TIELE, CORNELIS PETRUS (1830–1902), Dutch theologian and scholar, was born at Leiden on the 16th of December 1830. He was educated at Amsterdam, first studying at the Athenaeum Illustre, as the communal high school of the capital was then named, and afterwards at the seminary of the Remonstrant Brotherhood. He was destined for the pastorate in his own brotherhood. After steadily declining for a considerable period, this had increased its influence in the second half of the 19th century by widening the inelastic tenets of the Dutch Methodists, which had caused many of the liberal clergy among the Lutherans and Calvinists to go over to the Remonstrants. Tiele certainly had liberal religious views himself, which he early enunciated from the pulpit, as Remonstrant pastor of Moordrecht (1853) and at Rotterdam (1856). Upon the removal of the seminary of the brotherhood from Amsterdam to Leiden in 1873, Tiele was appointed one of its leading professors. In 1877 followed his appointment at the university of Leiden as professor of the history of religions, a chair specially created for him. Of his many learned works, the Vergelijkende geschiedenis van de egyptische en mesopotamische Godsdiensten (1872), and the Geschiedenis van den Godsdienst (1876; new ed. 1891), have been translated into English, the former by James Ballingall (1878–1882), the latter by J. Estlin Carpenter (1877) under the title “Outlines of the History of Religion” (French translation, 1885; German translation, 1895). A French translation of the Comparative History was published in 1882. Other works by Tiele are: De Godsdienst van Zarathustra, van het Ontstaan in Baktrië, tot den Val van het Oud-Perzische Rijk (1864) a work now embodied, but much enlarged and improved by the latest researches of the author, in the History of Religions (vol. ii. part ii., Amsterdam, 1901), a part which appeared only a short time before the author’s death; De Vrucht der Assyriologie voor de vergelijkende geschiedenis der Godsdiensten (1877; German ed., 1878); Babylonisch-assyrische Geschichte (two parts, Leipzig, 1886–1888); Western Asia, according to the most Recent Discoveries (London, 1894). He was also the writer of the article “Religions” in the 9th edition of the Ency. Brit. A volume of Tiele’s sermons appeared in 1865, and a collection of his poems in 1863. He also edited (1868) the poems of Petrus Augustus de Génestet. Tiele was best known to English students by his Outlines and the Gifford Lectures “On the Elements of the Science of Religion,” delivered in 1896–1898 at Edinburgh University. They appeared simultaneously in Dutch at Amsterdam, in English in London and Edinburgh (1897–1899, 2 vols.). Edinburgh University in 1900 conferred upon Tiele the degree of D.D. honoris causâ, an honour bestowed upon him previously by the universities of Dublin and Bologna. He was also a fellow of at least fifteen learned societies in Holland, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Great Britain and the United States. He died on the 11th of January 1902. In 1901 he had resigned his professorship at Leiden University. Tiele’s zeal and power for work were as extraordinary as his vast knowledge of ancient languages, peoples and religions, upon which his researches, according to F. Max Müller, have shed a new and vivid light. With Abraham Kuenen and J. H. Scholten, amongst others, he founded the “Leiden School” of modern theology. From 1867 he assisted A. Kuenen, A. D. Loman and L. W. Rauwenhoff editing the Theologisch Tijdschrift.
His brother Pieter Anton Tiele (1834–1888) acted for many years as the librarian of Utrecht University, and distinguished himself by his bibliographical studies, more especially by his several works on the history of colonization in Asia. Among these the most noteworthy are: De Opkomst van het nederlandsch Gezag in Oost-Indie (1886); De Vestiging der Portugeezen, in Indie (1873), and other books on the early Portuguese colonization in the Malay Archipelago.
TIENTSIN, the largest commercial city in Chih-li, the
metropolitan province of China. Pop. (1907), about 750,000. It
is situated at the junction of the Peiho and the Hun-ho, which
is connected by the grand Canal with the Yangtsze-kiang. It
is a prefectural city, and has, since the conclusion of the
foreign treaties, become the residence of the viceroy of the
province during a great portion of the year. The town is built
on a vast alluvial plain, which extends from the mountains
beyond Peking to the sea, and through which the Peiho runs
a circuitous course, making the distance by water from Tientsin
to the coast about 70 m. as against 30 m. by railway.
The appearance of the city has greatly changed since the Boxer rising in 1900. After that event the city walls, which measured about three quarters of a mile each way, were razed, wide streets were made, the course of the river straightened, electric lighting and tramways introduced and a good water service supplied. Among the public buildings are a university (in which instruction is given in western learning) and an arsenal. There are several cotton mills and important rice and salt markets. The city has always been a great commercial depot; a wharf nearly two miles long affords ample facilities for vessels able to cross the bar of the Peiho, over which there is a depth of water varying from 9 to 12 ft.
In 1907 the imports amounted to 79,500,000 taels (a tael in 1907 averaged 3s. 3d.); viz. foreign imports 61,200,000, native imports 18,317,000 taels; the exports in the same year amounted to 17,253,000. Valuable cargoes of tea are landed here for carriage overland, via Kalgan and Kiakhta, to Siberia. During the winter the river is frozen. The principal articles of import are shirtings, drills, jeans and twills, opium, woollens, steel, lead, needles, Japanese sea-weed and sugar; and of export, wool, skins, beans and pease, straw braid, coal, dates, tobacco and rhubarb. The coal exported is brought from the Kaiping colliery to the east of Tientsin; its output in 1885 was 181,039 tons and in 1904 28,956 tons.
The importance of Tientsin has been enhanced by the railways connecting it with Peking on the one hand and with Shanhai-kwan and Manchuria on the other. The British concession, in which the trade centres, is situated on the right bank of the river Peiho below the native city, and occupies some 200 acres. It is held on a lease in perpetuity granted by the Chinese government to the British Crown, which sublets plots to private owners in the same way as is done at Hankow. The local management is entrusted to a municipal council organized on lines similar to those which obtain at Shanghai. Besides the British concession the French, Germans, Russians, Japanese, Austrians, Italians and Belgians have separate settlements, five miles in all, the river front being governed by foreign powers.
In 1853 Tientsin was besieged by an army of T’aip’ing rebels, which had been detached from the main force at Nanking for the capture of Peking. The defences of Tientsin, however, saved the capital, and the rebels were forced to retreat. Five years later Lord Elgin, accompanied by the representative of France, steamed up the Peiho, after having forced the barriers at Taku, and took peaceable possession of the town. Here the treaty of 1858 was signed. But in 1860, in consequence of the treacherous attack made on the British plenipotentiary the preceding year at Taku, the city and suburbs were occupied by an allied British and French force, and were held for two years. The city was constituted an open port. On the establishment of Roman Catholic orphanages some years later the pretensions of the priests so irritated the people that on the occurrence of an epidemic in the schools in the year 1870 they attacked the French and Russian establishments and murdered twenty-one of the foreign inmates, besides numbers of their native followers. The Chinese government suppressed the riot, paid £80,000 in compensation and sent a representative to Europe to apologize for the outbreak.
During the period 1874–1894, when Li Hung-Chang was viceroy of Chih-li and ex officio superintendent of trade, he made Tientsin his headquarters and the centre of his experiments in military and naval education. As a consequence the city became the chief focus of enterprise and foreign progress. Having arrogated to himself the practical control of the foreign policy of the nation, Li’s yamen became the scene of many important negotiations, and attracted distinguished visitors from all parts of the globe. The loss of prestige consequent on the Japanese War brought about the retirement of Li, and with it the political importance of Tientsin ceased. Both the foreign concessions and the native city suffered severely during the hostilities resulting from the Boxer movement in June–July, 1900. (See China: History § D.)
TIEPOLO, GIOVANNI BATTISTA (1692–1769), Italian painter, was born at Venice, and acquired the rudiments of his art from Gregorio Lazzarini, and probably from Piazzetta, though the decisive influence on the formation of his style was the study of Paolo Veronese’s sumptuous paintings. When hardly out of his teens he developed an extraordinary facility of brushwork, and proved himself, as a fresco-painter, a colourist of the first
