Performing China: Virtue, Commerce, and Orientalism in Eighteenth-Century England, 1660–1760

Notes

n o t e s Introduction. China as Exemplar 1. I use the term English, not British, to refer either to events or literature written in England before the 1707 Act of Union or to linguistic, cultural, or political traditions that pertain primarily to the geography of England rather than that of Scotland, Wales, or Ireland . 2. “Olympics Opening Ceremony,” television program. Beijing: NBC Television, Aug. 8, 2008. 3. Richard Williams, “Patriot Games: China Makes Its Point with Greatest Show,” Guardian , August 9, 2008, www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/aug/09/olympics2008.opening ceremony. 4. The event would be surpassed by the National Day Parade on Oct. 1, 2009, and the Shanghai World Exposition, 2010. 5. Fénelon, Dialogues des Morts, in Œuvres, 299; my translation. Thanks to David Agruss for help with interpreting this phrase. Modeled after Fontenelle and Lucian, the dialogues between ancient and modern historical figures were conceived by Fénelon in the 1690s and then published in batches in and after 1700. Written to educate the ten-year-old duc de Bourgogne in princely etiquette and the qualities of a good ruler, they consist of fifty-one dialogues between ancients, twenty-seven between moderns, and one between an ancient and a modern. See Davis, Fénelon, 64–73. 6. Ibid., 299. The French reads: “Selon ces relateurs, le peuple de la terre le plus vain, le plus superstitieux, le plus intéressé, le plus injuste, le plus menteur, ce’st le Chinois.” 7. Defoe, Tour Through the Whole Island of Britain, 65. 8. See Chambers’s entry on porcelain in Cyclopaedia, 2: 842. See also Liu, “Robinson Crusoe’s Earthenware Pot,” 728–57. 9. Temple, Of Heroic Virtue, in The Works of Sir William Temple, 3: 328. 10. Waller, Of Tea, Commended by her Majesty (1663), in Works of Edmund Waller, 131– 32. 11. Defoe, Tour Through the Whole Island of Britain, 65. 12. Berg, “Asian Luxuries and the Making of the European Consumer Revolution,” in Luxury in the Eighteenth Century, 241. See also Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenthcentury Britain. 200 Notes to Pages 6–16 13. Pomeranz, The Great Divergence; Frank, Reorient; Wong, China Transformed; Chaudhuri , Asia before Europe; Arrighi, Adam Smith in Beijing. See also the revisionist work of Goldstone, “Efflorescences and Economic Growth in World History,” 323–89, and Why Europe? 14. Frank, Reorient, 149; Sugihara, “East Asian Path of Economic Development,” 79, 89–90, quoted in Arrighi, Adam Smith in Beijing, 33, 331. See also Arrighi’s discussion of Chinese exemplarity in Adam Smith in Beijing, 69, 336. 15. Ovington, Essay Upon the Nature and Qualities of Tea, 2, 36. 16. Brown, “Thing Theory,” 5, 4. 17. Goldsmith, Citizen of the World, 24. 18. Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees and Other Writings, ed. Hundert, 96. 19. According to Pocock, “The appropriate material foundation . . . was land: real property cognizable as stable enough to link successive generations in social relationships belonging to, or founded in, the order of nature . . . fortified by immemorial customs.” See Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, 458–60. 20. Ibid., 451, 445. 21. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History, 122. 22. Wycherley, The Country Wife, 70. 23. Rowe, The Biter, 13. 24. See Collier, Short View of Immorality and Profaneness. 25. Publications from the historical period of the mid-seventeenth century alone include Peter Heylyn, Cosmographie (1657); Martino Martini [Martin Martinius], Novus Atlas Sinensis (1655) and Bellum Tartaricum [De Bello Tartarico], or the Conquest of the Great and Most Renowned Empire of China, by the Invasion of the Tartars (1654); Alvarez Semedo, The History of that Great and Renowned Monarchy of China (1655); Johann Adam Schall, Historica relatio de ortu (1665); Athanasius Kircher, China Illustrata (1667); Johann Nieuhof [John Nieuhoff], An Embassy from the East-India Company . . . to the Grand Tartar Cham (1669); Olfert Dapper, Atlas Chinensis (1671); Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, The History of the Conquest of China by the Tartars (1671); John Ogilby, Asia (1673); Gabriel de Magalhães, Nouvelle relation de la Chine (1679); Domingo Fernandez Navarette, An Account of the Empire of China (1676). 26. Orr, Empire on the English Stage. 27. Choudhury, Interculturalism and Resistance in the London Theater. 28. Le Comte, Memoirs and Observations, 148. 29. Du Halde, General History of China, 141. 30. For an excellent discussion of visual representations of Chinese ritual, see Clark, “Chinese Idols and Religious Art,” 235–50. See also Standaert, Interweaving of Rituals. 31. Le Comte, Memoirs and Observations, 139. 32. Agnew, Worlds Apart. This follows the...