Reporting China:Sinological Orientalism, Colonial Discourse And The Early Days Of The North China Herald,1850-1864

This Masters’degree dissertation is a meditation on the implication of the North China Herald in the construction and spread of knowledge regarding China. It examines the contents within this newspaper in relation to the networks of sinological Orientalism, different European intellectual fields, and Sino-Western relations within the context of the British imperialist presence in China; by tracing and placing these intellectual disciplines of knowledge in historical perspective, as well as acutely highlighting nineteenth century, imperialist ideology. It aims to be both a study reflecting different kinds of’genres’within one type of publication, and a critique of ideology. Its predominant theme is how a newspaper published by Europeans, became a creator and a propagator of Orientalist knowledge concerning China. It asks how is it possible to trace intellectual networks and connections within the various texts published in this newspaper, and with its genre’s histories in the European intellectual environment and sinological studies. At another level, questioned the affiliative connections existing between these texts and imperialist ideology. The North China Herald, this dissertation argues, through the publication of articles on Chinese history, comparative studies of religious texts, descriptions of exploration, articles on scientific development and propaganda about new publications concerning Chinese studies, all became a synthesis of styles regarding literature within a sinological Orientalist tradition. Through the analysis of these texts, its arrangement and its publication in the North China Herald, this dissertation aims to conclude that publication of this kind were not simply responding to the diffusion of’pure and innocence knowledge’concerning China, but were also responding to the interests of the British Empire. In the first chapter, the thesis explores the newspaper’s structure as well as the main features of the newspaper characteristics; according to its development in light of British newspaper tradition. This chapter will also introduce the reader to the history of the North China Herald until1864, and its relations with the political context of the time, particularly centered on relations between the British Empire and China, and the networks of knowledge and the readers of the publication. Each of the following three chapters (Ⅱ to Ⅳ) deals with two or more disciplines of knowledge about China. Therefore chapter two, explores texts related with history and comparative religious studies; chapter three examines articles about exploration, travel writing and scientific knowledge; chapter four examines the promotion of sinological Orientalist knowledge, centered on texts discussing conventions of studies and publication about news regarding new books and advertisements about the sale of them. In all of them it pursued to look for imperialist affiliation perspectives to highlight the development of disciplines in the context of the European history, and more specifically the diffusion of these disciplines in the study of sinology, informal empire and discourses behind Orientalism and imperialism.