Chinese Heritage with European Characteristics: International and Domestic Dimensions of the China’s Cultural Heritage Politics

The discussion on Chinese cultural heritage started to emerge as a result of inspiration coming from foreign travels of Chinese scholars-officials and as protective measures against looting of artifacts in the 19th and 20th centuries. The most spectacular robberies were carried out by Anglo-French forces in the Old Summer Palace (Yuanming Yuan) during the Second Opium War in 1860. That event became one of the cornerstones of the “century of humiliation” (bainian guochi) in the Chinese historical narrative. Even though the Communist Revolution classified historical sites as remnants of feudalism, today the Communist Party of China has assumed the role of a defender of the Chinese heritage. In contemporary China, its cultural heritage is a phenomenon of both domestic and international significance. The Chinese emphasize the antiquity of the Chinese nation, pointing to the origins of Chinese civilization as early as five thousand years ago. In contemporary China, recovering cultural treasures is important for the political legitimacy of a government and for erasing the national humiliation.

Protestant Publishing in Chinese at the Anglo-Chinese College, Malacca, 1818–1843

Established in Malacca in 1818 by Robert Morrison, the Anglo-Chinese College ( Yinghua shuyuan 英華書院) became an important centre for translation and publishing of Protestant books and tracts in Chinese in the formative decades before the Opium War (1839–42). The extant publications in Chinese from the Anglo-Chinese College in this period shed light on the process of experimentation followed by missionaries and their Chinese collaborators, about how to make books that would appeal to Chinese readers – a necessary prelude to making converts to Christianity. This article traces that process of experimentation through an examination of the publications in Chinese from the Anglo-Chinese College press over the twenty-five years of the College’s operation there, prior to its relocation to Hong Kong in 1843. After an overview of the publications, the article discusses the books as physical objects and then considers the content and language within them. These examples suggest common ground between Chinese and Protestant print cultures: both saw close connections between reading, education and virtue, and both employed selective appropriation of excerpts from longer canonical texts as a reading practice. 1

The Role of Indians in Imperialistic India as portrayed in Amitav Ghoshs’ The Ibis Trilogy

Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy is a saga of the Opium War and the imperialistic monopoly of Great Britain over almost half the world. The British conquered India and ruled over the sub-continent with an iron hand, but at the same time being flexible with certain practices of the Indians. The Indians on the other hand, apert from sporadic outbursts, supported the British in their rule, with money and men. The symbiotic relationship of the British rulers and the Indian subjects was complex and incomprehensible to outsiders. The British through careful manipulation made the Indians do their bidding and this is reflected by Ghosh in his trilogy.

The Role of Indians in Imperialistic India as portrayed in Amitav Ghoshs’ The Ibis Trilogy

Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy is a saga of the Opium War and the imperialistic monopoly of Great Britain over almost half the world. The British conquered India and ruled over the sub-continent with an iron hand, but at the same time being flexible with certain practices of the Indians. The Indians on the other hand, apert from sporadic outbursts, supported the British in their rule, with money and men. The symbiotic relationship of the British rulers and the Indian subjects was complex and incomprehensible to outsiders. The British through careful manipulation made the Indians do their bidding and this is reflected by Ghosh in his trilogy.