Fwd: "foreign, adj. and n." - Word of the Day from the OED :: "foreign devil"

[Victor Steinbok]

Foreign devil.

This one is going to be unequivocal--the sources are unimpeachable, the
content is on point and exactly 100 raw GB hits (actual only 54, with
some duplicates) antedate all OED quotations, including a bracketed one.
By 1830, published materials that contained the phrase had been
published in English in China (Macao), in London and in the US. The
earliest available in GB is 1805, with an entirely unrelated use of an
identical phrase from 1801 and 1814. [Another 125 raw hits, with some
duplicates, can be found with "foreign devils", most distinct from the
other batch.]

One GB reference appears in a dictionary (reprinted in several later
editions).

http://goo.gl/w8TQN
A Dictionary of the Chinese Language: in three parts, Volumes 1-2. By
Robert Morrison. Macao: 1819
p. 151
> Fan kwei | foreign devil; an opprobrious epithet applied by the people
> of Canton to Europeans.

But there is one earlier, and from the same author.

http://goo.gl/zwapr
A view of China for philological purposes: containing a sketch of
Chinese Chronology, Geography, Government, Religion & Customs. By Robert
Morrison. Macao: 1817
Conclusion. p. 125
> A Merchant will flatter a *foreign devil* (as they express it), when
> he has something to gain from him; then he cau be servile enough;
> particularly if he is not seen by his own countrymen; for the presence
> of a menial servant of his own nation, will make him more ou his guard
> in yielding his fancied superiority. Europeans are secluded from
> general intercourse with natives of different ranks; which affords
> great facilities to Merchants and native domestics to comhine and
> impose upou them, which they usually do.

This passage is reprinted as a direct quotation in W. W. Wood's Sketches
of China, published in Philadelphia in 1830, so there is a fairly early
American publication in the mix as well.

http://goo.gl/98PDD

Morrison is very important, in no small part because of his
dictionaries, but he's anticipated by John Barrow.

http://goo.gl/yU8TO
Travels in China: Containing Descriptions, Observations, and
Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at
the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey
Through the Country, from Pekin to Canton. By Sir John Barrow. 1st
American Edition. Philadelphia: 1805
Journey through the province of Canton. p. 401
> Hitherto the embassy had met with the greatest respect and civility
> from all classes of the natives, but now even the peasantry ran out of
> their houses, as we passed, and bawled after us Queitze-fan-quei,
> which, in their language, are opprobrious and contemptuous
> expressions, signifying *foreign devils, imps*; epithets that are
> bestowed by the enlightened Chinese on all foreigners. It was obvious
> that the haughty and insolent manner in which all Europeans residing
> at, or trading to, the port of Canton are treated, had extended itself
> to the northern frontier of the province, but it had not crossed the
> mountain Me-lin; the natives of Kiang-see being a quiet, civil, and
> inoffensive people.

Presumably, there is an English edition of the same work, but I could
not find it.

Two more.

http://goo.gl/5gMR5
Asiatic journal and monthly miscellany, Volume 27. April 1829
Asiatic Intelligence--China. Epithets applied to Foreigners. p. 516/2
> /Epithets applied to Foreigners/. --It is well known that, like the
> rest of mankind, the Chinese think very highly of themselves, and very
> meanly of others; and therefore it cannot be previously expected that
> they would use terms which are respectful. If they used words such
> /foreigner/, which indicates nothing contemptuous or unpleasant to the
> people who are not Chinese, they would stand perfectly acquitted of
> incivility. But every one knows that in ordinary speech they use to
> each other, and in the hearing of foreigners, the most contemptuous
> language; such as *foreign devil, red-bristled devil, black devil, a
> devil, flower-flagged devil, &c.* Even his most Christian Majesty's
> dollars they designate sometimes devil-faced money, and foreign
> languages they call the devil's talk. Not only the poor ignorant
> people, but the gentlemen merchants, the custom-house officers and
> magistrates, use such language, and occasionally write it to the
> parties concerned. In ancient times, as appears by the book of odes,
> foreign countries were called by the Chinese the devil's regions. "As
> the Greeks had such an high idea of the preeminence to which they were
> raised, they seem hardly to have acknowledged the rest of mankind to
> be of the same species with themselves;" so the Chinese, by their word
> Kwei, which they deal out so liberally, imply that foreigners are not
> of the same species; for in all these cases, they could use the simple
> word man, if they did not wish to be contemptuous. The Chinese are not
> at all peculiar in this. There are words in all languages intended to
> express disrespect for foreigners.--/Ibid. [Canton Reg.] May/ 24.

There are several duplicates in other publications that follow in the
next 16 months.

I wanted to include another early cite, with a similar description.
(Although there are quite a few others from 1818-29.)

http://goo.gl/bnSlX
Museum of foreign literature, science and art, Volume 24. May 1834
Free Trade to China. [Review of five publications from the Quarterly
Review] p. 528/2[footnote]
> Oh, but says Mr. Marjoribanks, there are people who maintain that, 'as
> we have for a long term of years been called /dogs/ at Constantinople,
> we may as well continue to be called /devils/ at Canton and
> Pekin.'--(p. 4.) He is here ngtiin at fault: /quei/ signifies spirits,
> or demons; and as they have both good and evil demons, it is probable
> enough that they may apply the latter to us; but who are they who make
> use of the expression */fan-quei/--foreign spirits--or devils*, if it
> so please the late chairman of the select committee? Not the viceroy
> of Canton, but the very rabble of that place: we doubt if the
> expression is even known at Pekin. A Chinese gentleman would never
> think of applying it in speaking or writing. In Canton, it is just as
> in a French sea-port town, where, though the decent part of the
> inhabitants sometimes greet an Englishman with /mi lord Anglais/, he
> may almost he sure of being styled by the rabble and boys /god-dam/.
> The Chinese call Irish linen /fan-quei-poo;/ but no one would think of
> rendering it /foreign-devil-diaper/.

[italics in original; bold emphasis added]
[The Quarterly Review January 1834 original is here:
http://goo.gl/FRD32  (p. 458)]

I am including full paragraphs because I find them useful and
fascinating, and trimming the context off is not really my problem. But
there is yet another interesting twist. I checked "diaper" in the OED
and you can guess which meaning is virtually completely missing, except
for an oblique reference to "a baby's napkin" (with the only quotation
from 1879).

> 2. A towel, napkin, or cloth of this material; a baby's napkin or ‘clout’.
> a1616    Shakespeare Taming of Shrew (1623) Induct. i. 55   Let one
> attend him with a siluer Bason Full of Rose-water, and bestrew'd with
> Flowers, Another beare the Ewer: the third a Diaper.
> 1837    H. Martineau Society in Amer. II. 245   Table and bed~linen,
> diapers, blankets.
> 1879    J. M. Duncan Clin. Lect. Dis. Women iii. 31   You cannot judge
> of these discharges when dried on a diaper.

The reference to "this fabric" is the the preceding lemma:

> 1. The name of a textile fabric; now, and since the 15th c., applied
> to a linen fabric (or an inferior fabric of ‘union’ or cotton) woven
> with a small and simple pattern, formed by the different directions of
> the thread, with the different reflexions of light from its surface,
> and consisting of lines crossing diamond-wise, with the spaces
> variously filled up by parallel lines, a central leaf or dot, etc.

Once again, I'll have to let someone else figure out what to do with
dirty diapers. But, back to "foreign devils". There is actually a
singular appearance /earlier/ and utterly unrelated to Chinese terminology.


http://goo.gl/51aox
The Columbian Union. By Simon Willard. Hudson [MA]: 1814 (self-published)
p. 128
> To these domestic actors, to these true Washington followers, we are
> dearly indebted for all that is dear. Whose benevolent wealth and
> valour remains our Heavenly aid, whose Columbian words of truth and
> wisdom, our beloved advocates; on these our councils, our brave
> officers and soldiers, our freedom rests; for so long as the
> commercial influence of the seafaring tyrant, rattles over our beads,
> the farmers union alone can conquer their intriguing vengeance;
> domestic policy must be studied for conquering the *foreign devil*, as
> the devil studies to destroy; every plan must be laid to overcome the
> dreadful rogue, the dreadful enemies of intriguing ruin, the great
> properties of America held in favor of British maritime vengeance,
> ought to cease, its influence so dreadful, why ought it to exist to
> the destruction of Columbian rights.
p. 199
> Thus a war of the people, against the luxurious tyranny of the sea, is
> necessary to the farmer, and unavoidable to the labouring mechanic,
> least both become staves to the unjust robbing speculation of
> seafairing advantages of the devil over them; by compelling those who
> would be wholesome farmers, to embark in the frivolous business making
> every kind of luxury, finery and curiosity, for great bug-bear devils
> to wallow in, on the labour of those, whose pursuit ought to be in
> that kind of manufacturing and agriculturing business, as will produce
> in every country, such staple articles of necessity, as is for the
> real good of man, that is to say, such as substantial clothing,
> dwellings, household utensils, provisions, and other things necessary
> to make man comfortable and happy, through life; otherwise the
> labourers, who are the sole author of all the things of life, both for
> the great and the small, are reduced and forced to subsist on the mere
> pittance of roasted potatoes, heads and pluck, and crumbs which fall
> from their master's table, and to wear such clothes, and sleep on
> sucli canopies, and dwell in sucli cottages as their lazy lords of
> nobility, may please to set aside as rubbage for then-slaves, which
> they had reduced to misery, for the want of swords and patriotism, in
> the field of independent mechanics and farmers, that when their- holy
> war requires, that the sin of human masters shall be expelled and
> conquered from its invading fury, the militia .of freemen, whose voice
> of an agricultural government of an injured people, should at once
> rouse from the entangled arms of rebellion, to obey their God of equal
> rights, to the good of their own production ; that a few *foreign
> devils* for vanity and nonsense, should not get all, and ourselves to
> be their commercial slaves; but the tories of New-England, must
> withhold the farmer's militia, that lords and masters of the seas, may
> sleep in their downy beds, and firesides forever ; idlers to be waited
> upon by those slaves, who might have been not only militia soldiers,
> but citizens equal to their masters, had they obeyed their God of
> battles, and thrown off their delusive yoke when it first begun to
> press ; but yet like the Kentuckians, the New-Englanders will rouse
> for freedom, as did their fathers.

Of course, here, "foreign devil" is meant "outside influence", not
"'devils' of foreign origin". In addition to the Columbian Union, there
is an 1801 publication.

http://goo.gl/XMFpu
Porcupine's Works; Containing Various Writings and Selections,
Exhibiting a Faithful Picture of the United States of America. Volume 2
[of 12]. By William Cobbett. London: May 1801
[Citing Benjamin Franklin commentary on the events of August 1795]. p. 325
> 1. Because your articles of exportation are, in great part,
> necessaries of life. This idea isoriginally of the populace, who look
> upon every barrel of provision shipped off' to the West Indies, or
> else where, as so much loss to themselves, and as a kind of alms to
> keep the *poor foreign devils* from starving : and, in return for this
> generosity on their part, they imagine they have the power to compel
> the beggars to do just what they please. From the populace it found
> its way into Congress, under the auspices of a member of that body who
> made it the ground work of his famous resolutions, intended to force
> Great Britain to yield you commercial advantages. No wonder, then,
> that it should now be taken up by Franklin, and all the opposers of
> the treaty.

Here, the meaning is just plain ironic, with "foreign" simply being an
addition to "poor devils", thus resulting in an odd construction that is
actually quite ordinary.


     VS-)

PS: Took me a while, but I also tracked down the letter by Charles
Majoribanks that's mentioned in the 1834 citation above.

http://goo.gl/wuaVl
Letter to the Right Hon. Charles Grant, President of the Board of
Controul, On the Present State of British Intercourse with China. By
Charles Marjoribanks. London: 1833
p. 10
> Conseequa was a person of respectable family and very amiable
> character. Unhappily he associated himself in trade with American
> merchants, from whom he received the most ungrateful return--their
> debts owing to him being upwards of half a million sterling. He was
> also most nefariously imposed upon by an Englishman, who came to China
> with a diploma as Austrian consul, in a frigate sent to China by that
> government. Conseequa was recommended to apply to the Court of Vienna
> for redress. He received in reply a snuff-box, with the Emperor of
> Austria's picture upon it, and a complimentary letter from Prince
> Metternich. The snuff-box he was afraid to exhibit, for fear of his
> being discovered by his jealous government in correspondence with a
> "foreign devil barbarian king."


-------- Original Message --------
OED Online Word of the Day
foreign, adj. and n.
  A. adj.
...
8.
  b. transf. Unfamiliar, strange.
1881 J. R. Illingworth Serm. Coll. Chapel 74    Such language may be a
little foreign, but the experience is universal.

  c. /foreign devil/ [tr. Chinese yang kuei-tzu (also, formerly, fan
kuei(-tzu), and other regional forms)]: a term of contempt for a
foreigner (esp. a European) in China; also transf.
[1842 China as it Was viii. 51    Be it remarked, that the term Fan-Qui,
signifying literally ‘barbarian wanderer’, or ‘outlandish demon’ is
applied invariably by the subjects of the ‘Celestial Empire’ to all
foreigners.]
1860 Englishman in China 237    All rush to their doors, and press to
see the ‘Fan Qui’, or foreign devils; though I must here add that but
once was that name applied to us, and really they were all of them most
civil.
1889 G. B. Shaw Fabian Ess. Socialism 174    A Frenchman or a Scotchman
was a natural enemy: a Muscovite was a foreign devil.
1926 A. Huxley Jesting Pilate iii. 248    The trees might just be
saying, ‘Foreign Devil, Foreign Devil’, and repeating it monotonously,
mile after mile.
  1937 E. Snow Red Star over China i. iv. 43    It was the perfect
setting for the blotting-out of a too inquisitive foreign devil.
  1965 P. Ordway Night of Reckoning (1967) ii. 39    Most of us foreign
devils [in Spain] found seasonal rentals a very necessary source of
additional income.
1969 V. G. Kiernan Lords of Human Kind v. 167    Against these new
barbarians China was building a new Great Wall, of hatred. Wherever they
went they were saluted with cries of ‘foreign devil’.

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