"We must religiously observe our engagements with China, but I fear that Hong Kong is a sorry possession and Chusan is a magnificent island admirably placed for our purposes." So wrote the home secretary Sir James Graham to the prime minister Sir Robert Peel, as British diplomats prepared to return the island of Chusan to Chinese rule during the winter of 1845. For years, this now little-known island off the coast of Zhejiang province had been home to thousands of men, women and children of all classes and backgrounds, of all races and religions, from across the British Empire and beyond. Before the Union Jack ever flew over Hong Kong, it had been raised on Chusan. From a wealth of primary archives, Liam D'Arcy-Brown pieces together the forgotten story of how the British wrested Chusan from the Qing dynasty, only to hand it back for the sake of Queen Victoria's honour and Britain's national prestige. At a time when the Chinese Communist Party is inspiring a new brand of patriotism by revisiting the shame inflicted during the Opium Wars, here is a book that puts Britain's incursions into nineteenth-century China in a fascinating and revealing new light.

Chusan: The Opium Wars, and the Forgotten Story of Britain's First Chinese Island

History

D'Arcy-Brown, Liam

Asia

Takeaway Publishing

"My ever dear friend. As I may now do so with safety, I will try to write to you the sad particulars of the dreadful wreck of the Kite. May the Almighty in mercy strengthen me for the truly melancholy duty. Amen." So begins a remarkable account of five months spent as a prisoner during the First Opium War (1839-42). Anne Watson was born in 1814 in Wiltshire, but after a sea-voyage turned to tragedy it was as the shipwrecked and widowed 'Mrs Noble' that she became a household name. Held hostage while the Qing dynasty negotiated the withdrawal of British troops from Chinese soil, her treatment scandalized the public, influenced the course of the war, and years later was still the subject of theatrical entertainments and newspaper stories. A devoted wife and mother who sailed tens of thousands of miles across four continents, Anne's resilience forces us to reassess our ideas of what life was like for "ordinary" women during the mid-nineteenth century.

"A White Barbarian Lady": The story of Anne Noble, a Victorian woman imprisoned

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

A look China's recent cultural reinterpretation of the oldest canal in the world, dug when Confucius was alive, along which has traveled not only cargo but ideas, customs, and dialects The face of modern China is changing. Liam D'Arcy-Brown travels the length of the Grand Canal, a symbol of national identity, Chinese pride, and cultural achievement. For those with an interest in China and its culture, people, or heritage, this book provides an exciting, fascinating, and well-written account of the navigation of the lifeblood of a rising powerthe Grand Canal of China. At more than 1,100 miles long, and dating back to the 5th century BC, the Grand Canal of China is the world’s longest artificial waterway and its oldest working canal. Though a source of great national pride to the Chinese, one of China’s most economically important transport routes, and the possible savior of a rapidly desiccating Beijing, it has never been investigated by foreign writers and travelers. The first non-Chinese to have made this journey since the 1780s, Liam D’Arcy-Brown traveled from Hangzhou to Beijing along the Grand Canal by barges, boats, and road and here tells his tales.

The Emperor's River: Travels to the Heart of a Resurgent China

Eye Books

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Books by D'Arcy-Brown, Liam