About six months ago I received an email from Jamie Carstairs, a Digitisation Assistant at the University of Bristol. The subject header was ‘Rare historical photos cast light on life in China’. Further enquiry revealed that the images in question are a remarkable collection of photographs of China in the late 19th and early 20th century brought together by researchers from the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Bristol, as part of their ongoing ‘Historical Photographs of China’ project.

The photographs were about to go on display at the Brunei Gallery at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London and I thought they would make an interesting article for IIAS Newsletter. I contacted Jamie and the head of the project Professor Robert Bickers, who reacted with enthusiasm and within no time I received a CD containing all the photos.

I spent a very enjoyable afternoon poring over the simply stunning photographs of life in China before 1950. Photographs in the possession of families or descendants of Chinese and British men and women who lived there.

Robert Bickers describes how, “lodged away in attics and cupboards, these images include snapshots of expatriate social life, scenes of everyday Chinese life, and records of momentous political events”. They form a unique virtual archive for China. I wanted to be able to share a selection of these fascinating photographs with readers, and so the idea of a supplement to the Newsletter was born.

‘Picturing China 1870-1950’ at the Brunei Gallery, (16 October – 15 December 2007) received almost 10,000 visitors and the exhibition has now moved to the Museum of East Asian Art in Bath, UK where it will be until the 13th April. It then moves to the Oriental Museum at Durham University, UK from 25th April to 30th August.

I hope that this supplement, which along with the current edition of IIAS Newsletter will be available at the exhibitions in Bath and Durham, will not only be a useful keepsake for visitors to ‘Picturing China’, but an opportunity for those of you unable to get to the UK this summer to see some of these wonderful photographs too.

The images cover a wide range of topics including everyday life, fashion, industrialisation, crime and punishment, foreigners in China and the Chinese abroad. They provide glimpses of the lost Chinese past and telling evidence of the complex intimacy of British relations with China before 1950. My thanks to Jamie Carstairs for sending me an email one day last summer, to Oliver Moore and Catherine Ladds for their articles and to Robert Bickers for all his efforts and working with me to make this supplement possible.

Anna Yeadell
IIAS Editor
The project team at Bristol University would be interested to hear from owners of similar photographs.

Visit Picturing China: 1870-1950 Download Page

Picturing China 1870-1950, 12 pages, a supplement to IIAS Newsletter 46, February 2008

Contents:
Picturing China, Acknowledgements 2
Smiling through the 1920s:
Two private collections of Chinese photographs 3-5
A Customs officer in the treaty port world:
R.F.C. Hedgeland’s photographs 6-8
Historical views and histories of viewing 9-11
Historical photographs of China: the collections 12

About the IIAS Newsletter:

The International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) publishes the IIAS Newsletter four times a year. With a worldwide circulation of 24,000 institutes and individuals in Europe, North America, Australia, and Asia, the IIASN is a forum for scholars to share commentary and opinion; short research essays; book, journal and website reviews; artwork and fiction; and announcements of events, projects and conferences with colleagues in academia and beyond.

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About IIAS:

The International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) is a postdoctoral research centre based in Leiden and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Its objective is to encourage the interdisciplinary and comparative study of Asia and promote national and international cooperation. The institute focuses on the human and social sciences and on their interaction with other sciences.

IIAS acts as an international mediator, bringing various parties together. In keeping with the Dutch tradition of transferring goods and ideas, the IIAS works as a clearinghouse of knowledge and information. This entails activities such as providing information services, constructing international networks, and setting up international cooperative projects and research programmes. In this way, IIAS functions as a window on Europe for non-European scholars and contributes to the cultural rapprochement between Asia and Europe.

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