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First edition. Octavo, pp viii, 584. Folding map 33m x 47.5cm, of "The Choo Kiang or Pearl River" facing p 89. Rebound in quarter brown leather over marbled boards, two red title pieces and gilt lines to the spine, new endpapers. This volume includes lengthy sections on Chinese language and writing, Chinese pirates, a description of the Island of Penang, Mohammedanism in East Asia with a focus on Malaya, Jews in China, and practical information about hong merchants, European printing presses in China, the arrival and death of Lord Napier and detail on British Authorities in China, navy frigates at the Bogue and military activities on the Pearl River. This is just a sampling of the extensive contents of this volume. The map identifies Lantao I., Lamma, Hong Kong I. and Chu Loo Kawk ('Chek Lap Kok'). Small punch hole from the title page to p100, dent across the fore-edge, several black ink fingerprints at the bottom blank margin of the title page. Otherwise the book is in clean condition, no foxing or spotting. Very Good Minus.
The Chinese Repository was an English-language periodical founded in Canton by Elijah Coleman Bridgman (1801-1861), the first American Protestant missionary to China. It was published monthly from 1832 until 1851, initially in Canton with the offices moving to Macao in 1839 and then onto Hong Kong in 1844. Bridgman arrived in Canton in February 1830, studied Chinese and founded a mission press in 1832, at which he printed the Chinese Repository. He sought to combine missionary work with scholarly study, promoting cultural understanding as a foundation for religious engagement. As editor, he guided the journal's wide-ranging focus, which included reports on missionary activities, Chinese society and customs, commerce and trade, political developments, translations of imperial edicts, and observations on science, geography, and travel. In 1840, Bridgman was part of a group of four people including Walter Henry Medhurst, Charles Gutzlaff, and John Robert Morrison, who cooperated to translate the Bible into Chinese. Bridgman ceased editing the Chinese Repository in 1847 and moved to Shanghai where his wife, Eliza, founded and ran the first girls? school in the city. He died in Shanghai in 1861.
The Chinese Repository provides one of the earliest systematic, English-language records of Qing-era China, offering first hand accounts of Cantonese life, trade, and governance. It influenced Western perceptions of China, informed missionaries and merchants, and documented the context leading up to and after the First Opium War and the establishment of the Colony of Hong Kong.
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