How an Event Was Produced

Abstract: Through the Court Dairies of the Daoguang period, which is much more close to one of the original historical sites, we could see how the rich court affairs between 1838 and 1842 documented in it were selected and compiled as the lean narratives tabbed as the Opium War eventually by taking the Court Dairies of the intercalary month of 1832(Sep.) as a mirror. We will also make clear how the ruling group’s efforts finally has been transformed into an epoch-making event through a series steps from scattered and trivial matters on Sino-British battles due to opium trades kept in archives, then to the classified affairs (Barbarian matters) compiled secretly in 1850’s under Xianfeng’s decree, and to an event, by returning to the past along time sequence and close to one of the historical sites as much as possible. Comparing to Qing Empire’s own event-producing mechanism, we could distinguish how those contemporaries’ experiences, the recalling from people afterwards, and the narratives coming from later generations and outsiders combine together, how the contemporaries fall into the victim of aphasia finally, how the later generations dominate the voices of historical narratives, how the event was made depending on contemporaries experiences, how the significances has been added, distorted, and reduced interrelatedly and constantly, and how the event becomes a kind of hindrance for posterity if we want to return to the original historical site after the production of the event as a story. Understanding all of these, we could rediscover the history of these years from more diverse perspectives, and know much about the implications and limitations of the history of events as a way of thinking.