Staunton's pioneering work in translating the Qing law code had rather mixed effects upon its publication, but certainly his intentions were not the promotion of extraterritorial rights or the denigration of China or its system of government. In the end, however, Staunton had to admit that, to some extent, his detractors had been right all along – at least from appearances of what was going on in China.

The publication of the Qing Code was in part a response to earlier sensationalised works such as John Barrow's Travels in China (1804) and the deeply prejudiced translation and commentary upon of the novel Haoqiu zhuan by Bishop Thomas Percy of Dromore, titled The Pleasing History (1761). Staunton sought to dispel notions of Chinese brutality, debunking allegations about the prevalence of infanticide and corporal punishment and providing crucial social context to those examples that did exist.

In terms of structure, Staunton's editorial choices reflect this in great depth. He emphasises that the three prefaces he chose to translate – those of the Shunzhi, Kangxi and Yongzheng Emperors – were those of the first three emperors, thereby proving that the Qing had understood the importance of law and justice from the beginning, and were not in power by simply being despotic wielders of military force. His arrangement of the information into tables (usually, but not always tabulated in the original Chinese) omitted much information for the sake of convenience and to lessen the sense of Chinese cruelty, such as by omitting the distinction between the lighter cane used for 10-50 beatings and the heavier cane used for 60-100, or that certain punishments combined exile with beatings. Staunton also freely inserted a degree of commentary in the laws, not only his own but also, it seems, drawn from later Qing commentators, though he tends to be rather subtle in this regard and the line between original text and commentary can be a little blurred. His assertion at one point that 'My translation faithfully reflects the original' is thus a bit of a bold-faced lie, but his intentions are quite clear from the next sentence: 'the Chinese, then, think about kinship and organize knowledge in tables just like we do; therefore, they employ the same thought processes as we do and, in short, are just like us.'^2

Yet the reception of Staunton's work was somewhat different than his likely intention, as his work was consulted more for reference than for interpretation. While, as we have discussed, there was commentary integrated into the text, this was both subtle and relatively minor, and so his personal positions, isolated in the foreword, appendices and notes, could be freely ignored or challenged by readers. The reviews published in the Edinburgh Review and Quarterly Review in 1810 certainly got the point to an extent, and showed that Staunton had succeeded in demonstrating that the Chinese legal code was a clear, understandable and consistent set of principles, yet there nonetheless remained the sense, to quote the former, that China was 'A NATION WITHOUT HONOUR'.^3 Both reviews repeatedly use the reference portions of the text to support their own opinions on China and contradict claims by Staunton, such that to some extent you wonder whether they understood the point of a review (then again, it could be worse – it could have been Macaulay.)^2

Staunton himself opposed the idea of seeking extraterritorial rights, albeit in no small part due to his personal loyalty to the East India Company's agenda of non-confrontation in China and the maintenance of a relative status quo in terms of trade policy. In a collection of miscellaneous essays in 1822, he stated that 'As a general principle, it cannot be questioned, but that we are bound in all ordinary cases, to submit to the laws and institutions which we find established in the country in which we reside; and that, simply by the circumstance of our coming to China to trade, we do implicitly engage to submit to all the terms and conditions which the Chinese government has, in its wisdom, deemed proper to annex to our admission.' In the Ta Tsing Leu Lee he even defended the decision of the Canton court in 1807 to attempt to prosecute a British sailor on the merchantman Neptune for the manslaughter of a Chinese man, allegedly for inadvertently dropping a stick on him from a top-storey window.^4

Yet in the end, extraterritorial rights were demanded and obtained. Why? Well, the first thing to note is that Britain was not alone in demanding them. The Khanate of Kokand had been doing so since the 1810s by demanding the right to have an appointee of the khan be made qāḍī beg with judicial responsibility for all Kokandi merchants operating in Xinjiang,^5 which would be finally obtained in 1832 through a compact, expanded to a full official agreement in 1835, that stipulated the appointment of an aqsaqal with consular and judicial power over foreigners in Altishahr.^6 Qing assent to extraterritoriality was thus neither unprecedented nor unpalatable, and the Daoguang Emperor ultimately did little more than express disappointment in his officials in September 1842, but still assented to the terms of the treaty despite having had virtually no role in its composition.^7

However, that doesn't explain British pressure for extraterritoriality, the reason for which is arguably far more mundane: extraterritoriality gave a sense of security against what was perceived to be a highly arbitrary state that pedantically applied its laws at one time and casually flouted them at another depending on what suited it best. When the East India Company had exclusive trade rights between Britain and China (until 1834) this was not a major issue due to the Company's generally remaining on the good side of the law, and it was only the 'country traders', those who plied the commerce between India and China, who were the primary dealers in opium and who supplanted the Company after its monopoly charter expired in 1833, who had an especial interest in ensuring their own legal security. Pressure on successive British governments by the country traders helped make extraterritoriality a much larger issue (the issue of extraterritoriality had not, for example, been part of the demands made in the 1794 Macartney Embassy), especially as Lord Palmerston was being directly advised from Sir William Jardine, arguably the most infamous and unscrupulous of all the country traders, during the Opium War.^8

In the end, Staunton had to concede that his detractors had been right. On being made imperial commissioner for suppressing opium at Canton in 1839, Lin Zexu totally disregarded the advice of his colleagues by targeting British merchants during his opium suppression campaign, as opposed to just local consumers and distribution networks as the provincial governor Deng Tingzhen had done earlier. The 'siege' of the British merchants in the Thirteen Factories that came as part of this operation utterly shocked many in Britain, although even then outright pro-war sentiment was relatively limited, and after war began, the Melbourne government only rode out a no-confidence motion in April 1840 by nine votes out of 533 cast. Yet Staunton may well have helped to tip the balance when he, having on so many previous occasions dissuaded hostile action, spoke out in favour of war. Unlike all the previous provocations that had popped up since Macartney, the actions of Lin Zexu at Canton had been exactly what Staunton's critics had accused him of downplaying – the arbitrary exercise of power and disregard for any notion of partnership on equal terms. All Staunton's protests about Chinese justice had, seemingly, been for naught, for even he now had to admit that China had flouted any notion of the rule of law, and that Britain's only recourse to protect its interests and its citizens would be war.^8

Sources, Notes and References

1. Book review: William Christie, 'Forging Romantic China: Sino-British Cultural Exchange 1760–1840'; 'Coleridge, Romanticism and the Orient: Cultural Negotiations', European Romantic Review, 26:1 (2015), 75-83, DOI: 10.1080/10509585.2014.990216

2. James St. André, '"But do they have a notion of Justice?"', The Translator, 10:1 (2004), 1-31, DOI: 10.1080/13556509.2004.10799166

3. Book review: Francis Jeffrey, 'Ta Tsing Leu Lee; being the Fundamental Laws, and a Selection from the supplementary Statutes, of the Penal Code of Chinna; originally printed and published in Pekin, in various successive Editions, under the Sanction, and by the Authority of the several Emperors of the Ta Tsing, or present Dynasty: Translated from the Chinese; and accompanied with an Appendix, consisting of authentic Documents and a few occasional Notes, illustrative of the Subject of the Work', Edinburgh Review, 16:2 (1810), 476-499

4. S. P. Ong, 'Jurisdictional Politics in Canton and the First English Translation of the Qing Penal Code (1810)', Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2010), pp. 141-165

5. Joseph Fletcher, 'Ch'ing Inner Asia c. 1800', in John K. Fairbank (ed.), The Cambridge History of China, Volume 10: Late Ch'ing 1800–1911, Part 1, pp. 35-106

6. Joseph Fletcher, 'The heyday of the Ch'ing order in Mongolia, Sinkiang and Tibet', in ibid., pp. 351-408

7. Mao Haijian, The Qing Empire and the Opium War: The Collapse of the Heavenly Dynasty (1995)

8. Stephen R. Platt, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age (2018)