The Perils Of Interpreting - The Extraordinary Lives Of Two Translators Between Qing China And Th...

0691225451
English | 345 pages | epub | 36.75 MB

Description:
An impressive new history of China’s relations with the West-told through the lives of two language interpreters who participated in the famed Macartney embassy in 1793
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 British-China relations. She shows that Chinese familiarity with the West existed, but growing tensions endangered…