China and the Ideal of Order in John Webb's an "Historical Essay...."

China and the Ideal of Order in John Webb's an "Historical Essay...."Author(s): Rachel RamseySource: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Jul., 2001), pp. 483-503Published by: University of Pennsylvania PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3654152 .

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China and the Ideal of Order

in John Webb's

An Historical Essay....

Rachel Ramsey

Scholars of seventeenth-century intellectual history have generally relegated John Webb to the footnotes of their work on universal language schemes, architectural history, and Sino-European relations.' In this essay I suggest that Webb's An Historical Essay Endeavoring a Probability that the Language of the Em-

pire of China is the Primitive Language (1669), which argues that for 5000

years China preserved the language spoken by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, makes significant contributions to seventeenth-century intellectual history and to our understanding of early modem European perceptions of China. When Webb's Essay is placed within the context of the seventeenth-century debates about the "primitive" language of Eden, China's ancient history, and the idealization of that empire's harmonious and prosperous culture, its deeply political nature becomes apparent.

The Jesuit accounts and those of other travelers to China were especially appealing to English readers living in the aftermath of the civil wars and the turmoil of the early years of the Restoration because they offered glimpses of a

seemingly ideal state ruled by a stable monarchy and blessed with seemingly infinite resources and unimaginable wealth; however, these accounts included evidence that China had maintained an unbroken historical record that antedated the Flood, thus implicitly challenging the veracity of the Old Testament account of Noah and the Universal Deluge. Webb's Essay solves the problem posed by the Jesuit accounts of China's ancient history by placing them within a revised biblical narrative; this solution makes it possible for him to claim that China's

I would like to thank Professor Robert Markley and Lionel Jensen for their suggestions. 1 See John Bold, "John Webb: Composite Capitals and the Chinese Language," The Ox-

ford Art Journal, 4 (1981), 9-17-the only attempt by an architectural historian to connect Webb's fascination with China to his architectural designs.

483

Copyright 2001 by Journal of the History of Ideas, Inc.



484 Rachel Ramsey

exemplary status is a result of its possession of the primitive language and its

socio-political virtues are the consequence of its Noachian origins. The revised biblical narrative not only made Webb's encomium to that country more acceptable to a bible-reading public and protestant king but offered a politically-safe way for him to criticize the restored English monarchy by contrasting it to an idealized account of China's social and political state. More specifically, the circumstances of Webb's years of service in the Office of the King's Works help us further understand what attracted a seventeenth-century architect to the Je- suit accounts of China and what motivated him to write the first English treatise on the Chinese language. Webb's political career allows us to readAn Historical

Essay as a politico-theological justification for a reasoned critique of the patronage system which Webb held accountable for his thwarted career ambitions.

Webb's Career and the Politics of the Restoration

John Webb lived through some of England's most turbulent history and wit- nessed firsthand the effects of monarchical instability and regicide, the uncer- tainties of the Commonwealth, and the shortcomings of the Restoration. Born to a Somerset family in 1611 and educated at the Merchant Taylors' school, Webb became Inigo Jones's pupil in 1628 and served as his "Clerk Engrosser" from 1633 to 1641 in the Office of the King's Works, where Jones was Surveyor. During the early years of the English revolution Webb served as his mentor's

deputy in London after Jones fled north with Charles I, but he was dismissed from his post in 1643 following an "accusation from one Mr. Carter to the Committee of the Revenue, that the said Mr. Jones was at Oxford."2 During his absence from the Office of the Works, Webb supposedly sent detailed plans of London's fortifications and smuggled jewelry to the king, for which he was briefly imprisoned.3 After Charles I's execution in 1649, Webb worked on several country houses, including those of the Earl of Rutland at Belvoir, the Earl of Peterborough at Drayton, and Sir Justinian Isham at Lamport but he was firmly excluded from holding any political post as a former consort of the martyred King.4 He held an appointment briefly in the Office of the Works under the Cromwell-appointed Edward Carter, who was later dismissed, no doubt much to Webb's satisfaction, for "double-dealing."5 With Jones's death in 1652 Webb, who had married Jones's niece, Anne, and had been named his executor, became not only Jones's legal and principal heir but also heir to his architectural legacy. As "Inigo Jones's

2 H. M. Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of English Architects, 1660-1840 (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), 654

3 Ibid., 654.

4 Alfred J. Gotch, "Some Newly Found Drawings and Letters of John Webb," Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 28 (1921), 565-82.

5 See John Summerson, Architecture in Britain, 1530-1830 (London, 1983), 147.



China and the Ideal of Order in John Webb 485

Man" he was one of England's most experienced and highly-trained architects.6 John Summerson concludes that Webb as a professional architect never forged

an identity separate from Jones, in part because

inevitably, his unique, long and laborious training under Jones comes out in everything he designed. From the point of view of scholarship he was head and shoulders above all other designers of the Restoration. The only personal trait seems to be a tendency to a rather depressing emphasis on horizontals, a psychological clue, perhaps, to a nature dominated by loyalty.7

His loyalty to Jones seems indisputable, but it does not seem equally certain that Webb was unable or unwilling to build a reputation distinct from his mentor or that his interests were narrowly confined to his architectural work. Before the 1669 publication of his Essay, Webb published a treatise in 1655 speculating on

Stonehenge's Roman origins, supposedly from Jones's notes, and wrote a Vindi- cation of those claims in 1665. He designed the frontispiece for Brian Walton's

Polyglot Bible, and Anthony Wood attributes a translation of Giovanni's

Tarcagnota's Delle Historie del Mondo (Venice, 1562) to Webb.8 Architectural historians have concluded from his large collection of drawings and lengthy notes that he was planning a treatise on architecture; the instructions in his will

urging his wife and son to keep his drawings and notes bear witness to these

supposed intentions.9 His desire for public recognition of his scholarly achieve- ments appears particularly acute when placed beside his later professional disappointments. During the last years of the Commonwealth Webb maintained a residence in Scotland Yard, where the Office of the Works was quartered, but as a Royalist he could not hope to resume his work there or assume Jones's post as Surveyor until the restoration of Charles II.

Royalists in 1660 looked forward to being rewarded for their loyalty, but the political, religious, and economic strife did not disappear with Charles II's land- ing on English soil. As J. R. Jones has demonstrated convincingly, political life in England was "chronically unhealthy during almost the whole period between 1660-1688."1o This was especially true for Whitehall, where the scrambling for political appointments meant the interruption of the surveyorship and stopped the rebuilding work on St. Paul's Cathedral, among other government buildings.

6 See Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary, 654 and John Bold, John Webb: Architectural Theory and Practice in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1989); and Timothy Mowl and Brian Earnshaw, Architecture without Kings: The Rise of Puritan Classicism under Cromwell (Manchester, 1995).

7 Summerson, Architecture in Britain, 148. 8 Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxonienses iv, (London, 1813-20), 753-54.

9 Bold, John Webb, 8.

0o Country and Court: England, 1658-1714 (Boston, 1978), 1-10.



486 Rachel Ramsey

Webb's salary, consequently, was in arrears for several years. To make matters worse, his assumption that as Inigo Jones's heir he would be granted the

surveyorship met with bitter disappointment when Charles II appointed the poet Sir John Denham to the position. Webb pointed out in a letter of grievance to the

King from his temporary retirement in Butleigh, that though "Denham may have, as most gentry, some knowledge of architecture, he can have none of the practice.""' Charles II presumably knew enough about architecture and Denham's abilities to request personally in 1663 that Webb return to the Surveyor's Office as Denham's assistant and oversee the building of Greenwich Palace, assuring him an annual salary of ?200. Denham's position was nominal at best, and the

King promised Webb the reversion of the surveyorship.'2 After Denham's death in 1669, Webb once again sought the promised reversion, only to be denied in favor of Christopher Wren, a man twenty years younger and with little architectural experience. Denham supposedly opposed Webb's appointment, requesting from his death bed that it never pass the Great Seal.13 After forty-one years of service to the monarchy and the King's Works, Webb retired in 1669 to his estate in Somerset.

The series of disappointments Webb suffered can be attributed in part to the control the patronage system exercised over Whitehall; the burgeoning civil service system begun in the Interregnum had been, in Geoffrey Holmes's words, "cut down in its youth."'4 Under Charles II very few men were even employed in state service, and those who were so employed worked under no guarantee that

they would be paid or have a position from one day to the next."5 The instability of the patronage system was in some measure indicative of the larger problems facing the restored monarchy, including the King's failures to produce a legitimate heir to the throne, to quell the growing fears posed by James II's Catholi- cism, and to placate the merchants' frustrations over the loss of the Second Dutch War.'6 At the end of the 1660s Charles II faced the still burning embers left from London's almost complete destruction in the Great Fire of 1666, the fears generated by the plague in 1665, and the raw wounds of the Civil War with

perilously close-to-empty treasury coffers.17 In this climate of capricious politi-

" Bold, John Webb, 182 12 Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary, 655. 13 Brendan O Hehir, Harmony from Discord: A Life of Sir John Denham (Berkeley, 1968),

154. 14 Augustan England: Professions, State and Society, 1680-1730 (London, 1982), 240. 15 According to John Brewer, Sinews of Power: War Money, and the English State, 1688-

1783 (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), 65, the number of men employed during the Restoration in the central government administration was limited with the exception of the numerous tax collec- tors hired once the state assumed control of revenue collections formerly managed by private agents.

16 Tim Harris, London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II: Propaganda until the Exclusion Crisis (Cambridge, 1987), 88-89.

17 Brewer, Sinews of Power, 207, discusses the financial problems which plagued Charles II, including the fact that by the 1670s he owed goldsmith bankers over ?645,000.




cal patronage and unstable monarchical authority the Jesuit accounts of China's

systematic examination system that selected and promoted civil servants based on merit and exempted them from paying taxes-under the auspices of a prosperous and secure monarchy-apparently fascinated an ardent but disappointed Royalist like Webb. His treatise, then, emerges from this climate of political disappointment in the monarchy's failure to deliver economic and political sta-

bility and from his personal disappointment in twice losing the surveyorship to less qualified candidates.An Historical Essay may be read in part as a last-ditch effort by Webb to forge an intellectual reputation and to curry favor with the Court and thereby realize his professional aspirations within the Office of the Works.

Language Schemes, Chronology Designs, and European Perceptions of China

If Webb wished to hold China up as an example to Restoration England, he could account for China's exemplary status by attributing its perfection to its

possession of the primitive tongue of Adam. China could be located within the narrative of Mosaic history but seen as an uncorrupted Noachian alternative to the corrupt and fractured world of seventeenth-century Europe. China's character-based language system had long fascinated European thinkers.'" In England radicals and Royalists alike politicized, scapegoated, and blamed the instability of language for both religious and political conflicts; as Sharon Achinstein and

Nigel Smith argue, the confusion of tongues at Babel served as the dominant

ideological metaphor for linguistic and socioeconomic confusion, and the En-

glish Revolution itself was figured as Babel.19 The prominent authors of universal language projects-John Wilkins, George Dalgarno, Francis Lodowick, and Cave Beck-wished to collapse the space between words and what Francis Ba- con designated as "things and notions" through the use of an ideographic representational system that would midwife into existence "certain knowledge" and

political and religious stability and facilitate trade across linguistic and political boundaries.20 Universal language schemes and attempts to establish a calculus or clavis sinica were extremely popular in the late seventeenth century because they allowed ecumenically-driven scholars such as Leibniz to envision a perfected representational system as a "pancea for both political and theological ills."21

18 See Lionel M. Jensen, Manufacturing Confucianism: Chinese Traditions and Universal Civilization (Durham, N.C., 1997), 114-18, and William Appleton, Cycle of Cathay: Chinese Vogue in England during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (New York, 1951).

19 See Sharon Achinstein, Milton and the Revolutionary Reader (Princeton, 1994), and Nigel Smith, Literature and the Revolution in England, 1640-1660 (New Haven, 1994).

2 Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (New York, 1990), 32, 42, 70, 104, 128.

21 Toulmin, Cosmopolis, 100.



488 Rachel Ramsey

The seekers of the primitive language also sought to buttress political stability by "fixing" language but were forced to confront directly the underlying theological argument on which language projects built. These efforts worked from the premise that post-lapsarian language had corrupted the Adamic tongue lost at Babel and that the discovery of this language would necessarily restore a natural socio-political order. Seekers of the primitive language were by neces-

sity locked into a biblical framework: their search began with an analysis of the confusion of tongues at Babel, tracked the dispersal of language by reading and

reconciling all extant historical records and chronologies, and ended with an assertion that an existing language was the language of Adam. In 1641 John Milton wrote to Samuel Hartlib, himself a keen proponent of language schemes, that "[t]he end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, and to be like him."22 Primitive language projects rested on the assumption that the possession of the primitive tongue guaranteed knowledge of how "to know God aright"; therefore, the political and religious stakes were high in as-

serting claims to the Adamic language because those who possessed it would also necessarily possess the virtues and knowledge needed "to imitate him."

Webb's argument that China possessed the primitive tongue was necessarily hindered by its ancient history which presented problems for seventeenth-century readers if they accepted the Bible as historical fact, unless he could reconcile Chinese chronicles with a Mosaic metanarrative. China's antiquity offered readers an opportunity to buy into the self-fulfilling prophecy of social and linguistic redemption. As Robert Markley has argued, "Seventeenth-century writers committed to some version of millenarian reform see the restoration of Babel often as a prerequisite to, or occasionally as a consequence of, socioeconomic and political progress, however differently that progress may be defined."23 If the "primitive language" could be restored or a perfect universal language established, then the rewards would be a wealthy and stable political system- overcoming the curse of Babel. In this context China's immense wealth and seemingly infinite material resources and its stable monarchical government, for Webb, can be explained as both the cause and the effect of its possession of the primitive language.

Webb uses the speculations made by seventeenth-century scholars about the power of language to argue that China's possession of the uncorrupted language is the causal agent behind its exemplary economic, political, and social struc- tures. Because the Chinese possess the primitive language, their society has

22 Donald M. Wolfe et al. (ed.), Complete Prose Works of John Milton (8 vols.; New Haven, 1953-82), 11, 366-67.

23 Fallen Languages: Crisis of Representation in Newtonian England, 1660-1740 (Ithaca, N.Y, 1993), 69-70.




never lost its dominion over nature. Its resources and manufactured goods, Webb

argues in echoing his Jesuit sources, must be infinite. Given this wealth, China must possess, if not the pristine morality of the Garden of Eden then at least the

political and economic virtues which seventeenth-century writers associated with the Golden Age. Most important for Webb, China, because it possesses these moral and material virtues, is an unimpeachable model for the kind of government and society that England should strive to maintain.

In Webb's Essay, then, China's vast wealth and ideal social and political systems are mutually constitutive. Accounts of China's wealth were widely re-

ported by commentators on China. Pierre d'Avity asserts that "all things abound there in such sort, as besides the prouision of the Chinois, they haue wherewithall to furnish both their neighbors, and remote countries."24 Gaspar de Cruz's account emphasizes that "all the ground that ... can yeeld kinde of fruit receiuing seede, is husbanded," and "euery one enioyeth the fruits of his labour."25 All the

major texts published after Mendoza's history26 in 1588 reproduce in exacting detail the impressive list of the Emperor's tax revenues.27 Webb describes China's rich and fertile lands, the size of its kingdom, and the quality of its cities, marvel-

ing that the Chinese produce such vast quantities of goods and stressing that neither poverty nor want exists among the people of China.

[A]ll China throughout ... might not undeservedly be said to be one

City, in which is found such infinite plenty of whatever is necessary for the life of mankind; as that which the wise industry of Nature hath here and there amongst other Kingdoms of the World dispersed, may all Be

Summarily seen to be contained within this one only.... I could acquaint you also, that the revenue of their Emperour amounteth yearly unto one hundred and fifty millions of Crowns.28

He reiterates d'Avity's physiocratic description, which seems to be echoing Mendoza, of a "land that doth beare fruit three or foure times a year," and maintains that "they [the Chinese] exceed all people in the World, and are so

indefatigably diligent, laborious and expert therein, that throughout all the

24 Pierre d'Avity, The Estates, Empires, & Principalities of the World, tr. Edward Grimstone (London, 1615), 727.

5 Gaspar de Cruz, A Treatise of China, abridged in Samuel Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimes (London, 1625), III, 175.

26 Juan Gonzales de Mendoza, The Historie of the Great and Mightie Kingdome of China, tr. R. Parke (London, 1588).

27 See d'Avity, The Estates, Empires, & Principalities of the World, for an inventory, taken from Ricci, of the tax payments made to the emperor at the turn of the seventeenth century; and see Samuel Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimes, III, 370-411.

28 John Webb, An Historical Essay Endeavoring a Probability That the Language of the Empire of China is the Primitive Language (England, 1669), 86.



490 Rachel Ramsey

Chinique Empire, there is scarcely one hands bredth of ground to be found unmanured or barren."29 China's moral and cultural superiority relies on, and

springs from, its seemingly infinite resources, which are in turn emblematic of its possession of the primitive language. Having escaped the confusion of Babel, China's prosperity becomes axiomatic.

Situating China's ancient history within a biblical narrative, however, proved to be no easy task for Webb and presents him with particular chronological difficulties. With the translation of Jesuit accounts of China, chronologists were confronted by a culture that possessed written records whose authenticity could not easily be disregarded nor assimilated easily into existing biblical-based chro-

nologies. Martinio Martini's Sinicae historiae (1658) meticulously recorded the

reign of seven Chinese emperors well before the Universal Flood and, most im-

portantly, confirmed the existence of China's written documents which recorded history prior to the Deluge.30 With the publication of Martini's work China's history received serious attention, in part because this Jesuit missionary had failed to explain the preservation of those records during the Universal Flood or to reconcile the Chinese chronology with Mosaic history. These Chinese histories called into question the universality of the Flood, and in turn threatened to offer alternatives to the Old Testament accounts.

Explaining China's history, then, was not a task to be undertaken lightly.31 The seventeenth-century scholars and divines who attempted to establish a "world chronology" were motivated not only by a desire to account for the origins of pagan religions but to reaffirm "the status and place of the Bible in its relation to authoritative knowledge."32 Rather than dismissing Egyptian and Chinese histories as pagan and asserting that the Bible did not need confirmation by external sources, J. J. Scaliger and Archbishop Ussher, among others, hoped to assimilate them into their own chronologies. These chronologies established specific dates for the Creation, the Flood, the Resurrection, and subordinated "competing" chronologies to an unquestioned biblical history and Judeo-Christian au-

thority. Scaliger and Ussher relied on their chronologies to "enable the Christian world to assimilate the histories of the gentile nations to the biblical plan and to provide a comforting framework within which to accommodate all known historical facts."33

However, in their attempts to mediate the challenges presented to the Old Testament's chronology by the ancient Chinese, Egyptian, and Chaldean chro-

29 d'Avity, The Estates, Empires, & Principalities of the World, 719. 30 Farther Martini, Sinicae Historiae.... (Munich, 1658), 36-39. 31 See Edwin J. Van Kley, "Europe's 'Discovery' of China and the Writing of World His-

tory," American Historical Review, 76 (1971), 358-85. 32 Bernard McGrane, Beyond Anthropology: Society and the Other (New York, 1989), 58. 33 David S. Katz, "Isaac Vossius and the English Biblical Critics, 1670-1689," Skepticism

and Irreligion in the Seventeenth Century and Eighteenth Century, eds. Richard Popkin and Arjo Vanderjagt (Leiden, 1993), 151.




nologies, both Scaliger and Ussher were confronted with reconciling the traditional Vulgate version of Scripture with the Septuagint, the translation the Greek-

speaking Egyptian Jews produced between the third and first centuries BC. In the

Septuagint the lives of the Patriarchs are longer, and in general this translation adds fifteen centuries and budgets a 37% increase for the total length of world

history. The ability to accommodate older recorded histories, then, often meant

abandoning or compromising the accepted Vulgate text in favor of the Septuagint text, which provided more room in which to maneuver.34 The attempts to explain these histories, which granted them legitimacy and forced the abandonment of the Masoretic Hebrew text, as Paul Hazard has argued, "sow[ed] more seeds of unrest in quiet minds, and [did] more to undermine faith in history, than all [the] open scoffers and anti-religious fanatics ever succeeded in doing."35 The vexed

process of constructing chronologies, then, could potentially embroil the com-

piler in polemical and even heretical debates, but if these hazards could be nego- tiated, the reward was the inscription of all extant histories "into one unified and

unifying general order within the circumference of the Christian European circle."36 With Scaliger and Ussher leading the way, prose histories such as Sir Walter Ralegh's History of the World (1614) were being supplemented by short- ened chronologies that displayed times and events in tabular form. In the quest for simplified order that legitimated the Christian faith, these chronologies de-

pended on "the construction of a plausible set of diachronic and synchronic relations [that] function[ed] as a narrative matrix that at once represented historical plots in an abbreviated form and offered a vehicle for the discovery or invention of others."37 Chronology solved Webb's problem of how to legitimize his idealization of China: integrate the Middle Kingdom's ancient history into a biblical narrative which would explain and account for its perfected socio-political order.38

Unlike other "proto-sinologists" Webb did not have direct missionary contacts, which played such a fundamental role for other writers on China.39 His treatise depended entirely on written evidence in wide circulation between 1600 and 1670, and in accordance with accepted standards of seventeenth-century

34 Ibid., 151-53. 35 The European Mind, 1680-1715, tr. J. Lewis May (London, 1973), 60. 36 McGrane, Beyond Anthropology, 60. 37 Kenneth J. Knoespel, "Milton and the Hermeneutics of Time: Seventeenth-Century

Chronologies and the Science of History," Studies in the Literary Imagination, 22 (1989), 17. 38 See Carl Pletsch, "Textual Politics in Locke's Two Treatises of Government," Restora-

tion, Ideology, and Revolution (Proceedings from the Folger Institute Center for History of British Political Thought, IV), ed. Gordon J. Schochet (Washington, D.C., 1990), 105-47.

39 See David E. Mungello, Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins ofSinology (Stuttgart, 1985) for a thorough discussion of Jesuit accounts of China in Europe and "proto- sinology." See Jensen, Manufacturing Confucianism, 118-33 for a detailed examination of the European reception of Jesuit texts.



492 Rachel Ramsey

historiographic research, he heavily glossed his Essay with references to these

primary sources. Webb assembles an authority-driven, quotation-filled argument filled with citations to Peter Heylyn's Cosmographie (London, 1652), Samuel Purchas's Purchas His Pilgrimes (1625 edition), Sir Walter Ralegh's History of the World (London, 1614), Anthanasius Kircher's China Illustrata (1667), and especially the Jesuit accounts of Nicola Trigault's and Matteo Ricci's De Christiana Expeditione Apud Sinas (the original 1615 Augsburg edition had been partially translated in Purchas in 1625), Alvaro Semedo's Imperio de la China (translated into English in 1654), and Martino Martini's Novas Atlas Sinensis and Historiae Sinicae (published in English in 1654).40 By selectively sorting through these sources, Webb reconciles China's ancient history with the Old Testament.

Arguing that Noah's ark landed on the border of what is now India, as Sir Walter Ralegh and Peter Heylyn maintain, Webb claims that Noah and some of his sons then migrated further east and settled in China, isolating them com-

pletely from those who traveled west to the plains of Shinaar and generations later built the Tower of Babel. Therefore, the "primitive language" spoken by Adam and Eve and preserved by Noah remained intact in China because Noah and his sons did not suffer the confusion of tongues at Babel; Webb argues that the language they preserved is Chinese. He reconciles China's history with the Mosaic account by using Septuagint chronology to correlate the dates of the Flood with the Chinese myth of a great flood. Paolo Rossi describes the final hurdle confronting Webb's explanation of China's ancient history: "It would be impossible to explain the presence of ancient Chinese chronicles previous to the Deluge if one had to believe, as the sacred texts state, that the entire human race, with the exception of Noah and his family, was destroyed in the Flood.'"' Webb

attempts to solve this dilemma by placing Noah in China both before and after the flood, asserting that he retired to China to build his ark once God informed him of the impending deluge. Not only does this solve the practical problems of China's possession of antediluvian records, but it allows Webb to assert that China's monotheistic theology, model government, and ideal monarchy are a direct result of Noah's teachings. He identifies Noah as the legendary patriarch of China, "Jaus"-the Chinese-invented sage-king Yao who was to have ruled in 2356 Bc. Webb can then argue that China's isolation from the degenerate west and its superior culture prevented the form of the written language from under-

going any substantial corruption, unlike the more malleable spoken language. With his inventive reinterpretation of Chinese and biblical history Webb sets the

40 Mungello, Curious Land, 174 and Ch'en Shou-yi, "John Webb: A Forgotten Page in the Early History of Sinology in Europe," Chinese Social and Political Review, 19 (1935-36), 313 for a complete list of Webb's sources.

41 The Dark Abyss of Time: The History of the Earth and the History of Nations from Hooke to Vico, tr. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago, 1984), 140.




stage for an implicit comparison between China's idealized social and political history and the political turmoil, fiscal crisis, and damaging political favoritism

rampant in Restoration England.

Working on Local Problems in a Global Workshop

Webb dedicated his Essay to Charles II on 29 May 1668, the King's birth-

day, the official date of the Restoration, and the date the Lords and Commons decreed as a day of thanksgiving.42 In so doing he evoked images of new begin- nings and celebrated a deliverance from a past characterized as chaotic and unstable. He employs the language of discovery, comparing his work to that of

explorers, scientists, and inventors:

NEW DISCOVERIES make the Lives of PRINCES famous. Their POS- TERITY powerful; Their Subjects rich. Most prudently therefore doth YOUR MAJESTY vouchsafe to encourage them. Which rasieseth a

Spirit in the Heart of Your People to prosecute the same.43

His adoption of this rhetoric of exploration suggests the importance he sought for his project; by exploiting the metaphor of discovery, he stresses the material wealth that follows from the discovery of "new" lands. The rewards of "new discoveries" are reciprocal and should benefit not only the monarch but his sub-

jects as well. The relationship between the monarch and his subjects is further defined by Webb's rephrasing of a well-established Chinese political comparison: "The vertue of KINGS is like the Wind, his Subjects like Corn, which incline all to that part, whereunto they are moved by the Wind."44 While the

agricultural imagery naturalizes the reciprocal relationship between subject and monarch, the comparison highlights that it is the King's "virtue" that motivates this relationship, not merely his position as ruler. One of the primary advantages promised by Webb's treatise, then, is a means to stabilize the implicitly capricious relations between monarch and subject by providing an example of political virtue. The recovery of the Edenic language will unlock

[t]hat GOLDEN-MINE of Learning, which from all ANTIQUITY hath lain concealed in the PRIMITIVE TONGUE, whether religion, Famous Examples of the Wisedom of Old, Politique Rules for Government, or what ever else advantages to Mankind be respected.45

42 Helen W. Randall, "The Rise and Fall of a Martyrology: Sermons on Charles I," Hun- tington Library Quarterly (1947), 135.

43 Webb, An Historical Essay, II. 44 Ibid., 2. 45 Ibid., 4.



494 Rachel Ramsey

Though he seems to want to promise material wealth by evoking the image of a

"golden-mine," the advantages Webb stresses are political ones that derive from access to examples of a perfected socio-political order. By promising to supply the King with examples of these virtues, Webb implies their absence from Charles II's government. He holds China up as a mirror to disclose, in a politically ac-

ceptable way, England's shortcomings. Extolling China's virtues, Webb constructs his idealization of monarchy by

negation. From the dedication onward he compares Charles II to Chinese emperors who, he argues, are directly descended from Noah. In this way, each virtue he attributes to a Chinese emperor implies its absence in Charles II:

The LORD GOD of Heaven and Earth, bless, guide, and preserve YOU, in all Your councells; and make YOU Religious like Jaus; Wise like Yuus; Victorious like Hiavouus, whose conquering sword crowned him with victory over more Nations.... And make all YOUR People as

publiquely minded, as Their People the CHINOIS, Whereby YOUR POSTERITY shall reign happily to Eternity; and YOUR Kingdoms enjoy Wealth and Prosperity throughout all Ages.46

Webb's identification of biblical patriarchs with Chinese emperors invests them with a "genealogical legitimacy" that derives from their access to the Adamic

language and Noah's exemplary teachings.47 Charles II and all other European monarchs are necessarily excluded from such privileged knowledge. By the indi- rection of his dedication, Webb discloses the distance between the ideal Chinese

government, as he portrays it, and the complicated and inherently unfair court

politics of Restoration England. The sense of order and stability based on immense wealth that pervades

Webb's vision of China originates with its monotheistic monarch-Noah or Yao. He argues that the Chinese have maintained an orderly line of succession by "hereditary rule" that began with "the example of Noah ... as the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were afterwards accustomed to do."48 He dismisses history recorded prior to Yao as not credible, claiming instead that Noah is Yao. To cement this identification he points to the pious nature of both; Noah was preacher and Yao a "divine." Both were practioners of husbandry, and, most important, the "deluge of Noah happened in the year before Christ two thousand two hundred and ninety four; and the deluge that destroyed China in the time of

46 Ibid., 8.

47 David Porter, "Writing China: Legitimacy and Representation in the Enlightenment Reception of the Far East" (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1996), 33; also Porter, "Writing China: Legitimacy and Representation, 1606-1773," Comparative Literary Studies, 33 (1996), 98-122.

48 Webb, An Historical Essay, 91.




Jaus agrees perfectly therewith."49 Though identifying biblical patriarchs with Chinese emperors was not new, it was especially useful for Webb's purposes.51 It joined his reconciliation of Chinese history to the biblical chronology and it also served to legitimate Chinese history and culture by emphasizing the Noachian

origins of Chinese "knowledge in divine matters, [and] of the true God especially."51 Webb's claim that Chinese history began with Noah allows him to attribute all that he praises in Chinese culture and politics to the historic myth that "[the Chinese] had Noah himself for an Instructor."52 He then writes an encomium to China that has its basis in a presumption of China's 4000-year-old unbroken historical record while borrowing Jesuit accommodationist tactics to construct a vision of China that idealizes its social order and stability.53 Noah's/ Yao's descendants stretch down largely undisturbed through the chronicles of China's history, and Webb uses the language of empire to describe how this succession from Noah resulted in one unified body: "Thus by degrees all China, farr and wide, in every part, as now, became to be inhabited; and as it was out of one body and one Offspring peopled so at length grew into one body and form of

Empire."'54 The power of patrilineal succession and monarchy not only establishes order but sustains it during civil uprisings, factionalism, invasions, and war.

Webb's historical vision casts a veneer of invincibility over China based on its resiliency to change and its ability to subdue internal strife and quickly repel or assimilate invaders. The internal wars faced by China that he chronicles are attributed to feudatory princes in one of the fifteen provinces who revolt against the monarchy. These revolts are few and unsuccessful. Webb describes how Chingus Xius (Genghis Khan, who ruled in the thirteenth century) defeated uprisings in the provinces by "compelling the Southern Provinces to submit wholly to his obedience, and thereby wonderfully enlarged the Chinique Empire; [and] extended his arms into remote parts.""55 According to Webb, Hiavouur (Han Wudi who ruled China from 141-87 Bc) invaded other countries in pursuit of his wish "to bring the whole world under his subjection" but was able to forestall

possible uprisings in his absence by outlawing patrilineal inheritance among his

subjects, preserving the practice as the powerful province of the emperor only. Webb argues that by "ordain[ing] that for the future the Lands granted [the

49 Ibid., 60-61.

50 Georg Horn first argued for a correspondence between the Chinese Emperors and the biblical patriarchs (Van Kley, "Europe's 'Discovery' of China," 365).

51 Webb, An Historical Essay, 116. 52 Ibid., 82. 53 Robert Markley, "Civility, Ceremony, and Desire at Beijing: Sensibility and the Euro-

pean Quest for 'Free Trade' with China in the late Seventeenth Century," Passionate Encoun- ters in a Time of Sensibility, eds. Anne Mellor and Maximillian E. Novak (New York, 2000).

54 Webb, An Historical Essay, 118. 55 Ibid., 125.



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Royalets] ... should at their deaths be equally divided ... amongst their children," Han Wudi "reduced them to such penury, as utterly disabled them.""56 Patrilineal descent radiates from the emperor so that property and privilege are in theory funneled through him only. Patriarchy and primogeniture receive validation

through their use as tools wielded by the monarchy to limit potential uprisings and ensure domestic order.

In the tradition of order constructed by Webb foreign invaders pose no threat to the continuity of patrilineal virtue and the survival of the primitive language because of China's power to assimilate other cultures. War works not to disrupt or disable China, then, but to provide opportunities for expansion. Even with the invasion of the Manchus in 1640s China remains impervious to subjugation; rather than becoming the colonized, it acts as colonizer.57 Webb points to both

Heylyn's and Martini's accounts of the Manchu invasion to emphasize China's

resiliency, adapting them in ways that seem designed to appeal to a specifically English audience:

For, instead of compelling the Chinois whilst they had them under obedience to submit to their Laws and Customs, they themselves [the Manchus] submitted to the Rites and Manners of those, whom they had for that time subjected; applying diligently themselves to understand and learn, the Language, Conditions, Arts, and Manufactures of the Chinoise, which at their expulsion they carried into Cathay with them."58

He uses this history later to counter arguments that invasions and conquests necessarily alter and significantly corrupt languages. For English readers recov-

ering from a civil war Webb's idealized account of China serves as a model of

government that can forestall internal uprisings by warring factions and over- come external enemies through imperial expansion. By grounding China's exemplary monarchy in the ascendancy of Noah/Yao to the Chinese throne and

asserting that "history" effectively begins with his reign, Webb establishes a lineage which exists beyond any historical challenge but remains palatable to a biblically-based English public and protestant monarchy.

Webb's account of the Deluge and Noah's/Yao's ascendancy to the Chinese throne stands in stark contrast to Charles II's return to England. Webb claims that Noah lived in China before the Flood when "there was no monarchy, [because] the desire of rule had not then folded itself about the hearts of men," emphasizing how he patiently waited for the people to change their minds about monarchical rule. During the Flood Noah/Yao "gave himself Fastings and Prayers

56 Ibid., 127. 57 Frederic Wakeman, Jr., The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Order in

Seventeenth-Century China (2 vols.; Berkeley, 1985). 58 Webb, An Historical Essay, 129.




to free his subjects from calamities," and Webb describes how afterward he established his monarchy and "undertook all things with prudence and conduct."'9 The Universal Flood, coded here to indicate the civil wars and uprisings in En-

gland, washed away the resistance to monarchy and prepared the way for Noah/ Yao, who waited and preserved his religious ideals in the Ark, to ascend to the throne. Webb borrows imagery made familiar by Royalist poets to celebrate Charles II's return in his description of Noah's/Yao's ascendency to the throne, such as that found inAnnus Mirabilis, where Dryden commemorates the King's return and with it the restoration of "Laws, Learning, Arts, and Trade/And this our Age, a golden Age is made."60 In like fashion Webb praises the fact that "Jaus brought the Chinique Empire into a better, yea, a new and another kind of form than formerly it had; ... constituting Laws both civil and criminal" that served to erase any sins, and thus history, prior to Yao's reign.61 Webb posits an idealized version of Restoration that resides in a model of political history but also one that claims validation in Christian salvific history. The perfected model of China's monarchy contrasts sharply to Charles's own less than perfect Resto- ration.

The distance between the idealized Chinese emperors and the English mon-

archy increases as Webb describes the attributes of China's founding monarch.

According to his description, Noah/Yao was "not proud nor intemperate, but

despised salutations, titles, rich household-stuff," and Webb affirms that "vene- real enticings [he] would not vouchsafe an ear onto."62 The allusion to "veneral

enticings" alone precludes the notoriously profligate Charles II from commenc-

ing a reign of Noachian rectitude. Perhaps more important, Noah was not guilty of "saying one thing, acting another, seemingly virtuous, really vitious"63; the

advantages of a monarch who kept his word and promises to a man in Webb's

position are obvious. Social stability, in Webb's idealized vision of China, is

guaranteed by a vision of mutual obligation and trust between monarch and

subject. Webb wishes Charles II wisdom like Yuus Yu, who ruled in 2205 Bc, but he

equates wisdom with justice-justice translates into "giving every man his due" and not "giving undo credit" or "rewarding vice."64 Yu piously resists political maneuvering and makes his decisions based on merit rather than persuasion. He exerts authority and controls warring Royalets, who "submitted not to the settled

Monarchy of China" by having "many sons, who excepting him that was Heir

59 Ibid., 64.

60 See Michael McKeon, Politics and Poetry in Restoration England: The Case of Dryden's Annus Mirabilis (Cambridge, Mass., 1975).

61 Webb, An Historical Essay, 87. 62 Ibid., 65. 63 Ibid., 87. 64 Ibid., 92.



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apparent, and to succeed; the rest were either created Royalets of Some particular Territory."65 By repopulating the outlying and unstable territories with his own progeny, Yu defuses the threats posed by factionalism and competing claims to the throne. His reproductive capabilities reflect his wise and just decision-

making skills. The implied criticism of Charles II not only focuses on his inabil-

ity to produce a legitimate heir but extends to the English monarchy's inability in

general to raise a military force that would quell plots and riots. Webb underscores the "Sixth Chinese Emperor Hiavouus" or Genghis Khan's ability to secure victories abroad while maintaining a stable and peaceful government at home. In stark contrast, the English monarchy, especially Charles II's own politically and economically troubled regime, cannot claim such triumphs.

Webb can safely level this criticism because the remoteness of the Chinese and biblical figures provides a cover of plausible deniability. His strategy re- sembles one used by Restoration dramatists, whose tragedies dealt safely with issues of succession by placing the action in remote and exotic locations.66 Those dissatisfied or disillusioned with Court politics or the monarchy searched for secure and acceptable venues or strategies in which to express that dissatisfac- tion. For Webb the distancing strategies employed in his political criticism seem to be used as much to protect his own Royalist beliefs as to avoid political censure.

China's Written Language and England's Patronage System

For all his admiration of Chinese emperors, Webb saves his highest praise for the Chinese literati or civil servants who are responsible for maintaining socio-political order, especially in the monarch's absence. The paradoxes within Webb's Royalist ideology that celebrates absolute monarchy while praising the

ability of the Chinese nation to work smoothly without the active intervention of the monarch reflect England's ongoing reconfiguration of the monarch's role and his own idealization of administrative responsibility that puts day-to-day control of the government in the hands of "professionals," civil servants like himself. If Restoration England's Royalists craved a way to preserve its traditional monarchical and patrilineal order while adjusting its government's han-

dling of financial and administrative offices, China's system provided an ideal model.67 In Webb's treatise China may possess an unfailing and absolute monar-

chy, but it relies on a self-perpetuating and merit-based civil service system to

65 Ibid., 118.

66 Gerald MacLean, "Literature, Culture, and Society in Restoration England," Culture and Society in the Stuart Restoration, ed. MacLean (Cambridge, 1995), 10-11, and Steven N. Zwicker, Politics and Language in Dryden's Poetry (Princeton, 1984), 35.

67 See Robert Stillman, The New Philosophy and Universal Languages in the Seventeenth Century: Bacon, Hobbes, and Wilkins (Lewisburg, Penn., 1995), 185.




run its government. Thus, it acts as an appropriate model for loyal monarchists because it allows both for central political authority embodied in an unbroken

lineage of rulers and for a civil service system that maintains the everyday work-

ings of the nation. Webb's praise of China preserves his loyalty to the king but allows him to imagine a perfect state where his experience and qualifications would be justly rewarded.

The model civil service that China represents is radically different from the

patronage system that still held sway in Restoration England. As opposed to

England's limited bureaucracy, China maintained the oldest civil service system in the world. Beginning with the Han Dynasty a written examination system based on the mastery of classical knowledge was instituted to counter accusa- tions of regionalism and hereditary aristocracy. The examination system shaped traditional Chinese learning and the anonymous character of the exams "per- suaded rulers, elites, and commoners of the viability of the literati dream of

public success and social advancement," producing, in theory, a merit-based

system reliant on "scholar-officials" to organize and enact governmental policies.68 On the surface the equal-opportunity exam seemed to promise social

mobility; scholar-officials or Chinese literati occupied one of the highest rungs on China's social ladder. Benjamin A. Elman's recent work on the cultural his-

tory of China's civil examination system has demonstrated that the civil examination process was in reality far from the socially-inclusive and merit-based exam praised by Webb. Elman argues that

excluding the masses of peasants, artisans, clerks, Buddhist and Taoist

priests-not to mention women-from the licensing stage of the selec- tion process ensured that those in the competition were a self-selected

minority of young men from literati or merchant families, lineages, or clans with sufficient linguistic and cultural resources to invest in their male children.69

While exposing the social prejudices inherent in the exam process, Elman also demonstrates the enduring power of the myth of social inclusion and merit-based advancement that not only dominated accounts of China's examination process in the seventeenth century but have persisted well into the twentieth century. The attractions such idealized accounts of China's merit-based civil service system held for someone in Webb's position are readily apparent; he had the Surveyorship wrested from his grasp by what he considered the insidious nature of court patronage. What others saw as business-as-usual-government jobs as rewards for social contacts, family alliances, or instances of mutual obligation-he viewed as evidence of widespread corruption.

68 A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (Berkeley, 2000), 248. 69 Ibid., 248.



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Throughout his essay Webb shows admiration for the merit-based system of reward for the Chinese literati, explaining how even "the poorest man amongst them, if deserving it by his learning, [is] capable of the highest preferment."70 In fact Webb predicates China's ideal order and stability on its "political principles and dictates of right reason" that are embodied by the Chinese literati:

It may be boldly said that of the Chinois ... therein everything is found

disposed in so great order; as that whereas all matters are under the rule and power of their Literati, or wiseman; so also hardly any thing is translated throughout the whole Empire which depends not upon them; neither can any man attain to any degree of Honour, that is not very richly learned in their Letters and Science. In a word, their Kings may be said to be Philosophers, and their Philosophers, Kings; and they order every thing.71

The totemic linking of "Philosophers" and "Kings" suggests the length to which Webb's self-projection influences his utopian vision of China. By designating the literati or civil servants as philosopher-kings, he implies that, at least in the

day-to-day running of the country, they are as politically important as the monarch himself. Ichisada Miyazaki's overview of China's civil service demonstrates how the examination system, regardless of the reality of its exclusionary mecha- nisms, "strengthened the ideological principles of both state and society by se-

lecting officials ostensibly on the basis of ability and intellectual achievement rather than of birth."72 In a system replicating China's Webb could be the ideal civil servant and loyal subject; he would be justly rewarded and he could serve his King without recourse to petitions and complaints. To the English Royalists the Chinese literati and civil service represented a way to ensure monarchical succession while simultaneously laying the groundwork to preserve the country's financial and social stability in a future crisis. The "naturalized" system of order that Robert Stillman identifies as the impetus behind John Wilkins's "Real Char- acter" finds pragmatic form in Webb's description of China's civil service.73

In the final pages of the Essay Webb discusses the merits of the Chinese language. Previously, he had established how China received the "primitive language," reinterpreting biblical scholarship and Chinese history to solidify his conjecture and discussing the cultural and historical factors that contributed to its preservation. In one of the few extended examinations of An Historical Essay David Porter emphasizes the prelapsarian context Webb evokes that allows him

70 Webb, An Historical Essay, 50. 71 Ibid., 92-93. 72 Ichisada Miyazaki, China's Examination Hell: The Civil Service Examination of Impe-

rial China, tr. Conrad Schirokauer (New Haven, 1981), 8. 73 The New Philosophy, 185.




to instill "ideals of legitimacy into [China's] language" and to illustrate how its "transcendent origins ... are reflected in its structure and ... moral content."74 Porter's examination reinforces what M. M. Slaughter and James Knowlson both acknowledge in their studies of universal languages, that the form of the

language must meet "scientific" requirements as well as evincing an "eternal order."75 Porter demonstrates how Webb proves that the Chinese language meets the requirements of "antiquity, simplicity, generality, modesty of expression, vitality, and brevity" established by Bacon, Wilkins, and Comenius for a universal language.76 But such linguistic criteria are in some measure mere stalking horses for Webb's socio-political concerns. Webb's discussion of the function of

language in China reveals the Essay's ideological underpinnings. The order and stability inherent in all aspects of Chinese society ultimately

depend on China's written rather than spoken language. Even though Webb goes through several complex and often problematic arguments to prove China has maintained the "primitive language," he freely admits that the spoken language has altered significantly; only at the court does the speech " not differ [ from the written ideal] but remains pure and uncorrupted."" Webb applies the terms "double fence" to the Chinese spoken language, referring to the nuanced intona- tion that distinguishes between similar sounding words. The certainty of the

language "consists not so much in the speaking and pronouncing, as in the read-

ing and writing: not in the words but letters.""78 The "primitive language" has been preserved in the written language through the literati's meticulous tran-

scription of China's history, its documents, and its royal decrees. The love and

respect the Chinese have for written characters demonstrate the value of the

system, and Webb claims that "Letters far more than a good painting, whereby from being thus esteemed, they come to be reverenced."79 In effect the written

language, like Chinese history, is removed from its historical context to promise an unchanging, even unalterable, form of perfect communication.

Webb's distrust of verbal promises-the sort that Charles I and Charles II apparently made to him-helps illuminate his fascination with the stability, order, and contractually-binding nature of China's written language:

74 "Writing China: Legitimacy and Representation in the Enlightenment Reception of the Far East," 45-46.

75 Universal Language and Scientific Taxonomy in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1982), and James Knowlson, Universal Language Schemes in England and France, 1600-1800 (Toronto, 1975).

76 Porter, "Writing China: Legitimacy and Representation in the Enlightenment Reception of the Far East," 45-46.

77 Webb, An Historical Essay, 177. 78 Ibid., 188. 79 Ibid., 177.



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And hence it is that Mendoza80 telleth us, that in China letters missive

ready written and accommodated to all affairs, are publiquely to be sold

by every Book-Seller in his shop, whether they be to be sent to persons of Honour, or inferior degree, or for to supplicate, reprehend, or recom- mend, or any other intents whatever occasion requires, although it be to

challenge one another to the field, so that the buyer hath no more to do, than to subscribe, seal and send them to the place intended at his plea- sure.81

China's written contracts minimize extra-legal, arbitrary, and capricious under-

takings among all classes of people. The idealization of China's easily available written documents that are couched in the "true language" highlights England's deficiencies, not only in honoring contracts but in failing to establish a precedent for their availability and necessity for all interactions. More importantly, China's contractual basis for all interactions exists within and under the aegis of an absolute monarchy. In a letter to Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon written in

May of 1660 James Morley writes, "Mr Denham tells me he hath had ye place of

Surveyor under ye kings hand & seal above these 10 years."82 Denham also ensured that Webb's second chance at the appointment did not pass the Great Seal. Verbal promises and expert qualifications proved to be worthless when

compared to powerful patronage and written documents. The complex set of dynamics informing Webb's Essay provides a unique

insight into the conflicts facing a disillusioned Royalist in Restoration England. Though absolutism died with Charles I, his son's restored monarchy still sanc- tioned and controlled the patronage system in which civil servants such as Webb

fought for notice and advance. The inherent unfairness of such a system as well as its inabilities to meet the needs of an expanding economy were becoming increasingly evident. To question or challenge the sacred nature of the monarchy or patrilineal descent, two systems which were reinforced by religion, was both psychically and politically hazardous for seventeenth-century Royalists. The influx of Jesuit accounts of China presented them with an idealized vision of their beliefs and for Webb reconciled the tensions between loyalty and patronage: merit-based promotions of the literati allowed one to be loyal to a monarch whose perfection remained unchallenged because these "Philosopher-Kings" acted on his behalf in running the operations of the government.

Webb's treatise illustrates the ways in which seventeenth-century accounts of China resist the ahistorical imposition of "orientalist" models and provides a much-needed corrective to traditional assumptions about the relationships be-

80 See Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza, The Historie of the Great and Mightie Kingdome of China, tr. R. Parke (London, 1588).

81 Webb, An Historical Essay, 202. 82 O Hehir, Harmony from Discord, 155 (emphasis added).




tween the European self and the Asian other. The Essay, if an extreme example, also underscores the broad political dissemination of proto-sinology in Restora- tion England. Webb's work demonstrates how China served as an effective means for political conservatives wishing to launch a mediated critique in the face of the erosion of their hopes for the restored monarchy. Perhaps more importantly, a seemingly offbeat treatise such as An Historical Essay suggests that China's influence on European conceptions of history, government, and patronage in the seventeenth century is more complex and nuanced than even most sinologists have recognized.

Assumption College.



China and the Ideal of Order in John Webb's an "Historical Essay...."

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