M. P. Shiel's "yellow" trilogy
Shantung crisis, Russo-Japanese War, and China's revolution
By William Wetherall
First posted 15 July 2007
Last updated 15 July 2007
Matthew Phipps Shiel (1865-1947)
M. P. Shiel, The Yellow Danger, 1899 (Murders of German missionaries in Shantung, 1897)
M. P. Shiel, The Yellow Wave, 1905 (Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905)
M. P. Shiel, The Dragon, 1913 (China's Revolution, 1911-1912)
aka The Yellow Peril, 1929 (China's Revolution, 1911-1912)
Matthew Phipps Shiel
Matthew Phipps Shiel (1865-1947), better known as M. P. Shiel, was one of the most prolific writers of "yellow peril" fiction straddling the end of the 19th and start of the 20th centuries.
The Yellow Danger (1899) includes a chapter called "The Yellow Terror" (Chapter XXVIII, pages 291-302).
The Yellow Danger was not -- as some writers claim -- an earlier edition of The Yellow Peril (1929). The later was a retitling of The Dragon (1913), which includes a chapter called "The Yellow Deluge" (Chapter XXIV, pages 318-344).
To be continued.
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The Yellow Danger (1899)
M. P. Shiel
The Yellow Danger
(Or, what might happen if the
division of the Chinese empire should
estrange all European countries)
New York: R. F. Fenno & Company, 1899
388 pages, hardcover
The novel opens with a very dramatic appraisal of British concern about the implications of the Triple Intervention for Britain's position in China (pages 7-8).
. . . The principle cause of fear had been what had looked uncommonly like a conspiracy of the three great Continental Powers to oust English from predominance in the East. First there was the seizure of Kiao-Chau, the bombastic farewells of the German Royal brothers; then immediately, the aggressive attitude of Russia at Port Arthur; then immediately the rumor that France had seized Hainan, was sending an expedition to Yun-nan, and had ships in Hoi-How harbor.
All this had the look of concert; for within the last few years it had got to be more and more recognized by the British public that centuries of neighborhood had fostered among the Continental nations a certain spirit of kinship, in which the Island-Kingdom was no sharer.
[ graph omitted ]
It is true that the Russian hated the German, and the German the Russian and the French; but their hatred was the hatred of brothers, always ready to combine against the outsider. This had begun to be suspected, then recognized, by the British nation. Alone and friendless must England tread the winepress of modern history, solitary in her majesty; and if ever an attempt were made to stop her stately progress, she was prepared to find that her foe was the rest of Europe.
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The Yellow Wave (1905)
M. P. Shiel
The Yellow Wave
London: Ward Lock, 1905
317 pages, hardcover
Illustrated by Henry Austin
M. P. Shiel
The Yellow Wave
Toronto: Thomas Langton, 1906
317 pages, hardcover
Illustrated by Henry Austin
[Author's name misspelled "Sheil" on some title pages]
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The Dragon, 1913
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The Yellow Peril, 1929
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The Dragon (1913)
The Yellow Danger (1929)
M. P. Shiel
The Dragon
London: Grant Richards, 1913
356 pages, hardcover
M. P. Shiel
The Dragon
New York: Edward Clode 1914
356 pages, hardcover
[Printed in Edinburgh from Grant Richards plates]
Science fiction novel of future war between Britain and China, revised in 1929 as The Yellow Peril.
M. P. Shiel
The Yellow Peril
London: Victor Gollancz, 1929
367 pages, hardcover
Forthcoming.
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