Call for Papers: “China in Britain 1760-1860

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Call for Papers

China in Britain: 1760 to 1860

A conference organised by British Inter-university China Centre (BICC) and the Centre for Chinese Studies (CCS) and to be held at the University of Manchester 12-13 May 2016.

2016 marks the bicentenary of Lord Amherst’s embassy to China.  This episode of history seems to have been largely forgotten by historians of Britain and China, and has generated little scholarship.  But the embassy is important because the delegates saw – in their eyes – a different China to that which had been described before: “Dirt, squalidness, and extreme poverty were as usual their leading characteristics.  Their inhabitations were miserable beyond anything which England can exemplify … they looked more like the dens of beasts than the habitations of men” (Clarke Abel, 1819).  The British were changing their opinion about, and soon their policy towards, the Middle Kingdom.  Chinoiserie would soon lead to the “scramble for China”.  Although historians have studied “Britain in China”, they have largely ignored China in Britain after the heyday of eighteenth century Sinophilia, and before the darker turn in relations in the mid-nineteenth century.  Tea gave rise to and also saw the decline of the Honourable Company.  What is the social life of tea in the United Kingdom?  How did increasing dependence on the China trade and the ascend of the “private English” lead to a change in public opinion and ultimately policy?  What does this change tell us about British polity and society?  We welcome historians/scholars of Britain and China to a debate that addresses the following issues in an effort to promote Anglo-Chinese, some might say Sino-British, studies.

  1. Chinoiserie and allure of the Middle Kingdom in Britain
  2. China trade and its impact on British economy and society
  3. Changing public opinion about and policy towards China
  4. Individuals and institutions that emerged during the change

Inquiries and abstracts of no more than 150 words and 5 lines of biographical information should be sent to: sarah.coakley@manchester.ac.uk before 30 January 2016. Those accepted to present at the conference will be notified by 29 February.  Accommodation and food will be provided during the conference. There is a modest budget for travel but priority will be given to PhD students.

World Factory

World factory graphicWorld Factory is a new BICC-supported project that aims to explore the relationship between China and the UK – and the relationship of both countries to consumer capitalism, through the lens of the global textile industry. Textile production in 19th century Manchester provides the starting point for an exploratory process focussing on the rapid change underway in contemporary China. Professor Dagmar Shäfer at the University of Manchester is collaborating with METIS ARTS who are working with Shanghai-based Chinese theatre director Zhao Chuan and his company Grass Stage to undertake the research and development.

WORLD FACTORY – A CAFÉ CONVERSATION- Centre for Chinese Contemporary Arts, Manchester

Wednesday 25 February 2015 , 6.30 – 8.30 pm
Jasmine Suite

This informal evening offers an introduction to the World Factory project – an investigation of global consumer capitalism through the lens of the textile industry, from the heart of the industrial revolution in nineteenth-century Manchester to the world behind the ‘Made-in-China’ labels on our clothes today.

Four expert speakers with different perspectives on the global textile industry will discuss the relationship between production and consumption patterns in China today, and Manchester’s clothing and textile history, before opening up the conversation to the wider audience. There will also be a live demo of the digital World Factory shirt – with an opportuntity to trial our phone app to scan barcodes on the shirt – to reveal the people and processes behind how each shirt was made.

The speakers are to include Sara Li-Chou Han  researcher, designer and co-founder of Stitched Up collective

Amanda Langdown – Senior Lecturer, Fashion, Illustration with Animation at Manchester Metropolitan University with an interest in sustainable development

Tracey Cliffe – costume assistant, designer and organiser of a recycled fashion show at the Museum of Science and Industry

Lena Simic–  performance practitioner, co-organiser of the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home and Senior Lecturer in Drama at Liverpool Hope University

 

 

 

 

New Publications by BICC Researchers

Modern Asian Studies image - Jon

Two BICC researchers have just published important new work.

Jon Howlett, University of York, has had an article published in Modern Asian Studies‘The British boss is gone and will never return’: Communist takeovers of British companies in Shanghai (1949–1954)

 

Sam Geall book front coverSam Geall, Departmental Lecturer in Human Geography of China at Oxford and BICC funded student, has edited China and the Environment: The Green Revolution

Blurb: Sixteen of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China. A serious water pollution incident occurs once every two to three days. China’s breakneck growth causes great concern about its global environmental impacts, as others look to China as a source for possible future solutions to climate change. But how are Chinese people really coming to grips with environmental problems? This book provides access to otherwise unknown stories of environmental activism and forms the first real-life account of China and its environmental tensions.

Remembering Sir Robert Hart

BICC has been collaborating with Dr Weipin Tsai at Royal Holloway University of London, on her imaginative initiative to restore to public view the achievements of Sir Robert Hart, the Ulsterman who served from 1863-1911 as Inspector-General of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service. The first stage of this programme was completed on 22 February, when sixty guests assembled at All Saint’s Church in Bisham, near Marlow in Berkshire, for a ceremony to rededicate the gravestone of Sir Robert and Lady Hester Jane Hart.

hart4

Hart tombstone before restoration

The tombstone had been in danger of being removed, as it was in a decrepit state, but the team have had it professionally restored. On a freezing cold, but sunny morning, an audience of former diplomats, business figures, Chinese studies academics, several descendents of Customs staff, including descendents of Hart himself, and visitors from China, assembled for a simple rededication ceremony. The grave is but a few yards from the Thames, and there the Reverend Sara Fitzgerald led a service which included addresses on Hart’s spiritual life and motivations from Hans van de Ven, at Cambridge University, and on Hart’s contribution to Anglo-Chinese relations from Robert Bickers.

Sir Robert and Lady Hart's tombstone after restoration, February 2013

Sir Robert and Lady Hart’s tombstone after restoration, February 2013

Wreaths were then laid by Etain Alexander, great grand-daughter of Sir Robert, Deidre Wildy on behalf of his alma mater Queens’ University Belfast, Julie Shipley, Head of the Sir Robert Hart Memorial Primary School in Portadown, Dr Mary Tiffen, in memory of the Carrall family, and Weipin Tsai on behalf of The Royal Philatelic Society London, Taiwan Chapter; Chinese Taipei Philatelic Society; The China Stamp Society, Inc. Taiwan Chapter. (Hart was appointed to manage the new Imperial Chinese Post Office when it was established in 1896).

Waltham St Lawrence Silver Band, in All Saints' Church, Bisham

Waltham St Lawrence Silver Band, in All Saints’ Church, Bisham

In recognition of Hart’s place in the history of the European classical music’s reception in China — he organised and ran the first secular brass band in the country — the local Waltham St Lawrence Silver Band played a selection of pieces. These included some that are known to have been included in the programmes played by Hart’s own band in the gardens of his residence in Peking.

The ceremony was followed by a reception and presentations about Hart and his legacies, including his archive at Queens’ University Belfast Special Collections, and discussion of how the rich private archives of the British presence in China, not least its photographic records, can help furnish unique materials for understanding China’s modern history, its heritage, and social life and customs.

Hart joined the Customs in 1859, and 2013 marks the 150th anniversary of his formal appointment to the Inspector-Generalship. He was a Chinese civil servant, and never let the foreign nationals on his own staff forget this point, and he worked consistently to try and fashion structures and practices that would reduce the potential for tension between China and the foreign powers. He did not always succeed, but he undoubtedly had a significant impact on the course of events. Hart’s reputation has varied over the years. In Anglophone historical writing in the 1950s-60s he was presented as fairly central to any understanding of China’s interaction with foreign power, but thereafter new scholarly trends explored different fields and approaches and he largely fell out of sight. In China, until relatively recently, he was viewed simply as an agent of foreign, principally British, imperialism.

Attitudes in China today are more nuanced, and there has been a revival of scholarship internationally into the rich and varied history of the activities of Hart and his service. This event was part of a wider initiative, which will include a film, which aims to place Hart back into broader debates about British-Chinese relations, their history, contemporary features and their future. In particular, those state to state relations are at heart also relations between people, British and Chinese. In Hart, and the 22,000 foreign and Chinese staff of the Customs, and in the legacies of those careersdown to today, we have a rich field in which to explore how people shaped such abstractions as ‘Anglo-Chinese relations’.

The booklet accompany this commemorative event, Between Two Worlds: Commorating Sir Robert Hart, compiled by Weipin Tsai, can be found on the History of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service project website.