Mark Twain, Anson Burlingame, Joseph Hopkins Twichell, and the Chinese

• Hsin-yun Ou ^[1]
  1. [1] National University of Kaohsiung

     National University of Kaohsiung

     Taiwán

     
• Localización: Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, ISSN 0004-1327, ISSN-e 1920-1222, Vol. 42, Nº. 2, 2011 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Brand, adichie, and twain, interviews with post-9/11 novelists, and more), págs. 43-74
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This article examines Mark Twain’s Chinese connection that may have influenced his pro-Chinese sympathies, with a focus on his relationships with Anson Burlingame and Joseph Hopkins Twichell. Twain’s depictions of the Chinese in his journalism before 1864 attempted to attract readers with Chinese exoticism, but his subsequent reports for the San Francisco Daily Morning Call, either scathing or sympathetic, regarded the Chinese as susceptible to U.S. influences. As early as 1864, Twain demonstrated his sense of social justice through constant denunciations of unfair treatment of Chinese immigrants. In addition to his own compassion, Twain's esteem for Burlingame enhanced his strongly held feelings toward the Chinese. Burlingame was the first Western ambassador to accentuate the equality between China and the Western nations, as he replaced forceful policy with peaceful resolution and legalized Chinese immigration in 1868. Correspondingly, Twain’s three Galaxy sketches and Roughing It, published in the early 1870s, attack discriminatory practices against the Chinese in the United States, echoing Burlingame’s policy for establishing friendly relations with China. Twain also joined Twichell in assisting the Chinese Educational Mission by appealing to former President Ulysses S. Grant. Twain’s friendship with Twichell and the Chinese intellectuals may have an influence on his writings in the late 1870s, especially his characterization of the Chinese in Ah Sin (1877), which interrogates the Chinese stereotype. During the last two decades of his life, Twain wrote repeatedly to condemn Western imperialist expansion in China, and, as his moral rage fueled his skepticism about overseas Christian missions, he gradually disagreed with Twichell’s perspectives.