Tag Archives: Consular Service

Guest blog: Andrew Hillier on Armistice Day and its Aftermath in Treaty Port China

As we approach the 105th anniversary of Armistice Day, Andrew Hillier considers the significance of the ceremony in treaty port China and for Chinese people today. Held at the Cenotaph in Victoria Park, Tianjin (Tientsin), the Armistice Day parade was … Continue reading

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Andrew Hillier on Bessie Pirkis: A Renaissance Woman in Peking Part 2

Concluding his overview of the recently digitised Pirkis Collection, Dr Andrew Hillier digs further into these 400 cartes de visite to consider what the collection tells us about the legation world and the European presence in Peking more generally during … Continue reading

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Andrew Hillier on Bessie Pirkis: A Renaissance Woman in Peking

A recent approach to HPC revealed a treasure trove of material relating to life in the British Legation, Peking, in the 1870s and early 1880s, but, as Dr Andrew Hillier explains, making sense of the photographs can be a challenge.  … Continue reading

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‘Normal’ Lives Led in Abnormal Conditions

Dr Andrew Hillier shows how a recently- discovered collection of photographs shines a spotlight on the importance of family in treaty port China in the early twentieth century. On 12 April 1899, Edith Sarah Sharples and Walter James Clennell were … Continue reading

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A disturbing intimacy: The Private Papers of C. C. A. Kirke

Andrew Hillier discusses a diary, a photograph album and a memoir which, between them, provide a fascinating insight into consular life as well as showing how such materials can be used for exploring histories of intimacy and the emotions. The … Continue reading

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Guest blog: Melanie King on Harold Ivan Harding

Our latest guest appearance is from author and historian Melanie King. While researching her latest book, The Lady is a Spy: The Tangled Lives of Stan Harding and Marguerite Harrison she found H.I. Harding, the brother of one of her subjects … Continue reading

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The Kodak comes to Peking

Dr Andrew Hillier has been looking at the unpublished letters of a British Student Interpreter, later Consul, Walter Clennell. The correspondence highlights the importance of photography to Legation life in Beijing in the late 1880s. Andrew recently completed his PhD at the University … Continue reading

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Andrew Hillier reflects on Three Brothers in China: Visualising Family in Empire

Having just completed his PhD at Bristol, ‘Three Brothers in China: A Study of Family in Empire’, Andrew Hillier is now working on developing it  into a book. On 12 May 1846, Eliza Medhurst set off by boat from her family … Continue reading

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