YÜN-NAN
THE LINK BETWEEN INDIA
AND THE YANGTZE

MAJOR H. R. DAVIES

CAMBRIDGE: AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1909

First edition.
In 1898, the Yunnan Company retained Major Henry Rodolph Davies (1865–1950) to conduct a survey of the railway prospects on the Yunnan frontier. Davies was uniquely qualified to evaluate the feasibility of the Yunnan Company’s scheme, combining knowledge of Chinese, familiarity with Yunnan, cartographic expertise, and excellent connections to the British authorities in Burma; as an intelligence officer with the British Army in Burma, Davies had first visited Yunnan as a member of the Burma-China Boundary Commission in 1893.
Included in Davies’ party were several keen amateur photographers. The most significant was Captain W. A. Watts-Jones of the Royal Engineers, who produced a set of 238 photographs of Yunnan. Watts-Jones was killed in 1900 in Guihua (Hohhot) during the Boxer Rebellion, after spending some months in northwestern China.

This book contains an account of his travels though Yunnan province, written as a travelogue and first published in 1909. The region had been little explored by westerners before Davies' expeditions, and this is the first detailed description of Yunnan from a European traveller. The society, diverse indigenous cultures, geography, economy and political situation of the province are described in detail, with an introductory three chapters on the political context of the expeditions, and on railway construction in south-east Asia in the late nineteenth century.

24 x 16 cm. (8vo), xii + 432pp + 104 b/w photographic illustrations on 74 plates. With large folding map in pocket at end. Original green cloth with gilt title. “With the compliments of the author” slip loosely inserted.

Very good condition. A couple of small blemishes to the cloth on the front board. Some occasional light foxing to the page edges and margins. Missing the table of vocabularies from the pocket at the rear (all plates and maps present), binding sound. Map has some small splits at the junction of the folds.

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