William Nelson Lovatt in Late Qing China

The book successfully provides a colorful and fascinating account of the life in the Chinese Maritime Customs Service from the perspective of a Victorian British expatriate. This study would be very useful for people who are interested in the global history in the late 19th Century, and specifically modern Chinese history; also to readers who want to know more specifically about the foreign communities at treaty ports in China. * The Journal of American-East Asian Relations *
Wayne Patterson's study of William Nelson Lovatt is a profound and fascinating history of the defining institutions of late Qing China. More than a history of an individual, this impressively researched book uses Lovatt as the vehicle to demonstrate persuasively the often conflicting impact of foreign-controlled entities, which—like the Imperial Customs Service and Treaty Ports—both advanced and restrained China's evolution as a sovereign nation. -- Mordechai Rozanski, Rider University
The 2003 Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association featured a roundtable discussion on the scholarship of Wayne Patterson. Since then, Patterson’s productivity in the field of East Asian international relations has only accelerated. His most recent tour-de-force, like his earlier magna opera, is grounded in meticulous multilingual archival research and is carefully nuanced. Patterson goes beyond the biographical to provide a fuller perspective on merchants, missionaries, diplomats, anti-foreignism, and some of the most significant transformations in nineteenth and twentieth century East Asian history. -- Jonathan Goldstein, University of West Georgia
Over the decades of his productivity as a historian of East Asia, Wayne Patterson has introduced scholars, students, and the reading public to the careers of personalities who were deeply involved in modern Western relations with Korea and China. In this volume, Patterson gives us an animated and captivating account of the Asian career of William Nelson Lovatt, British soldier and then employee of the Qing government’s Maritime Customs Service. Lovatt interfaced directly with the Taiping and Nian Rebellions, the Self-Strengthening Movement, anti-foreign agitation, and the development of native and foreign commerce in the China coast and the Yangtze valley. Drawing upon exhaustive journal and correspondence materials, Dr. Patterson enables an intimate understanding of the daily activities, thoughts, and passions of a foreign employee of the Chinese government. The reader will also grasp the pulse of the lives of Chinese people of high and low status in the treaty ports in nineteenth century China. -- Thomas W. Burkman, emeritus, State University of New York at Buffalo
This book is a transnational and transcontinental history within the special context of East–West interactions. For this very reason, this monograph is a benefit to anyone who desires to learn modern Chinese history and China’s relationship with the West. * China Review International *