Madiera, South East Extremity, 10 October

This album contains sixteen views from the outward voyage of George Macartney’s diplomatic mission to China, an attempt to persuade the Chinese imperial court to broaden its trade policies with Britain. The naval ship Lion and an East India Company vessel, the Hindostan, departed Portsmouth in September 1792, intending to sail around the Cape of Good Hope and eastward into the Indian Ocean. Trade winds forced them to cross the Atlantic to South America, and they remained for several weeks in Rio de Janeiro, where Henry William Parish made this view. Recrossing the Atlantic, they arrived at Macau in June 1793. Parish was a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery and a trained draftsman. His sketch of Rio, then the heavily fortified Portuguese colonial capital and entrepôt for sugar, gold, and gems, combines the kind of coastal profile the Royal Navy relied upon for navigation and a military interest in the embrasures (openings for gun placements) of the port’s defenses. Macartney’s embassy attempted to create interest in British manufactured products to offset the trade deficit caused by British demand for Chinese goods, particularly tea and silk. While the mission famously failed in these aims, the visual and textual descriptions of the expedition brought back new knowledge of Chinese people and customs.