“The inevitable steam-boat”: Archibald John Little and steam navigation on the Yangtze river
Abstract
Keywords: Archibald John Little; Yangtze; navigation; progress; environment
In the second half of the nineteenth century the area surrounding the Yangtze river became increasingly crucial for Britons: they regarded it as their sphere of interest, firmly believed in its commercial potential, and thus strove to facilitate trade by introducing steam navigation beyond the Three Gorges. However, they encountered formidable obstacles, due to the nature of the river itself and to the opposition of Chinese authorities. Archibald John Little, a British merchant and author, played a prominent role in the opening of the Upper Yangtze to steamers, and discussed his project in print in order to gain the support of public opinion in Britain. Through a reading of his travelogue, Through the Yang-Tse Gorges, or Trade and Travel in Western China (1888), this paper explores the multi-layered significance that steam navigation on the Yangtze acquired for Britons: while it offered the chance to expand their economic power in the region, it was also a constant source of friction with Qing authorities, epitomising the difficulties that characterised the interaction between the two empires; for some, it also acquired the symbolic value of a challenge to demonstrate the superiority of Western technology and to force upon China a Western model of progress. Yet, the encounter with the river, which has been central to Chinese history and culture for two millennia, also challenged assumptions on the superiority of the West and its conquering attitude towards the environment; moreover, the opportunity to observe junkmen and trackers eroded received stereotypes about ‘the Chinese’, testifying to a degree of admiration and respect seldom voiced in this period. Crucially, Little’s account captured the overlapping of aesthetic, economic, and human considerations that characterised British discussions of the Yangtze, a unique environment which focalised, and partially reshaped, current views of China, its people and its nature.
References
WORKS CITED
Beattie, James, Edward D. Melillo, and Emily O’Gorman, eds. Eco-Cultural Networks and the British Empire: New Views on Environmental History. London: Bloomsbury, 2016.
Bird, Isabella. The Yangtze Valley and Beyond. An Account of Journeys in China, Chiefly in The Province of Sze Chuan and among the Man-Tze of the Somo Territory [1899]. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 2010.
Bird, Isabella. Unbeaten Tracks in Japan. An Account of Travels in the Interior, Including Visits to the Aborigines of Yezo and the Shrines of Nikkô and Isé [1880]. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 2010.
Blakiston, Thomas Wright. Five Months on the Yang-Tsze: With a Narrative of the Exploration of its Upper Waters and Notices of the Present Rebellions in China [1862]. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 2010.
Brunero, Donna. Britain’s Imperial Cornerstone in China: The Chinese Maritime Customs Service, 1854-1949. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.
Bruun, Ole. An Introduction to Feng Shui. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 2008.
Chang, Elizabeth Hope. Britain’s Chinese Eye: Literature, Empire, and Aesthetics in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Stanford: Stanford U P, 2010.
Daigle, Jean-Guy. “Challenging the Imperial Order: The Precarious Status of Local Christians in Late-Qing Sichuan.” European Journal of East Asian Studies 4.1 (2005): 1–29.
Fairbank, John King, and Kwang-Ching Liu, eds. Late Ch’ing, 1800-1911, vols. 10 and 11 of The Cambridge History of China. Gen. ed. Denis Twitchett and John King Fairbank. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1980.
Forman, Ross G. China and the Victorian Imagination. Empires Entwined. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 2016.
Hevia, James L. English Lessons: The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century China. Durham (N.C.) and London: Duke U P, 2003.
Huangfu Day, Jenny. “From Fire-Wheel Boats to Cities on the Sea: Changing Perceptions of the Steamships in the Late Qing, 1830s-1900s.” Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies 20.1 (2015): 50-63.
Kim, Nanny. “River Control, Merchant Philanthropy, and Environmental Change in Nineteenth- Century China.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 52 (2009): 660-94.
Lee, Klaudia Hiu Yen. Charles Dickens and China, 1895-1915: Cross-cultural Encounters. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2017.
Little, Alicia, Intimate China. The Chinese as I Have Seen Them [1899]. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 2010.
Little, Archibald John. Through the Yang-Tse Gorges, or Trade and Travel in Western China [1888]. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 2010.
Little, Archibald John. Through the Yang-Tse Gorges, or Trade and Travel in Western China. Third and Revised Edition, with Map and Illustrations. London: Sampson Low, Marston, & Company, 1898.
Little, Archibald John. Mount Obi and Beyond: A Record of Travel on the Tibetan Border [1901]. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 2010.
Little, Archibald John. The Far East [1905]. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 2010.
Little, Archibald John. Gleanings from Fifty Years in China [1910]. Ed. Alicia Little. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 2010.
Morgan, Susan. “The ‘Sphere of Interest’: Framing Late Nineteenth-Century China in Words and Pictures with Isabella Bird.” A Century of Travels in China. Critical Essays on Travel Writing from the 1840s to the 1940s. Ed. Douglas Kerr and Julia Kuehn. Hong Kong: Hong Kong U P 2007. 105-117.
Otte, Thomas G. The China Question: Great Power Rivalry and British Isolation, 1894-1905. Oxford and New York: Oxford U P, 2007.
Ozawa, Shizen. “Erasing Footsteps: On Some Differences between the First and Popular Editions of Isabella Bird’s Unbeaten Tracks in Japan.” Asian Crossings: Travel Writing on China, Japan and Southeast Asia. Ed. S. H. Clark and Paul Smethurst. Hong Kong and London: Hong Kong U P, 2008. 87-97.
Parkinson, Jonathan. “The First Steam-Powered Ascent Through the Yangtse Gorges.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch 46 (2006): 149-174.
Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London and New York: Routledge, 1992.
Reinhardt, Anne. Navigating Semi-Colonialism: Shipping, Sovereignty, and Nation-Building in China, 1860-1937. Cambridge (Mass): Published by the Harvard University Asia Center, 2018.
Rowe, William T. China’s Last Empire: The Great Qing. Cambridge (Mass) and London: Belknap Press, 2012.
Schoenbauer Thurin, Susan. Victorian Travelers and the Opening of China, 1842-1907. Athens (Ohio): Ohio U P, 1999.
Smith, Richard J. The Qing Dynasty and Traditional Chinese Culture. Lanham; Boulder; New York; London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
Stevens, Keith. “A Tale of Sour Grapes: Messrs. Little and Mesny and the First Steamship through the Yangzi Gorges.” Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 41 (2001): 321–28.
Thompson, Carl. “Nineteenth-Century Travel Writing.” Cambridge History of Travel Writing. Ed. Nandini Das and Tim Youngs. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge U P, 2019. 108–24.
Van Slyke, Lyman P. Yangtze: Nature, History and the River. Reading (Mass): Addison-Wesley, 1989.
Wu, Juanjuan. “Cosmopolitanism, Comparison and Affect: Decolonising Isabella Bird’s The Yangtze Valley and Beyond (1899).” English Studies 103.6 (2022): 920–39.
