About the Collection

In the 1820s, British trade with China was monopolized by the East India Company, whose staff and agents based in Macao and Canton (now Guangzhou) conducted their business under the highly restrictive Canton System, which was designed to limit foreign influence in China. It was against this background that the Canton Register was established in Guangzhou in 1827, to fill commercial information gaps, marking the beginning of English journalism on the China coast. 

The signing of the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 and subsequent treaties forced China to cede Hong Kong as a British colony and open many other Chinese coastal and inland cities as treaty ports for trade with the West. Following the steps of British government representatives, merchants, and missionaries, English journalism found its way into Chinese cities such as Hong Kong, Shanghai, Weihai, Tianjin, Beijing, and Chengdu.

Most of the twenty-five selected English newspapers and periodicals featured in this collection were founded and managed by British interests. However, local Chinese entrepreneurs, elites, and political forces, including the Chinese nationalist and communist parties from the 1920s onward, also found their voices in the English-language media (e.g., The Voice of China and Peiping Chronicle).

As a whole, these newspapers and periodicals played an important part in all these Chinese cities between the 1820s and 1970s by presenting a diversity of opinion, voices, and commentaries within the foreign communities as well as the local Chinese society in relation to Western powers’ China policy, missionaries, local treaty-port governments, internal Chinese social and political developments, and economic prospects. 

Value of the Collection

• First of its kind: This is currently the only large digital collection of multiple rare historical English newspapers originally published in Hong Kong, Macao, and other Chinese cities.
• Interdisciplinary scope: An invaluable resource for scholars researching and teaching on British colonialism and semicolonialism, Chinese treaty ports, the history of modern China and its international relations, as well as the history of English journalism in China.
• Scholarly appeal: Meets the need for English-language sources that support wide-ranging topics on Asian societies, cultures, politics, and trade, as well as their interactions with the West—particularly within the twentieth century.
• Topics include: History of modern China; British empire, colonialism, and semicolonialism in Asia; treaty ports and informal empire; history of journalism.