The series consists of material relating to Peter Stursberg's book No Foreign Bones in China: Memoirs of Imperialism and its Ending (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2002) which tells the story of his family's long involvement in China; from his grandfather Captain Samuel Lewis Shaw's arrival in China in the 1830s to the 1960s when the communist government forced his aged aunt Julia Shaw Carey's flight to Macao. The series holds Stursberg's correspondence with publishers and literary agents, drafts of the manuscript, promotional material, research notes, correspondence with surviving Shaw and Stursberg family members remembering life in China, genealogical records, and his family's original letters and manuscripts which he used as source material for the book. His research uncovered the family secret of his mixed racial background-his grandmother was Japanese-and reconstructed the world of the British colonial bureaucracy in China during the last years of British rule.
The original source material created by his family deserves to be described in greater detail for it documents the commercial and economic relationship between China and the West; the colonial machinery of the British Empire; the domestic and social world of the foreign elite living in China; and political and social unrest in China from the 1911 revolution through to the nationalist ouster of the Western powers in 1927 and the communist takeover in 1949. These family documents include W. Arthur Stursberg's letters to his fiancé, Mary Ellen Shaw, 1908-1912; his letters to his father John Peter Stursberg, 1914-1919; his letters to his sons Peter and Richard Stursberg while they were away at Bedford School in England, 1924-1927; fifteen letter books of correspondence to his wife while she was in England with their children, 1925-1927; official records of his employment with the Chinese Post Office, 1906-1928; and his memoirs and notes about China, written later in life. In addition, the family material includes letters to Peter Stursberg's mother Mary Ellen Stursberg (née Shaw), 1897-1913; correspondence with his aunt Julia Shaw Carey of Foochow and later Macao, 1945-1983; the correspondence and writings of his grandfather Samuel Lewis Shaw, 1867-1907; and a transcript of the journal of his ancestor Robert Shaw of Dublin and Terenure, Ireland, 1791-1795.
