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Recent Posts
- Guest blog: Andrew Hillier on Armistice Day and its Aftermath in Treaty Port China
- Guest blog: Kaori Abe on the Abe Naoko Collection –– a glimpse of a Japanese family’s life in Shanghai, c.1927-c.1934
- Guest blog: Ghassan Moazzin on Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China
- Guest blog: Helena Lopes on A connected place: Macau in the Second World War
- Andrew Hillier on Bessie Pirkis: A Renaissance Woman in Peking Part 2
- Guest blog: Rachel Meller on Uncovering the story of Shanghai’s Second World War Jewish refugees
- 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
Categories
Author Archives: Andrew Hillier
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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In and outside the combat zone: The Regimental Museums Project (1)
In the first of two blogs, Dr Andrew Hillier introduces a new Historical Photographs of China initiative – the Regimental Museums Project – which he is coordinating, and which will draw on photographs in regimental and national collections, to explore … Continue reading
Posted in About us, Collections, History of photography in China, Regimental Collections
Tagged Archives, army, Beato, China Campaigns Project, Heritage, military, museums, Royal Engineers, war
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‘A Darkly Mysterious Instrument’: Through China with John Thomson
Dr Andrew Hillier discusses the China photographs of John Thomson (1837-1921) in the light of a recent exhibition of his work at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS. One of two hundred images published in John Thomson’s Illustrations of China and its … Continue reading
Posted in Exhibition, Guest blogs, History of photography in China, Photographers
Tagged exhibition, SOAS, Thomson
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‘With a Camera in Yunnan’: the Ethnographic Expeditions of Fred W. Carey, RGS #2
PART 2 – COLLECTING AND DISPLAY In this second blog, Dr Andrew Hillier explores how the International Exhibition in Paris (1900) provided this young Customs man with the opportunity to collect local costumes in Yunnan but how their acquisition and … Continue reading
Posted in Collections, Guest blogs, Photographers
Tagged Carey, Chinese Maritime Customs Service, customs, ethnography, Royal Geographical Society, Semao, Shan, Szemao, Yunnan
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‘With a Camera in Yunnan’: the Ethnographic Expeditions of Frederic W. Carey, RGS #1
Drawing on a collection of photographs taken in Yunnan at the turn of the twentieth century, in this, the first of two blogs, Dr Andrew Hillier discusses what these images tell us about ‘the imperial gaze’ and the mind-set of … Continue reading
Posted in Collections, Guest blogs, Photographers
Tagged Carey, Chinese Maritime Customs Service, customs, ethnography, Royal Geographical Society, Semao, Shan, Szemao, Yunnan
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Regimental Cartes de Visite
Following the copying of the Royal Hampshire Museum’s collection of China- related photographs by the Historical Photographs of China project, Dr Andrew Hillier shows how these can reveal the personal aspects of a regiment on campaign in empire. First … Continue reading
Posted in New Collections, Regimental Collections, Uncategorized
Tagged army, Heritage, museums, Second Opium War, Taiping Rebellion
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Andrew Hillier on Images of War and Regimental Memory
Following a recent visit to the Royal Hampshire Regiment Museum in Winchester, Dr Andrew Hillier discusses the rich resources that are available in such museums and their importance to the study of imperial history. There are well over one hundred … Continue reading
Posted in Guest blogs, Photograph of the day, Regimental Collections
Tagged battle, Felice Beato, Heritage, Opium War, war
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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
Posted in cross-searching, Family photography, Guest blogs, History of photography in China
Tagged Beijing, Consular Service, Legation, Peking
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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
Posted in Collections, Family photography, Guest blogs, Photograph of the day
Tagged Beijing, cemeteries, Chinese Maritime Customs Service, Consular Service, family history, Hillier, Hongkong Shanghai Bank, Shanghai
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