CLASH OF CULTURES
“TO THIS DAY THE DEBATE RAGES AS TO WHERE REAL CULPABILITY LIES”
For more than 200 years the Qing dynasty had ruled China – a country that was to Westerners a vast, mysterious land that seemed to beckon the entrepreneurial, adventurous and ambitious from Europe and America to explore, discover and sometimes exploit. As early as 1793 Emperor Qianlong told Lord McCartney, a British envoy, that China possessed “all things” and neither needed nor desired trade with the
