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.