Mistranslation of 夷as a cause of Opium War (#262, Topic L)

Lydia Liu's book, The Clash of Empires (Harvard U 2004), which I read at the Library of Congress today, greatly disturbed me. Liu is a linguist; in the summer of 1997, just days before Hong Kong was to return to China after 156 years, she was in London doing research on issues related to the Opium War. In her book, after an overview, she devoted the entire Chapter 2 on the use/meaning of the Chinese word 夷 (pronounced as yi) and its translation/mistranslation into English. In China, 夷 refers to places/persons far-away from China proper -- an appropriate English rendition would be foreign (adjective) or foreigner (noun); the word has no derogatory connotation (see, however, my footnote at the end of this post). Indeed, it is so rendered in a Chinese-English dictionary compiled by a British missionary (that dictionary page is reproduced in her book). But, in the hands of British commercial representatives and their English- or Austrian-born translators in the 1830s, whose aim was to be provocative, 夷 was translated as barbarian (adjective and noun). Of course, these commercial representatives' counterparts in Africa (Liu uses the word colonists in her book) used this word routinely to refer to those Africans under their control -- but they were agitated when they used the word to refer to themselves. In any case, the rendition of 夷 as barbarian was self-administered (by staff members of these commercial representatives) and, thus, if they were agitated, self-inflicted. When a new chief commercial representative came from Britain to China, the Chinese governor of Canton, in one of his memorials to the emperor, used the phrase 夷目 to refer to this new foreign chief -- 目 means chief (Liu's book provides but a two-page glossary of key words in Chinese, 目 is not among them; pronounced as mo, this Chinese word is inferred by me); thus, the two words together, a chief from a foreign land. What is wrong with that? But the two translators in his employ (both, incidentally, were men of cloth by training [else they would have no need nor opportunity to gain a knowledge of Chinese]), who forsook their calling for the mighty pound sterling (they were ordered not to wear clothing traditional to men of cloth), rendered the phrase as barbarian eye (目 does have another meaning, which is indeed eye). This new chief was greatly alarmed, because his secret mission, to collect intelligence preparatory to a British invasion, was somehow exposed -- a sheer coincidence and, in any case, again self-administered and self-inflicted. This new chief, said to be a Lord, was obnoxious and unbecoming. Unable to accomplish anything (in a PhD dissertation I read, he violated six Chinese rules for his very first act, an illegal entry into China without proper documentation), he was forced to retreat to Macao in disgrace -- and he died there. His government took offense and claimed that its honor was tarnished -- it was later cited as one of the reasons for starting the Opium War. This is a long story, and this post is already long enough. Let me stop here to add a footnote. In my view, though the word 夷 has no derogatory connotation, it does imply, by virtue of their being removed from China proper, that they have an inferior cultural heritage. There is nothing wrong with that either; it is commonly used by the west when viewing that their culture is superior. The word 夷 appears 9 times in Confucius's Analects. In one instance in my translation (at p 107), I added this note: Yi refers to any area east of the Great Plains of China populated by underdeveloped people.