Featured Collections
Our collections vary in size, and many complement each other forming a wider body of materials. This page highlights some particular strengths. There are the extensive and distinctive portfolios of work created by diplomat and politician Fu Bingchang (傅秉 常 1895-1965) and by George Warren Swire (1883-1949). Then there are two sets of materials that came from contacts with the descendants of men who served in the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, and in the Shanghai Municipal Police. These certainly include many photographs of police or Customs Service work, but you will also find many other subjects, for these are also simply photographs taken in China by policemen, or by Customs staff. We also secured permission from the National Archives of the United Kingdom to digitize albums of photographs held there. Those albums largely came originally from the former libraries of the Colonial Office and Foreign Office, but also include material that had no official provenance. Three digitized collections held by Harvard-Yenching Library have also been added, as well as a page bringing together our diverse set of materials from Missionaries and Missionary Societies. Another featured collection, ‘British army in China’, gathers together regimental and other collections relating to the British military presence in China, 1860s to the second World War.
British army in China
Photographs from regimental and other collections relating to the British military presence in China, 1850s to the Second World War.
Vacher-Hilditch Collection
Very early photographs of Shanghai, and portraits of prominent people of the late 1850s, by gifted amateur photographers including William Vacher, Robert Sillar and William Jocelyn.
Missionary collections
This strand of material in the site showcases the photographs that have come to us from the families of British and North American missionaries and the societies that employed them.
Harvard-Yenching Library collections
Three collections from the Harvard-Yenching Library: The Edward Bangs Drew Collection, The Hedda Morrison Collection and The Rev. Claude L. Pickens, Jr. Collection.
Chinese Maritime Customs collections
This part of the site contains photographs relating to the life and work of members of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service (until 1912, the Imperial Maritime Customs Service).
The National Archives Collection
The National Archives in London hold a rich set of photograph albums documenting north China during the Boxer war, as well as Colonial Office activity in China.
G. Warren Swire Collection
Nearly two thousand images in the G. Warren Swire Collection, digitised mostly from celluloid negatives, in thirty-two annotated negative albums.
Fu Bingchang Collection
Fu Bingchang (Foo Ping-sheung, 1895-1965) was a diplomat and Nationalist politician, as well as an accomplished amateur portrait and landscape photographer.