DeepDyve eBooks - Liberal Barbarism

Liberals and barbarians

Ringmar, Erik

Pages: 3 –19

[Yuanmingyuan was the palace of the emperor of China, but that is a hope-lessly deficient description since it was not just a palace but instead a large compound filled with hundreds of different buildings, including pavilions, galleries, temples, pagodas, libraries, audience halls, and so on....

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An Awesome Performance

Ringmar, Erik

Pages: 21 –33

[A striking feature of the events that transpired in China in the fall of 1860 is their inherently theatrical quality. The French soldiers who looted Yuanmingyuan were not just stealing and destroying, but they were staging a performance. They dressed up in the garments and jewelry of the...

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An Imperial Theme Park

Ringmar, Erik

Pages: 37 –51

[Yuanmingyuan was a large park and palace complex located in the north-western outskirts of Beijing. 1 Within its walls, covering some 5,100 mu—or almost exactly an area the size of Central Park in New York—was a series of connected gardens with trees, lakes, streams, gorges, ponds, fountains,...

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The North China Campaign of 1860

Ringmar, Erik

Pages: 53 –68

[In early July 1860, the Allied troops had finally reached their rendez-vous points in the Bohai Gulf, as close as it was possible to get to Beijing by sea. Britain alone had some 200 ships. “It was a sight well calculated to impress every one with the greatness of our power,” wrote Garnet...

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Enter the Barbarians

Ringmar, Erik

Pages: 69 –85

[The following day, October 6, the Allied commanders received reports that General Sengge Rinchen together with 10,000 of his men had retreated to the imperial palace at Yuanmingyuan, northwest of Beijing, and the decision was taken to pursue them there. 1 Yet the terrain was difficult to...

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An International Society of Civilized States

Ringmar, Erik

Pages: 89 –102

[The Europeans who destroyed Yuanmingyuan, we said, were men of culture and learning engaged in an attempt to civilize the Chinese. Indeed, the middle of the nineteenth century was a time when Europeans suddenly became far more civilized than they were previously. For example, they began making...

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The Failure of the Liberal Project

Ringmar, Erik

Pages: 103 –119

[The Europeans in China were not only barbarians, they wereliberal barbarians. The next question is consequently what this liberal label might add to our knowledge of the people who destroyed Yuanmingyuan. One way to answer this question is to return to the simple-minded syllogism that we briefly...

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Performing for European Public Opinion

Ringmar, Erik

Pages: 121 –134

[The reason Lord Elgin decided to burn down Yuanmingyuan, wrote general Montauban in his diary, is that he is afraid of public opinion, “and in particular of the newspapers, since among the 26 English victims is Monsieur Bowlby, correspondent for The Times.”1 In 1874, in a deposition before a...

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Performing for the Chinese

Ringmar, Erik

Pages: 135 –149

[The Europeans who approached Beijing in early October, 1860, were, we said, at their wit’s end. The liberal practices of free trade were ineffectual in relation to a Chinese state which stubbornly failed to open its gates to the world market. The traditional practices of statecraft were not more...

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A Palace in a Dream

Ringmar, Erik

Pages: 153 –165

[So, why was Yuanmingyuan destroyed? The most fundamental reason concerns the different assumptions made regarding the nature of international politics in the Euro-centric and the Sino-centric international systems. In Europe, states were regarded as sovereign and as formally equal and the system...

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Liberal Barbarism

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Liberal Barbarism

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