Excerpt from Diplomatic Audiences at the Court of China
"But that in particular in which they treat an ambassador as a simple messenger is that the King of Siam in the audience of leave gives him a receipt for the letter he has received from him; and if this prince sends answer he does not give it to him, but sends with him his own ambassadors to carry it."
Napoleon I practically held the Asiatic theory on this point when he said that "Ambassadors are not equal to, nor do they represent their sovereigns; sovereigns have never treated them as equals. The false idea that they represent their sovereigns is a tradition of the feudal customs, under which a great vassal at the rendering of homage was represented by an ambassador who received the same honors due his master."
It is not surprising to find that throughout the history of the intercourse of the West with the East, there should have been constant misunderstanding on the part of the Orientals as to the intention of the princes whose ambassadors they were receiving, and the duties of the envoys themselves, especially in regard to performing the prostrations prescribed by Oriental etiquette, but which for centuries past had been reserved in Europe for the Divinity alone. Notwithstanding these Oriental views, which must have been well known to the Western world from the earliest periods, mission to the Court of the ruler of China followed mission from the thirteenth to the present century, and on nearly every occasion the envoys were slighted, to their minds at least, and their master's intentions misinterpreted. China, in fact, has only realized within the last few years that the old theory concerning embassies and foreign envoys was no longer tenable, in all its force, and it is only since 1873 that foreign envoys have been received as the representatives of independent sovereigns and the prostration or k'o-t'ou before the Emperor has been dispensed with in their case.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.