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The
Youngest Introducing The Oldest |
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The image to the left
has an embedded "hotspot" on the face of each character. Clicking on a "hotspot" will
automatically scroll the screen to the appropriate character in the list below the image. |
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America.
"Brothers and Sisters, I am happy to present to you the Oldest Member of the Family,
who desires our better acquaintance." |
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Please see the
commentary below this image for more information: |
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Thomas Nast’s cartoon
depicting Burlingame's mission , "The Youngest Introduction the
Oldest," shows (left to right): |
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Harper’s
Weekly wrote about The Celestial Embassy on July
18, 1868, to explain the cartoon in the same issue. Some of the discussion may be relevant
today with regard to China’s role in world trade, human rights and other issues. |
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His Celestial
Excellency, Mr. Burlingame, is having, as is most proper, a truly flowery reception. With
his high born and illustrious co-dignitaries the Celestial Embassador entered the
continent by "the granite portals of the Golden State," and they are receiving
every where a welcome of good feeling as well as of wonder. It is, as our picture in this
issue shows, the youngest nation introducing the oldest to the friendship of Christendom.
It is, indeed, strange to hear a Yankee speaking for China, and claiming for her that kind
of regard and respect which the world has not been accustomed to feel for the old empire.
Despite all that we hear and know of its ancient and elaborate civilization, there is
still the feeling that it is the most grotesque of barbarous nations, and that there is
wholly wanting that plane of common interest and knowledge and sympathy upon which the
nations of Christendom are accustomed to meet. The popular image of China is an enormous
country surrounded by a high wall, probably with broken bottles strewn along the top,
where the people wear their hair in a long tail, squeeze the feet of the women into
deformity, cultivate tea, and eat rats and dogs… |
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And now the
Celestial Embassador alights upon our shores—no outlandish foreigner, but a familiar
public friend of our own, and side by side with native Chinese noblemen, yet their
official chief, he quietly says to this amazed Brother Jonathan*, who evidently wonders
how his Celestial Excellency scaled the wall with no further damage to his attire,
"We seek not only the good of China, but we seek your good, and the good of all
mankind…" |
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This
means, of course, the same free and familiar intercourse that we have with European
nations. It means treaties of commerce and amity. It means an opening of the ports and
cities and interior of this great empire, secluded from the beginning of history, to the
exploration and study of curiosity and science. It means the unconditional admission into
China of all the influences, moral, social, intellectual, and industrial, of the outer
civilization which it has always suspected and avoided. If his Celestial Excellency does
not too warmly state the truth, his embassy is one of the most remarkable events in
history; and we await with the greatest interest the practical propositions which he is
authorized to make, by which this extraordinary change in the relations of China and the
Western World is to be begun and accomplished.* A prior name for Uncle Sam |
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