Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Editors’ Preface
- Acknowledgments / Use of Names
- List of Illustrations
- List of Abbreviations
- Hillier Family Tree
- Medhurst Family Tree
- Map of Principal Locations of the Hillier & Medhurst Families, 1817–1927
- Map of the Chinese Railway network, 1909
- Introduction: Family, China and the British World
- Part 1 1817–1860
- Part 2 1857–1927
- Time-line
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 2 - Opening the Treaty Ports
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 April 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Editors’ Preface
- Acknowledgments / Use of Names
- List of Illustrations
- List of Abbreviations
- Hillier Family Tree
- Medhurst Family Tree
- Map of Principal Locations of the Hillier & Medhurst Families, 1817–1927
- Map of the Chinese Railway network, 1909
- Introduction: Family, China and the British World
- Part 1 1817–1860
- Part 2 1857–1927
- Time-line
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
THE HEROIC PERIOD
‘TWENTY-ONE YEARS AGO’, wrote Consul Walter Medhurst in 1864, ‘a small iron steamer started early one cold dull November morning from the landing place at Ting-hae, the small capital of Zhousan with half a-dozen passengers on board’. Passing Wusong, ‘where thousands of curious wondering Chinese rushed out to gaze at her, the small contemptible craft’ made its way up the Huangpu river and anchored alongside the walled city of Shanghai at sunset on 8 November 1843. The following morning, the party disembarked and HM Consul, Captain George Balfour, presented his credentials to the Chinese authorities.
Thus, the first tentative steps were taken to establish the treaty port of Shanghai. Accompanying Balfour as his consular interpreter, Medhurst, junior, would have a major role to play during his three years in the Settlement. And, although his father had turned down the offer of an official position, he would also become one of the most prominent members of the fledgling community. This was, in Jurgen Osterhammel's words, ‘the ‘heroic period’ of the Consular Service, in which its officials acted as ‘empire-builders, establishing a British presence in adventurous conditions and in the face of an often hostile Chinese environment’.
Although very different and seldom mentioned in the histories of Shanghai, the early missionary presence was equally ‘heroic’. Established after some opposition on the outskirts of the Settlement, its chapel, hospital and printing press would become an important bridge between the two communities, particularly with the exponential increase in the Chinese population in the 1850s as they fled from the Taiping rebels. Focussing on the Medhursts’ experiences, this chapter examines the way in which the consulate and the mission station combined to establish the British presence in Shanghai, how this in turn shaped Medhurst junior's approach to his consular career and how these experiences were shot through with the ambiguities that would mark the British presence.
Despite the eagerness to open China, little had been done to lay the ground for the newly-appointed consuls, who were left to find their own way and adjust to whatever conditions they encountered.
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- Mediating EmpireAn English Family in China, 1817-1927, pp. 29 - 53Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020