The Far East Revisited – A Gorton Angier (1908) (1st ed)

S$143.00

The Far East Revisited – A Gorton Angier (1908) (1st ed)

S$143.00

Title: Far East Revisited

Author: A Gorton Angier, Robert Hart (preface)

Publisher: Witherby & Co, London, 1908. Scarce!

Condition: Hardcover, red cloth. Bottom of boards badly discoloured. Otherwise very good – firmly bound, clean interior.

Essays on political, commercial, social, and general conditions in Malaya, China, Korea and Japan. With some fantastic photographs of Singapore and all other regions mentioned.

Preface:

In China The London and China Express is taken at all the ports and places at which Europeans are found, and is considered an admirable summary of the world’s news and the views of the time for readers in the Far East, The Editor, Mr. Angier, having visited the Far East more than once, paid it yet another visit last year, and wrote a series of letters while travelling, which he now purposes republishing in book form under the title of ” The Far East Revisited.” Having read several of the letters as the papers containing them arrived in China, they appeared so valuable that it then seemed a pity to either throw them away or preserve them only on an inconvenient newspaper file : their re-appearance now in convenient book-form, and embellished by illustrative plates, is both opportune and welcome, and there need be no hesitation in recommending them to all who are interested in the affairs of the Far East — a class of readers whose numbers daily increase.

Mr Angier describes places and communities in a graphic manner, and deals with occurrences intelligently and fairly. Besides, he had the advantage of revisiting that important quarter at a time when the new forces let loose by this century were and are arranging themselves in logical continuity for further evolution, and what he has said of the condition and doings brought to his notice is
well worth the attention both of students and practical men, and will also be found informing and interesting by the general reader : he had seen the localities and people before, and was accordingly able to illuminate both past and present with each other’s hght, so that the comparison thus made gives additional value to all he writes, whether as record or forecast.

Books of this kind have a singular appropriateness at this moment in a record-making epoch. The East is up and awake, and the foundations are being laid for a fuller share in the work of the world, and for more intimate relations with all that concerns international intercourse and the influence one nation can exert on all others. Change is in the air, and developments will daily be
more and more important, and whatever tends to clearness of ideas as to what is, or helps to guide thought toward what is to be, will not fail to find its place in the general scheme of things. ” The Far East Revisited ” is such an aid, and its writer has done the public a service in thus reproducing the outcome of personal travel and observations made on the spot.

It is not proposed in this foreword to discuss any of the many subjects these republished letters deal with, and what is above said may be brought to a conclusion by asking for sympathy with the Far East in its march from the seclusion of past centuries towards the full brotherhood of future times, and by reminding those who are more especially affected by the expansion of trade and commercial intercourse that the study of a people’s wants is of even more importance than an exhibition of one’s own productions. Reasonableness never fails to meet with eventual appreciation, and the interplay of demand and supply cannot but derive benefit from, and be facilitated and fostered by, a mutual understanding between producers and consumers, and ” The Far East Revisited ” is a contribution to both one and the other.