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1. For an account of Thomson’s photographs of Thailand see Rosalind C. Morris, “Photography and the Power of Images in the History of Power,” in Photograhies East: the Camera and Its Histories in East and South East Asia, edited by Rosalind C. Morris, pp. 121-131 (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2009).

2. See James R. Ryan, Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualization of British Empire, pp. 161-167 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), and Anne Maxwell, Colonial Photography and Exhibitions: Representations of the “Native” and the Making of European Identities, pp. 57-67 (London and New York: Leicester University Press, 1999).

3. My discussion of treaty-port imagery builds on some of Ryan’s insights and arguments. See Ryan, Picturing Empire, pp. 65-67.

4. Ryan and Maxwell’s examinations of Thomson’s types focus on his plates of cameo portraits but neither scholar addresses this seminal image.

5. Thomson changes the spelling from “Pe-po-hoan,” which he used in the captions for Volume 1, to “Pepohoan.” Romanization of Chinese terms had not yet been standardized when Thomson published Illustrations of China and Its People. This change probably reflects input he received from a linguist before the second volume was published.

6. Ryan, Picturing Empire (pp.140-143), discusses a particularly compelling case of salvage ethnology and photography focused on Tasmanian aborigines in the late 1850s. Christopher Pinney, Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs, pp.46-50 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), cites other examples.

7. 19th-century conceptions of race utilized a hierarchy based on skin color: white, yellow, brown, red, black.

8. For a brief history and illustrations of the Lamprey and Huxley methods see Frank Spencer, “Some Notes on the Attempt to Apply Photography to Anthropometry during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century,” in Anthropology and Photography 1860-1920, ed. Elizabeth Edwards, pp. 99-107 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press in association with The Royal Anthropological Institute, London: 1992).

9. Ryan also suggests that Thomson’s Yangzi images and narrative rely on precedents set by William Allen’s 1840 Picturesque Views on the River Niger. See Ryan, Picturing Empire, p. 65.

10. See Ryan, Picturing Empire, pp. 63-65.

11. Ryan discusses the broader concerns of the RGS and provides a general introduction to the relationship between photography and RGS expeditions. See Ryan, Picturing Empire, pp. 30-44.

John W. Dower
Project Director
Emeritus Professor of History

Shigeru Miyagawa
Project Director
Professor of Linguistics
Kochi Prefecture-John Manjiro Professor of Japanese Language and Culture

Ellen Sebring
Creative Director

Scott Shunk
Program Director

Andrew Burstein
Media designer

Allen Hockley
Author, essay, “John Thomson's China l”
Associate Professor of Art History
Dartmouth College

The d'Arbeloff Excellence in Education Fund
The J. Paul Getty Foundation
The Henry Luce Foundation
The Andrew Mellon Foundation
The U.S. Department of Education
The Center for Global Partnership
The Andrew Mellon Foundation