ABSTRACT
In most description and analysis of cross-cultural relations in history, success and failure are employed as normative categories of judgment. This chapter examines the normative notions of success and failure with reference to China's historical encounters with the West, especially the British Empire, in the 18th and 19th centuries. For most historians of modern China, the First Opium War served as an example of total failure in the history of Sino-British relations, and in the Chinese official historiography, the war was generally described as the radical turning point that marked the beginning of the history of modern China. Forms of failure in the history of Sino-British relations, including misunderstandings, fictionalizations of experience and knowledge, prejudices, stereotypes, contradictions, and distortions, are a necessary part of that history which people must study, understand, and interpret. Failure presents a contradiction and disagreement between cause and effect, resulting from a forced alteration or negation of the original plan.
