Who Made the Great Wall of China?
On 26 September 1792, King George III dispatched the first British trade mission to China, a 700-strong party that included diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, scientists, painters, a watchmaker, a gardener, five German musicians, two Neapolitan Chinese priests and a hot-air-balloon pilot. Packed into three substantial ships, they brought with them the most impressive fruits of recent Western scientific progress – telescopes, clocks, barometers, airguns and, naturally, a hot-air balloon – all intended to dazzle the Chinese emperor, Qianlong, into opening trade with the West, by convincing him that he and his 313 million people needed Britain’s technological marvels. For the past decade, Britain had been running up a serious trade deficit with China: while the Chinese were quite happy to service the growing British tea addiction, they wanted nothing, except copious amounts of silver, in return. The few British merchants – employees of the East India Company – allowed to operate in China w
