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SOLDIERS AND THE “OTHER”
Troops and Western Views of the Asian “Other”
Photographs and drawings made during the campaign reveal, in part, the makeup of the invading forces in China. The defending Chinese soldiers were not captured in posed images, though photographs of dignitaries were made. Chinese soldiers were depicted in drawings and watercolors.
Felice Beato accompanied the British campaign and his photographs rarely show the French or other troops. They capture the colonial troops from India that, as in other British Empire wars, played a major role. Beato’s photograph, “2nd Belooch Regiment of Native Infantry, Bombay, outside the Ning Po Joss-House, China,” shows the Indian Belooch Regiment mustered by English commanders and sent to China to fight the Taiping Rebellion.
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“2nd Belooch Regiment of Native Infantry, Bombay, Outside the Ning Po Joss-House, China,” photograph by Felice Beato, 1860
National Army Museum
[Beato_04-01-a-2nd-Belooch]
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In a traditional studio view that would be marketable to his clientelle of soldiers, Beato photographed a group of officers called from India to China to serve in the Second Opium War: “Officers of the 99th (Duke of Edinburgh's) Regiment of Foot.”
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“Officers of the 99th (Duke of Edinburgh's) Regiment of Foot,”
photograph by Felice Beato, 1860.
The regiment, posted in India, was called to China to join the forces of General Sir Hope Grant fighting the Second Opium War, and was part of the “Sack of Peking.” The officers are identified in the handwritten text under the image.
National Army Museum
[Beato_04-01-b-Officers-99]
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Illustrations—which supplemented reports and news of battles—included maps of battle sites, portraits of leaders, troops in formation, imagined images of military attacks, and pictures of foreign cities under military occupation.
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“Camp of the Sikh Cavalry at Cowloong opposite Hong Kong: Probyn’s Horse and Fane’s Horse.—from a sketch by our special artist in China.” Notice the reference to the cavalry under Probyn’s command.
The Illustrated London News, October 6, 1860 (p. 311)
MIT Visualizing Cultures
[iln_1860-10-6-Sikhs-Cowloon]
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During the First Opium War, engravings and other publications outnumbered the images in the newspapers, but during the Second Opium War, the illustrated papers produced abundant images of the war. They also proliferated stereotypes of Chinese, agitating and shaping public opinion about alien Oriental races. Very few images indicated any respect for the military abilities of the Chinese, and illustrations of Chinese culture focused on curiosities and archaic symbolism.
The term “jingo,” for a blustering patriot who advocates aggressive military action against foreign powers, originated in 1878 with British efforts to provoke a war with Russia. But very similar attitudes had already appeared in the 1850s, first in the Crimean War, and then in the Opium War that followed. The rising influence of the illustrated press allowed writers and artists to create convincing caricatures of foreign peoples, reducing them to stereotypes. These caricatures reached a wide audience in Western countries and generated popular pressure on foreign policy.
Many aspects of the second Opium War echoed those of the first one. All the imperial powers used troops from their colonies, and the British especially employed troops from India’s martial castes, like Sikhs and Pathans.
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“Tent of the 19th Punjabis at Beitang”
Charles Wirgman, artist
The Illustrated London News, October 27, 1860
MIT Visualizing Cultures
[co2_ILN_1860_Oct27_pg394]
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British illustrations of the Chinese military forces ranged from satyrical to dispassionate to sympathetic. The humor magazine Punch depicted Chinese forces fleeing from a British regiment made up of “frightefully ill-looking Young Men,” put “to flight by the repulsiveness of their looks.” (Punch, November 21, 1857, p. 207)
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“A New Force in the Army,” Punch magazine, November 21, 1857 (p. 207)
Yale University
[punch_1857_11-27-new-force]
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British views of the Chinese military forces also portrayed the imperial forces as orderly, tall, and well armed with spears and shields. |
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“Chinese Soldiers,” The Illustrated London News, January 17, 1857 (p. 39)
MIT Visualizing Cultures
[co2_ILN_1857_0117_089]
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“Chinese Mandarin and Soldiers,”
The Illustrated London News, February 21, 1857 (p. 151)
MIT Visualizing Cultures
[co2_ILN_1857_0221_151]
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Justifying the War: Chinese Justice as Oriental Barbarism
The British and French invoked stories of atrocities committed by Chinese officials and the people to justify their armed intervention. Foreign missionaries were not allowed into the Chinese interior, and the province was in chaos due to the Taiping rebellion.
The French concentrated on the torture and execution of Auguste Chapdelaine (1814-1856), a French missionary who had entered southwest China illegally to preach Christianity and was executed in Guangxi province in 1856. The French had not reacted to the arrest of other missionaries, but they took advantage of the impending British invasion to demand reparations and join the military expedition. Chapdelaine was canonized as a martyr of the faith, and his story was portrayed in stained glass windows in the Eglise de Saint-Pierre de Boucey, where he had served. His canonization by the Pope in 2000 provoked a severe protest by the Chinese government.
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Caption: “Interrogatoire du Bienheureux Auguste Chapdelaine, M.E.P.
décapité au Kouang-si (Chine), le 29 Février, 1856”
MIT Visualizing Cultures
[interrogatoire-Chapdelaine]
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Accounts of Chapdelaine’s torture and death vary, but the following description explains some of the confusion:
His time in China proved difficult from the beginning, being robbed of his possessions shortly after his arrival in the country, and later being arrested, in 1854, spending two to three weeks in prison before being released. Chapdelaine would be arrested for a second time in February 1856, on the orders of a local mandarin, along with several other Catholic missionaries. During his latest incarceration, he was tortured and locked into a small iron cage that was suspended near the gate of the prison in which he was being held. While in the cage, Chapdelaine died, and his body was allegedly later taken out of the cage and beheaded. (Mark Simner, The Lion and the Dragon: Britain's Opium Wars with China 1839–1860, Fonthill Media, 2019, pp. 272-273)
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Translated from French: “Tortures suffered by R. P. [Révérend Père] Chapelaine [sic], missionary in China, martyred in the province of Quang-si”
Le Monde, February 27, 1858 (p. 133)
Wikimedia Commons
[1858_02-07-monde-illustre]
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The British promoted gruesome pictures of punishments inflicted by the Chinese legal system, including garroting and beheading. In the 18th century, Jesuit missionaries had praised the systematic appeals allowed under Chinese law, and noted the rarity of capital punishment—at a time when British courts hanged people for poaching. But now, the predominant tone was excessive attention to the most extreme punishments, many carried out in the public square.
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“Garotting a Chinese Criminal. — From a Drawing by a Chinese Artist”
The Illustrated London News, April 4, 1857
MIT Visualizing Cultures
[co2_ILN_1857_0404_306]
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These preconceptions about Oriental cruelty strongly shaped the Western responses to Chinese policy during the outbreak of the war. Ye Mingchen was accused of having committed atrocities when he led the suppression of the Taiping rebels in Guangdong and Guangxi. Newspapers like Punch, supporting Palmerston’s invasion, argued that Ye, the “destroyer of women and children,” deserved punishment.
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Caption: “A Lesson to John Chinaman.
Mr. Punch. ‘Give it him well, Pam, while you are about it!’”
Lord Palmerston threatens Commissioner Ye with a cat-o'-nine-tails,
while “Mr. Punch” looks on. John Leech cartoon, Punch, May 9, 1857 (p. 185)
Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University
[punch_1857_05-09_lesson]
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A cartoon on the opposite page (below) depicts Lord Palmerston pointing at Chinese atrocities and saying to Richard Cobden, the anti-war, non-interventionist politition who opposed the Opium Wars, “What can you say for your friends now, Richard!” The violent scene with raging fires and killing of women and children is a trope that will be repeated to imply barbarism—on both sides—during the third “China war,” the Boxer Uprising in 1900.
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“What Can You Say for Your Friends Now, Richard!”
Punch, May 9, 1857 (p. 184)
Archive.com
[punch_1857_05-09_friends]
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Another curious story spread throughout the foreign community in Canton during the conflict over entry to the city. Someone tried to poison foreigners by putting arsenic in loaves of bread. Several people vomited, but no lives were lost. A baker named Esing was examined in court, and newspapers blamed Governor Ye for having incited the attack, but no proof was ever found. Palmerston used this incident to rouse support for his election campaign, and Karl Marx, in his analyses, repeated this claim as evidence of Chinese popular hostility.
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“Examination at the Police-Office, Victoria, Hong-Kong, of Esing, the Baker, Upon the Charge of Poisoning.”
The Illustrated London News, March 28, 1857 (p. 286)
MIT Visualizing Cultures
[ILN_1857_03-28_286_c.png]
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In the growing use of a civilization-versus-barbarism motif, British patriotic imagery stressed China’s backwardness and savagery, while exalting Palmerston and the supporters of war as heroic representatives of a superior civilized power. An 1840 sketch envisions Palmerston as Cupid driving a chariot pulled by the British lion into a heroic encounter with the Chinese dragon. An 1860 Punch cartoon entitled “What We Ought to Do in China” also invokes the imagery of the Roman emperor punishing the Chinese dragon, rendered as a raging defeated beast.
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“Cupid Taming the Elements,” after West, by John Doyle. Study for a satirical print in the series “Political Sketches,” published by Thomas McLean in 1840.
“Palmerston as Cupid, driving a chariot drawn by the lion and the unicorn among the astonished Powers. Russia laughs but China is horrified, in a reference to England's hostility with China over the opium question.” (Description: British Museum)
British Museum
[1840_Palmerston_cupid]
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“What We Ought To Do In China”
Punch, December 22, 1860
Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University
[punch_1860_12-22_yale]
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Ridicule & Cartoon Caricatures
While portraying Chinese officials and people as dangerous and violent, the press also enjoyed ridiculing Chinese culture. The duality of racist imagery, as John Dower has shown in regard to American images of Japan, includes both the fear of the alien demon and the comic portrayal of the weak, small Asian man.
The Japanese, so “unique” in the rhetoric of World War Two, were actually saddled with racial stereotypes that Europeans and Americans had applied to nonwhites for centuries ... which had been strongly reinforced by 19th-century Western science. In the final analysis, in fact, these favored idioms denoting superiority and inferiority transcended race and represented formulaic expression of Self and Other in general: and this was the case on the Japanese side as well. (Dower, War Without Mercy, 1986)
For Western satirists observing China, the queue was an irresistible target. This strange Chinese hairstyle made the Chinese male vulnerable to ridicule. Ironically, the two principal conquerors of the Han people, the Manchus and the British, exhibited strange parallels in their treatment of the queue. The Manchus, as a conquering warrior caste, had enforced this military haircut on all Chinese men to demonstrate their submission. The British, for their part, also viewed it as a symbol of weakness. Only in the 20th century did Chinese nationalists, by deliberately cutting off their queues, stand up for Han masculinity.
Stereotypical views of China, such as the pigtail, proliferated in British popular publications that lampooned the world at large. Punch magazine, like the French cartoonist Daumier, specialized in humorous illustrations, satirizing all their subjects.
A January 31, 1857 cartoon (below) accompanies a discussion of differing opinions in Britain’s foreign office on the Chinese bombardment. One faction calls for an investigation, claiming that:… Admiral Seymour has unnecessarily and unlawfully destroyed innocent life: that we therefore resolve to proceed against Admiral Seymour for murder at the Central Criminal Court. (Punch, January 31, 1857, p. 42)
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Punch, January 31, 1857 (p. 42)
Sterling Memorial Library, Yale Universitys
[punch_1857_12-31-p42_yale]
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Another Punch story condemns Commissioner Ye, his queue flying in “the whirlwind,” with text that attacks him for “mad acts,” claiming he planted salt in the earth remaining where he burned down the foreign factories.
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“Yeh’s Husbandry,” Punch, London, April 18, 1857 (p. 154)
Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University
[punch_1857_04-18-p154_yeh]
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Honoré Daumier, “En Chine” 1858–60
Though artist Honoré Daumier (1808-1879) had never travelled to China, he produced two series of cartoons in response to France’s involvement in the second Opium War. His caricatures reflect contemporary French stereotypes of the Chinese, but more closely emulate his scathing satires of France’s bourgeois society, politics, manners, and mores. Under constant pressure to make a living, Daumier remained a prolific commercial artist into old age when, although a renowned artist, he slipped into poverty and lost his eyesight.
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Chinese Images
Images from the Chinese side are rare, but Chinese artists participated in the production of imagery for the Western powers. Many of the newspaper images are designated as “by a native artist.” Although the production of paintings by Chinese artists for the export trade was not as lively as it had been in the era of the Canton trade, the practice still continued. In this landscape of Canton, the Western illustrator probably copied one of the Canton export artists’ paintings.
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“The Dutch Folly Fort, Canton River.—From a drawing by a Chinese artist.”
Illustrated London News, January 17, 1857 (p. 38)
MIT Visualizing Cultures
[co2_ILN_1857_0117_038a]
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The newspaper illustrators also depended on Chinese painters for their depiction of cultural phenomena, like marriages and opium smoking, and large-scale portraits of urban scenes in Canton, including the foreign factories.
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“Form of a Treaty of Marriage in China.—From a Drawing by a Chinese Artist.”
Illustrated London News, February 14, 1857 (p. 134)
MIT Visualizing Cultures
[co2_ILN_1857_0214_134_a]
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“The Foreign Factories at Canton, Recently Destroyed.—From a Drawing by a Chinese Artist.”
Illustrated London News, April 18, 1857 (p. 367)
MIT Visualizing Cultures
[co2_ILN_1857_0418_367s_a]
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Chinese folk artists and woodblock printmakers distributed simple caricatures of foreign invaders to rouse up the anger of the local population. Two images which appeared prominently in the Western press were clearly done for a Chinese audience. One is a schematic picture of a battle scene, and the other is a famous caricature of an English sailor, portrayed as a grotesque monster spewing tobacco smoke.
This image, entitled, “A True picture of the Great Bandits and Demons,” is a simple woodblock print intended to inspire resistance to foreign invasion. The caption states:The rebel barbarians are truly hateful
They disturb the lives of the common people
Heaven sends down crimson rain
Causing everyone to become greatly angered
We rouse the braves to kill countless numbers
Until all evil is eliminated
The Great Peace will soon arrive
Giving everyone his just rewards. |
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Chinese woodblock print depicting the Second Opium, or Arrow, War
The Print Collector/Heritage-Images
[1856_60_2ndOpWar_Britannica]
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This portrait of the English sailor draws on analogies to a classic Chinese text on monsters and mythical beings. This beast—a cannibal, indestructible by bows and arrows, spewing black smoke—transformed the image of the British sailor from human into animal and encouraged both military men and common people to destroy them. This kind of rhetoric, the counterpart to British jingoism, spread widely through the Chinese population in the decade after the war. The target shifted from military men to Christian missionaries, but the notion that foreigners were like animal demons remained the same.
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“Chinese Caricature of an English Sailor”
Illustrated London News, April 25, 1857 (p. 397)
MIT Visualizing Cultures
[co2_ILN_1857_0425_397_pg397]
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The image was published with an extended caption in The Illustrated London News:
The accompanying is a Chinese caricature of an English sailor issued during the last war with China in the province of Zhejiang. It describes the British Tar in much the same style as the mythological and other monsters are spoken of in an old Chinese work, called the “Shanhaijing,” or “Book of Hill and Stream.” The descriptive text proceeds—
This creature appears in the Qingtian xian district of Zhouzhou fu of the capital of Zhejiang. Several troops of men surrounding it, it then changed into blood and water. Soldiers should shoot it with fire-arms, for bows and arrows are unable to injure it. When it appears, the people and troops should be informed that whoever is able to destroy or ward it off will be most amply rewarded. If the monster find itself surrounded by soldiers, it turns and falls into the water. When it meets any one it forthwith eats him. It is truly a wonderful monster.
As a specimen of caricature, and as showing the terms and exaggerated notions which prevailed on the east coast of China, it is a curious illustration of the immense self-immolation of the Chinese which prevailed at the capture of Jingguangfu. The smoke from the mouth is probably meant for fumes of tobacco.
(Illustrated London News, April 25, 1857, p. 397)
Oddly, a similar monster image appears in the companion to this unit, “The Opium War in Japanese Eyes,” and is worth a comparison. Author John W. Dower wrote: A similar graphic demonization of the Western foe in the first Opium War of 1839–42 appeared in an illustrated Japanese account of that earlier conflict published in 1849. Captioned simply “The Monster,” the body of this frightful figure is scaly and clawed, while the head is a typical ostensibly realistic rendering of a “hairy barbarian”. Atop this, belching smoke, rests a grotesque second head that seems to resemble the severed head of a pig. (Dower, “The Opium War in Japanese Eyes”)
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“The Monster,” Kaigai Shinwa, vol. 2
This supernatural creature—covered with scales and possessing two heads, one on top of the other—is mentioned only in passing in the narrative. Poisonous smoke billowed from the mouth of the upper head.
University of British Columbia
[Monster_Kaigai-Shinwa]
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