When Diplomacy Fails, Print Attacks | How British Magazines Weaponised a Diplomatic Failure ❤️

Shaping the East | British Magazines and the Amherst Embassy

Insights from A Special Lecture by Dr. Daniel Sanjiv Roberts

5th October 2026 | 10.30 am

The PG & Research Department of English (Aided) and the Office of International Programmes at Madras Christian College (Autonomous) jointly organised a guest lecture today, at 10.30 am in the Chemistry Seminar Hall.

Dr. Daniel Sanjiv Roberts, who is presently Reader in English at Queen’s University, Belfast, UK was the main speaker of the event.

Interestingly, Dr. Sanjiv was the classmate of Dr. Arul Kumaran (Professor, University of Saskatchewan, Canada), and Dr. Dipankar Mukherjee, the co-founder and Artistic Director of the famous Pangea World Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during their good-old MCC days.

Dr. Daniel Sanjiv Roberts spoke on the topic, “British Magazines and the Amherst Embassy: Literary and Metropolitan Responses”, focusing on the literary response to the Amherst Embassy and Chinese culture that featured such vituperative and virulent political commentary in early 19th-century British print culture. His lecture also focused on how eminent writers and influential magazines of the era utilised the diplomatic friction to shape the British public’s aesthetic and political perception of the East.

Excerpts from his Talk -

The Amherst Embassy and Its Historical Context

In 1816, Britain sent the Amherst Embassy, its second diplomatic mission to China, seeking trade concessions. The mission was widely regarded as a failure in its time. Lord Amherst, the British ambassador, refused to perform the required ceremonial bow, known as the “kowtow,” for the Chinese Emperor. As a result of this diplomatic friction, the British gifts were rejected, and the diplomatic ship, the Alceste, was wrecked during its return voyage.

This event occurred while Britain held a post-Waterloo status as a premier imperial power, yet faced severe domestic economic challenges, including mass unemployment and poverty. To offset trade imbalances caused by the British consumption of Chinese tea, Britain was increasingly growing opium in India for illegal export into China.

The Role of British Magazines and Reviewers

The failure of the Amherst Embassy prompted significant reappraisal in British print culture, shifting focus toward longer, analytical articles in quarterly magazines rather than basic newspaper reportage.

Literary Representations of China

British writers used the embassy’s failure to cultivate a specific aesthetic and political view of China, domesticating Chinese culture into “chinoiserie” (Chinese objects), while simultaneously mocking its governance.

In his essay titled, “Old China,” Charles Lamb approached the topic through a highly domesticated lens. Lamb focused his reflections on examining a China teacup. He used this object to explore the relatively new British practice of drinking tea. His essay highlights how tea and Chinese objects had become familiarised as standard domestic fascination and formed part of English habits during the Romantic period.

Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater introduced complex, nightmarish connotations regarding the East and the opium trade. De Quincey’s writings explicitly described the Chinese as an “antediluvian” and inanimate race, reflecting the era’s highly prejudiced and racist perspectives.

Reviewers and authors alike ensured that they depicted the Chinese diplomatic ceremonies as farcical and ridiculous spectacles, likening them to circus acts, pantomimes, or tumbling shows. Moreover, China was repeatedly characterised by British writers as a static, ancient, and fossilised civilisation that stood in stark contrast to progressive British imperialism.

John Barrow’s Attack

John Barrow, the Second Secretary to the Admiralty, played a major political and literary role in shaping public opinion. Barrow had participated in the earlier Macartney Embassy of 1793, and he used his platform to conceive, promote, and review the literature surrounding the Amherst mission.

Having personally conceived and promoted the Amherst Embassy, and having previously travelled on the 1793 Macartney Embassy, Barrow channelled his direct annoyance over the mission’s failure into his literary critiques.

When reviewing a translated Chinese drama titled An Heir in His Old Age, Barrow completely bypassed the text’s aesthetic value, using the review instead to launch a political assault on Chinese culture. He explicitly characterised the Chinese state as a “mean and insolent government”. He argued that Chinese diplomatic ceremonies and court entertainments were deliberately “puerile”. Barrow compared these stage representations to a “broad farce,” describing them as tumbling, jugging, and ridiculous processions featuring men disguised as animals.

He claimed these farcical exhibitions were intentionally staged to mock foreign ambassadors, whom the Chinese court dismissed as “foreign barbarians”. Barrow aggressively promoted the imperial narrative of China as a rigidly static civilisation. He argued that because “time stands still in China” without any alteration or improvement, an 800-year-old play still perfectly reflected its modern society. He even extended this criticism to the broader population, describing Chinese youth as unnatural, “inanimate, formal, inactive,” and constantly attempting to mimic the gravity of old age.

The Role of Magazines and Reviews

While newspapers focused on straightforward reportage, magazines provided longer, analytical, and highly opinionated accounts of foreign affairs. It highlights that contemporary publications like Blackwood’s and the London Magazine developed entertaining literary profiles to publish personal essays and fiction regarding these geopolitical events.

The dominant critical response outlined in the lecture came from the leading conservative political magazine, The Quarterly Review.

Through The Quarterly Review, influential reviewers like John Barrow aggressively defended the British ambassador’s dignity. Barrow and The Quarterly Review simultaneously depicted the Chinese government as a static, ancient, and fossilised civilisation that forced foreign diplomats into ridiculous, farcical ceremonies.

To conclude, then, the diverse literary and journalistic reactions to the Amherst Embassy functioned as a powerful cultural defense mechanism for a frustrated imperial power. By translating a humiliating diplomatic failure into either domestic aesthetic charm, as seen in Lamb’s focus on teacups, or vicious political caricature, evident in Barrow’s and De Quincey’s xenophobic critiques, British print culture actively reconstructed the narrative of the East. These contrasting depictions worked in tandem to establish a prejudiced, Eurocentric worldview that characterised China as a stagnant, “antediluvian” society requiring Western intervention.

This concerted effort by reviewers and authors did more than merely soothe the sting of the embassy’s dismissal; it laid the crucial ideological and rhetorical groundwork that would justify Britain’s increasingly coercive economic and imperial ambitions in the decades to follow,

said Dr. Daniel Sanjiv Roberts.

Dr. Franklin Daniel, our beloved Head of the Department welcomed the gathering. Dr. Arun Kumar, our vibrant Associate Dean of International Programmes, introduced the Chief Guest of the Day. Dr. Nirmal Selvamony was our guest of honour for the event. The event was hosted exclusively for our students of the I & II MA English Literature classes. 

So happy to note that, today we had two book donations by famous authors who also happen to be our illustrious alumni.

Dr. Daniel Sanjiv Roberts presented a copy of the famous book titled, Studying English Literature in Context: Critical Readings edited by Paul Poplawski, to the Department of English. His article finds a place in the book (Chapter 12, titled, ‘Transported into Asiatic Scenes’: Romanticism and the Orient.’)

Dr. Nirmal Selvamony also donated a copy of his amazing magnum opus titled, Tinai: The Indigenous Lifeway for the Anthropocene, to the Miller Memorial Library, and the copy was sponsored by our former Head of the Department of Philosophy Dr. Mathivanan. We promptly ushered them to meet with our Principal. Our Principal was very happy with the books that were gifted to the College.

On the whole, a very rewarding day, in every way!