Note
This work employs the Hanyu Pinyin transliteration system for Chinese proper names, with a few important exceptions. In the case of well-known names, I have used the established English spellings instead of their proper Pinyin transliterations, such as Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan in Pinyin) and Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi). Similarly, for certain key figures with self-styled Western names, I have retained the idiosyncratic spellings of their choice. Thus, I use K.C. Wu and Wunsz King, instead of Wu Guozhen and Jin Wensi, respectively, though I write Wang Shijie rather than its Wade-Giles variant then in use, Wang Shih-chieh.
Chinese place-names are likewise given in Pinyin, except where they form part of contemporary compound names or fixed expressions, in which case they may appear in their traditional Wade-Giles or former Chinese Postal Map spelling variant. The city Beijing is generally referred to by its historical official name Beiping when describing events during the period from 1928 to 1949, when it was not China’s national capital. Other exceptions to the general rule include well-established geographical names in English, including Manchuria, Tibet, and Yangtze. Finally, citations, quotations, and book titles will display Chinese proper names in English as they appear in the relevant publication.
Chinese characters are supplied at the first appearance of Chinese names and phrases where there is a risk of confusion, where precision is important, or, more generally, where this may contribute to future research. Examples of the first category are proper names, ranks or personal titles, and historical addresses (but not, for example, well-known and unambiguous geographical names such as names of provinces and key cities). Other examples include Chinese political slogans and legal clauses that are central to the subject matter at hand.
As a rule, Chinese renderings of Dutch proper names have not been provided, excepting those of key diplomatic and consular representatives listed in the tables. The reason for including these is that existing Chinese-language sources often use different transcriptions for the same Dutch (and other non-Chinese) persons, thus exacerbating the already fragmented and incomplete picture of this historical period. For the sake of accuracy and consistency, considerable efforts have been made in this book to supply the Chinese renderings that were prevalent at the time as evidenced by original diplomatic lists and other archival sources. In the incidental cases where these could not be retraced, no Chinese transcriptions have been supplied.
In line with recent trends in international scholarship on modern China, Chinese characters in this book have been included in simplified form. Exceptions were made for direct citations of original source materials, including in the notes, the transcripts in the appendices, and several titles (and the names of their authors) in the bibliography. While this has resulted in a less-than-ideal mixed usage of simplified and traditional characters in the final sections of the book, this seems only a small price to pay for doing (minimal) justice to the wealth of sources from which this book has drawn.