Congratulations on being shortlisted for the 2023 Wolfson History Prize. How does it feel to be shortlisted?
I’m very excited to be shortlisted for the prize! China is a massive issue right now, and I think that it is really important that people understand the history that lies behind our relationship with it. For The Perils of Interpreting to be shortlisted will tell people that this is a book they can read and enjoy. The book tells the story of two men, one Chinese and one British, who grew up between China and Europe in the eighteenth century and became interpreters. Through their stories it asks why sometimes states make poor decisions from ignorance of other cultures even when there are plenty of ordinary people moving between those cultures. These are important issues that still affect us.
The other thing the story of the interpreters teaches us is the crucial importance of learning foreign languages for understanding other cultures. Language learning is in sad decline in the UK and it would be great if the book inspired young people to learn Chinese, but also French, Italian and even Latin, all languages I used for the research.
The Wolfson Foundation funds a wide variety of museums, historic buildings and landscapes. Do you have a favourite historical place or a place that has inspired you?
I was trained as a local historian of China and I think it is really important to see the places I am researching. Looking out over the hills from Zhaojialing a tiny Catholic village in north China, where the cave Li used as a chapel has been preserved, really took me back to the eighteenth century and gave me a sense of how he was living. But I was also inspired by going round HMS Victory at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, which gave me a strong sense of these ships as floating gun batteries and also suggested just how close together everyone was on board them. When I went round the remains of Staunton’s garden, which is now Staunton Country Park in Havant on the outskirts of Portsmouth, I realised that the garden temple where he honoured his parents and closest friends, including his Chinese patron the merchant Pan Youdu, was at the high point of the site, with what would have been a wonderful view out to sea.
What could someone read, watch, or listen to next if they’re interested in Chinese history?
I would start with Valerie Hansen, The Open Empire: A History of China to 1800 for the early history as it is a wonderful read. Patricia Ebrey’s Cambridge Illustrated History of China is another good start and covers everything you could want to know. For the twentieth century I still really like Jonathan Spence’s The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and their Revolution, 1895-1980 which is told round the stories of some of China’s most famous writers. The novelist Amitav Ghosh’s trilogy beginning with Sea of Poppies is a great introduction to the Opium Wars.
For the twentieth century there are lots of wonderful memoirs. I particularly like Pang-Mei Natasha Chang, Bound Feet and Western Dress and Guo Yue’s Music, Food, and Love which is also a great cookbook! And an amazing number of new visual materials becoming available all the time. I’ve recently come across From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China which gives an amazing sense of life in and just after the Cultural Revolution and Chinese Film Classics edited by Christopher Rea which has a selection of 1930s and 40s films with English subtitles.
Why do you feel it is important to celebrate history writing?
One of the things that makes history different from a lot of other subjects we study is that so many people love to read it. When we read the best history we can imagine what it was like to live in the past, but doing that also shapes our ideas about the present. So, for example, in this book I talk about some of the Chinese people who came to England in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Knowing about them makes us rethink assumptions about both Chinese and British history. We realise that eighteenth-century China wasn’t cut off from Europe, but instead quite a lot of young men travelled from China to Europe. If they didn’t write or talk about it when they returned to China then we need a different explanation. At the same time we see that what the English knew was shaped by the fact that some of those travellers were disregarded as seamen others who settled here were seen as gentlemen.
History has to be as true as we can make it, and it should never be just about the present, but it does also change the world in which we live.
Read an extract from The Perils of Interpreting.
