This collection of primary documents establishes a comprehensive series of despatches, in the main from the British Consul in Shanghai to the British Ambassador to China, based usually in Peking, but in the 1930s based in Shanghai itself. There is regular information on the government of the Settlement, and reports on the opium trade; there are extended reports, in 1856, on the continuing Taiping Rebellion, and later, reports on the Sino-Japanese War over the control of Korea. From 1901–11 reports include: the Boxer Rebellion; commentary on the French Settlement; anti-government conspirators in Shanghai; the Russo-Japanese War; the Shanghai tramway system; the bubonic plague in Shanghai; the Chinese Revolution of 1911–12; British intelligence reports on German activities, 1914–18; and in the mid-1920s, telegrams reflect the impact of the Civil War in China, and report 'the Shanghai incident'. The collection ends with the winding up of the Settlement under wartime Japanese occupation.