Representations of China in Western Travel Accounts during the Nineteenth Century
Representations of China in Western Travel Accounts during the Nineteenth Century

Summary/Abstract: The 1800's brought a very pronounced change in the images of China produced by Westerners. What was left of the admiration and the reverence expressed regularly towards China in earlier times, was replaced by skepticism, suspicion and, finally, deep contempt. Fragmentary positive images were still being produced, as there is no such thing as a uniform attitude, but it was at this historical moment that China's image in Europe began to suffer the most. The paper discusses in detail the reasons for this shift and illustrates the aforementioned tendency with several travel accounts written by prominent authors such as John Barrow and Arthur Smith.

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