Catalogue description Records of the Chinese Secretary's Office

A large cache of Chinese-language material was found in the British Embassy in Peking in 1958 and returned thence to the Foreign Office in London. They were transferred to the Public Record Office in 1961 and accessioned as record series FO 682. The documents were numbered and listed in numerical order. A further list, subject-based, was drawn up in 1963 by Mr E Grinstead, then of the British Museum, and the late Professor Chang Hsin-pao; parts of the list were more detailed than the numerical list, other less so. Little attempt was made to sort the papers or to establish their provenance fully. Both the numerical and the subject lists are now obsolete.

Subsequently, work by a number of Public Record Office staff and external scholars identified two wholly discrete series of records, and other material which properly belonged in other series of embassy and consular records.

The records of the Kwantung provincial authorities, captured by the British during the Second Opium War (the 'Arrow' war) in 1858 were placed in a new series, FO 931. A further discrete series, consisting of Chinese-language correspondence of the Select Committee of Supercargoes of the East India Company inherited by the British Chief Superintendent of Trade in 1834, became FO 1048

Correspondence registers of the Chinese Secretary's Office were also placed in a separate series (FO 932) and title deeds and other documents relating to various British consulates in China were placed with similar material in FO 678. Miscellaneous papers from the Chinese Secretary's Office were identified for transfer into a new series, now FO 1080

The origins of the Chinese Secretary's Office lay in the activities of the East India Company. Until the mid-nineteenth century, British relations with China were entirely a matter of trade. A monopoly of British trade with China was held by the East India Company. On the Chinese side, trade with foreigners was restricted to a number of family firms. Since the Chinese language was the only medium of communication acceptable to the authorities, the East India Company's Select Committee of Supercargoes was obliged to maintain a staff of interpreters and scribes, headed by the Chinese secretary.

These were the only official contacts between the British and the Chinese authorities; British attempts to open diplomatic relations with the Chinese imperial authorities in 1793, and again in 1816, foundered on the refusal of the British representatives to kowtow to the emperor in the manner expected of tribute-bearing envoys, and the refusal of the imperial authorities to accept the principle of equal communication between independent governments.

The ending of the East India Company's monopoly of British trade with China by Act of Parliament in 1834 brought no immediate change in Anglo-Chinese relations. The chief superintendent of British trade, based at Canton, inherited the Select Committee's Chinese Secretary and most of the records in his office.

The Chinese Secretary was crucial to the conduct of Anglo-Chinese relations in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the Chinese authorities refused to communicate with foreign powers in any language other than Mandarin Chinese. He worked to the British chief superintendent of trade, initially in Canton (1834-1843) and subsequently in Hong Kong (1843-1860). When the British Mission to Peking was established in 1861, the Chinese Secretary's Office (CSO) moved there with the newly appointed British minister (envoy extraordinary and plenipotentiary), who also took over the role of chief superintendent of trade.

The post of Chinese Secretary was held by a succession of British consular staff who could both speak and write Chinese; to them worked a small number of native Chinese staff. The work involved not only the translation of communications from the Chinese authorities into English, but also the preparation of communications to the Chinese authorities in the appropriate official form of Chinese. In addition, the CSO translated documents such as decrees and legislation, and gave advice on Chinese customs.