William Alt, who hailed from London, lost his father at an early age. Prompted by the financial challenges facing his family, in 1852 he began serving on the crew of Charlotte Jane, a British ship that traded throughout the world and is well-known for its voyage to New Zealand in 1850. In 1858, Alt became a merchant in Shanghai, and later took a position in the Chinese Maritime Customs Service. In late 1859, he traveled to Nagasaki where the following year, he founded an import-export firm, Alt and Company, which emerged as one of the larger Western firms in the treaty port. In 1871, Alt retired to the United Kingdom.
The letters in this collection, digitized by the Art Research Center at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, were written by Alt and sent primarily to his mother, from c. 1852 to 1864. The Nagasaki Museum of History and Cultures holds the original letters, donated by Lady Tessa Montgomery.
Elisabeth Alt was born in New South Wales. Her father, George Windsor Earl, was a colonial official in Singapore, where she lived as a child before later attending school in the United Kingdom. In 1863, she rejoined her parents in the Straits Settlements and the following year married William Alt. The couple started a family in Nagasaki and lived there and in other parts of Japan until their return to the United Kingdom in 1871.
Late in life, Elisabeth dictated her memoirs to one of her daughters, a record that was recently digitized and accessible at via the homepage of the National Library of Australia.
The house built by William and Elisabeth Alt still stands in Glover Garden in Nagasaki.
The digitization of William Alt’s letters and Elisabeth Alt’s memoirs were generously supported by the Sainsbury Institute.
For Further Reading
Brian Burke-Gaffney, a Nagasaki based historian, has published numerous informative books about nineteenth-century Nagasaki, several of which present the results of his detailed research on William and Elisabeth Alt and their lives in Nagasaki. His books include:
Nagasaki: The British Experience, 1854-1945. Global Oriental, 2009.
Holme, Ringer & Company: The Rise and Fall of a British Enterprise in Japan (1868-1940). Global Oriental, 2012.
The Glover House of Nagasaki: An Illustrated History. Flying Crane Press, 2015.
The Nagasaki British Consulate, 1859-1955. Amazon Digital Services, 2019.
The Former Alt House: Biography of a Nagasaki Landmark. Flying Crane Press, 2020.
Ranald Noel-Paton, a direct descendant of William and Elisabeth Alt, published a book on the life of George Windsor Earl, who penned some of the first in-depth studies of Southeast Asia, including The Eastern Seas (1837).
Ranald Noel-Paton. George Windsor Earl and a Vision of Empire. Ashgrove Publishing, 2018.
Other publications that discuss Western merchants based in Nagasaki and trade through Nagasaki and other treaty ports include:
Donna Brunero and Stephanie Villalta Puig, eds. Life in Treaty Port China and Japan. Springer, 2018.
Hugh Cortazzi, ed.Victorians in Japan: In and Around the Treaty Ports.Bloomsbury,2012.
Jessa Dahl. “Agents of Change in a Changing World: Treaty Port Nagasaki and the Limitations of Local Resilience,” Journal of Urban History vol 47 no. 2 (March 2021): pages 317-331.
Lane Earns and Brian Burke-Gaffney. Across the Gulf of Time: The International Cemeteries of Nagasaki. Nagasaki Bunkesha, 1991.
Robert Fletcher and Robert Hellyer, eds. Chronicling Westerners in Nineteenth-Century East Asia: Lives, Linkages, and Imperial Connections. Bloomsbury, 2022.
Michael Gardiner. At the Edge of Empire: The Life of Thomas B. Glover. Birlinn, 2007.
Robert Hellyer, “Mid Nineteenth-Century Nagasaki: Western and Japanese Merchant Communities within Commercial and Political Transitions” in Lin Yu-ju and Madeleine Zelin, eds., Merchant Communities in Asia, 1600-1980.Pickering and Chatto, 2014, pp. 159-176.
Robert Hellyer, Green with Milk and Sugar: When Japan Filled America’s Tea Cups. Columbia University Press, 2021.
James Hoare, ed. Culture, Power and Politics in Treaty-Port Japan, 1854-1899: Key Papers, Press and Contemporary Writings. Amsterdam University Press, 2018.
Alexander McKay. Scottish Samurai: Thomas Blake Glover, 1839-1911. Canongate, 2012.
Shinya Sugiyama. Japan’s Industrialization in the World Economy, 1859-1899: Export Trade and Overseas Competition. Athlone Press, 1988.
Digital Sources
Lane Earns and Brian Burke-Gaffney, eds. Crossroads: A Journal of Nagasaki History and Culture
History & Heritage of the City of Aberdeen, The Glover’s Nagasaki
Jessa Dahl. The Merchant, the Marriage, and the Treaty Port: Reassessing Ōura Kei
Brian Burke-Gaffney. The Alt House: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Photograph at top of page courtesy of Brian Burke-Gaffney.