The Jews in China: Their Synagogue, Their Scriptures, Their History, &c.

London: B. Wertheim,, 1843. The ultimate redemption of all humanity First edition, rare, signed and dated 1869 by the author on the front free endpaper. Together with his 1872 study The Orphan Colony of the Jews in China, this work served as the most authoritative guide to the subject for Victorian audiences. His contemporaries were especially excited by the lessons vis-à-vis Jewish emancipation which could be derived from the Chinese case. Jewish communities have existed in China from perhaps as early as the Han dynasty, with the first concrete historical evidence dating to the 9th century CE. The city of Kaifeng, in particular, became a locus of activity, producing a unique integration of Jewish and Chinese culture. For James Finn (1806-1872), "the reason the Jews of Kaifeng existed was the ultimate redemption of all humanity" (Zhou, p. 74) The author was the British consul in Jerusalem from 1846 to 1863. "By every criterion, James Finn and his strong-willed and intelligent wife were perfectly fitted for the demands imposed on them by the Jerusalem consulate" (Blumberg, p. 28). Finn's "rigid sense of duty thrust him into battle for the rights of all British protégés who suffered persecution. It was thus not uncommon to find him battling the Turkish governor of Jerusalem to retain the right of Jews to prepare their own kosher meat, at the same moment that he was battling the rabbis for having excommunicated those Jews who submitted legal cases to the consular rather than the rabbinic courts" (ibid., p. 31). Underneath the author's signature, a slightly later hand has written "a gift from Emily". This inscription might refer to Emily Anne Smythe, Lady Strangford (1826-1887), a traveller in the Middle East and the author of Egyptian Sepulchres and Syrian Shrines (1861). Strangford wrote the preface to Finn's posthumously published Stirring Times: or Records from Jerusalem Consular Chronicles of 1853 to 1856. Octavo. Original green bead-grain cloth, spine ruled in blind, front cover lettered in Chinese in gilt, yellow coated endpapers. Recent pencilled number on front pastedown, a little red pencil underlining on p. 83. Spine consolidated and reattached, boards, endpapers, and text fresh, inner hinges repaired. A very good copy. Arnold Blumberg, ed., A View from Jerusalem, 1849-1858: the Consular Diary of James and Elizabeth Anne Finn, 1980; Zhou Xun, "The 'Kaifeng Jew' Hoax: Constructing the 'Chinese Jew'", in Derek Jonathan Penslar & Ivan Davidson Kalmar, eds., Orientalism and the Jews, 2005, pp. 68-79.