"Chinese Dialogues" - First English book printed in Shanghai - W. H. Medhurst - 1844

Chinese Dialogues, Questions, and Familiar Sentences, Literally Rendered into English, With a View to Promote Commercial Intercourse, and to Assist Beginners in the Language. -Printed at the Shanghai Mission Press – 1844 -W.H. Medhurst -Octavo --22 x 14cm -Complete: Very good condition - some marks and tears to pages. Original boards (made of reused printing waste) with title to front cover. Title page to text intact with no losses. Marks and bumps here and there but generally very good. Housed in modern quarter leather box. This “phrase book” was aimed at English traders who were moving to the newly opened treaty port of Shanghai. After the defeat of the Qing in the first Opium war, the 1842 treaty of Nanjing opened up the five ports of Shanghai, Guangzhou (Canton), Ningpo, Fuzhou and Xiamen (Amoy) to traders. Eager to take part in the profitable trade in Silks, Tea and Opium, many British, American and European traders made bases in the Chinese treaty ports. Alongside the merchants, missionaries also moved to the newly opened ports. Well established in the ports of Canton and Macao since the early 1800s, Missionaries had an excellent grasp of the language and customs, and Medhurst used this knowledge to produce this work. The London Missionary Society quickly established a press in Shanghai, with this work “Chinese Dialogues” being the first English (or European) work printed in Shanghai. Walter Henry Medhurst (1797-1857) was an important early Protestant Missionary in China. Following on from the trailblazing Morrison, Medhurst arrived in Malacca in 1816. He studied the local languages and was ordained by Milne in 1819. As well as being a missionary, Medhurst was a talented scholar and linguist, printing in Batavia and Macao a Chinese Dictionary, a Hokkien Dictionary, and a Japanese Dictionary (despite having never visited Japan). He quickly moved to Shanghai to set up a press following the opening of the treaty ports. Medhurst’s 1838 London printed “China: it’s state and prospects” would fuel Hudson Taylor and hundreds of other Missionaries to come to China in the second half of the 19th Century. A landmark in Western Printing in China – the first European book printed in Shanghai. Cordier 1642; Löwendahl 1009; Lust 1021. £5950