British commercial empire in China did not spur Chinese academic study

Evidence

Though the British had many commercial interests in China – the sale of opium among them – this did not lead to any corresponding explosion of interest in Chinese studies in Britain. When Thomas Wade was appointed to a Chair of Chinese in Cambridge in 1888, he declared that ‘I assume that my pupils, should I have any, will be intending missionaries or interpreters… My advice to applicants in either category is that they should make their way to China with all speed.’ When, in the following century, Arthur Waley, self-taught in Chinese and a great translator of its poetry, was offered the Cambridge Chair, his response was ‘I would rather be dead’. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 280

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the irony that commercial/imperial interest and scholarly interest diverged — a pattern the reader may recognize from the opium trade vs. sinology discussion elsewhere in their reading.