The Only Girl in Amoy: Gender and American Patriotism in a Nineteenth‐Century Treaty Port

Abstract

AbstractIn 1861, twenty‐year‐old Ruth Bradford accompanied her father to the Chinese treaty port of Amoy where he was to serve as American consul. Bradford recorded this trip in a diary kept from her departure from New York until her 1863 return. Drawing upon her diary, this paper explores how Bradford, as the only American woman in Amoy, refined her sense‐of‐self through interracial and cross‐cultural encounters with the settlement's Chinese and British inhabitants. The paper argues that through critical comparison with these communities, Bradford, like other nineteenth‐century American women in China, consolidated and articulated her gendered, racial and burgeoning patriotic national identity.