Peking 1920s Films – the MacMurray Files

The other day I noted a embroidered memorial to the British Legation Guards in Peking for 1925-1926 – it’s a fairly haunting little piece of old Peking memorabilia as if features an old black and white photo of one of the guards for some reason I don’t know (random choice, made by a family member, the lad died in Peking????). Anyway, I’ll research it obviously. But it is interesting to try and see Peking as they would have seen the city – boys out from England on Legation protection duty in a China of the 1920s. Fortunately we do have access to John van Antwerp MacMurray Papers and films, now housed at Princeton.

MacMurray was the American Minister (or Ambassador) to China for 1925-1929 and an early advocate of making moving pictures – he shot rather a lot of images of his time in China thankfully. Some of it is fairly routine stuff – or at least would have been to MacMurray – dignitaries arriving, soldiers drilling etc. The films are now loaded up on to YouTube (here – watch the first and you’ll see links to the other footage down the right hand side of the screen) and provide a great set of images of Peking at the time my British Legation Guards were there – i.e. we see the city through the same eyes as them.

A quite remarkable archive of old Peking in the 1920s.