Acknowledgements
This book follows Neel’s khabardari in attending closely to the Chinese Repository and the Canton Register (which was edited, in this period, by John Slade). Apart from these journals it relies principally on books, memoirs, documents, travelogues and word-lists that were written and compiled by people who lived in or visited Canton at around the same time as Neel: David Abeel, Colin Campbell, C. Toogood Downing, Capt. Robert Elliot, Émile D. Forgues, Shen Fu, Thomas Gardiner, Henry Gribble, Charles Gutzlaff, William C. Hunter, J. Johnson, William Kershaw, Charles W. King, W. Lobscheid, Sir Anders Ljungstedt, Gideon Nye, Samuel Shaw, George Smith, Russell Sturgis, Harriet Low, William Henry Low and several other members of this well-travelled Brooklyn family.
Neel was a keen collector of documents relating to his experiences in China. His archive included parliamentary papers such as The Sessional Papers Printed by Order of the House of Lords, Session 1840, Vol VIII, Correspondence Relating to China (Presented to Both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty, printed by T. R. Harrison, London, 1840); and other related collections of documents like the Statement of Claims of the British Subjects interested in Opium surrendered to Captain Elliot at Canton for the Public Service (London, 1840). It also included compendia of Chinese official documents such as Portfolio Chinensis: or A Collection of Authentic Chinese State Papers Illustrative of the History of the Present Position of Affairs in China, ed. J. Lewis Shuck (Macau, 1840).
Neel’s archive was a testament to his catholic interests. It included, for example, some works of natural history, such as Cuthbert Collingwood’s Rambles of a Naturalist on the Shores and Waters of the China Sea (John Murray, London, 1868); and several works on horticulture such as J. C. Loudon’s magisterial An Encyclopaedia of Gardening, Comprising the Theory and Practice of Horticulture, Floriculture, Arboriculture and Landscape-Gardening, including All the Latest Improvements, A General History of Gardening in All Countries and A Statistical View of Its Present State (Longman et al., London, 1824) and Sir William Chambers’ seminal work, A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening, To Which is Annexed An Explanatory Discourse By Tan Chet-qua of Quang-chew-fu, Gent (London, 1773).
Neel was fortunate also in being able to acquire a copy of a book that illuminated his experiences on Great Nicobar Island: John Gottfried Haensel’s Letters on the Nicobar Islands (London, 1812). He was not so fortunate in stumbling upon Elijah C. Bridgman’s A Chinese Chrestomathy in the Canton Dialect (S. W. Williams, Macau, 1841). He subsequently gave up all hope of publishing his own Celestial Chrestomathy and took the work in a different direction (fragments of which are available on certain websites, including www.amitavghosh.com).
Much that is said by the characters in this book is taken from their own words. Some of John Slade’s speeches are adapted from his editorials and articles, published in the Canton Register; some of Charles King’s utterances are similarly adapted from the reports of the Canton Register and from his own writings, most notably Opium Crisis: A Letter Addressed to Charles Elliot Esq. (London, 1839). Some of the speeches given by Dinyar Ferdoonjee, William Jardine, Charles W. King and H. H. Lindsay are also adaptations based upon published accounts.
Quotations from edicts and proclamations issued by Chinese officials (including Commissioner Lin) are generally adapted from translations published contemporaneously in the Chinese Repository, the Canton Register, Portfolio Chinensis and Correspondence Relating to China. In rendering passages of Neel’s Bengali version of Commissioner Lin’s letter to Queen Victoria, I have relied partly on W. C. Hunter’s translation; but mostly I have adapted it from Arthur Waley’s beautiful translation in The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes (Stanford University Press, 1968).
As a supplement to Neel’s library I have relied also on the work of many contemporary and near-contemporary scholars and historians. To list all the books, articles and essays that have enriched this narrative would be impossible here, but it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge my gratitude for, and indebtedness to, the work of the following: E. N. Anderson, Robert Antony, S. F. Balfour, Jack Beeching, David Bello, Henry and Sidney Berry-Hill, Kingsley Bolton, J. M. Braga, Lucile Brockway, Anne Bulley, Hsin-Pao Chang, Gideon Chen, Weng Eang Cheong, Craig Clunas, Alice Coats, Patrick Conner, A. H. Crook, Carl L. Crossman, Stephen Dobbs, Jacques M. Downs, Wolfram Eberhard, Mark Elvin, Fa-ti Fan, Amar Farooqui, Peter Ward Fay, R. W. Ferrier, S. N. Gajendragadkar, Valery M. Garrett, John Gascoigne, L. Gibbs, Basil Greenhill, Martin Gregory, Mary and John Gribbin, Amalendu Guha, Deyan Guo, G. A. C. Herklots, A. P. Hill, Bret Hinsch, Ke-en Ho, Nan Powell Hodges, A. W. Hummell, Robin Hutcheon, Christopher Hutton, Graham E. Johnson, Russell Jones, Maneck Furdoonji Kanga, Frank Kehl, Maggie Keswick, Jane Kilpatrick, Paul Kriwaczek, Roy Lancaster, Daniel Irving Larkin, Thomas N. Layton, Zhiwei Liu, Hosea Ballou Morse, H. Le Rougetel, Elma Loines, David R. MacGregor, Joyce Madancy, Pierre-Yves Manguin, John McCoy, Wilson Menard, Erik Mueggler, Yong Sang Ng, E. H. Parker, Glen D. Peterson, James Duncan Phillips, Behesti Minocher N. Pundol Saheb, Peter Raby, Desmond Ray, H. E. Richardson, Dingxu Shi, Asiya Siddiqi, Helen F. Siu, Anthony Xavier Soares, Tan Chung, Madhavi Thampi, Adrian P. Thomas, G. R. Tibbetts, G. H. R. Tillotson, Yun Hui Tsu, Peter Valder, Paul A. Van Dyke, Arthur Waley, Barbara E. Ward, Rubie S. Watson, Tyler Whittle, G. R. Worcester, Ching-chao Wu and Liu Yu.
For help with details of fact and language, for assistance in tracking down materials, and for their support, I am greatly beholden to Robert Antony, Pengyew Chin, Amar Farooqui, Atish Ghosh, Guoliang Guo, Ashutosh Kumar, Jiajing Liu, Ming Lu, Megha Majumdar, Cecil Pinto, Rahul Srivastava, Mo-lin Yee, Xu Xi and most particularly, Kingsley Bolton and Robert McCabe. To Shernaz Italia, Freny Khodaiji and their extended families, I owe an immense and very special debt of gratitude.
The long journey upriver would have been vastly more difficult without the unflagging support of Barney Karpfinger, my agent, and Roland Philipps, my publisher and editor in the UK; without Debbie, my wife and first reader, this vessel would almost certainly have run aground; without my children, Lila and Nayan it could not have kept to its course. My mother, Anjali Ghosh, taught me to read – without her the voyage would never have begun.