[Propaganda] Han, Zhou Han, and Griffith John. The Cause of the Riots in the Yangtse Valley. A "Complete Picture Gallery."

Hankow, 1891. First edition. Oblong 4to. With two title-pages, in English, and in Chinese, the latter printed in red, green, and in black. Illustrated with 32 full-page color woodcuts, with 42 unnumbered accompanying descriptive pages of text, printed in English in three columns. Original limp printed stab-sewn wrappers, worn and soiled, repairs in joint of rear wrapper, creased at center from when folded, with repairs along same on front wrapper; text toned, scattered wear and soiling to same; scattered pencil marginalia.

Very rare Chinese anti-Christian propaganda album. The album contains 32 anti-Western and anti-Christian color woodcut prints that are reproductions of images that originally circulated throughout Hunan Province in the early 1890s to incite anti-Christian activity. Each image features an accompanying translation and descriptive text by English Christian missionary Griffith John (1831-1912), a leader of the London Missionary Society, who proselytized widely throughout the region. John had found the images in a pamphlet and attributed them to a Zhou Han (1842-1911), a circuit official and scholar in Hunan. John circulated the present album in order to draw attention to the British authorities of the dangers faced by Western missionaries in China, as well as to provoke suppression of these anti-Western images and pamphlets. "Very little of this ephemeral material has survived. Because foreign missionaries collected it, this pamphlet is one of the few that circulated outside the country, escaping the conflagrations of war and upheaval that afflicted so much of China during the 19th century." (Perdue, Missionary Commentary on an Illustrated Anti-Christian Chinese Pamphlet, 2014, p. 3)

RBH locates only three other copies in the auction record since 1958.

This lot is located in Philadelphia.

Provenance

From the collection of Justin G. Schiller

[Propaganda] Han, Zhou Han, and Griffith John. The Cause of the Riots in the Yangtse Valley. A "Complete Picture Gallery."

[Propaganda] Han, Zhou Han, and Griffith John. The Cause of the Riots in the Yangtse Valley. A "Complete Picture Gallery."