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Recent Posts
- Andrew Hillier on Bessie Pirkis: A Renaissance Woman in Peking
- Need and opportunity: the new HPC website
- Everything’s changed, but everything’s still the same: HPC update
- Location/Dislocation – Admiral Keppel, the Chinese Buddha at Sandringham and three key photographs
- The Forbidden City at War: Images of the Wartime Evacuation of the Imperial Art Collections
- A name, a photograph, and a history of global connections
- ‘Normal’ Lives Led in Abnormal Conditions
- Charles Frederick Moore’s photographs of the ruins of the European-style palaces (西洋楼) at the Yuanmingyuan (圆明园)
- Pieces of China in Bristol – cataloguing Historical Photographs of China material
- A disturbing intimacy: The Private Papers of C. C. A. Kirke
- Jamie Carstairs on Remembering John Thomson in Edinburgh
- Guest blog: Nadine Attewell on Refocusing the Gaze: Leisure, Power, and Women’s Work in Interwar Hong Kong
- HPC: A Change of Pace
- Guest blog: Claire Lowrie on ‘Travelling Servants and Moving Images: A Photographic History of Chinese Domestic Workers’
- Guest blog: The Cercle Sportif Français: Elite cosmopolitanism in Shanghai’s Former French Concession.
Categories
Author Archives: Andrew Hillier
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
Posted in Collections, Family photography, History of photography in China
Tagged British in China, Cartes des Visite, Chinese Maritime Customs Service, Consular Service, Legation, Robert Hart
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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
Posted in Family photography, New Collections
Tagged British in China, children, Consular Service, marriage
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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
Posted in Family photography
Tagged Consular Service, diaries, family albums, family history, women
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The Five Faces of Dr Walter Medhurst, D.D.
Andrew Hillier considers how five portraits of the London Missionary Society (LMS) missionary, Walter H. Medhurst (1796-1857), one of which can be found on HPC, made over the course of his career, were used to maintain connections and promote the … Continue reading
Posted in Family photography, Guest blogs, Photographers, Uncategorized
Tagged Medhurst, missionary, portrait, Sillar
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‘A Miniature World’: Photographs and Memories of Internment in China
Drawing on his own records and images from the Historical Photographs of China platform, Dr Andrew Hillier, author of Mediating Empire: An English family in China 1817-1927 (2020) has posted a number of blogs here and elsewhere about his family. In … Continue reading
Posted in Heritage
Tagged internment, Pacific War, Qingdao, Second World War, Weixian
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A Banker and his Amanuensis
Andrew Hillier draws on the Richard Family Collection in Historical Photographs of China to evoke the moving relationship between Guy Hillier and his young amanuensis, Ella Richard. Andrew’s book, Mediating Empire: An English Family in China, 1817-1927, is published this … Continue reading
Posted in Collections, Family photography, Guest blogs
Tagged Beijing, Hillier, Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, Richard family collection
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Weihaiwei and the 1st Chinese Regiment – 2. Peking and After
In the second of his two posts, Dr Andrew Hillier traces the history of the 1st Chinese Regiment, from its performance in the relief of Tianjin to its disbandment six years later. Despite its record at Tianjin, to the dismay … Continue reading
Posted in Collections, Guest blogs, Regimental Collections
Tagged army, China Campaigns, memorial, military, regiment, soldier, war, Weihai, Weihaiwei
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Weihaiwei and the 1st Chinese Regiment – 1. Relieving Tianjin
As part of the Regimental Museums Project, Dr Andrew Hillier explores photographs reflecting the short but significant contribution of the 1st Chinese Regiment to Britain’s military presence in China. Raised in 1898 to protect the Royal Navy’s newly-acquired deep-water base … Continue reading
Posted in Collections, Guest blogs, Regimental Collections
Tagged army, China Campaigns Project, military, soldier
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The Banker’s Bullet-Ridden Buick
Andrew Hillier explores the story behind a pair of striking photographs in our collection, and in his family’s history. The images of Guy Hillier’s bullet-ridden car would have been surprising to those who knew him only as the blind and … Continue reading
Posted in Collections
Tagged bank, car, Hillier, Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, Manchus, Puyi
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In and outside the combat zone: The Regimental Museums Project (2)
Dr Andrew Hillier completes his introduction to The Regimental Museums Project by discussing some of the more nuanced aspects of military photography and the importance of regimental archives. Aside from Felix Beato’s photographs of the Second Opium War, referred to … Continue reading
Posted in About us, Digitisation, Guest blogs, History of photography in China, Regimental Collections
Tagged Archives, army, military, museums, Royal Engineers, soldiers, war
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