A Greek Tragedy in China

Abstract

Thomas de Quincey endorsed the Opium Wars in his journalism. Yet his China essays invoke ideas from Greek tragedy, and his ‘Theory of Greek Tragedy’ expresses British jingoism. Such a connection was topical: the Canton Register stirred controversy over Qing officials’ description of Europeans as yi (夷‎) with reference to classical conceptions of barbarism. Classical literature is crucial to de Quincey’s identity; he wields this as a master-knowledge against such Sinologists as Thomas Taylor Meadows when debating the Arrow crisis. Classical allusions reveal that his hatred of China is ultimately self-loathing: figures such as the classical daimon show that de Quincey identifies with those who have ceded agency to an outside force, and in his opium addiction he resembles China as much as he does the Malay in Confessions of an English Opium Eater. By reference to tragedy he proposes violence that is symbolic rather than real.