Databases

Imperial China and The West, Part I, 1815-1881, digitized in two parts from the FO 17 series of British Foreign Office Files held at the UK National Archives, Part 1 of Imperial China and the West provides General Correspondence relating to China from 1815–1881. In this, the first of two parts, scholars will find material relating to the internal politics of China and Britain, their relationship, and the relationships between other Western powers keen to benefit from the growing trading ports of the Far East. The FO 17 series provides a vast and significant resource for researching every aspect of Anglo-Chinese relations during the nineteenth century, ranging from diplomacy and war, to trade, piracy, riots and rebellions within China, international law, treaty ports and informal empire, transnational emigration, and translation and cross-cultural communication.

From Lord Amherst’s mission at the start of the nineteenth century, through the trading monopoly of the Canton System, and the Opium Wars of 1839–1842 and 1856–1860, Britain and other foreign powers gradually gained commercial, legal, and territorial rights in China. These files provide correspondence from the Factories of Canton (modern Guangzhou) and from the missionaries and interpreters who entered China in the early nineteenth century, as well as from the envoys and missions sent to China from Britain and the later legation and consulates.

The hand-written documents of FO 17 have been opened up to scholars with the use of Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) technology, as well as item-level information drawn from the Foreign Office Indexes in series FO 605.

The database is also accessible via Gale Primary Sources.