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The defining diplomatic policy of Asoka’s reign had little to do with military aggrandizement or economic progress; it consisted rather of missionary-envoys being sent to Syria, Egypt, Macedonia and Nepal to preach the tenets of Buddhism. And as we will see in the missions of men like John of Plano Carpini in the thirteenth century, the tradition of the monkish ambassador had a vibrant future ahead of it. When a new king, Tissa, came to the throne of Sri Lanka, he sent envoys to Asoka informing the emperor of his accession. Asoka responded by despatching his son, Mahinda, as an ‘ambassador of righteousness’, charged with winning the new king for the Buddhist faith. He succeeded, and King Tissa was soon erecting a Buddhist reliquary in one of the royal gardens.
Tissa’s sister was an even more impassioned acolyte and announced that she desired to become a Buddhist nun. Lacking the authority to invest her in holy orders, Mahinda sent for his own sister Sanghamitta, who was already a nun. She arrived in Sri Lanka with the requisite paraphernalia and a golden vase containing a branch of the Bodhi tree, under which the Buddha had meditated for seven years before receiving enlightenment. The sapling was planted on a terrace in the royal gardens and to this day remains an object of veneration.
If this was one way to encounter the rest of the world, Asoka’s grandfather had espoused quite another. Chandragupta (reigned 321–298 BC), the founder of the Mauryan dynasty, was a man of humble origins: by some accounts, the son of a peacock farmer. One, presumably apocryphal, story perfectly encapsulates his fearful reputation. Ever wary of assassination attempts, Chandragupta was in the habit of taking a daily draught of poison with his meals, hoping to immunize himself against its effects. One day, when his pregnant wife accidentally imbibed some of the poison, the emperor immediately chopped off her head (hoping to stop the toxins progressing any further), ripped the unborn child from her belly and placed the embryo in the womb of a goat.
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Such ruthless efficiency pervaded Chandragupta’s entire political career. It was captured for posterity by one of his most trusted ministers, named Kautilya, who wrote an intricate treatise on how a wise king ought to govern. Kautilya’s Arthasastra was not simply an abstract meditation on devious statecraft, but an account of actual political practice. It is one of the finest works of political philosophy ever written, though it remains undervalued in the West. Its radical meditations on the nature and exercise of political power led the sociologist Max Weber to conclude that, by comparison, ‘Machiavelli’s The Prince is harmless.’
(#litres_trial_promo) It made a refreshingly candid contribution to an enduring debate, and one that any history of the ambassadors is obliged to fathom. What was diplomacy for? By what rules should it be governed? Which is more important when conducting foreign affairs: moral rectitude or naked self-interest, courtesy or cunning, the urbanity of an envoy or the subtle skills of an assassin? Realism or idealism?
The great Roman orator Cicero (106–43 BC) offered one prescription: ‘There will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and for all times, and there will be one master and one ruler, that is, God, over all, for He is the author of this law, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge.’
(#litres_trial_promo) When expounding the rules and rubrics of diplomacy, the idealist insists, one must abide by the dictates of a universal moral order. This might be Cicero’s God, Asoka’s dhamma, or even the modern notion of a binding Law of Nations, but in all cases ethical imperatives govern the parleys between societies. Of course, rulers invariably engage in diplomacy to further their own best interests, but there is still a right way and a wrong way to conduct foreign affairs. Justice and fair play are not only worth pursuing in and of themselves; they also foster dynamic, respectful relationships.
Realists regard this as naïve, and look instead to self-interest and contingency. Higher justice is a chimera, they suggest, and rather than genuflecting to a benign Law of Nations, political leaders ought to abide by the grittier realities of the Law of Nature. The strong will always dominate the weak, the pursuit of power and influence is both noble and necessary, and if you do not strive to rule over others, then, in time, others will assuredly strive to rule over you.
Classical Athens, to look backwards for a moment, is often credited with an uncompromisingly realist outlook. In 416 BC, during the Peloponnesian War, the city launched an expedition against the island of Melos, a Spartan colony that stubbornly refused to ally itself with the Athenian Empire. Envoys were sent to treat with the island’s governors. ‘On our side,’ the Athenians began, ‘we will not use fine phrases,’ nor claim that Athens deserves its empire because of past services to the Greek world. When reaching their decision, the Melians should eschew moralizing and ‘try to get what it is possible for you to get…When matters are discussed by practical people,’ the just outcome is always determined by the fact that ‘the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept’.
In the present instance, ‘we rule the sea and you are islanders, and weaker islanders than the rest.’ Any appeal to ‘such a thing as fair play and just dealing’ was given short shrift. The ‘path of justice and honour’ led to danger the path of self-interest to safety. ‘There is nothing disgraceful in giving way to the greatest city in Hellas when she is offering you such reasonable terms – alliance on a tribute-paying basis and liberty to enjoy your own property.’ Athens was simply behaving as a great power ought to: expanding its influence so that it might flourish.
The Melians were unconvinced. ‘Our decision, Athenians, is just the same as it was at first. We are not prepared to give up in a short moment the liberty which our city has enjoyed from its foundation for seven hundred years. We put our trust in the fortune that the gods will send…and in the help of men – that is, of the Spartans.’ That trust was misplaced and, after a period of siege, ‘the Melians surrendered unconditionally to the Athenians, who put to death all the men of military age, and sold the women and children as slaves.’
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This account of the so-called Melian dialogue comes from the histories of Thucydides (460–400 BC), who is often claimed as a founding father of realist theorizing. Undoubtedly, he offers a skewed account of Greek statecraft. He had a particular view of the nature of Greek political life, a precise (and, to some tastes, compelling) theory about how the affairs of men were governed, and he shaped his histories accordingly. But if he exaggerated, Thucydides, as great an historian as the world would ever know, was surely correct in diagnosing naked self-interest as one of the engines of Greek politics. However, the tradition he inaugurated (which would be carried forward by philosophers such as Niccolò‘ Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes) had a less familiar, but no less vibrant, counterpart in the East, which brings us back to Kautilya’s Arthasastra.
ii. The Arthasastra
According to Kautilya’s theory, in the Mauryan political world everything turned on the character of the king. If he ‘is energetic, his subjects will be equally energetic. If he is reckless, they will be reckless likewise.’ Kautilya advised any reputable monarch to divide his day into segments of one and a half hours. His night-time hours were to be every bit as regimented.
During the first one-eighth part of the night, he shall receive secret emissaries; during the second, he shall attend to bathing and supper and study; during the third, he shall enter the bed-chamber amid the sound of trumpets and enjoy sleep during the fourth and fifth parts. Having been awakened by the sound of trumpets during the sixth part, he shall recall to his mind the injunctions of sciences as well as the day’s duties; during the seventh, he shall sit considering administrative measures and send out spies; and during the eighth division of the night, he shall receive benedictions from sacrificial priests, teachers, and the high priest, and having seen his physician, chief cook and astrologer, and having saluted both a cow with its calf and a bull by circumambulating around them, he shall get into his court.
An approachable king was likely to be a popular king. ‘When in the court, he shall never cause his petitioners to wait at the door, for when a king makes himself inaccessible to his people and entrusts work to his immediate officers, he may be sure to engender confusion in business, and to cause public disaffection.’ He should, therefore, ‘personally attend to the business of gods, of heretics, of Brahmans learned in the Vedas, of cattle, of sacred places, of minors, the aged, the afflicted, the helpless, and of women’. Indeed, the Arthasastra is, in many ways, a primer in enlightened monarchy. Domestic affairs were to be conducted with justice and despatch; measures were to be put in place to protect the population from natural disasters and to safeguard the rights and privileges of merchants.
Justice was never to be arbitrary, but it could sometimes be severe. Torture was a legitimate investigative technique, although it was not to be employed against certain classes of people: pregnant women, priests, ‘ignoramuses, youngsters, the aged, the afflicted, persons under intoxication, lunatics, persons suffering from hunger, thirst, or fatigue from journey, persons who have confessed of their own accord, and persons who are very weak – none of these shall be subjected to torture’.
A terrifying variety of punishments awaited everyone else:
blows with a cane: twelve beats on each of the thighs; twenty-eight beats with a stick of the tree; thirty-two beats on each palm of the hands and on each sole of the feet; two on the knuckles, the hands being joined so as to appear like a scorpion…burning one of the joints of a finger after the accused has been made to drink rice gruel; heating his body for a day after he has been made to drink oil; causing him to lie on coarse green grass for a night in winter.
Those adjudged guilty lost all hope of clemency. Anyone who stole a chicken, mongoose, dog or pig could either pay a hefty fine or have the tip of his nose severed. ‘He who castrates a man shall have his generative organ cut off,’ while ‘any person who aims at the kingdom, who forces entrance into the king’s harem, who instigates wild tribes or enemies against the king, or who creates disaffection in forts, country parts, or in the army, shall be burnt alive from head to foot.’
The flinty character of domestic politics extended to the Mauryans’ dealings with other kingdoms. The empire’s fortunes were not determined by the randomness of fate, Kautilya insisted, but by the decisions rulers made. Kautilya offered a simple but elegant analysis of Indian geopolitics. The king ought to regard his immediate neighbour as his enemy, and the neighbour beyond that as his ally, and so on in a system of concentric circles. He should adjust his policy according to his potency and resources; when strong, he should strike, and when weak he should temporize.
At all times, however, he should do everything possible to gather reliable intelligence, both at home and abroad. A motley collection of spies were to be recruited to test the loyalty of his ministers and to infiltrate subversive factions within society. The state should ‘employ spies disguised as persons endowed with supernatural power, persons engaged in penance, ascetics, bards, buffoons, mystics, astrologers, prophets foretelling the future…physicians, lunatics, the dumb, the deaf, idiots, the blind, traders, painters, carpenters, musicians, dancers, vintners, and manufacturers of cakes, flesh and cooked rice, and send them abroad into the country for espionage’. Agents should also be posted abroad to reconnoitre and sow discord. Astrologers might be despatched to convince dissidents that it was an especially auspicious time to mount a coup. Prostitutes could be sent to seduce rival generals and foment animosity between them.
Ambassadors also had a vital role to play. An envoy’s first duty was to ‘make friendship with the enemy’s officers such as those in charge of wild tracts, of boundaries, of cities, and of country parts. He shall also contrast the military stations, sinews of war, and strongholds of the enemy with those of his own master. He shall ascertain the size and area of forts and of the state, as well as strongholds of precious things and assailable and unassailable points.’ The ambassador’s reception was an excellent way of gauging the intentions of a rival monarch. Promising signs included respectful treatment, being given a seat close to the throne, and enquiries after the health of the emperor: ‘all these shall be noted as indicating the good graces of the enemy and the reverse his displeasure.’
Whatever welcome the ambassador received, he was not to be cowed by the ‘mightiness of the enemy’ and he should ‘strictly avoid women and liquor…for it is well-known that the intentions of envoys are ascertained while they are asleep or under the influence of alcohol’. During his mission he should establish his own network of spies ‘to ascertain the nature of the intrigue prevalent among parties favourably disposed to his own master, as well as the conspiracy of hostile factions’. If this proved impossible he could ‘try to gather such information by observing the talk of beggars, intoxicated and insane persons, or of persons babbling in sleep’. The precise objective of a mission would vary according to circumstances, but likely duties included ‘the maintenance of treaties, the issue of ultimatums, gaining of friends, intrigue, sowing dissension among friends, carrying away by stealth relatives and gems, [and] gathering information about the movements of spies’.
Of course, Kautilya realized that other potentates were always likely to send their own devious ambassadors, so it was important to remain vigilant. There were constant dangers associated with being a Mauryan emperor, and the risk of assassination was taken especially seriously, as Chandragupta’s wife could attest, with poisoning the regicide’s preferred method. The alarm was to be raised whenever
the vapour arising from cooked rice possesses the colour of the neck of a peacock, and appears chill as if suddenly cooled; when vegetables possess an unnatural colour, and are watery and hardened, and appear to have suddenly turned dry…when utensils reflect light either more or less than usual, and are covered with a layer of foam at their edges; when any liquid preparation possesses streaks on its surface; when milk bears a bluish streak in the centre of its surface; when liquor and water possess reddish streaks; when curd is marked with black and dark streaks, and honey with white streaks; when watery things appear parched as if overcooked and look blue and swollen; when dry things have shrunk and changed in their colour; when hard things appear soft, and soft things hard…when carpets and curtains possess blackish circular spots, with their threads and hair fallen off; when metallic vessels set with gems appear tarnished as though by roasting, and have lost their polish, colour, shine, and softness of touch.
Poisoners were also apt to give themselves away, and the king’s attendants should always be suspicious of ‘hesitation in speaking, heavy perspiration, yawning, too much bodily tremor, frequent tumbling, evasion of speech [and] carelessness in work’. Whenever the king was presented with ‘water, scents, fragrant powders, dress and garlands’, servants ‘shall first touch these things by their eyes, arms and breast’.
It was a fitting response to a cynical political milieu. The Mauryans knew of every potential danger because of an unflinching willingness to employ dubious strategies of their own. Just as ambassadors were expected to spy and to agitate, so agents were sometimes sent to kill off troublesome rivals. Pacts and pledges could be negotiated, but it was also entirely legitimate to break them. A trusted policy in the ancient world was for powers to exchange hostages – often including a ruler’s relatives – when they made treaties; this provided some guarantee that the parties would abide by the terms of an agreement. Kautilya recognized the usefulness of such arrangements, but saw not the slightest reason to honour them. If a prince had been offered up as a hostage, that prince should do everything in his power to engineer his escape.
Carpenters, artisans, and other spies, attending upon the prince (kept as a hostage) may take him away at night through an underground tunnel dug for the purpose. Dancers, actors, singers, players on musical instruments, buffoons, court-bards [and] swimmers previously set about the enemy [as spies], may continue under his service and may indirectly serve the prince. They should have the privilege of entering and going out of the palace at any time. The prince may therefore get out at night disguised as any one of the above spies…Or the prince may be removed concealed under clothes, commodities, vessels, beds, seats and other articles by cooks, confectioners, servants employed to serve the king while bathing, servants employed for carrying conveyances, for spreading the bed, toilet-making, dressing, and procuring water.
It might be necessary to serve sentinels with poisoned food, or to bribe them, or to create a diversion by setting ‘fire to a building filled with valuable articles’. The prince would disguise himself as a shaven-headed ascetic, a diseased man or even a corpse. The strategies enumerated by Kautilya were seemingly endless.
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Chandragupta and Asoka, grandfather and grandson, inhabited opposite ends of the same philosophical spectrum. Together, they offer a telling lesson in just how drastically, and rapidly, worldviews might change. Diplomacy was always the bellwether of a society’s attitude towards the rest of humanity. Asoka’s optimism and generosity, his policy of conquest through righteousness, were exceptional; in the words of H. G. Wells, among the monarchs that crowd the columns of history, Asoka shines almost alone. The encounters between cultures would more often be clouded by fear and suspicion.
Greeks were tolerated in the ancient city of Alexandria but, as Herodotus explained, ‘no Egyptian man or woman will kiss a Greek or use a Greek knife, spit or cauldron, or even eat the flesh of a bull known to be clean if it has been cut with a Greek knife.’
(#litres_trial_promo) Muscovite princes would accept the need for relationships with other nations but, well into the seventeenth century, they often refused to shake the hand of a foreigner for fear of infection. During the sixteenth century, Venetians would sell their wares in Ottoman Istanbul, and the Portuguese would trade in Macao, but the communities they traded with would be mistrusted and ghettoized.
Indeed, mention of the Portuguese in Macao brings us to China, the final destination in this survey of the ancient world, and a culture that has agonized more than any other over its dealings with the outside world. One of the duties of history is to puncture lazy orthodoxies, and the travels of one early ambassador do much to confound the notion of unwavering Chinese insularity and xenophobia. Before recounting his tale, however, it would be useful to ponder why that notion is so stubbornly embedded in the Western psyche. To that end, before we visit the Han dynasty of ancient China, a brief detour of twenty-one centuries is called for.
CHAPTER IV The Son of Heaven (#ulink_a20818b5-9680-505b-9d0a-7c5b890684cb)
i. The Boxers
From now on, when barbarians come to the capital to present tribute, the military population and common people who dare to congregate in the streets to stare and make fun of them, or throw broken tiles and thus injure any of the barbarians, shall be punished with the cangue as a warning to the public.
Hui-t’ung-kuan Regulations, 1500
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For fifty-five days in the summer of 1900 the foreign legations of Peking, crammed into the southern quarter of the city, lay under siege. Resentment of the Western powers had been simmering in China for decades. They had brought newfangled railways that tarnished the harmony of the natural landscape; they had encouraged hordes of zealous Christian missionaries to chip away at the empire’s ancient belief systems; and they had demonstrated an unwavering ambition to dominate China’s political and economic life.
China had been slow to recognize the extraordinary technological advancements of eighteenth-century Europe. The Chinese simply did not realize how mighty and wealthy the West had suddenly become until they tried to snuff out the illegal opium trade in the late 1830s. China was crushed by British force of arms. In the wake of the First Opium War (1839–42), Britain opened up seaports to foreign trade that were entirely removed from Chinese jurisdiction and also annexed Hong Kong. Further crises and humiliations followed. The Russians encroached upon the empire’s northern territories, internal rebellions scarred the middle years of the century, and in 1860 the French and British even temporarily occupied Peking. But in spite of all their successes, the Western powers were still impatient to carve out spheres of even greater influence and profit within the Celestial Empire.
In 1897 the murder of two Protestant missionaries gave Germany the ideal justification for seizing the bustling port of Jiaozhou. For several years, this same Shandong province had also seen a blossoming of enthusiasm for the so-called Boxer movement. Secretive, illegal martial-arts societies, the Boxers had abandoned their traditional anti-dynastic sentiment in favour of virulent anti-Western rhetoric. With their magical rituals and incantations, and their belief that they were immune from bullets, the Boxers offered an irresistible outlet for decades’ worth of resentment. Their influence spread out across northern China during the late 1890s.
The population was in dire need of a rallying cry. A recent war with Japan had ended in humiliating defeat, the Yellow River had burst its banks in 1898, and two years later the northern reaches of the empire had been ravaged by drought. In Peking, power resided with a reactionary empress dowager, whose counsellors urged her to stop demonizing the Boxers as lawless bandits and instead use them to reassert China’s independence. Early in 1900 they were summoned to the capital.
The diplomatic community in Peking was understandably nervous. Ominous news began to rush in from all sides. The British summer legation outside the city was burned down, the Boxers severed the railway lines between Peking and the coast, and on 11 June the chancellor of the Japanese embassy was set upon by an angry crowd, dragged from his coach and hacked to pieces. His battered corpse was thrown in the gutter and his heart presented to a popular general. By the 13th of the month, Boxers were flooding into the city, attacking churches and the homes of foreigners, and digging up Christian graves. When the German ambassador Clemens von Ketteler set out for urgent talks with the government on 20 June he too was murdered in the street. An officially sanctioned siege of the legation quarter by imperial troops now seemed inevitable.
Outlying embassies were abandoned, and a total of 475 civilians, 450 guards and 2,300 Chinese Christians, stranded in the diplomatic quarter, began their agonizing wait for the arrival of Western troops. Mercifully, they had a good supply of fresh water and rice, as well as ample stocks of pony-meat and champagne. There was also a wealth of tobacco; as one witness remembered it, ‘even some of the women, principally Italians and Russians, found relief in the constant smoking of cigarettes.’ Conditions were terribly crowded, however, and the Dutch minister was obliged to sleep in a cupboard belonging to the Russian ambassador. Morale was bruised when a Norwegian missionary went mad, and the French ambassador infuriated everyone by wandering around the compound, announcing, ‘We are all going to die tonight, we are all lost.’
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The siege provided its edifying sights: professors turning their hand to butchery, Catholic and Protestant missionaries filling defensive sandbags together. And for the most part, the imperial troops showed restraint, although during a single day they did manage to discharge 20,000 rounds of ammunition in the direction of the legations. Finally, on 14 August, relief came with the arrival of Western forces: 8,000 Japanese, 4,800 Russian, 3,000 British, 2,100 American, 800 French, 58 Austrian, and 53 Italian soldiers. ‘We heard the playing of machine guns on the outside of the city,’ someone recalled; ‘never was music so sweet.’
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It was an invincible force, and with the lifting of the siege the Western powers set about exacting their revenge. By the terms of the Boxer Protocol of September 1901, China was to offer an abject apology, pay a huge indemnity for its outrageous behaviour, and desist from importing arms for two years. It was a burden that the tottering Manchu dynasty could hardly withstand. By 1911 imperial China had ceased to exist, and in 1912 a republic was set up in its place. As for the Western powers, they seized every opportunity to expand their political and economic stranglehold on the country. Kaiser Wilhelm offered an especially bullish assessment of the changed situation: ‘Just as the Huns a thousand years ago, under the leadership of Attila, gained a reputation by virtue of which they still live in historical tradition, so may the name of Germany become known in such a manner in China that no Chinese will ever again even dare to look askance at a German.’
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If the West still cherishes an image of Chinese insularity and xenophobia, one need look no further than the siege of the Peking embassies in 1900 for part of the explanation. The terror and privations suffered by ambassadors, their families and retinues would not quickly be forgotten. In truth, the Boxer Rebellion was the culmination of decades of growing alienation. As early as the end of the eighteenth century, Europe had fallen out of love with China. Heady stories of the majestic Chinese court, revered during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the most cultured and opulent place that might be imagined, were suddenly replaced by the niggardly accounts of ill-humoured diplomats – as ever, the vessels for their cultures’ prejudices.
When a Dutch ambassador travelled to Peking in 1796, there was precious little talk of silk, jade or chinoiserie. Instead, he reported back on mandarins with ‘shrill voices’ who rudely awakened visitors at three in the morning, and of ‘low and dirty’ reception rooms stocked with ‘coarse rugs…a few common chairs [and] a piece of wood with an iron spike as a candlestick’. The elaborate order and ritual of the court had apparently descended into chaos, and palaces were now ‘full of people, great and small, rich and poor intermingled, pressing and pushing without any distinction, so that we were stuck by a scene of confusion’.
The emperor’s horses were ‘shaggy and rather dirty’, and the food served at state banquets was an utter disgrace; pieces of game, ‘looking as if they were remnants of gnawed off bones’, had been unceremoniously ‘dumped on the table’. Here, the ambassador suggested, was the ‘most conclusive proof of coarseness and lack of civilization…However incredible this may seem in Europe, it is too remarkable to pass over in silence. From the reports with which the missionaries have deluded the world for a number of years, I had imagined a very civilized and enlightened people. These ideas were deeply rooted and a kind of violence was necessary to eradicate them, but this reception, joined to all our previous experiences, was a radical cure.’
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In fact, the Jesuits who had been tending the mission fields of China for the past two centuries had not been deluding anyone. China was in a dozen sorts of decline, but it had not suddenly become an uncivilized backwater. Europe had simply experienced a shift in fashion, a cultural backlash. The Enlightenment adoration of Confucian philosophy, ceramics and Chinese political genius had given way to talk of Chinese despotism, cruelty and backwardness. The West had decided it was superior, the cradle and guardian of authentic civilization, and China was now a place to be feared, mocked or exploited.
It was to prove a resilient perspective: one that still infects the European world-view, and one that a tragedy such as the Boxer Rebellion only served to reinforce. Millennia of Chinese history were reduced to a stereotype. China was – and always had been – odd, unwelcoming and self-satisfied. But as other stories from the history of the ambassadors reveal, the image is at best a simplistic half-truth. The Boxer Rebellion does not epitomize the history of China.
ii. Chang Ch’ien
Certain negative orthodoxies regarding China cannot be gainsaid. They persist because they are accurate. The Chinese emperor was always hailed as the son of heaven, the mediator between God and mankind, the overlord of all the earth’s kings and princes, although this posture was hardly a Chinese preserve. The rulers of ancient Mesopotamia believed themselves to be gods, and Mongol khans would style themselves the lords of the universe. In 1525, when the Ottoman leader Süleyman the Magnificent sent a letter to Francis I of France, he referred to himself as, ‘by the sacred miracles of Muhammad…Sultan of Sultans, the sovereign of sovereigns, the dispenser of crowns to the monarchs of the face of the world, the shadow of God on earth…ruler of the White and the Black seas, of Rumelia and Anatolia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Persia, Damascus, Aleppo, Cairo, Mecca, Medina, Arabia and Yemen’.
(#litres_trial_promo) When the client states of ancient Egypt sent their envoys to meet the pharaoh, they were expected to prostrate themselves seven times on their bellies and seven times on their backs. Whenever letters were sent to the pharaoh, diplomatic convention required these same states to refer to themselves as the dust beneath his sandals.
It is also true that China would often be sublimely uninterested in affairs beyond Southeast Asia, and Chinese diplomacy would sometimes consist almost entirely of raking in tribute from Korea, Vietnam and Japan. This proved to be a disastrous policy at the end of the eighteenth century although, in other periods, one wonders why China should have been concerned with the intricacies of Western political life. Ancient Greece and Mauryan India were also preoccupied with their own regional politics, after all. Moreover, a sense of superiority did not always imply isolation. Throughout its twenty-five dynasties, China was usually delighted to welcome the envoys of distant nations.
As soon as two Persian ambassadors crossed the Chinese border in 1420 they were greeted by imperial officials. In ‘a delectable meadow’ their hosts had set up a platform ‘with canvas awnings, over which were placed tables and chairs’. A meal of ‘geese, fowls, roasted meat’ and fruit was served and ‘after the repast various kinds of intoxicants were served up and all became tipsy’. Drink and diplomacy were combined once again.
A few days further into their journey, the ambassadors encountered a local viceroy, and he was just as determined to provide lavish hospitality. Once again, the ambassadors were ridiculously well fed. To the accompaniment of ‘organs, fiddles, Chinese fifes and two types of flute’, they dined on musk melons and watermelons, ‘walnuts, peeled chestnuts, lemons, garlics, and onions pickled in vinegar’. The feast was rounded off by an acrobatic display, with tricks being performed by ‘handsome boys, with their faces painted red and white in such a way that whoever happened to look at them took them for girls, with caps on their heads and pearls in their ears’.
Festivities followed in every town through which the ambassadors passed until, in mid-December, they arrived in Peking. News reached the envoys that the emperor himself was planning a lunchtime banquet. They rode from their lodgings to the imperial palace and, having dismounted at the first gateway, they were ‘conducted to the foot of the throne’ and ‘made prostration to the emperor five times’. Led from his presence, the ambassadors were now advised to seek out a toilet, ‘lest they should unexpectedly feel the necessity to rise in the middle of the banquet for some need when it would not be possible to go out’.
With such matters attended to, the ambassadors returned to the scene of the banquet, ‘a very extensive courtyard paved most beautifully and exquisitely with cut stones’. Inside a canopy they discovered a ‘magnificent throne, higher than the height of man with silver staircases on its three sides’. Incense burners and eunuchs were posted on either side, and next to them ‘stood stalwart Chinese officers armed with quivers’. Further back came ‘soldiers with long halberds in their hands and behind them yet another body of men with drawn swords’.
The Yongle emperor made his entrance and took his seat beneath a canopy of yellow satin decorated with images of fighting dragons. All was silence as the ambassadors, ‘on the tiptoe of expectation’, approached the throne. Once they had prostrated themselves five more times, the meal got under way. There were yet more acrobats – a troupe of dancers, made up of boys ‘as beautiful as the moon’ – and with the arrival of each new course an orchestra struck up and an ocean of coloured umbrellas were spun around. With the meal of lamb, goose and rice wine complete, the emperor doled out rewards to the performers and retired
to his harem.
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The Persian ambassadors had been treated with the greatest courtesy, but the Chinese did not perceive them as representatives of a political equal. From the earliest days of imperial China in the second millennium bc, whenever envoys came to China, whether from Persia, Rome or the courts of Europe, they were seen as the bearers of tribute and homage to the greatest ruler in the world. Such visits flattered the emperor, they were a fitting sign of respect and submission, and it behoved the Chinese court to respond with grace and generosity.
But all the world over, and certainly not only in China, diplomacy has always been a game of power and one-upmanship. When an insult was called for, rulers would turn to less than impressive individuals to serve as their envoys. Louis XI of France once sent a barber on a diplomatic errand to Margaret of Burgundy; another French king disparaged Edward III of England by conveying a message of defiance via a kitchen hand; the citizens of ancient Rhodes were furious when Rome supplied an ambassador who not only lacked the customary rank of senator but was also a lowly gymnastics instructor.
Conversely, when one ruler wished to show respect to another he would select skilled, very often noble, ambassadors, and kings and princes have usually interpreted the arrival of such men as a reflection of their own grandeur. The Roman emperor Augustus would boast of how ‘embassies were sent to me from the kings of India who had never been seen before in the camp of any Roman general’.
(#litres_trial_promo) One of Elizabeth I’s more devoted subjects reported how English sailors refused to transport Moroccan ambassadors in 1600, ‘because they think it is a matter odious and scandalous to the world to be too friendly or familiar with infidels’. Nevertheless, it remained ‘no small honour to us that nations so far remote and every way different should meet here to admire the glory and magnificence of our Queen of Sheba’.
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China, being no different, was always pleased to receive envoys. Despatching ambassadors of its own was an infinitely more troubling proposition, however. Would it not be a sign of weakness or of parity with the barbarian hordes beyond its borders? Often, China decided that it would – but, to return to the ancient world at last, sometimes it did not.
There have been many epic diplomatic journeys. The distances travelled and the time such journeys took are apt to bewilder the modern reader. Envoys sent from ancient Babylon to Egypt traversed thousands of miles of caravan routes, usually only covering forty or fifty miles a day. When the ambassadors of an Indian king sought out the Roman emperor Augustus in 20 BC their outward journey lasted more than four years – a respectable achievement given the curious cargo with which they were burdened: a serpent ten cubits long, a partridge larger than a vulture, and an armless youth who could play the trumpet with his feet.
(#litres_trial_promo) The journey of the Han ambassador Chang Ch’ien was every bit as impressive.
The Han dynasty ruled China, a seventeen-year hiatus excepted, from 206 BC to ad 220. It was a civilization that easily bears comparison with either fourth-century Athens or Mauryan India. Paper was invented, ideologies were forged, and a fiercely efficient bureaucracy was developed. Specialized, well-trained ministers oversaw everything: whether tax collection, religious ceremonial or the observation of the stars. The market places of the Han capital, Ch’ang-an (modern Xi’an), bustled with merchants from across Asia; Buddhist missionaries travelled throughout the empire; and the Han embraced a policy of expansion and discovery. Their armies penetrated south of the Yangtze River, eastwards to Korea, and even into the mysterious ‘western regions’ of central Asia. China was no less assured of its plenitude, but it was open to the world.
The Han emperor had many enemies, notably the aggressive Hsiung-nu tribe on China’s northern frontier. Traditionally, it had seemed more sensible to contain the Hsiung-nu threat than to engage them in battle. Supplying them with luxurious goods – offering them bribes, in effect – also served to blunt their hawkish tendencies. One Han courtier talked of the various ‘baits’ with which the Hsiung-nu could be seduced: ‘to give them elaborate clothes and carriages in order to corrupt their eyes; to give them fine food in order to corrupt their mouths; to give them music and women in order to corrupt their ears; to provide them with lofty buildings, granaries and slaves in order to corrupt their desires’.
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The Han emperor Wu-ti grew weary of this passive, and to his mind ignoble, variety of diplomacy. He decided it was time to join battle with the Hsiung-nu. He would require allies, and who better than a people known as the Yueh-shih? They had been defeated by the Hsiung-nu and forced into exile, though not before the skull of their king had been fashioned into a drinking cup. They would surely crave revenge. Unfortunately, no one knew where they had fled. And so, in c.140 BC, the courtier Chang Ch’ien was despatched as an ambassador to locate their whereabouts.
A man of strong physique and of considerable generosity, Chang was accompanied by a hundred attendants as he set out on his embassy but he was almost immediately captured by the Hsiungnu. He spent the next ten years in captivity, although he seems to have been treated decently, and even acquired a Hsiung-nu wife and son. Finally, he managed to escape and embarked on a journey that would take him further west than any previous Chinese ambassador. He even located the Yueh-shih in present-day Kazakhstan, only to find they had no interest in forging an alliance with the Han. Chang spent the next year travelling around the region. On his homeward journey he was again captured by the Hsiung-nu but quickly escaped and reached the Chinese court in 126 BC. Only two of the hundred servants who had originally set out returned alive.
Chang was elevated to the office of grand counsellor of the palace, but not before providing the emperor with a report of the western regions that shattered the Chinese world-view. His verbal report was enshrined in the imperial histories and provoked decades of further exploration beyond the traditional sphere of Chinese diplomatic interest, usually limited to Japan, Korea, Vietnam and the various tribes on the empire’s frontier. The assumption had always been that, the further one travelled from China, the more barbaric the people became, until one came to the edge of the world and a limitless ocean. But Chang talked of people in the west, in the central Asian regions of Ferghana (in Uzbekistan) and Bactria (in modern Afghanistan), who actually lived ‘in houses, in fortified cities’, who were ‘settled on the land, ploughing the fields and growing wheat and rice’, who made wine from grapes and tended the finest horses Chang had ever seen. Even more astonishingly, he had heard of empires, most likely Persia, even further to the west that had developed the art of writing and traded with a metal coinage.
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As a direct result of Chang’s mission, more ambassadors would be sent out in search of allies in the coming years – to northern India, to Samarkand, even as far as the Persian Gulf. Each journey brought more revelations, and the trade routes into central Asia – the fabled silk roads – were refined and extended. As a direct result of such missions, China would be flooded with new imports, whether grapes or pomegranates, sesame seeds or broad beans.
By 92 BC a Chinese ambassador was laying silks at the feet of Mithridates II, king of Parthia, which lay southeast of the Caspian Sea. He returned the compliment, despatching ambassadors to China with an ostrich egg and a troupe of conjurors. Two hundred years after that, the envoys of a Roman emperor brought elephant tusks, rhinoceros horns and tortoise shells to the Chinese court. The links that had been forged in the wake of the Han ambassadors would be sustained. The enduring relationship between diplomacy and gift-giving was already thriving. In ad 638 the Persians were sending the Chinese a ferret that was an expert mice-catcher; a century later, they sent the Chinese four leopards. In the next phase of the ambassadors’ story, this aspect of diplomacy would soar.
THE MIDDLE CENTURIES (#ulink_226b3008-0643-53b8-8fae-3172a5639fee)
CHAPTER V Charlemagne’s Elephant (#ulink_61daf3c2-6a62-5ee0-a881-9e4be64d49f2)
i. Gift-Giving
Enter the French Ambassadors
KING HENRY
Now are we well prepar’d to know the pleasure Of our fair cousin Dauphin, for we hear Your greeting is from him, not from the king.
AMBASSADOR
May’t please your majesty to give us leave Freely to render what we have in charge; Or shall we sparingly show you far off The Dauphin’s meaning and our embassy? […] Your highness, lately sending into France, Did claim some certain dukedoms, in the right Of your great predecessor, King Edward the Third. In answer of which claim, the prince our master Says that you savour too much of your youth, And bids you be advis’d, there’s naught in France That can be with a nimble galliard won; You cannot revel into dukedoms there. He therefore sends you, meeter for your spirit, This tun of treasure; and, in lieu of this, Desires you let the dukedoms that you claim Hear no more of you. This the Dauphin speaks.
KING HENRY
What treasure, uncle?
EXETER (opening the tun)
Tennis balls, my liege.
KING HENRY
