‘Ancestral Voices Prophesying War’

Edward Gibbon and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were uneasy about the prospect of a British Empire, fearing overreach and collapse. Historical precedents such as the Roman Empire and Kublai Khan’s China made imperial expansion appear unwise. To Coleridge these predecessors served as warnings to Britain, but to Macartney they offered evidence that the Qing Dynasty was doomed. The Macartney Embassy attempted to recreate aspects of Marco Polo’s reception at Kublai Khan’s court: Macartney, like Gibbon and Coleridge, felt that histories could be replicated. In light of Britain’s fruitless embassies to China in 1793 and 1816, Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’ draws on Gibbon’s account of the Khans for prophetic effect. Like Macartney’s journal, Coleridge’s poem articulates a perception that war between Britain and China was likely some decades before the First Opium War occurred.