Photograph of Coins of Oriental Bank and Sketch of a Dragon

A photograph was attached to the upper half of the second page in the De La Rue's Archives, and a sketch of a dragon, with a yellow tone, was affixed right beneath. These two items were refer-ences as important as the two sketches from Peking for De La Rue's production of the postage stamp designs.

Along the top and right frames of the photograph is the annotation “Duplicate of a photo, lent me by Mr. Campbell, he having borrowed it from the Oriental Bank.” Five different coins are shown in the photograph. Both the obverse and reverse are displayed for the “5 Cents”, “1 Mace”, “2 Mace” and “5 Mace”. For the largest coin, only the reverse, with the design of Pa-Kua and Yin & Yang but without the denomination, is shown, with “1 Tael” written underneath. Upon close examination, we found that the items in the picture were not real coins but rather hand-drawn design sketches. We went through numismatic literature and realized these were the well-known Zhongwai Tongbao silver coins, produced based on the Customs' standardized weight of one tael, of the numismatic world.

The Zhongwai Tongbao have seemed an unsolvable mystery for a long time. Some scholars once classified the silver coins as those of North Korea due to the symbol of Yin & Yang at the coin's center. On the other hand, some considered they were produced by a for-eign mint to be promoted as commercial coins. E. Kann posited the coins might have been minted as a trial for coinage to pay Chinese Customs duty. They seemed to have been minted in England around 1858. In 1997 Ma Chuande and Xu Yuan stated in a published paper, based on an article by Joe Cribb who was then the Keeper of Coins and Medals at the British Museum in Hong Kong Currency, that the earliest recorded discovery of a photograph exhibiting the Zhongwai Tongbao silver coins was in 1878 and that these coins were conceived and designed by the director of Hong Kong Mint using the design scheme for “Shanghai One Tael” and were later produced by the Royal Mint. In Silver & Gold Coins of China 18381949, which he edited, Sun Hao pointed out that the Zhongwai Tongbao in the Royal Mint Museum were a set of five coins which were donated, along with their master dies and design sketches, by the family of Thomas William Kinder, one-time director of the Hong Kong Mint, in 1888 after his death.

The present discovery of the De La Rue China Archives furnishes us with a brand-new perspective to interpret the mystery of the Zhongwai Tongbao. Firstly, the earliest photograph of the Zhongwai Tongbao had been previously 1878. Secondly, the photograph kept in the De La Rue Archives was mentioned to have been provided by the Oriental Bank. Hence, it is not too difficult to conclude that the Zhongwai Tongbao silver coins were related to the Oriental Bank. Lastly, De La Rue used these silver coins as im-portant reference during the process of designing postage stamps for the Chinese Customs. Therefore, this set of coins should likewise be closely related to the Chinese Customs. This reasonably may explain the positioning of the Yin & Yang Device, so highly advocated by Hart, at the center of the Zhongwai Tongbao.

Let's now ask ourselves the following questions. Why did the photograph of the designs of the Zhongwai Tongbao come from the Oriental Bank? Why was the Zhongwai Tongbao closely related to the Imperial Customs of China? To resolve these outstanding questions, we must start with the Chefoo Convention of 1876. The Convention was signed as a result of the 1875 Margary Affair. Hart participated in the Sino-British settlement negotiations of the Margary Affair in Chefoo and envisaged the addition of a couple relevant items to the treaty, like Bureau of Silver Casting and Bureau of Letter Posting, but ultimately failed. Li Hongzhang in particular did not support the establishment of the Bureau of Silver Casting, and Thomas Wade, the then-British Ambassador to China, also withheld his support. This outcome made Hart indignant. Long before the Chefoo Convention, Hart had consulted with the Oriental Bank on several occasions concerning various subjects, such as the actual profit of running a mint, evaluations of mint projects, production of specimen coins, annual cost for running the establishment, new arrangements and improvements with a view to economize the operation, etc. During the period of contact between the two parties, from August 1875 to January 1878, Stuart, the manager of the Oriental Bank, passed away, and Peter Campbell succeeded him. J. D. Campbell wrote to Hart and report-ed as “I handed the note anent Minting to Campbell who has been appointed Manager. He will attend to the matter next week, after the receipt of poor Stuart's papers from Bahia. Boxes containing five specimen coins were posted to the Bank's Agents at Shanghai & Yokohama on the 17th instant and duplicates were sent by the fol-lowing Mail. Boxes containing one hundred specimens of each coin left Southampton yesterday, and duplicates will be forwarded by the same route a fortnight hence.” The five specimen coins mentioned in Campbell's letter were most likely the five Zhongwai Tongbao silver coins in the photograph lent to De La Rue. If this were in fact the case, the limited mintage of the Zhongwai Tongbao could have occurred at the end of 1875. Moreover, the Mr. Campbell who lent the photograph should not be J. D. Campbell but Peter Campbell, the new manager of the Oriental Bank.

The central designs for the Hart Sketches, the Zhongwai Tong-bao and De La Rue Design Sketches consist of similar patterns, such as the “two dragons”, or “one dragon and one phoenix”, embracing the Yin & Yang Device which was positioned right at the center. The Yin & Yang Devices in both the Hart Sketches and the Zhongwai Tongbao had their dark sides facing downward. The designs for both the Zhongwai Tongbao and De La Rue Design Sketches were very similar. As a reminder, Campbell requested De La Rue to change the dark side to “uppermost” on May 22. In fact, the change of this particular detail seems to yield a special kind of subtle relationship, as the Hart Sketches were the master designs for the Zhongwai Tongbao and De La Rue Design Sketches, and the Zhongwai Tong-bao was earlier than De La Rue Design Sketches.

Finally, let's not forget the sketch of a dragon, placed right under the photograph of the Zhongwai Tongbao. The sketch was provided by Campbell on May 22. According to the shape of the flag, the form of the dragon and the position of the pearl, this should be the triangular Qing then-official flag. In 1862, Michel Alexandre Kleczkowski, France's Ambassador to China, suggested to the Prince Gong, Yixin, that Chinese naval vessels should hang the Flag of the Dragon. Zeng Guofan then proposed the employment of triangular flags with pointed tips. For large ships, the flags should be as tall as three meters. For smaller vessels, the length of the flags should be between two and two and half meters. There would be no restrictions on the length of its slope and width of the lower transverse section. The dragon should be painted in yellow, and the dragon head should be pointing upward. In 1874, Campbell had the Dragon Flags made in London at Hart's request, which would be used as the flags for Chinese Customs vessels, as approved by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Tsungli Yamen. Then, Campbell replied to Hart: “I have enquired about Flags and am only waiting for one which is being made as a pattern, to send you my report. You will effect a great saving by ordering them from England. Would it not also be much cheaper to indent on England for the cloth and serge etc., required for uniforms ——and also for Paint for boats, etc.! Upon the last item I fancy the saving would be very considerable.” Afterwards, Campbell wrote another letter to Hart on the matter, informing him the samples for the small flags had been shipped. The large flags had not been dispatched due to some delays. The other kind was still being made. Campbell also conducted a simple feasi-bility study: “Printing is not practicable for the larger sizes of flags, and for the smaller sizes the first expense of the blocks would be very great, whilst the cost of their manufacture would be little less than that of painted flags. The only flags that are printed, and for which there is the necessary machinery, are small Union Jacks. All other flags for all countries are painted.” The sketch in the De La Rue's Archives provided by Campbell might basically be considered approval from Hart during its production process.

The 1877 official contact between the Chinese Customs and En-gland's Thomas De La Rue & Co. for stamp production originated from Hart's vision of establishing a national postal system in China. This all began with a March 5, 1877 letter of enquiry from Detring. As a result, De La Rue submitted a detailed, confidential technical report, detailing items such as specifically designed postage stamps, postage envelope, sketches of postage emblems, design sketch of wa-termark, etc., to the Chinese Customs but failed to gain its approval. The collaboration between the two parties finally came to a halt after receipt of the instruction from Hart. Nonetheless, De La Rue played a vital role in the Chinese Customs officials' exploratory pro-cess for printing stamps. Their confidential report was essential and definitely regarded as a valuable reference for the Chinese Customs. Although De La Rue was not selected by the Chinese Customs as a partner for its postage stamp production, China's pace for creating national postal services had not been set aside. The curtain for stag-ing our self-produced Large Dragons was opened slowly, but surely.

Zhao Yue

June 2018