'History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme' - Mark Twain.
A gallimaufry of random China history and research interests
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
The Life and Times of Charles Henry Brewitt-Taylor
As someone who wrote a biography of a great China Hand (Carl Crow) I'm interested in who other biographers choose. Isidore Cyril Cannon's new book Public Success, Private Sorrow is a biography of Charles Henry Brewitt-Taylor (1857-1938) a veteran of the Boxers and the Siege of the Legations, a long serving China Customs Commissioner and a pioneering translator of Chinese texts into English.
Brewitt-Taylor had a distinguishedcareer in the Chinese customs service, an important institution that mediated China's relationship with the outside world. During the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 he was trapped inside the British Legation compound though survived the siege. But he was also a scholarly China Hand and undertook the first high-quality translation of the classic Chinese novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which made him an importantinterpreter of Chinese culture in the West.
Though these were the historical highlights of his life Cannon’s book is also fascinating in providing an insight into the experiences of those Britons who went abroadin the Victorian and Edwardian ages, particularly of course to China. Brewitt-Taylor was not just in large cities but often in remote outposts. He is also of interest to me in that he is a case study of the opportunities the Empire and foreign service gave to those of ordinary birth, or humble origins, to go East and make a career based on being smart and competent school without having to worry too much about all the what class are you?, where did you go to old boy? nonsense that the English upper classes revel in so drearily.
If you are in Shanghai this weekend you can hear Isidore Cyril Cannon speak on Brewitt-Taylor’s life and work and her book at the Shanghai International Literary Festival this Saturday morning:
Saturday, March 21
10am
M on the Bund
The Life and Times of Charles Henry Brewitt-Taylor
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As someone who divides their time pretty evenly writing about China now and China back then this seemed like a place to throw all the interesting bits that fall through the cracks somehow and never get used anywhere else.
It's basically the stuff that doesn't get used in my writing about modern China or in the books I do about old China - i.e. probably of little interest to anyone but me and therefore ideally suited to an obscure blog up a dark cul-de-sac of the Internet.
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Nevertheless his images regarding The far east alongBuy Diablo 3 Items with The japanese were one of the better taken on till the time period his or her best performance was during the Russo-Japanese Struggle inside 1905. Ponting became a wonderful wedding photographer recalled at this point pretty much only for the operate in Antarctica however he or she should beGW2 Cd key recalled intended for their Cina pics way too.
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