Danes in Tianjin in the late 1800s

Description

The agreements between the Great Northern Telegraph Company and LI Hongzhang in 1880, the building of the telegraph line Tianjin-Shanghai, and the subsequent involvement of Danes in the Chinese Telegraph Administration, with more than a dozen employed in the 1880s, and the education of Chinese for telegraph service are all well known. The telegraph school in Tianjin opened in 1881 and operated for about twenty years with Danes in charge of technical training. Other Danes worked in the Chinese Maritime Customs, about one third of a total of c. 250 started before 1900. There was also a hotel keeper in Tianjin, the brother of a shop keeper in Beijing, and perhaps others. The story of some of these activities has been written, but the sources have not been used to present the life of the Danes in Tianjin and their interaction with Chinese. The paper will present the initial work and a presentation of official Danish archives, including the Great Northern Telegraph Company, and their potential for a study of the often heard claim, that the Danish, coming from a smaller country, had a special position, and how this worked in their interaction  with the Chinese and other foreigners. It is further planned to include material on Norwegians and Swedes working in Tianjin in the period but the paper will concentrate on the Danes.