Xi Jinping in his third term as party leader, massive covid protests, the recent death of Jiang Zemin… so much happening in China – and I make a ”Christmas calendar” about old books? Well, why not? Every day at work I walk past our department collection of China related books, and there are so many intriguing objects there. Physical books are today too often seen as only taking up space, gathering dust and so on, but only in our small collection at the Department of Languages and Literatures in Gothenburg you can find many both valuable and fascinating volumes. I have randomly chosen 24 books to present here until Christmas, just for fun.
Today, 1 December 2022, I have chosen Robert Montgomery Martin’s (1801-1868) China, Political, Commercial, and Social in two volumes, first edition from 1847. Martin was born in Dublin and in his twenties travelled to Ceylon, South Africa, and Madagascar, and also stayed over a year in Australia. Back in England he became a writer, taking an interest in colonial affairs, and was a founding member of The Royal Statistical Society in 1834. The same year Martin published the major work The History of the British Colonies in five volumes, in 1837 expanded to ten volumes. In 1844 he was appointed as the first Colonial Treasurer 庫務司 of Hong Kong. He resigned already in 1845 after a conflict with the governor Sir John Francis Davis about opium revenues, and returned to England. In today’s book China, Political, Commercial, and Social there is a section on opium that was also published separately. Apparently Martin in his reports as Colonial Treasurer argued that Hong Kong as a colony was ”doomed to failure”.
Martin is not very well-known today, but the maps from these two volumes sometimes appear on the market, and the complete book in good condition is quite sought after. The full text of the two volumes is available online.