The French Monarchs Had From
Time To Time Turned Their Attention To Promoting Trade With China And The
Far East.
Henry the Fourth sanctioned a scheme with this object, but it
came to nothing; and Colbert only succeeded in obtaining the right for his
countrymen to land their goods at Whampoa, the river port of Canton.
But
French commerce never flourished in China, and a bold but somewhat
Quixotic attempt to establish a trade between that country and the French
settlements on the Mississippi failed to achieve anything practical. But
what the French were unable to attain in the domain of commerce they
succeeded in accomplishing in the region of literature. They were the
first to devote themselves to the study of the Chinese literature and
language, and what we know of the history of China down to the last
century is exclusively due to their laborious research and painstaking
translations of Chinese histories and annals. They made China known to the
polite as well as the political world of Europe. Keen Lung himself
appreciated and was flattered by these efforts. His poetry, notably his
odes on "Tea," and the "Eulogy of Moukden" as the cradle of his race, was
translated by Pere Amiot, and attracted the attention of Voltaire, who
addressed to the emperor an epistolary poem on the requirements and
difficulties of Chinese versification. The French thus rendered a material
service in making China better known to Europe and Europe better known in
China, which, although it may be hard to gauge precisely, entitles them
still to rank among those who have opened up China to Europeans. The
history of China, down to the eighteenth century at least, could not have
been written but for the labors of the French, of Mailla, Du Halde, Amiot,
and many others.
There remains only to summarize the relations with the English, who, early
in the seventeenth century, and before the Manchus had established their
supremacy, possessed factories at Amoy and on the island of Chusan. But
their trade, hampered by official exactions, and also by the jealousy of
the Portuguese and Dutch, proved a slow growth; and at Canton, which they
soon discovered to be the best and most convenient outlet for the state,
they were more hampered than anywhere else, chiefly through the hostile
representations of the Portuguese, who bribed the mandarins to exclude all
other foreigners. The English merchants, like the Portuguese, believed
that the only way to obtain a remedy for their grievances was by
approaching the imperial court and obtaining an audience with the emperor;
but they were wise in not attempting to send delegates of their own. They
saw that if an impression was to be created at Pekin the embassador must
come fully accredited by the British government, and not merely as the
representative of a body of merchants who were suppliants for commercial
privileges. The war with the Goorkhas had made the Chinese authorities
acquainted with the fact that the English, who were only humble suitors
for trade on the coast, were a great power in India.
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