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PHOTOFILE | ESSAY
CLARE CHUN-YU LIU
JOHN ANTHONY (c. 1766-1805)
A Chinese Migrant to Britain and His Archival Footprint
John Anthony was an intriguing character in the history of Chinese migration to Britain. Not much is known about him. Not many people know about his extraordinary life at the turn of the nineteenth century in East London. From his adopted English name, it is impossible to know that he was in fact a Chinese person, born and bred in the Chinese Empire. My artwork John Anthony (c. 1766-1805) [1] retells his legacy, tracing his archival footprint in British institutions to (re)shape our understanding of the history of the Chinese diaspora in Britain. My sound-based work is part of Voicing the Archive [2], a project of commissioned works reimagining early Chinese migration to Britain through engaging with archival materials. The project is commissioned by esea contemporary [3], the only contemporary art platform dedicated to East and Southeast Asian cultures in the UK.
Personally, I am no stranger to migration myself. Both of my paternal and maternal families have gone through diasporas. My father escaped the Communist Purge in Indonesia, going to Taiwan by boat as a child. My maternal family relocated from China to Taiwan with the Nationalists in 1949. More than a decade ago, I moved from Taiwan to Britain for a second chapter of life. Intrigued by my familial and personal migratory trajectories, I have been exploring the Chinese diaspora and the fluidity and nuances of identity. In my art practice, I focus on employing lived experience and oral history to retell wider historical events, so as to challenge the grand narratives of politicised views and ideology.
As a fellow member of the Chinese diaspora in Britain, I am fascinated by John Anthony’s personal story as an unexpected, successful immigrant. My artwork John Anthony (c. 1766-1805) features a monologue of John Anthony, voicing to us his extraordinary experience as an early Chinese migrant. By way of speculative writing informed by archival materials, I (re)construct his life legacy in the then British Empire, voicing the archive – indeed as the title of the commission project – that would otherwise be unspoken and therefore unheard of. This voicing of Anthony’s lived experience is to challenge the grand narratives of the Chinese diaspora in Britain. The diasporic Chinese communities have been seen as a silent minority in Britain and by extension elsewhere in the world. We are commonly perceived as docile, quiet and uninterested in public affairs. Basically, as individuals and as a collectively entity, we fly under the radar, undetected. The lack of representation in the public discourse flattens our perceived characteristics as passive members of society. Where is our voice?
In her essay Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988), the cultural theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak puts forth her questioning of how the European/Western world perceives, studies and represents non-European/Western cultures. Through knowledge production, the European/Western other their colonial subjects in a way that is beneficial to their colonial and imperial interests. This means the representation of the other deprives them of the opportunity to self-represent and self-voice. This lack of voice echoes with the situation of Chinese diaspora in Britain.
In the case of John Anthony, however, the historical context presents a complex case. In the nineteenth century, the British Empire attacked the Chinese Empire, as of the two Opium Wars that respectively took place in 1839-1842 and 1856-1860, resulting in the British colonisation of Hong Kong. Both events were before John Anthony’s time. That is to say, Anthony’s presence here comes from the overlooked part of the pre-colonial Sino-British history. Crafting the narratives of John Anthony’s intricate subaltern’s voice, I feel resonant with the cultural theorist Ien Ang (2001: 2):
The diasporic intellectual acts as a perpetual party-pooper here because her impulse is to point to ambiguities, complexities and contradictions, to complicate matters rather than provide formulate for solutions, to blur distinctions between colonizer and colonized, dominant and subordinate, oppressor and oppressed.
Based on pertinent literature, we know that Anthony was born around 1766 in the then Chinese Empire and in 1799 arrived in London as an interpreter for the English East India Company, presiding over the responsibilities of looking after the catering and lodgings of Chinese sailors. My artwork only focuses on his life between 1799 and 1805 that is his time in London until his death here because of the limitation of archival resources. There are not much existing archival materials about John Anthony. To begin with, His Chinese name is not known and there is no clue about his life back in China or any documents in the Chinese language. It is possible that he was the sixth ever Chinese person in Britain [4] – or more precisely the then British Empire, and the second Chinese person to settle down here. The absence of his Chinese part of life echoes with his predecessor William Macao, the potentially fifth Chinese person and first Chinese migrant to the British Empire. At around 1775, Mr. Macao was brought to Britain by a Scot. Nothing about him in China is known and his Chinese name is not recorded anywhere. From his adopted English name, he was likely to have come from Macau. Before his death in 1831, Macao worked himself into the professional class and served as a public servant in the Excise Office in Edinburgh.
The writer Anna Sulan Masing in her book Chinese and any other Asian: Exploring East And South East Asian Identity in Britain (2025) articulates the lack of research into East and South East Asian (ESEA) immigration to Britain. Owing to the colonial past and legacy, ESEA communities have dwelled in the UK for hundreds of years. Nevertheless, there is a pervasive sense of lack of individual and collective rooting in British culture and society because the presence and migratory stories of East and Southeast Asians are insufficiently discussed and represented in public discourse. In the case of John Anthony, the lack of research and archives is particularly the case. As Anthony’s business activity, lodgings for Chinese sailors and the later Limehouse Chinatown were all within the borough of Tower Hamlets, I turned to Tower Hamlets’ Local History Library and Archives to trace his footprint. In situ, there was a collection of newspaper clippings and photographical materials of Chinese migrants and their business establishments in the Limehouse Chinatown from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. The first Chinatown in the UK was started by the East India Company’s Chinese sailors and their descendants, of which John Anthony was the forefather. However, there was no archival materials about Anthony or any local Chinese from before his death in 1805.
Not recorded in the local archives, John Anthony’s life in the then British Empire is, however, documented in some official records that have formulated as the foundation of my artwork. This situation resonates with Voicing the Archive’s context of the Chinese diaspora in Britain as ‘[…] a history systematically erased from national narratives and relegated to the margins of official records’ [5]. As a community of long history in the UK, the diasporic Chinese dwell in the margins of national archives.
The Old Bailey’s court hearing transcript.
The transcript [6] of a court hearing as part of the Old Bailey’s digitalised documents tells us that in 1804 Anthony’s fellow Chinese worker Erpung was a victim of thievery by Ann Alsey and Thomas Gunn. The crime was brought to the attention of the criminal court. With his excellent command of English, Anthony helped interpret between the Chinese sailors and the judicial committee. Famously, he introduced breaking a saucer as a way to swear an oath. Furthermore, in the British legislation dossier[7], we can see that the Chinese immigrant had a private Act of Parliament for the matter of naturalisation in 1805, which was a hugely costly undertaking at the time. As a result, Anthony was the first ever Chinese person to be naturalised British, although his Britishness did not last long. Later in 1805, Anthony passed away and his funeral in Shadwell Church in East London was attended by 2,000 people from all walks of life, as he was well-respected by individuals from the English upper class including the East India Company directors to the community of Chinese sailors that he worked with. From his extensive handwritten will[8], we learn that he had a vast amount of assets under his belt. Multiple properties in London and other monetary capital were to be inherited mostly by his English wife Esther Gole, who was the sister of his East India Company colleague Abraham Gole. It is enormously remarkable that in the short space of six years John Anthony achieved such great success as an immigrant all between 1799 and 1805: reputation, career, wealth, assimilation to British society and marriage.
John Anthony’s will from National Archives[8].
In my fourteen years (and counting) in the UK, I have been curiously observing the representation of the diasporic Chinese here. Alongside the lack of discussion in the national discourse as explored earlier, I have noticed that there is a tendency to talk about individuals of Chinese heritage here as struggling migrants: working in Chinatowns that are like some kind of ghettos, insufficient command of the English language and a natural incompatibility to the mainstream – that is white – British culture and society. At the same time, every so often there are articles in national news outlets addressing the danger of ultra rich Asians snatching up properties across the country. Of course, the impoverished part of diasporic experience exists on the spectrum of the demographics, and so do the very rich. But this imbalanced representation brings to the fore the practice of othering the diasporic Chinese through discourse. The polarised perception of us is itself a grand narrative that needs to be challenged – that I aim to challenge with John Anthony (c. 1766-1805).
The anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot in Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) articulates how history is perceived in relation to power. There is a gap and difference between what happened in the past and how it is framed and communicated. What we know as history is packaged in a narrative that often serves the imperial and colonial machine of power. By this logic, Trouillot categorises individuals involved in history into three categories: agents, actors and subjects. The three groups have different levels of agency in their production of historical narratives: agents enjoy the highest level of agency, actors the medium and subjects the lowest.
When I wrote the script of Anthony’s monologue, my intention was to contribute the piece to balancing the narrative about immigrants of Chinese heritage in Britain. I wanted him to be both a narrator and migrant of agency, or, in Trouillot’s lexicon, an agent in history. Therefore, my artwork starts with John Anthony refuting a quote from V.S. Naipaul’s novel A Bend in the River: ‘The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.’ As Naipaul’s fiction (1979) explores a lack of higher ambition and achievement in diasporic experience and culture dented by colonialism, I have Anthony proving this idea wrong with his life experience throughout the monologue. Speaking in first person, Anthony delineates his legacy as an active participant in East London, the East India Company, the local Chinese community and British society. Thus is how I challenge the British stereotypes of its Chinese diaspora through engaging with archives and art practice.
Bibliography
Ang, I. (2001) On not Speaking Chinese: Living between Asia and the West. London: Routledge.
BBC. (2007) Chinese in Britain. BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/chinese_in_britain1.shtml
Masing, A.S. (2025) Chinese and Any Other Asian: Exploring East and South East Asian Identity in Britain. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Naipaul, V.S. (1979) A Bend in the River. Trinidad and Tobago: Alfred A Knopf.
Old Bailey. (no date) Chinese Communities. Old Bailey. https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/about/chinese
Price, B. (2019) Chinese in Britain: A History of Visitors and Settlers. Stroud: Amberley.
Shea, J. (2023) Archives Give Voice to Immigrants. China Daily. https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202310/07/WS6520b2d1a310d2dce4bb937f.html
Spivak, G. C. (1988) ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?.’ In Nelson, C. and Grossberg, L. (ed.) Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana; Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
THHOL. (no date) The Black and Asian Presence in the Tower Hamlets: a Miscellany of 18th and 19th century References to Black People, Chinese people and Lascars. THHOL. https://www.mernick.org.uk/thhol/miscellany01.html#note1
Trouillot, M. (1995) Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston, Beacon Press.
Notes:
[1] My artwork John Anthoy (c. 1766-1805) is available to read and listen to on esea contemporary’s website https://www.eseacontemporary.org/voicing-the-archive#ClareChun-yuLiu. Moreover, my work alongside other works from Voicing the Archive are on view in the Community Project Space at esea contemporary in Manchester, UK, 1-25 May 2025.
[4] According to Barclay Price (2019), the presence of individuals of Chinese heritage in Britain dates back centuries. The first record is of the Jesuit convert Shen Fu Tsong, or Michael Alphonsius Shen Fu Tsong, from Nanjing. Accompanied by the Belgian Jesuit Father Philippe Couplet, Tsong traversed half the world to Europe and visited France, Britain and Italy. This journey was a result of the Jesuits’ dedicated project of spreading Christianity and befriending the court in China starting as early as the late sixteenth century. The British monarch James II received Tsong in his court in 1686, being immensely curious about the unlikely visitor. It is known that the Chinese Jesuit helped catalogue the Chinese books at the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, a task no one else was able to undertake at the time. The Latin-speaking Chinese Jesuit’s footprint was followed by Loum Kiqua, a Chinese merchant arriving in London in 1756. The British King George II had an audience with Kiqua, although the meeting was compromised by the language barrier: the Chinese businessman spoke only Mandarin and Portuguese; the British monarch understood neither languages. Nevertheless, Kiqua managed to connect with a number of English individuals from the high society of London before heading back to the Chinese Empire. Like other Chinese visitors to Britain, his presence was scarcely documented. The British artist Thomas Burford briefly annotated Kiqua’s trip to Lisbon and London in his portrait of the Chinese man; a letter by an English writer named A.B. published in the Gentleman’s Magazine discussed his experience of cultural exchange with Kiqua over music. In 1769, Tan Chitqua arrived in London via present-day Jakarta. Like his predecessors, the established artist from Canton attracted royal interest and was invited to meet with George II and Queen Charlotte. Chitqua participated in an exhibition at the Royal Academy in London in 1770 and, similar to Tsong, helped organise Chinese books at the British Library. In 1770, the possible fourth Chinese visitor in Britain was brought over by John Bradly Blake, an East India Company employee. Wang-y-Tong was known for his medicinal knowledge of Chinese plants and acquainted with the upper class as part of Blake’s social circle. It is recorded that he was back in Canton by the 1780s. The fifth Chinese person in Britain is William Macao, whom this essay discusses.
[6] Ann Alsey, Thomas Gunn – Theft (theft from a specified place); Theft (receiving). 5 December 1804. https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/record/t18041205-56
[7] Record of Act of Parliament from British legislation https://www.legislation.gov.uk/changes/chron-tables/private/23
[8] John Anthony’s will from National Archives https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/D429459
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