resulting cultural clash lend themselves to an anthropological and sensory analysis. A revised British assessment of China arose from the diplomatic ashes of the Embassy’s failure. Views of the Qing emperor changed from a civil and enlightened despot to a degenerate potentate ruling over a decaying empire whose arrogance and ignorance rendered futile any further British diplomatic overtures. It was already apparent to some officials that force might be required in future to achieve British aims in China.