Sir Robert Hart

The first order transmitted by Prince Kung to the new Inspector-General--or the I.G., as he was always familiarly called--was that he should live at Shanghai. This gave him the...

Curiously enough, almost as soon as Robert Hart was back in Peking (1880) the opium question was brought to his attention again. This time it was by a Chinese official--one Yuan...

Some three weeks before the beginning of the Siege proper Peking was in a state of great unrest--how great no one, not even the I.G., could accurately judge. But as each day bro...

The journey out to Chinn in 1854 was not the simple matter that it is now. No Suez Canal existed then, and the _Candia_ that took Robert Hart from Southampton left him at Alexan...

Robert Hart therefore went quietly on with his work in the Customs (1885), setting personal ambitions calmly aside, and finding--let us hope--his reward in the satisfaction whic...

When his share in the arrangements for the disbandment of "The Ever-Victorious Army" was completed, the I.G. received a second order directing him to live at Peking. In those da...

Three important things occurred in Robert Hart's life between the years 1870 and 1879. In 1873 his only son was born; 1875 was marked by the beginning of the famous Margary affa...

When Robert Hart joined the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, the service was already four years old. 1854--the very year he passed through Shanghai on his way to Ningpo--saw i...

With the conclusion of the Peking Congress a new era began in the old capital. One could scarcely expect the effects of the Siege and its terrible aftermath to wear off at once....

Robert Hart began his romantic life in simple circumstances. He was born on the 20th day of February, 1835, in a little white house with green shutters on Dungannon Street, in t...

Seventy-three years ago a little Irish boy lay in his aunt's lap looking out on a strange and mysterious world that his solemn eyes had explored for scarcely ten short days, whi...