Collaborative famine relief: Chinese and British responses to the North China Famine from Melbourne, Victoria

Abstract

The North China Famine of 1876–79 killed over 10 million people and generated a rise in non-governmental relief both nationally and overseas. This article examines the establishment of the China Famine Fund in Melbourne, Australia, which contributed to famine relief efforts in Shanghai. It demonstrates how the fund’s establishment followed lobbying by Chinese merchants in Melbourne and was made possible by pre-existing Chinese-European collaborative social and commercial networks. In highlighting the fund’s establishment, this article draws attention to the cultural influences of Chinese merchant philanthropy, the global mobilities of famine reportage, and philanthropy as a site for elite cultural encounter.

Keywords:

• Merchant philanthropy
• cultural encounter
• global history
• colonial Australia
• Overseas Chinese

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Beatrice Trefalt and Koji Hirata, my very patient supervisors, and to Sophie Loy-Wilson for her enthusiasm, encouragement, and expertise on Chinese-Australian history.

Disclosure statement

The author reports there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 ‘The Chinese Famine’, Kyneton Guardian, 22 May 1878, 2, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/233332176/25147279.

2 Ibid.

3 Minute book, 17 June–9 November 1878, China Famine Fund, Town Clerk’s Files, Series Two, Public Record Office Victoria (PROV), Melbourne, VPRS 3182.

4 Ibid.

5 China Famine Relief Fund, Shanghai Committee, The Great Famine: Report of the Committee of the China Famine Relief Fund (American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1879), 23.

6 ‘Tuesday, April 30, 1878’, The Argus, 30 April 1878, 5, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5930607/249518; ‘The Chinese Famine’, The Argus, 7 May 1878, 6, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5931472/249624.

7 Christina Twomey and Andrew J. May, ‘Australian Responses to the Indian Famine, 1876–78: Sympathy, Photography and the British Empire’, Australian Historical Studies 43, no. 2 (2012): 248.

8 Marilyn Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 15–45; John Fitzgerald, Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia (Sydney, NSW: University of New South Wales Press, 2007), 26.

9 Twomey and May, ‘Australian Responses’, 248.

10 Sophie Loy-Wilson, Australians in Shanghai: Race, Rights and Nation in Treaty Port China (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 5.

11 Bryna Goodman, ‘Networks of News: Power, Language and Transnational Dimensions of the Chinese Press, 1850–1949’, China Review 4, no. 1 (2004): 1–10; Elizabeth Sinn, ‘Emerging Media: Hong Kong and the Early Evolution of the Chinese Press’, Modern Asian Studies 36, no. 2 (2002): 421–65; Rudolf Wagner, ‘The Early Chinese Newspapers and the Chinese Public Sphere’, European Journal of East Asian Studies 1, no. 1 (2001): 1–33; Michael R. Godley, The Mandarin-Capitalists from Nanyang: Overseas Chinese Enterprise in the Modernization of China 1893–1911 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); John Fitzgerald and Mei-fen Kuo, ‘Diaspora Charity and Welfare Sovereignty in the Chinese Republic: Shanghai Charity Innovator William Yinson Lee (Li Yuanxin, 1884–1965)’, Twentieth-Century China 42, no. 1 (2017): 72–96; Tseen Khoo and Rodney Noonan, ‘Wartime Fundraising by Chinese Australian Communities’, Australian Historical Studies 42, no. 1 (2011): 92–110.

12 See other articles in this special issue.

13 China Famine Fund, Town Clerk’s Files, Series Two, Public Record Office Victoria (PROV), Melbourne, VPRS 3182.

14 Subscription letter from J.H. Hearn of Wandiligong, 9 July, Chinese Famine Fund, PROV, VPRS 3182.

15 Booklet and Chinese letter, Chinese Famine Fund, PROV, VPRS 3182.

16 All translations of these records have been made by the author who has Chinese-language skills. Translations were presented and workshopped with other scholars. The author accepts any and all inconsistencies or inaccuracies.

17 Peter Putnis, ‘Shipping the Latest News Across the Pacific in the 1870s: California’s News of the World’, American Journalism 30, no. 2 (2013): 235–59; Tehila Sasson, ‘From Empire to Humanity: The Russian Famine and the Imperial Origins of International Humanitarianism’, Journal of British Studies 55 (2016): 519–37; Elizabeth Sinn, ‘Practicing Charity (Xingshan 行善) across the Chinese Diaspora, 1850–1949’, in Chinese Diaspora Charity and the Cantonese Pacific, 1850–1949, ed. John Fitzgerald and Hon-ming Yip (Hong Kong University Press, 2020), 19–33; Twomey and May, ‘Australian Responses’, 238; Mei-Fen Kuo, Making Chinese Australia: Urban Elites, Newspapers and the Formation of Chinese-Australian Identity, 1892–1912 (Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2013), 87.

18 Zoë Laidlaw, Colonial Connections, 1815–45: Patronage, the Information Revolution and Colonial Government (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 29.

19 Joanna F. Handlin Smith, ‘Social Hierarchy and Merchant Philanthropy as Perceived in Several Late-Ming and Early-Qing Texts’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 41, no. 3 (1998): 418.

20 Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley, Tears from Iron: Cultural Responses to Famine in Nineteenth-Century China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 1.

21 Ibid, 114; Paul Richard Bohr, Famine in China and the Missionary: Timothy Richard as Relief Administrator and Advocate of National Reform 1876–1884 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 89; Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocaust: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (London: Verso, 2001), 76; Andrea Janku, ‘Sowing Happiness: Spiritual Competition in Famine Relief Activities in Late Nineteenth-Century China’, Minsu Quyi 143 (2004): 89–118; Liang Liu (刘亮), ‘American Society and the North China Famine in the 1870s: Information, Response, and Knowledge of China’, 古今农业 31 (2017): 68–77; Twomey and May, ‘Australian Responses’, 248.

22 Edgerton-Tarpley, Tears from Iron, 71–156; Yannan Li, ‘Red Cross Society in Imperial China, 1904–1912: A Historical Analysis’, VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations 27, no. 5 (2016): 2286; Ruth Rogaski, ‘Beyond Benevolence: A Confucian Women’s Shelter in Treaty-Port China’, Journal of Women’s History 8, no. 4 (1997): 54–90; Vivienne Shue, ‘The Quality of Mercy: Confucian Charity and the Mixed Metaphors of Modernity in Tianjin’, Modern China 32, no. 4 (2006): 411–52; Hu Zhu, ‘Jiangnan Gentry’s Responses to “The Great Famine in 1877-1878”: The Famine Relief in North Jiangsu’, Frontiers of History in China 3, no. 4 (2008): 612–37; Glen Peterson, ‘Overseas Chinese and Merchant Philanthropy in China: From Culturalism to Nationalism’, Journal of Overseas Chinese 1, no. 1 (2005): 87–109; Rudolf Wagner, ‘The Early Chinese Newspapers and the Chinese Public Sphere’, European Journal of East Asian Studies 1, no. 1 (2001): 1–33; Mary Backus Rankin, Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China: Zhejiang Province, 1865–1911 (Stanford: California University Press, 1986), 142–7; Pierre Fuller, ‘Changing Disaster Relief Regimes in China: An Analysis Using Four Famines between 1876 and 1962’, Disasters 39 (2015): 146–65.

23 Ian Welch, ‘Alien Son: The Life and Times of Cheok Hong Cheong (Zhang Zhuoxiong), 1851–1928’ (PhD thesis, Australian National University, 2004); Paul Macgregor, ‘Chinese Political Values in Colonial Victoria: Lowe Kong Meng and the Legacy of the July 1880 Election’, Journal of Chinese Overseas 9, no. 2 (2013): 135–75; Sinn, ‘Practicing Charity’, 24–6; Peterson, ‘From Culturalism to Nationalism’, 94.

24 Kong Hui Ong (王光輝), ‘Fundraising and Patriotism of Chinese Australian through Australian Chinese Newspapers (1894–1937)’ (MA thesis, National Taiwan Normal University, 2018); John Fitzgerald and Hon-ming Yip, Chinese Diaspora Charity and the Cantonese Pacific, 1850–1949 (Hong Kong University Press, 2020); Michael Williams, Returning Home with Glory: Chinese Villagers Around the Pacific, 1849 to 1949 (Hong Kong University Press, 2018); Gregor Benton and Hong Liu, Dear China: Emigrant Letters and Remittances, 1820–1980 (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018); Gregor Benton, Hong Liu, and Huimei Zhang, The Qiaopi Trade and Transnational Networks in the Chinese Diaspora (New York: Routledge, 2018); Khoo and Noonan, ‘Wartime Fundraising’, 106–10.

25 Fitzgerald and Kuo, ‘Diaspora Charity and Welfare Sovereignty’, 72–96.

26 Edgerton-Tarpley, Tears from Iron, 191; Bohr, Timothy Richards, 84–7; Rogaski, ‘Beyond Benevolence’, 82; Li, ‘Red Cross’, 2286.

27 Pauline Rule, ‘Chinese Engagement with the Australian Colonial Charity Model’, in Chinese Diaspora Charity and the Cantonese Pacific, 1850–1949, ed. John Fitzgerald and Hon-min Yip (Hong Kong University Press, 2020); Amanda Rasmussen, ‘Networks and Negotiations: Bendigo’s Chinese and the Easter Fair’, Journal of Australian Colonial History 6 (2004): 82–7; Elizabeth Sinn, ‘Practicing Charity’, 22–4; Khoo and Noonan, ‘Wartime Fundraising’, 95–9.

28 John Murphy, A Decent Provision: Australian Welfare Policy, 1870 to 1949 (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2011), 11–12; W.M. Jacob, Religious Vitality in Victorian London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 234–5.

29 Murphy, A Decent Provision, 29–53; R.A. Cage, Poverty Abounding, Charity Aplenty: The Charity Network in Colonial Victoria (Marrickville, NSW: Southwood Press Pty Limited, 1992), 135; G.F.R. Spenceley, ‘Charity Relief in Melbourne: The Early Years of the 1930s Depression’, Monash Papers in Economic History, no. 8 (1980): 4–5.

30 Murphy, A Decent Provision, 33.

31 Sinn, ‘Practicing Charity’, 23; Amanda Rasmussen, ‘Networks and Negotiations’, 79–92.

32 Murphy, A Decent Provision, 52.

33 Cage, Poverty Abound, 34.

34 Murphy, A Decent Provision, 52–3.

35 Jacob, Religious Vitality, 226–30.

36 B.J. Gleeson, ‘Public Space for Women: The Case of Charity in Colonial Melbourne’, Area 27, no. 3 (1999): 198.

37 John Watts, The Facts of the Cotton Famine (Hoboken: Taylor & Francis, 2013), 168.

38 Michael Williams, Returning Home with Glory, 66–119; Madeleine Y. Hsu, Dreaming of Gold: Transnationalism and Migration Between the United States and South China, 1882–1943 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 47–8.

39 ‘The Famine in China’, The Argus, 21 May 1878, 6, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5933173/249934.

40 Ibid.

41 China Famine Relief Fund collected by Kong Meng and C.H. Cheong, Chinese Famine Fund, PROV, VPRS 3182.

42 Chinese letter, 1878, Chinese Famine Fund, VPRS 3182.

43 ‘Law Report’, The Argus, 2 March 1877, 10, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5915219/247386.

44 Chinese letter, Chinese Famine Fund, PROV, VPRS 3182.

45 Sinn, ‘Practicing Charity’, 24.

46 Ibid., 24–25.

47 Ibid.; Peterson, ‘From Culturalism to Nationalism’, 92, 98.

48 Smith, ‘Social Hierarchy’, 421; Peterson, ‘From Culturalism to Nationalism’, 88.

49 Shue, ‘The Quality of Mercy’, 425–7; Edgerton-Tarpley, Tears from Iron, 133–4; Rogaski, ‘Beyond Benevolence’, 81.

50 Smith, ‘Social Hierarchy’, 418; Nanny Kim, ‘River Control, Merchant Philanthropy, and Environmental Change in Nineteenth-Century China’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 52, no. 4 (2009): 660–94.

51 Peterson, ‘From Culturalism to Nationalism’, 94.

52 Ching-huang Yen (颜清湟), Studies in Modern Overseas Chinese History (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1995), 165–66; Peterson, ‘From Culturalism to Nationalism’, 94.

53 ‘Tablet Bearing Inscription Shen Wei Pu You’, Multi-media historical and cultural heritage repository, Hong Kong Memory, accessed 9 July 2023, https://www.hkmemory.hk/MHK/collections/TWGHs/All_Items/images/202003/t20200306_94130.html?cf=classinfo&cp=%E7%89%8C%E5%8C%BE&ep=Tablets&path=/MHK/collections/TWGHs/All_Items/10266/10278/10281/index.html.

54 Kuo, Making Chinese Australia, 66–79.

55 Edgerton-Tarpley, Tears from Iron, 133–4.

56 Macgregor, ‘Chinese Political Values’, 120–2; ‘The Chinese in Victoria’, The Herald, 17 August 1863, 4, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/244289465/26563893.

57 Mount Alexander Mail, 14 April 1864, 2; The Argus, 17 September 1861, 8.

58 ‘The Chinese in Victoria’, The Herald, 17 August 1863, 4, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/244289465/26563893; ‘The News of the Day’, The Age, 24 December 1867, 4, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/185503431/18283474.

59 ‘Mr Lowe Kong Meng’, The Australian News for Home Readers, 20 September 1866, 4, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/63171144/6163430.

60 Paul MacGregor, ‘Lowe Kong Meng and the fluidity of nineteenth century geopolitical affinity’, in Colonialism, China and the Chinese, ed. Peter Monteath and Matthew Fitzpatrick (London: Routledge, 2019), 218–19.

61 Smith, ‘Social Hierarchy’, 421.

62 ‘Acclimatisation’, The Argus, 20 May 1861, 5, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5700340/203774.

63 Rule, ‘Chinese Engagement’, 138–53; Rasmussen, ‘Networks and Negotiations’, 82.

64 ‘Law Report’, The Argus, 2 March 1877, 10, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5915219/247386.

65 Ley Kum v Edward Wilson Lauchlan Makinson, 1877, Supreme Court of Victoria Civil Case Files, PROV, VPRS 267.

66 Joanna Handlin Smith, The Art of Doing Good: Charity in Late Ming China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 3–6.

67 Mei-fen Kuo, ‘Confucian Heritage, Public Narratives and Community Politics of Chinese Australians at the Beginning of the 20th Century’, in Chinese Australians: Politics, Engagement and Resistance, ed. Sophie Couchman and Kate Bagnall (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 137–73.

68 Lowe Kong Meng, Cheok Hong Cheong, and Louis Ah Muoy, eds., The Chinese Question in Australia 1878–79 (Melbourne: F. F. Bailliere, 1879), 10–30; Fitzgerald, Big White Lie, 111; Marilyn Lake, ‘The Chinese Empire Encounters the British Empire and Its “Colonial Dependencies”: Melbourne, 1887’, Journal of Chinese Overseas 9, no. 2 (2013): 178–80.

69 Rasmussen, ‘Networks and Negotiations’, 83; Rule, ‘Chinese Engagement’, 142–7.

70 Edgerton-Tarpley, Tears from Iron, 131–55.

71 See for instance, ‘Arrival of the English Mail. General Summary’, The Argus, 20 April 1878, 5, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5929494/249370.

72 Various subscription letters, China Famine Fund, PROV, VPRS 3182.

73 ‘Saturday, August 24, 1878’, The Argus, 24 August 1878, 7, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5945613/251444; Untitled, Weekly Times, 22 June 1878, 18, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/23353422; Jacob, Religious Vitality, 227–78.

74 Meeting minutes, 17 June–November 1878, China Famine Fund, PROV, VPRS 3182.

75 Sinn, ‘Emerging Media’, 432–3; Wagner, ‘The Early Chinese Newspapers’, 1–33.

76 Edgerton-Tarpley, Tears from Iron, 142–55.

77 Ibid., 131–55; Rogaski, ‘Beyond Benevolence’, 82.

78 Kuo, Making Chinese Australia, 53; Mei-fen Kuo, ‘Jinxin: The Remittance Trade and Enterprising Chinese Australians, 1850–1916’, in The Qiaopi Trade and Transnational Networks in the Chinese Diaspora, ed. Gregor Benton, Hong Liu, and Huimei Zhang (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018), 160–78.

79 The Argus, 20 August 1878, 7.

80 Kuo, Making Chinese Australia, 53.

81 Ibid., 11–12.

82 China Famine Relief Fund collected by Kong Meng and C H Cheong, Chinese Famine Fund, PROV, VPRS 3182.

83 Ong (王光輝), ‘Fundraising and Patriotism’, 2; Tung Wah Hospital, ‘Zhengxinlu (Annual Report) of Tung Wah Hospital, 1877’ (Tung Wah Museum, 1877), Tung Wah Museum Archives Catalogue, http://www.twmarchives.hk/zhengxinlu_detail.php?uid=16&sid=1&contentlang=tc&lang=en.

84 Minute book June–November 1878, Chinese Famine Fund, VPRS 3182.

85 Macgregor, ‘Chinese Political Values’, 143; see also ‘In Days of Old’, The Sun, 12 May 1918, 5, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/221942879/24411600.

86 Rasmussen, ‘Networks and Negotiations’, 79–92; Rule, ‘Chinese Engagement’, 142–51; Pauline Rule, ‘The Transformative Effect of Australian Experience on the Life of Ho A Mei, Hong Kong Community Leader and Entrepreneur’, in Chinese Australians: Politics, Engagement and Resistance, ed. Sophie Couchman and Kate Bagnall (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 22–52.

87 Rasmussen, ‘Networks and Negotiations’, 82; Rule, ‘Chinese Engagement’, 142–51.

88 Macgregor, ‘Chinese Political Values’, 160.

89 ‘The Chinese Famine’, Kyneton Guardian, 22 May 1878, 2, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/233332176/25147279.

90 Captain H. Morin Humphreys, Men of the Time in Australia, Victorian Series, Second Edition (Melbourne, M’Carron, Bird & Co., Printers and Publishers: 1882), 190.

91 Ibid.; ‘News of the Day’, The Age, 7 June 1864, 4, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/155013355/18274413; Jill Eastwood, ‘Smith, Alexander Kennedy (1824–1881)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB), National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/smith-alexander-kennedy-4597/text7557, published first in hardcopy 1976, accessed online 24 October 2022.

92 ‘The Mayor of Melbourne’s Fancy Dress Ball’, Maryborough and Dunolly Advertiser, 2 September 1863, 2, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/253525330.

93 Advertisement, The Argus, 15 June 1878, 12, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5936451/250349.

94 ‘Law Report’, The Argus, 2 March 1877, 10, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5915219/247386.

95 Minute meetings, June–November 1878, Chinese Famine Fund, PROV, VPRS 3182; Peter Cook, ‘Robert Harper (1842–1919)’, ADB, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/harper-robert-6572/text11305, accessed 1 January 2023; J. Ann Hone, ‘Sir James MacBain (1828–1892)’, ADB, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/macbain-sir-james-4063/text6477, accessed 1 January 2023.

96 Advertisement, The Argus, 15 June 1878, 12, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/250349.

97 The Herald, 17 August 1863, 4; Nicholas Guoth and Paul MacGregor, ‘Getting Chinese Gold Off the Victorian Goldfields’, Southern Chinese Diaspora Studies 8 (2019): 129–50; Benjamin Mountford, Britain, China, and Colonial Australia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 71.

98 Report of the Board appointed to consider the claims of certain Chinese in the Buckland District to compensation, together with the evidence taken before the Board, 28 April 1858, VA 2585 Legislative Assembly, PROV, VPRS 3253.

99 G. Oddie, ‘The Lower Class Chinese and the Merchant Elite in Victoria, 1870–1890’, Historical Studies: Australia and New Zealand 10, no. 37 (1961): 65–70; Alistair Bowen, ‘The Merchants: Chinese Social Organisation in Colonial Australia’, Australian Historical Studies 42, no. 1 (2011): 25–44; Macgregor, ‘Chinese Political Values’, 140–3; Sascha Auerbach, ‘Margaret Tart, Lao She, and the Opium-Master’s Wife: Race and Class among Chinese Commercial Immigrants in London and Australia, 1866–1929’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 55, no. 1 (2013): 44–52; Natalie Fong, ‘The Significance of the Northern Territory in the Formulation of “White Australia” Policies, 1880–1901’, Australian Historical Studies 49, no. 4 (2018): 533–7; Kevin Rains, ‘Doing Business: Chinese and European Socioeconomic Relations in Early Cooktown’, International Journal of Historical Archaeology 17, no. 3 (2013): 520–45.

100 Welch, ‘Alien Son’, 23–73.

101 ‘Wesleyan Church: Rev. Moy Ling’, Southern Times, 19 May 1896, 3, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/157532400/18682416.

102 Howard Le Couteur, ‘Reverend George Soo Hoo Ten’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society 105, no. 2 (2019): 225–47; Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts, 77.

103 Auerbach, ‘Margaret Tart, Lao She, and the Opium-Master’s Wife’, 46.

104 Welch, ‘Alien Son’, 68–9; Meeting minutes, Chinese Famine Fund, PROV, VPRS 3182; Geelong Advertiser, 21 June 1878, 2.

105 ‘The Chinese Famine Fund’, The Argus, 27 June 1878, 7, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5937828; Meeting minutes, 26 June, Chinese Famine Fund, PROV, VPRS 3182.

106 Meeting minutes, 21 June 1878, Chinese Famine Fund, PROV, VPRS 3182.

107 ‘The Famine in China’ Circular, 24 June 1878, Chinese Famine Fund, PROV, VPRS 3182.

108 Ibid.

109 Davis, Late Victorian Holocaust, 77–8; Twomey and May, ‘Australian Responses’, 233; Sasson, ‘From Empire to Humanity’, 104.

110 Memorandum from John F. Paten, ‘Avoca Mail’ Office, to the Mayor of Melbourne, 19 July 1878, Chinese Famine Fund, PROV, VPRS 3182.

111 The Argus, 8 June 1878, 7; Article cut-out in minute book, Chinese Famine Fund, PROV, VPRS 3182.

112 Letter from Arthur Davenport to John Pigdon, 30 July 1878, Chinese Famine Fund, VPRS 3182.

113 ‘Arrival of the English Mail. General Summary’, The Argus, 20 April 1878, 5, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5929494/249370; ‘The Suez Mail’, The Ballarat Courier, 22 April 1878, 4, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/211540532/22745835.

114 Committee, The Great Famine, 82.

115 Ibid., 83.

116 Twomey and May, ‘Australian Responses’, 238, 250.

117 Ibid., 248; James MacBain, Committee meeting minutes, 17 June 1878, Chinese Famine Relief Fund, PROV, VPRS 3182.

118 Individual contributions were substantially larger, school headmasters were involved, Department officers were asked for ‘voluntary’ contributions, and the file contains four boxes. See Charity and Relief Indian Famine, PROV, VPRS 3182, Box 6.

119 Committee, Final Report, 29–30.

120 China Famine Relief Fund, Shanghai Committee, The Great Famine: Report, 29.

121 MacBain, Committee meeting minutes, 17 June 1878, China Famine Fund, PROV, VPRS 3182.

122 ‘Chinese Famine Fund’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 29 May 1878, 8, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/1434261; ‘Chinese Famine Fund’, 30 May 1878, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/1434269; ‘The Chinese Famine Fund’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 31 May 1878, 8, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/1434277; ‘Chinese Famine Fund’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 June, 1, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/1434320.

123 ‘The Chinese Famine Fund’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 June 1878, 2, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/1434331.

124 Kuo, Making Chinese Australia, 53.

125 ‘South Australia’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 August 1878, 5, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/13411211/1432755.

126 ‘The Chinese Famine’, South Australian Register, 21 May 1878, 6, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/42991642/4005326.

127 ‘The Famine in China’, Adelaide Observer, 1 June 1878, 12, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/159442417/18906568.

128 ‘Floods in China’, The Australian Star, 6 June 1888, 6, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/229937584/24929990; Michael Williams and Shen Yuexiu, ‘Benevolence Returns from across the Seas’, History SA, no. 273 (2023): 9–10.

129 Geoffrey A. Oddie, ‘The Chinese in Victoria, 1870–1890’ (MA thesis, University of Melbourne, 1959), 40–3.

130 Kong Meng et al., The Chinese Question, 3–7.

131 ‘The Chinese Question’, The Argus, 9 January 1879, 6, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5927710/251409.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarah May Comley

Sarah May Comley (they/she) is a Masters of Arts (Research Training) candidate at Monash University. Their thesis explores famine relief from Melbourne, Australia, to the North China Famine, focusing on Chinese-Australian contributions and participation. Broadly, their research interests include the history of (environmental) humanitarianism, transnational disaster subjectivities, and the lived reality (and social history) of Asian-Australian diasporas.