Letter from the President of the United States of America to the Emperor (1843)

In this letter, the president dispatched minister Caleb Cushing to negotiate with China to regulate Sino-American trade. Qi Ying (1787-1858), a high official in the Qing court, ordered his interpreter to translate this letter into Chinese, who further rewrote it to make it look like a biaowen, a genre of tributary discourse conforming to Sinocentric tribute discourse (Y. Wang, 2021, p. 174). The translated Chinese version is collected in Chouban yiwu shimo 筹办夷物始末 [A retrospect of undertaking the westernization affairs 1836-1875] (1964).