Note 27 — Relation of the Insurrection of the Chinese

The statement in this sentence is not very clearly expressed; but the apparent meaning is that the Chinese commander was not officially entitled to the designation of “mandarin,” which had been conferred upon him by the insurgents without due right to make such appointment. S. Wells Williams says (Middle Kingdom, i, p. 326): “The word mandarin, derived from the Portuguese mandar, to command, and indiscriminately applied by foreigners to every grade from a premier to a tide-waiter; it is not needed in English as a general term for officers, and ought to be disused, moreover, from its tendency to convey the impression that they are in some way unlike their compeers elsewhere.” See his account of the Chinese government, general, provincial, and local, and the classes of the Chinese people (pp. 322–352); also Winterbotham’s description of the “mandarins of arms,” or military officers, in his Chinese Empire, ii, pp. 8–10. Cf. note on civil mandarins, in VOL. XIX of this series, p. 44.