Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections recently processed and made available a photo album containing rare photographs of China and foreign garrisons in China at the conclusion of the 1901 Boxer Uprising. The album was received from retiring WSU History professor Thomas Kennedy a few years back, and contains 245 images from the immediate post-Boxer period. The album itself is quite fragile, and the photographs required extensive care from MASC's in-house conservator, Jennifer Jouas, before they could be opened to the public.
The exact origin of the album is something of a mystery - while the neatly applied Japanese and English labels support the theory that this was a professionally published album, it lacks any identification to tell us who this publisher might be. Hand-written Japanese characters inside the album's spine loosely translate as "Military Unit #2," leading to speculation that this may have been the property of a Japanese military garrison in China. In any case, the album is now available to researchers here at the Washington State University Libraries.
Further information, a title list of images, and one more scanned image can be found at http://www.wsulibs.wsu.edu/holland/masc/finders/pc127.htm
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