Mapping Intelligence: Photography and Topography in Strangman’s Albums

Abstract

This article investigates the events that occurred in the surroundings of Tianjin in the period between the Boxer Uprising and the Russo-Japanese War. The discovery of two albums of snapshots and a short accompanying letter by Richard Strangman, a Customs officer, to Sir Robert Hart, the Inspector General of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, and Edwin Conger, the American Minister Plenipotentiary to China, offers a chance to reflect on the use of amateur photography as a tool of intelligence and topography in the border region between Zhili and Manchuria in the early years of the twentieth century.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

Keywords:

• amateur photography
• topography
• intelligence
• Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs
• Sir Robert Hart
• Tianjin
• Boxer Uprising
• Russo-Japanese War

Acknowledgment

I am grateful for comments on this research from Dr Emma Reisz. This paper was originally prepared for the New Lenses on China Colloquium in Belfast in 2017, and at various points it was supported by the Wiles Trust, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation (grant number CS007-U-16), the Universities’ China Committee in London, the Economic and Social Research Council (grant number RES-062-23-1057) and Queen’s University Belfast.

Notes

1 Letter from R. Strangman to Sir Robert Hart, dated November 23, 1903, in Hart Photograph Collection, Sir Robert Hart Collection, MS15/6/11B/001a, Queen’s University Belfast, McClay Library Special Collection.

2 For the democratization of the photography and the amateur photography, see R. Jenkins, “Technology and the Market: George Eastman and the Origins of Mass Amateur Photography,” Technology and Culture, 16.1 (1975): 1–19.

3 Famous is the case of Painter and the late nineteenth century Washington snapshots, see M. Ison, “Uriah Hunt Painter and the ‘Marvelous Kodak Camera’,” Washington History, 2.2 (1990/1): 30–47.

4 Only a few works in Western languages are completely dedicated to the history of modern Tianjin, including: G. Hershatter, The Workers of Tianjin (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986), 328; M. B. Kwan, The Salt Merchants of Tianjin: State-making and Civil Society in Late Imperial China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), 239; R. Rogaski, Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 415; D. Spicq, L’avènement de l’eau courante à Tianjin (Saarbrücken: Éditions Universitaires Européennes, 2012), 274. To this we should add some recent articles by V. Shue, “The Quality of Mercy: Confucian Charity and the Mixed Metaphors of Modernity in Tianjin,” Modern China, 32.4 (2006): 411–52; A. De Angeli, “Tianjin Sales of Land by Auctions: Italian Colonialism in the Early Twentieth Century China,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 15.4 (2010): 557–72; M. Marinelli, “Making Concessions in Tianjin: Heterotopia and Italian Colonialism in Mainland China,” Urban History, 36.3 (2009): 399–425; M. Marinelli, “The Genesis of the Italian Concession in Tianjin: A Combination of Wishful Thinking and Realpolitik,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 15.4 (2010): 536–66. A historical landmark remains the work by O. D. Rasmussen, Tientsin—An Illustrated Outline History (Tientsin: The Tientsin Press, 1925), 320.

5 The album MS15/6/11B is the one accompanied by the letter and has 48 photographs, while the second MS15/6/11E has 50 photos. Since the calligraphy is the same on the accompanying letter signed by Strangman, we may attribute quite certainly also this album to Strangman. Both albums are in Sir Robert Hart Collection, QUBSC.

6 For more information on this model, see Kodak No.2 Brownie Camera, The Brownie Camera Pace, accessed June 22, 2018, http://www.brownie-camera.com/53.shtml.

7 There was a Kodak stockist in Tianjin at the turn of the 20th century: The Kodak Shop of Messrs. Gartner at 111 Victoria Bund, UK Settlement, which was a wholesale, retail and manufacturing chemist and agents for Eastman Kodak Co. See China Times guide to Tientsin and neighborhood, Mrs. Burton St. John, ed., (1908), accessed June 25, 2018 https://archive.org/stream/cu31924099092516/cu31924099092516_djvu.txt, and The North China Desk Hong List, 1919, accessed June 25, 2018 https://archive.org/stream/northchinahonglist1919/northchinahonglist1919_djvu.txt. ]. Although the sources are later than 1900, photographs and postcards with the Kodak Shop stamp dating 1901 prove the existence of the shop at the time Strangman produced the two albums.

8 The Eastman Kodak Company of New Jersey started to produce the series of Brownie cameras in 1900. The cheap material and films made photography a hobby to many, since it cost less than a day's wage according to American standards. See J. Richter, Inventing the Camera (New York: Crabtree Publishing Company, 2006), 17; M. Targ Brill, Camera: America in the 1900s (Minneapolis, Twenty-First Century Book, 2010), 35.

9 C. Harding, Colin, “Camera Design: 6 Kodak,” in Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, ed. Hannavy, vol. 2 (Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, 2008), 252. Eastman asked Brownell to design a camera which could be mass produced for a very low cost. The result was the Brownie camera. A box camera fitted with a simple lens and shutter, the Brownie sold for just five shillings. Named after the Brownie characters popularized by the Canadian writer, Palmer Cox, the camera was initially aimed at children. Soon, however, it enjoyed much broader appeal as people realized that, although very basic, the Brownie could produce very good results under the right conditions. Within a year, over 100,000 Brownie cameras had been sold. For the next eighty years, the Brownie name was to be synonymous with snapshot photography. B. Batchelor, The 1900s (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 59.

10 A. De Angeli and E. Reisz, China's Imperial Eye: Photographs of Qing China and Tibet from the Sir Robert Hart Collection (Belfast: Queen's University Belfast, 2017), 41.

11 Strangman’s photograph album, in SRH Collection, MS15/6/11B/22.

12 C. M. Biggs, The United States Marines in North China, 1894–1942 (Jefferson: McFarland, 2003), 41–45.

13 Biggs, 51.

14 Strangman labelled photograph MS15.6.11B.23 “South Forts. Taku. before demolition,” and “After” the following photograph, MS15.6.11B24.

15 R. Horowitz, S. Richard, “The Ambiguities of an Imperial Institution: Crisis and Transition in the Chinese Maritime Customs, 1899–1911,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 36.2 (2008): 279.

16 Horowitz, 279.

17 Ibid., 280.

18 Biggs, 50.

19 Nesoleniy, Sergey Valerevich, Сергей Валерьевич Несоленый, Канонерские лодки первой эскадры флота Тихого океана в русско-японской войне (1904–1905) (The Pacific Ocean First Fleet Gunboats in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), С-Пб.: Издатель P.P. Муниров, 2011.

20 A. A. Ginter was born in a family of Navy officers in 1857, in Saratov, and was the Commandant of the gunboat Sivouch between April 1902 and January 1914 officially docked at Port Arthur, he died after 1917 unknown date, accessed June 25, 2018, http://cbsfokino.ru/pluginAppObj_41_01/2012_------------.pdf p.4.

21 The Sivouch then left Dagu for Niuzhuang (currently Yingkou) and anchored in the Liao River until called into service during the Russo-Japanese War, and was sunk on August 2, 1904.

22 See Strangman’s photograph albums, in SRH Collection, MS15.6.11E.49 and 50.

23 From Tanghe Station there was a 3-mile spur line to the Harbor Works of the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company Ltd. ‘The Company have laid down, at their own cost, a branch line of railway connecting with the main line [Beijing-Niuzhang] … This branch line leads down to the steamers’ berths at the breakwater and pier, and connects by a loop line with the Company’s own godowns and coal yards. Passengers are thus able to step from the ship into the passenger car.’ The Directory & Chronicle for China, Japan, Corea, Indo-China, Straits Settlements, Malay States, Sian, Netherlands India, Borneo, the Philippines, &c: With which are Incorporated "The China Directory" and "The Hong Kong List for the Far East," Hong Kong daily press Office, 1904, 160.

24 For further information about the construction of the line, see Huang Chingchi, 黄清琦, and Chen Xibo 陈喜波, Jing-Fei tielü zhi lishi dili yanjiu 京奉铁路之历史地理研究 (1881–1912年) (A historical geography research of Peking-Mukden Railway under the vision of modernization (1881–1912)), in Dili yanjiu 地理研究 (Geographical Research), 33.11 (2014): 2180–94.

25 P. H. Kent, Railway Enterprise in China: An Account of Its Origin and Development (London: E. Arnold, 1907), 86–87.

26 Built at the company’s own costs, “this branch line leaded to the steamers’ berths at the breakwater and pier, and connected by a loop line with the company’s own godowns and coal yards.” See The Directory, 1904, 160.

27 “Shanhaiguan,” in International Dictionary of Historic Place: Asia and Oceania, ed. P. Schelling and R. Salkin, vol. 5 (London, New York: Routledge, 1996), 742.

28 Y. Liang, The Shanghai Taotai: Linkage Man in a Changing Society, 1843–90 (Singapore: NUS Press, 1990), 72.

29 Ibid.

30 H. Conroy, “Lessons from Japanese Imperialism,” Monumenta Nipponica, 21.3, no. 4 (1966): 337.

31 Conroy, 339.

32 V. Zatsepine, Beyond the Amur: Frontier Encounter between China and Russia, 1850–1930 (Oakville: UBC Press, 2017), 100–01.

33 J. Reardon-Anderson, Reluctant Pioneers, Chinas Expansion Northward, 1644–1937 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 111.

34 Zatsepine, 119–20.

35 Von Witte Association, “The History of building the Trans-Siberian lines,” accessed June 25, 2018, http://www.vonwitte.org/index.php/the-witte-system-/the-history-of-building-trans-siberian-railway.

36 Zatsepine, 129

37 “Admiral Alekseev was put in charge of both the military forces and the diplomatic relations of a newly created Viceroyalty of the Far East, composed of the Amur region and the Liaodong concession.” See B. Elleman and S. Kotkin, Manchurian Railways and the Opening of China: An International History (New York: Sharpe, 2010), 23–24.

38 Zatsepine, 129.

39 Conroy, 340.

40 Zatsepine, 130–31.

41 Hart to Campbell March 12, 1905, letter 1367 Z/1050/1, in The I. G. in Peking: Letters of Robert Hart, Chinese Maritime Customs, 1868–1907, ed. J. Fairbank, K. Frost Bruner, and E. MacLeod Matheson, vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975).

42 Stoke Newington, located in North-East London, is nowadays part of the Borough of Hackney.

43 Strangman climbed the career ladder from watcher in January 1884, to Assistant Tidesurveyor in July 1899, then Chief Tidesurveyor in December 1900 and finally Harbor Master in April 1905, the highest position in Outdoor Personnel. On April 5, 1904, he also received the Civil Rank of the Fifth Class from the Chinese authorities. See The Service List, China. Imperial Maritime Customs—Service Series N.1 (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs, 1900–1912), 1900, 26; 1903, 24; 1905, 133; 1907, 135; 1912, 35.

44 “Mrs. Annie Saikao Strangman,” in North-China Herald and Supreme Court & Consular Gazette, July 9, 1941, 62.

45 Ibid. In the obituary dated 1941, it was the stated that Annie Sakao was aged 53, and so born in 1892.

46 Passengers,” North China Herald, February 17, 1912, 473, February 24, 1912, 527.

47 “Mrs. Annie Saikao Strangman,” 62.

48 “Deaths,” North China Herald, July 9, 1941, 80.

49 “From Daily News Ads.,” North China Herald, August 6, 1941, 240.

50 On the night of June 13, 1900, during the early stage of the Legation Siege in Beijing Sir Robert Hart lost most of his photographic collection, and so the actual collection is post-1900, while few items survived either because they were within the diaries or stored elsewhere. For more on Sir Robert Hart's photographic collection, see A. De Angeli and E. Reisz, 40–43.

51 R. Jenkins, 13–14.

52 R. Horowitz, “The Ambiguities of an Imperial Institution: Crisis and Transition in the Chinese Maritime Customs, 1899–1911,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 36.2 (2008): 276.

53 Ibid.

54 Captain Galen Clapp Blethen was born in Phippsburg, Maine on May 2, 1847 and died in 1924 aged 78 in Tianjin, China. He worked on the China coast for nearly half a century, mostly on the Tianjin run with Russel and Co., and then the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company. He retired in 1913. See ‘Old China Coast Skipper’, South China Morning Post, August 17, 1923, 12; and “Obituary: Capt. G.C. Blethen,” South China Morning Post, May 30, 1924, 14.

55 E. H Conger was born on March 7, 1843 in Knox County, Illinois. He participated in the American Civil War and was elected as a Republican to Congress, serving two terms. He married Sarah Pike in 1867 and in died in 1907. During his diplomatic career, he was twice in Brazil (1890–93 and 1897–98), China (1898–1905) and Mexico (1905–07). For more details on this aspect see “Conger, Edwin Hurd (1843–1907),” in Office of the Historian, USA Department of State, accessed June 22, 2018, https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/conger-edwin-hurd.

56 Hart to Campbell October 30, 1904, Letter 1349 Z/1032, The I.G. of Peking, vol. 2.

57 Published by A.C. McClurgher in 1909.

58 Hart to Campbell March 12, 1905, letter 1367 Z/1050/1, in The I. G. in Peking.

59 According to Aristotle, the rules of communication are based on three modes of persuasion: ethos, logos and pathos. Ethos is based on the speaker’s personal character and so the intent of the message should be credible thanks to speaker’s competence, good intention and empathy; the pathos is the emotional influence of the speaker on the audience and is based on the speaker’s ability to persuade the audience; while the logos is the appeal toward logical reason, thus the speaker wants to present an argument that appears to be sound to the audience. See European Rhetoric: Ethos, Pathos & Logos—Modes of Persuasion (Aristotle), accessed August 24, 2018, http://www.european-rhetoric.com/ethos-pathos-logos-modes-persuasion-aristotle/.

60 B. Elleman and S. Koktin, Manchurian Railways and the Opening of China: An International History (Armonk, NY: Sharpe, 2010), 23.

61 Sir Robert Hart's diary April 22, 1903, vol. 64, Sir Robert Hart Collection, QUBSC, MS15/1/64.

62 For the agreement, see J. Bland, Li Hung-chang (London: Constable & Company Ltd., 1917), 199–201.

63 Hart's diary April 22, 1903, vol. 64, QUBSC, MS15/1/64.

64 G. Moore, Defining and Defending the Open Door Policy: Theodore Roosevelt and China, 1901–1909 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015), 65–66.

65 Hart's diary May 13, 1903, ibid.

66 Hart made a classical reference comparing the “idi sinici” to the fate of the Roman Emperor Caesar, who was assassinated at the Ides of March in 44BCE. Hart's diary June 2, 1903, ibid.

67 Hart's diary February 5, 1904, MS15/1/64.

68 Hart using the Latin expression "omni sini" refers to all Chinese, and indicating that they should be off, he meant they should not take part in the conflict but remain neutral. Hart's diary, February 8, 1904, ibid.

69 L. Gomez-Popescu, “Towards a History through Photography: An Introduction,” E.I.A.L, 26.2 (2015): 9.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aglaia De Angeli

Aglaia De Angeli is a sinologist, with a degree in Chinese language and literature and a PhD in history, who specializes in social and legal history of Republican China. She is currently working on the Sir Robert Hart Project at Queen’s University Belfast, and writes also on historical photography in China. She also continues to publish on the Sino-Western relationship.