RAWSON, Samuel.

£50,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Pocket diaries recording five years spent trading in China and his later life in Britain. A primary record with significant implications for understanding of Shanghai's early expatriate mercantile community and the impact of the Second Opium War. The diarist, Samuel Rawson, was a member of the powerful Rawson merchant dynasty and one of the most senior British freemasons in China. Rawson (1819-1893), the grandson of the Yorkshire financier John Rawson (1744-1815), cut his teeth working for the family firm Blenkin, Rawson & Co., a leading opium dealer. He quickly joined the ranks of Britain's prominent merchants in Hong Kong and China following the First Opium War. In 1847, having been initiated as a freemason several years earlier, he was appointed the first Provincial Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England's Provincial Grand Lodge of China - a position affording considerable social status.Written in a small hand that becomes more legible on closer study, the diaries are composed of short but detailed entries, suggesting Rawson jotted down personal and professional snippets when he could snatch a free moment. The first volume opens with Rawson's return to China in 1860 and charts his accumulation of a large fortune in Shanghai's gold-rush years, when the opening of new treaty ports and the Qing court's granting of territorial and commercial concessions meant there was money to be made. His connections are readily apparent: entries are peppered with meetings with fi

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