John Otway Percy Bland
Encyclopedia
John Otway Percy Bland a British writer and journalist, was born on 15 November 1863 in Malta, the second son of the ten children of Major-General Edward Loftus Bland (1829–1923) and Emma Frances Franks (d. 1894). Best known as the author of a number of books on Chinese politics and history, he lived in China for most of the period 1883-1910. A planned career in law was curtailed while he was still at university, and his father arranged for him to be considered for an appointment in the Chinese Maritime Customs Service
.
In 1896 Bland resigned from the Customs to take up the position of Assistant Secretary to the Shanghai Municipal Council, which governed the Shanghai International Settlement
, succeeding to the Secretaryship the following year on the retirement of the incumbent, R.F. Thorburn. This was not initially an onerous position, and Bland began to develop a parallel career as a free-lance journalist. As a Customs employee he had been forbidden from writing to or for the press, but now, as well as starting a humorous weekly, The Rattle, he penned more light verse, and commenced an association with The Times
as its Shanghai correspondent. Verse and Worse was published in 1902 with illustrations by Willard Dickerman Straight, who had joined the Customs in 1902, and with whom Bland struck up a friendship.
Bland began to get critically engaged in the politics of Britain's China policy, and was a vocal advocate of a forward policy, especially with the arrival on the scene in China of German interests after 1897. At Shanghai during his tenure of his post as chief administrator, the International Settlement expanded in size threefold, and Bland himself was active in the Shanghai Committee of the British China Association, which advocated a more aggressive policy in China than its parent committee in London. He left the Municipal Council in 1906 to take up a new position with the British and Chinese Corporation (BCC), formed largely by Jardine Matheson and by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation
in 1898, becoming its Peking-based agent conducting railway loan negotiations with the Chinese government. This ended in acrimony in 1910 as Bland's anti-German proclivities ran counter to the Bank's policy, and he was dismissed. The following year saw the termination of his relationship with The Times. Since his move back to Peking Bland had assisted the paper's China correspondent George Ernest Morrison
, who had no Chinese. Morrison eventually saw Bland as a rival and engineered his dismissal.
, of two best-selling accounts of recent Chinese history, China under the Empress Dowager (1910) and Annals and Memoirs of the Court of Peking (1914). Backhouse, already widely known as a Sinologist supplied the source materials for the volumes, while Bland, who had some talent as a writer, fashioned them into readable manuscripts. Unfortunately for Bland, Backhouse was a fantasist and forger, and attacks on the veracity of the key source used in China under the Empress Dowager, the so-called 'Diary of His Excellency Ching-Shan', commenced even before it was published. To the end of his life Bland parried attacks on the books. British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper's 1978 biography clearly laid out the life-long pattern of fraud, forgery and deceit that had mostly engaged Backhouse's energy.
Bland's reputation has been further tarnished by his furious denunciation of China's nationalist revolution, China: the Pity of it (1932). Its attacks on post-imperial China, on its new nationalist aspirations and politics have seen Bland roundly identified as the quintessential 'Old China Hand', and a reactionary, if not a racist. He was equally critical of British policy and British diplomats, attacking the 'Foreign Office School of Thought' in his reportage, and making fun of diplomatic life and loves in Peking in his lighter fiction.
Bland died in 23 June 1945 in Ipswich, Suffolk, England. His papers were later donated to the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library
, University of Toronto
through the intercession of J.L. Cranmer-Byng.
Chinese Maritime Customs Service
The Chinese Maritime Customs Service was a Chinese governmental tax collection agency and information service from its founding in 1854 until its bifurcation in 1949 into services operating in the Republic of China on Taiwan, and in the People's Republic of China...
.
Career in China
Bland arrived in China in 1883, and worked in the Customs from 1 July 1883 until 31 January 1896, serving in Hankou, Canton, and Peking, serving there as Inspector-General Sir Robert Hart's Private Secretary from 1894-96. From early in his career he began writing light verse about life amongst the foreign expatriate communities in the Chinese treaty ports, collected in Lays of Far Cathay, in 1890. He married an American, Louisa Dearborn Nickels (b. c.1864), widow of M. C. Nickels and daughter of a Pacific Mail Line skipper, Captain H. C. Dearborn, in Shanghai on 29 November 1889.In 1896 Bland resigned from the Customs to take up the position of Assistant Secretary to the Shanghai Municipal Council, which governed the Shanghai International Settlement
Shanghai International Settlement
The Shanghai International Settlement began originally as a purely British settlement. It was one of the original five treaty ports which were established under the terms of the Treaty of Nanking at the end of the first opium war in the year 1842...
, succeeding to the Secretaryship the following year on the retirement of the incumbent, R.F. Thorburn. This was not initially an onerous position, and Bland began to develop a parallel career as a free-lance journalist. As a Customs employee he had been forbidden from writing to or for the press, but now, as well as starting a humorous weekly, The Rattle, he penned more light verse, and commenced an association with The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
as its Shanghai correspondent. Verse and Worse was published in 1902 with illustrations by Willard Dickerman Straight, who had joined the Customs in 1902, and with whom Bland struck up a friendship.
Bland began to get critically engaged in the politics of Britain's China policy, and was a vocal advocate of a forward policy, especially with the arrival on the scene in China of German interests after 1897. At Shanghai during his tenure of his post as chief administrator, the International Settlement expanded in size threefold, and Bland himself was active in the Shanghai Committee of the British China Association, which advocated a more aggressive policy in China than its parent committee in London. He left the Municipal Council in 1906 to take up a new position with the British and Chinese Corporation (BCC), formed largely by Jardine Matheson and by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation
Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation
The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited is a prominent bank established and based in Hong Kong since 1865 when Hong Kong was a colony of the British Empire. It is the founding member of the HSBC Group and since 1990 is now a wholly owned subsidiary of HSBC Holdings plc...
in 1898, becoming its Peking-based agent conducting railway loan negotiations with the Chinese government. This ended in acrimony in 1910 as Bland's anti-German proclivities ran counter to the Bank's policy, and he was dismissed. The following year saw the termination of his relationship with The Times. Since his move back to Peking Bland had assisted the paper's China correspondent George Ernest Morrison
George Ernest Morrison
George Ernest Morrison , also known as Chinese Morrison, was an Australian adventurer and The Times Peking correspondent.-Early life:...
, who had no Chinese. Morrison eventually saw Bland as a rival and engineered his dismissal.
Return to Britain
Bland returned to China just once more in 1920 before his death, but the years after he left were those which saw him carve out a new career as a freelance writer and commentator, mainly on Chinese affairs. As well as a succession of commentaries, Recent Events and Present Policies in China (1912); China, Japan and Korea (1921), he published more light fiction. He became best known, however, as co-author, with Sir Edmund BackhouseSir Edmund Backhouse, 2nd Baronet
Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse, 2nd Baronet was a British oriental scholar and linguist whose work exerted a powerful influence on the Western view of the last decades of the Qing Dynasty. Since his death, however, it has been established that some of his sources were forged, though it is not clear...
, of two best-selling accounts of recent Chinese history, China under the Empress Dowager (1910) and Annals and Memoirs of the Court of Peking (1914). Backhouse, already widely known as a Sinologist supplied the source materials for the volumes, while Bland, who had some talent as a writer, fashioned them into readable manuscripts. Unfortunately for Bland, Backhouse was a fantasist and forger, and attacks on the veracity of the key source used in China under the Empress Dowager, the so-called 'Diary of His Excellency Ching-Shan', commenced even before it was published. To the end of his life Bland parried attacks on the books. British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper's 1978 biography clearly laid out the life-long pattern of fraud, forgery and deceit that had mostly engaged Backhouse's energy.
Bland's reputation has been further tarnished by his furious denunciation of China's nationalist revolution, China: the Pity of it (1932). Its attacks on post-imperial China, on its new nationalist aspirations and politics have seen Bland roundly identified as the quintessential 'Old China Hand', and a reactionary, if not a racist. He was equally critical of British policy and British diplomats, attacking the 'Foreign Office School of Thought' in his reportage, and making fun of diplomatic life and loves in Peking in his lighter fiction.
Bland died in 23 June 1945 in Ipswich, Suffolk, England. His papers were later donated to the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library
Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library
The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library is a library in the University of Toronto, constituting the largest repository of publicly accessible rare books and manuscripts in Canada. The library is also home to the university archives which, in addition to institutional records, also contains the papers...
, University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
through the intercession of J.L. Cranmer-Byng.
Books
- Lays of Far Cathay (1890).
- Verse and Worse (1902).
- China under the Empress Dowager (1910) (with Edmund Backhouse).
- Recent Events and Present Policies in China (1912).
- Annals and Memoirs of the Court of Peking (1914) (with Edmund Backhouse).
- Houseboat days in China (1914).
- Germany's violations of the laws of war 1914-15 (1915) compiled under the auspices of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs; tr. and with an introduction by J.O.P. Bland.
- Li Hung-chang (1917).
- Men, manners & morals in South America (1920).
- China, Japan and Korea (1921).
- Something Lighter (1924).
- China: the Pity of it (1932).