Sir Edmund Backhouse, 2nd Baronet
Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse, 2nd Baronet (20 October 1873 – 8 January 1944) was a British oriental scholar, Sinologist, and linguist whose books exerted a powerful influence on the Western view of the last decades of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912). Since his death, however, it has been established that the major source of his '' China Under the Empress Dowager'', '' Diary of His Excellency Ching Shan'', is a forgery, most likely by Backhouse himself. His biographer, Hugh Trevor-Roper, unmasked Backhouse as "a confidence man with few equals", who had also duped the British government, Oxford University, the American Bank Note Company and John Brown & Company. Derek Sandhaus, the editor of Backhouse's memoirs '' Décadence Mandchoue'', argues that they are also an undoubted confabulation but contain plausible recollections of scenes and details. Early life Backhouse was born into a Quaker family in Darlington; his relatives included many churchmen and scholars. In 1918, he i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Barclays Bank
Barclays PLC (, occasionally ) is a British multinational universal bank, headquartered in London, England. Barclays operates as two divisions, Barclays UK and Barclays International, supported by a service company, Barclays Execution Services. Barclays traces its origins to the goldsmith banking business established in the City of London in 1690. James Barclay became a partner in the business in 1736. In 1896, twelve banks in London and the English provinces, including Goslings Bank, Backhouse's Bank and Gurney, Peckover and Company, united as a joint-stock bank under the name Barclays and Co. Over the following decades, Barclays expanded to become a nationwide bank. In 1967, Barclays deployed the world's first cash dispenser. Barclays has made numerous corporate acquisitions, including of London, Provincial and South Western Bank in 1918, British Linen Bank in 1919, Mercantile Credit in 1975, the Woolwich in 2000 and the North American operations of Lehman Brothers in 2 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cixi
Empress Dowager Cixi ( ; 29 November 1835 – 15 November 1908) was a Manchu noblewoman of the Yehe Nara clan who effectively but periodically controlled the Chinese government in the late Qing dynasty as empress dowager and regent for almost 50 years, from 1861 until her death in 1908. Selected as a Concubinage in China, concubine of the Xianfeng Emperor in her adolescence, she gave birth to a son, Zaichun, in 1856. After the Xianfeng Emperor's death in 1861, his five-year-old son became the Tongzhi Emperor, and Cixi assumed the role of co-empress dowager alongside Xianfeng's widow, Empress Dowager Ci'an. Cixi ousted a group of regents appointed by the late emperor and assumed the regency along with Ci'an. Cixi then consolidated control over the dynasty when she installed her nephew as the Guangxu Emperor at the death of the Tongzhi Emperor in 1875. Ci'an continued as co-regent until her death in 1881. Cixi supervised the Tongzhi Restoration, a series of moderate reforms that hel ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Beiping
"Beijing" is from pinyin ''Běijīng,'' which is romanized from , the Chinese name for this city. The pinyin system of transliteration was approved by the Chinese government in 1958, but little used until 1979. It was gradually adopted by various news organizations, governments, and international agencies over the next decade. Etymology The Chinese characters ("north") and ("capital") together mean the "Northern Capital". The name was first used during the reign of the Ming dynasty's Yongle Emperor, who made his northern fief a second capital, along with Nanjing (, the "Southern Capital"), in 1403 after successfully dethroning his nephew during the Jingnan Campaign. The name was restored in 1949 at the founding of the People's Republic of China. Peking Portugal was the first European country to contact China in modern times. In Portuguese, the city is called ''Pequim.'' This name appeared in the letters of Francis Xavier in 1552. It transferred to English as "Pekin" and t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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George Ernest Morrison
George Ernest Morrison (4 February 1862 – 30 May 1920) was an Australian journalist, political adviser to and representative of the government of the Republic of China during World War I, and owner of the then largest Asiatic library ever assembled. Early life Morrison was born in Geelong, Victoria, Australia. His father George Morrison, who emigrated from Edinkillie, Elgin, Scotland, to Australia in 1858, was headmaster of The Geelong College where Morrison was educated. George Sr married Rebecca Greenwood, of Yorkshire, in 1859, and Morrison was the second child of the marriage. Three of Morrison's seven uncles were rectors of the Presbyterian Church, and two of the four others were principal (Alexander) and master (Robert) of Scotch College, Melbourne, where George Sr also taught mathematics for six months. Another Uncle, Donald Morrison, was the Rector of The Glasgow Academy between 1861 until 1899. He won Geelong College's Scripture History gold medal in 1876 and, an a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Times
''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (founded in 1821), are published by Times Media, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, in turn wholly owned by News Corp. ''The Times'' and ''The Sunday Times'' were founded independently and have had common ownership only since 1966. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. ''The Times'' was the first newspaper to bear that name, inspiring numerous other papers around the world. In countries where these other titles are popular, the newspaper is often referred to as or , although the newspaper is of national scope and distribution. ''The Times'' had an average daily circulation of 365,880 in March 2020; in the same period, ''The Sunday Times'' had an average weekly circulation of 647,622. The two ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Beijing
Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as China's List of cities in China by population, second largest city by urban area after Shanghai. It is located in North China, Northern China, and is governed as a Direct-administered municipalities of China, municipality under the direct administration of the Government of the People's Republic of China, State Council with List of administrative divisions of Beijing, 16 urban, suburban, and rural districts.Figures based on 2006 statistics published in 2007 National Statistical Yearbook of China and available online at archive. Retrieved 21 April 2009. Beijing is mostly surrounded by Hebei Province and neighbors Tianjin to the southeast; together, the three divisions form the Jing-Jin-Ji, Jing-Jin-Ji cluster. Beijing is a global city and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of the longest-running newspapers in the United States, the ''Times'' serves as one of the country's Newspaper of record, newspapers of record. , ''The New York Times'' had 9.13 million total and 8.83 million online subscribers, both by significant margins the List of newspapers in the United States, highest numbers for any newspaper in the United States; the total also included 296,330 print subscribers, making the ''Times'' the second-largest newspaper by print circulation in the United States, following ''The Wall Street Journal'', also based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' is published by the New York Times Company; since 1896, the company has been chaired by the Ochs-Sulzberger family, whose current chairman and the paper's publ ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Robert Bickers
Robert A. Bickers (born 1964) is a British historian of modern China and colonialism. He is currently a professor of history at the University of Bristol. Bickers is the author of six books and editor or co-editor of three more. Biography Born in a Royal Air Force hospital in Wiltshire, UK, Bickers grew up living on Royal Air Force bases across England, in Germany, and in Hong Kong. He studied Chinese language at SOAS University of London during the mid-1980s, including a year studying in Taiwan. After holding fellowships in Oxford University and Cambridge University, Bickers joined the department of history at the University of Bristol in 1997, where he is currently a professor of history and associate pro vice-chancellor. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2023. Scholarship Bickers' book ''Out of China'' was shortlisted for the 2018 Wolfson History Prize. Rana Mitter in the New York Review of Books described it as "a panoramic examination of the increasingly po ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Merton College, Oxford
Merton College (in full: The House or College of Scholars of Merton in the University of Oxford) is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, chancellor to Henry III of England, Henry III and later to Edward I, first drew up statutes for an independent academic community and established endowments to support it. An important feature of de Merton's foundation was that this "college" was to be self-governing and the endowments were directly vested in the Warden and Fellows. By 1274, when Walter retired from royal service and made his final revisions to the college statutes, the community was consolidated at its present site in the south east corner of the city of Oxford, and a rapid programme of building commenced. The hall and the Merton College Chapel, chapel and the rest of the front quad were complete before the end of the 13th century. Mob Quad, one ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Winchester College
Winchester College is an English Public school (United Kingdom), public school (a long-established fee-charging boarding school for pupils aged 13–18) with some provision for day school, day attendees, in Winchester, Hampshire, England. It was founded by William of Wykeham in 1382 as a feeder school for New College, Oxford, and has existed in its present location ever since. It is the oldest of the nine schools considered by the Clarendon Commission. The school has begun a transition to become co-educational, and has accepted male and female day pupils from September 2022, having previously been a Single-sex education, boys' boarding school for over 600 years. The school was founded to provide an education for 70 scholars. Gradually numbers rose, a choir of 16 "quiristers" being added alongside paying pupils known as "commoners". Numbers expanded greatly in the 1860s with the addition of ten boarding houses. The scholars continue to live in the school's medieval buildings, whi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Charles Earle Funk
Charles Earle Funk (1881–1957) was an American lexicographer. He was a member of the Funk family who owned the publisher Funk & Wagnalls; Dr. Isaac Funk was his uncle. Funk wrote several etymological dictionaries An etymological dictionary discusses the etymology of the words listed. Often, large dictionaries, such as the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' and '' Webster's'', will contain some etymological information, without aspiring to focus on etymology. ..., includin''Thereby Hangs a Tale: Stories of Curious Word Origins'' ''A Hog On Ice & Other Curious Expressions'' ''Heavens To Betsy & Other Curious Expressions'' [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |