The First Museum in China: The British Museum of Macao (1829-1834) and its

Contribution to Nineteenth-Century British Natural Science

Author(s): ROGÉRIO MIGUEL PUGA
Source: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , JULY & OCTOBER 2012, Third Series, Vol.
22, No. 3/4 (JULY & OCTOBER 2012), pp. 575-586
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Royal Asiatic Society of
Great Britain and Ireland

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41811530

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 The First Museum in China: The British Museum of

Macao (1829-1834) and its Contribution to

Nineteenth- Century British Natural Science *

ROGÉRIO MIGUEL PUGA

Abstract

This article establishes that the first museum in China was not the Zhendan Museum in Shanghai,
founded by the French Jesuit Pierre Marie Heude (1836-1902) in 1868, but the "British Museum
in China" , founded in 1829 by three supercargoes of the English East India Company, in Macao, a
Portuguese enclave in the Pearl River Delta since c. 1577. My research, based on Portuguese, British
and American sources, allows us to better understand the context in which the founders of the museum
interacted and lived in Macao, how their research and field-work was important for academic British
institutions such as the British Museum in London and how the British Museum of Macao was founded
and became the first (western-styled) museum in China.

In the second half of the eighteenth century, many European cabinets of curiosities collected
by traders and travellers were displayed in museums such as the British Museum (1753- 1759)
and the Louvre (1793) to educate and entertain the public.1 By the 1860s museums were
centres of scientific culture in major western cities. The concept had also been exported to
Asia by European traders and missionaries. This article deals with the first modern museum
in China, founded by three East India Company (EIC) supercargoes in Macao, an enclave in
the Pearl River Delta where the Portuguese had been allowed to establish a base at around
1557. The Chinese authorities delegated the city's administration to the Portuguese, who
were in charge of all matters relating to foreigners.2 As we shall see, the EIC established
direct trade with China in 1700 and its supercargoes, forbidden to stay in China after their
business was finished, resided in Macao during the spring and summer months, between
the Canton trading seasons, rather than returning to Europe. As Portuguese, American and

*This article represents an extended version of a section of a paper I presented at the seminar Commerce,
Migration and Culture: New Perspectives, at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (University of London), on
21 July 2010.
1 See Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting , and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley,
1996), pp. 9, 99, 146, 407; Nigel Leask, Curiosity and Aesthetics of Travel Writing, 1770-1840 (Oxford, 2004), pp. 15-53;
Ken Arnold, Cabinets for the Curious: Looking Back at English Museums (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 13-44, 109-134; Sharon
MacDonald, A Companion to Museum Studies (Oxford, 2007).
Rogério Miguel Puga, A Presença Inglesa e as Relações Anglo- Portuguesas em Macau (1635-1793) (Lisbon, 2009),
pp. 99-102.

JRAS, Series 3, 22, 3-4 (2012), pp. 575-586 © The Royal Asiatic Society 2012
doi:io.ioi7/Si356i863 12000430

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 576 Rogério Miguel Puga

British sources show, anglophone traders collected na

and Canton during their leisure time and sent them to
contributing to the development of natural science.
The first museum founded in China by a Chinese wa
established by philanthropist Zhang Jian in 1905, an
teach Chinese visitors the concepts of evolution and hist
Studies on Chinese museum history5 usually identify
(1836-1902) as the founder, in 1868, of the first mod
Museum, a natural history museum originally know
location on the western outskirts of Shanghai s French
government of Hong Kong had also set up a small di
1 85 5. 6 In 1872 the North China branch of the Roya
in Shanghai, while in 1887 another western missionar
Baptist Mission, founded a museum in Qingzhou.7 Brit
development of modern museums in China, from Shan
been ignored by most, if not all, studies on early Chi
Shanghai Museum, founded by Pierre Heude, was not t
China, as anglophone sources reveal that in 1829 three
in Macao, which remained open for five years until th
China in 1834.
Since the middle of the sixteenth century, the cult
Portuguese Macao has been greatly enriched by the pr
western communities - from the lusophone and anglo
African, Malay, Parsee, Armenian and other temporar
traders arrived in 1700, when the EIC established di
anglophone presence grew in the city until the found
tlie Nanking Treaty. For almost 1 50 years British and Am
and diplomats used Macao as their home and as a "de
1831 the Canton Miscellany noted some of the British cu

3Johan Jacob Kaup, Catalogue of Lophobranchiate Fish in the Colle

pp. 15, 24.
4Qin Shao, Culturing Modernity: The Nantong Model, 1890-1930 (Stanford, 2003), pp. 142-149.
5John Fitzgerald, Awakening China: Politics, Culture, and Class in the Nationalist Revolution (Stanford, 1996
pp. 50-52; Ren Hai, s. v. "Museums", in Edward Lawrence Davis (ed), Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Cultur
(New York, 2005), pp. 568-569; "Ancient China, New Museums", Museum International, vol. 60, 2008, p. 5; Dan
Cui, "British Protestant Educational Activities and the Nationalization of Chinese Education in the 1820s" in Gle
Peterson, Ruth Hayhoe and Yongling Yu (eds), Education, Culture, and Identity in Twentieth- Century China, (An
Arbor, 2001), pp. 153-154.
G. B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 1977), pp. 104-105 and H. Du Cros, Y. S. F. Lee, A
Sauvigrain-McClelland, E. Chow and D. Lung, "The Pearl River Delta: One Region, Three Systems" in H. D
Cros and Yok-shiu F. Lee (eds), Cultural Heritage Management in China: Preserving the Cities of the Pearl River Delta
(New York, 2007), p. 31.
In 1905 the museum was moved to Jinan, in Shandong province. See J. S. Whitewright, "Pioneer Museum
Work in China", The Museum's Journal, February 1909, pp. 266-274; Shirley S. Garrett, Social Reformers in Urb
China: The Chinese Y.M.C. A (Cambridge, MA., 1970), p. 90 and Dan Cui, "British Protestant Education
Activities", p. 154.
See, for example: H. Du Cros et al., "The Pearl River Delta", p. 33; John Fitzgerald, Awakening China,
pp. 50-52 and Ren Hai, s. v. "Museums", pp. 568-569.
Rogério Miguel Puga, A Presença Inglesa, pp. 83-97.

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 The First Museum in China sjj

the EIC's Library (1806-183 4), 10 and the Natural History

scientific endeavour:

Macao also owes to the philanthropic feelings of the Members of the Honourable British
Company, an Institution, which has and will spread useful knowledge among the inhabitants.
We allude to a Library which began in 1806, and contains already at least four thousand volumes
in various languages, but principally in the English . . . Another interesting establishment was
founded two years ago, by young English Amateurs of Natural History. The Museum which
then began is progressing, and posterity will no doubt have to thank it for many rare specimens
of Nature s produce and marvels. Were Lectures on: Experimental Philosophy added to the
preceding resources of mental improvement, the inquisitive spirit in our days would be, we
presume, fully gratified. Cannot the qualification of a Lecturer in that scientific branch, be
united with those of a Clergyman who presides over the English Chapel at Macao?11

As I said before, the EICs supercargoes spent half of the year in Macau, and in the late
eighteenth century the wives and children of some of the anglophone traders moved to the
Luso-Chinese city, changing the way the exclusively male community had lived up to then.
The supercargoes were themselves a source of discontent for the Portuguese authorities when
EIC and private vessels sailed or anchored along the city's coastline, and traders removed
plants and stones from the coast, an activity reported in the British press.12 Merchants
and chaplains who were also (amateur) naturalists sent specimens of fauna and flora from
Macao back to Europe, contributing to the study of Asian botany, geology and zoology.
The botanical collecting and natural history endeavour were part of the scientific British
enterprise which has recently been associated with the nation s imperial project.13 Specimens
were also collected around the Canton foreign factories and along the Pearl River Delta, but
foreigners enjoyed greater freedom in Macao. One can conclude that the Sino-Portuguese
enclave served as a safe port and work platform where specimens could be collected by
traders and members of western scientific expeditions.14 Rocks, fossils, plants and animals
were sent to the West regularly, as well as drawings and descriptions of deformed human
beings, like the one in the Catalogue of the Contents of the Museum of the Royal College of
Surgeons in London , Parts 5 and 6: The Preparations of Monsters and Malformed Parts, in Spirits,
and in a Dried State , published in 1831. Section 323 quotes a description written in 1820 by
John Livingstone, surgeon of the EIC, of "A-Ke, a Chinese monster, born in the district of
Yunlang-yuen ... in the year 1804", of whom a clay model was presented to the Museum
of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1822, by L. Thomas:

10 The Chinese Repository , vol. 4, n. 2, June, 183, pp. 96-98.

11 The Canton Miscellany , n. 5, 1831, p. 381.
12"Natural Curiosity", Caledonian Mercury, n. 123 12, 21-08-1800, p. 3 and Trewman's Exeter Flying Post, n. 1923,
21-08-1800, p. 3.
13On British ecological and epistemological imperialism, see Fa-Ti Fan, "Victorian Naturalists in China:
Science and Informal Empire", British Journal of the History of Science 36, n.i, March, 2003, pp. 1-26; Fa-Ti Fan,
British Naturalists in Qing China: Science, Empire, and Cultural Encounter (Cambridge, MA, 2004); Richard Drayton,
Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the " Improvement " of the World (New Haven, 2000) and Linda
Schiebinger, Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Cambridge, MA, 2004).
See Richard B. Hinds (ed.), The Zoology of the Voyage of H. M. S. Sulphur under the Command of Captain Sir
Edward Belcher during the Years 1836-42, vol. 1 (London, 1843), P- I2°-

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 578 Rogério Miguel Puga

The male "monster" lived in Macao for a while, in a tempo

church15 . . . A-ke was born sixteen years [ago] . . . with a
size united to the pit of his stomach by the neck, as if his
breast. The skin of the principal here joins that of the upper
regularly and smoothly . . . The sufferings of the mother wer
of this monster only two days. Since the time, the parasite h

Three British amateur naturalists, John Reeves (1774-

(1798-1834) and John Russell Reeves (1804-1877),
from Macao between the 1820s and the 1840s, and th
several scientific publications: "Specimens in good orde
Museum and with the Cambridge Philosophical Society
George Vachell . . . Macao", or "A specimen in the Bri
Other publications, such as An Historical and Descript
6 "Botany"), mention the many drawings in possessi
organised by Mr Reeves in Canton and Macao, as well a
of the Museum of the Royal College of Physicians
Millett,19 superintendent of exports for the EIC wh
Morrison (1 796-1 879)20 and after whom the flower
plant specimens near Macao that he sent to London.22
The intense scientific activity of permanent residents,
from Macao and the activity of members of scientific
of specimens and other natural curiosities in the enc
China" was founded during a meeting of three EIC su
permanent exhibition was a smaller version of similar d
a natural history and science museum in the Canton Regi
founded by British Macao-Canton residents who had a

15 Catholic Church of our Lady of Grace built by the Portuguese in

Catalogue of the Contents of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeo
of Monsters and Malformed Parts, in Spirits, and in a Dried State (Lond
17John Richardson, "Report on the Ichthyology of the Seas of China
Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, vo
several specimens sent by British men from Macao and Canton). Sam
(London, 1848), p. 268, also advises: "The ichthyology of China is one
so, however, more from the greater proportion of food furnished by
of the finny tribes . . . Several large collections of preserved fishes
deposited one of the richest in the British Museum, together with a se
living specimens."
Hugh Murray et al, An Historical and Descriptive Account of Chi
In 1829 Millett was mentioned as a "droll chap" by Harriet Low i
and Shadows of a Macao Life: The Journal of Harriett Low, Travelling S
described "old Millett" as a "stiff old Bachelor who is conceited in
(P- 304).
Dr. Robert Morrison was the first Protestant missionary to arrive in China (1807); he translated the Bible
into Chinese and wrote the famous Chinese-English Dictionary.
Roger Spencer, Horticultural Flora of South Eastern Australia, vol. 3 (Sydney, 2002), p. 213.
22 Sir William Jackson Hooker and G. A. Walker Arnott, The Botany of Captain Beechy's Voyage; Comprising an
Account of the Plants Collected by Messrs Lay and Collie, and other Officers of the Expedition (London, 1841), pp. 166-172.
The expedition visited Macao in April 1827.
See Richard B. Hinds (ed.), The Zoology of the Voyage ofH. M. S. Sulphur, p. 120, Sir William Jackson Hooker
and G. A. Walker Arnott, The Botany of Captain Beechy's Voyage, pp. 166-172.

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 The First Museum in China 579

supercargoes established the museum on a voluntary basis, and

involved in the process. One of the museums founders was t
John Russell Reeves. His father was the naturalist John Reeve
teas for the EIC in Canton between 1812 and 1831, collected sev
for the British Museum (London) and who wrote about plant
Morrisons Chinese Dictionary.24 John Russell Reeves arrived i
inspector of teas and succeeded his father in 1831. Another fou
Mathew Clarke, arrived in Canton in 1825 and was superintend
He learned Chinese but left China in 1839. The third founder,
Vachell, was the eldest son of Vicar John Vachell. He arrived i
to work as chaplain to the EIC, mainly in Macao. George H. V
1832, married Cecilia Catherine in 1834 and in that same year r
to the British Commission.25 Like Reeves, Vachell started coll
he arrived, and sent some of them to the Cambridge Philoso
the request of the naturalist Rev. Leonard Jenyns (1800-1893).
scientific British journals acknowledged the research carried ou
John Reeves, indicating the importance of their work for the ad
1857 The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society: Zoolo
of some of the Society's members, including John Reeves an
information on their pioneering research and fieldwork in Chin
us to understand their contribution to science and European res
one of them became involved in the founding of the British M

In 1812 he [John Reeves, the father] proceeded to China . . . He devote

the resources of the country, and to the pursuit of various bran
his principal object to procure specimens of the natural product
especially those which promised to be either useful or ornamenta
England . . . He contributed largely to English horticulture ... by co
spring and summer ... It was in this way, to instance one case amon
sinensis first found its way to England. It was in the latter part of his stay
fine collection of fishes, which, together with his drawings, furnished
Richardson's valuable Report "On the Ichthyology of the Seas of C
in the "Reports of the British Association" for 1 845 . . . Mr. Ree
Linnean Society in 1817, and of the Royal Society in the same year;
Horticultural Society, the Royal Astronomical, the Asiatic, and the
the Society of Arts; and most of these institutions are indebted to him
to their collections.26

The same publication goes on to praise the work of John Reev

his research for the British Museum in London:

24 See P. J. P. Whitehead, "The Reeves Collection of Chinese Fish Drawings", Bulletin of the British Museum,
Natural History Series, n. 3, 1969, pp. 191-233.
25 Ivor Vachell and Arthur Cadogan Vachell, A Short Account, or History, of the Family of Vachell (Cardiff, 1900),
p. 84.
26 The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society: Zoology, vol. 1 (1857), pp. xliii-xlv.

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 580 Rogério Miguel Puga

His son, John Russell Reeves, Esq., (also, let me add, a v

likewise presented various fish procured at Macao to the
several species not figured in his fathers drawings. Mr. Re
Museum were not limited to the Natural-History departm
and the department of Antiquities, to the latter of which
collection of Chinese coins, all such as were thought desirab

In 1829, news of the opening of the British Museum

founders quickly reached Europe and other parts of
Journal described the structure and aims of the "Ma
article previously published in the Canton Register.

It appears from the Canton Register, that a society has been f

at Macao a cabinet of natural history and curiosities in art
reptiles, insects, either stuffed or prepared in spirits; pain
comparative anatomist; anecdotes of the names and habit
secretary in a book kept purposely in the museum.28

The short description enumerates the contents of th

the founders' pedagogic efforts to inform visitors: v
ethnographic objects, musical instruments, as well as
captions explaining each pieces application, so that th
artefacts were more than just strange and exotic object
been collected in China and were displayed and explain
supercargoes and other traders who lived in the city,
in the excerpt below.
In the second half of the eighteenth century the netw
opium trade united the supercargoes, the private mer
carried the drug and other goods from India to S
Committee was unable to prevent private traders fr
given its officials' personal interests, its dependence
of merchants who joined other nations' diplomatic s
evading the Company's legal control.30 Independent ag
Thomas Beale, John Henry Cox,31 Charles Schneider
James Matheson33 arrived in the enclave in the late e
of Portuguese residents and the diplomatic posts of

27 Ibid.
28 The Asiatic Journal , vol. 28, n. 165, September 1829, p. 370.
29 India Office Records (IOR, British Library, London): G/ 12/ 103, fls. 70-71, 74, 80-81, 84-85.
30In 1783 James Henry Cox and John Reid, chief of the "Imperial Company", were the only British residents
in Canton, and the EIC had no power over them (IOR, G/ 12/77, A- 81). In 1786 only two independent traders,
John Henry Cox and John M. Intyre, lived in Macao (IOR, R/10/15, fl. 14). After helping the supercargoes on a
voluntary basis, Intyre was nominated agent of the EIC in that city in 1785, where he assisted the crews of arriving
ships and the Canton factory (IOR, G/12/79, part 2, fls. 6-7, G/12/89, fl. 9, G/12/98, fl. 2).
IOR, R/10/15, fl. 14, G/12/101, fls. 9-10, G/12/103, fl. 10.
32 Arquivos de Macau, 3rd series, vol. 17, n. 3, March 1972, pp. 133-135.
33 Wen Eang Cheong, Mandarins and Merchants: Jardine Matheson & Co., A China Agency of the Early Nineteenth
Century (London, 1978).

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 The First Museum in China 581

to trading in the city, thus by-passing the law and the EIC s
British community was therefore composed of supercargoes, p
families living in Macao all year long. The private trader Tho
who collected fauna and flora from all over the world, was mos
museum. Supercargoes and private traders all contributed finan
"infant institution" which displayed:

Vegetable productions, both dried and in painting. Mineralogical

Specimens of art, especially Chinese, such as costumes, manufactu
buildings, tombs, bridges, boats, arms, fishing tackle, agricultural imp
materials, with accounts of their application; smelting processes, model
josses,35 ornaments, musical instruments; inscriptions, with translat
of natural history. Having been submitted in the first instance to th
factory, and highly approved of by a great majority of their numb
the 22nd of February, when it was resolved to give effect to the und
museum at Macao, to be supported by subscriptions of the British comm
to gentlemen of every nation to become honorary and correspondin
editor of the Register observes: "The good-will already manifested towa
may, we hope, be augured as an earnest of its future success'.36

Some American residents immediately donated "objects of curio

Robert Morrison contributed by translating a description of t
be delivered to the Hong merchants37 and other tea dealers in Can
would donate Chinese objects. Unlike their Chinese peers, foreig
China and collect material for the institution. The museum was therefore described as a

joint effort of British traders and missionaries, as well as American and Chinese merchants -
an anglophone philanthropic, scientific and educational initiative in a Chinese territory
administrated by the Portuguese:

Several contributions of objects of curiosity have been received, amongst them a very liberal
collection from an American gentleman. By the aid of Dr. Morrison, whose talents and co-
operation are never wanting in the cause of knowledge, a statement of the objects of the museum
has been drawn out in Chinese, and distributed through the Hong merchants, among the tea
dealers and numerous merchants from the interior, who annually visit Canton. Experience will
not, perhaps, justify our building much on their assistance; yet so much is in their power to effect
with but little trouble, that something more may be looked for than the mere isolated efforts of
individuals have been able to accomplish, when the desire of gain is brought into action with the
more ample means, which an association can command.38

34Thomas Beale arrived in Macao in 1791 . He traded in the enclave and smuggled opium until, poverty-stricken,
he committed suicide (see Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino (AHU), Portuguese Overseas Historical Archive, Lisbon):
Macau , box 37, doc. 14; box 42, docs. 16, 26; box 45, docs. 21, 49;box 46, doc. 31 and box 63, doc. 2 and Rogério
Miguel Puga, A World of Euphemism: Representações de Macau na Obra de Austin Coates: City of Broken Promises
enauanto Romance Histórico e Bildunçsroman Feminino (Lisboa, 2009), pp. 183-185.
35 Chinese divinity; Chinese Pidgin English term (corrupted form of the Portuguese word "Deus").
36The Asiatic Journal, vol. 28, n. 165, September 1829, p. 370.
37 The hong merchants did business with the westerners individually, but the group was responsible for all
matters relating to the stay and safety of the foreign crews in China, and for that reason they were called "security
merchants".
38 The Asiatic Journal , vol. 28, Ibid.

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 582 Rogério Miguel Puga

Robert Morrison, who also participated in the organi

and translator, mentioned the founding of the institut
a letter to George Staunton,39 dated 24 February 1829
was difficult, but a decision was reached and the insti
Museum in China":

I am induced to write a few lines to mention the formation of a Museum here. It is to include

Natural History and the Productions of Art. It is open to all British subjects by ballot, and not
confined to the Factory. Some of the Factory indeed declined being members. For the current
year, Mr. Reeves, jun., is secretary, Mr. Clark, treasurer; and the Rev. Mr. Vachell, curator. Our
annual subscription is thirty dollars. The name to give it was a difficulty. At last the meeting
resolved to call it the British Museum in China.40

Dr Morrison s memoirs also described the aims of the museum and his own involvement:

During this summer [1829] an Institution was established in Macao, designated the British
Museum in China, for the purpose of collecting native and foreign curiosities, including the
productions of art, as well as what pertained to natural history, &c. Dr. Morrison zealously
encouraged this attempt to enlarge the sphere of knowledge and science - not only as a liberal
subscriber and contributor, but also by circulating among the natives a statement of the objects
of the museum.41

Several anglophone Macao residents and visitors describe the permanent collection. Harriett
Low, an American young lady who resided in Macao between 1829 and 1833, visited the
museum with the Rev. Vachell in June 1830.42 A year later she mentioned some of the
animals on display and Vachells work setting up the collection: "Dr. Morrison, Pereira
and Fox called. After dinner according to agreement we went to Mr. Vachell s rooms to
see some birds just sent from Java for the museum - very handsome. Also a flying fox,
a wonderful creature, and a large vampire Bat, an immense creature".43 During another

39The first British Embassy to China in 1793 allowed for the education of the young George Thomas Staunton
(1781-1859), regarded as the first British sinologist. Acting on his fathers wishes and with the assistance of Chinese
teachers, he began to learn Mandarin in London in 1792. He took part in above mentioned diplomatic expedition,
exemplifying the British desire to set up a permanent trading post in China, later becoming a sinologist, a supercargo
and EIC administrator in Canton-Macao. In 1793, aged twelve, George Thomas accompanied his father, Sir George
Leonard Staunton (1737-1801), deputy secretary and minister plenipotentiary in Lord Macartney's Embassy, as a
page to the ambassador. The adolescent studied Chinese with Pol Ko and Lee, two Chinese missionaries from the
Propaganda Fide [Roman Catholic College for the Propagation of the Faith]. Later, in April 1798, Staunton was
appointed clerk of the British factory in Canton, promoted in 1 804 to EIC supercargo and the following year took
part in introducing vaccination in China by translating the Treatise of the Company's surgeon, Alexander Pearson. In
1808 Staunton was appointed factory interpreter, and in 18 16 he became president of the Select Committee, living
in Macao between trading seasons. That year, together with William, Earl Amherst (1773-1857) and Sir Henry Ellis
(1777-1855), he was appointed King's Commissioner in the second British Embassy to Beijing (1816-1817). His
mission was to try (although in vain) to defend the rights of British traders in Canton and Macao. Staunton wrote
"Considerations upon the China Trade" (1813, see IOR, G/ 12/20, fls. 444-488). On the second Embassy, see:
IOR, G/12/196, G/12/197, G/12/198; Jin Guo Ping and Wu Zhiliang (eds), Correspondência Oficial Trocada Entre
as Autoridades de Cantão e os Procuradores do Senado: Fundo das Chapas Sínicas em Português (1749-1847), vol. 5 (Macao,
2000), docs. 158-160,161, 165-166; and Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino (AHU) Portuguese Overseas Archive,
Lisbon, Macau , box 40, docs. 20, 38; box 41, doc. 13; box 42, docs. 7; box 43, doc. 27.
40E. Morrison (ed.), Memoirs of the Life and Labours of Robert Morrison, vol. 2 (London, 1839), p. 424.
Robert Morrison, Memoirs, p. 427.
H. Low, Lights and Shadows of a Macao Life, pp. 157, 228.
43The Asiatic Journal, vol. 28, p. 241.

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 The First Museum in China 583

visit in 1832 she praised the numerous donations to the museu

variety of curiosities. It has been established but a few years a
have been very large. Saw a skeleton of a man there. Not a very
must all, someday or other, be such a wreck of bones".44 Othe
Roberts, list the museum and other British and American institu
ophthalmic hospital,45 and a small museum"),46 and gradually
Macao s collective (anglophone) memory and imaginary, as wel
the famous aviary and gardens of Thomas Beale, and the gard
Camões Grotto, situated right next to the Casa Garden. This
to the president of the EIC Select Committee and was visited b
American travellers.

Other temporary visitors were guided through the museum, as Charles Samuel Stewart s
1830 travel narrative reveals when it enumerates places of interest in Macao: "The library
and museum of the East India Company, an aviary of splendid birds belonging to Mr.
Beale, an English resident, and a small Chinese temple, were also visited by us with much
gratification".47 In 1834, English-born Australian physician and naturalist George Bennett
(1804-1893) visited the enclave on his way to Australia and described the museum just before
it was closed down. He Usted some of the objects brought from all over the world to be
displayed in the institution s several rooms, where a guide informed visitors and guarded the
collections.

A museum has been established at Macao, by the English residents, and even now contains an
extensive and excellent collection of birds, beasts, weapons, fossils, &c. from all parts of the world.
Several rooms are appropriated solely for this collection, having a person to take charge of them,
and attend upon visitors. So little encouragement, however, is given to natural science, and the
European merchants are so much absorbed in mercantile affairs, that, on the dissolution of the
establishment of the Honourable East India Company, this excellent nucleus for an extensive,
valuable, and, (with scientific arrangement,) useful collection, will no doubt be broken up and
dispersed.48

According to the naturalist, the independent traders were only interested in business, so
he foresaw the destruction of the museum after the EIC left China. The museum was in
fact closed down, but his characterisation of the traders was not entirely accurate. On 19
October 1835, several western merchants, including the already mentioned William Jardine,
met in Canton to established the China branch of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge to show that "foreigners who come to this country have other objects in view
than mere selfish gains",49 as if to contradict Bennett s point of view, which was common
at the time.

44 Ibid., p. 286. See also p. 92.

45 In 1827 the assistant surgeon of the EIC Thomas Richardson College (1796-1879) founded the first
Ophthalmic Hospital for poor Chinese in Macao.
46E. Roberts, Embassy to the Eastern Courts of Cochin-China, Siam, and Muscat (New York, 1837), p. 167.
47 Charles Samuel Stewart, A Visit to the South Seas, vol. 2 (New York, 1833), p. 259.
48 George Bennett, Wanderings in New South Wales . . . Being the Journal of a Naturalist during 1832, 1833, and 1834,
vol. 2 (London, 1834), pp. 35-36.
49 Chinese Repository, n. 8, December 1835, p. 354.

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584 Rogério Miguel Puga

Both the academic and general British press des

contribution for the advancement of learning in Asia an
way to improve the EIC s social image, a strategy whic
directors in London, because of the strong demand in Br
monopoly in China, especially towards the end of the e
and manufacturers began to demand that the governmen
in vessels other than those of the EIC, so that they coul
than the Company's. The minister Sir Henry Dundas
China trade was in a precarious and fragile state but th
traders might upset the situation by giving rise to c
Company's monopoly should therefore be upheld until
obtained from the emperor.51 Following the 1833 act to
the EIC's monopoly in China came to an end, and with
In that same year, the British Society for the Diffusio
following description in its Quarterly Journal of Educ
description published in Morrison's memoirs:

British Museum: This institution was established at Maca

passed by members of the British factory on the 21st Febr
is the collection of specimens of natural history and of the p
annual subscriptions of thirty dollars each, the subscribing m
Natives of other countries are eligible as honorary or corr
of management is composed of a treasurer, a curator, and a s

In 1835, after the museum's closure, the London Quar

museum of rare animals, fossils, weapons, &c. &c., col
residents",53 while Anders Ljungstedt's (1759-1835) famo
Settlements in China , Macao's first history written in En
4,000 volumes and to the museum: "another interest
young English amateurs of natural history. The Mus
would no doubt have been indebted to it for many ra
marvels, had not the founders of it been obliged, by t
at Canton, to separate".54 The 1833 Act to Regulate Tr
ended the monopoly of the Company in the Pearl Riv
result, both its library and museum were closed down
The April 1836 issue of the Journal of the Asiatic Society
Macao museum that the British trader in Canton Rob
the Calcutta Asiatic Society, 55 which had been set up

50See Philip Lawson, The East India Company: A History (London

51 P. J. Marshall, "Britain and China in the Late Eighteenth Ce
Diplomacy: The Macartney Mission to China (1792-1794): Papers Presented
for Chinese Studies Marking the Bicentenary of the Macartney Mission
The Quarterly Journal of Education, vol. 6, n. 1 1 , July-October 18
The London Quarterly Review, n. 105, February 1835, p. 9
54 A. Ljungstedt, An Historical Sketch of the Portuguese Settlements
See also The Calcutta Monthly Journal and General Register of Occurren
East Forming an Epitome of the Indian Press for the Year 1836 (1837), p

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 The First Museum in China 585

A collection of 148 mounted birds, six birds' nests with eggs, six mamm
head and legs of various birds, were presented by R. [Robert] Inglis
formed part of the Macao museum lately abandoned. It had been propos
collection to Calcutta [Museum of the Asiatic Society], and as far as con
it is to be regretted that this magnificent intention had been abandoned.5

The number of stuffed animals sent to Calcutta reveals both the

the Macao museums collection, which was gradually dispersed af
philanthropic gesture was also acknowledged in the Catalogue of
Asiatic Society (1849), in which the origin of several items is listed:
museum: presented by R. Inglis, Esq. (1834)", or "specimen from
Museum".57 Unfortunately the general Catalogue of Curiosities in th
Society (Calcutta, 1849), organised by the institutions librarian, does
objects".
Museums and private collections in Great Britain and other western countries58 were
therefore enriched with specimens collected in Macao since the eighteenth century, and,
in the case of the Calcutta museum, by the specimens taken from the "dispersed Macao
Museum", the first museum in China. We tend to think of the EIC and the American firms
only as commercial institutions in China, but their presence was highly relevant in cultural
and social terms, as supercargoes and traders greatly enriched the everyday life of the enclave
and contributed to the advancement of scientific knowledge both in Asia and in the West.
Their presence in China, and especially in Macao, was therefore not only economic but also
cultural; it was vital for the dissemination of scientific knowledge and, as we have seen, for the
training of the first British and American sinologists. Since the EIC s cultural and scientific
role was not satisfactorily replaced by any other organisation or group of people after 1834,
the museum and the library's closure impoverished Macao and the Pearl River Delta in
cultural terms. The museum, like the library of the EIC, the English Tavern/Hotel on the
Praia Grande,59 the schools and hospitals founded by Protestant missionaries, 60 the English-
language newspapers printed in Macao and Canton,61 the theatre and opera performances,

of the meeting the various papers and donations to the museum presented to the Society during the past month.
Amongst the latter there was a large collection of stuffed birds and small animals from Mr. Robert Inglis of Canton.
They had formed part of the Macao museum which had recently been broken up, and constituted a very important
addition to the stores of the Asiatic Society."
Ajournai of the Asiatic Society, vol. 5, n. 52, April 1836, p. 249.
57Edward Blyth, Catalogue of the Birds in the Museum Asiatic Society, Calcutta, Asiatic Society (1849), pp. 45, 55.
See also pages xix, xxi, 75, hi, 155 and 215.
See the example of the Peabody Essex Museum, in Salem (USA).
59The Macau English Tavern/Hotel was strategically located in the Praia Grande during the 1830s and was
owned by two East India Company supercargoes - Richard Markwick (1791-1836) and Edward Lane (d. 1831) -
who established a firm called Markwick and Lane. It was also called the "Beach Hotel" in anglophone sources, and
the "English Tavern" in both anglophone and Portuguese documents [B. L. Ball, Rambles in Eastern Asia, Including
China and Manilla, During Several Years' Residence (Boston, 1856), pp. 409-410; H. Low, Lights and Shadows of a
Macao Life , pp. 104, 568; and Jin Guo Ping and Wu Zhiliang (eds.), Correspondência Oficial , vol. 8, pp. 30, 37].
60In 1835, Charles GutzlafFs (1803-1851) second wife, Mary Wanstall Gutzlaff (d. 1849), founded a school for
Chinese poor and blind children in Macao.
The Canton Register (1827-1844); The Canton Miscellany (1831-1832); The ( Chinese ) Courier and Canton
Gazette (1831-1833); The Chinese Repository (1832-1852); The Evangelist and Miscellania Sinica (1833); The Canton
Press (1835-1844); The Macao Review (1929-1930); The Macau Herald (1943); The Macau Tribune (1943-1945) and
The Clarion (1943-1945).

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 586 Rogério Miguel Puga

the several photographers who did business in the enclav

Press (1815-1834), the Luso-British Theatre (a tempor
and the Protestant old cemetery and chapel - which
the greatness of the impact that the anglophone com
cultural life and history. The British Museum in Macao
interest and field work in Macao and Canton and their contribution to the advancement
of knowledge locally and in Europe. The temporary institution was a manifestation of
expanding scientific knowledge, of more amateur cultures of scientific appreciation and of
European (British) posturing in Asia. It was also a vehicle for some of its founders to establish
scientific credentials while asserting that Macao, Canton and China in general were centres
of knowledge. As I have shown, it was the three above mentioned EIC supercargoes, and
not the French Jesuit Pierre Marie Heude, as previously thought, who founded the first
(western-styled) museum in China, the British Museum of Macao, which opened its doors
39 years before the Zhendan Museum in Shanghai. <rogerio_puga@hotmail.com>
Rogério Miguel Puga
FCSH-New University, Portugal

62Some of the anglophone photographers who did business there were: Eliphalet M. Brown Jr. (1816-188
Milton M. Miller (1830-1899), Charles Leander Weed (1824-1903), John Thomson (1837-1921), Cesar von D
(1819-1888), William Pryor Floyd (fl. 1860s- 1870s) and George Ernest Morrison (1862-1920).

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