At the Crossroads of Empire: Vietnam, India, China (Volume E)

Map Struggling to define their own linguistic and literary roles in relation to long-standing local and imperial traditions, South and East Asian writers of the nineteenth century were also caught between imperial struggles. Expanding European empires headed eastward. The image shows parts of South and East Asia during the nineteenth century.

Vietnam Chinese rule Tây So’n peasant uprising Gia Long, emperor French Indochina Imperial Japan, World War II China ruled Vietnam from 111 B.C.E. to 939 C.E. In the late eighteenth century, the Tây So’n peasant uprising briefly took over the country, but in 1802 a new emperor from within Vietnam, Gia Long, overthrew them and reinstated orthodox laws modeled after those of China. The French, eager for new markets for their own products, opened trade with Vietnam, and invaded in the late 1850s to establish its imperial stretch. By the end of the nineteenth century, French Indochina included all of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. French companies made huge profits from Vietnamese rubber, coal, and sugar while poverty, disease, and starvation for the indigenous people became commonplace. The French were not expelled until World War II, by Imperial Japan. The image shows a colonial French family in Vietnam with a machine gun, ca. 1900.

India India passed from the Mughal Empire, controlled by Hindus, to a Muslim empire during the seventeenth century, then to the British empire in 1804, when the British East India Company officially took control. The East India Company initially left local leaders empowered but later tried to impose what they felt were superior moral, linguistic, and cultural traditions on India. The painting is titled The Last Effort and Fall of Tippoo Sultaun (ca. 1800) by Henry Singleton. The painting marks the rulers of the kingdom of Mysore resisting British forces and losing to the British East India Company in 1799.

1857 Revolt Hindu and Muslim leaders repressive measures British-born administrators English language Indian National Congress (1885) swaraj In 1857, Hindu soldiers rebelled against the British army, triggering a large insurrection by both Hindu and Muslim leaders. The empire responded with repressive new measures and installed British-born administrators to manage Indian affairs. By mid-century, English had replaced Persian as the official language of law, diplomacy, and administration. The British proposed setting up an Indian National Congress that would represent Indian public opinion in a controlled way (1885); Gandhi, among others, demanded swaraj (self-rule), which led to full independence in 1947. The image depicts British soldiers storming Delhi during the 1857 Indian Rebellion.

China population growth peasant rebellion British opium trade Hong Xiuquan, “Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace” Qing Dynasty international imperialism By 1800, population growth in China strained food sources and erupted in peasant rebellions. The British began smuggling opium from India into China, leading to massive consumer demand and addiction. British warships responded to the Chinese attempt to ban opium imports by attacking the coastline and taking over Chinese ports. The Opium Wars lasted more than one hundred years, and civil war further weakened the ruling Qing Dynasty. Hong Xiuquan declared himself a younger brother of Jesus, sent to expel foreigners from China and declaring a “Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace.” The British and French supported the Qing emperor in favor of a peasant regime, but Russia seized China during the upcoming decades (1860s and 1890s), and China later lost a war with Japan and Korea.

The Boxer Rebellion As Europeans spread Christianity and established industry, the Boxer Rebellion arose in 1900, a peasant uprising that was quelled by the British. A revolution broke out in 1911 and the Chinese established Sun Yat-Sen as the first president of the Chinese Republic. The photograph shows a Chinese fighter in the Boxer Rebellion, ca. 1900.

Nguyên Du (1765–1820) “Heaven appoints each human to a place. If doomed to roll in dust, we’ll roll in dust; we’ll sit on high when destined for high seats. Does Heaven favor anyone, bestowing both rare talent and good luck? …Our karma we must carry as our lot—” (lines 3242–52). Du’s The Tale of Kieu is a 3,000 line Vietnamese epic about a woman forced into prostitution and slavery that also parallels the history of Vietnam as a nation that has been attacked by invaders and oppressed by tyrants. Du was born to a learned and powerful family, well-educated, but his family lost stature after the Tây So’n peasant revolt. In 1802, he pledged loyalty to the new ruler, Gia Long, who he nevertheless viewed as illegitimate (this may be reflected in the poem itself). Under the new regime, he was highly regarded as a poet and made ambassador to China in 1813. The image is a late nineteenth century illustration from a manuscript of the Tale of Kieu.

Ghalib (1797–1869) minor noble family arranged marriage Urdu and Persian poet failure to secure a patron or pension ghazal Ghalib was a descendant of Turkish military settlers in north India, and his family ranked as minor nobles in the Muslim ruling class of the nineteenth century under the Mughal emperor’s army. When he was thirteen, the family arranged his marriage to an eleven-year old girl from a wealthier segment of the nobility; he moved to Delhi in 1810, where the couple lived comfortably. He wrote poetry both in Urdu and Persian. When Indian princes rose up in an unsuccessful revolt against Britain in 1857, Ghalib’s court patronage ended; most of his adult life remained unfulfilled due to failure to secure aristocratic patronage or a British pension. He wrote poetry mastering the ghazal, a sequence of couplets in a single meter that are connected by an end-rhyme phrase. The image is a photograph of Ghalib.

Liu E (1857–1909) “Spiritual nature gives birth to feeling; feeling gives birth to weeping. One kind is strong; one kind is weak. When an addlepated boy loses a piece of fruit, he cries; when a silly girl loses a hairpin, she weeps…if weeping takes the form of tears, its strength is small. If weeping does not take the form of tears, its strength is great: it reaches farther” (p. 605). Liu E was born in Jiangsu province on the east coast of China. His father was a government official, and Liu was known as a wild, rebellious, and energetic youth. He joined a small religious sect that combined Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism and thereby became more disciplined and responsible while maintaining his outspoken characteristic. The Yellow River flooded in 1888, after which Liu went to work for the Director General on a conservancy project using his own eccentric methods. He began working on The Travels of Lao Can in 1904 as one of several socially critical novels of the period that attacked corrupt government and tradition. As a result, the author was falsely accused of treason and exiled to the far northwest, where he died a year later. The image is a photograph of the Yellow River Hukou Waterfall (June 18, 2008) by Leruswing.

Pandita Ramabai (1858–1922) “Although no law has ever said so, the popular belief is that a woman can have no salvation unless she be formally married” (p. 616). Ramabai converted from orthodox Hindu to Christianity, becoming a missionary and devoting herself to reforming the lives of Indian women; she wrote in both Marathi and English. The image is a photograph of Ramabai, date unknown.

Parts of South, Southeast & East Asia This map shows the degree to which areas in India, China, and South East Asia were affected by various cultural forces, including long-standing imperial traditions of their own (as in China and India, especially) along with new incursions from European imperial powers, such as Britain and France. In areas of southern China, for example, both British and French empires exerted their influence. The European presence across Asia often produced an odd cultural mix, and many writers were left to puzzle over how they could relate to new European ideas and to their native traditions. And while in some cases the mixing of East and West might have produced interesting new artistic possibilities, if not unusual photo opportunities, the imposition of Western culture and religion onto other cultures had dramatically negative effects. Often, native citizens immediately became second-class citizens in their own homes.

Test Your Knowledge Which of the following had, for most of ancient history, been the superpower in East Asia? a. the Mughal Empire b. Europe c. India d. China Answer: D Section: At the Crossroads of Empire: Vietnam, India, China Feedback: For many centuries China had been the great unchallenged superpower in East Asia. Writers in both South and East Asia found themselves, in the nineteenth century, at a crossroads where great empires were meeting with increasingly strong movements for native independence.

Test Your Knowledge Which empire took control of India by the middle of the nineteenth century, displacing the long-ruling Mughal Empire? a. the British b. the Dutch c. the French d. the Chinese Answer: A Section: At the Crossroads of Empire: Vietnam, India, China Feedback: The British Empire, which controlled all of India by the mid-nineteenth century, was, during its height, the largest empire that had ever existed and included fully one quarter of the world’s population. The empire was so expansive, it was often claimed that “the sun never set on the British Empire.”

Test Your Knowledge The Vietnamese writer Nguyên Du is a good example of a writer who ________ . a. disavowed imperial traditions completely b. embraced imperial traditions completely c. embraced local traditions completely d. embraced both local and imperial traditions Answer: D Section: At the Crossroads of Empire: Vietnam, India, China Feedback: Nguyên Du is a writer who, like many writers of his time period, cherished some aspects of the traditions of imperial China, though he was equally ready to embrace and promote local, Vietnamese linguistic and literary traditions.

Test Your Knowledge British presence in India was initially motivated primarily by which of the following? a. commerce b. religion c. politics d. exploration Answer: A Section: India Feedback: Initially, British interest in India was primarily commercial. However, through the nineteenth century Britain’s interest in India became less purely commercial and more cultural. It installed its own administrators, for example, and began actively trying to convert Indians to Christianity.

Test Your Knowledge The British began smuggling which of the following into China from India? a. coal b. rice c. tea d. opium Answer: D Section: China Feedback: During the nineteenth century, the British began smuggling opium from India into China (against the wishes of the Chinese emperor). Huge numbers of Chinese (and Britons) became addicted to the drug. What is sometimes called the “Chinese” opium trade is more correctly understood as the British opium trade.

This concludes the Lecture PowerPoint presentation for The Norton Anthology of World Literature