An American Engineer in China

TL;DR — William Barclay Parsons’s 1900 account of surveying a railway route through Hunan for American investors, and his view of China’s prospects for industrial development.

Published by McClure, Phillips & Co. in New York in 1900. Parsons, the engineer who later built New York’s first subway, led a survey party in 1898–99 for a proposed railway from Hankow to Canton, travelling through the interior including Changsha, which the preface describes as the one large Chinese city hitherto closed to foreigners.

The preface says the book deliberately leaves aside missionary questions, the recent political disturbances and diplomacy, and looks at China from the standpoint of industrial development — its resources, transport, labour and the outlook for railways and foreign investment. It is illustrated with photographs taken on the expedition. This copy is a scan from the SOAS library, University of London.

What it is: a primary-source travel and engineering account from the eve of the Boxer Rebellion.

Where this came from

• A copy saved in October 2026.
• Original source: https://archive.org/details/cu31924023226081
• Archived copy (Google Drive): Google Drive

330 pages. A copy is archived locally against link rot; the header links the original source.