Ch’ing Period Manuscripts on China in the Duke University Library

85 CH'ING PERIOD MANUSCRIPTS ON CHINA IN THE DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Kenneth W. Berger The Manuscript Department, William R. Perkins Library Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27706 Telephone: (919) 684-3372 Contact Person: Ms. Ellen Gartrell, Assistant Curator for Readers' Services Hours of Operation: Weekdays, 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturdays, 9 a.m.-12:30 p.m. The collection traces its origins back to materials collected by the Trinity College Historical Society, founded in 1892. The collection had grown to over one million items by the late 1940s, and to close to five million by 1980. The main geographic focus of the collection is the United States, and especially the American South. A broad range of topics (history, business, economics, government, politics, slavery, labor, literature, etc.) and kinds of materials (letters, account books, diaries, journals, documents, photographs and other illustrations, newspaper clippings, brochures, maps, broadsides, etc.) are included. The international coverage of the collection is derived primarily through the papers of missionaries, diplomatic officials, military personnel and travelers, and from exten­ sive holdings on the British Empire. China is not a major area of collecting concern, but almost fifty collections among the department's holdings are related, at least in part, to China during the Ch'ing period. There are also a number of collections covering other parts of the Far East, especially Japan, but they will not be addressed in this paper. This 86 paper will illustrate the variety of materials available by the example of several representative collections. There are a number of collections of papers of diplomatic missions from the United States and Great Britain, mostly centering on the 1800s. A rather significant group of collec­ tions cover early British official contacts with China. The George Macartney, First Earl Macartney, Papers, 1779-1798, include coverage of the East India Company, missionaries, and the Macartney Embassy to China. The Henry Hayne collection contains the little known diaries Hayne wrote while he served as secretary to the Amherst Embassy (including an account of what was probably the first cricket match held in China). Serving as a bridge between the two embassies are the papers of Sir George Leonard Staunton and Sir George Thomas Staunton, 1743-1835, a collection of almost 500 items. Among the other diplomats' collections concerning China are the papers of Sir John Bowring, which include family letters discussing Bowring's career as a British diplomat in mid-nineteenth century China; the dispatch book of Sir Frederick William Adolphus Bruce, which includes some dispatches that are not available in the Foreign Office microfilm edition; the letters of Sir Edward Malet, covering his service in Peking in 1873; and the scrapbooks, 1888-1897, of Sir James George Scott, which include materials relating to British neutrality in the Sino-Japanese War. The papers of Julius Frederick Bandinel, an American consular official in late Ch'ing China, contain miscellaneous items relating to the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars, and to the Boxer Rebellion. 87 The department has acquired a number of collections of papers of missionaries, mostly American, who served in the Far East, which reflect their interest in a wide range of subjects relating to their host countries. Among the more interesting collections are the diaries of Martha Foster Crawford, which discuss the mid-nineteenth century China she and her husband knew as Baptist missionaries, including Shanghai during the Taiping Rebellion. The Crawford collection also contains a manuscript of a history of missions in China. The Baptist mission at Shanghai is also a topic of the Rufus Henry Jones Papers. The George Osborn Papers consists of one letter (1857) in which Osborn states protections for missionaries and their work that were wanted as part of the treaty with China; and the Tillinghast Family collection includes a discussion of sending Episcopal missionaries to China. Merchants' papers are another important resource for historians of the period. The papers of Richard Henry Gregory (1905-1910) discuss the British-American Tobacco company and provide his impressions and photographs of China and the Chinese. Tobacco trade with and in China is the focus of other collections as well. The James Augustus Thomas Papers, 1905-1941, consist of about thirty thousand...