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Chinese and Americans
Chinese and Americans
A Shared History

XU G U O Q I

Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
2014
Copyright © 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America

First printing

Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data

Xu, Guoqi.
Chinese and Americans : a shared history / Xu Guoqi.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-674-05253-6 (alk. paper)
1. United States—Relations—China.
2. China—Relations—United States.
3. Americans—China—History.
4. Chinese—United States—History. I. Title.
E183.8.C5X8 2014
327.73051—dc23 2014005705
 To Margaret, Julia, and Tom
They represent the best of Chinese and Americans
 Contents

Foreword by Akira Iriye ix

A Note on the Spelling of Chinese Names xiii

Introduction: The Surprising Shared History of Chinese

and Americans 1

Pa r t On e
Messengers of the Nineteenth Century

1. Anson Burlingame: China’s First Messenger to the World 25

2. The Chinese Education Mission: Chinese Schoolboys

in Nineteenth-Century America 74

3. Ge Kunhua: America’s First Chinese Language Teacher 105

Pa r t T wo
The Internationalization of China and the United States

4. Frank Goodnow: An American Adviser in China 139

5. John Dewey: A Yankee Confucius and Cultural Ambassador 204

viii Contents

Pa r t T h r e e
Popular Culture and Sino-American Relations

6. Shared Diplomatic Journey through Sports 235

Conclusion 259

Notes 267
Selected Glossary 301
Selected Bibliography 303
Acknowledg ments 317
Index 321
 Foreword

The subtitle of this important book, “a shared history,” provides the key
not only to Xu Guoqi’s understanding of the history of U.S.-China re-
lations but also to one of the significant historiographic developments
today.
Xu himself exemplifies the spirit of “shared history” in that he has
been an integral part of Chinese history from his birth in Anhui Prov-
ince in 1962 to his American education and now as a distinguished histo-
rian whose work has made significant contributions to the history of
China, the United States, and indeed the whole world.
The village where he was born was in one of the poorest parts of China
and did not have electricity until 1993. His parents were unable to read
or write, but Guoqi was an exceptional student and was admitted to An-
hui Normal University in 1980, from which he proceeded to Nankai Uni-
versity for graduate work in American history. There he studied with
Yang Shengmao, who had studied with Thomas Bailey at Stanford Uni-
versity in the 1940s. Xu received a master’s degree in 1987 and taught
for a while at Nankai’s Institute of History before receiving a Harvard-
Yenching fellowship to enroll at Harvard as a graduate student.
He began his studies at Harvard in 1991, which was when I met him
for the first time. As with many foreign students—including myself—his
oral and written English was initially not quite adequate, and, more im-
portantly, he had not been fully immersed in the scholarly literature that

ix
x Foreword

had been developed among American and European historians for sev-
eral decades while the People’s Republic of China was virtually closed
to external intellectual contact. So Xu had not only to overcome his lan-
guage difficulties but also to catch up quickly with the ever-expanding
scholarly literature in history. In both these endeavors he was quite suc-
cessful, propelled by a sense of determination and purpose that has re-
mained with him to this day. He was a very popular teaching fellow while
working on his dissertation, which he completed in 1999. He then taught
at Kalamazoo College until 2009, when he moved to the University of
Hong Kong.
During his American years he broadened his interests to include in-
ternational history, with an emphasis on U.S.-China relations. This, I
believe, was a very happy choice both for him and for the scholarly com-
munity. He is at home in both American history and modern Chinese
history, and he always puts these national histories in the global context.
These characteristics inform all his books, which he has published in
rapid succession: China and the Great War (2005), Olympic Dreams
(2008), and Strangers on the Western Front (2011). All three are substan-
tial monographs, based on multiarchival research in Europe, the United
States, and elsewhere, and they set inspiring examples of how to “inter-
nationalize” the study of history. The first examines China’s entry into
the war against Germany in 1917 as a process of the country’s interna-
tionalization even as it developed its new national identity; the second
focuses on sports and traces the steady Chinese involvement in world
sporting events, in particular the Olympics; and the third describes the
connections, both direct and indirect, that were established between
Chinese workers and Europeans as well as Americans when they came
together in Europe during the Great War.
All these works, as well as others that he has published in Chinese,
show that Xu Guoqi is at the forefront of the movement among historians
to internationalize the study of history. This applies not just to studies of
individual countries but also to international history, that is, the history
of interactions among nations. Traditionally, this subject was conceptu-
alized as a story of “the rise and fall of the great powers,” in which sepa-
rate states are analyzed in terms of their respective agendas, usually un-
derstood in such terms as “national interests,” “national security,”
 Foreword xi

“balance of power,” and the like. Inevitably, the emphasis in such study
tends to center on the West, in particular Western Europe and the United
States. Other parts of the world come into the picture primarily as objects
of these powers’ expansion and control. The internationalization of his-
tory, therefore, has taken the form of incorporating as many countries and
regions of the globe as possible into research agendas. Xu’s books show
how this can be done, and why it would now be totally inappropriate to
write Eurocentric accounts of modern international relations.
At the same time, historians have been paying increasing attention to
individuals and their communities, not simply to governments and mili-
tary forces, in the study of international history. “International” affairs
in this sense embrace people-to-people, or intersocietal, interactions as
well as formal interstate relations. At that level, the key questions would
be how different people and nonstate entities (such as religious, business,
and cultural organizations) come into contact with one another across na-
tional boundaries. Interpersonal, intercommunal connections are the key
to understanding these phenomena, whereas in more formal interstate af-
fairs, questions of security, territorial integrity, and power balance would
be of utmost concern to governments. Put another way, at one level inter-
national relations assume the division and potential conflict among na-
tions, whereas at another level they entail virtually unlimited engage-
ment throughout the world.
It is in this latter context that Xu Guoqi’s new book makes an impressive
contribution. Rather than dealing with official relations between China
and the United States, as many accounts do, it focuses on encounters
and interactions between individual Chinese and Americans, as well as
nongovernmental organizations in which they are actively involved.
From the beginning, the book shows, there was a layer of these associa-
tions that defined its own world, the world of nonstate connections, that
remained vigorous regardless of the vicissitudes of official relations. This
was particularly notable in the field of education, where Chinese students
as well as teachers were brought over to the United States, which in turn
sent its educators and missionaries across the Pacific. What they devel-
oped in the process were shared experiences, shared because all these
individuals and the institutions that hosted them established their own
networks. Sometimes these networks could be more “virtual” than actual
xii Foreword

in the sense that Chinese and Americans might entertain images of one
another and of the world in which they would develop visions of an
interdependent future.
This was also a shared history in that it was not an exclusive or exclu-
sionary one but could be offered to others besides Chinese and Ameri-
cans. Xu rightly rejects the sort of cultural determinism that sometimes
stifles the study of international relations, a determinism that argues that
each people has its own unique cultural tradition that never changes and
retains its integrity regardless of cross-cultural contact. Instead, the shared
history presented here can be appreciated and appropriated by many
others in Asia, the Pacific, and indeed the whole world. Ultimately, all
history belongs to the whole of humanity. There is no such thing as a his-
tory that is owned by a country and its people and can never be shared
by anyone else.
All history must be shared, but how the sharing is done needs to be
carefully documented. This book shows the way.

Akira Iriye
Harvard University
 A Note on the Spelling
of Chinese Names

This book has used the internationally accepted Pinyin system of ro-
manization for Chinese names. However, certain names that have been
better known in the world with non-Pinyin spellings are exempt from the
Pinyin system. These names include the following in this book: Canton
instead of Guangzhou, Yung Wing instead of Rong Hong, Sun Yat-sen
instead of Sun Yixian, Confucius instead of Kongzi, Mencius instead of
Mengzi, Nobel prizewinner in physics Chen Ning Yang instead of Yang
Zhengning, Wellington Koo instead of Gu Weijun, and Hollington Tong
instead of Dong Xianguang, among others. Of course, the names in quota-
tions are preserved as they were without converting them into the Pinyin
system.

xiii
Chinese and Americans
 Introduction
The Surprising Shared History
of Chinese and Americans

The United States, born out of a revolution for freedom, is a young

country . . . but our constitution is the oldest continuing written
constitution in the entire world. Chinese civilization . . . is one of
the oldest cultures in the world. But as a modern nation, China is
quite young. We can learn from each other.
—Jimmy Carter, 1979

O n August 8, 2008, the day Beijing chose to start the Summer

Olympic Games, U.S. president George W. Bush attended the open-
ing ceremony of the grand new U.S. embassy building in Beijing—“a
new embassy for a new era.” 1 Both Chinese and Americans were keen to
use that lucky day to kick off a new era in their relations, and the U.S.
State Department issued a beautifully designed and illustrated volume
on the long history of Sino-American relations to mark the event. That
book was published simultaneously in English and Chinese under the
title A Journey Shared: The United States and China—Two Hundred Years
of History. Unfortunately, it is a slight treatment, only sixty-four pages in
length, and even given its promising title, its account is largely a typical
diplomatic history that misses most of the key points of the truly shared
journey. With these serious shortcomings, the historian John Israel has
declared it fit only for the coffee table.2
If the State Department missed the mark, the same problem has plagued
academic research for many years. Studies of Chinese-American relations

1
2 Introduction

from traditional perspectives seem to suffer from two fatal shortcomings.

First, they usually focus on the United States and Americans, and describe
the Chinese as simply responding to Western initiatives. Few pay equal
attention to the Chinese initiatives that also shaped Sino-American rela-
tions. Second, they often assume a top-down approach, overemphasizing
the roles of government, politicians, and the economy, and giving less
weight to the role of individuals, and especially the kinds of activities and
experiences through which Chinese and Americans mutually engage and
actively involve themselves, for instance, in the popular culture of sports.
Readers can pick up any general history of Sino-American relations and
only rarely come across any serious discussion of the case studies consid-
ered in this book. This traditional approach fails to provide a complete
picture, one that keeps both Americans and Chinese squarely in focus and
shows them as equally active in shaping and pushing their ideas to work
toward a better mutual understanding and better bilateral relations.
This book chooses to be different. It is not about cultural difference
and confrontations, coming wars, the clash of civilizations, America’s
decline, or the collapse of China. Nor is this one more in the distin-
guished but well-worn tradition of surveys on Sino-American diplo-
macy, or political, racial, and economic relations. I simply do not want to
add one more work to those ranks. Instead, this book presents case stud-
ies of prominent yet curiously neglected cultural exchanges, areas of
common ground, and the contributions of both Chinese and Americans
to a shared historical experience. By using culture rather than politics,
the economy, race, or diplomacy as a reference point, this book uncovers
how the shared pasts of these peoples have played a role in shaping na-
tional developments and the historical significance of Chinese and
American experiences. Culture rather than politics or the economy or
diplomacy is my preferred perspective for this project. By culture I mean
activities whereby people and societies work on shared dreams, hopes
and frustrations, excitements and disappointments such as Chinese and
Americans have experienced on their long journey from the nineteenth
century to the present moment. I have paid special attention to cultural
internationalism, a term and concept I borrow from Akira Iriye. Iriye, in
his incisive and provocative book Cultural Internationalism and World
Order, showed that even in the face of worldwide frustration with the
new world order in the aftermath of World War I, there still existed a
 Introduction 3

“cultural internationalism.” In the 1920s “educators, intellectuals, art-

ists, musicians, and many others cooperated across national boundaries
to promote mutual understanding. They envisioned a world in which
the exchange of students and scholars, collaborative intellectual enter-
prises, artistic exhibits, symposia on current affairs, and similar under-
standings would take the place of arms races and military alliances as
determinants of international affairs.” 3 According to Iriye, cultural in-
ternationalism refers to a surprising array of efforts that attempt to build
and foster cultural understanding, cooperation, and a sense of shared
values across national borders—through student and scholar exchange
programs, lectures, and other cultural activities. Inspired by Iriye’s ar-
guments, I try to show that among Chinese and Americans this cultural
internationalism has long been a major theme in their shared past. By
examining deep-level philosophical and cultural communications from
the early nineteenth century to the present, I want to explore what I see
as a new paradigm by which these two colossal and quite different soci-
eties and states may be studied and understood. It seems to me that cul-
tural internationalism has clearly served as an important though rarely
acknowledged theme in Sino-American relations.
There are key questions to be considered. If in fact there were such
shared experiences, just how did Americans and Chinese contribute to,
or help define, each other’s history and nation building? We often speak
of these two countries as being opposites when in fact they are merely
different. But did they not also share common ground, values, and ob-
jectives at crucial moments in their history? What dangers and frustra-
tions did each of them face, sometimes leading to angry words and use-
less violence on both sides? The study of the internationalization of the
United States and China is just taking shape. This book essays to com-
pare these two countries in a coherent way so that we may not only dis-
cover hidden connections, but more importantly, work out the intellec-
tual tools that will let us define a new international history of China and
the United States.

Sunzi’s classic manual of war (The Art of War) counsels, “Know your-
self, know your enemy: one hundred battles, one hundred victories.”
People now often say “know your enemy,” and we should add that it is
4 Introduction

also good advice to know your friends. But “knowing yourself ” is at least
as important, and much more difficult. To know yourself means know-
ing who you are, and Chinese and Americans both suffer from serious
national identity problems. China’s problem lies largely with its history,
while Americans seem to have more trouble with the present. Both, there-
fore, need to come to grips with their shared history and their shared
world. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold
war, Americans have been asking themselves whether their nation is an
empire, a beacon of democracy, or a superpower in serious decline. Even
worse, Americans, who united against clear enemies during two world
wars and the cold war, now are consumed with identifying the next en-
emy. Is that new enemy China?
The United States has often behaved like an empire, though most
Americans have chosen to view it otherwise. But if America is indeed a
superpower in decline, Americans need to adjust their foreign policy
and how they deal with rising powers such as China. The United States
may be a superpower for the present, but it is also heavily reliant on its
would-be rival, China, its largest creditor. Historically, no superpower
has lasted forever, never mind a superpower propped up by borrowed
money. Rome declined. So did the Chinese, Russian, and British em-
pires. Will America defy history or is it indeed exceptional? Americans
are not so sure. Winston Churchill as early as 1918 understood the para-
dox of the American experience when he described the American Dec-
laration of Independence as a great title deed on which the liberties of
the English-speaking people are founded: “By it we lost an Empire, but
by it we also preserved an Empire.” 4 Will the United States follow the
British path?
China’s challenge runs deeper, since its basic identity is anchored in
its pride at being one of the world’s longest continuous civilizations. The
Chinese have seen no need to divide culture from politics or power from
civilization. Traditional China was tianxia or “all under heaven,” and
its values were universal. The Chinese could also boast that they discov-
ered paper-making technology and were the first to employ a paper cur-
rency. China’s Tang dynasty was a fully cosmopolitan empire in the
eighth century. In 1776, when the Americans had just launched their war
of independence, China had been the undisputed superpower of East
 Introduction 5

Asia and one of the greatest powers in the world—economically, militar-

ily, and culturally—for several centuries.
The charge that China’s cultural polity was immobile is quite wrong.
After all, the Chinese are as adaptable as any people in the world. Al-
though they like to quote Mencius—“I have heard of men using the doc-
trines of our great land to change barbarians, but I have never yet heard
of any being changed by barbarians”—the Chinese changed quickly as
needed.5 With its humanistic-based Confucian civilization that dated its
origin to more than two thousand years ago, and a merit-based civil ser-
vice system that was full blown by the tenth century, China was the won-
der and envy of the world for several centuries. Britain and America may
have been inspired—or perhaps shamed—by the example of the Chinese
civil ser vice with its examination-based entrance qualifications when
they set up their own civil ser vice systems in the nineteenth century.6
Yet after the abolition of Confucian civilization in favor of Westerniza-
tion in the early twentieth century, the Chinese were left to wonder
whether China was a civilization, a nation-state, a party-state, or a cul-
tural wasteland. They worried about the viability of their “Chinese-
ness.” After all, even their Marxist system was an import from the West.
George H. Danton wrote in 1931, “The tragedy of Chinese civilization
seems to have been that while it actually thought cosmically, its cosmos
was always a micro-cosmos.” 7 Today’s China inherits the legacy of its
past but has tried to cobble together a new identity based on half-digested
ideas and borrowed systems. After all, the Chinese rejected Confucian-
ism as official ideology; they abolished the centuries-old dynastic system
and went on to eventually dismantle the Maoist system; they have proved
more capable capitalists than their capitalist mentors. While powerful
elites in America work to preserve buildings merely a century old, the
Chinese demolish ancient buildings and relics without thought or regret
in the name of economic development. History is dust.
Race is another source of identity and anxiety. The United States has
been a nation of immigrants, and race remains a thorny issue. There is
no “American race” the way there has been a “Chinese (Han) race” since
the early twentieth century, when reformers such as Sun Yat-sen wanted
to turn the multiethnic Qing Empire into a nation based on the Han eth-
nicity. Americans long defined their polity by racial exclusion. African
6 Introduction

Americans were excluded from full citizenship in the Constitution, but

it is less recognized that the first law passed by the new American repub-
lic in 1790 was to restrict citizenship to whites. Though the United States
touted its special relationship with China, Chinese were singled out and
specifically excluded on the basis of race from immigrating to America
from 1882 to 1943. The U.S. Congress in 2012 passed resolutions of re-
gret, but the government has yet to officially apologize for this uncivilized
treatment of the Chinese. It took some forty years for the American gov-
ernment to officially apologize and pay reparations to Japanese Ameri-
cans as compensation for their forced internment during World War II,
and it has yet to come to grips with the historical injustices done to Chi-
nese immigrants and its citizens of Chinese descent.
Both countries have been historically expansionist and used territory
to defi ne themselves both as nations and as imperialist powers. The
United States began its westward movement early in the nineteenth cen-
tury as the Qing Empire was consolidating its expansion into Central
Asia. China continues to pursue an “Open the West” (xibu da kaifa) pol-
icy to develop areas the Qing conquered long ago. Both countries fought
disastrous wars in Vietnam. During the Qing dynasty, the Qianlong em-
peror’s 1789 invasion turned into catastrophe. The U.S. Vietnam War,
launched primarily in the name of stopping Chinese Communist expan-
sion, for rather different reasons is nonetheless also characterized by the
term “quagmire.” When the staunchly anticommunist Richard Nixon de-
cided to extricate American forces from Vietnam, he realized he needed
help from China. The Chinese government provided that help simply by
being warm to America. Five years after the Americans had left Viet-
nam, in late 1978, just as the United States and Beijing finally arrived at
normalized diplomatic relations, China launched its own Vietnam War
to teach the Viet namese “a lesson” for their hostility to China. During
Deng Xiaoping’s famous visit to the United States in early 1979, he in
turn sought support from the Americans for his Vietnam War.8 Presi-
dent Jimmy Carter refused to give his blessing.
Each nation has at times been a model for the other. China was attrac-
tive to the American founding fathers such as Benjamin Franklin, who
considered it “the most ancient, and from long Experience, the wisest of
Nations.” Franklin once thought that China would be a better model for
 Introduction 7

America than European countries.9 China even played an indirect role

in American independence: the tea dumped into the water during the
Boston Tea Party in 1773 came largely from China. Once independent,
the Americans dreamed about the China market and its wealth. In 1784
the first American merchant ship, Empress of China, arrived in Canton
and made a 25 to 30 percent profit from that single trip. Chinese revolu-
tionaries would eventually follow in the footsteps of American revolu-
tionaries by declaring a republic in 1912. Their leader, Sun Yat-sen, was
a Christian and an American citizen.10
One’s identity in the world is also defined by friends, allies, and ene-
mies. China and the United States were close military allies during the
two world wars. They fought the same enemies and shared the same hopes
for a new world order. American president Woodrow Wilson’s blueprint
for the post–World War I world order deeply aroused the imagination of
the Chinese and affected their sense of themselves, the Americans, and
the rest of the world.11 Chinese students marched to the American lega-
tion in Beijing shouting, “Long live President Wilson!” Chen Duxiu, the
future cofounder of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), wrote that
Wilson was “the number one good man in the world.” 12 President Frank-
lin D. Roosevelt, who led America during World War II, named China
one of “Four Policemen,” that is, one of the four most important powers
after the war. During the cold war, the fates of Chinese and Americans
became interconnected in a different way. China and the United States
fought each other in two hot wars—directly in the Korean War and indi-
rectly in the Vietnam War. China thus has the unshared distinction of
being America’s military ally in World Wars I and II and then its deadly
enemy in the only hot wars of the cold war era.
Despite this history of interaction, the two countries still struggle to
know each other. Americans have little excuse for their naive ideas about
China and their ignorance of themselves. Chinese premier Wen Jiabao
told the Washington Post on November 21, 2003, “If I can speak very hon-
estly and in a straightforward manner, I would say the understanding of
China some Americans have is not as good as the Chinese people’s un-
derstanding of the United States.” Wen and many similarly minded Chi-
nese are misinformed, of course. Generally speaking, average Americans
have more reliable channels through which to learn about China than
8 Introduction

the average Chinese has for America, and America has better-trained
scholars of China than their Chinese counterparts studying the United
States, largely due to China’s concern with information control and its
censorship and lack of transparency. It also has to be pointed out that
although Americans might know more about China, this does not neces-
sarily mean that their understanding has any depth. After Nixon’s visit
to China in 1972, other American visitors such as the economist John
Kenneth Galbraith and the actress Shirley MacLaine, who knew little
about China and spoke no Chinese, toured for several weeks and imme-
diately published “authoritative” books on China based on their travels.
Some Americans even claimed that impoverished China had already
solved the problems of the postindustrial age: recycling of waste prod-
ucts, medical care for the poor, a sense of belonging and community in a
densely populated society.13 More recently, Henry Kissinger’s five-
hundred-plus-page book, On China, assumes an authoritative tone to
declare that China is “less a conventional nation-state than a permanent
natural phenomenon” and that “the United States and China have been
not so much nation-states as continental expressions of cultural identi-
ties.” 14 Every four years since the 1980s, China has become a major elec-
tion issue that crosses party lines. Commentators in print and other me-
dia all pretend they are experts on China.
Economic ties have led to both constructive relations and shameful
exploitation. The history of the American obsession with the so-called
China market is longer than that of the United States itself. America was
founded on high principles, yet its policies toward China have shown
more pragmatism than idealism. From the Canton trade days to the
1860s, “in every issue between the foreigner and the Chinese, the impor-
tant question was whether the Americans would find it most to their
profit to stand with the English or with the Chinese.” 15 Two great Ameri-
can universities, Duke and Stanford, have deep connections with China:
both were built on money made either from the China trade or through
Chinese coolies working in the American West, though neither univer-
sity has ever officially acknowledged that debt. It is well known that in
the nineteenth century Britain sold opium to China to balance its books
and drain away Chinese silver, but who has ever heard that James B.
Duke made his fortune by selling the Chinese cigarettes? Upon learning
 Introduction 9

of the invention of the cigarette machine in 1881, Duke’s first words were,
“Bring me the atlas.” When he saw China with a population of 430 million,
he told his associates, “[That] is where we are going to sell cigarettes.”
According to Sherman Cochran, the fi rst cigarettes were exported to
China in 1890, and sales increased from 1.25 billion cigarettes in 1902
to 9.75 billion in 1912 and 12 billion in 1916—ten times the number sold in
1902. By 1915 more cigarettes were exported annually from the United
States to China than to all other nations of the world combined. Such high
sales and handsome profits delighted Duke. “We have made big progress
in China,” he reported to the press. “The possibilities . . . there can
hardly be overestimated.”16 Largely thanks to the fortune he made in
China, Duke later founded the university that bears his name. The Chi-
nese contributed to constructing the Central Pacific Railroad and the rail-
road between San Jose and San Francisco. It was the Chinese who chiseled
the tunnels through the dangerous Sierra Nevada. The founder of Stan-
ford University made his fortune by using Chinese laborers to build the
western reaches of the American continental railway. Those workers were
poorly paid, and not a few lost their lives.
Although economic and trade issues now dominate Sino-American
relations, until recently they were not truly important factors in the two
countries’ shared history. The so-called China market of the nineteenth
and most of the twentieth century was largely a myth. Trade volume with
China ranged between 1 and 3 percent of American trade worldwide.
And for the first twenty-three years after the People’s Republic of China
(PRC) was founded in 1949, trade relations with the United States sim-
ply did not exist. In 1971 U.S. trade with China amounted to $4.9 mil-
lion, all indirect imports through third countries. After Richard Nixon’s
visit in 1972, direct trade gradually resumed, although China’s total for-
eign trade that year only amounted to about $5.5 billion, less than its
commerce with Hong Kong.17 In the 1970s, China’s economic relations
with Americans expanded, but Americans found doing business with
the Chinese “like being close enough to a pretty girl to have her stand on
your foot.” 18 In 1978, when China began to open up and pursue eco-
nomic reforms, its total foreign trade volume reached about $20 billion,
but only $1 billion of China’s foreign trade that year was with the United
States.19
10 Introduction

Nowadays, while many recognize that China is America’s largest

creditor, few realize or understand that since 2010, China has also pro-
vided the largest number of foreign students to American colleges and
universities. In the 2009/2010 academic year, 127,822 Chinese students
attended American colleges and universities. One year later, their num-
bers reached 157,558, an increase of 23 percent and nearly 22 percent of
the total international student population. This made China the top
sending country for the second year in a row, and the number of Chinese
students in America is the largest from any single country. Moreover,
China has sent more students to the United States than to any country. It
seems the trend will only go up. For comparison, the second-largest send-
ing country in 2010/2011 was India, with 103,895 students sent to univer-
sities in the United States.20 If we compare the growth of Chinese degree
students in the United States between the 2000/2001 and 2011/2012 aca-
demic years, the figure is even more startling: their numbers grew at a
rate of 223.7 percent. For the same period, British students in America
increased by only 12.9 percent, and German students even declined by
7.7 percent. Besides the breathtaking increase of Chinese students in
America, areas of academic cooperation between Chinese and Ameri-
cans have also grown substantially. In 2012, academic papers coauthored
by scholars from China and America increased 700.3 percent when com-
pared to 2000. In the same period research coauthored by scholars from
Germany and the United States increased by 101.2 percent, while that
with British scholars grew about 131.3 percent. In terms of higher educa-
tion and academic cooperation, we might have reason to suggest that the
present era is a Chinese century.21
China might lose its title as America’s largest creditor, but will prob-
ably retain its position as the largest exporter of U.S.-bound students.
Many Chinese who came to America in the 1980s or 1990s have now
returned to China and are taking part in their country’s historic trans-
formation. Some are called hai ou (seagulls) in Chinese because they
commute, work, and live as residents of both countries. Some are hai gui
(sea turtles) because they have returned to live and work in China for the
long term. Yung Wing, the brains behind the first wave of Chinese to
study in America in the 1870s (a story discussed in detail in Chapter 2),
and Sun Yat-sen were both naturalized American citizens. Yung Wing
 Introduction 11

can be characterized as the earliest and most famous hai ou and Sun Yat-
sen as the earliest hai gui, although there were no such terms back then.
The recent and unprecedentedly large wave of Chinese studying in the
United States will produce more seagulls and sea turtles. Imagine how
these Chinese, no matter whether they return to China or choose to re-
main in America, or commute from one to the other, will contribute to
the shared history and development of China and America in the future!
As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman shrewdly observed, “I
am not yet ready to cede the twenty-first century to China. Our Chinese
will still beat their Chinese.” 22
China’s persistent identity crisis has blocked its development as a
nation-state. If China had been a nation-state capable of protecting its na-
tional interests and national sovereignty, instead of a family-state (when
the Manchus were in control) or a party-state (with the CCP in charge),
it might well have been at war with America many times. For instance, in
the nineteenth century, when Chinese in America were stoned to death
or massacred or when Chinese were forbidden from marrying whites or
from owning land or testifying in court, a strong China would have at
least launched an effective protest or diplomatic retaliation. And when
the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was bombed in 1999, if China had been
in a stronger position, without the Communist Party’s chief concern be-
ing its political survival and legitimacy, both countries would have been
scrambling their fighter jets and bombers.
Chinese leaders were slow to learn about America, and American
leaders even slower to understand China. Before Mao became the Red
Emperor, he seemed more comfortable working with the Americans
than with Stalin. In a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt on November 10,
1944, Mao wrote, “The people of China and the people of the United
States have a traditional and deep-rooted friendship,” and he hoped to
cultivate a stronger relation with Americans.23 Even John Foster Dulles,
the ultra-anticommunist secretary of state in the 1950s, once said, “One
of my most prized possessions is a letter I received when 8 years old from
Li Hung Chang, then the great Chinese elder statesman. The opening
sentence of the letter reads: ‘To the little grandchild of General Foster,
my friend and councilor in my hours of perplexity and trouble.’ ” Dulles
then said, “That letter is to me symbolic of what have been, and always
12 Introduction

should be, the relations between our two peoples. It breathes the spirit of
fraternal friendship between their old, and our young, society. It reflects
the kindly good humor and respect for home and family ties, which
make it easy for Americans to understand and to love the Chinese char-
acter.” Conceding that American trade with China never grew to large
proportions, nor did Americans ever invest heavily in China, Dulles
observed, “The contacts have continued to be primarily cultural and
spiritual.” 24
Chinese leaders often dismiss American attitudes toward their own
political mistakes. In November 1973, Mao asked the visiting Henry
Kissinger, “Why is it in your country you are always so obsessed with
that nonsensical Watergate issue?” Breaking into an opponent’s offices,
making an enemies list, and flouting the rule of law did not seem remark-
able to Mao. In April 1974, Deng Xiaoping met Kissinger in New York
and asked why there was “still such a big noise being made about Water-
gate” and added that “Chairman Mao told you that we are not happy
about this.” Instead of answering, Kissinger turned the conversation to
Chinese domestic events. Deng then asked, “Doctor, are you familiar
with Confucius?” With uncharacteristic modesty, Kissinger replied,
“Not in detail.” Deng explained that Confucius was very conservative,
and to emancipate the people’s thinking, Confucius had to go. Kissinger
might have been unfamiliar with Confucius, but he did understand the
Chinese historical mind-set. At an early stage in the renewed Sino-
American relations, between 1971 and 1973, Kissinger maintained a “de-
fensive posture” that enabled him to conform to what he called the
“Middle Kingdom syndrome,” being ever “the polite, admiring, even
self-depreciative and humble student listening to the lectures and ab-
sorbing the wisdom of the world’s master strategists.” 25 Kissinger did not
think to ask how many Chinese, including Chinese leaders, knew much
about Confucius or had the courage to admit not knowing Confucius “in
detail.”
But the problem is deeper than either country’s knowledge of the
other. A country will have national identity problems when it refuses to
confront or even remember its own history. This is especially true in
present-day China, where the regime tries to brainwash its people about
the recent past and urges them to forget nearly half of the party’s post-
 Introduction 13

1949 history. The current regime meets little resistance when it admon-
ishes its people, “Don’t remember.” “Don’t remember” the bad things
the party and its leaders have done to the people; “don’t remember” how
great China once was if past greatness makes the current regime look
bad; “don’t remember” the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolu-
tion, the Tiananmen Massacre; and “don’t remember” the party’s role in
this “don’t remember” campaign. Chinese studies of the West have seri-
ous limitations and shortcomings as well. Although the Chinese regime
nowadays invokes traditional culture to boost its soft power legitimacy
and redress the ideological vacuum, most Chinese know too little about
their own history and traditional cultures to either draw spiritual suste-
nance or make critical judgments based on them, never mind turn them
into soft power.
China’s enemy in the end is not the United States, but itself. Many
Chinese have been quick to assume that America as the sole superpower
has prevented their country from receiving well-deserved respect in the
family of nations. In fact the CCP and its one-party dictatorship should
be largely blamed. The party’s most formidable opponents are actually
the Chinese people themselves, since it is the Chinese who could take
away the “mandate of heaven,” not the Americans. The party has tried
to quash the dignity and potential of the Chinese people to be citizens of
a great nation by denying them freedom of thought and imagination, and
it is the Chinese political system that is fundamentally responsible for
the failure of the nation to achieve its potential. Chinese are widely
known for their smarts, but they have to go abroad to achieve their po-
tential. China has failed to produce a Steve Jobs, a Bill Gates, or Nobel-
winning scientists and top intellectual thinkers. The Chinese who left
home to work abroad have earned these honors, but not those who re-
main in China. The irony is that Beijing has been obsessively setting up
Confucius Institutes worldwide while Chinese in China do not know
much about Confucianism and have largely ignored the teachings of
their traditional cultural heroes. The party has a legitimacy problem at
home, so how can Confucius Institutes boost China’s soft power abroad
when the party has a “soft belly”? The occasional chauvinist American
opposition to the Confucius Institutes is thus misguided. The current
regime calls itself a “People’s Republic,” and its currency is called
14 Introduction

“people’s money” (renminbi), but party officials have all the power and
control the nation’s wealth, not the people. It is more accurate to say that
CCP now stands for “Chinese Capitalist Party.”
Americans certainly have their own governmental failings, but in the
realm of expression regarding social justice, they can exercise imagina-
tion and dream. Chinese live with fear, anger, and uncertainty about their
own, their children’s, and their nation’s future. But Americans should
take a lesson from the Chinese experience of coming into the modern
world. The United States might believe it will be a superpower forever
and that its global domination is an entitlement, but the Chinese empire
was in the same position for many centuries over the last thousand years.
The Chinese eventually learned that “glory is as ephemeral as smoke and
clouds.” 26

These two self-contained continental countries share a long and com-

plexly intertwined history. Anson Burlingame, a national figure when
Abraham Lincoln appointed him top diplomat to China during the
American Civil War, became the de facto head of China’s first diplomatic
mission to the world. When China wanted to send officially sponsored
student groups to study abroad in the 1870s, the United States was cho-
sen to be host nation. Chapters 1 and 2 in this book deal with these
neglected episodes in Sino-American relations. Qing officials tried to
understand Americans and communicate with them more effectively
in creative and nontraditional ways with a focus on cultural sharing and
mutual learning. By appointing the American Burlingame to represent
China internationally, and by sending 120 young boys to study in Amer-
ica, the Qing government kicked off China’s ongoing study abroad drive.
Those young Chinese learned firsthand about modern American edu-
cation, Western civilization, and, it was hoped, secrets to wealth and
power—as well as American baseball. At the same time, Americans and
the world gained opportunities to observe and understand both official
and everyday Chinese people, their culture, dreams, and frustrations.
Chapters 3 through 5 of the book focus on episodes in cultural learn-
ing and exchange. Chapter 3 uncovers the largely forgotten history of
how, in the late 1870s, a group of Boston merchants recruited a Chinese
 Introduction 15

poet named Ge Kunhua to jump-start Chinese language teaching and

cultural education in the United States. It also profiles Ge Kunhua the
person and describes his experiences and contributions. Chapters 4 and
5 tell how two twentieth-century American professors with strong con-
nections to Columbia University were chosen to work in China, one as
an employee of the Chinese government, the other in Chinese higher
education institutions. Frank Goodnow traveled under the sponsorship
of the elite Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former
Harvard president Charles W. Eliot, whereas John Dewey was invited by
Chinese scholars who, as newly active reformers, faced unprecedented
challenges as they sought out new directions for national development in
1919 and 1921. Through a detailed examination of the background to
these exchanges and by bringing forward fresh perspectives on a shared
history, these chapters show how, at crucial moments, Chinese and Amer-
icans sought to educate each other and shape each other’s mutual under-
standing and appreciation.
These exchanges built a foundation of what Zhou Enlai would later
call a relation of “equality and mutual benefit.” But by the end of World
War I there was also a foundation of mistrust, exploitation, and mutual
harm. As I wrote in one volume of my trilogy on the history of China’s
internationalization,27 educated elites of the Chinese World War I gen-
eration displayed a “naiveté in the face of Western countries’ obsession
with expanding their own unequal rights to Chinese territory,” with the
result that “Chinese romanticism about the West’s abstract ideals pre-
vented the elite from developing a clear and deep understanding of the
West and the international system itself.” 28 Americans insisted on an
open door for their missionaries, trade, and investments in China but
closed their own door to Chinese immigration.
Chapter 6 takes a dramatic turn away from individuals to highlight
the role of sports. Americans introduced modern sports to China, and
the Chinese have used sports as a platform from which to inform the
world of their desire to be treated with respect and equality, and their
right to eventually compete for world supremacy. In this chapter I show
how popular sports culture played an important role in bringing the two
nations together by creating bonds and providing new perspectives on
the different ways that each thought about and pursued a new world
16 Introduction

order and their own internationalization trajectories. It also examines

how Chinese and American governments used sports to achieve shared
diplomatic objectives in dealing with Moscow’s 1980 Olympic Games.
Commentators now read sports as a power struggle between China and
America. For instance, when China surpassed the United States in gold
medals in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, commentators in both countries
declared that China was replacing America in the new balance of world
power. When at the 2012 London Olympic Games America returned to
the familiar number one position in both gold medals and total medals,
with China a close number two, some concluded that this result might
mirror the true rankings in world politics. But few pundits have men-
tioned or even realize that it was Americans who introduced the modern
Olympic movement to China and that America has played a key role in
China’s using sports to return to the modern world system and showcase
its rise as a new power.
Existing scholarship has either ignored the cases under discussion
here or treated them from a negative or skeptical perspective. For many
years the Chinese considered Burlingame, Goodnow, and, to a certain
extent, Dewey to be “running dogs of imperialism,” who had no desire
to do anything good for China or the Chinese. They saw the students of
the first education mission as tools of both Chinese conservatives and
American cultural agents. Chinese scholars have not yet realized the im-
portance of popular culture in the history their countrymen and -women
share with Americans. American studies of the same topics usually con-
centrate on American perspectives and rarely pay attention to these
cases from the viewpoints of both sides. Chinese and American scholar-
ship on the cases under consideration here has tended to run between
dismissive and skeptical.
Unlike many volumes about Sino-American relations that have largely
focused on the differences and confrontations between the two nations,
in this book I have aimed at emphasizing the positive aspects of these
cases, which have so far been ignored. Burlingame obviously had an im-
pact on both the Chinese and American people through his dual posi-
tions and the treaty he concluded with the United States on China’s be-
half. The young students from China affected American perceptions of
China and the Chinese as well as Chinese perceptions of Americans.
 Introduction 17

With their American education and connections, many of those boys

provided a great ser vice to China, playing a part in national develop-
ment and improving Sino-American relations in developments such
as the American return of Boxer Indemnity funds for education and
bringing Goodnow to China as a constitutional adviser. Ge Kunhua
not only played a part in Harvard president Eliot’s ambitious plan to
transform Harvard and thus American higher learning; more impor-
tantly, he was the fi rst Chinese to systematically introduce Chinese
learning and culture to Americans. Goodnow was an important Amer-
ican witness to China’s transition from dynasty to republic even though
he would be tarred by his connection with the Yuan’s failed monarchy
scheme. Dewey both witnessed and transformed the May Fourth
Movement—a major turning point in modern China; and as a public
intellectual he helped shape mutual Chinese and American percep-
tions as he promoted the values of science and democracy for his Chi-
nese audiences. The realm of sports, including the Olympic Games,
provided a convenient means for the Chinese and Americans to achieve
both national and diplomatic objectives. I argue that all these cases
involve a history shared between Chinese and Americans. True, shared
experiences or past encounters are something different from a shared
journey, which presumes a common destination and mutual interest
despite possible difficulties, challenges, and tribulations along the
way. But given their vast differences, in all the case studies here, the
Chinese and Americans did indeed interact on many levels and had
many things in common.
Although each chapter in this book tells a separate story, all these sto-
ries are carefully selected for the thematic thread of “shared history,” by
which we can illuminate in a new way a past of cooperation and shared
excitement or frustration. Individual stories and personal experiences
bring to light shared national experiences in the nineteenth century, when
both countries were in some crisis in the process of reformulating them-
selves. Later chapters foreground the value and role of culture in linking
both nations and their people in the twentieth century. The overall goal of
these chapters is to demonstrate how both nations worked from the ideas
and values around democracy, education, new blueprints for world orders
such as constitutionalism and Wilsonianism, and international sports to
18 Introduction

shape their respective national development as well as brilliant diplo-

matic successes or disappointments.
Does the study of a shared history matter? It does, in at least two
ways. First, it matters in terms of historical research. John King Fairbank
in his landmark book The United States and China, first published in
1948 and reissued in several editions subsequently, wrote that “histori-
ans have been misled by the fact that our junior partnership [in the nine-
teenth century] with the British in China was not always apparent in the
American archives” because official diplomatic activities were “poorly
documented and dull as dishwater.” 29 However, if we use both Chinese
and American sources and especially the rich materials found in per-
sonal papers and other kinds of surviving documentation, we discover
that America actually played an enormously important role in the cases
of the Burlingame mission and the Chinese Education Mission, both of
which took place in late 1800s. In those cases, with encouragement from
the Chinese, Americans took the initiative. Contrary to widespread char-
acterizations of America’s passive role in China, the so-called me too
policy, pursued at the heels of the British, these cases demonstrate that
both the Chinese and the Americans had held high hopes for the role the
United States might play and took active steps to define their nations’
new directions. Fairbank maintained that in American scholarship, “one
thing stands out: In Sino-American relations to 1949, China was always
the weaker party, in trouble, the recipient of our interest and philan-
thropy. America was always the superior party, not in such trouble, able
to help. It was not an equal relationship, which is no doubt why we en-
joyed it.” 30 Because scholars have tended to treat the experiences of these
two nations separately, as Fairbank wrote, “the Chinese experience of
Sino-American relations was different from the American experience.” 31
But if we shift the focus by paying attention to their shared experience
and by using sources from both sides, the picture changes strikingly.
Second, recognizing the limitations of the traditional approach, other
scholars have long called for fresh perspectives. More than forty years
ago, when Akira Iriye published his Across the Pacific: An Inner History
of American–East Asian Relations, his point was to explain the irony
that the Chinese and Americans, “two of the most history conscious
peoples,” got into terrible confrontations thanks to “a most distorted
 Introduction 19

picture of their mutual relations.” By focusing on how Americans and

Chinese defined their respective realities and how those realities were
related to their historical experience and the international system, Iriye
revealed a fascinating “inner history.” 32 He pointed out, “Only when
American-East Asian relations are seen as an intellectual problem, and
only when efforts are made to overcome propaganda, emotionalism, and
excessive empiricism, will it become possible to transcend the past
and look toward a more peaceful Pacific.” Iriye thus called on the Chi-
nese and the Americans to “liberate themselves from the burden of the
past.” 33 Michael Hunt has also made a brilliant study of the so-called
special relationship between the Chinese and the Americans. Hunt
traces the origins of the idea of a special relationship and concludes that
“careful scrutiny of the fabled relationship” suggested that what was
special was “the degree to which two distinctly different and widely sep-
arated peoples became locked in conflict, the victims in some measure of
their own misperceptions and myths.” 34 Fairbank, Iriye, and Hunt are
all pioneers and giants in the study of Sino-American relations. It is
now time for a new generation of scholars to carry out new studies by
building on the contributions and foundations laid by those pioneers.
Inspired by their example, this book explores a different approach by
positing a shared history that can be teased out by investigating these
key but rarely researched case studies. It is hoped that pointing to shared
experiences might help Chinese and Americans establish better rela-
tions going forward. After all, as Fairbank once argued, historical per-
spective is “not a luxury but a necessity.” 35
The focus of “shared history” is not only important academically, for
developing a truly transnational history practice, it is also valuable in
terms of its practical purpose. For instance, skeptics have criticized Bur-
lingame as a naïf who stumbled into China and then came home to
promise a “shining cross on every hill.” Yet his genuine desire to pro-
mote mutual understanding and his long efforts to establish harmonious
relations for China with the rest of the world are exactly what Chinese
and Americans need to recognize today, when both sides seem more in-
terested in criticizing and distrusting each other. Too often neither side
has been willing to be reasonable: when one side was open to discussion,
the other likely was not.
20 Introduction

Furthermore, the case studies in this book clearly are relevant for cur-
rent and future relations. As both Chinese and Americans are now try-
ing to figure out the implications and importance of China’s enormous
new wave of students heading overseas, the history of that earliest educa-
tion mission should provide some historical mooring for our expecta-
tions and ideas about better managing for success. As the Chinese gov-
ernment shows its determination to promote China’s soft power through
Confucius Institutes and as learning the Chinese language has become
popular across America, Ge Kunhua’s story might also be valuable in
advancing mutual understanding and communication. The Goodnow
and Dewey cases clearly provide examples of how scholarship in both
countries can aid in advancing understanding by taking apart stereo-
types and misperceptions. Sports have demonstrated to us the value and
importance of popular culture in bringing Chinese and Americans to-
gether and promoting mutual interest. From a shared history perspec-
tive and through these case studies, we may detect a strong American
desire to spread “American civilization,” in the terminology of the nine-
teenth century, in its dealings with China. Burlingame’s obsession with
“civilization” can and should be approached as a form of cultural or moral
internationalism. In choosing the cases of Burlingame, Ge Kunhua, the
education mission, Goodnow, Dewey, and the role of sports, I hope I am
able to demonstrate how cultural internationalism was and continues to
be a motivating factor for both Chinese and Americans as they have en-
gaged over recent decades.
I believe this new approach and focus have value both for scholarship
and understanding current affairs and even for developing future Sino-
American relations. True, both countries are bound to have many future
confrontations and clashes over their current status in the world and their
development modes. But it is important for them to maintain healthy rela-
tions, since in many ways they are still in the same boat, and their fates
remain interconnected. Henry Kissinger’s 2011 book On China argues
that Chinese and Americans “needed each other because both [nations]
were too large to be dominated, too special to be transformed, and too
necessary to each other to be able to afford isolation.” 36 China has accu-
mulated more than $3 trillion in foreign currency reserves, far more than
any other nation. Half of that reserve is American government debt, mak-
 Introduction 21

ing China its biggest foreign creditor. The sheer size of this sum seems to
ensure that China will share America’s fate, at least economically. Even
though the United States and China may be staging something like a fi-
nancial version of the cold war, we have to keep in mind that both sides
fear mutually assured destruction in a “too big to fail” global relation-
ship. For all its challenges and the bubbling fiscal cold war, the fact is
that China has become increasingly integrated into the economic future
of the United States. And that could be a good thing, for both sides. Sec-
retary of State Hillary Clinton wrote in a 2011 Foreign Policy article titled
“America’s Pacific Century,” “At the end of the day, there is no hand-
book for the evolving US-China relationship. But the stakes are much
too high for us to fail.” 37
The eminent China scholar John King Fairbank wrote in his final
book, China: A New History, “Perhaps the Chinese have finally joined
the great outside world just in time to participate in its collapse.” 38 As
Western economies shrink and the balance of power tilts toward China,
if the West, especially Americans, have mishandled their relations with
the Chinese, Fairbank might be right. The poet laureate of the British
Empire, Rudyard Kipling, once recorded an imaginary epitaph on a
gravestone in one of his poems: “A fool lies here who tried to hustle the
East.” As Americans have tried to hustle China, with or without good
reason, the Chinese hustle them right back. The problem seems obvi-
ous: if Americans treat the Chinese as an enemy, they surely will become
one. Yet we can easily see other possibilities. As Kishore Mahbubani, a
Singapore scholar, wrote, “Only one country can provide the leadership
to integrate, modernize, and sustain China. And that country is the United
States.” Unfortunately, it seemed to him that “no one in Washington seems
to be proposing, much less pursuing, a comprehensive new strategy for
US-Chinese relations.” 39
The future of Sino-American relations depends on both countries
learning from the past and valuing shared traditions. Then their visions
of the future, while never free of conflict or mutual hustling, can none-
theless have points of productive contact or convergence. China and the
United States as nations are neither unconditional allies nor permanent
adversaries; Chinese and Americans as people are neither simply friends
nor fi xed enemies. As the Chinese recorded in “Legends of the Warring
22 Introduction

States” (“Zhan Guo Ce”) more than two thousand years ago, “Those who
do not forget the past will be masters of future.” About 150 years ago, a
high Chinese official wrote the following poem to express his hope for
better relations between the Chinese and the Americans:

Hoary China of five thousand years

With the youthful union only eighty [United States],
One on the east, the other to the west,
Now join the old and new
To the joy of all mankind.40

But another scenario could still take shape:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.41

History, even shared history, does not offer “lessons” in the way that
the old-fashioned schoolbooks did. But it does offer examples from which
we can take inspiration or learn regret. This type of history can perhaps
provide the best guidance for Chinese and Americans as they undertake
the hazardous journey ahead.
 part one

Messengers of the
Nineteenth Century
 1
Anson Burlingame
China’s First Messenger to the World

[The Burlingame Treaty] is a treaty made in the broad interests of

justice, enlightenment, and progress, and therefore it must stand.
It bridges the Pacific, it breaks down the Tartar wall, it inspires
with fresh young blood the energies of the most venerable of the
nations.
—Mark Twain

[China] comes with no menace on her lips. She comes with the
great doctrine of Confucius, uttered two thousand three hundred
years ago, “Do not unto others what you would not have others do
unto you.” Will you not respond with the more positive doctrine of
Christianity, “we will do unto others what we would have others
do unto us?” She comes with your own international laws; she tells
you that she is willing to come into relations according to it. . . .
She asks, in a word, to be left perfectly free to unfold herself pre-
cisely in that form of civilization of which she is most capable.
—Anson Burlingame

P ossibly the most elusive chapter of contradictory hope and

frustration in the history shared by Chinese and Americans centers
on Anson Burlingame (1820–1870). Abraham Lincoln appointed Burlin-
game minister to Austria, but he became the first U.S. resident minister
to China. Just as he was planning to wrap up his term in Peking in 1867,
Burlingame was called on to head China’s first diplomatic mission to the
West in 1868 and eventually signed China’s first equal treaty with the

25
26 Messengers of the Nineteenth Century

United States on behalf of the Chinese. He would die in St. Petersburg

on an extended mission in which he carried out diplomatic negotiations
for China. Burlingame was the Chinese emperor’s envoy, but never met
him, nor did he understand a word of the original letters of credence is-
sued for him to present to foreign governments, for he did not speak Chi-
nese or know much about Chinese history and culture.
More than one hundred years ago, as the Open Door era began, an
American commentator looked at Burlingame from a cross-civilizational
perspective, suggesting, “If Burlingame’s name be not forever associated
with an epochal readjustment of the world’s civilizations, then few names
have missed immortality more narrowly.” 1 But after more than a century,
we still await a definitive study of Burlingame’s life and his contribu-
tions. Most Chinese and Americans have never heard about Anson Bur-
lingame, and this might well be attributed to what historian Frederick
W. Williams pointed out in 1912: that Burlingame “was not taken seri-
ously enough by contemporaries during life,” and that “after his untimely
death he was discredited by a suddenly aroused fear of Chinese immi-
gration associated with his treaty, and loaded with obloquy by orators of
the sand-lot type.” 2

Representative to China of American Civilization

China and the United States were both in the throes of deadly political
crises in the mid-nineteenth century. Starting with the Opium Wars in
the 1840s, foreign invasions and economic pressures on China culmi-
nated in 1860 with British and French troops marching into the Forbid-
den City and then looting and burning the court’s Summer Palace. The
fatal threat to the dynasty, however, came from within. China had long
simmered with resistance and rebellion, and suppressing Muslim upris-
ings in Central Asia drained the treasury, but the Taiping Rebellion of
the 1850s was revolutionary. Inspired by Christian missionary tracts and
the Old Testament, Taiping leaders wanted to replace Confucian civili-
zation with a millenarian Christian kingdom. The once proud and com-
petent Qing ruling class of Manchus and Han Chinese now seemed too
tired and corrupt to suppress rebellion or defend their country.3 In Bur-
lingame’s homeland, a civil war, which started in 1861, was the bloodiest
 Anson Burlingame 27

and perhaps most destructive war the United States ever fought.4 In
1864, as a revived Han Chinese and Manchu coalition finally defeated
the Taiping and proceeded to introduce some reforms in China’s foreign
policies, Lincoln’s armies began their bloody march to victory. The Chi-
nese called their twin threats nei you wai huan, or troubles from within
and threats from without. Interestingly, at the same time the Americans
even had their version of nei you wai huan as Great Britain supported
the rebellious South diplomatically and even militarily when the North
and the South were killing each other.
This was the world of reconstruction and revolution in both coun-
tries out of which Anson Burlingame emerged. He was born into a poor
and deeply religious family on November 14, 1820, in the town of New
Berlin, in south-central New York. When he was young his family
moved to Ohio, then Michigan, both frontier states. According to one
of his earliest friends, “Anson was handsome, jolly and lovable in child-
hood, as he was earnest, energetic and devoted in manhood.” 5 To a
great extent, his high moral values and political idealism developed
during his years on the American frontier. As both an idealistic and a
self-motivated man, he managed to graduate from Harvard Law School
and set up an office in Massachusetts, where his marriage to Jane Liver-
more from an established family in Cambridge nurtured a politically
successful career. Burlingame served in Congress for three terms in the
1850s, where as a northerner and a progressive politician, he was a
member of the strongly antislavery Free Soil movement. In 1856 he
gained national attention for denouncing and challenging Preston
Brooks, the congressman from South Carolina who on the floor of the
Senate had brutally attacked Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner. In
his famous speech, “Defense of Massachusetts,” Burlingame denounced
Brooks’s barbaric assault: “I denounce it in the name of the sovereignty
of Massachusetts, which was stricken down by the blow. I denounce it
in the name of humanity. I denounce it in the name of that fair play
which bullies and prize-fighters respect.” 6 Burlingame accepted Brooks’s
challenge to a duel but scared him away with his terms—the duel was to
take place on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls and to be fought with
rifles. The incident made Burlingame a hero and a national figure in the
political arena.
28 Messengers of the Nineteenth Century

The key concepts in Burlingame’s “Defense,” as in his political career,

were sovereignty, justice, and humanity. Terms such as “conscience,”
“mankind,” ‘moral principle,” and “civilization” peppered his letters
and speeches, even when he was a young man.7 A widespread and per-
haps true story illustrates this political attitude. In 1849 Burlingame was
in London and had an opportunity to visit the House of Commons. When
he by mistake took a comfortable seat in a gallery reserved for peers, he
was asked to leave. One courtly peer indicated that he might remain, ar-
guing that Burlingame might be a peer in his own country. “I am a Sov-
ereign in my own country, Sir,” replied Burlingame as he left, “and shall
lose my caste if I associate with Peers.” 8 True or not, the story reflects
Burlingame’s attitude when Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian revolution-
ary, visited the United States in the early 1850s. Kossuth’s romantic story
and his unavailing struggle against the Austrian and Russian Empires
appealed strongly to the people of the United States, who prided them-
selves on supporting the freedom of Latin America from Spain. 9 Bur-
lingame served as chairman of the reception honoring Kossuth when
he visited Massachusetts to speak in favor of Italian independence.
In the 1860 election campaign, Burlingame spent so much time away
from Massachusetts working for Lincoln’s campaign for president that
he lost his own seat in Congress, but as a reward for his sacrifice, Lin-
coln appointed Burlingame “envoy extraordinary and minister plenipo-
tentiary to Austria.” This appointment was hardly a plum, as Secretary
of State William Henry Seward admitted. “We are a commercial people,”
he wrote, and our representatives at Vienna, where little business was
done, “seem generally to have come, after a short residence there, to the
conclusion that there was nothing for them to do and little for them to
learn.” 10 Moreover, while Burlingame was on his way to Vienna, the
Austrian government declared that his support of Kossuth and Sardin-
ian independence rendered him a persona non grata. Once again there
was a consolation prize. On June 17, 1861, Seward wrote to inform Bur-
lingame that he had been appointed minister to China.11
China was no less in domestic upheaval than the United States in
1861, a year that also proved crucial to the foreign relations of both coun-
tries. As the historian Knight Biggerstaff wrote, up to that time “no influ-
ential Chinese had recognized the necessity for adaptation to the Western
 Anson Burlingame 29

world, the few concessions that had been made having been regarded as
temporary measures which would be reversed as soon as China had be-
come stronger.” 12 After its defeat by Great Britain and France in the sec-
ond Opium War and the burning of the Summer Palace in 1860, China
had finally set up a foreign ministry, the Zongli Yamen (zongli geguo
shiwu yamen), but this ministry was intended to be temporary and did
not have its own legal existence, since most of its officials came from
other ministries. Only in 1861 did China first allow foreign ministers to
settle in Peking on a permanent basis. Before Burlingame became minis-
ter and took up residence in Peking, the American legation to China was
based in the rented house of its chargé d’affaires and secretary, Samuel
Wells Williams, in the Portuguese settlement of Macao. This happen-
stance made Burlingame the fi rst American minister to reside in Pe-
king. On October 24, 1861, Burlingame arrived in Hong Kong from
Paris. It then took him six more months to reach Peking due to a lack of
transportation in the winter season and the dangerous military situa-
tion. He finally arrived in the capital on July 20, 1862, and prepared to
take up residence and his diplomatic role.
The timing could not have been worse. First of all, Burlingame had
never even considered the possibility that he might become Lincoln’s
top diplomat in China. He knew little about China and had shown no
interest in the country previously. Still, in his acceptance letter to Seward,
he wrote, “I proceed to my new post with diffidence, but still with plea-
sure for there is a fine field and I am yet a young man.” 13 At that time Bur-
lingame was forty-one years old. Second, China and the United States
were not important to, or even interested in, each other. China had no
foreign policy and would refuse to even send resident ministers abroad
until the 1870s. It showed no diplomatic interest in the United States
when Burlingame arrived. And Americans for their part had little inter-
est in China. The American legation’s budget was pitiful: the total sum
spent for 1862, excluding salaries, was $399.90 as compared to £5,750
approved by the British government for its legation to Peking. With little
funding and staff, Burlingame compared the legation in 1862 to “a ship
without sailors.” 14
Nor did the United States have a set or independent policy toward
China. Before Burlingame’s arrival, the State Department usually asked
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
humble offering to the gods removed all impurities, social and
religious.
The Bolarum Dacoitee committed in 1837 is such an excellent
illustration of the system adopted by the Sanseeas that no apology
need be offered for the length of the narrative, as given to Captain
Malcolm ten years afterwards by one of the Dacoits actually engaged
in it.
"From this place (Sadaseopath) I and four others came on to
Hyderabad, where we looked about us for five days, but finding
nothing likely to suit our purpose, we went to Bolarum, and took up
our quarters at a buneeya's (tradesman's) shop in the village of
Alwal, close to the cantonments. In the cantonments we soon
discovered a respectable looking shop, which appeared well suited
for a Dacoitee. Early one morning I took fifty shuhr-chelnee rupees
with me and went to the shop, where I found the owner transacting
business. I asked him to exchange the shuhr-chelnee for bagh-
chelnee rupees, and when I had agreed to give him one pice
discount on each rupee, he went and unlocked one of two large-
sized boxes, which I saw in an inner room, and out of which he took
the money I required. I also noticed some silver horse-furniture
hanging upon a peg on the wall, and in a niche a dagger and a pair
of pistols." "Having thus obtained all the information I required as to
the exact spot where the property was likely to be found, I next
examined the position of the different guards likely to interrupt us in
the act of breaking into the house. I found that a guard of eighteen
men was stationed at the chowrie (police station) some distance off,
and that a sentry was posted at night at a place where four streets
met, close to the shop I had reconnoitred. From the latter I feared
no opposition, as he could easily be overpowered, and we calculated
upon breaking into the house before the chowrie-guard could turn
out and come to the rescue of the banker."
"I then returned to my comrades, with whom I remained for two
days, making ourselves acquainted with all the localities about the
place, the roads leading from it, and in fact with everything that
might be of use to us in the enterprise we were about to undertake.
Among other things, we learnt that after gun-fire, or eight o'clock,
the guard had orders to stop all parties entering the cantonments,
and we therefore determined to commence operations before that
hour."
"We then returned to Sadaseopath (forty miles distant), and on
relating the result of our proceedings to the gang, it was determined
to risk a Dacoitee on the Sowar's house at Bolarum. Our next
proceeding was to convey as secretly as possible to the vicinity of
that place sufficient arms and axes to answer our purpose; these
were made up into bundles and entrusted to four men, who
proceeded in the night time to Puttuncherroo, and on the following
night, a couple of hours before daybreak, we reached a small nullah
(ravine) behind the mosque near Bolarum, where the axes and
spears were carefully buried in the sand. The rest of our party in the
meantime struck their camp, and, leaving the high road, made to the
village of Tillapoor, about eight or nine miles from the fort of
Golcondah."
"The gang chosen for the Dacoitee consisted of twenty-four able
men, under Rungelah Jemadar and myself, and left Tillapoor about
ten o'clock in the forenoon, and, in small parties of two and three,
reached at twilight the spot where our arms were concealed. We
then procured some oil from the shop in the cantonments, and,
about half-past seven or nearly eight o'clock, we proceeded in
straggling order towards the shop about to be attacked, and which
we reached without being challenged by any one. The sentry posted
near the shop we were about to attack did not appear to suspect or
notice us; and the moment our mussal (torch) was lighted, he was
speared by Baraham Shah and Kistniah, while others commenced
breaking in the doors of the inner room, the outer partition of the
shop having been found open. Three bankers, whom we found
writing their accounts in the outer shop, rushed into the house and
disappeared. The lock of the door yielded to one blow from the axe
of Rungelah, and, on throwing down the planks of which it was
formed, we found the box which I had seen on a former occasion,
unlocked and open. Out of this we took sixteen bags full of money,
leaving four, which we were obliged to relinquish, as we were
pressed for time, and had not sufficient men at hand to remove
them. The whole place now was in a state of commotion and uproar;
and, as we drew off as fast as we could, we were followed by a
crowd of camp-followers and Sipahees, to the place where a number
of bullocks were picketed. We here struck into the paddy (rice)
fields, and across these our pursuers did not attempt to follow us. A
short distance from Bolarum, two of the bags broke, and the money
fell to the ground; and as it was dark, and we had no time to search
for it, we lost nearly 1,500 rupees." Nevertheless, they got off with
14,500 rupees, and with silver horse-furniture valued at £15 more.
The impossibility of guarding against these organized attacks by
large bodies of armed men, through the means of the ordinary
police, induced Lord Auckland in 1838 to appoint Captain Sleeman
commissioner for the suppression of Dacoitee, in addition to his
duties as General Superintendent of measures for the suppression of
Thuggee. The task was a difficult one. Not only were the Dacoits
protected and screened by the native princes, land owners, and
magistrates—their own numbers and determination rendered their
apprehension a matter of some danger. It was afterwards
ascertained that in 1839 there were no fewer than seventy-two
leaders south of the Jumna who could gather together 1,625
followers; and to the north of that river forty-six leaders, supported
by 1,445 men. In the Oude jungles were many powerful colonies,
who were usually warned by friendly Zemindars of the approach of
danger, and thus enabled to flee to less accessible fastnesses. On
one occasion 1,500 of them escaped into Nepaul where they
temporarily dispersed, to meet again at a given rendezvous. The
Commissioner himself aptly compared their colonies to a ball of
quicksilver, which, if pressed by the finger, will divide into many
smaller globules, all certain to come together again and cohere as
firmly as before. However, the constant alarms to which they were
now subjected, compelled them to conceal themselves in such
unhealthy spots that they were decimated by disease. In the
Goruckpore district a gang, consisting of ninety-four men and 280
women and children, suffered so much from this cause that they
voluntarily surrendered themselves. Others were hunted down from
one district to another, until in despair they yielded themselves
prisoners, or endeavoured to abandon their illegal vocation and
settle down to agricultural pursuits. Many of the prisoners, being
conditionally pardoned, were admitted into the police force, where
they distinguished themselves by their courage and intelligence. It is
a remarkable trait in the character of the Dacoits that they rarely
forfeited their word. If once they pledged themselves not to revert to
their former evil habits, there was little danger of a relapse. An
experimental colony was formed of the approvers and their families
near Moradabad, at a place called, de nomine facti, Buddukabad.
The result has been satisfactory, though the Dacoits usually
complained of the difficulty of confining their expenditure to the
comparatively small means furnished by honest industry. A Budduk,
they would say, cannot live on eight rupees a month (three rupees
being the wages of an ordinary labourer): he requires at least two
rupees a day, because he eats meat and takes large quantities of
ghee and rice, and loves liquor, and is addicted to polygamy. One of
them, who had been ten years in prison, being asked by Capt.
Ramsay if, in the event of his liberation, he would promise to amend
his life, shook his head and answered with a merry laugh:—"No, no,
that would never do. Why should I become an honest man—work
hard all day in the sun, rain, and all weathers, and earn—what?
Some five or six pice a day! We Dacoits lead very comfortable and
agreeable lives. When from home, which is generally only during the
cold season, we march some fourteen or sixteen miles a-day for,
perhaps, a couple of months, or say four, at the outside—commit a
Dacoitee and bring home money sufficient to keep us comfortable
for a year, or perhaps two. When at home we amuse ourselves by
shooting, or visiting our friends, or in any way most agreeable—eat
when we please, and sleep when we please—can, what you call an
honest man, do that?"
Another who had passed a like period within the gaol at Lucknow,
returned to Dacoitee a few months after his release. "I was then
young," said he, "and in high spirits—I had been confined with many
other old Dacoits—and in gaol I used to hear them talking of their
excursions, how they got 50,000 rupees here and 20,000 rupees
there; and I used to long for my release, that I might go on Dacoitee
and enjoy myself." The confessions of both these men would be
readily endorsed by many inmates of our own prisons. Evil
associations and the charms of a contraband career are equally
potent in Europe and in Asia. But among the natives of India the
profession of a Dacoit was not regarded as one of shame and
disgrace. Indeed, even the Commissioner avowed he could see little
difference, ethically, between expeditions in quest of plunder, and
those for the purpose of conquest; it was a question of degree, not
of principle. They themselves gloried in their calling. "Ours," they
said, "has been a Padshahee Kam (an imperial business); we have
attached and seized boldly the thousands and hundreds of
thousands that we have freely and nobly spent: we have been all
our lives wallowing in wealth and basking in freedom, and find it
hard to manage with a few copper pice a day we get from you." So
energetic, however, and persevering were the measures adopted for
the suppression of this "Padshahee Kam" that within a very few
years after their inauguration, there existed in the Upper Provinces
scarcely even the nucleus of a gang. The few who still remained at
liberty were known by name and personal appearance, and only
escaped apprehension by leading simple and inoffensive lives,
gaining their daily bread by their daily labour.
The task of suppression in the Lower Provinces has been attended
with so many peculiar difficulties, from the natural configuration of
the country, that Dacoitee can hardly yet be said to be extinguished.
But its days are numbered, and a marked diminution of cases is
observable every year. The apathy of their victims has, undoubtedly,
been one great cause of the impunity so long enjoyed by these
daring marauders. This reluctance to prosecute, though partly owing
to a well founded dread of incurring the vengeance of the comrades
of convicted Dacoits, is chiefly attributable to the repugnance felt by
all respectable natives to appear in Court even as complainants. The
tedious formalities of legal proceedings appear to them in the light
of studied annoyances, and their dignity is offended by the distrust
with which their statements are necessarily received. Perhaps, the
ancient mode of administering justice would be, after all, the most
efficacious, and certainly most in accordance with the native
character. The elders of the town, or village, seated at the gate, or
beneath the grateful shade of stately trees, and presided over by an
English gentleman conversant with their habits and language, and
possessed of tact, patience, and good sense, would probably
dispense more evenhanded justice than is obtained by all the costly
paraphernalia of courts of law founded on a totally different phase of
civilization. Be this as it may, enough has now been said to disprove
the vulgar allegation of indifference to the welfare of their fellow
subjects so flippantly and frequently urged against the Government
of the East India Company. And these are only two out of many
instances that might be adduced to show that their administration
has been one of continued and consistent progress. It is reserved for
posterity to admire the gratitude that seeks to reward the
annexation and improvement of a vast empire by maligning the
motives of those to whom this country is indebted for the brightest
gem in the imperial crown, vilipending their services, and depriving
them of power and patronage.
 The Mangs.
Some curious and interesting information has been furnished by
Captain C. Barr, of the Bombay Native Infantry, with regard to the
Mangs, or Kholapore Dacoits. It is needless to observe, that
Kholapore was one of the early divisions of the Mahratta empire, or
that it separated from the main body in 1729, under the auspices of
one of the younger branches of Sivajee's family. The Mangs occupied
the very lowest grade in the ladder of society—or, rather, they were
looked upon as outcasts, and quite beyond the pale of society. They
harboured in wilds and forests, and lived upon carrion, roots, and
wild fruits. Their real occupation, however, was that of border
robbers; and yet it was a source of pride among them that their
wives should remain ignorant of the nature of their pursuits. They
never robbed or defrauded one another; they even believed that the
spoliation of "the Gentiles" necessitated an expiation, which usually
assumed the form of a gift of a pair of shoes to a Brahman, and
alms to the poor. Experience had taught them the expediency of
employing a peculiar dialect—perhaps it was the original language of
their race. Their leader, or headman, was called the Naïk, and was
selected by the majority of votes for his skill in planning an
expedition, his bravery in carrying it out, and his integrity in the
division of the spoils. The office was, consequently, not hereditary;
but they so far believed in the efficacy of blood, as to allow
considerable weight for a father's merits. The Naïk's person and
property were alike inviolable. On all ceremonial occasions his
precedence was allowed; in disputes, his decision was final; and on
him devolved the duty of laying out plans for robberies. To every
band was attached an informer, who was also the receiver of the
stolen goods. These scoundrels generally pretended to be, and
perhaps were, bangle-sellers, dealers in perfume, goldsmiths,
jewellers, &c., &c. In this capacity they were admitted into women's
apartments, and so enabled to form a correct notion of the
topography of a house, and a shrewd guess as to the wealth of its
inmates. Their mode of conducting a Dacoitee was in all respects
similar to those already described. The only persons exempt from
their depredations were bangle-sellers and agricultural labourers,
who, in return, afforded them refuge and hospitality in the hour of
need. After a successful foray, each of the gang contributed one-
fourth of his share to the Naïk, towards the common fund for
defraying the expenses of preparation, absolution, and feasts of
triumph. The informer was not entitled to any specific sum; but, as
he enjoyed the privilege of pre-emption of the booty, his interests
are not likely to have been overlooked.
Like all barbarous tribes, and all persons addicted to criminal
practices, the Mangs were extremely superstitious. They never, for
instance, set out upon an expedition on a Friday. The new-born child
was bathed in a spot previously prepared for the purpose, and
baptized by the Brahman, in the name of the deity presiding over
that particular hour. In the family, however, and throughout life, the
neophyte sinner was known by some household name. Danger was
encountered at an early period of life. The mother and another
woman stood on opposite sides of the cradle, and the former tossed
her child to the other, commending it to the mercy of Jee Gopal, and
waited to receive it back in like manner, in the name of Jee Govind.
The Mangs usually married young in life. If a girl happened to hang
heavy on hand, she was married, at the age of puberty, to the deity.
In other words, she was attached as a prostitute to the temple of
the god Khundoba, or the goddess Yellania. Those belonging to the
service of the latter were wont, in the month of February, to parade
the streets in a state of utter nudity. It was customary, previous to a
secular marriage, for the parents of the bridegroom to ask for the
hand of the bride. A test of the aspirant's address was then
demanded. In one instance, the father of the maiden filled a silver
vessel with water up to the brim after carefully suspending it over
his head in bed, so that the slightest touch would be certain to
splash the water on to his face. The suitor, however, was not
daunted by the difficulty of the enterprise. Procuring some dry
porous earth, he employed it as a sponge, carefully applying it to the
surface of the water. Having thus reduced the level of the surface,
he cut the strings, carried off the vessel, and next morning claimed
his bride. The marriage ceremonies were by no means interesting,
except when a bachelor wooed a widow. In this case he was first
united to the asclepias gigantea, which was immediately
transplanted. Withering away and dying, it left him at liberty to
marry the charming widow. If a lady survived the sorrow caused by
the death of two or three husbands, she could not again enter the
holy state unless she consented to be married with a fowl under her
armpit—the unfortunate bird being afterwards killed to appease the
manes of her former consorts.
Each family had its household god, but all agreed in the common
worship of Davee, as the tutelar deity of the tribe. Their chief festival
was the Dusserah, on which day they usually set out on their
expeditions, armed with sword and shield, and iron crowbar.
Unhappily, the Mangs must be spoken of in the past tense. The
servants of the East India Company, actuated, no doubt, by
mercenary motives, have put an end to their depredations and
compelled them to resort to honest and common-place industry.
Thus are sentimentality and romance crushed at the India House.
 The Oothaeegeerahs
or

Professional Thieves.
In the year 1851 it was accidentally discovered that the British
territories had long been infested with gangs of thieves from the
Banpoor States. These Sunoreahs, or Oothaeegeerahs, who
extended their depredations into the very heart of Calcutta, had
carried on their vocation with impunity for many generations. Their
existence was well known, however, to the native authorities, from
whom they received protection and encouragement. The head man
of each village was ex officio chief of the Sunoreahs, and kept a
registry of the various "nals," or gangs under his own jurisdiction—
usually from seven to ten in number. In Tehree they were estimated
at 4,000, in Banpoor at 300, and in Dutteeah also at 300. There
were in all twelve villages occupied by them, presided over by a
Government officer, whose duty it was to act as umpire in all
disputes arising out of the division of spoils.
Shortly after the Dusserah festival the chiefs of each village repaired
to their favourite Brahman priest to ascertain in what direction they
were to bend their steps. This having been duly indicated, together
with the auspicious day and hour, they started off in a body to some
place of considerable note. Here the gang, consisting, probably, of
fifty or sixty men, was subdivided into parties of ten or twelve, and
detached to adjacent towns and villages, while the leader, with a
strong party, remained at the point of separation. Hither they all
returned in the month of July; and, if their joint exertions had
produced fifty or sixty rupees for each man, they then hastened
home to prepare their fields for the summer crop. But should fortune
have proved unfavourable they again took to the road, while their
leader alone hastened back to the village laden with plunder for their
respective families. The office of Mookeea, or leader, was hereditary,
and, in default of male issue, descended to females. If among the
booty there happened to be any object of peculiar elegance or value,
it was ceremoniously presented to the chief of the state. Thus, the
head of the Tehree Government acknowledged a present of two
valuable pearl nose ornaments, by bestowing on the thief a grant of
land, rent free, in perpetuity; and the Rajah of Banpore was known
to have accepted two handsome watches and a pair of arm
ornaments. There was no mystery in the disposal of their stolen
goods. These were openly sold in the market places and bazaars at
half their value, and, during the absence of the Sunoreahs on their
thieving expeditions, the village money-lender unhesitatingly
supplied their families with whatever they might require. Of course,
care was taken never to commit any depredations within the
territories of their protectors and patrons.
The Sunoreahs had "chounees," or depôts in all parts of India,
where they could always find a ready sale for their effects. Near
Calcutta their head quarters were at the serai of the Rajah of
Burdwan, whose ostentatious hospitality oftentimes maintained as
many as 200 of them. Though usually possessed of ample means,
they never scrupled to accept alms with the Byragees, or religious
mendicants at Burdwan. No matter how widely they might have
roamed from their native villages, they always found ready
purchasers for their pilferings, and they themselves easily recognised
each other by means of a peculiar "bolee," or slang.
When their proceedings first became known to Major P. Harris,
Superintendent of Chundeyree, that officer immediately addressed
the Rajah of Banpoor on the subject, and elicited from him a most
naïve and characteristic reply, the following extract from which well
exemplifies the native notions of morality and good government:—
"I have to state that from former times these people following their
profession, have resided in my territory and in the states of other
native princes; and they have always followed this calling, but no
former kings, or princes or authority have ever forbidden the
practice; therefore these people for generations have resided in my
territory and the states of other princes; proceeding to distant
districts, to follow their occupation, robbing by day for a livelihood
for themselves and families, both cash, and any other property they
could lay hands on. In consequence of these people stealing by day
only, and that they do not take life, or distress any person, by
personal ill-usage, and that they do not break into houses, by
digging wells or breaking door-locks, but simply by their smartness
manage to abstract property; owing to such trifling thefts I looked
on their proceedings as petty thefts, and have not interfered with
them. As many States as there may be in India, under the protection
of the British Government, there is not one in which these people
are not to be found, and it is possible that in all other States who
protect them, the same system is pursued towards them as in my
district; and besides, these people thieving only by day, the police
officers in the British territories are not expected to exert
themselves, the loss having occurred simply through the owner's
negligence. Owing to this circumstance, your friend looking on their
transgressions as trifling, I have not caused my police to interfere
with them. The British Government, who issue orders to all the
native powers in India, have never directed the system of Sunoreahs
to be stopped. From this I conclude that their offence is looked upon
by the British Government, as trifling; and probably this is the
reason that neither the British Government, nor any other authority,
have ever directed me to stop their calling; and on this account,
from property that they have brought home, and I have heard that it
suited me, or that they themselves, considering the article to be a
curiosity from a distant province, have presented to me through my
servants; thus, viewing the offence as trifling, that there was no
owner to the property, I received it from them, and gave them a
trifle in return."
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