<i>Laou-Seng-Urh</i> and the imperial politics of Chinese theatre in early Anglo-Sino diplomacy

Abstract The founder of the Hong Kong branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, John Francis Davis, published the first translation of a Chinese play into English, Laou-Seng-Urh, or ‘An Heir in Old Age ’, in 1817. While significant in both literary and scholarly terms, Davis’s work is also worthy of attention for its political undercurrents. An anonymously penned introduction draws connections between Davis’s translation and theatrical performances in the context of Qing diplomacy, including Macartney’s embassy of 1793, while an accompanying ‘Advertisement’ highlights Davis’s role as interpreter on Amherst’s subsequent embassy of 1816. This article conclusively attributes these paratexts to the second secretary of the Admiralty, Sir John Barrow. Records from the East India House library, the John Murray Archive, and back-numbers of The Quarterly Review reveal how Barrow exploited Davis’s translation to promote British diplomatic engagement with China and celebrate the embassy on which he had staked his own reputation as a China expert. Though Laou-Seng-Urh achieved few of its political objectives, it nevertheless inadvertently influenced the trajectory of nineteenth-century academic sinology in Europe.