William Nelson Lovatt in Late Qing China: War, Maritime Customs, and Treaty Ports, 1860–1904

William Nelson Lovatt in Late Qing China: War, Maritime Customs, and Treaty Ports,1860-1904 looks at the late Qing dynasty through the eyes of a British-American who spent most of his adult life in China in the late nineteenth century, fighting in four wars, serving in its maritime customs service, and living in eleven different treaty ports. It is based on the newly-discovered journals, correspondence, and photographs of William Nelson Lovatt (1838-1904), who first arrived in China in 1860 as a sergeant in the British army to fight in the Second Opium War, and who then proceeded to fight against the Taiping in Shanghai, against the Nian in Tianjin, and finally against the Japanese in Taiwan, providing an inside look at those four conflicts. Joining the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service in 1863 under Inspector-General Sir Robert Hart, Lovatt provides a rare insider look at the operation of Hart and the Maritime Customs Service for during the four decades he served. Because he was based in treaty ports, he also provides a new look at those enclaves, their institutions, and their inhabitants – Chinese, missionaries, and fellow customs officials. Fluent in Chinese, his frequent travels outside the treaty ports gave him rare access to Chinese society available to few others. This volume opens up a new window on China during the final decades of the Qing dynasty.

Table of Contents:
Chapter One: Entering China: The Siege of Beijing, 1860 Chapter Two: Fighting the Taiping: Shanghai, 1860-1862 Chapter Three: Entering the Customs Service: Hankou and Zhenjiang, 1863-1865 Chapter Four: Training the Cavalry and Taming the Nian Chapter Five: Minnesota, Jiujiang and Taiwan, 1869-1877 Chapter Six: Wuhu, 1877-1878 Chapter Seven: Return to Hankou, 1878-1881 Chapter Eight: Resignation: Tianjin, 1881-1883 Chapter Nine: Commissioner in Korea: 1883-1888 Chapter Ten: Return to China on Demotion: Fuzhou, 1888-1889 Chapter Eleven: Hoping for a Promotion: Jiujiang, 1889-1890 Chapter Twelve: Opening a New Customs Station: Chongqing, 1890-94 Chapter Thirteen: The Final Decade: Yichang, Guangzhou, Jiujiang, and Hankou, 1894-1904 Chapter Fourteen: Epilogue: 1904-1914

About the Author :
Wayne Patterson is professor of modern East Asian history at St. Norbert College in Wisconsin.

Review :
The book successfully provides a colorful and fascinating account of the life in the Chinese Maritime Customs Service from the perspective of a Victorian British expatriate. This study would be very useful for people who are interested in the global history in the late 19th Century, and specifically modern Chinese history; also to readers who want to know more specifically about the foreign communities at treaty ports in China. Wayne Patterson's study of William Nelson Lovatt is a profound and fascinating history of the defining institutions of late Qing China. More than a history of an individual, this impressively researched book uses Lovatt as the vehicle to demonstrate persuasively the often conflicting impact of foreign-controlled entities, which—like the Imperial Customs Service and Treaty Ports—both advanced and restrained China's evolution as a sovereign nation. The 2003 Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association featured a roundtable discussion on the scholarship of Wayne Patterson. Since then, Patterson’s productivity in the field of East Asian international relations has only accelerated. His most recent tour-de-force, like his earlier magna opera, is grounded in meticulous multilingual archival research and is carefully nuanced. Patterson goes beyond the biographical to provide a fuller perspective on merchants, missionaries, diplomats, anti-foreignism, and some of the most significant transformations in nineteenth and twentieth century East Asian history. Over the decades of his productivity as a historian of East Asia, Wayne Patterson has introduced scholars, students, and the reading public to the careers of personalities who were deeply involved in modern Western relations with Korea and China. In this volume, Patterson gives us an animated and captivating account of the Asian career of William Nelson Lovatt, British soldier and then employee of the Qing government’s Maritime Customs Service. Lovatt interfaced directly with the Taiping and Nian Rebellions, the Self-Strengthening Movement, anti-foreign agitation, and the development of native and foreign commerce in the China coast and the Yangtze valley. Drawing upon exhaustive journal and correspondence materials, Dr. Patterson enables an intimate understanding of the daily activities, thoughts, and passions of a foreign employee of the Chinese government. The reader will also grasp the pulse of the lives of Chinese people of high and low status in the treaty ports in nineteenth century China. This book is a transnational and transcontinental history within the special context of East–West interactions. For this very reason, this monograph is a benefit to anyone who desires to learn modern Chinese history and China’s relationship with the West.