Erik Ringmar, Liberal Barbarism and the Oriental Sublime

917

Liberal Barbarism and the OrientalSublime The European Destructionof the Emperorrsquos Summer Palace

Erik Ringmar

In 1860 a combined A n g l o - F rench army looted and burned theYuanmingyuan a vast compound of palaces temples pagodas andg a rdens belonging to the Chinese empero r This act of barbarism theya rgued was necessary in order to bring civilisation to China Thisarticle explains this event as an expression of Europeanrsquo confro n t a t i o nwith the lsquoOriental sublimersquo a fiction created by them as an exoticcounterpart to the liberal and rationalistic social order theythemselves re p resented The desire for sublime experiences is stills t rong in modern societies and it still leads Europeans mdash and NorthAmericans mdash to commit atrocities in the name of liberal values

ndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndash

In Europe the nineteenth century was an era of endless liberal self-confidence Establishing itself as a political doctrine through therevolution in France and as an economic doctrine through the industrialrevolution in Britain liberalism stood for political equality and laissez-faire capitalism Everyone was to have the same opportunities to pursuetheir own ends governed only by the rules of reason As the liberals self-confidently declared old prejudices and traditional hierarchies unableto justify their existence before the court of public opinion would soondisappear In this way a better world would be built for everyone

But the nineteenth century was also the era of Euro p e a nimperialism This was when most parts of the globe came to be occupiedby European powers and when parts left unoccupied ndash such as ChinaJapan or Thailand ndash were subject to intense military pressure It mayindeed be difficult to understand what it was that turned the liberals intoempire builders Domination of others would seem to conflict with theliberal commitment to freedom and equality and the extensive network____________________

I am grateful to Lin Chun Song Nianshen and Qalandar Memon for commentson a previous version of this article

1 As indeed the first generation of Enlightenment thinkers ndash Diderot andothers ndash concluded See Jennifer Pitts A Turn to Empire The Rise of ImperialLiberalism in Britain and France (Princeton Princeton University Press 2005)165ndash73copy Millennium Journal of International Studies 2006 ISSN 0305-8298 Vol34 No3 pp 917-933

918

Millennium

of colonies to contradict the tenets of free trade1 Although there werecertainly different idiosyncratic reasons for countries such as Britain orFrance to become imperialist there is nevertheless a more general causeintrinsically linked to the liberal ideology The connection let us suggestwas a result of the liberal definition of reason

It is the use of reason liberal thinkers concluded which separateschildren from grown-ups2 It is through the exercise of reason that welearn to take responsibility for ourselves and gradually becomeindependent Reason makes it possible to study the world scientificallyand to organise our societies efficiently Economic markets apply a sterntest ndash in the long run the existence of that which is not commerciallyviable cannot be effectively defended Yet not all countries are equallyfar along the path to enlightenment Like a child a society will come toexercise its reason and learn to determine its own fate only gradually Ifa society cannot do it for itself it will need the help of others3 This morethan anything was the rationale for liberal imperialism Dutifullyshouldering the burden of colonies the Europeans set to workoccupying enlightening rationalising and commercialising

At the same time rationality was never enough Reason is aprinciple of accountability which forces us to justify ourselves to othersand a principle of efficiency which requires constant comparisons andmeasurements Yet always justifying ourselves and competing makes fora poor social environment The rationalistic air was always too arid theeconomic imperatives too categorical and in the end rationalism madethe Europeans sick Not surprisingly they took refuge in dreams4 Thusthe nineteenth century was the era of not only liberal self-confidence butalso Victorian Romanticism with its cult of the obscure thetranscendent the unutterable shadowy and grotesque ndash FrankensteinrsquosM o n s t e r Edgar Allen Poersquos Raven Freudrsquos Subconscious andNietzschersquos Zarathustra5 Together these capitalised entities tell the____________________

2 Immanuel Kant [1784] lsquoAn Answer to the Question What isEnlightenmentrsquo in Immanuel Kant Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on PoliticsHistory and Morals trans Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis Hackett 1983) compareEli Kedorie Nationalism (Oxford Blackwell 1993)

3 As John Stuart Mill put it in relation to China lsquoif they are ever to be furtheri m p roved it must be by foreignersrsquo John Stuart Mill [1859] On Liberty(Harmondsworth Penguin 1985) 137 This is also the reasoning behind theracialist doctrines of the era For the case of France see Tzetan Todorov OnHuman Diversity Nationalism Racism and Exoticism in French Thought(Cambridge MA Harvard University Press 1993) 90ndash170

4 The seminal account is MH Abrams The Mirror and the Lamp RomanticTheory and the Critical Tradition (Oxford Oxford University Press 1955)

5 The most famous discussion of this contrast is of course Nietzschersquosdistinction between the forces of Apollo and the forces of Dionysus See

919

Liberal Barbarism and the Oriental Sublime

unofficial story of modern society ndash reasonrsquos mad and embarrassing twinb rother whom we keep locked up in the attic of our collectiveconsciousness

The relationship between reason and unreason is neatly broughtout by the contrast between the beautiful and the sublime as discussedmost famously by Edmund Burke6 Burke explained that we enjoy thethings which are beautiful since they are pleasing to the senses beautifulobjects are objects which our senses can hold and control The sublimeon the other hand is always beyond our grasp the sublime givesintimations of other worlds ruled by obscure and terrifying forces Thuswhile the beautiful can be subject to our reason the sublime we cannotreason with instead the sublime is an awesome power which forces ussilently to succumb

In terms of these aesthetic categories the tension between reasonand unreason can be understood through the desire for transgressionFrom the Latin transgredi to lsquopass over a thresholdrsquo to transgress is tomove from one world to another Most commonly perhaps we think oftransgression as lsquomoral transgressionrsquo but transgressive acts can just aswell be social cultural or political As our mothers or our teachers willtell us transgression is wrong but it is at the same time also tempting ndashin fact it is tempting because it is wrong Transgression is liberating orto be more precise to imagine yourself as a transgressor is to imagineyourself as free from the social norms which rule your normal existenceThis is why people in modern society like to read about transgressionwatch films and fantasise about it and why transgressive acts constantlypop up in our dreams

This explains the temptation of the sublime By submittingourselves to the power of the unknown we liberate ourselves from therequirement to make sense We escape from the tyranny of reason byclaiming that we temporarily have been overpowered by forces beyondour control Yet of course this is only so much hyperbole The thrill of thesublime is a vicarious pleasure It excites us since it gives us thesensation of transgressing without actually having to do it It is a fantasywhich never actually comes true We stay within the realm of reasonwhile pretending to abandon it Contemporary society is built aroundthis hypocrisy we constantly see ourselves as escaping modernity whileat the same time reaping all the benefits from it Yet without this

____________________

Friedrich Nietzsche [1870ndash71] The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals(New York Doubleday 1956) 3ndash146 For a comprehensive discussion see thecontributions to MS Silk and JP Stern Nietzsche on Tragedy (CambridgeCambridge University Press 1981)

6 Edmund Burke [1759] A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas ofthe Sublime and the Beautiful (Oxford Oxford University Press 1998)

920

Millennium

hypocrisy no doubt modern society would become unbearableE u ropean nineteenth-century imperialism illustrates this arg u m e n t

p e r f e c t l y Imperialism is a transgressive act par excellence The colonisersleft Europe behind and passed over the threshold to other lands ruled byother gods customs and moral precepts With them the Euro p e a n sb rought their weapons and their comparative advantages inm a n u f a c t u red goods but above all they brought their reason Yet it wasnever clear how far reason would travel and what force it would have inthese alien settings This was not least the case since the Euro p e a n sconstantly felt the attraction of the exotic sublime They came as rulers buts e c retly they wanted to be ruled the people whom they sought to contro lw e re those to whom they also wanted to yield people more attractive thanthemselves ndash more sincere more innocent more spiritual more feminine7

Yet of course this is just another version of the modern hypocrisyThe people whom the Europeans wanted to control actually existedwhereas the people they wanted to yield to never did The latter wereinstead nothing but a creation of European imagination people theEuropeans dreamt up in order to make the tyranny of their own self-confident selves more bearable The Europeans created sublime otherswhich provided them with vicarious thrills mdash compare nineteenth-century Orientalism in art architecture fashion and interior design aswell as in academic scholarship8 Recreated as exotic Oriental otherspeople in other parts of the world were deprived of their voices and theirreason and thereby they became easier to control The hypocrisy wasobvious to the colonised but never to the colonisers

The Destruction of theYuanmingyuan

Consider the following case study On the morning of 7 October 1860French and British troops entered the grounds of the Yuanmingyuan thelsquoGarden of Perfect Brightnessrsquo or what the Europeans liked to refer to asthe lsquosummer palacersquo of the Chinese emperor9 This compound located____________________

7 Ashis Nandy The Intimate Enemy Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism(New Delhi Oxford University Press 1983) 1ndash63

8 The classical study is of course Edward W Said Orientalism WesternConceptions of the Orient (Harmondsworth Penguin 1995)

9 The main contingent was French the larger part of the British army had lostits way and only arrived the following day The destruction of theYuanmingyuan is discussed in Bernard Brizay Le sac du Palais drsquoEacuteteacute lrsquoexpeacuteditionanglo-franccedilaise de Chine en 1860 (Paris Rocher 2003) Nora Wang Ye Xin andWang Lou Victor Hugo et le sac du Palais drsquoEacuteteacute (Paris Les Indes Savantes 2003)James L Hevia English Lessons The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-CenturyChina (Durham NC Duke University Press 2003) 74ndash118 John NewsingerlsquoElgin in Chinarsquo The New Left Review 15 MayJune 2002 119ndash40

921


north-west of Beijing was the secluded world of the Chinese rulers avast complex of palaces pagodas pavilions temples lakes gardens andgroves including a European-style palace ndash the Xiyanglou ndash built byItalian architects in the eighteenth century In addition theYuanmingyuan was the place where tributary gifts from foreign princeswere stored making it into one of the most extraordinary collections ofartefacts ever assembled

The emperorrsquos summer palace in short was the very epitome ofthe lsquoexotic eastrsquo and it was one of the main sources of inspiration for thefashion in Chinese garden design that swept across Europe in theeighteenth century Father Jean-Denis Attiret a French Jesuit priest hadpublished a famous account of the Yuanmingyuan in 1749 and alreadyin 1753 a lsquoKina Slottrsquo had been built at the summer palace of the Swedishking outside Stockholm while in 1761 a lsquoChinese pagodarsquo was erectedfor Princess Augusta Princess of Wales in what later became the RoyalBotanic Garden in Kew10 Yet as Father Attiret made clear it was quiteimpossible to make a European audience understand what theYuanmingyuan was like lsquobecause there is nothing in the Whole whichhas Likeness of our manner of Building or our Rules of Architecturersquo11

It was simply too vast too varied too refined too ephemeral andultimately completely overwhelming It was lsquoune merveille du mondersquoas the French author Victor Hugo put it lsquoune eacutenorme modegravele de lachimegraverersquo lsquoun eacutedifice lunairersquo lsquoun songe construit du marbrersquo12

The European soldiers who entered this secluded world on themorning of 7 October 1860 were completely overwhelmed by all thes p l e n d o u r They were Aladdins in an Oriental palace paved withdiamonds and gold The French general Montauban wrote lsquoNothing inour Europe can give us an idea of such luxuryrsquo and dazed by it all theyw e re quite unable to describe it1 3 Another French soldier Armand Lucyw rote lsquoI was dumbfounded stunned bewildered by what I had seenand suddenly Thousand and One Nights seem perfectly believable to mersquo1 4

And then the destruction began During forty-eight hours theYuanmingyuan was subjected to lsquoan orgiastic rampage of lootingrsquo Thesoldiers destroyed vases and mirrors tore down paintings and scrolls

____________________

10 Jean-Denis Attiret Lettres eacutedifiantes et curieuses eacutecrites des missions eacutetrangegraverespar quelques missionnaires de la compagnie de Jeacutesus (Paris Gueacuterin 1749) Publishedin English as lsquoA Particular Account of the Emperor of Chinarsquos Gardens NearPekinrsquo 1752 available at [insidebardedu~louisgardensattiretaccounthtml]

11 Ibid1 2 Translated as lsquothe model of an illusionrsquo lsquoa lunar edificersquo lsquoa dream built in

marblersquo Hugo [1861] quoted in Wang Xin and Lou Hugo et le sac du Palais drsquoEacuteteacute 913 Negroni quoted in Brizay Le sac du Palais drsquoEacuteteacute 26814 Ibid 287

922

Millennium

broke into the storehouse of silks and used the precious fabrics for tyingup their horses they draped themselves in the empressrsquos robes andstuffed their pockets full of rubies sapphires pearls and pieces of crystalrock15 Lucy wrote lsquoDuring two days I walked on more than 30 millionfrancs worth of fabrics jewellery porcelain bronzes and sculpturesrsquo16 Itwas an amazing and hallucinatory orgy lsquole recircve drsquoun mangeur dehaschischrsquo (a haschisch eaterrsquos dream)17

Finally on 18 October the British commander James Bruce theeighth earl of Elgin ndash the son of the seventh earl the notorious collectorof Greek marbles ndash ordered the Yuanmingyuan to be burnt to theground18 During the subsequent two days groups of soldiers weredispatched around the grounds to set fire to the various palacespagodas and other buildings A particular loss was the imperial libraryand archive which contained some 10500 volumes including the rarestand most beautiful works on Chinese history science philosophy andthe arts Since many of the buildings were made of cedar-wood theyburned well and for days an aromatic smoke filled the sky over Beijingrsquosnorthern suburbs The Anglican pastor to the British army RobertMcGhee wrote lsquoNo eye will ever again see this testimony to the artistictalents and tastes of another erarsquo Yet there was no remorse lsquoSave notone no not one building Let there be no remnants of the palace Now letus return to Beijing the good work is donersquo19

The destruction of the Yuanmingyuan is undoubtedly one of theworst acts of cultural vandalism of all time20 It is on a par with theburning of the library at Alexandria or the overrunning of Rome byGothic hordes As French sources had already noted at the time it was asthough the Louvre and the Bibliothegraveque Nationale had been destro y e ds i m u l t a n e o u s l y And the action is remarkable given that it was committedby the re p resentatives of two countries ostensibly out to lsquocivilisersquo the non-E u ropean world The destruction of the Yuanmingyuan illustrates thehypocrisy of this project and the racist foundations on which it rested InE u rope in relations between civilised nations such acts of culturald e s t ruction were unthinkable even during times of war but the Chinesew e re evidently not included in this moral universe The lesson was notlost on the Chinese and it is vividly re m e m b e red to this day Thelsquo Western barbariansrsquo turned out to be exactly that ndash Western barbarians

____________________

15 Montauban in his Souvenirs quoted in Brizay Le sac du Palais drsquoEacuteteacute 272ndash316 Ibid 28617 Ibid 27818 Ibid 364ndash519 Quoted in ibid 35420 For a comparative study see Russell Chamberlin Loot The Heritage of

Plunder (London Thames amp Hudson 1983) See also Chalmers Johnson lsquoThe

923


Explaining the Destruction

So why did the Europeans do it How did they explain these actions tothemselves at the time and how have their historians later justified themObviously some pretty good explanations are re q u i red if nothing else ino rder to protect the Europeansrsquo image of themselves It is not possibleafter all to think of oneself as a force for good while simultaneouslycommitting such heinous deeds lsquoJust because we did itrsquo the arg u m e n tmust be doesnrsquot mean itrsquos the kind of thing we would dorsquo2 1

In coming up with an explanation the destruction has often beendivided into two parts ndash the looting which took place on 7 and 8 Octoberand the burning which took place on 18 and 19 October The looting hasvariously been blamed on the inherent human desire to destroy on thecruel logic of warfare or on the expectations on the part of the soldiersof a reward which was commensurate with their efforts When seeingthe palace with all its riches they just could not contain themselves Thiswas particularly the case of the armyrsquos rank-and-file22 In contrast to theirofficers who were expected to know better the ordinary soldiers weresimple men who never realised what it was they were destroying

The final burning down of the Yuanmingyuan ndash an act for whichLord Elgin bore sole responsibility ndash had the historians explain aparticular cause During an earlier incident the Chinese had taken anumber of French and British subjects prisoner They were returned on14 October or rather the surviving ones were returned but were foundto be in a very bad state They had been tortured and subjected to crueland degrading treatment Seeing the state they were in Elgin decidedthat he had to teach the emperor a lesson23 This was not least the casesince one of the prisoners was a journalist with The Times and Elginwanted to pre-empt the jingoistic rhetoric he expected from the Britishpress To flatten the Yuanmingyuan seemed appropriate since the actionwould hurt the emperor personally rather than his subjects and alsoElgin believed the palace was where the foreign prisoners had been keptBesides to the extent that the sacking convinced the Chinese about thesuperior power of the Europeans it would serve to prevent further____________________

Looting of Asiarsquo London Review of Books 25 no 22 (20 November 2003) Availableat [wwwlrbcoukv25n22john04_html]

21 To paraphrase Rob Corddryrsquos remark on The Daily Show with Jon Stuart 6May 2004 in relation to the revelation that US soldiers were torturing prisonersat the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad Quoted in Mark Danner Torture and TruthAmerica Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror (New York New York Review ofBooks 2004) 24

22 Woolseley quoted in Brizay Le sac du Palais drsquoEacuteteacute 314ndash1523 The concept of the English lsquoteaching lessonsrsquo is Heviarsquos key metaphor in

English Lessons

924

Millennium

warfare Surely thousands ndash perhaps tens of thousands ndash of humanbeings are worth more than an imperial museum full of assortedantiques24

Yet these justifications-c u m-explanations are fairly unconvincingWe may doubt for example whether there really is such a thing as ani n h e rent human desire to destro y and we may wonder why the soldiersif they really sought to enrich themselves wantonly smashed whateverthey got their hands on And even if we accept that the soldiers wereuncouth yobs we may still wonder why the more culturallysophisticated officers did nothing to stop them The empero rrsquos palacewas a secluded world after all to which access could have been re s t r i c t e dquite easily Attempts to pass the eighth earl Lord Elgin off as a rationalhumanist also fail Even if we accept the perverse notion that theE u ropean intruders had a right to punish the Chinese authorities onChinese soil there must have been other actions they could havecontemplated actions less obviously re p rehensible Unless of course ndashand this is a possibility we shall explore ndash there is some other reason noto fficially stated for the Yuanmingyuan being singled out for destru c t i o n

What none of these explanations touches on properly is theorgiastic quality of the actions of the Europeans When they first cameacross this hidden world the Europeans were struck with awe and at aloss for words Yet as soon as the first porcelain vase was broken thespell seems to have been broken too25 Suddenly everything waspermitted and the Europeans went on a rampage which ultimatelyculminated in a kind of furious delirium Afterwards a feeling ofweariness overcame them and astonishment at their own actions andreactions The dream of a haschisch-eater indeed The question is onlyhow to explain it

Sublime Possession

The beginnings of an answer can be found by looking at the aeligsthetictheories current in the nineteenth century After all the Europeansreacted to the Yuanmingyuan its buildings and artefacts as artisticobjects and judged them with the help of aesthetic categories And intheir imagination the empero rrsquos summer palace was more thananything an instantiation of the sublime The idea of the sublime had aparticular hold on the imagination of the Europeans Through theirreading of classical authors such as Longinus modern authors such asNicolas Boileau Joseph Addison and Immanuel Kant developed a full-

____________________

24 Compare the argument of the French general Collineau quoted in BrizayLe sac du Palais drsquoEacuteteacute 360

25 As the French clergyman Franccedilois Pallu pointed out Quoted in ibid 266

925


fledged theory of the sublime26 For an English-speaking audiencehowever it was more than anything Edmund Burke who provided theseminal statement27

The sublime Burke explained resembles the beautiful but it isnevertheless entirely distinct from it The sublime is lsquoa sort of delightfulh o r ro rrsquo a lsquotranquillity tinged with terro rrsquo which the mind experienceswhenever it is overwhelmed temporarily by some object or sensation2 8

The sublime is terrifying but the danger is never real The sublime givesus the f r i s s o n of fear the delight of realising that we really are perfectlysafe Often such reactions are brought out by encounters with nature Burkersquos favourite illustration is a stormy ocean ndash such as Rough Sea withWreckage and S n o w s t o r m painted later by JMW Turner ndash but dark woodsspacious caverns poisonous snakes and large menacing felines can havethe same sublime eff e c t s 2 9 Man-made objects can be sublimetoo pro v i d e dthey are sufficiently awesome ndash such as the Egyptian pyramids or StP e t e rrsquos in Rome30 In general sublime sentiments are brought out by theo b s c u re the dark the hidden the vast the deep the ancient the great thetragic the silent the exalted the infinite and the eternal

It is above all by causing astonishment that the sublime works itse ffects Astonishment temporarily disables our rational faculties Burkeexplains that suddenly lsquothe mind is so entirely filled with its object that itcannot entertain any other nor by consequence reason on that objectwhich employs itrsquo31 The sublime floods our senses short-circuits ourcognitive processes and leaves us speechless and bedazzled For theperson concerned this sensation is often experienced as an act of yieldingor as a submission The sublime forces us to subject ourselves to it and wea re enthralled by its hidden powers In this way the sublime seems togive us intimations of the transcendental of the extra-human powerswhich reside in the object before us and which through it act on us

____________________

26 Longinus [3rd century AD] On Great Writing (Indianapolis Hackett 1957)trans Boileau in 1674 Addisonrsquos articles in The Spectator in the 1710s served topopularise the topic in England available at [tabularutgerseduspectator]Kant treated the sublime in both [1763] Observations on the Feeling of the Beautifuland the Sublime (Berkeley University of California Press 1960) and [1790]Critique of Judgement (New York Hafner 1951) especially at 82ndash105

27 Burke Philosophical Enquiry A precursor of Burkersquos Shaftesbury alsodiscussed the concept extensively See Anthony Ashley Cooper 3rd Earl ofShaftesbury [1711] Characteristics of Men Manners Opinions Times ed LawrenceE Klein (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1999) especially 351ndash94

28 Burke Philosophical Enquiry 12329 Shaftesbury provides a list of examples in Characteristics of Men Manners

Opinions 31630 Kant Observations 4931 Burke Philosophical Enquiry 53 compare Halberstam Totalitarianism 183ff

926

Millennium

This explains the thrill of the sublime Sublime experiences take us awayf rom ourselves and give us time out from our everyday lives Suddenlywe find ourselves on a moral holiday with diminished faculties andreduced responsibilities Often sublime experiences are associated withexuberant and intoxicating sensations and in extreme cases we become asthough possessed suddenly seized by a divine fury we begin havingvisions and speaking in tongues This of course is all very scary but it isat the same time strangely exciting and while we may want to resist thesef o rces we also have a strong urge to succumb to them Truly sublimeexperiences are like the rape fantasies of pro v e r b i a l Victorian middle-classwomen ndash what you officially dread is also what you secretly dream of

The Politics of the Commonsensical

And herein lies the danger People who are astonished and possessed areunable to use their judgement and as a result they are no longer capableof rational self-rule The aim of the state as Thomas Hobbes already hada rgued appro v i n g l y is to keep its subjects lsquoin awersquo and this awe served asa restraining and pacifying force which made sure that the subjects weretoo lsquogob-smackedrsquo to cause any tro u b l e 3 2 Yet by the eighteenth centuryauthors such as the earl of Shaftesbury were reacting strongly against suchre p ressive strategies The absolutist state was lsquoawfulrsquo in the pre c i s etechnical sense that it filled people with awe thereby robbing them oftheir ability to re a s o n 33 O rganised religion from the Egyptians to the Jewsand onwards to the Catholic Church had used the same obscurantistmumbo-jumbo in order to silence dissent and instil obedience3 4

As Shaftesbury pointed out however such tactics were likely onlyto make people more fanatical Since they had never been trained toreason people living in absolutist states were more likely to turn intofanatics35 They became lsquoenthusiastsrsquo (from the Greek entheos meaning tobe lsquotransported by the divinersquo)36 Enthusiasts are dangerous intolerantpeople who embark on wild-goose chases and endless crusades It was

____________________

32 Thomas Hobbes [1651] Leviathan (Harmondsworth Penguin 1981) I 13185 Compare the discussion in Reinhart Koselleck [1959] Critique and CrisisEnlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society (Oxford Berg 1988) 23ndash31

33 Lawrence E Klein Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness Moral Discourseand Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge CambridgeUniversity Press 1994) 154ndash60

34 Shaftesbury Characteristics of Men Manners Opinions 365ndash40735 On Burkersquos view of the French Revolution in light of his theory of the

sublime see George Steiner lsquoAspects of Counter Revolutionrsquo in The PermanentRevolution The French Revolution and Its Legacy (London Fontana 1988)

36 See for example Ronald A Knox [1950] Enthusiasm A Chapter in theHistory of Religion (Notre Dame University of Notre Dame Press 1994)

927


enthusiasm Shaftesbury made clear that started the English Civil Warand it was enthusiasm Burke would later argue that produced theFrench Revolution Or we might add it was unthinking submission toauthority which in the twentieth century prepared the way for bothgenocide and state terror37

The best protection against the awful and its fanatical servants wasthe culture of polite society of which the English gentleman and theF rench homme de lettre s w e re the principal custodians This culture wascharacterised by intense sociability by endless amusements and above allby constant conversations on matters ranging from plain gossip to debateson the latest events in politics or trends in the arts3 8 By talking together themembers of these elite groups learnt to appreciate each othersrsquo opinionsbut also to exercise their own judgement Since they constantly weref o rced to consider the arguments of others they never developede x t remist views In face of the sublime English gentlemen and Fre n c hhommes de lettre s stayed stoically calm they remained ironic sceptical andg o o d - h u m o u red Often in fact these members of elite society weresurprisingly anti-monarchical and sometimes shockingly irreligious butm o re commonly they had no particular views at all and took nothing veryseriously ndash except that is their own elevated social positions

Compare these reactions with the reactions of a person struck bythe sublime More often than not such a person would be incapable ofboth listening and expressing himself properly As a result he wouldeither have monopolised the conversation or fallen completely silent ndashand either way he would have been thoroughly impolite and anembarrassment to any salon or gentlemenrsquos club Not surprisinglyenthusiasts were never invited anywhere and spent most of their timealone Yet instead of blaming the individuals concerned for their failingsthe members of polite society detected a tactic of the absolutist state Bybreaking up civil society and by separating and isolating their subjectsabsolutist states created the social conditions for the loneliness which therulers required in order to assure peace and secure their rule39

____________________

37 Compare Halberstam Totalitarianism 155ndash68 and Hannah Arendt [1951]The Origins of Totalitarianism (San Diego Harcourt Brace Janovich 1979)460ndash79

3 8 Keith Michael Baker lsquoPublic Opinion as Political Inventionrsquo in hisInventing the French Revolution Essays on French Political Culture in the EighteenthCentury (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1990) Compare ErikRingmar The Mechanics of Modernity The Institutional Origins of Social Change andStagnation (London Routledge 2005) 109ndash17

39 Compare Shaftesburyrsquos ironical comments on the political philosophy ofThomas Hobbes lsquoA life without natural affection friendship and sociablenesswould be a wretched one were it to be triedrsquo in Characteristics of Men MannersOpinions 56

928

Millennium

As protection against the seductive powers of the sublime gentlemenand hommes de lettres had above all their commonsensical outlook on lifeAt the time just as today common sense denoted an empirical practicaland sceptical attitude but in addition it also had the connotation of asensus communis a lsquoshared sensersquo developed collectively by people whointeracted closely with each other for long periods of time40 Thusunderstood common sense was more similar to a shared sense ofjudgement or a kind of collective intelligence and although youcertainly were free to disagree with the conclusions it reached youalways had to acknowledge the existence of this collective judgement Itsdecentralised nature and its location in polite society meant that thesensus communis was defined independently both of the State and theChurch ndash and therefore at least occasionally in opposition to bothCommon sense honed in mercilessly on pomposity false credentials andblind faiths ndash all of which were declared lsquosuperstitionsrsquo that had to beabolished Common sense unmasked the sublime much as the little boyin H-C Andersenrsquos story unmasked the naked emperor41

Standing up to the Oriental Sublime

Returning to the Yuanmingyuan with these considerations in mind wefind that the reaction of the Europeans never was only aesthetic but wasalso perfectly political Or rather the aesthetic was the political and thepolitical the aesthetic The Chinese state was sublime in both senses andit was explicitly organised in order to inspire awe The Yuanmingyuan isan architectural illustration of this programme For the person observingit from the outside ndash such as a Chinese peasant or a foreign traveller ndash itwas a walled-off secret garden a world which was sublime above all bybeing entirely inaccessible However those who were lucky enough topass through its gates ndash such as foreign diplomats - were affected rathermore directly As we saw above they were all amazed awe-struck filledwith wonder and at a loss for words Those sublime experiences weremore than anything the reason that the Europeans were fascinated bythe Yuanmingyuan ndash and it is also why they eventually destroyed it42

____________________

40 Compare Shaftesburyrsquos essay lsquoSensus Communis An Essay on the Freedomof Wit and humour in a Letter to a Friendrsquo in Characteristics of Men MannersOpinions 29ndash69 For a discussion see Hans-Georg Gadamer [1975] Truth andMethod (London Sheed amp War 1989) 19ndash42

41 But for their lsquodignified capacityrsquo as Bagehot pointed out Queen Victoriaand the Prince of Wales are really nothing but lsquoa retired widow and anunemployed youthrsquo Walter Bagehot [1867] The English Constitution (BrightonSussex 1997) 21

4 2 Compare the Orientalising fantasies which Segalen attached to the

929


When Europeans first came into sustained contact with China in thesixteenth century they were unanimously impressed by the next-to-infinite powers of the empero r43 The unity and order of Chinese societycontrasted favourably with the disunity and strife of Europe in thepost-Reformation era The Chinese state was indeed awe-inspiring andthis was why the Europeans believed China was peaceful and wellgoverned The emperor made no attempt to involve his subjects indecision-making or to explain his actions to them the Chinese statewas silent in relation to society and acted without publicly statedr a t i o n a l e 4 4 That is the emperor was doing what the king of Francetried to do but more successfully so The Chinese emperor was farm o re awesome far more lsquoawe-fullrsquo than his European counterpartsThe Yuanmingyuan was also a much better example of the sublimethan any Palais de Ve r s a i l l e s

In the course of the eighteenth century some Europeans began forthe first time to criticise the Chinese political system and these voicescame from entirely predictable quarters the increasingly self-confidentmembers of polite European society ndash the English gentlemen and theFrench hommes de lettres45 To Baron de Montesquieu for example theproblem with Chinese absolutism was exactly the same as the problemwith French absolutism The submission required by all the elaboraterituals created passive subjects who could be easily led and as easilymisled The term for this kind of polity was lsquoOriental Despotismrsquo46 Fromthis perspective the sublime was turned into a basic principle ofstatecraft As such it served as a lesson to Europe and as a negativestandard by which European institutions could be assessed The moreChinese Europe became the more trouble the continent was in

____________________

emperorrsquos palace in the novel by Victor Segalen [1922] Reneacute Leys (New YorkNew York Review of Books 2003)

43 See for example Donald Lach and Edwin J van Kley Asia in the Making ofEurope Volume III A Century of Advance (Chicago University of Chicago Press1993)

44 See for example Lucian W Pye Asian Power and Politics The CulturalDimensions of Authority (Cambridge MA Harvard University Press 1985)198ndash200

45 Baron de Montesquieu De lrsquoEsprit des lois in Oeuvres complegravetes ed RogerCaillois (Paris Gallimard 1951) vol 2 227ndash995 For a discussion see Ho-fungHung lsquoOrientalist Knowledge and Social Theories China and the EuropeanConceptions of EastndashWest Differences from 1600 to 1900rsquo Sociological Theory 21no3 (2003)

46 Juan-Pau Rubieacutes lsquoOriental Despotism and European Orientalism Botero toMontesquieursquo Journal of Early Modern History 9 no1-2 (2005) 109ndash80

930

Millennium

The Macartney mission to China in 1793 illustrates this clash ofcivilisations perfectly47 G e o rge Macartney was a diplomat and agentleman and he was a keen conversationalist often spotted infashionable London clubs As a diplomat he was a servant of the king tobe sure but as a member of the landed gentry he belonged to the socialclass which constituted the backbone of English society He was his ownman used to exercising his own judgement Not surprisingly Macartneyran into trouble with the etiquette of the Chinese court According to theelaborate Chinese ritual it was possible to approach the imperial throneonly if one performed the lsquokowtowrsquo ndash koutou ndash and prostrated oneself onthe ground nine times as a sign of reverence and submission PredictablyMacartney refused to go along with this custom Any kowtowing on hispart would have placed his own king in an inferior position vis-agrave-vis theemperor and it would have involved Macartney himself in a ritual gamefor which he had nothing but disdain In the end he simply knelt downon one knee ndash much as he was expected to do when approaching hisown monarch Macartney was quite literally standing up to the Orientalsublime Not surprisingly perhaps nothing of much substance came ofhis diplomatic mission

In the nineteenth century criticism of China became more generaland the image of Oriental despotism spread widely among Europeanintellectuals As they discovered not only was the awe-inspiringChinese state destructive of human liberty but despotism also led toeconomic and social stagnation48 In Europe of the mid nineteenth-century the industrial revolution was well under way and its promise ofceaseless progress gave the Europeans a new sense of superiorityEurope had made a leap into an exciting world of economic prosperityand unprecedented technical mastery of nature new hopes wereconnected to individualism liberalism and democracy Nowhere wasthis more obvious than in Britain where the Smithian idea of self-organisation ndash the lsquohidden handrsquo of the market ndash provided a new modelfor social order to be established and maintained without constantinterventions by the state49 The logic of the market as Smith hadexplained might indeed be hidden from its participants but sublime itwas decidedly not

____________________

47 Extensively discussed in James L Hevia Cherishing Men from Afar QingGuest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793 (Durham NC Duke UniversityPress 1995)

48 On Marxrsquos discussion of China see Timothy Brook lsquoThe Asiatic Mode ofProduction in Chinarsquo in Chinese Studies on China (Armonk ME Sharpe 1989)Compare KA Wittfogel Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Chinas (Leipzig Hirschfeld1931)

49 Compare the discussion in Ringmar Mechanics of Modernity 118ndash26

931


In all these respects China had failed to follow Looking at their own partof the world the Europeans saw change everywhere looking at Chinathey saw nothing but lsquostagnationrsquo and lsquothe despotism of customrsquoAccording to John Stuart Mill there is no freedom and no individualityin China and for that reason there can be no progress50 Here lsquothedespotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to humanadvancementrsquo The Chinese defer to the judgement of others Millargued and neither character nor originality are allowed to develop Theminds of the Chinese are like the feet of their women lsquomaimed bycompressionrsquo The best hope for the country was that Europe ndash throughits colonies its commerce and its church ndash would destroy the ancientsocial structures and rebuild them according to European principles

It was with these considerations very much in their minds that theEuropeans returned to the Yuanmingyuan in 1860 Lord Elgin and hisF rench counterpart Count Montauban were both gentlemen andmembers of polite society and as such they knew exactly what waswrong with the Chinese state Elgin was no monster on the contrary hewas a liberal ndash a very reasonable man ndash and if anything a rather reluctantimperialist51 He came to China not in order to destroy and dominate butin order to open the country to foreign and mutually advantageoustrade But it was as a liberal that he knew what was wrong with theChinese state It was incredible to him that the Chinese emperor hadsuch a faulty conception of himself and the role his country played in theworld Moreover the emperor had treated Britain and its subjects withcontempt The lesson Elgin wanted to teach concerned exactly this topoint out that behind the awe-inspiring symbols there was absolutelynothing to demonstrate that the sublime was a mere illusion to revealthe emperor as stark naked Burning down the Yuanmingyuan madethese points perfectly

Yet on the day everyone seemed to go crazy There is probably noway of destroying a marvel while keeping a level head The sublimeeven if you do not believe in it still has the power to enchant you andordinary soldiers were surely far more susceptible to enchantments thantheir commanding officers52 Less inoculated by the commonsensical

____________________

50 Mill On Liberty this and the following quotes are from 135ndash751 Newsinger lsquoElgin in Chinarsquo 119ndash2552 Compare Veynersquos discussion of the power of myths lsquoI hold ghosts to be

simple fictions but perceive their truth nonetheless I am almost neuroticallyafraid of them Nothing would reassure me more than to learn that ghostsldquoreallyrdquo exist Then they would be a phenomenon like any other which could bestudied with the right instruments a camera or a Geiger counterrsquo Paul VeyneDid the Greeks Believe in Their Myths An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination(Chicago University of Chicago Press 1988) 87

932

Millennium

culture of polite society they were more prone to be struck by awe Atthe precise moment of committing their crime the Europeans were takenover by the very forces they were seeking to destroy they becamefurious in order not to be destroyed by the furies only as barbarianscould they effectively spread the blessings of civilisation It was onlyonce the work was done ndash once there was nothing left of theYuanmingyuan but a smouldering heap ndash that things returned to normaland the Europeans gradually returned to themselves53 The point wasconclusively proven the ghosts were effectively exorcised yet theEuropeans were at the same time surprised and shocked at their ownactions At the moment when the Yuanmingyuan was destroyed theyhad themselves come under the spell of the sublime

New Imperialism New Transgression

During the 150 years since the destruction of the Yuanmingyuan thevictory of the commonsensical has become next to complete We aretoday living in a world where the pragmatic the scientific and theeconomically efficient have come to dominate our lives completely Allsuperstitions and all naked emperors have been exposed the lsquoawe-fullrsquois considered truly awful and commonsensical arguments trump allothers Reason has won the day Everyone everywhere is a Europeanliberal or at least a European liberal in the making

Yet the yearning for transgression has not gone away Beyond thebrightly lit and the clearly elucidated there are still fleeting shadows insylvan groves and small vessels on stormy seas We know this is the casebecause we see it in our dreams and in our nightmares In fact the moresense we make of the world the more the sublime will come to attractus In an era when everything is rational and tangibly real we need thesublime more than ever in order to rescue us from our reason and ourreality This is why the cultures of contemporary societies are filled withportrayals of transgressive acts ndash in computer games films music drugculture religious prophecies and internet porn Although officially wemay be loath to admit it vicarious experiences of this kind are what wespend most of our time and our money on Never properly admittingthis tension in our lives we are still hypocrites

Overt imperialism is of course a thing of the past Europeans nolonger directly control other parts of the world Today we are firmbelievers in democracy self-determination and free trade To d a yEuropeans ndash and their North American counterparts ndash use developmentexperts and consultants to advise countries in what used to be known asthe lsquoThird Worldrsquo and they use international agreements on trade

____________________

53 Compare Hevia English Lessons 101ndash2

933


finance and intellectual property in order to impose reason order andaccountability They speak to poor and underdeveloped countries withauthority and knowledge sure of themselves and their own superiorityThe poor and underdeveloped may initially resist such impositions buteventually they will always give in

Yet the desire for transgression remains as powerful as ever Thecountries which once used to be European colonies are still our Orientalothers the lsquoexoticrsquo locations which we visit on vacation or whereHollywood blockbusters are set They are also the places where acts ofliberal barbarism continue to be performed Going off to a war in af o reign land is today one of the few ways in which an average Euro p e a nor American kid legally can get their transgressive kicks As soldiersthey are expected to kill and as prison guards they are expected to tre a ttheir captives harshly5 4 All their training is geared towards overc o m i n gtheir natural aversion to killing and their prior socialisation andh u m a n i t y Here the boys finally get to transgress for real and they canbecome their own action heroes And their leaders ndash like once LordElgin and General Montauban ndash can spread their liberal values thro u g hacts of barbarism

Erik Ringmar is Professor at the Center for Cultural and Social Studiesat the National Chiao Tung University Taiwan


____________________

54 On the recent Iraq war from this context see Evan Wright Generation KillLiving Dangerously on the Road to Baghdad with the Ultraviolent Marines of BravoCompany (London Bantam 2004) Mark Danner Torture and Truth America AbuGhraib and the War on Terror (New York New York Review Books 2004)

918

Millennium

of colonies to contradict the tenets of free trade1 Although there werecertainly different idiosyncratic reasons for countries such as Britain orFrance to become imperialist there is nevertheless a more general causeintrinsically linked to the liberal ideology The connection let us suggestwas a result of the liberal definition of reason

It is the use of reason liberal thinkers concluded which separateschildren from grown-ups2 It is through the exercise of reason that welearn to take responsibility for ourselves and gradually becomeindependent Reason makes it possible to study the world scientificallyand to organise our societies efficiently Economic markets apply a sterntest ndash in the long run the existence of that which is not commerciallyviable cannot be effectively defended Yet not all countries are equallyfar along the path to enlightenment Like a child a society will come toexercise its reason and learn to determine its own fate only gradually Ifa society cannot do it for itself it will need the help of others3 This morethan anything was the rationale for liberal imperialism Dutifullyshouldering the burden of colonies the Europeans set to workoccupying enlightening rationalising and commercialising

At the same time rationality was never enough Reason is aprinciple of accountability which forces us to justify ourselves to othersand a principle of efficiency which requires constant comparisons andmeasurements Yet always justifying ourselves and competing makes fora poor social environment The rationalistic air was always too arid theeconomic imperatives too categorical and in the end rationalism madethe Europeans sick Not surprisingly they took refuge in dreams4 Thusthe nineteenth century was the era of not only liberal self-confidence butalso Victorian Romanticism with its cult of the obscure thetranscendent the unutterable shadowy and grotesque ndash FrankensteinrsquosM o n s t e r Edgar Allen Poersquos Raven Freudrsquos Subconscious andNietzschersquos Zarathustra5 Together these capitalised entities tell the____________________

2 Immanuel Kant [1784] lsquoAn Answer to the Question What isEnlightenmentrsquo in Immanuel Kant Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on PoliticsHistory and Morals trans Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis Hackett 1983) compareEli Kedorie Nationalism (Oxford Blackwell 1993)

3 As John Stuart Mill put it in relation to China lsquoif they are ever to be furtheri m p roved it must be by foreignersrsquo John Stuart Mill [1859] On Liberty(Harmondsworth Penguin 1985) 137 This is also the reasoning behind theracialist doctrines of the era For the case of France see Tzetan Todorov OnHuman Diversity Nationalism Racism and Exoticism in French Thought(Cambridge MA Harvard University Press 1993) 90ndash170

4 The seminal account is MH Abrams The Mirror and the Lamp RomanticTheory and the Critical Tradition (Oxford Oxford University Press 1955)

5 The most famous discussion of this contrast is of course Nietzschersquosdistinction between the forces of Apollo and the forces of Dionysus See

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Erik Ringmar, Liberal Barbarism and the Oriental Sublime

Documents

Transcript of Erik Ringmar, Liberal Barbarism and the Oriental Sublime