Editing Hugh Trevor-Roper (section)

===Backhouse frauds===
In 1973, Trevor-Roper was invited to visit Switzerland to examine a manuscript entitled ''Décadence Mandchoue'' written by the [[Sinology|sinologist]] [[Sir Edmund Backhouse, 2nd Baronet|Sir Edmund Backhouse]] (1873–1944) in a mixture of English, French, Latin and Chinese that had been in the custody of Reinhard Hoeppli, a Swiss diplomat who was the Swiss consul in Beijing during World War II. Hoeppli, given ''Décadence Mandchoue'' in 1943 by his friend Backhouse, had been unable to publish it owing to its sexually explicit content. But by 1973 looser censorship and the rise of the [[gay rights movement]] meant a publisher was willing to release ''Décadence Mandchoue'' to the market. However, before doing so they wanted Trevor-Roper, who as a former MI6 officer was an expert on clandestine affairs, to examine some of the more outlandish claims contained in the text.

For an example, Backhouse claimed in ''Décadence Mandchoue'' that the wives and daughters of British diplomats in Beijing had trained their dogs and tamed foxes to perform [[cunnilingus]] on them, which the fascistic Backhouse used as evidence of British "decadence", which explained why he was supporting Germany and Japan in the Second World War. Trevor-Roper regarded ''Décadence Mandchoue'' with considerable distaste calling the manuscript "pornographic" and "obscene" as Backhouse related in graphic detail sexual encounters he claimed to have had with the French poet [[Paul Verlaine]], the Irish playwright [[Oscar Wilde]], Wilde's lover [[Lord Alfred Douglas]], the French poet [[Arthur Rimbaud]], the Russian ballet dancer [[Vaslav Nijinsky]], the British Prime Minister [[Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery|Lord Rosebery]] and the [[Empress Dowager Cixi]] of China whom the openly gay Backhouse had maintained had forced herself on him.<ref name="Trevor-Roper, Hugh pages 295">Trevor-Roper, Hugh ''[[The Hermit of Peking]]'', New York: Alfred Knopf, 1976 pp. 295–96.</ref>

Backhouse also claimed to have been the friend of the Russian novelist [[Leo Tolstoy]] and the French actress [[Sarah Bernhardt]]. For the next two years, Trevor-Roper went on an odyssey that took him all over Britain, France, Switzerland, the United States, Canada and China as he sought to unravel the mystery of just who the elusive Backhouse was. Backhouse had between 1898 and his death in 1944 worked as a sinologist, the business agent for several British and American companies in China, a British spy, gun-runner and translator before ending his days in World War II China as a fascist and a Japanese collaborator who wished fervently for an Axis victory which would destroy Great Britain.<ref name="Trevor-Roper, Hugh pages 295"/> Trevor-Roper noted that despite Backhouse's homosexuality and Nazi Germany's policy of persecuting homosexuals, Backhouse's intense hatred of his own country together with his sadistic-masochistic sexual needs meant that Backhouse longed to be "ravished and possessed by the brutal, but still perverted masculinity of the fascist {{lang|de|Führerprinzip}}".<ref>Trevor-Roper, Hugh, ''[[The Hermit of Peking]]'', New York: Alfred Knopf, 1976, p. 295.</ref>

The result was one of Trevor-Roper's most successful later books, his 1976 biography of Backhouse, originally entitled ''A Hidden Life'' but soon republished in Britain and the US as ''The Hermit of Peking''. Backhouse had long been regarded as a world's leading expert on China. In his biography, Trevor-Roper exposed the vast majority of Sir Edmund's life-story and virtually all of his scholarship as a fraud. In ''Décadence Mandchoue'', Backhouse spoke of his efforts to raise money to pay the defence lawyers for Wilde while he was an undergraduate at Oxford.<ref name="Trevor-Roper, Hugh 1976, page 268">Trevor-Roper, Hugh, ''[[The Hermit of Peking]]'', New York: Alfred Knopf, 1976, p. 268.</ref>

Trevor-Roper established that while Backhouse raised money for the Wilde defence fund, he spent it all on buying expensive jewellery, especially pearl necklaces, which were a special passion of Backhouse's. It was this embezzlement of the money Backhouse had raised for the Wilde defence fund that led to him fleeing Britain in 1895. The discrediting of Backhouse as a source led to much of China's history being re-written in the West. Backhouse had portrayed Prince [[Ronglu]] as a friend of the West and an enemy of the Boxers when the opposite was true.<ref name="Trevor-Roper, Hugh 1976, page 268"/>

Trevor-Roper noted that in the "diary" of Ching-Shan, which Backhouse claimed to have looted from Ching's house just before it was burned down by Indian troops in the [[Boxer Rebellion]], it has Prince Ronglu saying in French about the government's support of the Boxers: "It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder."<ref>{{langx|fr|italic=no|"C'est pire qu'un crime, c'est une faute." Commonly attributed to [[Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord|Talleyrand]], more likely spoken by [[Joseph Fouché|Fouché]]}}.</ref><ref name="Trevor-Roper, Hugh page 203">Trevor-Roper, Hugh, ''[[The Hermit of Peking]]'', New York: Alfred Knopf, 1976, p. 203.</ref> Trevor-Roper argued that it was extremely unlikely that Prince Ronglu – who only knew Manchu and Mandarin – would be quoting a well-known French expression, but noted that Backhouse was fluent in French.<ref name="Trevor-Roper, Hugh page 203"/>

Backhouse was fluent in [[Mandarin language|Mandarin]] and [[Cantonese language|Cantonese]], lived most of his life in Beijing and after moving to China had declined to wear western clothes, preferring instead the gown of a Chinese mandarin, which led most Westerners to assume that Backhouse "knew" China. Trevor-Roper noted that despite his superficial appearance of affection for the Chinese, much of what Backhouse wrote about on China worked subtly to confirm Western "[[Yellow Peril]]" stereotypes, as Backhouse variously depicted the Chinese as pathologically dishonest, sexually perverted, morally corrupt and generally devious and treacherous – in short, Chinese civilization for Backhouse was a deeply sick civilization.<ref name="Trevor-Roper, Hugh page 203"/>

Derek Sandhaus, however, notes that Trevor-Roper did not consult specialists in Chinese affairs, and seems to have read only enough of the text to have been disgusted by its homosexuality.<ref name=BackhouseIntro_xv>Backhouse; Sandhaus, ed., ''{{lang|fr|Décadence Mandchoue}}'', 2011, Introduction, xv–xxiv.</ref> While conceding that Backhouse fabricated or imagined many of the purported assignations, others Sandhaus independently confirmed or found plausible, reasoning that Backhouse spoke Chinese, Manchu, and Mongolian (the languages of the imperial household), and that his account of the atmosphere and customs of the Empress Dowager's court may be more reliable than Trevor-Roper allowed.<ref name=BackhouseIntro_xv/><ref>{{cite news | author = Ewing, Kent | date = June 18, 2011 | format = book review | title = Pomp and Porn During the Qing Dynasty—Decadence Mandchoue by Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse | work = [[Asia TImes]] (atimes.com) | url = http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/MF18Ad01.html | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110619200054/http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/MF18Ad01.html | archive-date = 2011-06-19 | access-date = 2025-01-08 }}</ref>