It is difficult to say that the image of Oriental markets is well-known to us. This paper intended to clarify the image by using the articles in Quarterly Review, Edinburgh Review, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Westminster Review.
For Victorians, China was the trading Eldorado of the East. China's value as a potential market was great. So, China was opened up by the Opium Wars. But, the export trade to China did not increase in such degree as Victorians expected. At the end of the 19th century, Britain was so far from having retained a free hand in China. She was confronted by formidable Europian rivals. They began to claim ''spheres of interest".
For Victorians, India was the Eldorado filled with the vast dormant wealth. And, they did not necesarily dwell on the general benefits of commerce with India. But, these expectations were not realized. In the 1880s, Victorians began to think more of how to retain their possetion of India than how to develop the immense resources of Indian Empire.
The image of Oriental markets in Victorian. Britain was very simple and vague. But, the image had power to excite Victorian's imagination about the East. And, the simplicity and vagueness of the Oriental image continued to influence the British imagination.