Researching my Ph.D. thesis

Since John Snow is curious, I decided to do a blog post describing the research I did on my Ph.D. thesis twenty years ago.  It was on the treaty port of Chongqing in Sichuan, which was only opened in 1891.  And it was among the only treaty ports that hadn't been overrun by the Japanese when the system of extraterritoriality was ended in 1943.

The first thing I looked at was reports issued by the Imperial Maritime Customs, a department created by the Qing dynasty to handle the empire's foreign trade, including trade between treaty ports, which was mostly staffed by foreigners. (After the 1912 revolution it was just the Maritime Customs, and gradually got taken over by Chinese officials.) They issued five ten-year reports between 1891 and 1931, but also a long series of annual reports.

For me the summer of 1994 was the Summer of The North China Herald.  I spent the whole summer reading reports by that Shanghai-based English newspaper's Chongqing correspondents, on microfilm at the Robarts Library.  By the time I was finished, I had opera music going around in my head! (Wagner in particular, like "Elsa's Dream" and the Prize Song.)

Between May of 1995 and January of 1996 I was in London, staying at Goodenough College. (Lucky for me that my sister had stayed their the year before and put in a good word for me!) Most of my research was consular reports at the British government archives in Kew, which was quite a commute.  I also found some stuff at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies.

I often found interesting details in "throwaway" comments.  Like when they showed figures for passengers on the foreign ships sailing between treaty ports, they mentioned that some of the Chinese passengers were actually Japanese who passed themselves off as natives for the cheaper fare!

Some of the individual "characters" were interesting too.  Chongqing got "opened" as a treaty port, then opened to steamship trade, through the efforts of a merchant called Archibald Little, who wasn't so successful but did play the pioneer role.  His wife Alicia  was a travel writer, and one of the leaders of China's first anti-footbinding movement!