The life history of Sir Rutherford Alcock is that of the progressive development of a sterling character making in all circumstances the most of itself, self-reliant, self-supporting, without friends or fortune, without interest or advantage of any kind whatsoever. From first to last the record is clear, without sediment or anything requiring to be veiled or extenuated. Every achievement, great or small, is stamped with the hall-mark of duty, of unfaltering devotion to the service of the nation and to the interests of humanity.
A copious and facile writer, he has left singularly little in the way of personal history. The only journal he seems ever to have kept was consigned by him to oblivion, a few early dates and remarks having alone been rescued. When in recent years he was approached by friends on the subject of auto-biography, he was wont to reply, "My life is in my work; by that I am content to be remembered." We must needs therefore take him at his word and judge by the fruit what was the nature of the tree.
In the following work the reader may trace in more or less continuous outline the stages by which the present relation between China and foreign nations has been reached. In the earlier portion the course of events indicated is comparatively simple, being confined to Anglo-Chinese developing into Anglo-Franco-Chinese viirelations. In the latter portion, corresponding roughly with the second volume, the stream becomes subdivided into many collateral branches, as all the Western nations and Japan, with their separate interests, came to claim their share, each in its own way, of the intercourse with China. It is hoped that the data submitted to the reader will enable him to draw such conclusions as to past transactions as may furnish a basis for estimating future probabilities.
The scope of the work being restricted to the points of contact between China and the rest of the world, nothing recondite is attempted, still less is any enigma solved. It is the belief of the author that the so-called Chinese mystery has been a source of needless mystification; that the relation between China and the outer world was intrinsically simple; and that to have worked from the basis of their resemblances to the rest of humanity would have been a shorter way to an amicable understanding with the Chinese than the crude attempt to accommodate Western procedure to the uncomprehended differences which divided them. It needed no mastery of their sociology to keep the Chinese strictly to their written engagements and to deter them from outrage. But discussion was the invitation to laxity; and laxity, condoned and pampered, then defiant and triumphant, lies at the root of the disasters which have befallen the Chinese Empire itself, and now threaten to recoil also upon the foreign nations which are responsible for them. This responsibility was never more tersely summed up than by Mr Burlingame in his capacity of Chinese Envoy. After sounding the Foreign Office that astute diplomatist was able to inform the Tsungli-Yamên in 1869 that "the viiiBritish Government was so friendly and pacific that they would endure anything." The dictum, though true, was fatal, and the operation of it during thirty subsequent years explains most that has happened during that period, at least in the relations between China and Great Britain.
The Englishman in China During the Victorian Era Vol. I (of 2), Rutherford Alcock, THE OPIUM TRADE, THE FRUITS OF THE WAR, THE FOREIGN CUSTOMS, CHINESE EXPORTS, EVACUATION OF CANTON
A copious and facile writer, he has left singularly little in the way of personal history. The only journal he seems ever to have kept was consigned by him to oblivion, a few early dates and remarks having alone been rescued. When in recent years he was approached by friends on the subject of auto-biography, he was wont to reply, "My life is in my work; by that I am content to be remembered." We must needs therefore take him at his word and judge by the fruit what was the nature of the tree.
In the following work the reader may trace in more or less continuous outline the stages by which the present relation between China and foreign nations has been reached. In the earlier portion the course of events indicated is comparatively simple, being confined to Anglo-Chinese developing into Anglo-Franco-Chinese viirelations. In the latter portion, corresponding roughly with the second volume, the stream becomes subdivided into many collateral branches, as all the Western nations and Japan, with their separate interests, came to claim their share, each in its own way, of the intercourse with China. It is hoped that the data submitted to the reader will enable him to draw such conclusions as to past transactions as may furnish a basis for estimating future probabilities.
The scope of the work being restricted to the points of contact between China and the rest of the world, nothing recondite is attempted, still less is any enigma solved. It is the belief of the author that the so-called Chinese mystery has been a source of needless mystification; that the relation between China and the outer world was intrinsically simple; and that to have worked from the basis of their resemblances to the rest of humanity would have been a shorter way to an amicable understanding with the Chinese than the crude attempt to accommodate Western procedure to the uncomprehended differences which divided them. It needed no mastery of their sociology to keep the Chinese strictly to their written engagements and to deter them from outrage. But discussion was the invitation to laxity; and laxity, condoned and pampered, then defiant and triumphant, lies at the root of the disasters which have befallen the Chinese Empire itself, and now threaten to recoil also upon the foreign nations which are responsible for them. This responsibility was never more tersely summed up than by Mr Burlingame in his capacity of Chinese Envoy. After sounding the Foreign Office that astute diplomatist was able to inform the Tsungli-Yamên in 1869 that "the viiiBritish Government was so friendly and pacific that they would endure anything." The dictum, though true, was fatal, and the operation of it during thirty subsequent years explains most that has happened during that period, at least in the relations between China and Great Britain.
The Englishman in China During the Victorian Era Vol. I (of 2), Rutherford Alcock, THE OPIUM TRADE, THE FRUITS OF THE WAR, THE FOREIGN CUSTOMS, CHINESE EXPORTS, EVACUATION OF CANTON
