Book Launch: The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators between Qing China and the British Empire
The 1793 British embassy to China, which led to Lord George Macartney’s fraught encounter with the Qianlong emperor, has often been viewed as a clash of cultures fueled by the East’s disinterest in the West. In The Perils of Interpreting, Henrietta Harrison presents a more nuanced picture, ingeniously shifting the historical lens to focus on Macartney’s two interpreters at that meeting—Li Zibiao and George Thomas Staunton. Who were these two men? How did they intervene in the exchanges that they mediated? And what did these exchanges mean for them? From Galway to Chengde, and from political intrigues to personal encounters, Harrison reassesses a pivotal moment in relations between China and Britain. She shows that there were Chinese who were familiar with the West, but growing tensions endangered those who embraced both cultures and would eventually culminate in the Opium Wars.
Date:
5 May 2022, 17:00
Venue:
Dickson Poon Building, Canterbury Road OX2 6LU
Venue Details:
Kin-ku Cheng Lecture Theatre (lower ground floor)
Speaker:
Professor Henrietta Harrison (University of Oxford)
Organising department:
Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Organisers:
Professor Denise van der Kamp (University of Oxford),
Dr Yi Lu (University of Oxford),
Dr Coraline Jortay (University of Oxford),
Dr Chigusa Yamaura (University of Oxford),
Dr Giulia Falato (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address:
information@chinese.ox.ac.uk
Part of:
China Studies Seminar series
Booking required?:
Not required
Cost:
Free
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Clare Orchard
