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The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators between Qing China and the British Empire by Henrietta Harrison (review)

2023; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 56; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/ecs.2023.a900664

1086-315X

Chinese history and philosophy

Reviewed by: The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators between Qing China and the British Empire by Henrietta Harrison Eun Kyung Min Henrietta Harrison, The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators between Qing China and the British Empire (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2021). Pp. 312; 36 b/w illus., 1 map. $29.95 cloth. Henrietta Harrison's Perils of Interpreting joins an impressive list of books on the Macartney (1792–94) and Amherst (1816–17) embassies to Qing China by scholars such as Alain Peyrefitte, James L. Hevia, Lydia H. Liu, Peter J. Kitson, and Stephen Platt. As readers of these books know, the first two British embassies to China continue to excite controversy, though the most recent debates have been less about precisely what happened in the tent in Rehe (today Chengde) where Macartney bowed down before the Qianlong emperor, and more about the scholarly and theoretical frameworks mobilized to study what Harrison calls "one of the most famous moments in the history of China's encounter with the West" (2). Harrison offers us a fresh and highly readable account of the embassies from the perspective of two apparently minor figures: Li Zibiao (1760–1828), a Catholic Chinese priest who was recruited by George Leonard Staunton for the Macartney embassy, and Staunton's twelve-year-old son George Thomas (1781–1859), who was taught Chinese and presented to Qianlong as part of his ambitious father's efforts to give him a head start on a future career in Asia. The result is the opposite of a bird's-eye view of the British embassies. Harrison's readers will be enthralled by the original story she tells—a story created painstakingly out of multilingual archives in Rome, Naples, London, and Beijing, as well as oral interviews with the current residents of Zhaojialing where Li lived as an old man. By focusing on these figures who were unwittingly pulled into the embassies due to their unusual linguistic abilities, Harrison gives us an intimate and at times touching account of how history happened at ground level. Harrison divides her book almost equally between Li Zibiao and George Thomas Staunton, evidently in the interest of striking a narrative balance between the Qing and British accounts. In part 1, she interweaves the stories of their unusual [End Page 629] childhoods and educational upbringing. Part 2 retells the story of the Macartney embassy primarily through Li's travails as an interpreter caught between two cultures and ends with his later experience as a Chinese priest in Lu'an (today Changzhi); part 3 traces Staunton's adult career in the East India Company and subsequent role in the Amherst embassy. In the concluding part 4, Harrison examines the last years of Li and Staunton and analyzes the disasters of the Opium War as, at least in part, a result of the "perils of interpreting." Harrison encourages us to regard Li and Staunton in parallel terms. Through their unusual experiences of transcontinental travel at an early age, they both became remarkably knowledgeable about each other's language and culture; their cross-cultural knowledge, in turn, isolated them from their peers and countrymen. However, we should note that in many ways they are vastly different historical figures. Though Staunton did not achieve the full political success and social respect he desired, he had a highly successful and lucrative career in the East India Company, became a baronet and MP in his thirties, published many important translations of Chinese texts, and spent his later life in considerable comfort at Leigh Park. Though he was often made fun of for his Chinese mannerisms, his sufferings can hardly be compared with those of Li, who lived through years of religious persecution under emperor Jiaqing, hiding away in a cave in the Zhaojialing hills, witnessing the arrest and death of many of his acquaintances, cut off from the world and often in ill health. Harrison's most important achievement in Perils of Interpreting is the detailed restoration of Li Zibiao as a central protagonist in the story of the Macartney embassy. Indeed, it is arguably Li who steals the show. The younger son of a large...