Upcoming Seminar!
Join us this Thursday for the final seminar in the ANU China Seminar Series for the semester.
DATE: 3 June, 4:00 – 5:30 pm
WHERE: This event will be available both online via zoom and in-person at the Australian Centre on China in the World, ANU
REGISTER NOW and be reminded about the event closer to the time.
About the Seminar
Chaloner Alabaster (1838-98) was an English career consular officer in China from 1855 to his retirement in 1892, rising to the position of Consul General in Canton, and receiving a knighthood. Over his career he kept a diary (now held in the special collections of the London University School of Oriental and African Studies Library). At the beginning it was a discursive, descriptive, self-critical record of his life and what he saw around him. Later, it took on the less interesting character of an appointments diary.
This seminar (and the book I am now completing) concerns the first four volumes of the diary from when he was in Hong Kong as a Student Interpreter, from September 1855 – November 1856, when he was only sixteen and seventeen years of age. These diaries, which run to more than 50,000 words, give a unique view of Hong Kong a decade and a half after the British took control – on the eve of the 2nd Opium War – from the point of view of an educated teenager on the bottom rung of the colonial ladder. His diary displays a curiosity about what he sees around him, importantly, noting features of everyday life that are usually considered too “ordinary” for more experienced observers, both Chinese and western.
About the speaker
Dr Benjamin Penny is Senior Research Fellow at CIW and CHL. His research focusses on the history of Daoism, contemporary religions in the Chinese world, and expatriate views of China in the nineteenth century.