The Corporal and the Celestials: In North China with the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, 1909-1912
Description
Some of the most creative of human expression has originated in the collision of cultures. So it is with this extraordinary archive. The Corporal and the Celestials publishes for the first time a truly absorbing collection of photographs of China in the early years of the twentieth century, taken by a young corporal of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, James Hutchinson, when stationed there from 1909. His battalion was guarding the British Legation in Peking and Concession in Tientsin in the wake of the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, which had seen the massacre of civilian and military personnel of the foreign powers and of Christian Chinese.
Despite the alien and volatile setting, Hutchinson, born in Co. Laois, was fascinated by the ancient civilisation of 'the Celestials' and its dawning modernisation. He not only photographed it but, incredibly, developed his prints and lantern slides without benefit of darkroom: 140 of the best are here reproduced, including 18 of those he hand-coloured. It is by any standards a remarkable portrayal of a civilisation to which few westerners had had access.
Wounded later at Gallipoli, Hutchinson re-settled with his family in Northern Ireland in the 1920s, where he gave talks on his experiences. These commentaries, together with his photographs of the great monuments and the people of China and of his comrades-in-arms, make for a very personal, uniquely Irish and visually stunning record of a transient moment when the paths of two great empires, the British and the Chinese, collided.
Contents
Foreword by Keith Jeffery vii
Preface by Bill Jackson ix
Historical introduction by Michael Bosworth xiii
Prelude 1
Crete 2
Malta 4
- Voyage
From Malta to China, September to November 1909 9
Suez Canal 10
The Red Sea 12
Indian ocean 15
Ceylon 17
The Straits of Malacca 18
Singapore 18
The China Seas 18
Hong Kong 20
The China Coast 23 - The Battalion in north china 27
Sports 32
An unusual route march 35 - Tientsin 37
The Concession 37
The Native City 42 - Peking 50
The City Walls 52
The Foreign Legations 55
The Tartar City 63
The Imperial City 69
The Forbidden City 70
The Temple of heaven 74
Ascending the throne 79
Other temples and sights of Peking 81 - Manners and customs of the Chinese 92
Government 97
Education 100
Pidgin English 106 - The great sights of China 109
The Imperial Summer Palace 109
The Peking to Kalgan Railway and the Great Wall o China 113
The Ming Tombs 119 - Eventful times 121
Summer Camp 122
Revolution 123
On detachment in Wei-Hai-Wei 130
Departure 138
Postscript 139
General index of English terms 142
Index of Chinese proper names 144