“Not Only for Show, but for Study”—The Great Exhibition in the English Periodicals in Late Qing China

• Main Authors: Li, Su, 蘇立
• Other Authors: Peng, Weng-Jeng
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/17803398097965942285

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 新聞研究所 === 100 === Informed by the Orientalism of Edward Said, this research examines the reports on the Great Exhibition of 1851 in the English periodicals in late Qing China to delineate the ways in which stereotypes of race, politics, and civilization were mobilized to construct identities and assert agendas for the Westerners in late Qing China. This research approaches the content of the periodicals with the concept of the three aspects of style proposed by Roz Ivanič. Analyses show keen competition among the periodicals over immediacy, accuracy, and readers’ approval. The China Mail encouraged public participation in the Great Exhibition, but it also detailed the mistakes of the government instead of playing an official mouthpiece as previous studies suggest. The North-China Herald added a touch of localism to its support for the participation in the event, while The Hongkong Register argued for the possibility of acquiring colonial resources to advance the privileges of Westerners in China by sending nothing to London. The Friend of China and Hongkong Gazette criticized the consequences brought by the debates in the periodicals as a media critic. The Hongkong Register and The Friend of China and Hongkong Gazette further reached the audience in the West with their overland editions. Facing the reports on the Chinese visitors to the Great Exhibition in the Western press, these periodicals refuted but also energized Western stereotypes to establish a hierarchy in which the identity of the Westerners in China was situated above both the Chinese and the Westerners in the West. However, these periodicals did not dwell on a coherent identity but roamed in a spectrum of different identities and disclosed their processes of identification. These periodicals also differed in their references to and perspectives of the Crystal Palace, a building on which discourses from imperial grandeur, individual heroism, monetary interests, to national pride converged. Contrary to the assumptions by previous studies, these periodicals did not Orientalize themselves to claim expertise on China in front of an audience of Westerners, both in China and in the West.