From Chinese kou tou meaning knock on the head. In traditional Chinese culture, it was necessary to display reverence to superiors, and lower ranked persons needed to bow deeply, or kowtow by prostrating themselves on the floor and touching the ground with their heads. In the Qing Period the standard procedure to greet a superior was to perform “three kneelings and nine prostrations.”
John Barrow was an extensive traveller in the 1800s, travelling to China and South Africa and as the most senior British civil servant for the navy promoted travel to the Arctic. Barrow Strait is named after him. In 1804 while a diplomat he China, he noted “the Chinese were determined they should be kept in the constant practice of the kowtow, or ceremony of genuflexion and prostration”.
To kowtow or not to kowtow became one of the thorny issues relating to China. The issue was the status of the kowtow. Was it respect or was it submission? This was an issue that was debated for some 50 years. The Dutch ambassador was willing to kowtow, the British ambassador only managed a salute.
But from a very early stage, kowtow was also used is a somewhat ironic sense. In 1826, Novelist and later Prime Minister Disraeli used the word quite casually in his novel Vivian Grey. Nowadays the word kowtow is also used to mean deferring to another person’s opinion. The nouveau riche Mrs Million arrives and is greeted by the marquess who “kowtowed like a first-rate mandarin”.
