A drastic shift in British perceptions of ChinaFootnote ¹ took place between the beginning and end of the nineteenth century. Up through the first decades of the nineteenth century, China and its ideals as well as its art and aesthetic were widely admired.Footnote ² Yet by the end of the century, the discourse surrounding China had become very different: no longer were the Chinese admired for their art or their morals; instead, they were castigated as amoral, pitiless, inscrutable liars. Why and how this change took place has not yet been explored in part because scholars have tended to focus on either the beginning of the nineteenth century or the beginning of the twentieth, rather than on the years between these periods. Yet those years saw the rise of sinology, which became established as a field of scholarship in precisely the period (from roughly 1870 to 1901) that has so far been neglected. This scholarship, highly specialized though it might seem (and was), was not confined to the Ivory Tower; it made its way to the educated, upper-middle-class reading public through periodicals. If we look at what British periodicals were teaching their readers about China and the Chinese languageFootnote ³ during this gap period, we can see – perhaps surprisingly – a concerted and earnest effort being made to avoid assumptions that the Chinese need British help and to avoid pro-Christian judgments, in favor of an attempt to learn the workings of the Chinese language as the first step towards understanding the Chinese on their own terms. What scholars learn and what periodicals teach about the Chinese language, however, leads these very same would-be enlightened people, in the end, to see the Chinese as cunning children incapable of complex thought or basic feeling, and therefore incapable of progress or morality. In other words, the increasing British prejudice against the Chinese originated to an important degree in the work of the first scholars of sinology, rather than in the fears of the ignorant or the culturally-marginalized. Examining this process challenges a paradigm dominant in postcolonial studies, in which modern scholars decry the supremacy of Western systems while problematically replicating a narrative in which the concept of Western systemic supremacy is not challenged and the existence of non-Western systems is not acknowledged. In the case of China, the complexity of its written and spoken language systems helped frustrate Western efforts at colonization, and this systemic resistance to Western domination was constructed by Western scholars in such a way as to create and justify sinophobia.

Previous scholars have argued that Britain's late 19th-century sinophobia was simply a response to the increase in contact with China, that “the more that was known first-hand about China, the less positively it was reported and deemed” (Bickers 783). Greater knowledge, however, need not lead to greater prejudice, unless one is predisposed to prejudice. Nor was China unknown or untraveled in the first half of the century; earlier first-hand accounts were more positive, praising China's treatment of British visitors.Footnote ⁴ Other scholars have argued that Britain's late-century sinophobia was a response to historical events: Shanyn Fiske, for example, states that “the Boxer Rebellion and the increasing numbers of Chinese immigrants to England gave birth to rampant sinophobia” (216). Yet the number of Chinese immigrants to Britain was quite small, and in fact census records show that their numbers decreased significantly by century's end, from a height of only 665 persons in 1881 to 582 in 1891 and a mere 387 in 1901 (Ng 6).Footnote ⁵ This does not rule out the idea that the British became increasingly hysterical about Chinese immigrants, but it certainly complicates that hysteria by revealing that it was not, in fact, a response to anything actually happening. And while the Boxer Rebellion undoubtedly struck fear and panic into the hearts of Britons, it was hardly the first time an historical event had motivated the British to portray the Chinese in a negative light. The Opium Wars earlier in the century had also provided a moment in which Britain had every motivation to paint the Chinese as a threat in order to justify their own military actions. But while the periodical press certainly engaged in mocking China's military unpreparedness (Thurin 10–11), nonetheless, even during the Opium Wars the idea had persisted that the Chinese were a moral and reasonable people. This was sometimes done, easily and patriotically, by making a distinction between government and people: while “[t]he Government of China is purposely absurd, . . . the people are reasonable in their views and conceptions” (Lay vi). Nor had China become more of a military threat by the end of the century; while it was capable of winning land battles, it was not able to invest in a strong navy, whereas the British had not only a superior navy but also a number of European allies.Footnote ⁶ Explaining Britain's late-century sinophobia with reference to historical events only gets us so far, then, because different reactions are possible to historical events. The big events – the wars, rebellions, and waves of immigration – not only shape perceptions, but are also understood in light of pre-existing ideas.

Those ideas, I argue, were being shaped by the genesis of sinological scholarship. Following the first Chinese Embassy in 1868, there was a sudden growth of scholarly interest in China in general and in learning Chinese in particular. The China Review was founded in 1872, followed by a number of other specialized journals; missionary and translator James Legge was appointed the first Chair of Chinese at Oxford in 1876 and sinologist Thomas Wade the first Chair of Chinese at Cambridge in 1888. The period from 1873 to 1897 is what Norman Girardot, James Legge's biographer, has called “the Leggian epoch” as Legge produced the first translations into English of a truly heroic number of Chinese texts during this period, but Legge was joined in his efforts by other translators such as F. Max Müller. Throughout the period, scholars struggled with various systems of romanizingFootnote ⁷ Chinese characters, finally largely settling on the Wade-Giles system still most familiar to Western readers.Footnote ⁸

This scholarship was not confined to the more specialized environs of academia; it made its way to the educated, upper-middle-class reading public through periodicals. The Saturday Review provides a particularly useful case study in how such scholarship filtered its way to a broader public. The Saturday Review was a long-running (1855–1938) periodical with a “moderate” (Powell 380) political stance that appealed to a substantial audience of educated, upper-middle class readers. By 1858, the journal's circulation had reached 5,000, “more than the rival Spectator’s, slightly less than the prestigious Athenaeum’s,” and by 1868 the journal's circulation had doubled to 10,000 (Powell 380).Footnote ⁹ Articles on China and the Chinese language were detailed and frequent, demonstrating the level of interest readers were expected to have in such matters; the articles the Review published were written by a number of scholars, representing a spectrum of viewpoints regarding various scholarly debates. These articles were published anonymously, which, because it prevented the possibility of ad hominem attacks, had the effect of presenting the opinions expressed as less open to question or argument than they would have been had they been published with a by-line. This anonymity also allowed for the presentation of a general editorial position regarding China and the Chinese, one which consciously criticized Imperial policy regarding China and mocked pro-Christian prejudice. These articles, therefore, represent an earnest, scholarly attempt to understand China, free from nationalistic or religious bias, and the sheer number of these articles suggests that the educated upper middle classes who formed the target audience for these articles shared these goals and also possessed a deep interest in learning about China on its own terms. Nonetheless, what scholars discovered and taught a more generalized audience about China and the Chinese language through these articles ultimately painted a portrait of the Chinese as ineradicably amoral beings who were utterly incapable of evolving.

Coverage of China in the Saturday Review was both detailed and frequent (at least 397 articles between 1868 and 1901 – just over one article a month, on average), with articles on China and the Chinese language appearing in the Review's leaders, middles, and book reviews. Leaders provided up-to-the-week updates on the political situation in China, usually beginning in medias res and clearly expecting readers to be following Chinese events with such a breathless interest that recaps of the last leader on the subject were considered unnecessary, even though the last leader on China might have been published months before. The Review's middles educated readers on such matters as Chinese emigration to America (not without a certain smugness at American consternation). Most frequent, however, were the book reviews, which not only discussed the latest books on Chinese language and literature (and these books almost always received their own, individual reviews), but also reviewed the latest translations of Chinese texts with an eye to issues of translation and romanization, which they explain in sometimes painful detail. The Saturday Review also published detailed reviews of the latest Chinese-English dictionaries. Surprisingly again, these reviews were generally positive, unusual for the journal that had early been nicknamed “The Saturday Reviler” for its cutting and merciless book reviews (Tilley). All these reviews served to teach readers about how the written and spoken versions of Chinese were structured. This intensive coverage suggests that educated, upper-middle-class readers were expected to be deeply interested in China and in the detailed workings of the Chinese language.

Sadly, the authorship of these articles is unknown. Although they display a level of erudition about the Chinese language that relatively few people possessed at the time, it seems clear from internal evidence that the articles were not written by any of the prominent sinologists of the time, such as Legge, Wade, or Herbert Allen Giles.Footnote ¹⁰ The articles do not appear to have been written by the same person either, unlikely in any case during a several-decade span. One clue that indicates multiple authors were at work is the fact that different articles take different positions on various sinological debates. For example, “China's Place in Philology” argues that attempts to relate the origins of the Chinese language to a Biblical picture of linguistic evolution are futile, a viewpoint that is sharply contradicted in “Beal on Chinese Buddhism.” This tells us not only that the Saturday Review was publishing articles by a range of authors but also articles which presented a representative spectrum of scholarly opinion. Another clue indicating the range of scholars involved in producing these articles is the fact that these articles, written at a period before the Wade-Giles system of romanization had become standard, make use of a range of various different systems of romanization. The fact that many of these authors, particularly those writing dictionary reviews, appear to be well-versed in several different systems further suggests that these authors were anxious to be up-to-date and were willing to take on the daunting task, not only of learning Chinese in an age before college courses and textbooks, but of learning entire new systems every few years. The use of this range of romanization systems further suggests something about how these authors saw the Review's readership. Evidently they expected readers to desire the latest, most up-to-date representations of Chinese, and to be willing and able to keep up with terminological changes over time. It also suggests that, despite the sometimes dryasdust explications of how best to translate this or that word, readers were not necessarily expected to learn Chinese per se, but simply to note the author's erudition on the way to gleaning some general points about the workings of Chinese (and to be intimidated enough by that erudition that they would be reluctant to call those general points into question). In any case, the fact that the authors of these articles cannot, so far, be identified is worth noting if only because it indicates that, most likely, a number of Victorians besides those sinologists whose names we currently know possessed an advanced degree of knowledge about Chinese languages. For all this scholarship, however, many of these articles are clearly intended for a non-specialized audience. Their venue alone indicates as much, and occasionally a throwaway phrase, such as “to the uninitiated” (“Chinese Language and Porcelain” 749), makes the intended audience plain.

Not only were these articles written by a range of scholars, representing a spectrum of up-to-date scholarship, they also evince a determination to avoid nationalistic and religious bias. This is especially striking given that, over time, the Saturday Review became somewhat more conservative in its political views. While the journal had been at first “cautiously liberal, mindful of class privilege and conscious of its own authority” (Tilley), the journal became “less concerned with keeping up the adventurous quality of its first thirteen years” (Powell 381) when Philip Harwood assumed editorship in 1868, and from 1883 to 1894, under Walter Herries Pollock, the journal became yet more conservative (Powell 381). The Saturday Review's circulation also fell somewhat during Pollock's tenure as editor (Powell 381), although exact figures are unknown, and perhaps this is why the journal's book reviews, in this period, “became shorter and often included notices of several books in one brief article” (Powell 381).

Given these changes, one might expect, then, that articles about China would be less frequent during these years, as Britain was no longer at war with China, and that reviews of books about China would be truncated, as were the other book reviews. And one would further expect, given the direction the journal was taking, that the Saturday Review's attitude towards China would be conservative and sympathetic to imperialism. But not so. Even during these more conservative years, the journal cultivated an editorial position that actively criticized imperial policy with regards to China, and explicitly rejected the notion that the Chinese needed Western help. Even in those occasional articles that attempt to defend the British against charges that missionary efforts, for example, were an impudent imposition, the journal feels constrained to admit that

Thus, even when the Saturday Review defended British treatment of China, it acknowledged the rights of China as a sovereign and non-Christian nation. Ultimately, the Review's position regarding British presence in China was that Britain had played a “sorry part” that had “made us ridiculous” in the eyes of the world (“The Policy of ‘Squeeze’ in China” 420) and that Britain ought to put “an end to the most feeble, the meanest, and the worst directed colonial enterprise of modern times. The stain of bad manners, to use no stronger term, is visible in every detail of this muddle” (“Exit the Chinese Muddle” 847). Even in the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion, the Review took it upon itself to publish a series of articles by Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson called “From the Chinese Perspective,” later reprinted with some additions as Letters from John Chinaman (Reference Dickinson1902). And the Saturday Review also rejected arguments about China that assumed the superiority of Christianity as their premise, and took translators such as missionary James Legge to task “for injecting too much of a Christian apologetic into his scholarship” (Girardot 413). The Review even mocked those missionaries who complained that they were not being treated well enough and who demanded military support for their proselytizing efforts, calling their complaints on the one hand “much more entertaining than ordinary Foreign Office documents” and on the other deriding their efforts as so much “rodomontade about the shining Cross” (“Missionaries in China” 630).

Despite this determination to avoid bias, however, what these articles ended up teaching readers about China and the Chinese language in particular helps explain how, when, and why the British shifted from seeing the Chinese as essentially moral, if inferior, people, towards an even more racist belief that the Chinese were inscrutable, cunning automatons lacking in human feeling. Over and over, through the reviews of treatises, translations, and dictionaries, through leaders and middles, the Saturday Review hammered home the same information about Chinese, always presented with the assumption that the workings of a language are the best clue not only to the workings of a mind, but to the mind of a whole country and a whole “race.” Though presented in a number of articles clearly written by different authors over a span of years, the lessons taught were nearly always the same: Language is the mirror of the mind, and the nature of the Chinese language reveals a mind that is forever limited and incapable of progress, a mind that simply does not do much thinking or feeling and is therefore content with a stagnant, clumsy, inefficient, and therefore ultimately uncommunicative system of speaking and writing. These conclusions about Chinese do not seem to have been directly influenced by racist prejudices; rather, these racist prejudices were influenced and even created by what these scholars and authors believed they were seeing in their studies.

One of the primary lessons these articles taught readers about Chinese was to explain the nature of the written language – mainly with an eye towards clearing up the common misunderstanding that Chinese is hieroglyphic:Footnote ¹¹

The author goes on to explain the ideographic nature of Chinese characters, to point out that the language focuses heavily on abstract concepts rather than consisting of pretty pictures of nouns. The idea here is not only to explain the ideographic nature of Chinese characters, but also to teach a lesson about China and the Chinese: that the development of their language is so far indicative of intelligent people. This will not be the overall lesson that such articles teach, but it is typical of the overtly good intentions of the authors of these articles.

In addition to this basic lesson about written Chinese, readers were also taught one main point about spoken Chinese: that it has fewer sounds than does English. And not only does Chinese employ fewer sounds, those sounds can only be combined into brief units, usually beginning with a consonant; either “a consonant followed by a vowel, or a consonant and vowel followed by a final consonant.” These two facts taken together mean that “the number of possible combinations into words must be excessively small” (“The Language and Literature of China” 721). As a result, Chinese makes use of a system of tones to distinguish among its many homophones:

Thus, for example, the syllable “shi” (pronounced something like “shh”) might be pronounced with a rising tone or a falling one to indicate two different meanings. Rather than tones indicating sarcasm or some other attitude or emotion, as they do in English, tones in Chinese indicate the meaning of the word itself. So 十 shí in a rising tone is the number ten; 是 shì in a falling tone is the verb to be; and so on.

These different tones can be indicated, as they are above, with the use of diacritical marks, but the number of homophones in Chinese is still so large that even with the use of diacritics an alphabetic system cannot precisely convey all words. There are hundreds of words in Mandarin corresponding to the sound “shi,” for instance, and only four or five tones,Footnote ¹² so ideographic characters are inescapably necessary, a fact to which these authors must repeatedly force themselves to be resigned:

Thus the number of homophones rules out any alphabetic system in the written language while also making the spoken language more than ordinarily dependent on the written one.

The obvious difficulty here is that the student of Chinese is faced with learning not one but two languages (written and spoken) which bear less relation to each other than usual in Western languages (that is, the written language is, with some rare and by-now mostly historical exceptions, not phonetic), and yet each of which is necessary for the comprehension of the other to a degree that is also unheard-of in Western languages. Such a system has a number of advantages, at least for native speakers; for example, it makes it possible for literate Chinese to communicate with each other even when one speaks only, say, Cantonese and the other only Fujian. And, as the written language has been standardized for many centuries, “an educated Chinese has always been able to avail himself of the literature of almost any period” (Rodzinski qtd. in Ford 12), in contrast to the English-speaker, who must rely on translations of older English-language texts such as Beowulf. The written system also adds a visual, aesthetic dimension to literature and poetry impossible to alphabetic languages, blurring the boundaries between literature and the visual arts. For all these reasons, the relation of written Chinese to spoken engenders a respect for literacy's power, beauty, and necessity impossible to alphabetic languages. But one can easily see how disheartening it is from a student's perspective to realize that to the already-daunting task of learning Chinese and its homophone-riddled language is added the, if anything, even more daunting prospect of mastering written Chinese with its 80,000+ characters – at the same time, no less.

Nonetheless, the authors of these articles understood that, however discouraging these facts were for the foreign learner, they had a place in Chinese tradition that had to be understood and preserved. That is, they were aware not just that it would be impossible to transform written Chinese into an alphabetic system; they were also aware that it would be insensitive and would impose practical difficulties upon the Chinese, however much easier it might make matters for the English. The examination system to which China's whole government was tied was itself tied to the written language, and for the examination system and education generally to continue, students would have to know how to read older texts. Thus “[i]t is obvious that, to preserve this uniformity of learning, it was necessary to adhere to the same written medium” (“Edkins on the Chinese Characters” 456). This attempt to keep in mind a Chinese perspective demonstrates the effort these authors were making to be open-minded; yet precisely because of this good intention, the picture of Chinese becomes one in which the language is complex, not so much because the Chinese mind is complex, but because China's unwieldy size necessitates an unusually strong governmental system while also leading to the development of different languages and dialects. These two facts, together with the structure of the language itself, in part explain the extent to which a government official's position must be tied to his level of education and literacy. As this literacy is itself made complicated because it is being forced to make up for what these Victorian commentators perceived as defects in the spoken language, this then led to the disgruntled suspicion that written Chinese, an immensely sophisticated and beautiful system, is as complex as it is not necessarily because it reflects a complexity of mind, but rather the opposite: it reflects a complexity of circumstances and forms masking an unevolved mental state.

Not to be dissuaded from their desire to see the Chinese as at least capable of evolving, however, the authors of these articles sometimes broach the possibility that Chinese, whatever its current defects in their eyes, could evolve for the better. But here again they saw a problem: any addition to vocabulary would have to involve either adding to or changing the written language. Such a prospect was seen as impossibly cumbersome. Chinese had in fact added little new vocabulary in recent years at this point, at least to English-speaking knowledge, but the authors of these articles could imagine only two methods of ever adding new words to the language. One, obviously, would be to add new characters to the tens of thousands already in existence – an idea so horrifying it was usually not even entertained – and the other was to group old characters together to indicate, say, new inventions by way of descriptive phrases. This is in fact the way that modern Chinese adds vocabulary – a bus, for example, is 公共气车 gōng gòng qì chē,Footnote ¹³ which literally means an equitable and democratic method for conveying people via a gas-driven vehicle. This is almost poetic (and great fun to say), as well as conveying a whole range of values and ideas in a built-in way that the English “bus” simply cannot replicate – but Victorian sinologists were not in the mood. Such a method struck them forcibly as much too time-consuming to be efficient:

As a result, these Victorian commentators felt forced to the conclusion that the Chinese had not properly evolved; had not (charitably) been able properly to evolve. And since language is the mirror of thought, in their way of thinking, the state of the Chinese language must, they believed, indicate the state of the Chinese mind:

Such views were widespread, and made necessary within the framework of linguistic relativism – the idea that language and thought are tied, and that certain languages are more evolved than others – developed by von Humboldt and, later, Max Müller, and to which the authors of these articles clearly subscribed.Footnote ¹⁵ In a feat of circular reasoning, the Chinese language (as spoken) was deemed a poor vehicle for thought because it could not possibly express all the thoughts that a Chinese person, or anyone for that matter, might have, while simultaneously the supposed inadequacy of the language was taken as proof that the Chinese could not have many thoughts because otherwise their language could never have remained so poor. Thus, because their language was “crystallized,” Chinese people were judged incapable of progress, both because they were seen as being handicapped by their language and because their language was seen as revealing them to be incapable of progress no matter what language they might use. As one author put it, trying to explain away China's historically high level of achievement in realms such as invention and literature in light of this picture of the language, “In most of the amenities of life they arrived like precocious children at a certain level [of advancement] at a very early period. But there they stopped short. . . . It is difficult to see in what direction they have made any steps forward since the beginning of our era” (“Chinese Coins” 386). Ultimately, a lack of progress was seen as due, inevitably and unavoidably, to the nature of the language itself and what that (in this view) must say about the Chinese mind.

These were not pleasant or desired conclusions, but ones into which scholars felt forced by the facts. Some even attempted to find a way out of these conclusions by looking to Chinese literature in the hope that the language, as used in famous and venerated Chinese works, would reveal something they could find more evolved than the structure of the language itself. Here, too, however, they felt disappointed. As one author put it, “[t]hese conclusions as to the sluggish nature of the Chinese mind, which seem to afford the only satisfactory solution to the peculiarity of the language, appear to be further confirmed by the history of Chinese literature” (“The Language and Literature of China” 721). Literature here means, in practice, mostly religious texts, because those texts were primarily the ones being translated into English – a holdover, in part, from the fact that missionaries were originally the ones most interested in translating Chinese texts. Here, too, the Saturday Review found the same emphasis on complexity of form that disturbed them in the language. Texts such as the Book of Rites (禮記Lǐ Jì) featured detailed accounts of how to perform a number of rituals, not simply at an altar, but in all phases of life. Most disturbing to Victorian commentators was the use in these ceremonies not only of ritual behaviors, but of ritual phrases, which struck them as meaning that the Chinese were taught to lie continually and taught this by their own “moral” texts. One iconoclast defended such practices, arguing that the British themselves were hardly strangers to what one article of the same title called “Polite Lying,” but even then did not bother to dispute the assumption that the Chinese use of ritualized phrases made them liars. Few other commentators bothered even to make so limited a defense. Herbert Allen Giles, for example, usually a leader in defending the Chinese against most charges common at the time (that they murdered babies; that they were hopeless drug-users), took it for granted that Chinese were liars (“Giles's Chinese Sketches” 87).Footnote ¹⁶ In general, the emphasis on ceremonial, verbal as well as physical, seen in Chinese religious texts was taken as simply further confirmation that the Chinese were “a nation of formalists whose freedom of action and independence of thought are cramped and mutilated by the mechanical system” (“The Sacred Books of China” 1886, 693).

Most damning, perhaps, was the puzzling absence of reference in these texts to a God or an afterlife. Victorian commentators, even when consciously attempting to avoid pro-Christian prejudice, still struggled to understand how religious texts could focus only on earthly behavior in all its most mundane moments and expect to influence behavior for good: “It is difficult to understand how a people can be influenced as the Chinese unquestionably are by a code of social laws which offers no inducement to obedience by appealing to the higher instincts of humanity” (“The Sacred Books of China” 1886, 693). By “higher instincts” is meant, not a good conscience, but a sense of an afterlife and an all-powerful divinity. Victorian commentators were particularly puzzled as to how a Chinese religious text could discuss proper behavior without reference to threats of divine retribution for disobedience or offers of divine bribes for good behavior. The Victorians might even have assumed that questions of ultimate punishment and reward were likewise assumed by the Chinese and just not made explicit, were it not for the fact that they were not sure if the Chinese had even developed the concept of a god. Because missionaries were among the first to translate Chinese texts, and because they also led the charge to translate English texts (mostly tracts) into Chinese, certain specific questions of vocabulary came up before others. One of the foremost problems was how to translate the word “God.” Most scholars fixed on 上帝shàng dì as the best possibility, but others rejected this term in favor of some other, and yet other scholars could not find that any term in Chinese really corresponded to what they meant by “God” – a creator, and sustainer, and savior, and person, and judge, etc. Debate on this question started early and continued late,Footnote ¹⁷ but the very existence of debate on what was considered a very basic term was not viewed favorably: “That there should be any doubt upon such a matter shows clearly that the Chinese concept of religion is not a very exalted one, and that they had no very definite idea of a Supreme Being” (“The Sacred Books of China” 1879, 730). The lack of a clear equivalent for the Christian “God” is not bad, however, because the Saturday Review is suddenly adopting a Christian perspective; it is bad because, in the Saturday Review's opinion, countries evolve from polytheism to monotheism. The fact that China had, so far as they could tell, not so evolved – that they might not even yet have the concept of a monotheistic god – made the Saturday Review purse its lips very doubtfully. There seemed no way out: literature served as the final “proof” that the nature of the Chinese language and mind was essentially both unevolved and amoral.

As the case of the Saturday Review shows, the dramatic shift in British perceptions of the Chinese from the beginning to the end of the nineteenth century was due not to the prejudices of the ignorant and the culturally-marginalized, but, to an important extent, to the efforts of the scholarly and the well-informed, as scholars who tried to avoid pro-Imperialist and pro-Christian prejudices passed on their views to an educated reading public that was keen to learn about China. Nonetheless, these scholars portrayed the Chinese language to that public as inefficient, incapable of evolving, and expressive of ritual lies rather than truth. And since they also assumed that language reveals the mind of a race, the inevitable implication became that all these characteristics must be true of the Chinese mind as well.

Ultimately, what caused these scholars to go so far wrong, despite their desire to learn about China on its terms and in its own language and their desire to avoid their own biases? Several factors were at work. All their observations of China were colored by a relentless paradigm of evolution which had never taken China into account and into which China could never therefore fit. As British knowledge about China grew, it became more and more apparent that China simply had not evolved in the “right” order or in the expected ways. Rather than questioning the paradigm, however, scholars simply found China to be both backwards and baffling. And, despite their attempts to avoid pro-Christian prejudice, scholars were also operating within a system of knowledge of Chinese language and literature that was based almost exclusively on missionaries’ translations of religious texts. Thus, even when commentators were not themselves religious, they were still stuck with structures and judgments that had been shaped by religion. They concluded that “the note of the Chinese creed is ‘regressiveness,’ its ideal is in the past” (“Books on Divinity” 436), but in fact it was they who were unable to see their way out of their own scholarly past and its roots in evolutionary theory and missionary work.

More modern scholars have also been trapped in a paradigm, basing discussions and definitions of postcolonialism largely on the countries most successfully colonized, such as India, and overlooking colonialism's failures elsewhere. This focus problematically replicates the power structures under criticism; it elides colonialism's weaknesses while missing an opportunity to examine the conditions necessary for successful resistance to colonization. Likewise, discussions of postcolonialism often construct an implicit binary in which Western political and economic forces are placed in opposition to the supposedly resistant forces of individual agency or (Western, modern) scholarship. Thus individual narratives – travel narratives, personal accounts, the voice of the subaltern – have dominated postcolonial criticism. This juxtaposition of large systems against smaller groups or individuals, while historically useful, is in danger of overlooking the fact that non-Western societies also have well-developed systems and that non-Western systems and structures can oppose Western ones – a concept that deeply jeopardizes, not simply the morality of Western supremacy, but the reality of such supremacy. A greater emphasis on China as a site of systemic non-Western challenge to Western hegemony would force Western scholars to question not only the difficulties of the subaltern but also the precariousness of their own positions and the limits of knowledge. As the case of the Chinese language in the Saturday Review shows, prejudice does not have to be a matter of intentionality or a response to political or economic events – it can be a response to, and result of, the systems of knowledge created by well-intentioned scholars. At a time when humanities scholars sometimes struggle to demonstrate the relevance of what they do, it is bittersweet to see how scholarship, in presenting itself to the more general public, can play a part in creating prejudice.