iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Robert Bickers @bickers.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Huge thanks to @viviankonghk.bsky.social who made this possible, and who has promised an introductory blog post about it when time allows. In the meantime hpcbristol.net/visual/Do01-88

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Robert Bickers @bickers.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

We've just published a varied collection of 96 photographs of early 1890s Hong Kong including this hpcbristol.net/visual/Do01-87

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Robert Bickers @bickers.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Another batch of new photographs coming soon, but this afternoon we have published these mid- and late Victorian photographs of Hong Kong on hpcbristol.net Here's a view of Taipingshan by William Floyd Pryor hpcbristol.net/visual/NA14-25

View of Chinese tenement houses and narrow lanes in Hong Kong

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Robert Bickers @bickers.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

I didn't choose the cover, but I did get most of the images I wanted in the book including this particular favourite, an autochrome of a young Chinese man at the Confucius Temple Qufu 14 July 1913 from Musée Albert Kahn

Illustration in Robert bickers, The Scramble for China: Photograph of young Chinese man standing by a pillar at the Confucius Temple Qufu 14 July 1913 from Musée Albert Kahn

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Robert Bickers @bickers.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

My chapter 'Out of Shanghai' takes the journey of this man, photographed in 1998 in London by @tomhunterart.bsky.social as the prompt for a discussion of the end of the British presence in the city after the Second World War. Thanks to Jay and Kolleen, to Tom Hunter, and to colleagues on the project

Photograph of a man on a sofa from series Holly Street Residents' by Tom Hunter © 1998

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Robert Bickers @bickers.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

It's arrived! 'Statelessness After Arendt: European Refugees in Asia and the Pacific during the Second World War' has been marshalled into print at @manchesterup.bsky.social by Kolleen Guy and Jay Winter

Cover of book Statelessness After Arendt edited by Kolleen Guy and Jay Winter

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Robert Bickers @bickers.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

It now has a cover! manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526183026/

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Robert Bickers @bickers.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

2nd with @sulinlewis.bsky.social All about cars, Malaysia, family histories and what we can do as historians with what's immediately to hand: doi.org/10.1093/hwj/...

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Robert Bickers @bickers.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

It doesn’t have a cover yet, so here’s the table of contents.

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Robert Bickers @bickers.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Here are some more book covers. Empire Made Me (2003), is a 2024 History Workshop Radical Read. A contract for a new PRC Chinese translation’s just been signed. www.historyworkshop.org.uk/public-histo...

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Robert Bickers @bickers.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

You can judge for yourself, from reviews or reading my work, but I think it’s improved since this, the earliest verdict I can find on a piece by me on Chinese history – April 1979, aged 14. I managed to reread the essay, despite the handwriting. The mark and comment were quite justified.

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Robert Bickers @bickers.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

New platform, so here's an introduction. I’m a historian of modern China and of British colonialism working at @uobrishistory.bsky.social . I’ve written six books, edited eight more, and run various projects, on the Chinese Maritime Customs, on Tianjin, on creative & heritage work closer to home.

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Robert Bickers @bickers.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

I'd suggest you don't clutter the text. This book of mine focuses on 110 British men who sailed to war in 1914 from Shanghai. I did list them all in the bibliography, but I then placed basic details on all of them from my working database online: robertbickers.net/books/gettin...

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Robert Bickers @bickers.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Great, in which case, here's one of my favourite ST items, an oldie but goldie from 1978

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Robert Bickers @bickers.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

My new favourite historic form: do you exist? Can you prove it? Do you have a form to say so signed by a church minister, magistrate, doctor or banker?

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Robert Bickers @bickers.bsky.social · 23/11/2023

Never tire of hopping on these. Next stop Wanchai

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