A Belated Encounter
Perry Anderson retraces his father’s career in the Chinese Customs Service
The range of emotions parents can arouse in their children – affection, rebellion, indifference, fear, adulation, their disturbing combinations – suggests a repertory of subjective universals, cutting in each individual case at random across cultures. What children know – as opposed to feel – about their parents, on the other hand, is likely to be a function of objective constraints that vary more systematically: tradition, place, lifespan. Is there an unalterable core, of pudeur or incomprehension, even here? That is less clear. In the American tropics, for instance, gaps of scarcely more than a dozen years between generations, not uncommon, can create an easy sibling intimacy between mother and grown-up child, difficult to imagine in the North.
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Letters
Vol. 20 No. 17 · 3 September 1998
From Herman Reichenbach
At the risk of being condemned as a pedant, may I correct an error in Perry Anderson’s China essay (LRB, 30 July and 20 August), if only because it is one that is made again and again in articles and books on China. A note states that all names in the article and on the map, with the exception of Deng Xiaoping’s, are given in the Wade-Giles transliteration. Although true for most personal names, it is not true for a single name on the map, nor for place-names in general. For example, the Wade-Giles spelling for Peking would be ‘Pei-ching’, for Canton ‘Kuang-chou’, for Szechwan ‘Ssu-ch’uan’ and for Kwangsi ‘Kuang-hsi’. The spelling Anderson uses was indeed standard at the time, but the romanisation is the one developed for and used by the Chinese Post Office, which was, as Anderson correctly noted, an arm of the Chinese Maritime Customs until 1911, when the Service was transferred to the Chinese Ministry of Posts and Communications. (Spellings such as ‘Peking’ and ‘Canton’ were, of course, traditional even before the establishment of the Chinese Maritime Customs or the birth of Wade or Giles.)
Herman Reichenbach
Hamburg
From Andrew Hillier
Perry Anderson’s fascinating account of his father’s career in the Chinese Maritime Customs, coinciding as it does with the publication of Frances Wood’s No Dogs and Not Many Chinese: Treaty Port Life in China 1843-1943, shows what a resurgence of interest there is in this subject and what a wealth of material in terms of letters and diaries must exist in private ownership. So far as I am aware, there is no record of such papers and it seems a terrible waste that these sources are not better known. I have substantial material relating to my forebears, C.B. Hillier (Chief Magistrate, Hong Kong, 1846-56), his father-in-law W.H. Medhurst (one of the first LMS missionaries to the Far East, where he lived from 1816 to 1856), C.B.H.’s three sons, Sir Walter, a diplomat and sinologist, Guy, manager of the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank in Shanghai and Harry, Assistant Commissioner of Customs. May I suggest that some sort of registry is established to enable scholars and others to know where such papers may be found? I would be happy to hear from anyone interested in the idea.
Andrew Hillier
9 Rodenhurst Road,<br />London SW4 8AE
From Eleanor Fishman
I wonder what evidence Perry Anderson has for ‘the mass panic and exodus from the Bay Area’ after Pearl Harbor, which he says his parents ‘watched with astonishment’. As an undergraduate at the University of California at Berkeley at the time, I noticed no panic and exodus. Further more, I heard no such stories or rumours from an older cousin, a doctor who practised in San Francisco, but lived in the immediate area of Los Gatos, where the Anderson family settled. The only mass exodus from the Bay Area resulted from the decision of the Federal Government to remove forcibly all Japanese-Americans from the Pacific Coast; most of them were sent to internment camps. Some of our fellow students were Japanese-Americans, and were quickly removed from the campus.
Eleanor Fishman
London N5
Vol. 20 No. 19 · 1 October 1998
From Rosemary Seton
Andrew Hillier (Letters, 3 September) draws attention to the ‘wealth of material in terms of letters and diaries’ relating to East Asia in private ownership in the UK and enquires about ways of making these papers better known. During the Seventies Noel Matthews and Doreen Wainwright compiled A Guide to Manuscripts and Documents in the British Isles relating to the Far East, published in 1977. The School of Oriental and African Studies has, for some years now, been building up a large accumulation of private papers relating to China and is always interested in hearing from those looking for a suitable place to deposit such papers. The Library holds papers of a number of leading officers of the Chinese Maritime Customs service, including Sir Robert Hart and Sir Frederick Maze; of China consuls such as Sir Challoner Alabaster, Sir Alwyne Ogden and P.D. Coates; of business firms working in China (John Swire & Sons); of diplomats (Sir John Addis) and bankers (Sir Charles Addis). SOAS is particularly strong in the archives of British missionary societies, including the London Missionary Society which sent its first missionary (Robert Morrison) to China in 1807 and the China Inland Mission, founded by James Hudson Taylor (1832-1905). There are papers on schools founded by the British in China such as Chefoo School and Tientsin (Tianjin) Grammar School and a vast range of material relating to the introduction of Western medicine in China. These papers are available for consultation, in a purpose-built reading room, by all those who can demonstrate a serious need to use them. For further details consult our website, or contact the archivists.
Rosemary Seton
School of Oriental and African Studies,<br />Russell Square, London WC1
Vol. 20 No. 20 · 15 October 1998
From Dick Sargent
May I take the opportunity provided by Andrew Hillier’s letter (3 September) to remind, or inform, readers of the LRB that there already exists a National Register of Archives, maintained by this Commission. The NRA offers exactly the service which Mr Hillier suggests – namely, to direct scholars and other users of archives to relevant source material for British history. Last year more than 120,000 users accessed our website and we plan in the near-future to offer direct access to the NRA database via the World Wide Web. If any of your readers wish to trace sur viving archives, they are welcome to visit our search room, open Monday-Friday 9.30-5 p.m. Alternatively, they may write, fax (0171 831 3550) or e-mail (nra@hmc.gov.uk) their enquiries to us.
Dick Sargent
Director, National Register of Archives<br />Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts<br />London WC2A 1HP
