Friends of Sir Robert Hart, Three Generations of Carrall Women in China

摘要

This book is a labour of love, in which Dr Mary Tiffen, a distinguished scholar of socio-economic development in Africa and the Middle East, tells the story of her family's engagement with China during the 19th and early years of the 20th centuries. Dr Tiffen recounts this story in considerable detail, highlighting the relationships that several of the women of her family enjoyed with the redoubtable Sir Robert Hart, Inspector-General of the China Maritime Customs Service. Hart was one of the most effective 'China helpers' in the late Qing period, and the service he led was one of the most powerful vectors of modernisation within China as she attempted to reform in the face of the often hostile Great Powers.