J M Philips

Microfilm copies of letters (135pp ts) written by John Maitland Philips between March 1923 and May 1926 to his friend P S Jones, mostly from China where Philips was a representative of the Asiatic Petroleum Company, providing valuable insights into social and political conditions in China at that time, with particular reference to the foreign concession in Canton and the activities of the nationalist Kuomintang under Sun Yat Sen and its effects on the foreign commercial interests in the country, also describing his own work for the Asiatic Petroleum Company (during the course of which he was killed by pirates on the West River in May 1926).

Forty typescript copies of letters sent from John Maitland Philips to Philip Suttill Jones between March 1923 and May 1926. Philips and Jones had been school friends at Highgate School between 1917 and 1918, when Jones left to join his grandfather's textile business. Two years later, Philips was forced to enter his father's estate agency, and it is from his Victoria Street office that the first letter was written. Some time in 1923, Philips left the Estate Agency, and joined the Asiatic Petroleum Company, and in May 1924 he was sent out to their agency in Canton. He arrived in Canton at a time when the Nationalist Kuomintang, which controlled the city and the surrounding area, was increasing its power and efficiency with the help of Russian organisational and military aid provided by the newly-arrived Comintern agent, Jacob Borodin.

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