Asia-Pacific in the Making of the Americas: Toward a Global History

The Xiuxiang hongmao fanzi

There are brief records on the Illustrations in two bibliographies in the Asia Division of the U.S. Library of Congress. In the List of Chinese Books of the (Caleb) Cushing Collection (c.1896) , now in the Library of Congress, it is stated that: “椎 (the author’s note: which should be written as “樵”)西夢 Tseaou si mung. 繡像紅毛番字. Sew Seang Hung maou fang Tsze. Illustrations of foreign characters”; whereas in the Alphabetical List of Titles of the Chinese Books in the Library of Congress (April 12, 1906) it is written thus:

"Sew Seang hung maou fan tsze. The writing of the Red head barbarians illustrated. By 樵西夢 Tseaou Sie muny. Hirth. Hung maou = Red hair, nickname for the Dutch, and afterwards for the English."[27] 

Hirth refers to Friedrich Hirth (1845-1927), who was then teaching in Columbia University. These two records are not of much help with finding out the background and value of the Illustrations. Though Hummel’s explanatory note on the Illustrations is of much greater importance:    

This book, like another small one in the Chinese Section (author's note: referring to the book of vocabulary mentioned above), probably also was compiled by Benjamin B. Carter (1771-1831) of Providence R.I. The earliest date in the book (see back) is 1797. A later date is 1805 when Carter was at Canton. He was connected with the Providence firm of Brown and Ives which is also mentioned in Chinese and in English."   –A. W. Hummel.   February 23, 1954

But Carter came to China only after 1797. Therefore the compiler of the Illustrations was someone other than Carter, and Carter only added some parts of the content, phonetic writings and explanatory notes to it. I previously gave an account of this manuscript in other works and would like to further discuss it.[28] 
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[27] See also Report of the Library of Congress of the Fiscal Year ended June 30, 1898 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1898) [https://books.google.com.hk/books?id=SyMvAAAAYAAJ&dq=Report+of+the+Library+of+Congress+of+the+Fiscal+Year+ended+1898&hl=zh-TW&source=gbs_navlinks_s], Appendix No. 8, p. 80.
[28] See “China-US Cultural Relations in the Nineteenth Century: A Study of Caleb Cushing’s Documents and His Collection of Chinese Materials in the US Library of Congress” and “Benjamin Bowen Carter’s (1771-1831) Two Manuscripts on Chinese Language Studies”, my paper presented in the 41st Annual Meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Region Association for Asian Studies, West Chester University, November 3-4, 2012.

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