Breaking with the Past: The Maritime Customs Service and the Global Origins of Modernity in China 9780231510523

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BREAKING WITH THE PAST

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BREAKING W IT H T H E PA S T T H E M A R I T I M E C U S TO M S S E RV I C E A N D T H E G LO B A L O R I G I N S O F M O D E R N I T Y I N C H I N A

Hans van de Ven

Columbia University Press

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New York

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Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Copyright © 2014 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Van de Ven, Hans J. Breaking with the past : the Maritime Customs Service and the global origins of modernity in China / Hans van de Ven. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-231-13738-6 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-231-51052-3 (e-book) 1. Customs administration—China—History 2. China—Foreign economic relations. 3. China—Foreign relations. 4. China—History. I. Title. HJ7071.v35 2014 382′. 7095109041—dc23 2013024118

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. This book is printed on paper with recycled content. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 COVER DESIGN :

Michele Taormina

References to websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

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For Susan

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CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ix LIST OF GRAPHS AND TABLES

xi CONVENTIONS

xiii Introduction 1 Chapter One The Birth of a Chameleon 22 Chapter Two Robert Hart’s Panopticon 64

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viii CONTENTS

Chapter Three The Customs Service During the Self-Strengthening Movement, 1870–1895 103 Chapter Four The Rise of the Bond Markets: The Customs Service Becomes a Debt Collector, 1895–1914 133 Chapter Five Imperium in Imperio, 1914–1929 172 Chapter Six Tariff Nation, Smugglers’ Nation: The Customs Service in the Nanjing Decade, 1929–1937 217 Chapter Seven Maintaining Integrity, 1937–1949 259 Epilogue: Echoes and Shadows 302 NOTES

311 BIBLIOGRAPHY

369 INDEX

381

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Illustrations are printed after page 216 FIGURE 1 FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

FIGURE 4 FIGURE 5 FIGURE 6 FIGURE 7

FIGURE 8 FIGURE 9 FIGURE 10 FIGURE 11 FIGURE 12 FIGURE 13 FIGURE 14

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Robert Hart David Marr Henderson, returning from a shooting trip, Shanghai, c. 1870–1890 China Navigation Company’s vessel approaching Shanghai, 1906–1907 Lighthouse, at Turnabout (Niushan), Fujian Province Shanghai Bund, estimated 1890–1893 Shanghai Custom House, estimated 1890–1893 Commemorative photograph of Frances Aglen’s meeting with Chinese Staff Club, 1923 Tianjin commissioner’s residence, 1915 Shanghai Bund, early twentieth century The port of Xiamen, early twentieth century The Wuhu Bund, 1911–1912 Docks along the Min River near Fujian, 1915 Hankou Custom House Coast inspector’s residence at Shantou

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x I L L U S T R AT I O N S

FIGURE 15 FIGURE 16 FIGURE 17 FIGURE 18 FIGURE 19 FIGURE 20 FIGURE 21

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The Wenzhou Custom House docks The Shantou commissioner’s official residence, 1925–1926 Frederick Maze Customs revenue steamer, unknown date Portrait photograph of Lester K. Little, 1927 Ding Guitang The Wuhu Bund area, 2006

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GRAPHS AND TABLES

TABLE 1.1. G RAPH 3.1. TABLE 3.1.

G RAPH 3.2. G RAPH 3.3. G RAPH 3.4. G RAPH 3.5.

G RAPH 3.6.

G RAPH 3.7. G RAPH 3.8. G RAPH 3.9. G RAPH 4.1. G RAPH 5.1. G RAPH 5.2. TABLE 5.1. G RAPH 6.1. GRAPH 6.2. TABLE 6.1.

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Reported tollhouse collections, 1740–1795 53 Customs revenue, 1861–1895 117 The growth of Custom Houses during the Self-Strengthening period 118 Customs revenue allocations, 1861–1895 120 Net imports and exports, 1864–1895 123 Raw cotton, raw silk, and tea exports, 1864–1895 123 Imports of rice, kerosene, sugar, cotton yarn, cotton goods, and opium, 1867–1895 124 The trade of Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangzhou, and the ports on the Yangzi River, 1867–1895 126 The depreciation of silver, 1863–1895 128 The copper-silver exchange rate, 1865–1895 130 The price of rice, 1867–1895 131 China’s foreign trade, 1895–1911 165 Customs revenue, 1912–1926 182 Consolidated debt bonds, January 1922–October 1926 185 Senior Chinese and foreign staff, 1916 and 1925 194 Government income, 1929–1937 219 Smuggling in 1930s China 235 Smuggling between Taiwan and southern China, 1931– 1936 246

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CONVENTIONS

TRANSLITERATION

The transliteration of Chinese into Western scripts is complicated and continues to be a source of confusion, even though the Pinyin system has become the generally accepted standard. I have followed it rigorously but have made the occasional allowance for current English usage in the case of place names and personal names. For Chinese names, I have followed the Chinese order, in which the family name comes first and the personal name second, unless the reverse has become generally accepted. The Customs Service held to its own transliteration system, which was not unlike the Wade-Giles system, preferred in older scholarship, but, predating it, differed from it in some ways. My procedure has been to transpose all Customs transliterations into Pinyin. For instance, if the Customs Service referred to Hankow or Kiukiang Custom Houses, they appear in the text as the Hankou and Jiujiang Custom Houses. In a few rare cases, for instance when Customs Service records gave the name of a Chinese person in its own transliteration system, it was impossible to recover the original Chinese. In these cases, I have retained the transliteration of the Customs Service.

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xiv CONVENTIONS

In the main text, whenever I quote from a Chinese text or refer to a Chinese institution, I provide a translation, the Chinese characters, and a Pinyin transliteration, for the ease of reading for those who do not know Chinese. In the footnotes, I have not provided Chinese characters: if the original was in Chinese, a Pinyin transliteration follows it in brackets. In the bibliography, I provide the characters for all titles and author names but not a transliteration: one can read Chinese, or one cannot.

CURRENCIES

During the century this history covers, different units of accounts were in use, and a great many different currencies circulated. The Customs Service used its own unit of account, the Haiguan tael (海关两, haiguan liang), which I have abbreviated as Hk.Tls. It was defined by its silver content and differed slightly from the Treasury tael, the K. Tls. (库平两), the unit of account of the Treasury in Beijing, again different from the Shanghai tael, in which foreign exchange was usually conducted. For the broad analyses provided in this book, the differences are not relevant. During the Republican period, silver dollars minted by different banks, including foreign ones, circulated. In the 1930s, the Customs Gold Unit and the Nationalists’ legal tender notes made their introduction. During World War II, the situation became even more complicated. For this period, too, I have provided values as they appear in the sources, explaining the difference with other currencies and units of account at their first mention. Currency exchange rates can be found in Hsiao Liang-lin, China’s Foreign Trade Statistics, 187–196.

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BREAKING WITH THE PAST

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INTRODUCTION

And so it is with our past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of the intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of the intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die. —MARCEL PROUST, SWANN’S WAY

When I walked around Old Shanghai for the first time in 1986, its buildings seemed a ruin from a bygone age. The villas, banks, hotels, shopping centers, entertainment halls, bars, and clubs that had made Shanghai the City of the Neon Lights in the first half of the twentieth century were still around. But they were in a state of disrepair. Window frames were rotting, plaster work was crumbling, paint was peeling off, and roof tiles were broken. In the 1930s, world stars like Noel Coward and G. B. Shaw stayed in hotels that were the height of luxury; rats disturbed our sleep in the mid-1980s. Then, the Shanghai rich lived in comfortable country-housestyle mansions. After 1949, they were divided into small apartments, with one family having just one room and shared kitchens and toilets. Rather than a playground for foreign adventurers, Shanghai became a dull, dusty, gray, and overcrowded place, with the jazz band of the Peace Hotel, some of whose members had first played there in the 1930s and 1940s, providing rare night-time entertainment.

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2 INTRODUCTION

Even in the mid-1980s, after Deng Xiaoping’s reforms had already begun, Shanghai’s decrepitude suggested that those who argued that the foreign influence had been ephemeral at best and that the fundamental forces shaping China were to be found in the countryside were right.1 The Communists had won the battle for China by mobilizing the peasantry, responding to changes in China itself. After 1949, they had sent all Westerners packing, except for a few fellow travelers and Soviet advisors housed in the Friendship Hotel in Beijing, and the latter were dispatched home soon, too. Symbolizing the change, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank building on the Shanghai Bund had been taken over by the Chinese Communist Party’s Shanghai municipal government. During the Cultural Revolution, the bells of the Shanghai Custom House no longer tolled the Big Ben chime, as they did when it opened in 1927, but the Maoist “The East Is Red.” Twenty-five years later, this narrative of the emergence of present-day China, focusing on rural revolution, can no longer be sustained. The past is back, in force, including its urban and foreign aspects. The Big Ben chime can once again be heard from the Shanghai Custom House, even if only dimly because of the noise of the traffic. The Hongkong and Shanghai Bank building on the Bund again houses a bank, the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank. The city once more is a meeting ground for businessmen, bankers, writers, artists, academics, lawyers, and tourists from Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the United States. It again stages major sports events and pop concerts, attracting huge crowds, as the Shanghai race course did in earlier days, with the wealthy betting on fast Mongolian ponies and the poor, on dogs. The city’s foreign past is no longer decried as a source of shame but is explored with fascinated interest. Coffee-table books about its pre-1949 history and reprints of old Shanghai maps are crammed into book shops. Waitresses in Qipao dresses serve food in restaurants built in late Qing and Republican architectural styles. Businesses, shops, and banks parade their pre-1949 history. China’s current Customs Service has reclaimed its pre-1949 past with pride. What is true for Shanghai is also the case for Guangzhou, Tianjin, Wuhan, Xiamen, Ningbo, Tianjin, Dalian, and Chongqing, cities that thrived on contact with foreign countries during the second half of the nineteenth and the first part of the twentieth century and that have again become prominent, even if it is now the airplane rather than the steamship that connects them.

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3 INTRODUCTION

This study focuses on the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, which emerged out of one violent epoch, the Taiping Rebellion from 1850 to 1864, and came to an end in another, that of World War II and the 1949 Communist conquest of China. In this century, the Customs Service was a key institution both on and off the China coast. Initially, its task was merely to assess—not even to collect—duties on cargo arriving in foreign steamships. But it soon accumulated other functions and became much more than just a customs agency. The Service built lighthouses, placed buoys, erected beacons, and managed China’s ports, thus facilitating the rapid expansion of China’s foreign trade. It funded China’s diplomatic missions abroad and put together China’s contributions to international exhibitions and world fairs, linking China into a new world of diplomacy based on sovereign nation-states and transnational institutions. It collected meteorological data to facilitate weather forecasting. It supervised the Translators College, which trained China’s diplomats, providing them with a liberal education, and translated Western works on natural science, political economy, and law. It helped China acquire a modern navy, several times. From 1895, it became deeply involved in the management of China’s foreign loans. It intervened in China’s diplomatic affairs, including during the Boxer Rebellion, when it helped prevent the partition of China. From 1911, it took over the actual collection of customs duties, which already for two decades had accounted for one-third of all revenue available to Beijing, and it would continue to do so until the outbreak of the War of Resistance in 1937. From 1914, the head of the Customs Service, the Inspector General (IG), was ex officio in charge of China’s domestic bond issues. In the 1930s, the Service became responsible for enforcing the Nationalists’ high-tariff policies, which it did by building a Preventive Fleet of some seventy vessels and policing a single integrated coastline. The Customs Service, in short, was one of the most, if not the most, powerful bureaucracies operating in China between the Taiping Rebellion and the Communist Revolution, and the only one that did so uninterruptedly and across most of China. Maritime Custom Houses, despite their name, could be found deep in China’s interior, even in landlocked Urumqi in Xinjiang—central Asia, really—and in the Himalayas. It proved durable, surviving the end of bureaucratic monarchical rule in 1912, the civil wars of the early republic, the rise of the Nationalists in the late 1920s, and even, just about, the Sino-Japanese War.

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4 INTRODUCTION

The Customs Service was institutionally odd: formally, it was always an agency of the Chinese state; the Inspector General and his staff were Chinese officials and reported to a Chinese superior. But the IG—British until 1943, when an American was appointed—had sole control over the Customs Service. It facilitated trade and helped give rise to modern cities like Shanghai, where people and commodities from diverse origins were brought together into a new configuration. The senior staff of the Customs Service was foreign, drawn from all the countries that traded with China, in rough proportion to the importance of a country’s trade with China. The Service also employed many Chinese, initially only in inferior positions, but from the 1920s, when foreign hiring ended, increasingly in more senior posts as well. Its cosmopolitan nature caused awkward situations. When the Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, the Japanese chief secretary, Kishimoto Hirokichi, was in charge of the Service, and he issued orders as instructed by Kong Xiangxi, the Nationalist minister of finance, to Customs officials resisting his fellow nationals. Kishimoto remained the number two of a putatively Nationalist bureaucracy until the outbreak of the Pacific War. The Customs Service is, I believe, best thought of as a frontier regime, in a double sense. It was a regime of the frontier: a set of institutions, rules, practices, offices, and routines that governed the exchange of goods, the arrival and departure of vessels, and the comings and goings of people in a frontier region. The Service was also a regime in the frontier: a “state within a state,” an imperium in imperio, or in Chinese, 国中之国 (guo zhong zhi guo), based in a frontier zone. It was a civil service bureaucracy with a cosmopolitan nature, committed to upholding what it understood as the general good, with its own structure, ethos, esprit de corps, traditions, policies, rules, and regulations; its own armed forces; at times its own distinct diplomacy; and its own myths and illusions, important especially to the last Inspectors General as the end came in sight. It operated with considerable independence in the frontier zone between weak Chinese regimes and overstretched European empires. It inserted itself into niches wherever they existed or opened up as China’s states lost their grip and European empires brought new ways of conducting trade, diplomacy, and war. It was, to misappropriate a term pioneered by Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus, a bureaucratic rhizome, an entity in which everything is connected with everything else, which spreads in different directions and

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5 INTRODUCTION

into different arenas, depending on where space is available, and which is multidimensional and multiple.2 It was, as its own members referred to it, “the Service” or, more commonly, just “the Customs.” In analyzing and narrating the century-long history of the Service, I emphasize, first, the role of the Inspectors General. Because they were autocrats in the Service, their views and policies were critical factors in shaping its history. I focus, too, on ruptures and tipping points. The responses of the Service to often unexpected events—even the outbreak of the SinoJapanese War in 1937 took the Customs Service unprepared—was critical. Third, in researching this study, one of the surprises has been just how important finance, banking, and bond markets were in shaping China’s modern history, which has largely been narrated from revolutionary and nationalist perspectives. Finance, therefore, stands prominently in this study, especially in its second half. The fourth major theme is the evolving relationship between the Customs Service, on the one hand, and Chinese and foreign diplomatic officials, on the other. One purpose of this book is to write the Customs, and by extension the foreign, back into China’s modern history. The Taiping Rebellion and the Communist Revolution bookended a century of rapid globalization in China, characterized by an acceleration of foreign trade, large-scale population movements, the emergence of large port cities along China’s coast and rivers, intense cultural transformations, major social shifts, and the spread of secular liberal governance of the civil service type. The Customs Service was important in this century in providing the regulatory infrastructure that facilitated China’s international trade and buttressed the transnational personal networks, involving China, Europe, Asia, and the United States, critical to its functioning. It supported China’s involvement not just in the new diplomacy based on supposedly equal nation-states but also in international agencies working to forge common international practices, such as in navigation. Its officers, who had ample leisure time, were often collectors, translators, linguists, and scholars in their private time; through their activities, they ensured a place for China in international cultural and scholarly organizations. China’s Republican regimes, including the Nationalists, did not abolish the Customs Service. As elsewhere in the world at the time of decolonization, the new ruling classes took over a foreign-built institution to strengthen their hold on power, protect their financial interests, and secure their new state. In all these ways, the history

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6 INTRODUCTION

of the Customs Service runs through China’s modern history as a significant force, casting its shadows in many directions; affecting major events such as the Boxer Uprising, the 1911 Revolution, and the emergence of the Nationalists; and shaping the states that administered China in this period in fundamental ways. To try to recover the world of the Customs Service is opportune because Custom Houses are once again in use, operating in some cases from pre1949 Customs buildings or from new buildings put up on the sites their predecessors occupied. The reassuring beams of light cast by lighthouses built by the Customs Service once again guide ships along China’s coast and into harbors. Port cities have once again assumed predominance. After 1949, Mao rejected the world the Customs Service helped build, determined that China should follow its own road to a non-Western modernity on its own resources, but that proved a huge mistake. Despite many differences, the Customs Service of today is reclaiming, if gingerly, its pre1949 past. Not all historians in China still write about it as just tool of imperialism causing “a century of humiliation” that had to be overcome through arduous revolutionary struggle. Adopting one of the stories that the Customs Service liked to tell about itself, not always with justification,3 it is depicted as a bureaucracy with a disciplined and incorrupt staff even by its critics.4 One question I have been asked frequently in China, including by Customs officials, is what made the Service a disciplined and clean institution. A former Customs official, who did go to Taiwan, argues that had other Nationalist agencies been more like the Service, there would have been no Communist revolution.5 Ren Zhiyong has stressed the limits of its power, arguing that Chinese officials remained in control during the late Qing,6 and Zhan Qinghua has suggested that it served as a “bridge” that made possible “dialogue, exchange, and communication” between China and the West. Both explicitly reject the argument that foreign staff of the Customs Service were “cultural invaders.”7 The foreign presence was multifaceted, nor can it be maintained plausibly that the Qing was a happy and prosperous empire when the British arrived. The Taiping and Nian rebels clearly did not think so, and even Confucian revivalists who defended the established order, like Zeng Guofan, kept up a nice line in producing biting criticisms of their age. By focusing on the Customs Service, this study aims to open up a more nuanced perspective on the foreign presence in China in the past, one that complicates the trope of the foreign victimization of

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7 INTRODUCTION

China. It does not rush to judgment but attempts to restore the moral universes and world outlooks in which decisions were made. This study has been written against the background of rapid economic growth in China and the country’s quick integration into a Western-dominated international order. The main factors making these developments possible must be that China has done extraordinarily well out of doing so; that commercialization has a deep history in China; that Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore have demonstrated their benefits; and that Chinese populations across the world gave a helping hand. But China’s globalization today also builds on the century of globalization that began in the early1800s, which in turn had antecedents in China’s involvement in East and Southeast Asian trade networks that began in the Ming Dynasty. One aim of this study is to write the Customs Service back into the history of modern China and modern globalization and so, more generally, to bring the foreign back. Its approach to modernity attempts to be alert to its patchwork nature, to its improvisational aspects, and to the fact that what we might see as typically European, or Chinese, in reality came about as the two met.

Little work has been done on the Customs Service. Most historians, in China and abroad, have depicted the Customs Service in the context of British imperialism in China.8 This is problematic in several ways. For most of its history, although not all, the Service consciously declined to align itself with British imperialism. The Service helped sustain the Qing and China’s Republican polities. Its establishment was the product of weakness rather than strength: the Service provided the British and the French, Britain’s junior partner in the European expansion in East Asia,9 with a way to offload responsibilities relating to the taxation and policing of foreign trade assumed during the 1838–1842 Opium War and which they found they did not have the capacity to shoulder. Greatly weakened by the Taiping Rebellion, the Qing readily seized the opportunity provided by outsourcing the policing of trade to foreigners working under Chinese supervision. Analyses stressing the imperialist nature of the Customs Service were written against the background of John Fairbank’s Panglossian and typically enigmatic depiction of the Customs Service as the institutional pillar underpinning what he called synarchy.10 By that he meant the joint rule by Manchus, Han officials, and the British of China’s treaty ports. Synarchy,

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8 INTRODUCTION

Fairbank argued, opened up China, with its unique culture, to the supposedly beneficent forces of Western modernization and fitted it into the Westphalian system of equal nation-states. Fairbank has been rightly criticized for being insufficiently critical of imperialism, for judging China by a yardstick derived from Western modernization theories, and for holding to an Orientalist view of relations between East and West,11 but certain elements of his analysis, I believe, are in fact worth resuscitating, including the suggestion of a necessarily veiled accommodation between Qing officials and foreign diplomats trying to bring order during and after the Taiping Rebellion on a coast infested with Chinese and foreign pirates as well as cynically corrupt and colluding merchants. The same is true for his suggestion that the Customs Service had a base in Qing governmental practices, including the co-option of powerful outsiders. The minimal taxation of foreign trade and an internal correspondence system based on Chinese models, even if written in English, are other examples. However, Fairbank was naïve about the political context in which the Customs Service operated and did not do what is an imperative for historians: follow the money. He failed to pay sufficient attention to conflicts among foreigners as well as between Chinese officials and Manchu aristocrats. Nor was he sufficiently alert to China’s long history of commercialization and overseas trade, or of the fact that its officials and merchants often collaborated, or that the weak, too, often have some sort of power. It is also true that at times, and especially from 1911 until 1929, when Francis Aglen was Inspector General, the Service did align itself with British imperialism. Robert Hart, IG from 1863 until 1911, whose diaries and correspondence Fairbank lovingly, even adoringly, edited, was not, as Fairbank argued, a paragon of the rational, pragmatic, and modern Western bureaucrat. He was racked by religious doubt; he could be despotic; and he relied increasingly on his family, suspecting everybody else. Although usually of sound judgment, he recruited for the Translators College someone whose purpose in life was to prove Newton wrong about gravity. He fancied himself a naval expert, gave partial advice on the suitability of certain types of naval vessels without taking the views of his Chinese colleagues seriously, and delivered ships of shoddy quality. Fairbank ignored Hart’s Irishness, his intense religiosity, and his sexuality. None of that means that Hart was not a consummate administrator or an empire builder of the first order. His great gift was his ability to fit into the Chinese official world. Without

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9 INTRODUCTION

him, the Customs Service would never have become the powerful institution that helped keep China together through a most turbulent century. One problem the imperialist and synarchist schools of thought share is that they see the Customs Service as a late Qing institution. In reality, it became more, not less, important after the 1911 Revolution, a period in China’s history about which Fairbank would remain largely silent and that he found intellectually and, perhaps, emotionally puzzling. When the Customs Service seized control of the collection of customs dues and associated harbor charges during the 1911 Revolution, it became a caisse de la dette, a debt-collection agency for foreign financial interests and countries receiving Boxer Indemnity payments. Francis Aglen, a paid-up member of the British establishment and entirely dismissive, unlike Hart, of Chinese officialdom, became China’s finance czar at a time when Britain was perhaps not the policeman of the world but certainly its bailiff. He not only banked China’s Customs revenue but, after 1913, gained the stewardship of domestic bond issues and so further expanded the power of the Customs Service. The Customs Service remained hugely powerful after the Nationalists took control in 1929. Foreign hiring was stopped, Customs collections were once more deposited into Chinese banks, and Customs surpluses—funds not needed for servicing domestic and foreign debt—were no longer controlled by the Inspector General. But it continued to be fiscally indispensable, delivering before the outbreak of war with Japan half of all Nationalist revenue, and the new Preventive Fleet was put in charge of eradicating seaborne smuggling. The history of the Customs Service did not end in 1911, nor in 1929, nor even in 1937; it remained fiscally, politically, diplomatically, and socially important right up until 1949. The independence and longevity of the Customs Service need explaining. The Service was able to isolate itself from both foreign and Chinese bureaucracies. It emerged, as said, in a situation of general governmental fragility. The Taiping and Nian rebellions had severely weakened the Qing. Although European empires were beginning to expand aggressively, they did so in China on the basis of limited resources while facing huge problems elsewhere and at home. The 1848 revolutions occurred only half a decade before the founding of the Customs Service. Great Britain faced the upheavals of the Irish Potato Famine from 1845 through 1852, fought with France against Russia in the Crimea from 1853 to 1856, and confronted the Indian Rebellion from 1856 through 1858 while the Chartist movement for

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10 INTRODUCTION

electoral reform remade—slowly, of course, as this was Britain—political practices at home. Continental Europe was kept busy with the ramifications of the Prussian unification of Germany and the Italian Risorgimento in the 1860s, and the United States in the same decade was plunged into civil war. France had to deal with invasion by Prussia in 1870 and with consolidating its hold over new colonies in the Middle East. The Service, offering order, regularity, profit, and revenue, was an attractive proposition to officials on all sides. When the new imperialism arrived in China in the 1890s and British supremacy among the foreign powers there ended, there was a brief moment when Great Powers competed to establish control over the Customs Service. But that did not last. The loans extended to the Qing that financed the indemnity imposed by Japan after the first Sino-Japanese War created a common interest in maintaining the Qing Dynasty and the Service; Customs revenue stood guarantee for the loans. The Boxer War, when the partition of China threatened and foreign armies found themselves in possession of Beijing but also once more terribly exposed, drove home the point that the course of greater wisdom was not to risk the slaying of the golden goose, for it was laying eggs for all. The Boxer Indemnity was constructed as a single bond, again guaranteed by Customs revenue, between the Qing Dynasty and the eight countries that invaded the country that year. The Service was able to maintain its independence because its revenue provided a common interest in its survival. That revenue also provided one of the reasons for republican governments to allow it to continue its operations. The fact that the Customs Service was able to issue China’s bonds domestically and internationally—while the Chinese state was unable to do so— makes clear that it was seen as more reliable not just by foreigners but also by Chinese investors. But the independence of the Customs Service was not just the product of the geopolitical situation. It worked hard to carve out a solid space for itself in between the Qing and Western empires and policed its independence skillfully most of the time. It did so during the first decades of its existence by establishing the authority of Customs commissioners vis-àvis local Chinese officials and consuls, diminishing the power of both, in the case of the consuls by reaching over their heads and appealing to the British Crown. The first IG, Horatio Lay, ensured that although the Inspector General was appointed by an imperial edict, he had sole and untram-

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11 INTRODUCTION

meled control over recruitment, transfer, promotions, and dismissals and could organize the Customs Service as he wished. Robert Hart turned the Inspectorate, the head office, into a bureaucratic panopticon by creating centralizing flows of information, enforcing standard procedures, laying down expected standards of behavior, promoting gentlemanly values and attitudes, and, importantly, prohibiting staff from engaging in trade on their own account or receiving extra payments for additional activities. The IG became the all-powerful, all-knowing center of a disciplined organization, with a self-confident senior staff, bound together by a strong esprit de corps. The Customs became a self-contained bureaucracy able to survive and even exploit the great shocks of the early twentieth century that befell China. As the Chinese state collapsed around it, the Service developed a powerful belief in possessing a historical mission, one independent of and transcending the Chinese states to which it formally subordinated itself. World War II and the Nationalist-Communist Civil War demonstrated just how tenacious an institution the Customs Service had become by the middle of the twentieth century. Shortly after the outbreak of war between China and Japan in 1937, the Service lost its main function of assessing and taxing China’s foreign trade. Nonetheless, until 1941 the Inspectorate continued to manage China’s Custom Houses across China, including in Japanese-occupied areas. In 1942, it forestalled a Nationalist attempt to abolish the Inspectorate or appoint a Chinese Inspector General. At the conclusion of World War II, it was the Nationalist bureaucracy best prepared to begin the work of reconstruction and rehabilitation. On the eve of the Communist takeover, many in the Customs Service, although not its few remaining foreign employees, believed that the institution would survive the transition to Communist rule. That this was a delusion became clear at the time of the Korean War, when the Communists cracked down hard on the Customs Service during the Three Anti and Five Anti Campaigns of 1951 and 1952, which were aimed at waste, corruption, dealing with the enemy, tax evasion, theft of state property, and so on. Thousands of staff were found guilty and punished at different levels of severity; at the same time, the principles and values which the Service had held up as important for the creation of a modern state in China were now denounced as bourgeois and antirevolutionary. In other words, the narrative that had sustained the Customs Service and in which it was seen as a kernel of a modern rational bureaucracy was turned upside-down. Rather than a harbinger of a better

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12 INTRODUCTION

future, it was depicted as a pillar of a bad past. The denunciation of its historical role and of its guiding principles marked the true end of the Service. The Customs Service, in short, could function as a largely autarkic institution because of its own efforts, because Chinese and foreign governments found it convenient to rely on it or had little choice but to do so, and because it delivered essential services. As Robert Hart would say many times, its survival depended on being “useful” or, in other words, being of service to the institutions and governments around it. Its power was based on its ability to marshal reliable information about tax revenue and, after 1911, the actual collection of it. It drew strength from its administrative efficiency and its internal cohesion and from its ability to access and spread knowledge about Europe in China and about China in Europe. Its cosmopolitan recruitment policy gave elites in Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, and other countries with which China traded a stake in its maintenance. It accumulated an idiosyncratic portfolio of activities, but that also ensured that its survival was not tied to just one function. The Marine Department before the 1911 Revolution, the involvement in state finance after it, and the Preventive Department in the 1930s made it a versatile organization. It was all this, its own internal discipline, and the fact that it never thought of itself as something unchanging and permanent that made it possible for the Customs Service to endure as China’s states succumbed one after the other and as one power replaced the next. The Customs Service, it should be emphasized, was perhaps special, but it was not unique. Within China, the Salt Tax Administration and the Postal Service employed foreigners while being formally agencies of the Chinese state. Elsewhere, analogous to the later Customs Service was the Caisse de la Dette, which from 1879 placed Khedive Ismail’s Egyptian tax collection under British and French supervision. The Ottoman Public Debt Administration, established in 1881, did the same on behalf of the European holders of Ottoman debt bonds. To extend the point, frontier zones between weak polities have often generated powerful and independent regimes. One can point to the maritime empire of Zheng Chenggong (鄭成功), or Koxinga, in China’s past as something similar. The United Nations has carved out significant spaces for itself between weak political and social structures in Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere as well, by, among other things, coordinating humanitarian relief operations. A comparative study of the

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13 INTRODUCTION

Customs Service with such institutions would be instructive but is well beyond the scope of this book.

Let me briefly introduce the chapters that make up this study. Chapter 1, “The Birth of a Chameleon,” begins with a brief discussion of the 1861 Xinyou coup d’état by Prince Gong. This was a decisive moment: Prince Gong endorsed the experiment that foreign and local Chinese officials had begun in 1854, by which foreign supervisors were appointed to the Shanghai Custom House. Prince Gong broke with the xenophobic attitudes of his brother, the Xianfeng Emperor. His policy was to give primacy to the suppression of the Taiping. Even though the British and French had just burned the Summer Palace, he nonetheless concluded that they could be useful in suppressing the Taiping and in providing a counterweight to the Russians, who had turned east after their defeat by France and Britain in the Crimea, cutting vast swaths of land from the Qing imperium. Prince Gong also wanted to prevent too great a closeness between the French and the British and the increasingly dominant Han officials in provinces along the Yangzi River. I discuss the activities of Horatio Lay, who launched the Shanghai experiment and then became the first Inspector General, laying the basis of the Customs Service. Prince Gong dismissed him after he demanded unfettered command over a naval force that he put together on behalf of the Qing, thus demonstrating that there were limits that the prince was not prepared to cross and that the IG would always have to bow to Chinese supremacy. The chapter pays attention to Robert Hart, focusing on his respect for Chinese culture and Chinese traditions, his rejection of the swashbuckling British imperialism that led to the two Opium Wars, and his adoption of a secular liberal and cosmopolitan stance, which grew out of a deep and personal religious crisis resulting from his growing familiarity with China and his skepticism about claims of British superiority. The chapter ends with a discussion of China’s previous methods of governing maritime trade, demonstrating that the Customs Service incorporated some of its key features. In the second chapter, “Robert Hart’s Panopticon,” I analyze how Robert Hart built up a disciplined, cohesive, and centralized organization; carved out a space for it in between the Qing and Western empires; and

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14 INTRODUCTION

extended its functions, using niches wherever they opened up. It was Hart who turned the Service into a widely respected organization, involved in taxation as well as diplomacy, finance, scholarship, meteorology, and the management of China’s maritime sphere. A good example of the Service’s ability to take hold of new functions was its erection of lighthouses along the Chinese coast. Lighthouses were important to the transport revolution of the second half of the nineteenth century, but they were also symbols of modern engineering and management with complex political and cultural meanings. The main purpose of the chapter is to demonstrate the measures by which Hart turned the Service into a centralized hierarchical organization able to survive through many crises. Chapter 3, the “Customs Service During the Self-Strengthening Movement,” focuses on the period from the Taiping Rebellion until the 1894–1895 Sino-Japanese War. It begins with an examination of the London Office of the Service, through which the Customs Service gained access to highest reaches of the British government, which gave the Qing a head start in its competition with Japan for naval supremacy in East Asia and caused European and Qing politics to become intertwined. The chapter then examines the trajectory and the consequences of the increased maritime trade that the Service enabled. I will suggest that the Sino-French War of 1883–1885 was a major turning point. Before the war, when China’s economy grew quickly as it recovered from the Taiping and Nian rebellions, and in the early 1880s, China was the strongest East Asian naval power. The rapid decline in the value of silver caused the terms of trade to move against it. Unlike Japan, China did not develop light industry, with the result that it became underdeveloped, becoming an exporter of primary resources and an importer of industrially produced goods. Growth slowed, living standards began to decline, and Japan edged ahead in the East Asian naval arms race. The chapter also discusses the intensifying diplomatic, legal, scholarly, and banking links between China and Britain that the Customs Service fostered. With chapters 4 and 5, the focus shifts to the involvement of the Customs Service in fiscal affairs. Chapter 4, “The Rise of the Bond Markets: The Customs Service Becomes a Debt Collector,” begins by explaining the emergence of a market for China loans in London and then analyzes the Qing’s failed efforts to issue domestic loan bonds to pay for the indemnity Japan imposed after the first Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895. This in-

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15 INTRODUCTION

creased the Qing’s dependence on the Customs Service, as foreign banking consortia refused to issue loans unless they were formally hypothecated on Customs revenue. The Customs Service played a critical role in ending the 1900 Boxer War, preventing a threatened partition of China. It designed the Boxer Indemnity as a single state-to-state loan, rather than a private one, from the Qing to all affected countries collectively. It became a foundation for the collective security arrangements that would hold during the first quarter of the twentieth century. The chapter ends by narrating how the Customs Service first adjusted itself to the rise of Young China, a concept current at the time that deserves, I believe, much fuller exploration. However, in 1911 the Service captured control over Customs revenue collection with the support of Yuan Shikai, China’s strongman of the time, and British diplomats. Chapter 5, “Imperium in Imperio,” takes the financial story up to the Nationalists’ formation of a new government in 1928. Francis Aglen saw sound finance as a force for moral and social improvement, fostering honesty, responsibility, and dutifulness, whose lack among Chinese officials Aglen regarded as a major cause of the difficulties faced by the republic. The chapter examines how Aglen accumulated financial power and, in an ironic twist of fate, became a protector of Chinese bondholders, including against foreign interests. The chapter also explores how Gu Weijun, a leading Young China figure, made tariff autonomy, extraterritoriality, and control over the Customs Service into key demands of Chinese nationalism by his bravura performances at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and the 1921–1922 Washington Conference. In the same way that the Customs Service was a key factor during the 1911 Revolution, it also shaped the 1926– 1928 Northern Expedition, which led to the ascendancy of the Nationalists. The refusal of Aglen to raise promised additional Customs revenue for the northern government and the assistance provided to the Nationalists by Shanghai commissioner Frederick Maze tipped the financial scales in favor of the Nationalists and secured for Maze his succession of Aglen as Inspector General. The Nationalists did not nationalize the Customs Service when their armies marched into Beijing in 1928 and established their capital in Nanjing. While they had been hugely critical of the Service and Francis Aglen, they were also attracted to the revenue it delivered and the facilities it provided. In Maze they had a superficially suppliant Inspector General, one

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16 INTRODUCTION

willing to work with them and accept their demands for a reduced foreign role in the Service, including the return of authority to China over the use of Customs revenue and the deposit of it into Chinese banks. This made it possible for the Nationalists to agree to the continued existence of the Customs Service and to recognize existing international and domestic debt obligations. They thereby gained control over an important revenue stream; secured the support, or at least the acquiescence in their rule, of coastal financial elites and foreigners; and put into their hands a functioning bureaucracy operating throughout China. Chapter 6, “Tariff Nation, Smugglers’ Nation,” suggests that high tariffs profoundly affected Nationalist state making. High tariffs increased the Nationalists’ revenue but also led to an epidemic in smuggling. They strengthened centrifugal forces: many regions resisted the high taxation imposed by Nanjing, seen less as a new national government than an upstart regional one. The Customs Service played an important role during the first decade of Nationalist rule because it was the one Nationalist bureaucracy that had a presence across China. It built up a strong preventive capacity that dampened smuggling, especially in southern China. Because of its capacity to act with a degree of independence, it also was able to broker deals and settlements between Nanjing and local governments, again more in southern China than in the north. Chapter 6 draws attention to the importance of tariffs and customs services in the making of the modern nation-state. It suggests that modern states arose not just as central governments enforced bureaucratic hierarchies throughout a clearly bounded territory, as in the Weberian model, nor a Foucauldian conspiracy entrapping unwary citizens, but also as an evolving patchwork of deals, settlements, and accommodations shaped by domestic and international conflict and self-interest. The final chapter, “Maintaining Integrity,” charts the history of the Customs Service from the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 to the Communist victory and its crackdown on the Service in 1952. During its first phase, continuing until December 8, 1941, Maze struggled to maintain the territorial integrity of the Customs Service without abandoning the Service’s formal allegiance to the Nationalists in Chongqing, a policy fraught with difficulty. The second phase lasted from 1942 to 1945. Maze’s policy became untenable after Japan began its Southern Advance in December 1941, attacking British and American colonies in Southeast Asia and occupying foreign concessions and settlements across China. China,

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17 INTRODUCTION

although not Japan, now did declare war and appointed Kishimoto Hirokichi as Inspector General. This led to the creation of a new Inspectorate General in Chongqing, headed by the American Lester K. Little. These were the dark years: the Service had little to do, its prestige plummeted as corruption spread, and it was unwanted by most Nationalists. They kept it on as a sop to British and especially U.S. sensitivities, needing their assistance in China’s war with Japan. Little worked hard to keep up morale, combat corruption, and prepare the Customs Service to resume its duties after the end of the war. The Service began the postwar period well, recovering its position on the China coast with aplomb, but it was soon overwhelmed by problems, some resulting from World War II and others the consequence of the postwar malaise and disorder, including hyperinflation, which the Nationalists were unable to overcome. Most Chinese staff stayed in China, believing that continued commitment to the traditions and disciplines of service and honesty on which the Service had always prided itself would ensure that the Communists, like their predecessors, would want to keep it in place, even if all foreigners would have to leave, probably seeing an advantage in that, too. That proved a miscalculation when, in the context of the Korean War, the Communists became afraid of enemies within. They turned on the Service, an institution that their revolutionary instincts told them to distrust and that they would have wanted to transform sooner or later in any case.

The genesis of this book lies in a chance encounter. While I was researching a book on China’s military history at the Second Historical Archives in Nanjing, Vice Director Ma Zhendu mentioned to me during a lunch break that the archives had recently come into the possession of 55,000 files of the Inspectorate General of the Customs Service. Vice Director Ma asked whether I might help as most of the material was in English; needing his goodwill, I agreed. Because the archive was in a rough state, not even having a workable catalogue, and because most of its files dealt with the Customs Service after 1900, about which we knew little, we decided that a team was needed, involving specialists in archival management and historians of modern China and of British and imperial history. Thanks to the work of that team, first supported by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation and then the United Kingdom’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, the

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18 INTRODUCTION

Inspectorate Archives are now available to researchers, with a rich website, an online catalogue, bibliographies, and various databases on China’s trade and the personnel of the Customs Service.12 Although the Inspectorate material is already so vast that no researcher can possibly establish control over it, its limitations nonetheless must be noted. First, it is incomplete. The Inspectorate archive was torched during the Boxer Uprising and only incompletely reconstructed during the 1930s. Second, only a few local Custom House archives are available. Most remain closed, including that of the Shanghai Custom House, by far the most important one. Important archives of Qing and especially Republican institutions, including those of the Chinese Superintendents of Trade, have been destroyed or remain closed, as is the case of all Communist archives and of Nationalist and Communist intelligence organizations. Every historian has to work in the knowledge that archives are imperfect and that they are not virginal depositories of the past, because key figures will have tried to ensure that history would look kindly on them (as Maze did in the case of the Customs Service). The truth is not always to be found in the archive. Nonetheless, the Customs Service is easily the best-documented bureaucracy of late imperial and modern China. It also offers a perspective separate from that of the Qing, the Nationalists, and the Communists. This study has relied not just on the Inspectorate archives. The British National Archives at Kew is the home of hundreds if not thousands of files relating to the Customs Service, most produced by the British Legation in China, China consuls, and the Foreign Office. Many foreign but also some Chinese Customs Service officers published diaries, memoirs, and novels.13 Working in the Customs Service left some staff members with the time to pursue their interests in Chinese language, art, economics, culture, and society.14 The correspondence between Robert Hart and James Duncan Campbell is a unique resource for the study of the Customs for the last four decades of the Qing Dynasty.15 One of the pleasures of working on Customs Service history has been that it led to contacts with families with forebears in the Customs Service.16 Some had scrapbooks, correspondence, and photographs that they were willing to share. Personal papers of Customs staff have also found their way into library or archive collections, especially at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, where papers of two Inspectors General—Frederick Maze and Francis Aglen—are kept but also elsewhere, including at the Queen’s University

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19 INTRODUCTION

Belfast, where papers of Robert Hart and Stanley Wright are preserved. The Customs Service dealt with a myriad of companies and institutions in the course of its business. Their archives, too, are important, including those of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, which manages its own archive in London, and Jardine Matheson, whose archives are kept at the Cambridge University Library. The Bowring Papers, of John Bowring, British minister to China when the Customs Service was founded, can be found at Manchester University, while those of Stuart Rendel, an intimate of Gladstone who gave the Customs Service access to the highest political and commercial circles in Britain, are at the National Archive of Wales. Pursuing the Customs Service has been a journey of discovery of China in Britain.

This study tries to do justice to the multifaceted nature of the Customs Service. But I must note that I have been unable to explore the Marine Department of the Customs Service to any serious extent. The Inspectorate dealt with general policy, relations with Qing and foreign officials, personnel issues, diplomacy, and finance. The Marine Department did the hard work of building up harbors, installing and servicing aids to navigation, and maintaining Customs Service vessels, including of the Preventive Service. This was a different world, one in which nautical knowledge and experience was at a premium and in which expertise and leadership, as opposed to status or privilege, were decisive. It is where land and water meet, an area that moves constantly as tides go up and down and rivers change course, that interesting things happen. This is where people from different backgrounds congregate, where borders are uncertain and constantly shifting, and where local populations can easily ignore or subvert the claims of the state. Greater attention to the Marine Department would have enabled me to address an aspect of globalization, or imperialism, that is generally ignored, namely, what happens with and around goods and people as they are moved from one port to the next. Most histories are landlubber histories.17 It is on the water that part of the explanation of what Kenneth Pomeranz called “the great divergence” between the Europe and Asia is likely to be found.18 To profit from having sugar plantations or from South America’s silver deposits, one must first be able to get there. Superior navigational knowledge, especially the discovery of a way to fix longitude and

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20 INTRODUCTION

so pinpoint a ship’s position on the seas, resulted from an ability to combine scholarly astronomy, already dependent on patient observation over decades and mathematical genius, with artisanal excellence in manufacturing accurate clocks able to withstand the harsh marine environment.19 Important too were shipbuilding techniques, port facilities, the training of crews, the availability of materials such as strong tall trees for masts, and a bureaucratic infrastructure able to gather together nautical knowledge from around the world and make it publicly available. Armed mercantilist competition among Europe’s small states and state support for nautical development accelerated the process. The study of the Customs Service has given me glimpses into this world, but much more work needs to be done. Finally, I would like to thank some of the many people who have supported my research. Zhou Zhongxin, the director of the Second Historical Archives, acted with bravery when he allowed Vice Director Ma and me to develop this project. Vice Director Ma has played a key role throughout. His organizational and administrative skills are phenomenal; he also proved a most congenial host and a wise friend. Other staff at the archives were also consistently helpful. Professor Robert Bickers took the lead during the second phase of the project. His perspective on British and imperial history has fundamentally reshaped my thinking about China and the Customs Service. Ts’ai Wei-pin was an invaluable research assistant whose work on China’s modern postal system is an important outgrowth of our Customs Service research. The dissertation that Felix Boecking wrote as a member of our team deepened our understanding of Nationalist tariff policy in the 1930s and foreign personnel in the Service. I am indebted to many colleagues in China and Taiwan, including Mao Haijian, Chen Qianping, Lian Xinhao, Ren Zhiyong, Dai Yifeng, Sun Xiufu, Chang Chih-yun, Lin Man-hoang, and Zhang Zhiyong. I thank Christopher Bayly, Rana Mitter, John Thompson, Timothy Brook, Julia Lovell, and Susan van de Ven for reading parts or all of the manuscript. I have given presentations on the history of the Customs Service at UC Berkeley, UCLA, the Modern History Institute of the Academy Sinica, the Academia Historica, Nanjing University, Huadong University, Xiamen University, Oxford University, Bristol University, the University of Warwick, Queen’s University Belfast, Manchester University, the University of British Columbia, and Leiden University. The discussions at these occasions were helpful in suggesting new ideas and perspectives but also in building my confidence that

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21 INTRODUCTION

others might be interested in a history that for me became an obsession. I also thank all my students who have taken my course on China’s modern globalization; the dissertations they have produced pushed me to think again about many subjects and to think about some I had not thought about at all. Finally, I thank the Johns Hopkins–Nanjing University Center for making it possible for me to spend a year in Nanjing and have the time to read quietly through the Service’s archive at the Second Historical Archives of China. I also thank the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the Universities China Committee in London, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council for financial support at various stages of this project. On Andax June 1, 2011

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Chapter One

THE BIRTH OF A CHAMELEON It is not infrequently found that political relations flow on most smoothly when juristic exactness hibernates, and when the question of ultimate authority is not too sharply raised. —C. E. MERRIAM

In its origin . . . the Inspectorate partook of the nature of a foreign, rather than a native, establishment. . . . Soon, however, and in virtue of a vitality inherent in its mixed nature, the office gradually separated from its original founders, and with unpremeditated gravitation, became more and more a Chinese institution. —ROBERT HART, 1864

The coup d’état that followed the death of the Xianfeng Emperor in 1861 was a tipping point in Chinese history.1 In 1850, Aisin-Gioro I Ju, as he was known by his Manchu name, ascended the throne at the age of nineteen. The propitious title of his reign—General Prosperity (咸丰, Xianfeng)— could not prevent his decade as the Son of Heaven from being a most miserable one. In 1853, Taiping rebels, inspired by Christianity, established a new capital in Nanjing after a march that began in 1851 and saw them break out of Guangxi Province in the far south to descend in their tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands down the Yangzi River. The rebellion would cost millions of lives and still had three years to run when the Xianfeng Emperor died. Less ferocious and less threatening ideologically—but closer to the capital—was the Nian Rebellion, caused by the Qing’s inability to deal effectively with the flooding of the Yellow River. In 1860, the Brit-

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23 THE BIRTH OF A CHAMELEON

ish and their French helpmates landed an army of some twenty thousand troops, commanded by Lord Elgin and Baron Gros, at Tianjin.2 They forced their way to Beijing, where they burned and looted the Summer Palace to punish the Qing for having taken hostage fifty-six British and French subjects, killing nearly half of them. The Xianfeng Emperor, who that spring also had seen his last significant force in the lower Yangzi River routed by the Taiping, fled to the Chengde Summer Palace in Rehe Province, claiming that he needed to make offerings to his forebears at the imperial tombs to the north of the city. More likely, he feared that the French and the British would remove his head and overthrow the Qing Dynasty. The Xianfeng Emperor died on August 22, 1861, weeks after reaching the age of thirty, ashamed and exhausted. As is usual in the case of a failed emperor, he is said to have ignored state affairs while in Chengde and instead to have enjoyed Chinese operas and the company of his concubines. On his deathbed he appointed his only son, Aisin-Gioro Dzai Sun, as his successor. Because Dzai Sun was just five years old, a regency of eight men was set up, which was dominated by the effective but puritanical Sushun, president of the Treasury, adjutant general, and associate grand secretary. Perhaps to curtail the powers of the regency, the Xianfeng Emperor had decreed that the imperial seal that authenticated any edict issued in the name of the child emperor was to be wielded by the two empresses dowager: the Xianfeng Emperor’s principal consort, Empress Dowager Cian (慈安), and Dzai Sun’s birth mother, the famous Empress Dowager Cixi (慈禧), who actively and controversially had assisted the Xianfeng Emperor in the conduct of affairs of state. Sushun was a hardliner, believing that the fortunes of the Qing could be revived only if a tough “back to basics” line was taken with malingering officials, cowardly generals, corrupt merchants, and acquisitive foreigners.3 It seems that he thought that once everything was back in its proper place and all did as their stations required, all would be well. He refused any compromise with the British and the French, cracked down hard on Board of Revenue officials who had profited from emergency finance measures, and insisted on the execution of the Qing negotiator Qiying (耆英), who had fled Tianjin in a panic after British translators exposed his sleights of hand during the negotiations that followed the Opium War. He also opposed, as violating any and all precedent, the proposal that the empresses dowager would not only affix their seal to imperial edicts but should also be allowed

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24 THE BIRTH OF A CHAMELEON

to “attend to government from behind a screen [垂帘听政, tuilian tingzheng],” a move they and their supporters justified as having been implicit in the Xianfeng Emperor’s order that they were to endorse all edicts with the imperial seal. As minister of the imperial household, Sushun controlled the court’s expenditures; there were allegations doing the rounds in Beijing suggesting that he was starving the two empresses to death.4 Cixi conspired with Aisin-Gioro Isin, the brother of the Xianfeng Emperor whose Beijing mansion has recently been restored, to overthrow the regency.5 Prince Gong (恭親王, Gong Qinwang), as Isin is usually known, had his own reasons to revolt. Sushun had arrested some of his followers, prevented Prince Gong from visiting his dying brother in Chengde, and kept him out of the regency. Prince Gong had been brought up with the Xianfeng Emperor and had been left in charge in Beijing after the latter departed the city, responsible for negotiating a deal with the British and the French. He had come to the conclusion that they just wanted trade, not to overthrow the Qing, and that the Europeans insisted on coming to Beijing and being received by the emperor as a demonstration of sincerity and as a symbolic avenging of the defeat a British force had suffered the year before. In 1858, a new trade treaty had been negotiated—the Treaty of Tianjin—but a year later the Mongolian general Sengge Rinchen (僧格林 沁, Zengge Linqin) had humiliatingly repulsed a ratification mission, sinking four costly gunboats in the process. This had triggered the amassing by the British and the French of their large invasion force. In Chinese history, the death of the ruler often allows a decisive figure to force through a radical change of policy. So it proved in the case of the Xinyou Coup. On November 2, 1861, Prince Gong and Empress Dowager Cixi used the opportunity provided by the return to Beijing of the Xianfeng Emperor’s body to oust the Sushun regency. The two empresses had arrived in Beijing one night ahead of the main procession. They and Prince Gong used the hours with Sushun out of the loop (he was duty bound to stay with the emperor’s coffin) to seize control. Edicts were issued that charged the members of the regency with mismanaging foreign affairs, opposing the empresses dowager, and having denied the expressed wish of the emperor to meet with his brother Prince Gong. The regents were arrested, and a memorial was accepted that argued that they had written Xianfeng’s last edict when he was incapable and when no princes of the first degree had been present, as precedent required. Sushun, too, was charged with

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25 THE BIRTH OF A CHAMELEON

disobeying the Xianfeng Emperor’s clear wish that the empresses dowager be co-responsible with the regency.6 Sushun suffered the indignity of being publicly dismembered. Two other regents were ordered to commit suicide, which was a lesser form of punishment, and the rest were sent into internal exile. Prince Gong became the sole prince councilor (议政王, yizheng wang) as well as the head of the Zongli Yamen (总理衙门), an office established earlier in the year to oversee the Qing’s relations with European countries.7 He was also placed in charge of the imperial household. 8 Prince Gong pushed through a raft of new policies. Besides ratifying the Treaty of Tianjin, he promoted more Han officials into the highest ranks of the bureaucracy, a policy that Sushun had in fact already begun. Following the 1860 defeat of Qing regular forces blockading the eastward expansion of the Taiping, the recovery of control over the middle and lower Yangzi provinces had come to depend on men like Zeng Guofan (曾国藩) and Li Hongzhang (李鸿章), Han officials who had raised new armies from their home provinces.9 Zeng Guofan became governor general of the Liangjiang, that is, of the provinces of Jiangsu, Anhui, and Jiangxi, and Li Hongzhang became governor of Jiangsu. Prince Gong also established the Beijing Field Force (神机营, Shenji Ying), drawn from the elite Banner Armies and armed with the best firearms available. He called for “self-strengthening” (自强, ziqiang), meaning the adoption of Western military training and manufacturing technologies to strengthen the Qing. To drive home the point that a new departure had been made, the reign title announced for Dzai Sun of “Great Fortune” (祺祥, Qixiang) was changed to “Joint Rule” (同治, Tongzhi), likely an allusion to the phrase in the Confucian Classic of History “there are different sorts of good acts but they all contribute to bringing order [为善不同,同归于治, wei shan bu tong, tong gui yu zhi],” an appeal to the empire to rally together but also to the young emperor to do his best.10 The relationship between Empress Dowager Cixi, who quickly became the dominant of the two empresses, and Prince Gong was a rocky one. In 1865, shortly after the capture of the Taiping capital at Nanjing, Prince Gong was censured for the first time and briefly dismissed from his posts. He fell definitely from power in 1884, during the Sino-French War, accused of mismanagement, nepotism, and gross insolence in front of the emperor.11 His influence on the Self-Strengthening Movement was profound, even if it abated during its last decade. Later Chinese historians hailed the events

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26 THE BIRTH OF A CHAMELEON

so described as one of the great Confucian restorations in China’s past,12 but the taint of illegitimacy never fully disappeared. If the fight against the Taiping was justified as conducted in the defense of Confucianism, Empress Dowager Cixi and Prince Gong, with the Qing tottering on the edge, were prepared to act against precedent, establish new institutions (such as in the governance of trade), and introduce new policies, including in ChineseWestern and Han-Manchu relations. The crisis justified radical measures. The Chinese Maritime Customs Service was one beneficiary of the Xinyou Coup. In Shanghai in 1854, three foreigners had been appointed to the Shanghai Custom House on an experimental basis, at a time when a local rebellion had driven Qing officials away and British officials had come to the conclusion that order could be restored to trade only if they involved rather than replaced Qing officials. The experiment had proved its worth, making it possible for trade to continue even as the Qing and the allied British and French were fighting each other in the north, leading to massive increases in revenue. Following the Xinyou Coup, Prince Gong regularized the model by issuing an edict that ordered its extension to all open ports and formally appointed an Inspector General to supervise foreign Customs commissioners and other foreign staff hired into Custom Houses. The Service fitted his aim of centralizing control over foreign affairs in Beijing, away from local officials who, he probably thought, had caused a conflict that had nearly ended the Qing monarchy. This chapter traces the history of the Customs Service from 1854 until 1864, when the Inspector General was instructed to reside permanently in Beijing. The Customs Service would never have come about were it not for the chaotic conditions of the Taiping Rebellion, the political instability resulting from the death of the Xianfeng Emperor, and the reorientation of domestic and foreign policy initiated by Prince Gong with the support of Empress Dowager Cixi. However, if the peculiarities of the moment created the right conditions for its birth, its emergence reflected broader and more fundamental historical shifts. First, it is undoubtedly true that when the British appeared on the China coast in the early nineteenth century, they were determined to alter the basis on which trade and state-to-state relations were conducted, by force if necessary and, for some, preferably in that way. However, the founding of the Customs Service nonetheless also resulted from the British realization

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that their power in China was limited and that they even risked becoming overexposed. The British and the French might win most battles easily, but that could not hide the fact that they did not have the force to consolidate their victories or occupy a city permanently, let alone take a big swath of territory. The Crimean War, the Indian Uprising, and France’s problems in Algeria were reminders of the limits of their power. The occupation of Guangzhou during the Arrow War could only be maintained in the teeth of strong opposition,13 and General Sengge Renchin’s heroics at Tianjin and the murder of British and French hostages served as further reminders of the dangers of overstretch. After 1860, Britain abandoned its policy of neutrality in the Qing-Taiping civil war. Missionary and public opinion had soured on the Taiping, who now threatened British trading interests. For the British and the French, the Customs Service was useful to offload formal responsibility for regulating and taxing the Qing’s overseas trade, which they had assumed after the Opium War. They discovered that they were unable to fulfill this task effectively. Although the Royal Navy would continue to maintain its China Station,14 the Service was useful, too, to make the Qing help pay for the cost of maintaining the new trading order the British wanted to impose. In essence, the British outsourced the administration of trade. Changes in the dominant attitudes of the British involved in China were also important to the founding of the Service. The British who had caused the Opium War were largely, although not uniformly, swashbuckling imperialists seeking profit and conquest.15 The creation of diplomatic and consular services on the China coast after the Opium War, combined with the reform movements that shook up Britain during the 1830s and 1840s, led to the emergence of a muscular, armed liberalism. Its proponents saw governments like the Qing as irredeemably backward and readily used military means to impose change. But as the limits of British and French military power became clear, military intervention became less attractive. Some Britons came to reject the use of arms, argued for accommodation, and displayed a greater respect for Chinese traditions and Qing officials. That became the dominant attitude in the Service, as I will illustrate by discussing the transition from Horatio Lay, who did much to pioneer the Service, to Robert Hart, who built it up into a major bureaucracy in the decades after the Taiping Rebellion.

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I also place the emergence of the Service in the context of regional rivalries in China. The Service was attractive to officials and merchants in Shanghai and the Lower Yangzi region more generally. They wanted to escape from the longstanding Cantonese dominance of overseas trade, which did not fully end after the first Opium War. The Cantonese had in fact sought to capture control over Shanghai’s foreign trade. Lower Yangzi– region officials and merchants resisted this not only because they wanted their own region to profit from the trade but also because the revenue collected on it was a significant source of funding for the officials in the area leading the fight against the Taiping. Both the imperialist and the synarchist perspectives have depicted the Customs Service as an entirely new venture. It was in many ways, especially in the hiring of foreign customs commissioners into Chinese Custom Houses. But the Service also had a background in the Qing’s network of tollhouses (榷关, queguan), which had grown large during the Qing’s Prosperous Age. The Customs Service would take over some of its practices. The Service became a powerful organization, but it initially was no more than an integral, if special, element of the Qing’s tollhouse network. I call the Service a chameleon because it had a hybrid quality that enabled it to present a different identity to each of its interlocutors. To Westerners it might look very Western, but it was recognizable to Qing officials and Qing merchants, too. It was this ability to fit into different worlds and to connect them that allowed the Service to carve out a niche for itself between the Qing Dynasty and the British Empire.

SHANGHAI EXPERIMENTS

Article 2 of the Treaty of Nanjing, concluded after the 1838–1842 Opium War, stipulated that Britain should appoint “Consular Officers . . . to be the medium of communication between the Chinese Authorities and the [British] Merchants and to see that the just Duties and other Dues . . . are duly discharged by HBM [Her British Majesty’s] subjects.”16 The treaty opened four new ports to Western trade, Fuzhou, Xiamen (Amoy), Ningbo, and Shanghai, Guangzhou (Canton) being already open. It brought to an end the monopoly of a select group of Cantonese merchants—the Cohong— on China’s trade with Western countries and provided for extraterritorial-

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ity, which entitled foreigners to be judged by their own laws in their own courts in China rather than by Chinese officials. The 1843 Supplementary Treaty of Humenzhai laid down how foreign consuls were to discharge their responsibilities.17 Within one day of the arrival of a ship, her captain had to deposit his ship’s papers, a bill of lading, and a manifest with the British consul, who would immediately communicate with the Chinese superintendent, the official in charge of the Custom House. His staff examined the cargo and assessed duties, which were paid into a bank or to a shroff, a silver merchant, appointed by the superintendent. After the superintendent informed the consul that all duties and dues had been paid, the consul returned the ship’s documents to her captain, enabling her to up anchor and leave port.18 The Nanjing and Humenzhai treaties, in short, assigned to British consuls responsibility for the proper conduct of British subjects, including the payment of dues and the observance of treaty regulations. As Pär Cassell has argued, this fitted the longstanding Qing tradition of allowing different ethnic groups in China to observe their own legal systems.19 As John Fairbank has demonstrated, the new system quickly failed.20 Not all countries signed a treaty like the British one, meaning that their merchants did not have to abide by its stipulations and thus had a competitive advantage. British consular officials often found it difficult to do their job as they were passively resisted by local Qing officials, who had little reason to fall in with the new regulations. The Opium War was a contributing factor to the disorder that spread as the Taiping Rebellion took hold. As trade moved north, that at Guangzhou declined, throwing many coolies out of work; they moved inland and were drawn into the ranks of the rebels. The pirate-suppression campaigns of the Royal Navy had the same effect, especially because it was impossible to distinguish between pirates and legitimate sailors, who naturally were often one and the same. Some three thousand pirates operated out of Xiamen alone, according to the British consul there.21 A further problem was that the commercial opportunities resulting from the opening of new ports and the Taiping Rebellion drew to China not just reputable foreign merchants but also adventurers, arms dealers, speculators, mercenaries, and rowdy sailors. Frederick Bruce, who accompanied his brother Lord Elgin, the commander of British forces during the Arrow War, described the chaos in an April 3, 1858, letter to his sister:

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The littoral provinces swarm with pirates and robbers, the Government makes no serious effort to suppress them but leaves the people to supply the apathy by associations in self-defence . . . the governors are paralysed—they dread [our] power and being ignorant when they can assert their just rights, they prefer as the wisest course never meddling with them at all. The foreigners become more audacious, and the scum of the earth are attracted to a country where they can commit excesses without restraint. The people of China will be exasperated to vengeance, and it will fall indiscriminately on all who bear the name of foreigner, so justly made odious.22

There was no way that foreign consulates, with their small staff, could possibly cope with this situation. In Shanghai—rather than Guangzhou, where former Cohong merchants and local officials resisted change—there was the incentive and the opportunity to evolve a new way of doing things. Once opened, Shanghai’s trade in tea, cotton, silk, and arms, including to the Taiping, took off. Shanghai became a boomtown. Rich Chinese from the Yangzi provinces fled to the city and the rapidly expanding foreign settlement to its north, adding to its wealth. As elsewhere, Shanghai also attracted foreign speculators and prospectors, hoping to make a killing from the opportunities available there. On September 6, 1853, the city of Shanghai was occupied by Fujianese and Cantonese unemployed sailors brought together in the Small Sword Society led by Liu Lichuan (刘丽川). The Small Sword Society did not attack the foreign settlement, but the Chinese Custom House located in it was sacked on September 8: “a mob of freebooters came swarming into the British Settlement and thoroughly looted [the Custom House].”23 They drove away Wu Jianzhang, the Cantonese superintendent of customs. The British vice consul, Thomas Wade, wrote, “from clannish inclination to the Cantonese and from a peculiarly Cantonese aversion to foreigners, he supported both Cantonese and Fukien [Fujian] men against the Foreigner.”24 Wu had been involved in the Canton trade before 1842, knew some English, and moved to Shanghai in 1848 in the hope of safeguarding Cantonese interests.25 After the removal of Wu Jianzhang and the closure of the Shanghai Custom House, it became unclear how foreign consuls could meet their obligations as laid down in the Nanjing and Humenzhai treaties. They remained officially responsible for the payment of customs duties by their country-

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men. Qing officials, on the other hand, needed a way to restore the Custom House to the Qing’s ambit. Shanghai merchants wanted to see trade resume as quickly as possible, preferably with less Cantonese influence. A common interest had emerged.

The Foreign Board of Inspectors

The British consul in Shanghai, Rutherford Alcock, was quick to reject the suggestion to turn the city into a free port: The capture of an isolated seaport on the coast of a vast Empire can in no sense abrogate a solemn Treaty entered into between the two sovereigns of Great Britain and China . . . the inability of the one government to enforce its rights owing to the calamities which beset it, so far from being a reason why the other should take advantage of the circumstances to ignore its rights, forms in truth the strongest argument for their honest recognition.26

As the British state took over the role of governing its empire from institutions like the East India Company, men like Alcock became important. Their views of empire were shaped by their education, which had exposed them to the liberalism of John Stuart Mill, the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham, and Adam Smith’s free-trade principles.27 Alcock himself had trained at Westminster Royal Hospital in London and joined the army as a surgeon. After serving in Spain during the Carlist War, he lectured in surgery at King’s College, London, until he lost the use of his thumbs.28 He then joined the consular service for China, which Britain was rushing to put together after the Opium War. Alcock saw trade as “the true herald of civilization,” the foundation on which orderly relations to the benefit of both sides could be built.29 His was still a muscular liberalism; he was as appalled by the greed of British merchants and the rowdiness of its sailors as by the corruption and meekness of local Chinese officials. In the same way that he was unwilling to make Shanghai into a free port, in 1848 he had used his consular powers to stop the trade of Shanghai when Chinese officials, in his eyes, had failed in their duties to uphold order. He had serious scholarly interests, becoming the head of the Royal Geographic Society in the 1870s, and was also an art collector.

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In 1853, Alcock attempted to deal with the impasse in Shanghai by introducing “Provisional Rules for the Clearing of Ships.”30 They required merchants to provide information on the cargoes they imported and exported. Ships would be allowed to leave the harbor if they paid the appropriate amount of duty or gave a bond “payable on demand at forty days sight in Shanghae.”31 Alcock reasoned that stopping all trade while waiting for a Chinese Custom House to be reestablished would harm Britain’s trading interest. On the other hand, to allow ships to depart without paying dues would mean a violation of the Nanjing Treaty.32 The Provisional Rules proved unworkable. One problem was that the bonds that British merchants were asked to sign would only become effective once the “Home Government sanctioned” them,33 a clause on which British merchants had insisted. Few countries agreed to abide by the Provisional Rules, unsurprisingly as many consuls in their day jobs as merchants were making a fortune by selling goods to the Small Sword Society. As Alcock wrote, “Sympathy, counsel, food, guns, and ammunition [were] passed daily from the foreign settlement, held sacred from the intrusion of imperial troops on the ground of absolute neutrality, into a blockaded city with the professed object of prolonging the defence against the Emperor’s forces.”34 Wu Jianzhang also refused to accept the Provisional Rules. He established his own checkpoints to the north and south of the settlement. On June 15, 1854, Alcock wrote to John Bowring, the British superintendent of trade, that he believed that the solution lay “in the combination of a foreign element of probity and vigilance with Chinese authority.”35 He advocated the reestablishment of the Shanghai Custom House in cooperation with Qing officials, with foreigners appointed as inspectors to ensure equal treatment for all. Bowring had grown up in a Puritan family, had edited the Westminster Review, and as a member of Parliament had pleaded for voting reform, Catholic emancipation, and popular education. He was a staunch Benthamite utilitarian and a polyglot who published translation collections such as Batavian Anthology, Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain, and Poetry of the Magyars.36 Bowring, like Alcock, did not shun the resort to arms. He had triggered the Arrow War, using a minor flag incident to call in the British navy and force his way into Guangzhou, a move agreed nearly two decades earlier in the Nanjing Treaty but long resisted.37 Setting out his plans to Bowring, Alcock stressed that “the free concurrence of Chinese Authorities” was an essential precondition for his idea

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to succeed.38 Given the situation, Qing officials could not be free in any real sense of the word, but Bowring and Alcock realized that the British could not go it alone and that they required Qing cooperation. A “Foreign Inspector of Customs,” Alcock argued, “should be appointed to the Chinese Custom House . . . on the joint nomination of the Consuls and the Tao-t’ai [道台, daotai],” the circuit intendent concurrently serving as Shanghai superintendent. The inspector should be paid well so as to ensure “his probity,” and he should have a staff of “two linguists” (translators) as well as “Chinese writers and runners,” that is, clerks and messengers, and additional foreigners as needed, including “tidewaiters,” a harbor police to watch over ships in port to prevent evasion of customs duties. This foreign inspector should be allowed sight of all documents—port clearances, landing and shipping-off chops, and duty receipts.39 Enticed by the promise of the payment of considerable back duties, the governor general of the Lower Yangzi Provinces agreed to cooperate.40 The Shanghai Custom House was reopened on July 12, 1854. Rather than just one foreign inspector, local negotiations among Wu Jianzhang and the consuls of Britain, the United States, and France led to a board of inspectors with representatives from each country. Upon the nomination of the consuls, Wu Jianzhang appointed Thomas Wade, the British vice consul at Shanghai; Arthur J. Smith, an interpreter at the French consulate; and Lewis Carr from the U.S. consulate.41 Because Wade spoke Chinese well and was allowed to devote all his time to the board, and because British trade was the largest, Wade quickly became the dominant figure of this triumvirate. The experiment rapidly proved its worth. Wu Xu (吴煦), who succeeded Wu Jianzhang as Shanghai daotai soon after the inauguration of the board, noted a year later that “trade dues and tonnage dues have markedly increased, leading to a doubling compared to a year ago.”42 Wu was a native from the Lower Yangzi, had prospered as a grain merchant, and had acquired degrees by making donations. He had served in local government posts, helped raise local militia against the Taiping, and also served on the staff of leading provincial officials. In May 1859, Wu noted that revenue collections at Shanghai had risen from between K.Tls 100,000 and 800,000 to K.Tls 1.8 to 2 million per year.43 Wu was convinced of the necessity of employing foreigners in the Shanghai Custom House: “Foreigners are very competitive. If we employ them, foreign merchants will be highly suspicious

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and not collude in committing corrupt practices. They are dishonest, but the inspector knows exactly how much they import and export and so they have to pay the appropriate duties in accordance with the regulations.”44 Bowring was pleased, too, writing that the Shanghai system “has removed from the Superintendency [of Trade] and the Consul numberless questions which have been equitably settled on the spot, while at the other ports the annoyances, vexations, and embarrassments growing out of the habitual violation of the laws of China are a source of constant solicitude.” 45 Lord Clarendon, the British foreign secretary, was lukewarm, rejecting the suggestion that other ports copy the Shanghai model, but he agreed to allow the experiment to continue.46 Clarendon made one key intervention. British merchants had appealed to the British consul when the Shanghai Custom House had imposed fines on them and confiscated their goods as a violation of extraterritoriality. Clarendon ruled that inspectors acted as Qing officials on behalf of the Qing Emperor, who was sovereign in his own land, and that the consul could not interfere.47 Extraterritoriality could not mean that the queen could take the Qing Emperor to court in his own land. It would take many years and a number of court cases before the issue became generally accepted as settled, although it was never turned into law and continued to echo throughout the Service’s history. Had extraterritoriality continued to be interpreted in the wide sense that British merchants wanted, the Service could never have functioned.

The Treaty of Tianjin

Thomas Wade resigned from the board of inspectors after one year, wishing to return to the consular service. Horatio Lay succeeded him. Lay had taken Wade’s place in the British consulate in Shanghai and was known as “the boy consul” because of his age. He was from a poor family with no social standing. His father had been a naturalist and a missionary and had established the Xiamen consulate after joining the consular service. He died leaving his family penniless. The Foreign Office took pity and agreed to send Horatio, when he was just fourteen years old, and his brother as student interpreters to China, to preserve the family from penury. He learned his Chinese as an apprentice of the redoubtable Pomeranian missionary Karl Gutzlaff,48 and, like other Gutzlaff students, acquired his teacher’s

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abrasive attitudes toward Chinese.49 This was a time when the consular service still was the “refuge for the destitute” and those “who are broken in fortune or reputation,” as the future prime minister Benjamin Disraeli said in 1842.50 Even having excellent Chinese may have reduced Lay’s status in the eyes of the foreign community. Not a few thought with George Bonham, the governor of Hong Kong, that “the close attention indispensable for a successful study of the Chinese language warps the mind and imbues it with a defective perception of the common things of real life.”51 With his appointment as the British inspector of the Shanghai Custom House, Lay suddenly was in a superior position; he was earning a good salary and had an opportunity to make his name and lord it over those who had slighted him. If Wade was frustrated by the constant strife and harassment that the post of inspector brought with it, for Lay they were his meat and drink. He was a zealous inspector, even searching the warehouses of British merchants, impressing his Qing superiors.52 He expanded Customs patrols and convinced Qing authorities to use tonnage dues to improve the navigability of the approaches to Shanghai, to survey the Huangpu River, and to lay buoys. He introduced “exemption certificates” for goods that were imported to Shanghai but could not be sold there and were reexported. As Jonathan Spence has pointed out, Lay was more important in laying the foundations of the Service than is acknowledged in most historical scholarship, which has largely focused on the role of Robert Hart.53 For Horatio Lay, the Arrow War was an opportunity to secure for the Service a legal basis and to extend it to other ports open to Western trade. Because of Lay’s excellent Chinese and his contacts in the Qing bureaucracy, Elgin, the British plenipotentiary, took him along in the summer of 1858 when he first traveled to Tianjin to negotiate a treaty. That treaty, concluded with Guiliang (桂良), the father-in-law of Prince Gong, provided for the opening of the Yangzi River and ten more ports; the right to maintain a diplomatic mission in Beijing; permission for foreigners to travel throughout China for trade and evangelical purposes; the legalization of the opium trade; and the proscription of the character 夷 (yi), thought to mean “barbarian” and understood as derogatory.54 In Tianjin with Elgin and later in Shanghai, Lay was in an excellent position to make sure the new treaty and the new trade regulations protected the interests of the fledgling Service. The treaty called for the appointment

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of a high officer by the Qing to supervise foreign trade. Article 10 of the trade regulations stipulated, first, that a uniform system shall be enforced at all treaty ports, and that the High Officer will be at liberty, of his own choice and independently of the suggestion or nomination of any British authority, to select any British subject he may see fit to aid him in the administration of the Customs Revenue, in the prevention of smuggling, in the definition of port boundaries, or in discharging the duties of harbour master; also in the distribution of Lights, Buoys, Beacons, and the like, the maintenance of which shall be provided for out of the tonnage dues.55

This was crucial. Article 10 provided the treaty base for the Service. Qing officials in Shanghai supported the treaty because the revenue collected by the Shanghai Custom House had risen rapidly under Lay’s tenure, as mentioned. Wu Xu also favored it because it restricted Cantonese influence. In a letter to the Jiangsu provincial treasurer, Wu wrote that the “original idea behind Tianjin was to request an imperial edict for the appointment of a grand secretary as the high officer to manage things from Beijing jointly with the foreign ministers. The aim was to oppose Guangdong.”56 It was no doubt not coincidental that on October 7, 1859, Lao Chongguang (劳崇光) was appointed governor general of the Liangguang, that is, of the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi. Lao was an eminent jinshi, possessing the highest, hugely prestigious grade in the imperial examination system. He came from Hunan with a track record in fighting the Taiping in Guangxi and Guilin. Shortly after his appointment, he submitted a memorial that called for the extension of Shanghai’s trade regulations to Canton to fight corruption and break up collusion between Cantonese and foreign merchants.57 Like Wu, Lao also believed that it was imperative to have a foreigner in the Guangzhou Custom House: “Only if we use foreigners to control foreigners, someone who fully understands their language and knows the tricks they are up to, will the local people be unable to stir up trouble or act in collusion with them.”58 Although the Treaty of Tianjin and the new trade regulations would mean more security and more power for Lay, he was dissatisfied with how the Qing proposed to implement them. He Guiqing (河桂清) was appointed as the first high officer to supervise Western trade. He did not issue Lay with a formal appointment but merely sent him an instruction “to as-

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sist in providing overall management. . . . He will in collaboration with the superintendent and deputies appointed by me supervise the investigation of revenue which will be managed uniformly in accordance with the treaties. He will be responsible for all new inspectors. The appointment is for a period of five years.”59 Lay was appointed to a temporary post on He Guiqing’s staff, rather than to a permanent and established office in his own right. Lay worried that “foreign merchants will not take me seriously.”60 Worse was to come. Pressured by Sushun, the Xianfeng Emperor decided to refuse to ratify the Tianjin Treaty. Its stipulations, including the requirement that the emperor personally receive the credentials of foreign ministers, were understood as humiliating and well beneath his dignity. The unruly behavior of British and French soldiers in Tianjin had fueled resentment. Some put forth the argument that during the winter, when the Tianjin harbor would be frozen over, the allied supply line could be cut and the foreigners could then be defeated, especially if local militia were raised to support the Qing’s regular banner forces.61 Sushun may also have scared the Xianfeng Emperor by asserting that Prince Gong was in reality preparing to mount a coup with foreign help. Local officials in Guangzhou, and also those in Fujian and Zhejiang, spoke out against the extension of the Shanghai Custom House to ports in their provinces.62 They did not want Beijing to know how much was being collected locally in customs dues. Sushun no doubt felt vindicated when General Sengge Rinchen annihilated the ratification mission. A firm line, backed up with force, seemed all that was required to deal with uncouth and aggressive foreigners. He Guiqing became nervous and declined to appoint any further foreign inspectors. He wrote to Wu Xu that “the emperor is now deeply concerned about collaboration. How could such a step not be considered as conclusive evidence of a great crime?”63 He was afraid that he would be accused of treason if he appointed more inspectors. He Guiqing’s hesitation caused Lay to complain to Wu Xu: “Why did He Guiqing appoint me as general assistant if he does not manage the various ports?” During a stormy meeting with Wu Xu in Shanghai, Lay argued that article 10 of the new trade regulations could not be satisfied by simply making one appointment. He rejected Wu’s proposal that a local superintendent should appoint the foreign inspectors, arguing that in that case he could not be held responsible for their actions.64 He Guiqing, however, would not and could not budge.

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Lay had little option but to agree to a compromise proposal whereby he and Wu Xu would set to work in Shanghai, drawing up new port regulations and implementing them, anticipating that when superintendents in other ports followed suit, they would have to turn to Lay, giving him in practice the power he wanted.65 In Shanghai, Wu Xu appointed H. Tudor Davis as Shanghai customs commissioner, with his task defined as aiding Wu in the collection of revenue.66 The new Shanghai rules that Wu approved included the stipulation that as He Guiqing’s assistant Lay had full authority over all foreigners working for the Shanghai Custom House regardless of their nationality. “As to the commissioner for this Custom House and all other foreigners employed in it, they are all selected by and subject to the authority of General Inspector Lay. Regardless of their nationality, if they act inappropriately, he will be held accountable.”67 It was at this time that the term Inspector General, or at least a variant of it, came into use. While He Guiqing avoided direct responsibility, he did encourage other ports to adopt the Shanghai system and work with Lay. On May 23, he instructed that “as to foreigners to be employed at each port, it is impossible for me to select and recruit all of them. But if the ports do not employ foreigners to assist in their management, the arrangements will not be uniform, inevitably leading foreign merchants to use this as a pretext to make trouble. . . . I have instructed General Inspector Lay to oversee this affair.”68 The situation changed once more when the British and the French smashed their way to Beijing and the Xianfeng Emperor placed Prince Gong in charge of Beijing and of negotiating with the French and British. Prince Gong proposed the creation of the Zongli Yamen,69 to which his brother gave his approval. It was inaugurated on January 20, 1861. Four days later, Prince Gong issued Lay with a formal letter of appointment as IG.70 To a memorial urging the appointment, an imperial edict commented that “the Englishman Lay is Inspector General. All new open ports can be managed by him. Let Yixin [Prince Gong] issue him with an appointment certificate making him responsible for assisting officials in all open ports managing maritime trade.”71 The reporting system required customs commissioners, as they were called in English, and, less grandiosely, revenue affairs officers (税务司, shuiwusi) in Chinese, to report their assessments of duties owed on cargo carried in Western ships to the superintendent for trade in the north or the superintendent for trade in the south. These

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two posts replaced the single high officer established earlier. They in turn reported the figures to the Treasury and the Zongli Yamen, which was given the additional right of being consulted about regulations for the Custom Houses. The events of 1860 and 1861 were important in the history of the Service; they turned the temporary arrangements adopted in Shanghai after 1854 into a model to be applied throughout China. They also culminated in the appointment by imperial edict of an Inspector General. His position, however, remained more of an assistant than the holder of an independent office of state. Foreign customs commissioners, too, were appointed into Chinese Custom Houses to assist Chinese superintendents. For the Qing, and especially Prince Gong, the new system promised greater control over foreign affairs and accurate knowledge about revenue collected on foreign trade.

HORATIO LAY’S COLLAPSE AND THE RISE OF ROBERT HART

Just when Horatio Lay had been appointed by imperial edict as Inspector General, he threw it all in. In April 1861, Prince Gong called Lay from Shanghai to Beijing for consultations.72 Lay declined, claiming that he needed to return to Britain for health reasons. Lay’s decision to leave China in 1861 might appear in hindsight, given the career that his successor, Robert Hart, made for himself, a spectacular miscalculation. At the time, it was not so clear that the Qing’s chances of survival were all that good. Before his departure, Lay wrote in a letter to Elgin and Thomas Wade that “the Rebellion has gained such strength of late as to threaten the immediate downfall of the Dynasty.”73 In the spring of 1860, the Taiping had taken Jurong, Danyang, Changzhou, and Suzhou, towns all close to Shanghai. The armies of Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang had still to prove themselves. Thomas Wade wrote Lay that only if “Tsang Kwoh-fan [Zeng Guofan] or any other Chinese agent be really able to conquer the provinces, which are so disordered, then the Tatsing [Da Qing, Great Qing] will revive again. Otherwise, the question is only when its remaining solidity will melt away.”74 What would be the outcome of the upheavals in Beijing was anyone’s guess; Prince Gong was in charge in Beijing, but Sushun remained with the emperor in Chengde. Lay concluded that “it is a toss up with the

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dynasty . . . before extending the system, I think it prudent to wait and see what this year will bring forth.”75 So, Lay went back to Britain. Prince Gong appointed Robert Hart and George Fitz-Roy as joint acting commissioners, ordering them to “cooperate zealously with the Chinese superintendents at the several ports,” report “duties and tonnage dues collected to the Board of Revenue [the Treasury] and the Foreign Board,” the Zongli Yamen, and ensure that foreigners employed in Chinese Custom Houses behaved properly, as “it is impossible for the Chinese government to form an estimate of [their] merits.”76 George Fitz-Roy, who spoke no Chinese, was the Shanghai customs commissioner. He had joined the Service in 1859 and resigned in 1868. Little else is known about him, except that he acted as acting IG during Hart’s trip back to Britain in 1866. Robert Hart had arrived in China as a trainee interpreter in the British consular service in 1854. During his initial stay in Shanghai, he had come to know Lay well. He then had been assigned to the Ningbo Consulate to study Chinese. He served as interpreter during the British and French occupation of Guangzhou, where he impressed senior British and Chinese officials. In 1859, Governor General Lao Chongguang urged him to take charge of introducing the Shanghai model to Canton. Hart declined, recommending instead that Lay be brought down from Shanghai to take responsibility, which was done, although Lay soon returned to Shanghai to look after some local difficulties there.77 Hart accepted Lay’s invitation to join the Service the same year and from then on worked in the Guangzhou Custom House under Custom Commissioner G. B. Glover, a U.S. citizen, who would manage this Custom House until 1870 virtually uninterruptedly. When Lay left China, he recommended the appointment of Hart and FitzRoy as acting IGs.78 In June 1861, Hart travelled to Beijing, where he met Prince Gong and developed good relations with Zongli Yamen staff. Hart impressed them all by submitting seven memoranda about a wide range of Customs topics, including how to tax the opium trade, which ports to open along the Yangzi River, what taxation arrangements to make for Chinese and Western products as they moved between the open ports and places elsewhere in China, and detailing the variety of taxes levied in Guangdong on tea, salt, and opium and the smuggling that was going on there.79 During their meetings of this time, the Zongli Yamen staff and Robert Hart discussed not only the Service but also the purchase of Western naval vessels to aid in the suppression of the Taiping.80 With no one in the Zongli

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Yamen knowledgeable about how to go about this, and with Hart having impressed them, Prince Gong secured an imperial edict ordering Hart to take charge of the project.81 This would lead to the debacle of the LayOsborn Flotilla as well as Lay’s dismissal and the appointment of Robert Hart as IG in November 1863. Below, I examine this affair in part because it became part of Customs lore, with Lay’s behavior depicted as an example of how not to go about things and Hart’s as the reverse. The affair also illustrated that even when the Qing’s fortunes were at a nadir, there were limits to Prince Gong’s willingness to accommodate the British. Finally, it marked the eclipse of men like Lay, who believed that modernity could only be forced upon China, and the rise of Robert Hart, who was averse to military intervention.

The Lay-Osborn Flotilla

The flotilla was probably not a new idea. Lay had urged something like it on Lord Elgin in 1858. According to him, Article 53 of the Treaty of Tianjin, providing for cooperation in the prevention of piracy along the China coast, was designed to provide a treaty basis for it, with its cost to be defrayed from Customs revenue.82 The idea of a Western navy paid for by the Qing to bring order to China’s coastal waters and so create better conditions for trade had an obvious attractiveness. As long as the Arrow War lasted, nothing could be done, but once it was over, Prince Gong became a supporter. The arrangement was that that its costs would be defrayed from revenues on foreign trade collected at Shanghai, Xiamen, Fuzhou, and Ningbo; Lay in Britain was asked to take charge of the actual purchasing of the vessels.83 Lay saw the flotilla as a stick to pummel the Qing into modernizing itself. He wrote Robert Hart in 1862: “we must never forget that we have to control as well as guide the Chinese Government. It is not equal to walk alone yet, and won’t be for many years.’84 In Our Interests in China, a pamphlet published in London in 1864 after the disbandment of the flotilla, Lay summed up his stance: My attitude towards the Chinese was this: if I help you to collect the revenue, you must do whatever is right by foreign questions. . . . The Chinese Government was too rotten a reed to lean upon, and the foundations of the structure I was

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endeavouring to build up had to be artificially created. My position was that of a foreigner engaged by the Chinese Government to perform certain work for them but not under them. I need scarcely observe in passing that the notion of a gentleman acting under an Asiatic barbarian is preposterous.85

Lay arranged things in such a way that the flotilla was “under my immediate control.”86 He was convinced that only if the flotilla was “part and parcel of the Customs department” could the Qing be compelled to undertake the modernization projects it needed,87 such as centralizing government control, building telegraph and railroad lines, and developing a mining industry. Lay was a modernizer, but he also saw China as incapable of modernizing itself, and hence “we must never forget that we have to control as well as guide the Chinese Government.”88 If Britain did not “act strong” and force the Qing to modernize, Lay believed that the result would be that it would have to colonize China, which it did not want to do.89 Lay convinced the British government to repeal the Neutrality Act, which was not difficult given the new pro-Qing mood. He secured an Order in Council permitting himself and Sherard Osborn, who would command the force, but no one else, to recruit British subjects to “enter into the Naval and Military Service of the Emperor of China.”90 Osborn had fought with the Royal Navy at Canton during the First Opium War and later in the Malay Peninsula. He had commanded the Sea of Azov Squadron during the Crimean War. Lay insisted that Osborn sign a contract stating that he, as commander of the “European Chinese navy,” would “act upon all orders of the Emperor which may be conveyed direct to Lay and Osborn engages not to attend to any orders conveyed through any other channel.”91 Before leaving Britain with his fleet, Lay had Hart extract a letter of authority from Prince Gong that gave Lay “absolute and uncontrolled discretion” about contracts for the purchase of vessels and the engagement of their crews.92 When Horatio Lay returned to China in May 1863, clearly now having come to the conclusion that there was life yet in the Qing, Robert Hart thought him “greatly changed, Anglicized in fact to such a degree his task with the Chinese will be very uphill work.”93 Lay was no longer prepared to serve under a Qing official: “No officer worth having should submit to Chinese management, and if they would, it would soon lead to mismanagement, dismemberment.”94 On landing at Shanghai, Lay demanded K.Tls. 120,000 from Li Hongzhang, who concluded that he was “threatening and

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will cause endless problems.”95 When he arrived in Beijing, he insisted that Customs revenue be remitted direct to the Zongli Yamen, rather than be retained locally, and that it be deposited in a foreign bank in a guarantee fund for the flotilla.96 He told Zongli Yamen officials that he would not “submit reports,” as from an inferior to a superior, but “statements.”97 “As the P’oong-yew [朋友, pengyou, friend] and confidential advisor of the Prince,” he stated, “he is by courtesy entitled to equal respect and consideration with the highest officers of the empire.”98 He demanded a princely palace and an official sedan chair.99 Prince Gong rebuffed Lay. He regarded the demand of a security fund for the flotilla as an affront. He disagreed with Lay that he had given him command over the flotilla, arguing that he had given him carte blanche with respect to recruitment and finances but not over operations: “If that were accepted, China would be under his control. . . . If Osborn and China’s senior officials may not communicate with each other, the only result can be disaster. We cannot approve this.”100 Attempts were made to evolve some kind of compromise, but they came to nothing, in part because Lay’s abrasiveness riled everybody and because Li Hongzhang and Zeng Guofan told Prince Gong that they would accept the flotilla only if they had a say over its operations, if it was integrated with their own forces, and if its crews included Chinese.101 By 1863, the tide of war had begun to turn in the Qing’s favor, meaning that Prince Gong was no longer as desperate for the flotilla as he had been in 1861. According to Hart, Lay threatened to “sell the fleet to the rebels”102 and even thought about “smashing the dynasty,”103 but there was no support for that option, and Prince Gong would not give in. In November 1863, Hart received a note from Lay that informed him, as Hart noted in his diary, that “the Chinese have dispensed with his services.”104 Lay’s career in China was at an end, and the fleet was disbanded. Hart replaced Lay, receiving his appointment from Prince Gong on November 15, 1863.105

The Education of Robert Hart

Relations between Lay and Hart had soured during Lay’s absence. Lay believed that Hart was failing to treat him with the respect due to him. “Without meaning to do so, I fully believe,” he wrote, “you reversed our positions.

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You made yourself I.G. and me your agent. Your required me to disburse money belonging to the Chinese Government for you and so vest the ownership of the thing purchased in you.”106 He thought that Hart had acted in a self-aggrandizing fashion: “your letter was so full of I’s that I thought that I would say that the idea of a Chinese naval force had entered other minds besides your own. To the credit of getting Kung’s [Prince Gong’s] assent to the actual purchase of the vessels, I cannot possibly lay any, the slightest, claim.”107 Hart’s view was that Lay had acted without authorization, as “Lay’s arrangements were ones that had not only not been reported to the Yamun [Zongli Yamen] but were in direct opposition to the conditions on which the Yamun sanctioned the experiment. Hinc illae lacrymae [hence these tears].”108 Regulations drafted by Hart had provided for a Chinese commander-in-chief and Chinese crew members.109 The difference between Lay’s version and Hart’s version of command relations created an awkward situation, one that could not be easily overcome. The rift between the two, though, went deeper. Hart had enjoyed an excellent education, and Lay had not; where Lay was abrasive, Hart was accommodating and obliging, even outwardly placid; where Lay saw the Qing as unable to stand on its own feet, Hart had sympathy for it. Hart believed in gradual change; Lay wanted a revolution. Perhaps most importantly, while Lay believed that it was beneath his dignity to subordinate himself to the Qing, Hart had no problem with that and only thought it right. Below, I trace Robert Hart’s development to analyze the causes of these deeper differences, paying attention to Hart’s education in Britain and in China, his religion, as well as his experiences in China. Hart’s attitudes would become the dominant ethic of the Service while he was IG. Robert Hart was born in 1835 in Portadown, in the north of what was still a united Ireland, three decades after the creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and a decade before the Irish potato famine. The Harts had made a living as distillers, but Hart’s father had become a staunch Wesleyan, a strand of Christianity in which the performance of good deeds, the individual search for salvation, an abstemious lifestyle, and the imminence of the return of God were central themes. Reflecting the rise of Puritanism, in 1853 Robert Hart’s father moved out of the spirit business, buying seventy-three acres of farm land. Robert was educated at the Wesleyan Preparatory School in Taunton, England; at Wesley College in Dublin; and finally at the newly established Queen’s College, Belfast. He studied

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Latin, Greek, English literature and history, economics, and jurisprudence. His teachers instilled in him discipline, hard work, a sense of duty, and a clear and logical style of writing. Hart was influenced by the great liberal writers of the age, from whom he imbibed the belief that the story of history was the gradual unfolding of liberal progress. In the early part of the nineteenth century, public schools and university education had become more widely available. Together with the expansion of empire, this provided a new pathway for success, including for those in the north of Ireland who had just become part of Britain’s Celtic fringe. Many of Hart’s classmates at Queen’s College would become surgeons, doctors, lawyers, academics, teachers, and journalists in various parts of the British empire.110 Robert’s opportunity came in 1854, when Clarendon, the secretary of state for foreign affairs, asked for nominations for the newly formed consular service for China and Japan. Hart had excelled at Queen’s University, Belfast, and the university put him forward as their favored candidate.111 Clarendon had thrown his weight behind Bowring’s call for an effective and professional consular service for China and Japan. If Wade had come to China as a soldier during the First Opium War and Lay as one of Disraeli’s destitutes, Hart was part of a new breed of well-educated and presentable civil servants. Because the Treaty of Nanjing had called for direct communication between British and Qing officials, the British had to produce staff able to communicate in Chinese. This was more easily said than done, as there were few teachers or textbooks, and British Sinologists tended to occupy themselves more with lengthy discussions of what kind of language Chinese even was. At Ningbo, Robert found a good Chinese teacher, who decided that the best course of action was to pretend that he had to be prepared for the imperial examinations. He soon had him grinding through Mencius (孟子), The Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦), The Four Books (四书, the five Confucian classics), and the Kangxi Emperor’s Sacred Edicts (圣谕).112 In China, then, Robert received the kind of training that would enable him to communicate with Qing officials from a shared literary background, something that would serve him very well. Lay had excellent Chinese, but he had learned it from Karl Gutzlaff, who as a missionary was not disposed to take China’s canonical texts very seriously. Hart came to China as an intensely religious young man, unsurprisingly given his Wesleyan background, and it shaped him profoundly. The

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volumes of Hart’s journal for his early years in China are full of discussions of sermons, religious reflections, and accounts of religious dreams. The following is an example of the latter from April 1864, that is, shortly after Hart was appointed Inspector General: Last night, I had a most remarkable dream. I thought I was standing in a veranda with some one looking towards the moon, to the right of which the stars seemed to be clustering strangely . . . looking at this, and wondering what it might portend, suddenly and with great rapidity a child or babe was seen: alive but marble like. Just at that moment, the person with me cried out “The Saviour, by George!”—It was William Swanton who spoke—I shouted “Hurrah,” jumped from the veranda, and sped through the air toward the babe,—shouting praises to God, and feeling exultant beyond measure . . . I felt as if I had really seen a heavenly vision, and since that time, I have had a more vivid sense than I can give expression to of the reality of the fact that the Saviour will come again.113

He noted in this entry that “of late I have on several occasions awoke praying or lain half asleep with a most pleased feeling of that “perfect love that casteth out fear.’” In China, Hart’s piety was disturbed in a way unlikely to have happened in Britain. He came into contact with eccentrics such as the Meadows brothers. Thomas Meadows was a consular interpreter, or intelligence officer, who wrote Desultory Notes on the Government and People of China, and of the Chinese Language, praised by John Fairbank as an outstanding early treatment of China’s governmental system.114 Meadows wrote the book to dispel “false notions extant in England about China.”115 He wanted “to know the institutions of this country, the reasons for so many actions that appear very odd until their reasons are known, and of learning generally their motives.”116 He would become a supporter of the Taiping and was fascinated by the Chinese language, which he had first encountered while studying in Germany. His brother, John Meadows, lived in Ningbo while Hart was there. In his diary, Hart recorded a conversation between John Meadows and a Dr. MacGowan, who had extolled the equality of all races. Meadows had asked him whether he would sleep with a black woman, to which MacGowan had hurriedly answered “no, no, no.” Hart had “appreciated the cleverness of the question” and commented “that we may hold high sounding beliefs eloquently but insincerely.”117 Hart was religious,

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but he would always be impatient with missionary self-righteousness and hypocrisy. British violence in China shocked Hart. When Hart served in Guangzhou as an interpreter for the Anglo-French occupation forces, he described in his diary a reprisal action for the kidnapping and murder of a French sailor: “a party of French and also a party of English were sent out with the order, I believe, to shoot everyone in the neighbourhood of the place where the murder was committed. . . . The consequence was that fifty Chinese were shot near the Gate.”118 Entries for July and August 1858 show that the allied hold on Guangzhou was shaky, with constant attacks by local militias, murders, and kidnappings.119 In a letter of 1867, Hart wrote: We Britishers are, I believe, hated by the Chinese; we fancy they know our superior honesty and truthfulness—and perhaps they do; but there’s no disguising the fact that amongst those of them who know foreigners at all, there is a feeling of great dislike to the English. The British is looked upon as the cause of all trouble: we got up the opium war; we took Canton; we got to Peking; we burnt the palace; we have been ever foremost when there was a blow to be struck. . . . Why should they not hate and detest us.120

Throughout the rest of his life, Hart tried to foster a better impression of the British in China. An issue preying on Hart’s mind was his sexuality, which greatly troubled him, seeing it as something that was to be struggled against in the pursuit of a life of purity to become worthy of salvation. He regularly tried to convince himself that he had mastered his lust. In July 1858, he noted that “I am undergoing a psychological change: think much less about the other sex than I used to: don’t enjoy imaginary intrigues.”121 Later on, he would confess this was not so. In 1857, he began a long relation with a Chinese woman, whom we only know as Ayaou, and with whom he had three children over the next six years. Hart cut all relations with Ayaou and his Chinese children after he became IG, likely because he believed that maintaining a Chinese wife was incompatible with his new status. He would continue to pay for the upbringing and education of his Chinese children but made sure that they were out of the way by sending them to England, where they were looked after and educated in a way that made it unlikely that any member of the high circles in which Hart now traveled would

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meet them.122 Ayaou is unlikely to have had any say in the matter. She, or more likely her family, was probably just paid off. After severing relations with Ayaou, Hart again attempted but failed in his desire to observe the Ten Commandments. In 1864, he noted “My last six months have not been gone through without much struggle: my besetting sin, ‘womanizing,’ has worried me day after day . . . what troubles me most is my imagination—I find it almost impossible to refrain from indulging in imagination in those pleasures which I have strength enough to refrain.”123 Another entry reads: O woman, lovely woman! And yet, it is sexual desire—it is, I fear, more brute passion than desire for the society of woman. I like to have a girl in the room with me, to fondle when I please . . . at home polygamy would not do; and indeed with English girls it would not pay; they would tear each others eyes out, run off with outsiders, and weary the life out of their common lord. In China and with Chinese . . . polygamy does get on. Were I always to remain in China, I might do as the Chinese do. I do not think it inexpedient in China, nor do I think it morally wrong.124

In 1866, he went on leave, traveling to Britain largely to find a wife, which he did, marrying Hester Bredon from northern Ireland that year, a marriage that for some years made him act the contented Victorian husband, living in a comfortable home, surrounded by his wife, children, and servants, reading, smoking, drinking claret, and playing the violin. But his contentment, if it ever existed, does not seem to have lasted, and he and his wife would lead largely separate lives.125 It is impossible to know the precise nature of Hart’s relation with Ayaou, as he tore from his diary the pages covering the years that he knew her. But it does seem to have made him something of a cultural relativist, and the relationship with his Chinese children may have given him a certain natural sympathy for China’s fate. At a more profound level, the conflict between his religion and his sexuality seems to have made him believe that he might be one of the chosen ones. In August 1864, Hart wondered whether God had put temptation in his way so as to prepare him for some extraordinary task: “am I going through a course of moral training which is fitting me for something in the future, for which I should never have been fitted were it not for the exercitations [sic] consequent on the working of my ‘thorn.’”126

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After being appointed acting IG, Hart spent most of his time traveling around China to introduce the Shanghai system to treaty ports where this had not been done. In June 1864, following his appointment as IG, he was called to Beijing, where from then on he would reside and have frequent, often daily contact with Zongli Yamen officials. His education in China, his thorough knowledge of the country and especially its trading systems, as well as his knowledge of consular and diplomatic affairs stood him in good stead. Wenxiang (文祥), Prince Gong’s Manchu placeman in the Zongli Yamen, became a trusted and respected interlocutor.127 Their conversations were not restricted to diplomatic and trade issues but were wide ranging, touching on such issues as morality and national character. Hart was pleased that Wenxiang seemed to appreciate him. In his diary, he noted that Wenxiang had stated that it was unfortunate that “I had not been born a Chinaman, as I would have been able to discuss Taou-le [道理, daoli, the principles of the Way].”128 At the Zongli Yamen, Hart became aware that Han-Manchu relations were delicate. One Yamen official told him that “at [the] bottom [of] every Chinaman’s heart there was a feeling of elation when he thought of the possibility of driving out the present dynasty: that Chinese advisers of the crown would therefore not unwillingly give such advice as would lead to troubles between the Government and foreign powers . . . it must be the policy of the Government to keep on the best terms with foreigners.”129 Wenxiang confided to Hart that if Han Chinese wanted to overthrow the Qing, they could do so with ease, and hence that the Manchus, of whose tendency to arrogance Wenxiang was critical, should treat them well.130 Hence the respect that he and Prince Gong showed to Han officials. Wenxiang’s solicitousness was deliberate policy. Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang were now in charge in the lower Yangzi delta. Under Li Hongzhang, Frederick Ward had begun to raise an army officered by foreigners, armed with Western weapons, and supported by a flotilla of gunboats. To have the ministers of foreign countries reside in Beijing, and to require Hart to live there as well, was smart politics on the part of Prince Gong and Wenxiang. If the British had collaborated with Han officials now dominant in the Lower Yangzi, the Manchus in Beijing would have been left in a precarious position. It was much better to divide the two groups and draw the British, and other foreigners, to Beijing, something for which they had

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clamored for so long. In trying to ensure Hart’s loyalty, they went so far as to place an official with attractive daughters in a house next to Hart’s,131 in the hope that he would be drawn to them (which he was, having late-night trysts with them in their garden) and take one or more as his wives (which he did not).132 Although Hart’s obituary in the Times of London stated that at the end of his life he had second thoughts about having supported the Qing Dynasty, in the 1860s he was firmly on its side.133 In 1865, Hart wrote the following in his diary, no doubt having Lay in mind: The highly sentimental view of the position and duties of a foreigner in the employ of, or in official relations with, the Chinese Government is that, in addition to the performance of his own paid-for duties, he shall look upon the country as rotten to the core, and shall so act as though its salvation and regeneration depended on his exertions alone. I myself, in my most helpful moment, have been for holding this obviously sentimental view: I now commence—wearied and frustrated—to lay it aside, and content myself with, in the first place, trying to do, to the best of my ability, the work I am paid for, and secondly, outside the work, to originate or assist in carrying out any plan that may seem to be of a useful kind, and for the working of which the time seems ripe and circumstances favourable.134

In an 1864 circular, he instructed his staff that “it is to be distinctly and constantly kept in mind, that the Inspectorate of Customs is a Chinese and not a Foreign Service, and that, as such, it is the duty of each of its members to conduct himself towards Chinese, people as well as officials, in such a way as to avoid all course of offence and ill-feeling.”135 He wrote in his diary: “I am on the Chinese side, and I will help them to the best of my abilities.”136 Hart has been portrayed as the ultimate bureaucrat. His sense of duty and hard work naturally made him want “to whip the Foreign Inspectorate into shape.”137 But he was not satisfied with just being a cog in a machine. “For the last five years,” he wrote in July 1863, “I have been constantly racking my brains to hit upon or devise some line of action which, if carried out, would eventually enable one to think that my life had not been wholly thrown away or useless.”138 This yearning for a higher purpose was unsurprising given his belief that God was preparing him for a special task. The secularism that emerged so powerfully in the middle of the nineteenth century, one infused with a dedication to improving the world, was never

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quite so separate from religion as has so often been argued. To Hart, as he embraced the Service to make it into a force for good, the immediate task was learning more “about the Chinese, about the littoral provinces, about taxation, about official duties—all with an eye to being useful.”139 That was the best way to prepare for a task that God might bestow at a later date and that would give one’s life a deeper meaning.

THE OLD IN THE NEW

When I first began to read Customs Service documents, I was surprised that they looked like the Qing documents to which I had been introduced during my graduate training rather than British diplomatic and bureaucratic documents I found in UK archives. Even though written in English, texts to which Customs documents referred were paraphrased or quoted within the document itself, rather than enclosed or merely referred to, as in the British case. Robert Hart believed the Qing’s way superior. In an IG circular, he stipulated that a dispatch “should be a perfect document in itself; that is to say, it should contain in itself all that is necessary to its being understood, and not as a rule necessitate reference to other documents.”140 This is a minor example of two broader truths, namely that the Service did not emerge out of nothing and that even if largely constructed along British civil service lines, it also adopted Chinese bureaucratic practices. The Chinese names of Maritime Custom Houses formed another reminder of the continuity between the Service as it took shape in the late nineteenth century with what had gone before. The Guangzhou Custom House was called the Yue Haiguan (粤海关, Guangdong Maritime Tollhouse), the Fuzhou Custom House was named the Min Haiguan (闽海关, Min River Tollhouse), the Shanghai Custom House was called the Jiang Haiguan (江海关, the Yangzi River Tollhouse), and the Ningbo Custom House was known as the Zhe Haiguan (浙海关, Zhe River Tollhouse). These were their traditional names, which the Qing adopted after they reopened these four Maritime Tollhouses in 1684 following the Qing defeat of Zheng Chenggong’s maritime empire. The Service would continue to use them as well. As usual, the new built on the old. I first sketch out the rise of longdistance overland and overseas trade during the Qing’s Prosperous Age of

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the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I then discuss the tollhouses themselves. It will become clear that the Qing trade had long escaped the narrow confines of the tribute system before the arrival of the West and that the Service imported aspects of the tollhouse system.

The Growth of Long-Distance and Overseas Trade

European travelers in the eighteenth century were impressed with the Qing economy. Jean Baptiste du Halde depicted a world of amazing plenty in his 1736 A Description of the Empire of China and Chinese Tartary: The inland of China is so great that the commerce of all of Europe is not to be compared with it; the provinces being like as many kingdoms, which communicate with each other their respective productions. This tends to unite the several inhabitants and makes plenty reign in all of China. The provinces of Huguang [Hubei and Hunan] and Jiangxi supply those with rice that are not so well provided; that of Zhejiang furnishes the finest of silk; Jiangnan, varnish, ink, and all sorts of curious works; Yunnan, Shaanxi, and Shanxi yield iron, copper, other metals, mules, horses, and furs; Fujian [which included Taiwan] sugar and the best tea; Sichuan, plants, medicines, and rhubarb.141

John Barrow, who accompanied the 1793 Macartney mission, was equally enthused. He wrote that “the extensive shops and warehouses” of Hangzhou, a city on the shores of West Lake near Shanghai, “might be said to vie with the best in London.”142 Robert Fortune traveled through China in the mid-nineteenth century as a plant collector and tea purchaser. “The people of Hangzhou,” he noted in his travelogue, were relatively unaffected by the Taiping Rebellion; they “dress gaily and are remarkable for their dandyism. All except the lowest labourers and coolies strutted in dresses [i.e., robes] composed of silk, stain, and crepe.”143 The city is today again a place where the Shanghai rich spend their weekends in luxury and shopping: Jaguar, Rolls Royce, Bugatti, Maserati, and Rolls Royce dealerships line the city’s road along West Lake. Ramon Myers and Wang Yeh-chien have shown that by the eighteenth century, China’s long-distance trade had expanded well beyond the confines of local customary trade and the official “command economy,” that is,

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goods commandeered by the Qing state as taxes in kind or otherwise.144 The Qing saw the rapid expansion of interregional trade in grain, consumables, textiles, and manufactures.145 The Jiangnan, the region south of the Yangzi River at its lower reaches, exported cotton textiles far and wide. Workshops in Hangzhou and Suzhou specialized in dyeing and calendaring, as well as the production of shirtings, Nankeens, footwear, and socks. Silk was produced around Lake Tai near Suzhou, in Sichuan, and Shandong. The consumption of tea and sugar spread throughout the Qing Empire through regional trade links. Sugar was grown in Taiwan—the Caribbean of East Asia—as well as in Fujian and Guangdong, which also produced citrus fruits. Sugar mills crushed the sugar canes, boiled the residue, and, once filtered and solidified, refined the resulting sugar cakes into several grades. Tea was produced in Jiangxi, Zhejiang, and Fujian. The Qing’s was no “export” economy; its interregional trade was far more important. Overseas trade was nonetheless not insignificant. Between 1570 and 1830, a total of eight hundred million taels of silver made its way to China, first coming from Japan but then largely from the Americas.146 Chinese goods exported to Japan included ginseng, rhubarb, white sugar, hides, silks (especially black silks), strings for musical instruments, sandalwood, and a small amount of European clothing, which was in such great demand that the Dutch were unable to meet it. From Japan, Chinese ships brought back pearls, red copper, wrought copper, saber blades, smooth paper for fans, and Japanese furniture, which Chinese often shipped to Manila and Batavia to sell on to Europeans.147 Exports to Manila, a trade in which Anhui merchants dominated, consisted of silks, embroidery, carpets, cushions, gowns, tea, porcelain, and drugs. To Batavia, Qing merchants exported green tea, porcelain, gilded paper (in high demand among the Malay), drugs, and copper utensils such as dishes, trays, and kettles. Imports were made up of silver; spices such as pepper, cloves, nutmeg; tortoise shells (for toys); combs; boxes; knife handles; snuff bottles; sandalwood; agate; and amber. Aceh, Malacca, Patana, Ligon in Siam, and Annam were minor trade destinations for Qing merchants. Imports from these places were pepper, cinnamon, birds’ nests, rattan, and camphor. As is well known, to Europe the Qing exported porcelain and tea. As in Europe, the trade in luxuries and handicraft products were important. The growth in China’s overseas trade meant that it became increasingly difficult to fit it into the tribute system that had governed foreign trade. As

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John Fairbank noted, the 1818 Collected Statutes of the Qing Dynasty divided foreign countries into two categories. One was that of “trade partners” (互市诸国, hu shi zhu guo); the others were tributary states. The first included Japan, which had earlier been a Ming tribute state, Cambodia, Ligor, Patani, Trenganu, Pahang, Luzon, Mindanao, and Java. Korea, Turfan, Liuqiu, Annam, and Siam were the main tributary states.148 The division of China’s foreign countries into tributary states and trade partners reflected the fact that not all China’s neighbors, including Japan, recognized the Manchus as the legitimate inheritors of the Mandate of Heaven.149 They saw them as upstarts from a peripheral region rather than the inheritors of a long Confucian tradition.

Tollhouses

The Qing built up a network of tollhouses to manage interregional and international trade. If the Board of Rites dealt with tributary missions, the supervision of the tollhouses, including those where international trade was permitted, fell largely to the Treasury (户部, hubu), although a few were under the Board of Works. This too indicates that the tribute system had ceased to be an adequate way to manage trade. As Qi Meiqin has done, the history of the tollhouses can be traced back far into the distant past, as with most dynastic institutions.150 They grew numerous during the Qing, when thirty-four tollhouses, each overseeing numerous substations and checkpoints, regulated and taxed trade along the major communication routes of the Qing Dynasty. These included the Yangzi River, the Grand Canal, the overland route from Beijing to Central Asia through Shanxi Province in the north, and another route from Guangzhou over the Shaoguan Pass in northern Guangdong and then into Jiangxi and along the Gan River to the Yangzi. They also included trade routes in Sichuan Province; routes from the central China provinces to the Huai River and then on to the Grand Canal; and overland routes through the Great Wall between Beijing, Mongolia, and Manchuria. The four Maritime Tollhouses of the Qing were simply part of this network. Like other tollhouses, the Maritime Tollhouses had many substations. The Yangzi Maritime Tollhouse had more than twenty; the Min River Tollhouse in Fujian managed as many as sixty to keep under purview a

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55 THE BIRTH OF A CHAMELEON

thousand-kilometer coastline with high hills and many coves and islands. The Guangdong Maritime Tollhouse, by far the largest, had seven main substations, including at Macao, Guangzhou, Chaozhou, Qiongzhou on Hainan Island, and Leizhou in Guangxi Province. Each controlled its own checkpoints.151 The charges imposed by the tollhouses were small, but the size of the trade meant that the customary dues, hence “customs,” collected at tollhouses became Qing China’s third largest source of revenue. Table 1.1 provides information on reported revenue collections for each of the tollhouses in the second half of the eighteenth century. Unsurprisingly, the Guangdong Maritime Tollhouse was fiscally the most important. A continuous problem for the Qing was how to balance central and local interests, an issue that has run through Chinese history much like the contest between the City, London’s financial center, and Whitehall, its political one, runs through British history. In the case of the tollhouses, the result was a constant back and forth between centralization and localization of control. In 1665, the Kangxi Emperor ordered that provincial officials take over the supervision of the tollhouses in a number of places because officials appointed by the Treasury and the Board of Works “had given rise to trouble and had caused suffering to the merchants and the people” by excessive collection.152 They had done so not only to enhance their salaries, which during the Qing were extremely low (and it required a considerable outlay of funds to purchase a post), but also because they gained merit marks in their annual reviews if they were able to remit more revenue than called for by official quotas.153 Inevitably, local officials were also found to engage in extortion. No stable system was ever developed, which perhaps was one reason why Prince Gong was willing to experiment with having foreign commissioners working under the control of an Inspector General resident in Beijing and reporting to the Zongli Yamen. A superintendent (监督, jiandu), who usually served for one or two years, supervised tollhouses in his jurisdiction. In some places, the governor served concurrently in the post. In Fujian, the provincial commander did so. In yet other places, the circuit intendent (道台, daotai) was the superintendent. The circuit intendent was a powerful official in between the magistrate and the provincial governor, usually with the right to submit memorials to the emperor. Yet a further arrangement, used for strategic and sensitive posts, as in the case of the Guangdong Maritime Tollhouse,

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TABLE 1.1 Reported tollhouse collections, 1740–1795 (in 1,000 K. Tls.) 1740 1745 1750 1755 1760 1765 1770 1775 1780 1785 1790 1795

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Guangzhou maritime tollhouse (粤海关, Yue Haiguan)

260

304

467

286

356

505

596

541

556

872

1128 1171

Taiping tollhouse (太平关, Taiping Guan)

115

126

—

132

—

125

—

132

132

134

134

134

MinRi ver maritime tollhouse (闽海关, Min Haiguan)

278

292

339

328

—

357

385

355

397

—

330

248

Linqing tollhouse (临清关, Linqingguan)

37

72

—

39

42

46

46

50

50

39

50

50

Yangzhou tollhouse (扬州关, Yangzhou guan)

115

118

140

130

95

97

72

72

118

82

118

107

YangziRi ver maritime tollhouse (江海关, Jiang Haiguan)

80

79

77

76

77

49

71

72

72

73

73

73

Hushu tollhouse (滸墅关, Hushuguan)

33

—

54

50

37

54

56

55

56

46

58

54

ZheR iver maritime tollhouse (浙江海关, Zhejiang Haiguan)

93

88

90

90

—

90

89

90

90

90

86

87

Beixin Tollhouse (北新关, Beixin Guan)

180

—

—

200

—

185

189

187

193

159

194

195

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Xixin Tollhouse (西新关, Xixin Guan)

66

—

—

68

—

78

66

80

69

102

66

74

Jiujiang Tollhouse (九江关, Jiujiang Guan)

354

354

382

348

412

369

332

662

597

686

639

546

GanT ollhouse (赣关, Ganguan)

90

91

—

96

98

92

112

93

103

93

94

—

Fengyang Tollhouse (凤阳关, Fengyangguan)

142

283

381

303

238

315

102

93

102

144

175

121

Wuhu Tollhouse (芜湖关, Wuhuguan)

291

178

—

244

—

248

232

231

232

232

233

233

Tianjin Tollhouse (天津关, Tianjin Guan)

60

60

—

75

—

79

80

95

80

95

232

95

Huaian Tollhouse (淮安关, Huaian Guan)

330

310

—

442

396

457

—

360

386

183

420

336

Wuchang Tollhouse (武昌关, Wuchang Guan)

40

44

55

57

58

58

—

42

39

56

56

56

Kui Tollhouse (夔关, Kuiguan)

—

—

55

172

170

193

—

59

59

201

189

188

Chongwenmen (崇文门, Chongwenmen)

—

—

—

102

260

265

—

309

—

—

—

—

Guihuacheng (归化城, Guihuaguan)

—

—

—

—

—

—

26

26

22

21

17

—

Total

2,546 2,399 2,040 3,238 2,239 3,662 2,454 3,604 3,353 3,303 4,292 3,768

Source: Qi Meiqin, Qingdai Queguan Zhidu Yanjiu (Research on the System of Qing tollhouses) (Huhehoate: Neimenggu Daxue Chubanshe, 2004), 445–449.

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58 THE BIRTH OF A CHAMELEON

was for a household slave of the imperial household, a boo i aha (包衣阿哈, bao yi a ha), to be in charge. They provided the emperor with a reliable source of information on local political and commercial conditions; a further advantage was that whatever he accumulated could be easily confiscated.154 A continuity between the tollhouse system and the Service was that superintendents remained formally in charge of the foreign Custom Houses. Being a busy official, he usually relied on a deputy to handle Custom House affairs and managed the actual collection of customs dues. Hart insisted that each Customs commissioner regularly meet with his superintendent and keep him well informed. Initially he also insisted that they should treat the superintendent as their superior, although later that was changed to an ambiguous equality of status, with the Customs commissioners deferring to the superintendent in case the two could not reach a common position.155 No bureaucracy can work without registers and forms. The tollhouses compiled three registers. The first was the “personally completed register” (亲填蒲, qin tian pu), which was made up of cargo lists submitted by the merchant and noted the amounts of duty a merchant was to pay. The second was the circulation register (循环蒲, xunhuanpu), also known as the red stub register (红单存根册, hongdan cungen ce). This was made up of a form with three stubs. Completed by tollhouse staff, the merchant retained one stub, the second was kept at the superintendent’s office, and the tollhouse kept the third. A register of investigations and examinations (稽考蒲, jikao pu) was drawn up by day, month, and year for reporting to Beijing. The Qing Maritime Tollhouses levied taxes on a ship’s cargo and its carrying capacity as well as a variety of further charges, including docking and handling fees. In 1686 a dynasty-wide tariff was promulgated on the basis of Guangzhou practices. This tariff recognized four main categories of goods: textiles, edibles, items of practical use, and a further category called “other.” These items were further differentiated according to type of material and quality. The “regular tariff rate” (正税, zhengshui) for imports was 4 percent and for exports 2.6 percent. On the total, a surcharge of 20 percent was levied as well as a handling fee of a further 20 percent.156 The low official tariffs agreed to after the first Opium War were a continuation of established practices, not an imperialist imposition. Taxes on a ship’s carrying capacity were called tonnage dues. Different rates existed for Chinese junks, Asian ships, and European ships, which ini-

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59 THE BIRTH OF A CHAMELEON

tially paid substantially more than the other two types but from 1689 paid the same as Asian vessels.157 Tonnage dues were flexible. For example, one East India Company ship, upon entering Guangzhou in the late eighteenth century, was measured and declared to have a length of ninety-four feet from the front to rear masts and a beam of 23.5 feet. It formally owed K.Tls. 2,484 in tonnage dues, but this was discounted to K.Tls 1,500, with a payment of K.Tls 300 made to the superintendent separately as a facilitation fee. When the same ship returned to Guangzhou a couple of years later, it was assessed at K.Tls 1,718, but the East India Company was required to pay K.Tls 3,600 Tls as a result of a number of additional impositions.158 Tonnage dues would become the major source of revenue for the Service to support its operation. A variety of other dues were levied, including the notorious “meltage fees,” justified as a payment for remelting silver so that it had the required fineness, as well as arrival and departure fees, called “the presents” by European traders.159 The Qing used tollhouses not just to collect revenue but also to intervene in the economy and manage political relations. The decision to restrict Western trade to Guangzhou was an example. Western vessels before the middle of the eighteenth century had usually called only on Guangzhou. However, in the years before the restriction, they had begun to sail north, including to Ningbo in Zhejiang Province. The goods they wished to purchase, such as silk and porcelain, could be had more cheaply there than in Guangzhou, and Zhejiang brokers and merchants did not demand as many fees as those at Guangzhou. To protect Guangzhou’s trade, the governor general of the Liangguang proposed in a memorial that “the Zhejiang Maritime Tollhouse should levy somewhat higher taxes than the Guangdong Maritime Tollhouse.”160 Another proposal was for the Guangdong Maritime Tollhouse to establish a branch at Dinghai on Zhoushan Island off the Zhejiang coast to ensure uniform treatment. When both measures failed, the Qianlong Emperor decreed that “foreign traders in future are only allowed to anchor at Guangzhou and trade there. They should not again go to Ningbo. . . . This will not only tighten the security of Zhejiang but will also benefit the livelihood of the people in Guangdong and the tollhouses at Shaoguan and Ganzhou.”161 The motive was to protect Guangdong’s overseas trade and the overland trade routes in the south that depended on it. He also wanted to keep Western traders firmly in the south, well away from the booming Lower Yangzi region, with its independent-minded elites.

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It should be noted that the Qianlong Emperor’s decision did not stop the overseas trade carried in Chinese junks. From Guangzhou, Chinese junks sailed to Annam, Fujian junks as large as four and even five hundred tons sailed to the Nanyang (the South Seas), and Ningbo junks sailed to Shandong, Tianjin, the northeast (Manchuria), and Korea.162 The revenue collected by the Maritime Tollhouses increased at all four ports. In 1736, revenue at the Min River, Zhejiang Maritime, and Yangzi Maritime Tollhouses amounted respectively to K.Tls. 203,000, K.Tls. 91,000, and K.Tls. 62,000. After the prohibition came into force, the figures were K.Tls. 328,000, K.Tls. 87,000, and K.Tls. 77,000. A further three decades later, collections at Fujian amounted to K.Tls 350,000; those by the Zhejiang and Yangzi Maritime Tollhouses had remained steady.163 These figures were reported amounts; actual collections were undoubtedly higher. To sum up, well before the creation of the Service, the Qing had developed a tollhouse system to regulate, control, and tax overseas trade. The Customs Service would introduce many new measures, including the separation of domestic and foreign trade. But its past in the Qing’s tollhouse system was reflected in its nomenclature, in the fact that tariffs remained low, and in the continuing role of superintendents. Correspondence between superintendents and Customs commissioners show that the superintendents were busy officials, especially so at the time of the Taiping Rebellion. A recurrent theme in these correspondences is that of superintendents requiring Customs commissioners to halt arms shipments to the Taiping and to pass their own arms and gunpowder deliveries free of duties.164 One practical attraction of the Service to the Qing was that it gave the Qing a grip on the arms trade, which was important in the civil war against the Taiping: substantial quantities of arms flowed through China’s coastal ports to the Taiping, as had happened in Shanghai. The Xinyou Coup brought to power a group of very young men and one woman. In 1861, Prince Gong was only twenty-eight years old; Empress Dowager Cixi was two years younger. Li Hongzhang was thirty-eight; Zeng Guofan, although of an older generation, was still only forty-nine. Theirs had been a coup of the young against the old. Robert Hart, too, had yet to turn thirty. No wonder this group would dominate Qing politics for the next several decades. Turning the idea that Britain represented the youthful West and the Qing an old and decaying empire on its head, Frederick Bruce was fifty-seven, Rutherford Alcock fifty-two, and John Bowring a decidedly

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61 THE BIRTH OF A CHAMELEON

ancient sixty-nine. The idea that the Xinyou Coup was the restoration of a Confucian gerontocracy incapable of real change and that Britain was a young, modern, and cohesive nation-state is a simplification if not an outright error. Although industrialization and reform processes had been set in motion, Europe’s industrialized, homogenized, and bureaucratic states did not really begin to emerge until after the wars of the mid-nineteenth century such as the Crimean War and the wars of German and Italian unification.165 Until then, they had remained, as Christopher Bayly has argued, “in flux,” uncertain, underpowered, and fearful of the democratic and nationalist processes unleashed by the French Revolution.166 It was in this context of general weakness that the Service could take root. It had to suggest that it was able to fit in with Qing structures while also being seen to serve European and at this time especially British agendas. John Fairbank was right when he called Hart “a minor Ch’ing [Qing] official and a dictator of the Service.”167 Later on, as he built up the Service, Hart became a powerful figure. Within the Qing bureaucracy, he was initially a Zongli Yamen functionary and no more. He did not have the all-important right to submit memorials to the throne, a privilege only the highest officials in the land, such as provincial governors, enjoyed. Hart had to request his Zongli Yamen superiors to submit them for him. One reason he could thrive in the Qing was because he was willing to hide his light under a bushel. Frederick Bruce did not exaggerate very much when he wrote, referring to the Qing, that they do not look upon the I.G. as anything more than a subordinate officer in their employ to whom a general superintendence is given over the foreigners engaged to aid in the collection of the Customs revenue on foreign trade, but on whom no control is bestowed over the application of the receipts. They do not consider him as a political officer at all, nor do they consult him as of right even about questions affecting foreign trade.168

The founding of the Service was not a single event; it was a process that stretched out over more than ten years. It emerged in Shanghai as a temporary expedient. A major turning point was the Arrow War, leading to the Tianjin Treaty that regularized the Shanghai system and provided for its extension to other open ports. Decisive was the death of the Xianfeng Emperor, which ended the xenophobic polices that had dominated his reign.

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62 THE BIRTH OF A CHAMELEON

Another important step was Robert Hart’s permanent move to Beijing in 1864. But, even then, there was nothing yet like a fully fledged Inspectorate with secretaries supervising its various functions, a Marine Department managing aids to navigation along the coast, a Statistical Secretariat collecting and publishing data on China’s overseas trade, or river police forces to provide harbor security. That would all come later. There would always remain something ad hoc about the Service, which gave it the flexibility and the adaptability, as well as the willingness, to experiment and take on additional functions. If the Service emerged out of a very specific set of circumstances, its creation reflected broader historical shifts both in China and in Britain. The expansion of international trade, resulting from industrialization and from the rise of free-trade principles, was basic. So was the British determination to include China in its imperial trade networks. The emergence of civil service–type bureaucracies and liberal reform ideologies were also important, as were lessons about the limits of military violence delivered by the Indian Uprising and the Arrow War. Their educational background, the rise of the discourse of civilization, and their broad experiences in China gave people like Robert Hart a certain respect and sympathy for China. Hart’s accommodating attitude and his willingness to subordinate himself to Chinese authority allowed Prince Gong and Wenxiang to speak of him as “Our Hart” (我们的赫德, women de Hede).”169 I have emphasized that the British and the French, although militarily superior, were overexposed in China. The Service was useful not as yet another cog in the imperialist wheel but to offload responsibilities, to secure Qing cooperation, and to make China pay for a substantial part of the maintenance of coastal security. On the Qing side, the fundamental shifts were Beijing’s determination to achieve greater control over foreign affairs so as to prevent local officials from enmeshing the dynasty in foreign conflicts, the assessment that the British and the French would support rather than destroy the Qing, the desperate need for revenue, and the desire, especially strong in the Lower Yangzi region, to break the Cantonese hold on foreign trade. The emergence of the Service, finally, formed an illustration of the growing separation between commerce and government. In 1864, Hart complained in a memorandum that merchants resisted the Service. This was not because of the taxes that they imposed, which were not heavy. Be-

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63 THE BIRTH OF A CHAMELEON

fore the creation of the Service, foreign merchants simply instructed their linguist, their shroff, or their comprador to pass goods through the Custom House. “The opening of offices which demanded attention to rules and regulations generated a feeling abroad that it would be undignified on their part to apply either personally, or by neatly made out documents, for the authorizations requisite to do this or that.”170 Merchants “regarded the foreigner in Chinese employ as being the low rowdy a popular paper styled him” and made them feel “that his position deprived him of all title to social amenities.”171 It would be some time before commissioners became pillars of treaty port communities. The separation between trade and governance was fundamental to making it possible for Hart and others in the Service to see their compatriots as objects of their rule, as merchants to be regulated, and to think of Qing officials as colleagues in striving for a goal they in fact shared. To that extent, Fairbank’s synarchy, which he must have meant as a loose translation of the new reign title of Joint Rule, remains a suggestive term. Another way of putting it, as Robert Hart did in the quotation used as an epigraph to this chapter, was to argue that while under Lay the Inspectorate had been a foreign institution, it could only find a place in the Qing order after over time it had “become more and more a Chinese institution.”

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Chapter Two

ROBERT HART’S PANOPTICON From that day he devoted himself with all the dogged perseverance, the shrewd intelligence, and business-like capacity of a typical Ulsterman of evolving European order out of Chinese chaos. In his masterful hands the Maritime Customs, which originally represented mere local agencies for the collection of duties on foreign goods, grew to be a great and complex organization. —“THE DEATH OF SIR ROBERT HART: A REMARKABLE CAREER,” THE TIMES OF LONDON, SEPTEMBER 21, 1911

Those who become princes through their skill acquire the principality with difficulty, but they hold on to it easily; and the difficulties they encounter in acquiring the principality grow, in part, out of the new institutions and methods they are obliged to introduce. . . . One should bear in mind that there is nothing more difficult to execute, nor more dubious of success, nor more dangerous to administer than to introduce a new order of things. —NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, THE PRINCE

This chapter examines Robert Hart’s build-up of the Service in the decade after he became Inspector General. Hart made the Customs Service into a disciplined frontier regime, exploiting the spaces between the Qing Empire and the expanding European empires, the chaotic conditions that resulted from China’s mid-nineteenth-century rebellions, and opportunities created by the introduction of new trade systems and navigational technologies. The frontiers of empires, unlike the borders of modern nation-states, are not clearly demarcated. Especially during times of turbulence and general governmental weakness, the zones between such empires provide opportu-

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65 R O B E R T H A R T ’ S PA N O P T I CO N

nities for an institution like the Customs Service to build up a presence and become powerful in their own right. Hart excelled at doing this. Robert Hart carved out a clear space between foreign consuls in the treaty ports and Qing Customs superintendents. He gained the upper hand because he was able to appeal, going over their heads, to foreign ministers in Beijing, in the case of the superintendents, and to the highest court in Britain, in the case of the consuls. Hart turned the Service into a Foucauldian panopticon, not inappropriately, given Hart’s utilitarian instincts, by turning the Inspectorate General, its headquarters, into a monitoring center from which he supervised, managed, coordinated, and controlled the Service’s Custom Houses. The Service became a centralized bureaucracy, with a clearly defined hierarchy of authority, strict financial controls, well-defined personnel systems, circumscribed responsibilities, and a rich array of information flows, which ensured that the Inspectorate was well informed about all that went on in the Service. The Service not only prospered because of the functions it arrogated to itself, its internal discipline, and the information it provided to Beijing about revenue collected from China’s foreign trade. It also recruited a foreign staff that through their sociability, physical presence, and education demanded respect. The best and brightest of the British opted for one of the home civil services, the Indian Civil Service, or the diplomatic or consular services, but the Customs Service took the best of the rest. The policy was to recruit from across Europe to ensure that all countries had a stake in the Service, that senior staff was competent and self-confident, and that it was respected in treaty port society by traders, Qing officials, and the general public. Hart saw the Customs Service as the kernel of modern centralized bureaucratic governance in China. As he wrote to Foreign Minister Earl Granville in 1885, he wanted the Service to become “a possible nucleus for a reformed administration in all its branches.”1 He repeatedly called for a central mint; fiscal and financial reform, especially in the collection of the land tax; a national postal service; a modern navy; and ministries for railroad construction and mining. His aggressive modernizing instinct was tempered by the recognition that it was important to work with and not against the grain. He regularly launched pilot projects, only to draw back from them in case they provoked resistance. That caution, too, was important to facilitate acceptance of the Service.

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66 R O B E R T H A R T ’ S PA N O P T I CO N

BETWEEN CONSULS AND SUPERINTENDENTS

Robert Hart believed that a major cause of Qing weakness was its habit of “localizing responsibility,”2 meaning that the central authorities in Beijing refused to take initiative, leaving this to provincial officials. They served only for a few years in any one post and could be dismissed at any time, with the result, according to Hart, that “many feel exceedingly careful to keep right—but such excessive care must produce fear of responsibility.”3 Because official salaries were very low—and because many officials had to invest substantial amounts of their own funds to secure appointment— Hart went on, “people . . . lay hold of every means of securing money” while in post.4 The result was a bureaucracy of corrupt and cowardly officials afraid to take action and determined to avoid responsibility. A centralized bureaucracy staffed by well-paid public servants enjoying security of appointment was Hart’s antidote. Hart constructed the Service as a centralized and disciplined organization. His first task was to reduce the influence of consuls and superintendents in the management of China’s trade with European countries and the United States.

Restraining the Consuls

For the Service, extraterritoriality was a problem. If foreigners could be tried only in accordance with their own laws and in their own courts, the Service would have been unable to punish infringements of the tariff without consular cooperation. Extraterritoriality also threatened Robert Hart’s authority as IG: it left open the possibility that malcontents in the Service would challenge him in a consular court. Almost as soon as the Board of Inspectors was established in Shanghai, the issue emerged of whether the Customs Service had the right to impose fines on foreign merchants. In 1855, the Wynand, a ship belonging to the merchant house of Dent, Beale, & Co., left Shanghai with the official destination of Hong Kong, but it was soon spotted loading rice outside Shanghai in violation of trade regulations. Thomas Wade advised the Shanghai commissioner to order the ship to Shanghai, and there Wade confiscated it and seized its cargo. The British consul, preferring to see Wade as his assistant, did not believe that Wade possessed authority for these actions. When

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67 R O B E R T H A R T ’ S PA N O P T I CO N

the issue was referred to London, Foreign Minister Clarendon ruled that Chinese authorities were perfectly entitled to confiscate both the cargo and the ship. The legal advice of the law officers of the British Crown modified this so that the Service could impose fines and confiscate cargo but could not seize the Wynand itself.5 In a later case of the same year, when a consular court had overturned fines imposed by Lay, Clarendon overturned the court’s ruling, arguing that consuls should not see Customs officers as their agents: they were “to all intents and purposes Chinese officers.” If consuls disagreed with their actions, they were to complain to the Chinese authorities.6 This position was upheld by Frederick Bruce, the British minister to the Qing Dynasty, in 1859, when he wrote in a dispatch to Ansom Burlingame, the U.S. minister, “that when the British Government determined in conformity with the American treaty on relieving its Consuls from any share in the collection of duties for the Chinese, it decided not to deprive the Chinese of those summary powers of self-defence, which every country has found it necessary to adopt to prevent frauds on its Revenue.”7 These rulings were helpful, but they were no more than executive interpretations of treaty clauses. When Horatio Lay was in London in 1861 through 1863, he secured the legal opinion of prominent lawyers. They included W. Atherton, who had been solicitor general and attorney general; Sir Fitz-Roy Kelly, the chief baron of the Court of the Exchequer; and James Hannen, a judge of the Queen’s Bench. Their opinion was that “it must be conceded that the Chinese Government retained all the rights of sovereignty which it has not expressly agreed to resign. Amongst those undoubted rights is that of imposing and enforcing its own revenue laws within its territory.”8 The legal opinion also stated that “a British subject is not amenable to a British Court or Tribunal for acts done by him in pursuance of this authority as a Chinese Customs’ Officer.” That meant that staff could not lodge a lawsuit in a consular court against the IG for acts by him in his official capacity. The issue was raised once more in 1864 when Shanghai Customs Commissioner Fitz-Roy confiscated cargo belonging to a firm called Bowman and Co. Bruce became involved after the Shanghai consul had objected when Fitz-Roy argued that he had acted on the authority of the Shanghai superintendent. Bruce reported the case to the then foreign secretary, Earl Russell, writing that he had dismissed the case because “the complainant had recognized the act as done under the authority of the Chinese

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Government” and therefore “it did not appear to me advisable to direct the Consul to go through the farce of summoning Mr Fitz-Roy,” as he would have pleaded sovereign immunity.9 The United States strongly backed the British position. In June 1864, U.S. minister Ansom Burlingame wrote the U.S. consuls: “it appears that a misunderstanding prevails as to the extent of the rights and duties of American citizens under the treaty.” He continued: “the Chinese government has the right, as an incident of its unyielded sovereignty, to enforce its own revenue laws.” Noting that “British, French, and Russian Ministers authorise me to inform you that they entirely approve,” he ordered U.S. consuls to cooperate fully with the Customs Service and the superintendents.10 Hart, unsurprisingly, agreed. When a consul objected to a fine he had imposed for a false manifest, Hart wrote in his diary: “I maintain that independent China, in her own dominions, has the right and power, in virtue of her sovereignty to do everything she has not promised not to do.” Referring to the consul, he went on, “he takes the other ground and holds . . . that China cannot do anything that foreign Governments have not said she may do.”11 If Hart needed to have the principle recognized in order for the Service to be able to function at all, for the diplomats in Beijing the advantage was that it would prevent consular establishments from becoming engulfed in innumerable conflicts and endless litigation with which they were not equipped to deal. Extraterritoriality also was a threat to the authority of the IG over Service staff. In September 1867, the French commissioner C. Kleczkowsky committed suicide after it had become clear that he had tampered with the books as Zhenjiang commissioner.12 Hart had insisted that he resign, but after Kleczkowsky’s suicide he offered his wife £2,100 as a solatium.13 Hoping to salvage her husband’s reputation, she mobilized the French minister in Beijing and prepared to sue Hart in a French consular court. Hart discussed the affair with Ansom Burlingame, a staunch supporter, arguing that “what I have done, I have done as IG. It has been a mere act of internal discipline. I am ready to explain it and answer for every step to the Chinese Government.”14 Burlingame agreed, and, according to Hart, told officials at the French Ministry that “I must be independent and how impossible it wd. be for things to go on properly, if any minister tried to dictate to me, & that I was entitled to the support of all only so long as I was not under the

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orders of one.” This view prevailed; the French minister did not interfere. Hart convened an internal Customs board of inquiry, which found it difficult to pronounce against a former colleague but also decided that Hart had done nothing wrong.15 The issue returned in 1870 in a more farcical although no less perilous way. In 1866, while in Britain on his mission to find a wife, Robert Hart engaged Johannes von Gumpach for the Translators College (同文馆, Tongwenguan), offering him the grandiloquent title of “Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy.”16 Von Gumpach, a naturalized British subject, was a maverick scholar, writing on astronomy, Assyrian and Babylonian history, the Old Testament, “baby-worlds,—or nascent members of our solar household,” philosophy, and Newton’s erroneous understanding of gravity.17 China has attracted its fair share of foreign crooks, cranks, swindlers, and eccentrics. Von Gumpach was one of these. The Translators College aimed at training Chinese for the Qing’s diplomatic service, although Hart had greater ambitions for it, hoping to turn it into China’s preeminent seat of learning.18 Although established in 1862, conservative opposition delayed its opening. The first cohort of students enrolled only in 1867, and not with the kind of students Hart hoped. He wrote despondently in his diary that “the majority are just about as unpromising a lot of [?] looking louts as one could well see!”19 Von Gumpach arrived in China before the Translators College was even open, let alone before it had transformed into a substantial university with significant research facilities. Relations between Hart and von Gumpach broke down in the spring of 1867 when Hart refused von Gumpach’s request to ask the Zongli Yamen for funds to purchase an astronomical library and observatory.20 The two held a number of face-to-face meetings, in which Hart asked him to learn Chinese so he could teach his students and refused von Gumpach’s request to become the head of the Translators College. He also declined to increase his salary, instead offering him a year’s pay in case he wanted to resign to return to Britain. At one of these sessions, von Gumpach told Hart that he was “unpopular, because I don’t go out enough, because I don’t take my wife out, etc. I am very inconsiderate, tyrannical!”21 Hart stopped paying von Gumpach in the fall of 1868, providing him with one year’s salary as a severance payment, which von Gumpach decided to regard as a bonus.

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A year later, he asked Hart for his salary. When Hart refused and dismissed him, von Gumpach brought a case against Hart at the Supreme Court for China and Japan in Shanghai. Chief Judge Edmund Hornby upheld von Gumpach’s case that Hart had made false representations to the Zongli Yamen. In his defense, Hart denied that he had induced von Gumpach to come to China on false representations. He also argued that he had acted as an agent of the Chinese state and that therefore the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction. Hornby ordered this defense struck from the record.22 Hart appealed against Hornby’s ruling in London at the Privy Council, which was made up of senior politicians, clerics, and judges and functioned, in this case, as the United Kingdom’s highest court of appeal. He was defended by the same lawyers Lay had engaged. They argued that Hart had not acted willfully, as von Gumpach had charged, because in 1869 he had persuaded the Zongli Yamen to reinstate von Gumpach. More fundamentally, in line with their earlier expressed views, they defended Hart by arguing that as IG he could not be held accountable in a British court.23 The Privy Council’s judgment was subtle. It argued that Hart did not enjoy absolute privilege because it could not be right that an official could never be taken to court. Their reasoning was that while officials acted in the name of the monarch and the monarch could do no wrong, when an official acted wrongly, he therefore ceased to be the monarch’s substitute and hence lost his absolute privilege. However, the judgment went on, Hart did enjoy limited privilege, in the same way that the communications of all officials were privileged. The consequence was that the burden of proof for demonstrating malicious intent lay with von Gumpach. The Privy Council ordered Hornby’s judgment to be set aside and von Gumpach to pay all costs. Von Gumpach’s dismissal stood. He would stay in Shanghai, keeping up a busy campaign against Hart, until his death in 1875. This was a narrower victory than Hart had wanted. The Privy Council made it difficult but not impossible for Hart to be taken to court. He thus proceeded to shore up his position. In 1870, he circulated to Customs commissioners the legal advice that Lay had secured, “as it may be of use to have them on record and at hand in each office.”24 For good measure, IG circular 20 of 1870 forbade Service staff to take legal action against another member “on pain of dismissal.”25 Hart’s victory over von Gumpach did not mean an end to his struggles with the consuls. There would be several more

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cases in the 1870s in which consuls contested the authority of Hart and the Service.26 The consuls were usually backed by Thomas Wade, Britain’s minister. Although Hart had been a Wade admirer, their relationship had deteriorated, with Hart believing that Wade was out to “smash us.”27 However, after Wade was replaced in 1881 by Harry Parkes, whom the Qing had held hostage during the Arrow War, the relationship between the Service and British diplomatic and consular staff in China improved, not just because of the change in personalities but also because Britain’s position in China had become more fragile, and thus supporting the Service became an important element in Britain’s China policy.28 The assumption was that “everything depended upon the Inspector General and the Minister being on good terms; and that, if they were friends, everything would go on well.”29 Hart had used the law, the internal logic of sovereign thinking, the desire of foreign ministers in Beijing to prevent consular entanglement in trade disputes, and a change in Britain’s international position to assert the authority of the Service. It was now legally defined as a Qing agency. Consuls could not treat commissioners as their helpmates but had to bow to their authority. The right of the Service to impose sanctions on British merchants was accepted. Implicitly, the Privy Council had curtailed the scope of extraterritoriality. There remained one problem. For foreign merchants to be able to accept Service authority, an appeals process needed to be instituted. This was provided by the creation of the Joint Investigation Court. If a merchant believed that the Customs had erred, he would inform his consul, who would ask the superintendent to convene a meeting at the Custom House. The superintendent presided, the relevant consul was present to ask questions so that the merchant could state his case, and the commissioner acted as an assistant to the superintendent. The task of the court was to establish the facts. If a merchant remained convinced the Service was in the wrong, he would ask his consul to pursue the case through diplomatic channels, that is, by having the issue discussed between their minister in Beijing and the Zongli Yamen.30 This was a safety valve designed to ensure that the Service could not be charged with arbitrariness, to diminish local conflicts, and ensure that few difficult cases ever made it to Beijing. It was entirely successful: few merchants ever thought it worth the expense and the wait to avail themselves of this mechanism.

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Sidelining the Superintendents

Ren Zhiyong, a scholar at the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has recently argued that the superintendents continued to play a major role in the management of China’s trade with the West during the Qing.31 To make this case, Ren combed through Grand Council archives held at the Number One Historical Archives. Ren is correct that the superintendents should not be ignored: they were important territorial officials and were the recipients of Customs revenue until the Chinese Revolution of 1911. Nonetheless, in the same way that Hart distanced commissioners from consuls, he also ensured that there would be a well-defined space between the commissioners and the superintendents. There was a clear shift in his stance. If shortly after becoming IG he insisted that commissioners should subordinate themselves to the superintendent, a decade later he insisted that commissioners and superintendents were equal and that the commissioners should involve the superintendents as little as possible. Before outlining this process, it is necessary to make additional remarks about the superintendents. The opening of new treaty ports and the requirement in the trade treaties that consuls would deal with officials of equivalent status meant that Prince Gong had to appoint a large number of new superintendents. To avoid them being seen as Beijing men, he rejected the suggestion that they should be appointed by the Zongli Yamen but instead insisted that the governor of the relevant province and one of the two high commissioners for trade nominate a person, whose appointment then would be confirmed by an imperial edict.32 Fan Baichuan, a historian of the Self-Strengthening Movement, has suggested that, like the consuls, the superintendents saw commissioners as their subordinates.33 Not many dispatches between superintendents and commissioners survive, but those that do bear Fan Baichuan out. Superintendents addressed commissioners through “instructions” (札, zha), a term only a superior could use.34 The fact that superintendents issued funds to the commissioner to perform his duties will only have reinforced this perception,35 as did the fact that superintendents appointed deputies, a linguist, and a shuban (书办), a special clerk responsible for calculating customs dues, to the commissioner’s staff.36 In IG circular 8 of 1864, about “the spirit that ought to animate the Customs Service,” Hart defined the

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commissioner as “the subordinate of the Superintendent”37 and warned that “it is to be expected from those who take the pay, and who are the servants of the Chinese government, that they, at least, will so act as to neither offend susceptibilities, nor excite jealousies, suspicion, and dislike.” Hart soon took steps to reduce the influence of superintendents over Custom Houses. It will be remembered that when the Shanghai model was extended to other ports, He Guiqing had insisted that local officials rather than Beijing should appoint commissioners and other foreign staff to the Custom Houses in their jurisdictions. In 1864, Li Hongzhang argued that this principle remained in effect. Hart’s response, as recorded in his diary, was “if this principle be allowed, the Customs Service must fall through.”38 He resolved, “I must try and get the Keen-tuh [jiandu, superintendent] disassociated from local offices . . . I must have it clearly understood that no Keen-tuh is to dismiss or procure an Impl. Court [Imperial Court Edict] to dismiss a shwuy-wu-sze [税务司, shuiwusi, commissioner] without reference to the Inspector General.” In the summer of 1864, Hart drew up a set of customs regulations, which were approved by the Zongli Yamen and made clear that the Inspector General reported only to the Zongli Yamen and that he, and he alone, was “responsible for the appointment, raising and lowering of salaries, transfer among the various ports, and the dismissal of all foreigners serving in the tax administration.”39 If a local official was unhappy, the only thing he could do was to push the issue up the bureaucratic hierarchy until it reached Beijing, where the Zongli Yamen then would raise it with Hart. The loss of control over the Jiujiang Custom House, which had opened in 1863, was one reason why Hart became determined to restrict the influence of the superintendent.40 When it was set up, Hart had agreed that the superintendent could appoint three deputies to the Custom House. One joined the indoor staff, filling in forms to which the superintendent had previously affixed his seal. The two others became members of the outdoor staff, with one involved in policing the harbor and the third a general factotum. Despite Hart’s hopes that all would work together in harmony,41 the three deputies became the real chiefs and were treated as such by Custom House staff and outsiders. Charles Hannen, Jiujiang commissioner in 1868, reported that “the position of Commissioner at Jiujiang seemed to have become simply a kind of chief-clerkship under the Superintendent.” Hannen’s successor, F. Kleinwächter, “found the office disorderly, discipline lax

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and the position and power of the wei-yuen [deputies] inconsistent with the discharge of his own duties.” The issue came to a head when Kleinwächter took umbrage after the superintendent ordered him to manage the Jiujiang Custom House together with his deputy.42 He insisted on dealing with the superintendent directly, compelled him to come to the Custom House personally to stamp his forms, and even searched the superintendent’s desk in the Custom House, hoping to find evidence of corruption. When he failed to find it, his position became untenable, and he turned over charge to his second and left for Beijing. Hart appointed E. B. Drew to the Jiujiang Custom House and instructed him to reduce the influence of the superintendent, courteously but firmly.43 A year later, in IG circular 25 of 1869, Hart told commissioners to keep the superintendent at a distance, arguing that in most cases “the Commissioner is competent to act without reference to the Superintendent.”44 He did not want any second Jiujiangs. Hart was able to strengthen the Service by improving its financial position. In 1866, after the Arrow War indemnities had been paid off, Hart secured an annual allocation from the Zongli Yamen of Tls. 748,000 for the upkeep of the Inspectorate and local Custom Houses.45 Salaries were now paid from a customs allowance issued by the Inspectorate to each Maritime Custom House,46 eliminating the financial dependence of commissioners on superintendents. Another source of income was the proceeds of fines and confiscations. Forty percent was retained by the commissioner, with the Zongli Yamen and the superintendent splitting the rest.47 In addition, in 1868 the Zongli Yamen agreed that 70 percent of tonnage dues would be placed at the disposal of the Customs Service. Robert Hart would finance the activities of the Marine Department out of these monies. The financial balance of power had turned in the Service’s favor. The unhappiness of commissioners with being treated as lowly assistants of Qing officials pushed Hart to change his definition of their relationship with superintendents.48 In IG circular 24 of 1869, Hart acknowledged that commissioners had cause to complain about their social status, although he defended it as having been necessary in the early years of the Service to gain the Qing’s trust.49 Hart could do so also because senior Qing officials became more supportive of commissioners. They argued that superintendents were changed frequently and hence did not understand the local situation.50

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In 1873, Hart instructed his commissioners not only to avoid involving superintendents but also to insist that they were their equals. In IG circular 13 of that year, he told commissioners first to stop referring to superintendents as “His Excellency” because “the Chinese mode of address ta-jen [大人, daren] does not necessarily become ‘Excellency’ in English.”51 Second, commissioners were to refrain from phrases such as “the Superintendent has ordered me to do so and so” because “the Superintendent does not order a Commissioner”; the commissioner and the superintendent “act conjointly.” If a problem arose that required contact with a superintendent, commissioners should say that they would “consult with” the superintendent and that a decision was the result of mutual agreement. If no consensus could be reached, the superintendent’s view would prevail, but the commissioner was to report to Hart so that he could discuss it with the Zongli Yamen.52 In the first decade of his stewardship of the Customs Service, Hart secured a clear position for the Service between the consuls and the superintendents. He relied on legal arguments and the backing of foreign ministers in Beijing to resist consular assertions of authority. He was more cautious in fending off the superintendents. But the growing reputation of the Service and the fact that it delivered the goods guaranteed him the required support. Between 1861 and 1873, customs duties rose from Tls. 4.4 million to more than Tls. 9 million; tonnage dues increased from Tls. 164,000 to Tls. 454,000.53 That kind of success speaks for itself.

BUREAUCRATIZATION: FORMS, REGISTERS, AND CORRESPONDENCES

IG circular 8 of 1864 stated that the duties of commissioners were “simple, though important, and are such that a man of common sense can hardly fail to perform them satisfactorily and efficiently, guided as he is by Port Regulations, which provide for almost every ordinary contingency, and aided by an office routine that ought to make the transaction of business a matter of mechanical correctness.”54 That description exemplifies Hart’s ideal of the Service. It was to function like a well-oiled engine: noted for what it delivered, in this case revenue and a stable trading order, but without drawing attention to its inner workings. Robert Hart used report forms,

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registers, lists, and tables to collect information to turn the Customs Service into such a machine. Below, I survey the main ways in which the Customs Service collected and disseminated information, focusing on how its systems contributed to making the Service into a centralized bureaucracy.

IG Circulars

The most important Customs document was the IG circular, of which around 7,500 were issued in its history. IG circulars were documents written by the Inspector General and addressed to the commissioner. From 1875 they were printed by the Statistical Department and countersigned by the statistical secretary to confirm their authenticity.55 IG circulars had the force of law within the Customs Service. To give some examples, in 1863 circulars demanded a monthly report on a standardized form on seizures and confiscations, set out the rules to be observed in correspondence with the IG, determined the shape of quarterly returns for revenue assessments, ordered registers to be kept for the correspondence of commissioners, and prohibited commissioners from engaging in trade themselves. In 1867, circulars instructed commissioners to fill in a form detailing their outdoor staff, specified the design of flags that Service vessels and buildings were to fly, stated that earnings from Service publications had to be remitted to a certain account in Shanghai, and informed commissioners of new forms that they had to use to report imports and exports. Hart issued thirty circulars in 1869. They dealt with such topics as tonnage measurement and the duty to be paid on clocks and watches, provided new forms for quarterly returns of trade, introduced a detailed new system of accounting, provided regulations to be followed in coolie emigration, and introduced a standard return for reporting Custom House property. In 1873, IG circulars introduced a new Customs flag, laid down how and in what form notices to mariners were to be issued, stipulated how subordinates were to be trained, formulated shipping rules for Chinese-owned steam vessels built abroad, and provided a standard format for the Chinese version of the cargo manifest. IG circulars were confidential. Commissioners were not to share them with anyone outside the Service, and even within the Service their circu-

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lation was strictly limited. Each Custom House was to maintain an upto-date set. Detailed indexes made them easy to use as reference works, allowing commissioners and their assistants to determine what to do in almost any situation. IG circulars sustained the institutional memory of the Service. Because they were secret, they created a clear border around the Service, setting it apart from the rest of Qing officialdom and the general public. IG circulars, finally, were an expression of the ultimate authority of the Inspector General.

Dispatches

Dispatches were short documents used to request authorization for a particular action or to issue an instruction or notification. Hart insisted that they be produced in a standard way. He stipulated that they were to be written on foolscap, leave a margin on the left for binding, and be numbered consecutively for each year, with the first dispatch of the year detailing how many had been sent and received in the previous year.56 They were to be docketed, addressed, and folded in a standard way, with envelopes marked “On Service.” These requirements ensured that no dispatch was lost, that they could be registered and indexed, and that the history of a certain action could be recovered quickly. Dispatches were confidential: “Linguists and members of the Outdoor Staff are not to be employed on despatches,” and “the clerks employed on such correspondence are from time to time to be reminded that it is confidential work they are entrusted with and that they are neither to gossip about it with their fellows nor in any way make public either subject or matter unauthorizedly.”57 Confidentiality reinforced the separation of the Customs Service from other bureaucracies and from merchants; it also strengthened the esprit de corps, at least of the indoor staff. Hart was a stickler for detail. In 1868, he complained, I regret to have to state that it seems to be almost impossible to induce the various offices to attend to the simple instructions issued to them relative to the folding and docketing of despatches and enclosures. . . . I now request you to inform the clerks in your Office that in future the detection of any mistake in the documents

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forwarded to the Inspectorate will be followed up by the placing of the name of the clerk responsible for the correctness of such documents at the bottom of the list of the class to which he may belong.58

Their regular promotions would be delayed. Hart believed that the Chinese form for dispatches was superior to the Western one. In 1873, in an IG circular detailing how dispatches were to be written, he wrote, “Chinese official communications may in fact be taken as models: their two grand qualities are that every despatch is, in itself and for the purposes of that despatch, a perfect document and that, in each, the simple chronological order is followed, first, in the narration of events, and then, so to speak, in the remarks of suggestions or arguments that follow.”59

Semiofficial Correspondence

In contrast to the forms that commissioners had to fill out and the dispatches they had to send, Hart did not set a special format for “semiofficial” letters. They were to be on “any non-Customs business, whether affecting foreigners or natives, that is causing a reference to Peking or that is likely to evoke the intervention of Peking officials.”60 Semiofficial correspondence was also the right place for a commissioner to “comment on or explain” actions he had taken as communicated in dispatches. Hart did not want to be embarrassed by being “the last to learn” in Beijing of events happening in a port. Semiofficial letters were personal in tone and direct. They were not indexed or registered, so they did not become part of the official record. While Hart saved the semiofficial letters he received, he did not make copies of those he sent. It is not clear when semiofficial letters were introduced, but in IG circular 15 of 1874 Hart mentioned that letters of appointment for commissioners included the stipulation that they were to “address me privately every fortnight” and that in them commissioners were to “keep me informed of interesting or important occurrences.” The point of the IG circular was to remind commissioners not to use semiofficial letters for routine affairs. All formal business should be recorded through dispatches, so that actions were traceable.

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Few pre-1900 semiofficial letters remain. The Inspectorate archives were destroyed during the Boxer Rebellion, and its holdings of semiofficial correspondence have been lost. Few local Custom House archives are currently open to researchers, so we do not have access to their holdings of semiofficial correspondence. Until well after 1900, they were treated as private rather than Service property, with the result that Customs commissioners often took their semiofficial correspondence with them upon retirement or dismissal. We may, however, get some idea of the likely way in which Hart addressed commissioners in semiofficial correspondence from a letter he wrote to Zhenjiang commissioner Kleinwächter in 1867, before semiofficial letters had become established. Kleinwächter had wanted to take action against Chinese merchants who purchased transit certificates from foreign merchants. Transit certificates entitled cargo owned by foreigners to pass through lijin toll stations without paying any charges. Chinese merchants were not allowed to purchase them. In his letter, Hart told Kleinwächter: General principles to guide you: 1—It will be sage to remember that in the interior of any country, it is bad policy to concede to aliens rights to be exercised daily which are withheld from natives. . . . 2—It should be borne in mind that the Inspectorate aims at being a model institution, and that it should not volunteer its assistance in questionable cases. Now, when the native officials find a native evading the operation of local taxation by getting a foreigner to pass his goods under the transit system, they are literally in their right when they punish him; but, apart from the fact that the punishment is only too likely to be an exaggerated one, and out of all proportion, it is open to question whether or not the native is not morally right in resisting by the best means in his power, say by taking advantage of the foreigner’s cupidity, the mistaken official action which makes his position inferior in his own country to that of the alien.

It was impossible to put a message like this in a circular, but it could be stated in a semiofficial letter. The semiofficial letters are reminiscent of the secret palace memorial system introduced by the Yongzheng Emperor, who reigned from 1722 to 1735. As the post-1900 semiofficial correspondence makes clear,61 semiofficial

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letters created a personal link between the IG and Custom commissioners. Besides local issues, in their semiofficial letters commissioners aired their frustrations, including about Customs policy, and frequently, when they assumed charge of a Custom House, about their predecessors. As with the secret palace memorial system, the semiofficial correspondence created a personal link between Hart and his commissioners. Because commissioners did not know what their colleagues were telling him—and only Hart read all of them—the letters also were an excellent means for the IG to keep the commissioners guessing about one another and so prevent united opposition to his rule.

Forms

The commissioner’s life was one of filling out forms. By 1875, commissioners were obliged to submit no fewer than twenty different reports in standardized form, many monthly, some quarterly, a few semiannually, and another batch at year end. Every month, each commissioner sent in reports on district occurrences, service movements, and collections and expenditures. Each quarter, they were to deliver a revenue return, a set of abstract accounts, a confiscation report, and a trade report. Confidential reports on staff were required every six months. At the end of the year, commissioners filled in an annual estimate; a list of lights, buoys, and beacons; a report on total annual revenue collections; an annual trade return; a trade report; a stationery requisition; a report on dispatches sent and received; and a number of other ones. Besides this set schedule of reports, Hart also occasionally required special reports, for instance on changes in local practice, steamers owned or chartered by Chinese officials, requisitions for supplies, and joint investigation reports. This was a comprehensive system of data collection. These reports drilled deep down into the operations of each Custom House. In 1868, Hart required Customs commissioners to complete “within a week” a form about the stationery used in their Maritime Custom House. Hart wanted to know how much was used, at what cost, of various forms of paper, as well as of envelopes, registers, letter books, pens, pencils, knives, erasers, wax, gum, and ink.62 The “Returns on Trade” report divided commodities according to size, type, color, and quality, with cotton goods di-

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vided into tens if not hundreds of different categories. Tonnage dues returns demanded information by month about how many “sailing vessels, steamers, river steamers, and native craft” had entered port, what their tonnage was, from where they came, under what flag they sailed, and for which port they had been bound when they left.63 From 1863, Hart also demanded information on the foreign and Chinese indoor staff at Custom Houses. The form he designed required names in English and Chinese, age, nationality, date of first employment in the Customs, present position, and pay.64 This information served Hart in defining personnel hierarchies, which for indoor staff consisted of commissioners, deputy commissioners, and first-, second-, and third-class assistants.65 He prescribed salary levels and stipulated how many of each class of employees there should be in each port. Once he had done this for the indoor staff, he did the same for the outdoor staff, the main ranks of which included the tide surveyor, responsible for overseeing the work of all outdoor staff; the examiner, who, as the name suggests, worked in Customs examination sheds, the bunds, or on pontoons to examine cargo; and tidewaiters, stationed on vessels to guard against illegal loading and unloading and also to supervise the transfer of cargo to the shore. Outdoor ranks were, like the indoor ranks, subdivided into various grades, each of which attracted a standard rate of pay. To further establish control over the Customs staff, in 1868 Hart instructed commissioners to submit a confidential report on “the conduct and qualifications of the Customs’ employees under your orders.”66 Hart wanted to know whether a member of staff was punctual, attentive, cheerful in his work, kept good relations with his colleagues, was “steady in habits” and making progress in his Chinese, and whether he had any special qualifications. His object, he stated, was “to make myself fully acquainted with the merits and demits of the various Customs’ employees in order that deserving men may be promoted.” Not everybody liked this, with many preferring promotion simply on the basis of seniority, that is, length of service. Hart compromised by agreeing that only a few promotions would be based on selection.67 From 1873, Customs staff in established posts were listed in a service list, which was annually published.68 This was not an initiative by Robert Hart but had been suggested by indoor staff. What began as an exercise in

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enforcing a hierarchy of authority, and thus of subordination, came to be used in the articulation of a new status hierarchy. Hart’s regulations, reporting system, and correspondence series tied together and instilled bureaucratic discipline into what otherwise would have been a fragmented organization. Hart’s disciplining instincts, however strong, were tempered by a sense of the limits of regulation and an awareness of the importance of local differences. He wanted commissioners to use common sense: “It is fallacious to suppose, that, because action conflicts with the principle on which a rule is based, it therefore conflicts with principle, and must not be taken. It happens continually that cases occur demanding exceptional action.”69 He did not want commissioners to be mere functionaries. He urged them to take the initiative in developing “improvements in their own offices or reforms in the neighbourhood.”70 However, while he endorsed initiative, he insisted that commissioners keep him informed. “I am unwilling to accept responsibility of action concealed from me.” To move ahead and gain promotion to commissioner rank, it was important to impress the chief by showing common sense and initiative. That, too, reinforced the IG’s control of the Service.

GOING OFFSHORE: THE MARINE DEPARTMENT

“To go safely, we must proceed slowly” was Hart’s mantra.71 In 1865, Hart had written “A Bystander’s View” (局外旁观论), setting out what he believed the Qing needed to do to become a modern state, such as adopting Western technologies, creating centralized and efficient bureaucracies, and reforming the tax system. His suggestions went nowhere. The Zongli Yamen submitted Hart’s memorandum to the emperor, who ordered it to be circulated among the highest officials for comment, but few responses were received, and the document was quietly shelved.72 Hart from then on launched projects under the aegis of the Service, trying now this and then that. Few of his initiatives would work out, but the Marine Department, whose purpose was defined as to “improve the approaches to the ports, and facilitate navigation along the Chinese seaboard,”73 did become a success, helped by the fact that 70 percent of tonnage dues was allocated to the improvement of navigation,74 by the fact that the disorder along the China coast provided the Service with a niche into which it could thrust itself, and by

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the fact that it was in a prime position to introduce new naval and shipping technologies to China. And so the Marine Department set out to “render navigation on the Coast as easily as walking down Broadway by gas-light.”75

Centralizing Impulses

It was not the case that nothing had been done before. In April 1858, as he sailed into Shanghai during the Arrow War, Elgin noted that “a floating light house, a succession of buoys marking the channel, and a light-tower” had guided his way into the city.76 At Yantai, too, the superintendent had placed lights on an island near the coast, and in Xiamen, the Customs commissioner had taken control of “a local fishing light, first shown at a temple on Taitan Island” and replaced it with a stronger one. At Guangzhou, the Lintin, the infamous opium receiving ship, had “accidentally sunk.” A light was fixed to a mast that stuck out of the water, and it became “the first light house in Canton.”77 In IG circular 10 of 1868, which announced the formation of the Marine Department, Robert Hart was at pains to show respect for these efforts, noting that in many ports—Niuzhuang, Tianjin, Shanghai, Ningbo, Fuzhou, Danshui, and Xiamen—buoys, beacons, and lights had been established. He justified the creation of the Marine Department as making it possible to plan centrally and so avoid wasting scarce resources. In the previous year, the Inspectorate, he wrote, had worked on devising a comprehensive plan for improving safe navigation “from Niuzhuang [in the Northeast] to Hainan” so as to “husband resources and produce results of real and lasting utility.”78 Hart took the initiative away from the commissioners. IG circular 10 told them that they should forward to the Inspectorate “suggestions as to work to be undertaken by the Marine Department.”79 The Marine Department, staffed by experienced engineers and navigational experts, would judge the projects as to their technical feasibility and priority; the Inspectorate would keep overall control and allocate funding within the limits of its budget. The original design for the Marine Department was that it was to be headed by a marine commissioner, who reported directly to Hart and who was aided by a lighthouse engineer and a harbor engineer. Captain Charles S. Forbes of the Royal Navy, who had served in the Lay-Osborn

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Flotilla, was appointed to the post of marine commissioner in 1868 but resigned less than two years later to join the Californian gold rush. The appointment of David Marr Henderson as lighthouse engineer worked out much better. A qualified engineer who had worked for the leading glass manufacturer of the day, the Chance Brothers, with whom he had fallen out, he was recruited in 1869. He made his career in the Customs Service, retiring in 1898, after having built most of the lighthouses along the China coast.80 A harbor engineer was never appointed. Hart’s initial plan divided the coast into three sections, but this was adjusted to two soon after.81 One was headquartered in Shanghai and was responsible for overseeing the ports to the north and along the Yangzi River. The other operated from Fuzhou and oversaw all ports to the south.82 The first two divisional inspectors were the Frenchman S. A. Viguier and the American captain A. M. Bisbee, once more exemplifying the effort to keep the Customs Service international. Bisbee, like Henderson, would have a long Customs career, becoming coast inspector and Shanghai harbormaster in 1881, serving in that capacity for the next twenty years. They reported directly to Robert Hart. Under them were harbormasters, who remained formally subordinate to the Customs commissioner. Because “there is not such a quantity of shipping . . . as would warrant the appointment of a separate Harbour Master” for each port,83 Hart stated, tide surveyors were ordered to double up as harbormasters. They were responsible for managing anchorages, assigning berths, running a pilotage service, supervising local lighthouse keepers, monitoring the harbor police if there was one, and maintaining local aids to navigation. Hart admitted in IG circular 10 that it would have been logical to make the Marine Department into an entirely separate institution. He justified making it an integral part of the Customs Service on the grounds of economy.84

Lighting the China Coast

In 1870, Robert Hart produced two memoranda for the Zongli Yamen, the first providing an outline plan for the lighthouses he planned to build and the second a detailed account of how tonnage dues had been spent and how he planned to spend them in the future. The latter text was an aide memoire for the Zongli Yamen to help rebut charges that the Qing had

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not implemented treaty stipulations, which had required it to use tonnage dues to improve harbor and navigational facilities.85 The first memorandum provides a rare description of the China coast as seen from the water. Hart opened the memorandum by remarking, rather glibly, that the China coast was “comparatively free from shoals, sunken rocks, and dangerous headlands.” He did admit that “fogs in spring, typhoons in summer, and the heavy northerly blows in winter” posed dangers. The rest of the memorandum set out, treaty port by treaty port, Hart’s plan for improving navigation. At Tianjin, for instance, he wrote that “the bar off Taku [Dagu] is an inconvenience” making “the approach dangerous,” as it continues to be today, with a narrow channel cut through the Dagu Bar to allow ships to enter from the shallow and hence choppy waters of the Bohai Gulf. The low-lying coast deprived navigators of orientation points. Hart’s plan called for buoys to mark the bar, a lighthouse, and beacons to help navigators. By keeping two beacons in line, one behind the other, a ship’s navigator could be sure he was following the channel and not be set off course by tide or wind. Shanghai was “the port most frequented by shipping, but also the least easy of approach.” From sea, the Yangzi River was blocked by “the Saddle Islands and Gutzlaff,” respectively Nanyushan (南鱼山) and Dajishan (大戢山), from the south and “the high island, known as Sha-wei-shan” (沙尾山) from the north. Dangerous rocks lay between these points and the mouth of the Yangzi River. Sailors had to rely on reverse bearings—looking to the rear from the stern of the ship—on Shaweishan to find their way into the Yangzi River. A lightship had been anchored there, and the Shanghai Customs provided pilots to take ships from Shaweishan into Shanghai. Shifting shoals and tides rendered the Yangzi River channel itself difficult to navigate, and the entrance from the Yangzi River into the Huangpu River, which led to Shanghai, was blocked by a sandbar. A tide gauge indicated the level of water over the bar, as did flags with numbers flown from the Wusong harbormaster’s flagstaff. Three beacons served as leading marks for the best course over the bar. Hart’s memorandum envisaged three lighthouses for Shanghai. He also was considering removing the bar blocking the Huangpu River but wanted expert advice “from Holland” to ensure that the Qing would not end up “burying sycee [a form of ingot currency] in the mud.”86 At Ningbo, the memorandum went on, a dangerous rock called “Tiger’s Tail” (虎尾石, Huweishi) meant that “any miscalculation of the strength of

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the tide, or any mismanagement of the sails . . . will endanger vessels.” The rock had been buoyed, and “three lights have been placed in such a way as to make the approach to the entrance of the river “easy in the extreme.”87 According to Hart, Xiamen’s harbor was made dangerous by “many sunken rocks,” but “buoys and beacons have been placed on them,” and a light had been erected on one of “the seven islands through which vessels pass when entering or leaving the estuary.” As for Guangzhou, Hart stated, “no necessity for lights has ever been known to exist at the mouth of the Pearl River.” Pagodas along the hills served as beacons indicating the course through the shoals in the river, and new beacons had been placed “on the three rocks between Honam [河南岛, Henandao] and the city.” Over the next three decades, the Marine Department worked to improve conditions in accordance with the general plan developed by Hart. The first program of construction focused on making the approaches to Shanghai safer. Lighthouses were put up on Gutzlaff Island, North Saddle, and Shaweishan; a new lightship was anchored at the Yangzi River entrance. Then the focus shifted elsewhere. Lighthouses were established on Chapel Island (东椗岛, Dongdingdao) south of Xiamen and on Middle Dog (东犬山, Dongquanshan), at the entrance of the Min River near Fuzhou. More were also established on Turnabout (牛山, Niushan), Lamocks (东澎岛, Dongpengdao) near Shantou in northern Guandong, and Ockseu (乌邱屿, Wuqiuyu) near Xiamen, as well as on the dangerous Shandong Promontory and on West Volcano Island (鱼腥脑, Yuxingnao) near Hangzhou Bay to aid ships traveling on the busy Shanghai-Ningbo Route. Many lights and buoys were also provided along the Yangzi and Pearl Rivers. In the second half of the 1870s, a further lightship was anchored in the Yangzi Estuary, the Kiutoan (九段, Jiuduan), as well as one off the Dagu Bar. The approaches to Shantou were marked by three lights, while lighthouses were also put up at key headlands near Yantai and Xiamen, on Eluanbi (鹅銮鼻) on Taiwan’s most southerly point, and on Shandong’s southeastern promontory. The great lighthouse-building program was completed when major lights were established in the northeast to mark the Liaodong Peninsula promontory, on an island near Hong Kong, on Hainan Island, and, finally, on Cape Cami on the Leizhou Peninsula.88 By 1892, there were 104 lighthouses, seventy-nine buoys, and fifty-eight beacons listed on the “List of Lights” of the Customs.89

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The Marine Department did much more than this. Pilotage services were provided for all ports. Hart’s original design was to make it compulsory to use pilots and to have the harbormaster be in sole control of them. In this he failed: pilotage became optional, and the Service’s harbormasters were required to consult with consuls and local Chambers of Commerce. But in 1868, the Qing promulgated the General Pilotage Regulations, which provided for licensed pilots, a local board involving consuls and Chambers of Commerce to set local regulations and decide on fees, and an examination board headed by the harbormaster.90 Pilots were uniformed, sailed on clearly numbered vessels, and flew a Chinese pilotage flag, the upper half yellow and the lower, green. Pilots took vessels from outer anchorages outside port into the port itself and to a berth in the inner anchorages and, if available, a mooring buoy or pontoon berth. The Marine Department published notices to mariners to alert sailors to any important changes in aids to navigation.91 Harbormasters flew flags from semaphore masts to inform vessels of local conditions. Its tracing office supplied up-to-date tracings of charts. Hart attempted to develop a weather-forecasting system. In 1869, he announced that he wanted to use existing Customs facilities to establish a string of meteorological stations, using precise barometers, temperature and rainfall gauges, and wind-strength meters to help the “scientific world” and aid “seafaring men and others on these Eastern Seas.”92 That part of the plan fell through, but data were gathered and sent to the Jesuit Siccawei observatory in Shanghai, which developed a typhoon-warning system.93 In Shanghai, too, the Marine Department established a River Police in 1868, modeled on the Thames Police and staffed with men recruited from it, to control traffic on the Huangpu River and the very busy Suzhou Creek, which connected Shanghai to Suzhou and its waterlogged hinterland, which was a center of silk cultivation.94

Lighthouses as Symbols

The Marine Department was a vehicle for the Customs Service to carve out a major space for itself in China’s coastal world. It was part of the transformation in seafaring that took place during the second half of the nineteenth

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century. Steam replaced sail, shipping companies established regular services, the Suez Canal was opened in 1869, and the telegraph reached China in the early 1870s. International agreements about ship lights and navigational rules of the road, as well as international collaboration in producing reliable charts and pilotage books, all helped to make the seas a safer place. Providing safe anchorages and pontoons, bunding shores, and erecting secure warehouses facilitated the landing and loading of cargo. Lighthouses were one element in the nineteenth-century transformation in navigation, making it possible to ship ever more goods ever more cheaply. The Marine Department implemented this transformation along the China coast, thus helping bring about the acceleration in foreign trade and at the same time strengthening the base of the Customs Service in China’s coastal world. Lighthouses were a key element of the changes. Although deceptively simple-looking structures, lighthouses are based on sophisticated science and complex engineering. Chemistry was important for the manufacture of high-quality glass. Knowledge of optics was critical to concentrating light so that a light beam could be thrown many miles out over the sea but also aimed precisely, just above the horizon, so sailors would not be blinded. Precision manufacturing techniques were needed to achieve the required clearness of the glass and to polish them so that they had just the right angles and could fit into the metal frames of the light aperture. Lighthouses had to be built to withstand harsh climatic conditions, requiring a good knowledge of physics, material science, and engineering. Complex steam-driven machinery was needed to rotate the light reliably, predictably, and constantly. None of this was much use if not backed up by a bureaucracy that ensured that the various lights had different characteristics so navigators could distinguish among them and that these characteristics were communicated accurately to hydrographic agencies around the world so that they could indicate them on their charts. Lighthouses needed to be manned and serviced constantly, again requiring an efficient bureaucracy. Few institutions symbolize modern globalization’s dependence on technology, expertise, and bureaucracy quite so well as lighthouses. But there is even more to the symbolic force of lighthouses. The complex meanings of lighthouses, the disruptions they could cause in local society, and the anxieties they could generate is illustrated by the building in the early 1880s of the South Cape lighthouse on the southern tip of Taiwan. It was of “an exceptional construction.”95 The wrought-iron tower,

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made by Armstrong & Co. and fifty feet high, doubled as a fort. Inside the lighthouse were living rooms, storerooms, a kitchen, a water cistern, and an armory. The brick wall around its compound had loopholes for guns, a twenty-foot ditch, and barbed-wire fencing. Two eighteen-pound cannons, a Gatling machine gun, and a mortar—all new weapons—ensured that the lighthouse could withstand a serious siege.96 All this was thought necessary because southern Taiwan was occupied by people referred to as “wild aborigines” in Western reports of the time.97 The reports of George Taylor, the first lighthouse keeper, were full of descriptions of conflicts between Qing military forces and the local population. The fears for the safety of the lighthouse crew were not just fantasy. In 1867, the crew of an American vessel that had been shipwrecked had been killed, and others had been kidnapped and held for ransom by a man named Tok-e-Tok, who presented himself to Taylor as the leader of eighteen tribes in southern Taiwan.98 Taiwan was contested territory, involving local indigenous populations especially in the south; Hakka immigrants from Fujian and elsewhere in southern China; the Japanese, who sent a punitive expedition to Taiwan in 1874 after some of its sailors had been killed there; the Qing; the Service; and in the 1870s, also the French, who occupied Jilong in northern Taiwan. The South Cape lighthouse, then, was inserted in contested territory. The Zongli Yamen approved the project to erect the South Cape lighthouse in the hope of strengthening the Qing’s presence in southern Taiwan. Some officials, however, worried about the strategic implications of the lighthouse and the ultimate aims of the Customs Service. Liu Ao was a local circuit intendent, associated with Zuo Zongtang, the governor of Fujian. In a memorandum of January 1882, Liu worried that the South Cape lighthouse would provide a base from which a challenger to the Qing’s claims to Taiwan could penetrate north. The Customs Service had wanted to hire locals to help with construction, but this increased Liu’s anxiety, as the Customs Service could thereby build strong links with local society. He was not reassured by promises that lighthouse personnel would not mix with locals, as its foreign staff was bound to want to go hunting in their spare time.99 Liu was right. If George Taylor’s accounts are to be believed, he had a rip-roaring time traveling around southern Taiwan and enjoying “the genial, hospitable Capting, Chief of Kang Kou, Koalut, and the Amias.”100

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As the history of the South Cape lighthouse illustrates, as a symbol and as an instrument of governance, lighthouses could have multiple and conflicting meanings. The Service exploited the Marine Department to create an image of the Service as making an unequivocally positive contribution to the general welfare of humanity, a portrayal that became part of China coast lore and by which the Customs Service came to justify its position.101 In the 1930s, the Customs Service protected this understanding of lighthouses by refusing to let its vessels servicing lighthouses participate in operations against smuggling. It is easy to understand why Robert Hart was so committed to building up the Marine Department. Besides giving the Service responsibility for a whole new type of activity, the Marine Department illustrated the points about the centralization of power, the creation of an efficient and honest bureaucracy, and the adoption of Western technologies that Hart had made in his “A Bystander’s View.”

Other Initiatives

More than the Marine Department kept Robert Hart busy in the late 1860s and early 1870s. In 1873, he established the Statistical Department by fusing the Printing Office and the Returns Department. It printed all forms in use at Custom Houses to “maintain oneness of form and singularity of appearance of all Customs documents.”102 It collected data produced by Custom Houses and then compiled them in series such as the annual Returns on Trade. It made publicly available information in a new tabular format what commodities were shipped where and at what price, using a standard unit of account, the Customs tael, which differed slightly from the tael used by the Board of Revenue, thus reinforcing the difference between the two agencies. The publication of series like the Returns on Trade formed a significant intervention, in that for the first time economic information was made available as a public resource and as authorized by the Qing as official data. In the same way that the Service was an active participant in the transformation of seafaring of the second half of the nineteenth century, it also exploited the age’s statistical revolution. Statistics provided governments— and academics and social critics such as Karl Marx, whose Das Kapital is full of them—with a new way of understanding their societies. Statistics

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were fundamental not just to thinking in terms of national economies but also of governments having tools with which they might govern their economies. The Qing established, somewhat belatedly, its own statistical bureaucracy after 1900 as part of the post-Boxer New Policy reforms.103 Robert Hart appointed specialist secretaries to strengthen the Inspectorate and improve control over individual Custom Houses. The most important was the audit secretary, a post created in 1874. Before this, the chief secretary, James Campbell, had shouldered the responsibility of auditing Customs accounts. Campbell had served in the Treasury and in the Audit Office of the UK government. He revamped the Service’s accounting system in 1869, with the “assistance from Charles Vine, Commissioner of Public Accounts at the Treasury.”104 The new system devised by Campbell centralized financial authority in the Inspectorate so that Custom Houses were unable to make any payments or retain any funds without authorization. “It must be distinctly understood that there can be no admission of claims, or issue of public money, without authority from the Inspector General,” as a memorandum about the new system of accounts made clear.105 The new accounting system enforced the separation of Customs accounts from private ones and ensured that funds allocated for a specific purpose would be used only for that purpose. In an 1870 IG circular, Hart instructed commissioners that they were not to advance money to others, could not pay salaries in advance, and had a duty to ensure that they obtained the best prices for all the goods or services they acquired.106 Commissioners could not retain any income: “you are not to appropriate, in aid of any service, moneys received from incidental or extraneous sources, such as sales of property, of old stores, etc: they must be paid into Account D as Extra Receipts.” Any balances in his accounts had to be sent monthly to the IG’s account with the Oriental Bank in Hong Kong. Nor could Customs commissioners vire between accounts: “you are not to apply the Customs Allowances of the month, or the Tonnage Dues of the month, or the Fines and Confiscations of the month, or the Fees and Special Moneys of the month, to any other purpose than to meet the expenditure authorized to be incurred, under each of these heads of account during the month.”107 Under the new system, a clerk in the Pay Office of a Custom House handled all local expenditures. No payment was to be made without specific written authorization from the IG. Standing authorities covered regular

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expenses of a predictable amount, such as salaries and rents; general authorities were needed to pay for regular but incidental payments, for instance for postage, stationery, and fuel; and special authorities from the IG were needed for anything else. Income and expenditures were to be recorded each day on the day, and no payments were to be made without the appropriate vouchers, which had to be archived.108 From 1874, the audit secretary visited each port once every year to check the accounts. Upon arrival, he was “at once” given the key to the safe and all account books so that he was “able to report to the Inspector General the exact condition in which he found safe and accounts on arrival.”109 The audit secretary had the power to relieve the commissioner of his duties if he found that unauthorized expenditures had been made. The new auditing regime greatly strengthened the control of the Inspectorate and reduced the independence of the commissioners. Paper trails ensured that misdemeanors could be investigated. It meant that financial planning became easier and more reliable, and the record of the accounts enabled Hart to defend the Service from any charges of negligence or wastefulness that might be levied against it.

RECRUITMENT AND BEHAVIOR: “SMART, GOOD LOOKING, AND LUSTY LADS”

Rules, regulations, procedures, and accounts were all important to turn the Customs Service into a modern centralized bureaucracy. Just as crucial was that Hart populated it not with adventurers or opportunists on the make but clerks willing to dedicate their lives to the Service. Customs staff in its early days had been selected by Horatio Lay and George Fitz-Roy in Europe. Hart had raided at first the legations in Beijing and the consular services, offering higher salaries and a wider set of opportunities.110 In a memorandum of 1864, Hart admitted that “scarcely one brought with him to his new position aught save a vague and very general idea of the functions” he was to undertake.111 Few had any understanding of what a Custom House was supposed to do; those who did were “unable to look beyond the red-tape boundaries within which they had been accustomed to act.” The opening of ports not just in China but also in Japan meant that consular bureaucracies as well as business enterprises were recruiting

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heavily. The Customs Service had, as Hart wrote, “to make shift with others whose social position and want of education were prejudicial alike to the standing and efficiency” of the Service.112 Robert Hart instituted a new recruitment process aimed at staffing the Customs Service with “smart, good looking, and lusty lads,” as Robert Bredon, Hart’s brother-in-law, commented on one applicant for appointment.113 In 1874, Hart appointed J. D. Campbell, the man who had overhauled the Service’s auditing system, as nonresident secretary to take charge of the IG’s London office.114 Campbell replaced a part-time purchasing agent, H. C. Batchelor, and would be responsible for the Service’s purchases in the United Kingdom, serving as a listening post at the heart of the British empire, managing recruitment, and looking after Hart’s “wards,” his Chinese children.115 The Customs Service wanted young men with a decent education, presentable in treaty port society, and exhibiting the manly values of the Victorian age. In 1874, Hart introduced an examination system, which reflected these criteria, for recruitment of Europeans to the indoor staff. Hart nominated candidates, and Campbell set them a qualifying or competitive examination before they would be appointed. Candidates had to have “a good secondary education,” meaning the baccalaureate for French and gymnasium for Germans; “for British candidates, in the absence of a University Degree, Oxford or Cambridge Higher Certificate, etc. the highest form in a public school of the first rank” was needed.116 As Catherine Ladds has argued, the Customs Service assessed applicants on academic merit, medical fitness, character, and sociability,117 as well as on handwriting and numerical skills. The surviving records of the London examinations confirm Ladds’s point that the Customs emphasized what was called character just as much as academic merit.118 In 1887, the father of one failed candidate was told by Campbell in 1887 that “the examination is a competitive one, and in striking the balance of merit, physical appearance, and other attributes—strong physique, good manners, gentlemanly bearing, with evidence of tact, temper, and judgment—are as much considered as mental achievements.”119 Campbell went on: “if for instance, a candidate otherwise qualified excels more or less in riding, shooting, swimming, rowing, cricketing, dancing, singing etc, and he comes out equal or even inferior in pursuit of learning to one who does not care for any of these manly sports or accomplishments,”

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he would be preferred. A good—as opposed to outstanding—education was a minimum qualification.120 In a memorandum of 1887, Campbell explained to Hart that the process for the London examinations was that candidates were first assessed for their health by the Customs physician, Dr. S. Macrae. They then were given examinations in obligatory and optional subjects, including Latin, Greek, English, mathematics, political economy, and international law.121 Campbell also assessed them for “all around promise and fitness,” a task accomplished during lunch at Campbell’s Thatched Hut Club in London. Marks were given in all categories, and a ranking of merit was then established. Note that “commissioner” was both a rank and a function in the Service. Commissioners were originally in charge of a Customs district, but as the Service grew, it became a habit to promote staff to the rank of commissioner even if they did not have charge of a Custom House. Where necessary, I make the distinction clear by referring to someone in charge of a Custom House as the Customs commissioner. Cosmopolitanism was a guiding but not absolute principle in recruitment. Frederick Bruce had insisted that the Customs Service should be an international one: “in the interest of the Chinese Government, and in order to conciliate and give confidence in it to the different trading communities, I think the more hybrid it is, and the less open to the charge of representing one foreign nation exclusively, the more smoothly and satisfactorily it will work. No one has pressed this view on Mr Lay more than myself.”122 Bruce wanted to avoid “national jealousies.”123 Hart agreed: the Customs Service, he wrote in 1867, was to avoid “national partisanship of any kind or of taking any action tending to lead either the public or individuals to suppose that the foreign employees of the Chinese Government are actuated by any desire to advance unduly the interests of one, or oppose and obstruct those of another country.”124 The first published list of indoor staff contained fifty-seven British, fourteen French, eleven German, and six Americans; smaller European countries such as Norway and Switzerland might have one or two representatives.125 This cosmopolitan principle was tempered by Hart’s wellknown favoritism toward Irishmen, his own family members, and China coast families. For some in these categories, the Customs, offering a stable and reasonably prestigious career, was their first choice. But others turned toward the Customs Service only after failing out of a university or be-

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ing rejected by a more prestigious civil service branch.126 I illustrate these points below by surveying comments made by Campbell and his successors on candidates they examined in London between 1887 and 1926, when the hiring of foreigners was stopped. O. G. Ready, who Campbell examined in 1887, “had the highest aggregate marks, is a BA of Cambridge, Honours in History and Law.” His one shortcoming was that “his handwriting flows without the aid of punctuation,” but, Campbell believed, “this is only a University habit which will disappear under the influence of official requirement.” O. G. Ready was duly taken on in 1887 but would not live up to his promises; he ended his career as chief assistant B rather than commissioner. Frederick Maze would serve as IG from 1929 until 1943. He was part of the northern Irish Customs Service aristocracy, being the son of Hart’s sister. Campbell wrote that Frederick “has passed a creditable examination in the obligatory subjects, without mistakes in spelling or wrong additions. His handwriting is good and his papers are neat.”127 An essay on Napoleon was “well expressed,” and his English composition was “praiseworthy.” Maze, Campbell added, had “a natural taste for painting.” Hart had cut off all contact with Frederick’s father, who had fallen on hard times. This was a case of Hart looking after his family constituency but using Campbell to ensure that those taken on would not damage the reputation of the Service. A certain manliness was an important attribute. In 1896, Campbell commented on the Frenchman R. C. Guernier that “he is tall and strong for his age.” He had “a pleasant countenance and agreeable manners” and “he can converse well on most subjects, especially on speculations of a philosophical nature . . . he is not devoid of manly tastes—he can play football and is fond of dancing.”128 He became a commissioner but was invalided out of the Service in 1927 before reaching his formal retirement age after having had charge of the Tianjin and Nanjing Custom Houses in the 1920s. The Lennox-Simpsons were an important China family, one of whom, Bertram, gained fame for his portrayal of treaty port foreigners, including Customs staff, in Indiscreet Letters from Peking. His father had been one of Lay’s recruits: he had joined the Service in 1861, rising to commissioner seventeen years later. Several children applied to follow him into the Service. Clara, Campbell wrote, “was educated at Brighton College” but Macrae could “not certify that Mr Simpson’s eyesight is perfect,” and he was “found deficient in all the obligatory subjects, excepting arithmetic, while in his

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optional subjects, French and German, he has only a colloquial smattering without any sound knowledge.”129 Campbell was positive about Bertram: “he is quick and intelligent, self-possessed, and well-informed. He played cricket and football at school, and is a famous swimmer.”130 He left the Service in 1901 but stayed in China, becoming “the consummate treaty port jobbing hack, writing commentaries, begging for newspaper work, penning novels . . . and serving as Daily Telegraph correspondent in Beijing from 1911 to 1914.”131 He proved a bad choice: in 1930 he seized control of the Tianjin Custom House during the War of the Central Plains on behalf of opponents of the Nanjing Government, an incident that will be discussed later. Jan Willem Helenus Ferguson was examined in 1898, when he was seventeen. He had studied at the Public Government School at Wageningen in the Netherlands, probably de Openbare School No. 1. It taught a gymnasium course as well as its technical and scientific equivalent in the Dutch educational system. Campbell rated him “intelligent” and commented that he was “heavily built and somewhat phlegmatic, but his manners are pleasant.” He was born in Hong Kong and was the son of a Dutch jurist who served as minister to the Qing from 1872 to 1895. Ferguson would have a stellar career, serving as statistical secretary from 1922 to 1924 and as commissioner in charge of the Hankou and Guangzhou Custom Houses. He authored De Rechtspositie van Nederlanders in China (The legal position of Dutch citizens in China), which was published in 1925.132 His brother, Thomas, was born in Indonesia and was equally successful, serving as audit secretary, having charge of conservancy work on the Huangpu and Min Rivers, and overseeing the dredging of a channel through the Dagu Bar at Tianjin. He published several books and articles, including Tien Jaar China (Ten years in China),133 “Nog een en ander over the study van de Chinese tail” (Further remarks about the study of the Chinese language),134 “De moderne problemen van China” (China’s modern problems),135 and Fragments of Confucian Lore.136 The Jolys were another Customs family. H. B. Joly had served in the British Consular Service. One son, Percy, was born in Guangzhou; his brother, Cecil, was born in Macao. In 1909, Percy told Bruce Hart—Robert Hart’s son who had succeeded Campbell—that he had known Cantonese and Korean, although he had forgotten both. He had attended a missionary school in Qufu. Bruce Hart noted that he played rugby and cricket but found him “difficult to size up and somewhat nervous, but not shy, pleasant in appear-

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ance and manner.” Bruce Hart was more positive about Cecil, examined in 1912, stating that his “handwriting is good, did well in arithmetic. His essay was well expressed and his précis [was written] fairly well. Geography, History, and General Knowledge all excellent.” He had begun to study Chinese, played rugby, and had “pleasant manners.” Cecil served briefly as officiating inspector general in 1942, after having had charge of a string of ports. Percy had a less illustrious career but would also “make commissioner,” as the phrase went. James O’Gorman Anderson was examined in 1914 by A. S. H. Caruthers, an assistant of the then nonresident secretary, Paul King. James was the father of Benedict and Perry Anderson, both of whom became famous scholars, with Benedict known for Imagined Communities and Perry for Lineages of the Absolutist State and for having served as editor of the New Left Review. Caruthers wrote “socially he is quite suitable. His uncle was Commander-in-Chief at Hong Kong. His father was a Brigadier General in the Engineers.” James, or Sheamus, as his first wife, the novelist Stella Benson, preferred to call him, had been educated at Cheltenham and then attended Pembroke College, Cambridge, “gaining a Classical Exhibition,” that is, a bursary. He had left after one year. When asked why, he had “replied quite frankly,” Caruthers noted, “on account of expense and my extravaganza.” The Cheltenham headmaster had described him as “strong-willed and determined, inclined to obstinacy with qualities for exercising discipline and leadership.” His examination performance impressed Caruthers, who rated James as “far above the average.” He also found him “pleasant to speak to but his appearance is somewhat stultified by an eyeglass which on Dr Chaplain’s advice he is relinquishing in favour of ordinary glasses.” He would not in fact do so.137 Robert Hart used his control over appointments to secure the goodwill of influential people. In 1864, Hart wrote to Ansom Burlingame to ask for his help in recruiting Americans at a time when Americans felt that they did not have enough influence in the Service. He wrote, “I should therefore consider it a very great favour if you could get for me from America three young gentlemen who have received a collegiate education. I should like men of at least fair average abilities, of good standing in society, and of industrious habits.”138 The result of this appeal was the appointment of E. B. Drew from Harvard; E. C. Taintor of Union College, New York, who was appointed the first statistical secretary; and F. E. Woodruff from Yale.

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They all enjoyed good careers in the Customs Service, and all reached the rank of commissioner.

Attitudes

The Customs Service used its personnel and promotion systems to enforce preferred attitudes. For Hart, a good knowledge of Chinese was essential. Not everybody agreed, as Hart noted in IG circular 25 of 1869, in which he acknowledged that some believed he attached an “exaggerated importance . . . to the knowledge of the Chinese language, and that their due value has not been given to other qualifications.”139 Hart rebutted the charge, arguing that officials of a country should surely know the language of that country. Superintendents had complained, he went on, about commissioners who did not know Chinese well. Good Chinese was also important for a commissioner to establish his authority in his Custom House, as Chinese staff would always turn to those who did. Chinese was thought important to improve the Service’s chances of survival: “acquisition by all,” Hart wrote, “seems calculated to ensure the continued existence of the service, for, in that way, the service may hope to be able to commend itself as of intrinsic value to the approval of Chinese officials.” Recruits for the indoor staff were made to study Chinese, examinations were conducted on their progress, and promotion depended on success. In June 1869, Hart warned that those with “three years or more in the service, and are yet unable to pass affair examination in Wade’s Colloquial series, will be liable to find their services dispensed with.”140 No one would be appointed a commissioner “who has not passed the various examinations satisfactorily, or whose knowledge of Chinese is inadequate to the transaction of extraordinary business without the aid of an interpreter.”141 In promotions, Hart balanced seniority—time served in the job—with proven competence and national background. Commissioners and assistants argued in favor of only considering seniority in promotions, but Hart rejected that because the Service had to prove its worth to the Qing and be “so thoroughly cosmopolitan as to recommend itself to foreign powers.” Hence, capability and nationality would be taken into account.142 But Hart went some way to accommodate the wishes of his staff. In 1869, when he framed the “Rules and Regulations for the Customs Service,” he stated that

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“Assistants will be promoted according to seniority” but that “each fifth vacancy will be filled up by the Inspector General by selection.” Appointments to the rank of commissioner would remain the sole prerogative of the IG.143 The “Rules and Regulations” also specified certain standards of conduct. Drunkenness, dishonesty, and violence, including against Chinese, “will entail the summary dismissal of the individual concerned of whatever rank.”144 The rules listed as offences “slovenliness, want of punctuality, negligence, incompetence, quarrelsomeness, insubordination, absence without leave, unauthorized publication of office matters, prosecution for any cause civil or criminal, malversation, peculation, bribery, fraud, engaging in trade, insobriety, and gross immorality.”145 If anyone was accused of a violation of the rules, a Court of Inquiry would be established to ascertain the facts and make a recommendation. The punishment would be decided by the IG and ranged from censure and suspension through demotion and dismissal.146 The rules made clear that no Customs member could “receive either directly or indirectly any fee, gratuity, present, or reward of a pecuniary or other nature for any official service.”147 They were also not “to trade as a merchant, shopkeeper, broker, or agent of any kind, nor be concerned in shipping.”148 For improving the Service and enhancing its reputation, the recruitment system implemented from the early 1870s was as important as introducing a tight auditing system, creating the Marine Department, or establishing a clear hierarchy of authority. When the first Custom Houses were created in the 1850s, its staff had been treated as social outcasts. By recruiting directly in Europe, the Customs Service was able to secure young men who were well educated, who likely would prove competent and reliable, and who would not be scorned in treaty port society. A noticeable aspect of Customs recruitment was its emphasis on gentlemanly values and acquisitions. Robert Hart did not want his own British children to attend public schools such as Eton, Harrow, or Rugby, which he called “monster places,” perhaps because he considered them too militaristic and their disciplinary methods too fierce, or perhaps because they inculcated attitudes of superiority that would not work well for the Service in China.149 He wanted gentlemen who were educated and could hold themselves in polite society and participate in its activities—but he did not want bullies. An ability to carry oneself with dignity and pride was important to be able to participate in treaty

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port life, which turned on clubs and sports, but also to demand respect through one’s physique and bearing. If the recruitment process was designed to recruit a certain type of young man, its personnel system reinforced the attitudes and standards the Service wanted its staff to possess, including trustworthiness, punctuality, honesty, seriousness, manliness, and fairness. Such values reflected Victorian notions about gentlemanly respectability and were molded by Christian ideas of service, sacrifice, and temperance. If many bureaucracies built at the time, including those for colonial governments, shared these, the Customs Service was unique in stressing the importance of a good knowledge of Chinese. Not all members of the indoor staff would be good at Chinese or in fact believed in its utility. C. A. S. Williams authored Outlines of Chinese Symbolism and Art Motives and served in the Service from 1903 until 1935, including for a period as vice principal of the Customs College.150 He reproduced in his memoirs a letter from The Rattle, a satirical screed he found in the Hankou Customs Club. It was addressed to a “Fourth Assistant B”—the rank at which young foreign recruits entered the Service—and stated: I should not advise you to become a Sinologue for a Sinologue, as the consular and diplomatic record proves, ceases to be an Englishman. Learn of course a little just to impress the merchant when he hears you to tell the t’ing-ch’ai [听差, tingchai] to ching [请, qing, request] the Chief Examiner. I have known one or two men sustain very scholarly reputations by such judicious use of the language. You have only to run over the names in the Service List to see that promotion and proficiency in the language do not necessarily go together.151

That was jest and not entirely untrue, but the Customs Service did pay serious attention to learning Chinese. Experience suggested that without good Chinese, a commissioner would find it difficult to stamp his authority on his Custom House or develop good relations with local officials. The Service was able to become an established bureaucracy on the China coast by creating a clear space for itself between consuls and superintendents; by becoming an efficient, disciplined, and centralized organization; by taking control of the regulation of a foreign trade that was rapidly increasing; and by arrogating to itself a new sphere of operation that required modern Western navigational expertise. The Service guarded its control

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of this sector carefully throughout its existence, including by not sharing its expertise with the Chinese hydrographic department established in the Republic. The recruitment of a confident senior staff that demanded respect because of their education and their bearing also helped the Service become a prominent and respected institution on the China coast. To the Qing, the Service’s willingness to subordinate itself to its authority was important. For foreign countries, the Service provided trade on a new basis and promised the kind of modernizing reforms they believed would stabilize China and grow its economy, which would in turn lead to more trade. For Qing officials, diplomats in Beijing, and foreign offices in Europe and elsewhere, the Service provided something attractive to all bureaucrats: less trouble—麻烦 (mafan). The emergence of the Service as a modern bureaucracy was part of a broader movement. The middle decades of the century saw huge wars in the United States, in Europe, and in Asia, out of which grew the European national mass armies staffed by effective bureaucracies recruited on the basis of merit without regard for wealth, status, or seniority. Hart modeled the Customs Service after such bureaucracies. Its foreignness, though, meant that the Customs Service could never become the core of a modern nation-state, as happened elsewhere and as Hart hoped. Even if the Service was modeled on Western bureaucracies, it differed from them in significant ways. Its staff was drawn from across Europe and the United States and later also from Russia and Japan, as the influence of these two countries grew. Its survival depended on not being seen as the tool of any one great power but of being thought of as generally useful to all—and of course also to the Qing. Many of the forms the Service used and the bureaucratic routines it developed were recognizable to Qing officials and Chinese merchants. The Service was unique, in both the Chinese and Western bureaucratic worlds, in that the power of the Inspector General was unfettered and in that he held his post permanently, in Hart’s case literally until his death. Two further points emerge out of the narrative presented here of the founding of the Custom Service. The first is the institutional adaptability of the Qing, a conquest dynasty that always had to balance different social, regional, and ethnic groups. The Service was attractive to a politically astute person like Prince Gong to prevent collusion between powerful Han officials and British officials and traders and to reduce the dominance of

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Guangdong in managing the Qing’s relations with Western powers. The Service provided one way for the Qing to fit assertive and grasping foreigners into their world. If they could not tame them, then at least the Qing could assert some control over them and profit from their trade. Second, the Service must be studied in its own right. It emerged between a faltering Qing and an overstretched Britain, between the foreign diplomats in Beijing and the Zongli Yamen, and, at the local level, between consuls and superintendents as well as between foreign and Chinese merchants. The Service was conscious of itself. It believed it had a historical mission of its own, and it did not see its operations as part of anyone else’s hegemonic project. It incorporated important elements of the way China had managed its maritime trade in the past. It was a hybrid bureaucratic agency, kept together through its internal information flows, a clear hierarchy of authority, strict disciplining and accounting methods, and its ethos of service.

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Chapter Three

THE CUSTOMS SERVICE DURING THE SELF-STRENGTHENING MOVEMENT, 1870–1895

The Self-Strengthening Movement began in the 1860s as a Qing effort to acquire the military means to resist European empires. Naval dockyards were built in Shanghai and Fuzhou, and an arsenal was established in Nanjing. The movement broadened beyond the military sphere in the 1870s when commercial enterprises, including the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company and the Kaiping Mining Company, were set up. These were followed in the 1880s by the Shanghai Cotton Mill, the Imperial Telegraph, and the Mo-ho Gold Mines. In the 1890s, a modern ironworks was established at Wuhan, rail connections were created between China’s coastal ports and their hinterlands, and public utilities began to transform urban landscapes.1 The Customs Service contributed to the Self-Strengthening Movement in many ways. This chapter cannot possibly cover all of its activities, of which the Marine Department’s efforts to bring the transportation revolution to China was just one example, if an important one. Rather than aiming at comprehensiveness, I focus on aspects of the role of the Service that are most suggestive of its general significance to the Self-Strengthening Movement. The first is the role of the London Office. It managed the legal representation of the Service and served as a recruitment and procurement

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center, as we have seen. In the 1870s and 1880s, it also became deeply involved in the Qing’s purchase of a modern navy and in diplomacy, giving the Qing a head start in the East Asian naval arms race that developed between China and Japan. It conducted negotiations with France during the 1884–1885 Sino-French War on behalf of the Qing. The London Office gave the Service an important base in Europe; provided it with high-level access in governmental, diplomatic, industrial, and financial circles; and linked European and Chinese political affairs so that they began to effect each other. From the 1880s, the Service would regularly play key international roles, as it did during the loan negotiations that followed the 1894–1895 Sino-Japanese War, the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, the 1911 Revolution, the ascent of the Nationalists, and during the outbreak of the War of Resistance against Japan in 1937. Its semiofficial international role and its ability to call on its international support network was one reason why the Service was able to survive for so long. We move back from London to China to examine the economic effects of the expansion of the Customs Service. During Hart’s reign as IG, the number of Custom Houses in the treaty ports expanded from three to twenty-six. Its staff grew as the number of its establishments increased and as its role in managing China’s trade became ever larger. Using statistical data collected by the Service and anecdotal evidence provided in the annual reports of Customs commissioners about their ports, I trace the economic effects of the Service’s actions in promoting China’s trade with the West. The 1880s, the evidence suggests, was a major turning point. Up until then, the Chinese economy had been recovering steadily from the disasters of the mid-nineteenth-century rebellions. Its imports and exports were in balance, and silver was flowing back into China, reversing a trend that had begun earlier in the century and relieving fiscal pressures, including on the peasantry. Living standards appear to have improved, and the cost of living declined. However, from the 1880s on the Chinese economy began to “develop underdevelopment,” as André Gunder Frank called it.2 Chinese exports of tea and silk earned less, and imports of industrially manufactured commodities such as textiles or chemical products such as kerosene became more expensive. Imports exceeded exports; the gold value of silver crashed. China became an exporter of cheap primary products, such as raw cotton, for Japan, which was industrializing rapidly, as well as for European coun-

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tries and the United States. China would suffer seriously from its failure to develop a domestic light industry in the late nineteenth century. It became a classic example of an agricultural economy that became poor as many other parts of the world industrialized. Following the Service through the Self-Strengthening Movement suggests that the seeds of China’s 1895 defeat by Japan were sown in the 1880s. That defeat shocked Chinese elites profoundly and marked the moment that Japan emerged as the major Asian military and political power. The 1880s signaled not just the beginning of a downturn in China’s economic history but also the moment that the new imperialism began to effect China. Britain’s position as the dominant force in China and East Asia generally was challenged by Japan, Russia, France, and even already Germany. If until the 1880s the Qing had a more powerful navy than Japan, this changed as Japan built up its naval forces after the Sino-French War while the Qing stood still. Those who argue that the Qing in 1895 had the superior navy simply have it wrong.3 Economic malaise, the replacement of international cooperation by intense competition, and the emergence of Japan as an economic and military power meant that the Qing lacked the financial strength, military power, international significance, and internal cohesion to resist Japan when the latter started on its path to build a colonial empire of its own.

CHINA IN EUROPE: THE LONDON OFFICE OF THE CUSTOMS SERVICE

Many scholars have noted that the Service played an important role in the transmission of Western knowledge to China. James Hevia wrote about the Service as a prime provider of “English lessons,” erasing Chinese understandings of their own world and “reterritorializing” it with British ones.4 Benjamin Elman has pointed out that the Translators College was a conduit for the transmission of Western science, technology, and political economy to China. Its director, W. A. P. Martin, translated Henry Wheaton’s Elements of International Law5 and The Elements of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry (格物入门, Gewu Rumen). Anatole Billequin, who taught at the college, published Introduction to Chemistry (化学指南, Huaxue Zhinan). During his 1880 leave in Britain, Hart noticed a series of science primers edited by

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Thomas Huxley, covering physics, physical geography, geology, physiology, hygiene, and political economy. The Translators College turned this into A Collection on Science (格致汇编, Gezhi Huibian).6 Zhan Qinghua and Lydia Liu have similarly written about the Service’s activities in bringing European ways of thinking to China.7 Less attention has been paid to the reverse flow of information about China that the Service provided in Europe. Customs staff participated in scholarly organizations such as the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Statistical Society, and the Royal Asiatic Society. They wrote articles and monographs on Chinese literature, history, geography, and material culture; they also translated Chinese novels.8 The Medical Reports fed into the growing interest in tropical medicine.9 H. B. Morse was a plant collector in his spare time who enriched the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew.10 Tea and garden plants remain the most immediate way in which most Westerners encounter China, even if few do so with much consciousness of the fact. The Service organized the Chinese exhibitions at international fairs, which were great spectacles attended by thousands of people, so too contributing to European understandings of China.11 The London Office was a nodal point in the intensifying relations between China and Europe in the late nineteenth century. Its obscurity was deliberate. When Hart appointed Campbell as the Service’s nonresident secretary, Campbell pressed Hart to have him appointed as “the agent of the Chinese Government” to give him an official status.12 But Hart told him that he was a “wei-yuen” [委员, weiyuan, deputy], acting for him and him alone in affairs delegated to him by the Zongli Yamen.13 When Campbell asked what precisely Hart wanted him to do, his telling answer was “1. to carry out the I.G.’s orders and 2. you are to keep him informed on all matters of interest,” adding, “you are to refrain from all initiative.”14 Campbell was to Hart what the members of the personal staff, the mufu (幕府), were to the Qing officials, and in some ways one could look on the whole Inspectorate as Hart’s mufu. If Campbell was to toil in obscurity on his master’s behest, this did not mean his post was unimportant. The location of the London Office, at 28 Storey’s Gate, said it all. Storey’s Gate was just around the corner from the Treasury and the Foreign Office, near the Houses of Parliament and not far from the City of London, the financial heart of the United Kingdom.

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From here, Campbell was in an excellent position to cultivate contacts in the highest reaches of the British government and among its financiers. The following three were the most important. Stuart Rendel was the London agent of the arms manufacturing company of Armstrong & Co., a Liberal MP representing Montgomeryshire in Wales, and an intimate of Prime Minister William Gladstone, with whom Rendel played backgammon in the evenings. Rendel was a key figure in the Service’s acquisition of a modern naval force for Li Hongzhang, the dominant Qing official of the Self-Strengthening Movement. Another was Julian Pauncefote, a barrister who had practiced in Hong Kong and was appointed permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office in 1876. Pauncefote supplied Campbell with information about Foreign Office views and opened political and diplomatic doors. Campbell once wrote Hart, after a long conversation with Pauncefote, that “if you wish any info to reach the FO quietly, the best way would be to put it in the form of a letter or telegram to me which I could show Sir Julian.”15 Pauncefote ended his career as UK ambassador to the United States in the 1890s, providing the Service with a helping hand to have the United States accept its ideas about the Open Door policy. Finally, there was William Hutchins of the legal chamber of Hutchins and Murray, who had assisted the Customs during the von Gumpach case and would continue to serve as its legal advisor.

The London Office and the East Asian Naval Arms Race

Robert Hart was a naval enthusiast. He had been keen about the LayOsborne Flotilla and continued to look for opportunities to equip the Qing with a modern navy, although the flotilla episode and the opening of naval dockyards at Fuzhou and Shanghai made an early resumption of Qing naval arms purchases abroad unlikely. However, in 1874 the Japanese sent a punitive exhibition to Taiwan to avenge the murder of forty-nine Japanese sailors. China lacked the means to counter this force, as it was protected by a 1,400-ton ironclad. Li Hongzhang and other officials believed that Japan posed a new threat, with not just a few port cities at stake but large slices of Chinese territory.16 Li concluded that the Qing needed a new navy, and so began the East Asian naval arms race.

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With the support of Prince Gong, Wenxiang, and other prominent officials, Li argued in a memorial to the Qing Emperor that the campaign to recover Xinjiang from the Moslem rebel leader Yakub Beg should be abandoned and that the funds thereby freed should be used to construct fortresses along China’s coast and acquire modern naval vessels. This proposal was opposed by Zuo Zongtang, the leader of the campaign against Beg. His armies had recovered Gansu and were poised to strike into Xinjiang. Zuo did not deny the importance of coastal defense but argued that the recovery of Xinjiang should have priority. He prevailed in the debate, with the consequence that Li’s naval buildup had to be done on the cheap until Xinjiang was recovered, which happened in 1881.17 Li’s defeat was Robert Hart’s opportunity. He proposed that a portion of Customs revenue should be allocated for naval purchases.18 He tasked Campbell to seek advice from the War Office, which put him in touch with the brother of Stuart Rendel, George, who worked for Armstrong & Co. as a naval designer.19 Campbell assured Hart that George Rendel was “the first Artillerist Authority and far in advance of the age. What he recommended eight years ago is only now being adopted!”20 Rendel would become famous for his Rendel gunboats and for his design of high-speed cruisers with hydraulically operated guns. Rendel gunboats were all-iron, and later all-steel, vessels. Initially built as a vehicle for the testing of Armstrong’s big guns, they were developed as a cheap coastal defensive weapon against battleships. Rendel gunboats had no mast or rigging and thus needed no deep keel to keep them upright. They could operate in shallow coastal waters well away from deep-draft battleships, and their small size made them difficult to hit. Each Rendel gunboat was armed with a single massive gun mounted at the bow, which was aimed horizontally by turning the boat and vertically by moving the barrel up and down. They were not designed for offensive operations or battles on the high seas. At Hk.Tls. 150,000, about £50,000, they were far less costly than cruisers or battleships. The Rendel gunboat offered what Li Hongzhang was after: an advanced but cheap way of defending China’s coast. Between 1875 and 1881, Li purchased nine. They had a displacement of 400 to 440 tons, their speed was between eight and ten knots, and their heaviest gun was a 35-ton, 11-inch rifled muzzle loader.21 Li Hongzhang also wanted more powerful ships. In 1879, he authorized an order for two Armstrong cruisers, stipulating that “they must go more

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than fifteen nautical miles an hour . . . and [must be] so well arranged at the bow for ramming that we can rely on them to dispose of an ordinary ironclad.”22 Many naval strategists continued to believe in ramming. Hart wrote Campbell, “I hope Armstrong & Co will do their very best for us with the two ships now ordered: great strength of build and great speed are the main points, and to please Li Hongzhang (whose hobby it is) special attention must be given to the torpedo launch.”23 The two cruisers would become the Zhaoyong and the Zhaowei and were, when they were delivered two years later, “the most powerful guns afloat.”24 They had a displacement of 1,350 tons and were armed with ten-inch hydraulically controlled breech-loading guns with a range of twelve kilometers. Their maximum speed was sixteen knots, and they carried sufficient coal for twenty-eight days’ cruising, providing China with an offensive deep-water capability. Hart was exhilarated. “Things seem to be coming into my hands again, just as in 1863 when Lay’s fiasco checkmated me.”25 However, the Rendel gunboats disappointed. After the arrival of one batch, Hart wrote Campbell that Shen Baozhen, a leading official in Fujian who oversaw the Fuzhou Naval Dockyard, had stated that “they cannot steam against a head-wind or sea . . . they cannot work their guns except in smooth water, and they are not fit for deep water fighting.”26 The gunboats were not designed for the latter, and Shen’s criticism was no doubt partly inspired by a desire to advance the cause of the Fuzhou Dockyard. Their speed may also have deteriorated because of barnacle growth on their hulls. Armstrong had also delivered substandard goods. In 1881, one firing display by a gunboat that had just arrived in Guangzhou went badly wrong. Hart admitted its “gun missed thrice, and the whole thing went so badly that all shook their heads.”27 William Clayson, who captained the two Armstrong cruisers on their way to China, criticized their “careless workmanship.”28 Rivets had come loose when the guns had been fired. Clayson feared that “the ships will fall to pieces after some firing.”29 Hart agreed that “the quality of the work” had not been good enough.30 Li took to blaming Hart: “it’s all my fault for I provided ships that can’t fight.”31 Hart did not help the Customs’ cause when he opposed Li’s demand for battleships. Hart was unconvinced of the utility of battleships, and he objected to their high cost.32 In 1881, a cruiser carried a price tag of £400,000; a battleship would cost at least three times that.33 Li, though, believed that China had to have battleships to resist Russian and Japanese advances in

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Northeast Asia, which threatened the Qing’s hold over Korea. Already in 1879 Japan had annexed the Liuqiu island chain (present-day Okinawa). If Hart’s stance seems ill-advanced in hindsight, George Rendel advised that his gunboats remained “the most effective means of defence against the raids of a hostile ironclad.”34 In France, the war theorists of the Jeune Ecole too argued that small but fast ships could defeat battleships. The Japanese navy defeated the Chinese navy in 1894–1895 without a battleship and repeated the feat against the Russian navy during the Russo-Japanese War. The debate about the usefulness of battleships would not be decided until later. Li turned to Germany, ordering the two battleships that would become the Dingyuan (定远) and the Zhenyuan (镇远) from the Vulcan Yard at Stettin. The two ships had a displacement of 7,100 tons, they were one hundred meters long, and their maximum speed was 14.5 knots. They had 14-inch-thick armor; armed with four 12-inch, 25-caliber, 31.5-ton rifled breech-loading Krupp guns as well as Hotchkiss quick-firing guns; and they carried two torpedo boats. They had a range of 4,500 nautical miles. Hart blamed his opposition to battleships to Li’s decision to place his order in Germany.35 There was more to it than that. Li had become an admirer of Germany after Prussia defeated France in 1870 and unified Germany. German manufacturers, including Krupps, who made the best breech-loading rifled cannon available at the time, flocked to China to secure business, and they courted Li energetically.36 In addition, arming the Qing no longer fitted British policy. When in 1881 Hart heard that Li was ordering battleships in Germany, he pleaded with George Rendel quickly to send him drawings and costs for an Armstrong battleship. George Rendel was slow to deliver because “Britain was reluctant to sell much larger warships to China for fear of offending Russia.”37 In addition, Armstrong & Co. had come to see Japan as a more promising client than China. As Campbell wrote Hart, from Japan it had “received orders for two ram cruisers, guaranteed speed 18 knots, price £240,000; and they expect to receive an order for an ironclad, price £760,000 . . . Japan, by wisely going to A & Co will reap the advantage of all China’s experiences.”38 European politics prevented the Dingyuan and the Zhenyuan from being available to the Qing during the 1884–1885 Sino-French War. The Qing could have made very good use of them: perhaps they could have prevented Admiral Courbet’s overstretched Far Eastern Squadron from sacking the

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Fuzhou Naval Dockyard, sinking nine naval vessels of the Fujianese Fleet, and occupying the port of Jilong in northern Taiwan. They failed to be on hand not because they were not ready. When the Sino-French War broke out, the French sent Prosper Giquel, who had briefly been in the Service and had served as the European director of the dockyard, to Germany “to retard the departure of the ‘Tingyuen’ [Dingyuan] Ironclad.”39 Bismarck, the German chancellor, complied with the French request to avoid problems with France.40 Li’s purchase of the Dingyuan and Zhenyuan also triggered what can be thought of as an East Asian naval arms race. In Japan, the Meiji reforms of 1866 had initially stirred up significant opposition, including by powerful regional daimyo. The samurai class was not disarmed until 1876, and the last major regional uprising, the Satsuma Rebellion, was suppressed only in 1877. But from then on, Japan possessed a strong central government that was determined to modernize Japan, build up its industry, and create a strong military. In 1886, Japan purchased from France the 4,200-ton cruiser Matsushima and two sister ships. They were specifically designed, by Emile Bertin, to be able to take on the Dingyuan and Zhenyuan. Bertin subscribed to the thinking of the Jeune Ecole and from 1885 served for four years as an advisor to the Imperial Japanese navy, during which time he ensured that it developed good training facilities and an efficient logistical network.41 The Matshushima was armed with one massive 35-cm Canet gun, twelve 12-cm guns, four torpedo tubes, and a number of further smaller-caliber guns. From Armstrong, Japan bought two 3,000-ton cruisers, the Naniwa and the Takachiko, capable of a speed of twenty-three knots and armed with quick-firing guns.42 Based on the newest George Rendel designs, they were completed in 1885 and 1886 and dwarfed Li Hongzhang’s cruisers. The above makes clear that the Qing led the East Asian naval arms race until the Sino-French War but that from then it rapidly fell behind. When the Qing and Japanese navies went head to head during the 1894–1895 SinoJapanese War, the Dingyuan and the Zhenyuan were the most advanced vessels available to the Qing. Japan possessed far more modern ships, with greater speed and more firepower: no wonder that the outcome was the utter destruction of the Qing navy. Li Hongzhang’s doubts about the quality of the vessels he had bought from Armstrong suggest that his declining to deploy his navy during the Sino-French War was not necessarily because he was overcome by a bout of regionalism. It is clear, too, that already by the

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middle of the 1880s, European and East Asian affairs had come to impinge on each other. Germany and Britain refused to arm the Qing for fear of upsetting other European powers.

The Customs Service During the Sino-French War

For the Customs Service, the intensification of European rivalries as the new imperialism began to take hold threatened its unity. When Li Hongzhang turned to Germany, Robert Hart concluded that his position was in danger and that he might be replaced by the German Customs commissioner Gustav Detring, who had a close connection with Li Hongzhang. “I know he is very loyal to China,” Hart wrote, but he “has natural German proclivities, which I, comparing British and German interest in China today and in the East in the future, am not at all disposed to back to the nth . . . he made the running to such an extent that I fear he’ll be past the winning post before the real horse with say in him can collar him!”43 Hart was similarly suspicious about the aims of Prosper Giquel, believing that he was after a separate Customs Service for Tonkin.44 He feared for his position, writing to Campbell that “the Chinese will necessarily tire of me and my ways and want something new, and they will easily find more agreeable and more able men among my lieutenants . . . you should not be surprised to hear of me spoken of as the ex I.G. any day.”45 The Sino-French War brought these tensions to a climax. French involvement in Vietnam can be traced to the late eighteenth century, when the man who would become known as Emperor Gia Long unified Vietnam and established the rule of the Nguyen Dynasty. Between 1858 and 1862, Napoleon III, out to build up his prestige following his 1851 coup, annexed the larger part of Cochin-China. In 1863, he acquired a protectorate over Cambodia. In the 1870s, after France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the ouster of Napoleon III, France began to extend its influence into Tonkin in northern Vietnam, an effort inspired by the discovery that the Red River flowing through Tonkin provided a safe waterway to Yunnan, triggering fantasies about unrivaled new commercial opportunities. Increasingly concerned about France’s designs, the emperor of Vietnam turned to the Qing for assistance. It sent tribute missions in 1877 and 1881 as a sign of its allegiance to the Qing, and the Qing supported the Black Flags,

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an irregular Chinese force under Liu Yongfu (刘永福), which operated in the border region. In 1883, the Black Flags resisted a French attack on Hanoi, killing its commander, Captain Henri Riviere. The French Parliament quickly translated the popular outcry that followed in France into the allocation of funds for a large expeditionary force. Following the French capture of forts at Hue, the capital of Annam, in August 1883, the king signed a treaty with France that provided for a French protectorate of Tonkin and Annam and the stationing of a resident general at Hue. China refused to recognize the Treaty of Hue, continued to support the Black Flags, and sent forces into Tonkin from its southern provinces. In Beijing, officials usually associated with the Pure Criticism faction, of which Zhang Zhidong (张之洞) was the most prominent member, called for a tough stance toward France. They rejected arguments by Li Hongzhang and Prince Gong that China was not ready for a war with France. The result of the conflict between the two policy views was that in Europe the Qing appeared to be pursuing opposing policies at the same time. The Chinese minister to London and Paris, Zeng Jize (曾紀澤), a son of Zeng Guofan, was a representative of the Pure Criticism faction.46 In January 1884, Zeng stated to Britain’s foreign minister, Lord Granville, that China had made all possible concessions and hoped to count on British neutrality if it came to war, as seemed inevitable.47 Zeng caused an uproar when he publicly stated that even though China had suffered a defeat in Tonkin, it was nothing compared to France’s defeat by Prussia at Sedan and that, things having gone this far, China would rather fight than accept an unfavorable peace.48 Working through Detring rather than Robert Hart, Li Hongzhang plowed an entirely different furrow. Detring scurried between Paris, Berlin, and London through the summer and fall of 1883. Li Hongzhang let it be rumored that he disavowed Zeng’s hard-line stance.49 Returning from Europe in the spring of 1884, Detring met Captain Francois Fournier in Hong Kong.50 The two hammered out what they believed could be a basis for a settlement and then proceeded to Tianjin, where Li Hongzhang and Fournier on May 11 reached a preliminary accord. It provided for a Qing withdrawal from Tonkin; free trade in goods between Vietnam and China, to be regulated in a separate trade treaty; the establishment of a boundary commission to delineate the border between Tonkin and China; and a French promise not to insist on an indemnity and “to make use of

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no expression calculated to affect prejudicially the prestige of the Celestial Empire” in the final treaty.51 The Convention of Tianjin, as this agreement is known, was rejected in both Beijing and Paris. Paris rejected it because the promise not to include any statement in the final treaty was seen as containing an implicit recognition of Chinese rights in Vietnam. In China, court politics and the rise of the Pure Criticism caused the rejection of the treaty. In April 1884, Empress Dowager Cixi dismissed Prince Gong after the death of Empress Dowager Ci’an and military reverses in Tonkin. She overhauled the membership of the Zongli Yamen and the Grand Secretariat.52 When officials were invited to comment on the convention, a slew of memorials called for Li Hongzhang’s impeachment and trial,53 and the newly hard-line Zongli Yamen refused to endorse its conditions.54 Orders went out to China’s troops in Tonkin to stand their ground and not withdraw from Tonkin.55 War became inevitable when in June 1884 Qing forces inflicted a heavy defeat on French forces, emboldening the Pure Criticism faction and prompting France to take revenge. The French demanded an apology, an indemnity, and the immediate implementation of the Tianjin Convention. This was rejected, and in August Admiral Corbet was ordered into action, which he did by, among other things, pulverizing the Fuzhou Naval Dockyard, which, ironically, had been built with French help. The outbreak of war provided the Customs Service with an opportunity to reenter the fray. Before the war, Hart had attempted to seize hold of the diplomatic initiative. Acting on London Office information about a French desire to avoid war with the Qing for fear of the consequences for its relations with other European countries, Hart hoped to have Britain in tandem with Germany propose mediation by the United States, which was the most disinterested party. Hart believed that the Qing lacked the power to intervene in Vietnam and that its best bet was to declare the Red River open to international trade so that all countries would have a stake in its future. He instructed Campbell to have Stuart Rendel approach Lord Granville with the suggestion.56 Gladstone refused to become involved,57 probably because he did not object to France being distracted in East Asia while Britain occupied Egypt.58 Hart’s first attempt to gain a diplomatic role came to nothing. The outbreak of war in August 1884 changed the situation. In December 1884, France made preparations to send an expeditionary force of fifty thousand men to Beijing and to halt the rice trade. In the same month,

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Japan supported a coup in Korea, which led to the death of one prince and six regents.59 The situation seemed to be spinning out of control: China faced serious difficulties on both its southern and northern border. As Hart wrote, “trouble in Europe, foreign anti-French intervention, or the arrival of foreigners, Germans and Americans, to fight on the China side” all became possibilities.60 Stuart Rendel’s memoirs make clear that the British became afraid that the Qing might disintegrate, which would remove a buffer between British India and a Russian empire expanding into East and Central Asia.61 The growing influence of Germany too caused alarm. Campbell wrote to Hart that it was feared that Bismarck would try to use the opportunity to “prove to China the power of German influence and the value of German friendship, and thereby secure [favors] for German enterprise, railways, and telegraphs, mines and machinery, ships and guns, etc etc.”62 Such fears were fueled by Germany’s disembarkation of forty troops in Shantou in December 1882 and four hundred at Xiamen a month later.63 Referring to the German minister to China, Hart wrote, “I fear von Brandt will have a taste for blood.”64 Retaining the Service “in British hands” became a central aim of Britain’s China policy.65 Hart decided that “English mediation has not been a success . . . so we must have a go ourselves,”66 and he found a receptive environment in London. In regular touch with Rendel and Campbell through telegrams, an opportunity opened up for the Customs Service to intervene when the French seized the lighthouse vessel Feihe. Hart sent Campbell to France to seek direct discussion with Jules Ferry, the French premier, and to use the opportunity that discussions about the Feihe provided to raise the issue of a peace treaty.67 Campbell crossed the channel, first having briefed Rendel and through him Granville.68 Campbell met Ferry for the first time on January 10, 1885.69 From then until the conclusion of the peace treaty in June 1885, Campbell regularly met with Ferry in absolute secrecy. Ferry demanded as a precondition for discussing a peace treaty that the Zongli Yamen give formal approval to the Customs Service to represent the Qing. Hart secured this, and Campbell was appointed a Qing special envoy.70 Hart wanted the “negotiations [to be] entirely under my control”71 and insisted that neither the Zongli Yamen nor Ferry would use any other intermediary.72 An imperial edict instructed “Tianjin, Shanghai, Fujian, and Canton to halt all negotiations so as to avoid obstructing my negotiations.”73 By March, preliminary agreement was reached that China

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would ratify the Convention of Tianjin and that France would withdraw from Taiwan and cease all hostilities.74 The agreement was nearly derailed in both France and in China after French troops suffered a defeat, causing the collapse of the Ferry government.75 After consulting with the French president, Ferry hastily convened a cabinet meeting that approved the new treaty. In China, Zhang Zhidong, the leader of the Pure Criticism faction, attempted to marshal forces to continue the war. He asked Li Hongzhang to oppose the accord, but Li answered that “From beginning to end, the treaty was handled from the inside, relying completely on Two Reds.”76 This was a pun on Hart’s Chinese surname, 赫, whose two parts, if read separately, mean “red.” Li’s statement was a hint that Empress Dowager Cixi had made the decision and that hence it could not be made undone. Zhang was furious: “Hart had sole control, and China now bears the consequences of his stupidity.”77 Cixi having come out in favor of peace, he had no option but to accept defeat.78 If Zhang Zhidong and Li Hongzhang were unhappy, the Service had captured a central position in Qing foreign relations and in British foreign policy. Campbell would continue to play a diplomatic role in subsequent years, for instance when he went to Portugal to conduct negotiations about the status of Macau.79 In 1897, the Qing appointed Campbell secretary to China’s special embassy to attend to Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee80 and did once more so for the Chinese embassy attending the coronation of King Edward.81 During the Boxer Uprising, when the fall of the Qing and the partition of China were real possibilities, it would again be the Customs Service, working again through the London Office, which initiated negotiations. It would once more intervene during the 1911 Revolution and continue to do so subsequently. The Service’s new international role would give it yet another powerbase.

THE CUSTOMS SERVICE, THE EXPANSION OF FOREIGN TRADE, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT

As important as the London Office was to the Customs Service to safeguard its position, the bedrock on which its existence rested was its work in facilitating foreign trade and assessing customs duties. During the SelfStrengthening Movement, China’s trade carried in foreign steamships

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roughly quadrupled, ensuring a significant new revenue stream available to Beijing. Given that the Qing had lost control over the combined land and poll tax and because the lijin was largely a local tax, Customs revenue was an important new funding source. Below, I first detail the expansion of the Customs Service across China as China’s steamer trade grew. I then examine the effects of this trade on China’s broader economic development, arguing that 1880s formed a significant economic turning point.

The Expansion of the Customs Service

If any institution profited from the growth in China’s trade, it was the Customs Service. Graph 3.1 illustrates that by the end of the Self-Strengthening Movement, the Customs Service accounted for nearly Hk.Tls. 25 million, or slightly less than one third, of all central revenue.82 When Hart became acting IG in 1861, only three Custom Houses had been opened. That number expanded to twenty-six over the next three decades. Table 3.1 lists these ports, noting the year in which a treaty port was opened and providing its Chinese name, its Customs name, and its Pinyin transliteration. The

GRAPH 3.1. Customs revenue, 1861–1895.

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TABLE 3.1 The growth of Custom Houses during the Self-Strengthening period Chinese name

Customsn ame

江海关 粤海关 潮海关 镇江关 津海关 浙海关 闽海关 九江关 江汉关 厦门关 东海关 淡水关 山海关 打狗关

Shanghai Canton Swatow Chinkiang Tientsin Ningpo Foochow Kiukiang Hankow Amoy Chefoo Tamsui Newchwang Takow

Jianghaiguan Yuehaiguan Chaohaiguan Zhenjiangguan Jinhaiguan Zhehaiguan Minhaiguan Jiujiangguan Jianghanguan Xiamenguan Donghaiguan Danshuiguan Shanhaiguan Dagouguan

July 1854 August 1858 March 1860 April 1861 May 1861 May 1861 August 1861 December 1861 January 1862 January 1862 March 1863 October 1863 March 1864 May 1864

台南关 琼海关

Tainan Kiungchow

Tainanguan Qiongzhouguan

January 1865 March 1876

瓯海关 宜昌关 北海关 芜湖关 九龙关 拱北关

Wenzhou Yichang Pakhoi Wuhu Kowloon Lappa

Ouhaiguan Yichangguan Beihaiguan Wuhuguan Jiulongguan Gongbeiguan

February 1877 February 1877 March 1877 April 1877 March 1887 March 1887

龙州关 孟自关 重庆关 亚东关

Lungchow Mengtzu Chungking Yatung

Longzhouguan Mengziguan Chongqingguan Yadongguan

March 1887 April 1889 September 1890 May 1894

Pinyin

Dateo f o pening

Province

Jiangsu Guangdong Guangdong Jiangsu Hebei Zhejiang Fujian Jiangxi Hubei Fujian Shandong Taiwan Fengtian Taiwan (the town is called Gaoxiong today) Taiwan Guangdong (Hainan) Fujian Hubei Guangxi Anhui Guangdong Guangdong (Lappa is better known as Macao) Guangxi Yunnan Sichuan Tibet

Source: Chen Shiqi and Sun Xiufu, “中国近代海关常用词语” (Dictionary of common words and phrases in the modern Customs Service of China), 669–673.

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table illustrates that treaty ports were opened in three main waves. The first occurred during the last years of the Taiping Rebellion, after the Treaty of Tianjin ordered the extension of the Shanghai experiment to other treaty ports and the Yangzi River was opened to foreign trade. A second wave followed the signing of the Chefoo Convention in 1876 by Li Hongzhang and Thomas Wade. The third took place in the second half of the 1880s, after the Sino-French War. As graph 3.1 shows, Customs revenue showed a huge jump in this period. This was the result of Qing agreements with Hong Kong and Portugal, by which the Service was allowed to put up Custom Houses and barriers near Macao and Hong Kong and to collect native lijin duties on opium at these two places, which were opium smuggling centers.83 In addition, Custom Houses were established in Yunnan and Guangxi for trade between Vietnam and south China. The Yadong Custom House in Tibet, which did not collect any customs dues, was a symbolic assertion of Qing suzerainty in Tibet at a time when Britain was trying to build up its influence in the area.84 This suggests that the Qing exploited the Service to put down markers to indicate the territory it claimed. As the number of treaty ports grew and as the activities of the Customs Service increased in scope, so did its personnel. The Service List listed 1,830 members of staff in 1875. Ten years later, that had grown to 2,548. By 1890 it had reached 3,475, and in 1895, the Service List contained 3,709 persons.85 These figures show that the Customs Service experienced its fastest expansion in the second half of the 1880s. Cooks, servants, grooms, porters, and tingchai were not listed in the Service List, so the number of staff employed by the Customs Service was in actuality substantially larger. In recognition of the expansion of the Customs Service, as well as of its fiscal significance, in 1888 the Qing increased its grant to the Customs Service from Hk.Tls. 1 million to Hk.Tls. 1.7 million. By the late 1880s, the Customs Service had become a large and financially secure bureaucracy. When we turn to the use of Customs revenue, Ren Zhiyong suggests that while in the 1860s most revenue was remitted to the Treasury in Beijing, from then on provincial allocations outpaced remittances to Beijing. According to Ren, around 10 percent of all net Customs revenue, that is, total Customs revenue minus allocations to the Service and to the superintendents, was retained within the province where a Custom House was located. The rest was remitted to the Treasury in Beijing, to the Imperial Household, whose income had suffered from the loss of control over the

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GRAPH 3.2. Customs revenue allocations, 1861–1895.

salt revenue during the Taiping and Nian rebellions, to other provinces, or to the Zongli Yamen. Graph 3.2 illustrates that remittances to the Treasury declined after 1867, as did those to the Imperial Household, but that interprovincial remittances advanced from 30 percent in 1879 to more than 40 percent after 1880. The situation reversed only just before the SinoJapanese War. Such provincial remittances did not indicate that Beijing increasingly lost control over Customs revenue; such transfers needed central approval. But it did mean that the Self-Strengthening Movement became regionalized, taking place in the provinces rather than being directly controlled by Beijing.

The 1880s as a Turning Point

Economic historians have assessed China’s economic performance during the Self-Strengthening Movement differently. Hao Yen-p’ing argued in The Commercial Revolution in Nineteenth-Century China that “China’s economic relations with the West gave impetus to a full fledged mercantile capitalism,” as credit expanded, monopolies were broken up, markets

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widened, agricultural production for instance of tea became commercialized, and profit maximization became the overriding goal of merchants.86 Loren Brandt has argued that by the 1890s, “markets for such commodities such as rice, wheat, cotton, and oilseeds had in many parts of China become inseparably tied to the international economy.”87 Others have been less convinced of the significance of the new trading regime. Albert Feuerwerker maintained that foreign trade was too small to have much of an effect on China’s vast domestic trade.88 David Faure argued that the dominance of the lineage and ritual in economic activity was far too ingrained to make way for Western forms of capitalism.89 In a book positive about the growth in China’s modern economic sector in the half-century before World War II, Rawski argued that “modern growth,” meaning an increase in per capita productivity, only began during the 1890s.90 The Service’s records suggest that changes in the composition of trade, the drop in the gold value of silver, the resistance to develop light industry, regionalism and intraelite factionalism, and the shift from an aristocratic to middle-class forms of investing in the China trade all contributed to China’s failure to keep pace with those countries who were industrializing rapidly during the late nineteenth century, including Germany. Before proceeding, let me state one caveat. China’s post-Taiping economic history has been reconstructed from the Trade Returns published by the Customs Service. While valuable, they were not comprehensive. They only recorded the trade carried in steamships at treaty ports. While the number of treaty ports increased over the course of the Self-Strengthening Movement, the Customs had no knowledge of the junk trade at least until 1887, when it opened Custom House barriers near Kowloon and Macao. Even so, it continued to be ignorant of the junk trade elsewhere. In 1904, the statistical secretary declared to be confident that the Customs Service recorded “practically the whole of the foreign trade of China.”91 However, until 1931, the Returns came with the warning that “a large number of vessels of Chinese type which are not within the control of the Foreign Customs ply between Foreign and Chinese—both treaty and non-treaty—ports.”92 In the 1930s, when the Customs Service was put in charge of China’s junk traffic, the Service discovered quickly that it had no hope of establishing any real control over it for many years. A further problem is that the Service relied on values as reported by merchants, not market prices. From a Service perspective, this policy made

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great sense. It diminished incentives for smuggling, reduced trouble, and made enforcement easy. The fact that Customs revenue increased rapidly during this period suggests not that merchants were honest but that a policy like this can be productive, especially when enforcement mechanisms are in fact lacking. But not all merchants will have resisted the opportunity to reduce their tax bill. For the economic historian, it means that the data on trade collected by the Service should be used with caution. As Lin Man-houng has shown, the improving economy of the early SelfStrengthening period was the result of the rapid increase of China’s silk and tea exports to Europe and the United States.93 This reversed the outflow of silver that had gained pace in the early nineteenth century as a result of increased opium imports from India and the drying up of silver supplies coming from the Americas. As silver flowed back to China between 1856 and 1886 in significant quantities, the silver crisis eased, and the allimportant purchasing power of copper, in which most Chinese conducted their daily transactions, improved.94 Other scholars, such as Wang Yuru, Yan Se, and Zhang Wuchang, also suggest that the first two decades following the suppression of the Taiping Rebellion saw a general improvement in the Chinese economy.95 This benign picture changed in the 1880s as China’s opium, silk, and tea were replaced by what the Service called “muck and truck” commodities, such as cotton manufactures, beans, hides, wool, sugar, timber, raw cotton, and kerosene. From the 1880s on, the gold value of silver plummeted, making exports cheap for foreigners and imports expensive for Chinese importers. The result was a persistent and substantial trade deficit. Graph 3.3 shows that the silver value of imports and exports, as expressed in Hk.Tls., rose steadily after the Taiping Rebellion and accelerated upward after the Sino-French War. Graph 3.4, which includes raw cotton data for comparative purposes, shows the declining value of China’s tea and silk exports. Changes in consumer preferences drove the decline of tea. In his 1892 decadal report, Shanghai commissioner R. E. Bredon argued that “China can never hope to produce a tea which will compare with Indian tea according to the only standard which now seems applicable in England: the standard of strength, the capacity to colour so many gallons of water for each pound of tea . . . China must try to win back the average British tea drinkers from this acrid concoction.”96 China too had exported black tea, but it did not have the same kick as Indian tea. Hankou commissioner

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GRAPH 3.3. Net imports and exports, 1864–1895.

GRAPH 3.4. Raw cotton, raw silk, and tea exports, 1864–1895.

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R. B. Moorhead agreed with Bredon: “The poorer classes [in the United Kingdom prefer] a cheap tea from which they can get two or three brews.”97 He described Indian black tea as a “picker upper.” Silk declined because other countries were increasingly able to compete with China.98 However, silk made a recovery after the late 1880s. This was, as Robert Bredon stated, the result of “a liberal interpretation of repackaging rules,”99 which made it possible to open silk filatures in the treaty ports. The increase in raw cotton exports from the mid-1880s reflected the rise of the textile industry elsewhere, especially Japan, and the switch of the Chinese economy from supplying consumer markets to supplying primary products to foreign industries.100 Japanese industries exported to China cotton manufactures made from Chinese raw cotton. Besides raw cotton, exports of beans, utilized as fertilizer and in the chemical industry; hides, used for coats and shoes; and wool, employed in the manufacture of clothes, also advanced rapidly from the mid-1880s.101 When we turn to imports, graph 3.5 demonstrates that the value of imports rose dramatically after the Sino-French War. Cotton manufactures replaced opium as China’s most important import commodity, surpassing it from 1885. Machine-spun yarn was also a leading import, which proved

GRAPH 3.5. Imports of rice, kerosene, sugar, cotton yarn, cotton goods, and opium, 1867–1895.

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a boon to domestic weavers in northern China, the northeast, and the middle-Yangzi provinces of Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, and Anhui.102 After the Sino-French War, rice imports from Southeast Asia, especially Siam and French Indo-China, also grew rapidly, as did kerosene. Kerosene quickly found a very large market. Bredon noted in 1892 that in Shanghai kerosene imports had increased from nine to thirty-five million gallons during the previous decade.103 In Hankou, Guangzhou commissioner Rocher too was struck by the rapid growth in kerosene imports, noting that “its cheapness and convenience have brought it into very general use.”104 Hankou commissioner R. B. Moorhead remarked on the increase of kerosene imports, “principally of the kind known as Devoe’s Brilliant— a very good oil, but somewhat inflammable.” So flammable, in fact, that it had led to “several disastrous fires.”105 The Service banned Devoe’s Brilliant from its premises. Rice imports became by volume, although not by price, the most important import commodity. Guangzhou increasingly imported rice from Siam and Annam; Wuhu, upriver from Nanjing, was the center for the trade in rice originating from Anhui and Jiangxi.106 A luxury market also emerged. The Zhenjiang commissioner reported that “glass windows” were being imported into Zhenjiang by the 1890s, although “so far only used by the rich.”107 Rocher argued that in Guangzhou a market had emerged for “arm chairs, sofas, and spring beds.” He believed that “metal is gradually supplanting wood and bamboo for articles in common use. Bars and bolts for doors and windows are now almost invariably made of iron. . . . Iron gates and railings [are placed] in front of native shops and dwellings.”108 The use of tin too had grown, being used for “all kinds of things,” including for “covering boats and sheds” and packaging for “lard and ginger” exports to the north; tin was also turned into “lamps and boxes.”109 Important regional differences existed. As already indicated, Shanghai was not a small village that suddenly became a major center of China’s international trade once it became a treaty port. Graph 3.6 makes clear that the relative position of Shanghai and Guangzhou remained stable after Shanghai became a treaty port. However, in the 1880s Shanghai’s trade accelerated further, probably as a result of the changes then taking place, enriching the Lower Yangzi region. Trade along the Yangzi River, at least that part carried by steamship, remained modest, and some towns suffered from the introduction of

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GRAPH 3.6. The trade of Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangzhou, and the ports on the Yangzi River, 1867–1895.

steam-borne trade. Zhenjiang, where the Yangzi River and the Grand Canal crossed, had been a nodal point in China’s trade network for a long time. Even three decades after the Taiping Rebellion, its population remained well below its prerebellion figure.110 The rise of Shanghai and Hankou and the increased use of steam vessels that could take the coastal route added to its troubles. “Merchants from Henan and Shandong used to come to Zhenjiang, but they now go to Shanghai,” Zhenjiang commissioner Friedrich Hirth reported.111 The Zhenjiang population resented foreigners, sacking the small foreign community several times in the 1880s. The same was true for Nanjing, where foreign trade resumed only in 1899.112 The northeast, on the other hand, became something of a new frontier, a Wild West, after gold was discovered and the Qing opened up the area, which it had preserved as its homeland, to economic exploitation, encouraging farmers to cultivate land and hunters to chase bears, tigers, otters, sable, and deer.113 The history of China’s trade during the Self-Strengthening Movement suggests that China’s trade was decisively altered by the effects of industrialization both in Japan and Europe. China became an exporter that supplied industries abroad while it imported cotton goods; products from chemical industries, including kerosene; and cheap rice from Southeast

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Asia. The effects were not evenly distributed, with Shanghai only coming into its own at this time.

Causes

It was not just the introduction of steamships per se but the provision of regular steamer services to and in between China’s treaty ports that helped bring these changes about. Hankou commissioner R. B. Moorhead reported in 1892 that “thirteen steamers sail between Hankou and Shanghai, and five between Yichang and Hankou.”114 He believed that this development was responsible for the revival of trade along the Yangzi River, to the extent that it did. Better port facilities, including for storing cargo in hulks and godowns (warehouses), improved financial services, including credit and insurance, provided by Western and Chinese banks, contributed to these changes. Better packaging techniques also helped. Bredon noted that “China produce” could now be exported “in a more convenient form and prepared to resist the deterioration of the voyage.”115 The transport revolution of the late nineteenth century consisted of a number of interlocking changes, some eyecatching, such as large steamships, others less visible but nonetheless important, such as the placing of buoys and the standardization of packaging. As Shanghai commissioner Robert Bredon noted, another development was a new and, for the foreign merchant, less risky way of doing business. Bredon argued that up until the 1880s, “men with large amounts of capital” had dominated the China trade. However, from then on, trade was being done on a commission basis, with “orders being conveyed abroad by telegram and the Tael price and rate of exchange being settled before the order is despatched.” Bredon found this abhorrent: “the commission broker [has taken] the place of the merchant prince,”116 with the result that trade “promotes a sharpness of business and a keenness of competition” that undermined ethics.117 If the foreign merchant shouldered less risk, the reverse was true for the Chinese producer. The collapse of the gold value of silver after the 1880s was closely correlated with the transformation of China’s import and export business. Silver began its decline in the 1870s. It remained steady through the first half of the 1880s, albeit at a lower level, and then plummeted. This development resulted from the increased production of silver globally, rising from

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GRAPH 3.7. The depreciation of silver, 1863–1895.

39 million ounces in 1861–70 to 161 million ounces in the last decade of the century, inevitably depressing silver prices in international markets.118 At the same time, many Western countries moved onto the gold standard. Britain was first in 1844, Germany used the indemnity imposed on France during the Franco-Prussian War to do the same in 1870, and by the time of World War I, 90 percent of all countries were on the gold standard.119 Obviously, for those with gold, Chinese products became cheap. Last but not least, the spatial distribution of China’s steam-borne overseas trade changed. China’s trade with Japan advanced most quickly, becoming China’s second most important trade partner by 1895.120 However, mainland Europe was not far behind, nor were the United States and Russia. The rapid industrialization of these three areas made them eye China as a market for their products. If China’s trade from all of East Asia and South Asia is combined, its total significance remained fractionally less than British trade with China. However, it is nonetheless clear that one of the effects of the growth of China’s maritime trade was the strengthening of intraAsian trade links, as Hamashita Takeshi has argued.121

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Consequences

If China’s share of world GDP was still 30 percent in 1830 and 20 percent in 1860, by 1900 it had sunk to only 6 percent.122 The growth of China’s trade after the Taiping Rebellion, one might think, could be compared to its economic takeoff after Deng Xiaoping introduced his economic reform program in 1978. It may have looked so in absolute terms, and it is the case that China’s growth then created useful pathways for China’s economic takeoff after the Cultural Revolution. However, in relative terms, during the Self-Strengthening Movement China fell behind decisively. In essence, late Qing foreign trade was of the wrong sort; China became an underdeveloped country, a market for industrial products and processed fuels such as kerosene and an exporter of raw cotton, beans, hides, and other primary goods. Research by Yan Se of the Guanghua Business School has made clear that the changes in China’s foreign trade in the 1880s occurred at the same time that living standards began to decline and the cost of living to increase. Yan used Customs Service data on the wages of Customs staff and the cost of a basket of goods to examine the economic fortunes of unskilled and skilled workers and to generate consumer price indexes for low and high earners.123 Se Yan’s conclusions bear out the contention that the 1880s represent a real economic turning point. It could have been worse. The depreciation of silver affected the Chinese economy less than one might have expected. Bredon, for one, did not believe that the decline of the gold value of silver, of which he was well aware, had a serious effect on Chinese consumers: “in the general opinion, a Tael of silver buys as much produce now as it did when it had a higher Sterling value. . . . An intelligent native says that a man who has an income of Tls. 100 can now buy more than 10 years ago. He says the tendency of foreign trade has been to raise the standard of Chinese comfort.”124 Bredon was overly optimistic, but he had a point. For most Chinese, it was the copper price of commodities that mattered. After reaching a post–Taiping Rebellion high of around 1,700 copper coins for one tael of silver, by 1895 it had dropped to around 1,200, that is, by nearly 30 percent.125 The consequence was that the deterioration of the gold value of silver was dampened by the decline of the copper value of silver. Graph 3.8 shows that copper appreciated in terms of silver.

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GRAPH 3.8. The copper-silver exchange rate, 1865–1895.

The consequence was that the tax burden, assessed in silver, declined. One other reason why the decline of silver did not have an utterly disastrous effect was because much of Asia remained on the silver standard. Japan, for instance, did not move onto the gold standard until it could use the indemnity paid by China after the Sino-Japanese war to do so. Although in the Dutch East Indies silver was pegged to gold, India did so only in 1898. It was only then that “intra-Asian trade fell behind decisively” in global trade.126 Graph 3.9 bears out the point, as it suggests that the silver price of imported rice remained fairly steady throughout the period. By extension, the price of food did not worsen as much as China’s growing dependence on food imports might otherwise have caused. The Self-Strengthening Movement was a crucial period in the history of the Service. Early on, Robert Hart had ensured that the Service was a centralized and disciplined organization able to respond quickly and effectively to new opportunities, that it was well informed about events in China and in Europe, and that it could mobilize expert and professional advice. The Customs Service therefore was in an excellent position to exploit the opportunities provided by the rapid expansion of global trade; the industrialization of mainland Europe, Japan, and the United States; and the transport revolution. The Service, however, was not merely an append-

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GRAPH 3.9. The price of rice, 1867–1895.

age of the British Empire. The information that the London Office could mobilize and the network of contacts on which it could call also made it useful to the Qing. If its appendage in London allowed the Service to become a nodal point in relations between the Qing and Britain, with an influence even in Europe, from where it increasingly recruited staff from influential families, it would never have been able to carve out such a strong position had it not been for its role in facilitating the expansion of China’s steamer trade. That delivered new revenue badly needed both by Beijing and provincial governments, and traders and merchants in China and abroad who profited from this trade formed powerful constituencies. Not all of China’s regions benefitted equally, but many, especially Shanghai, did. In analyzing the effects of China’s integration into international trade, I have suggested that from the 1880s China became primarily an exporter of primary commodities and an importer of industrially produced goods. China would pay a high price for the Qing’s refusal to permit the creation of a domestic textile industry, a policy that probably derived from a desire by officials to protect household and handicraft manufacturing.

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Benjamin Elman has argued that the Sino-Japanese War has cast a long shadow over interpretations of the Self-Strengthening Movement. Interpreting the whole movement as inevitably leading up to the Qing’s failure to resist Japan’s attack fails to do it proper justice. The evidence presented in this chapter suggests that the 1880s were a critical period, and several developments occurred during that decade that put the Qing adrift. The economic situation deteriorated in part because of the failure to develop a modern light industry. During the Sino-French War, the intertwining of European and Qing politics rebounded on the Qing. Neither Germany nor Britain wanted to supply the Qing with the advanced naval ships it needed for fear of upsetting other European powers. The new imperialism meant that they wanted to preserve the peace in Europe while each carved out new colonies elsewhere. A point to note here is that the new imperialism began to affect China earlier than has usually been allowed. The partition of Africa occurred at the same time as European imperialist countries and Japan began to divide up East and Southeast Asia, and there were connections between the two developments. Important too was the end of unity among the Qing’s post-Taiping leadership. Prince Gong was set aside during the Sino-French War. Hart believed that he was “very ill: stone—and will not submit to an operation,” leading Hart to fear that the Service would “lose a strong supporter”;127 Prince Gong survived, but his career was over. Zuo Zongtang died in 1885; Zeng Guofan had done so in 1872. That left Li Hongzhang. The opposition to him, as illustrated by the efforts of the Pure Criticism faction under Zhang Zhidong’s leadership to impeach him, ensured that he could not become a Chinese Bismarck and demonstrated that the Qing lacked the political unity required to drive through the industrialization and modernization projects it needed to keep up with the West and Japan. Empress Dowager Cixi was controversial in any case, and she did not help matters by fomenting factional rivalries so as to hold the balance of power. In all these ways, the 1880s proved a critical decade. However, had a few things gone the Qing’s way, such as having the Zhenyuan and Dingyuan available when the Qing took on France, one needs little imagination to envision a different end to the Self-Strengthening Movement than the denouement of 1895. Minor events can have huge results.

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Chapter Four

THE RISE OF THE BOND MARKETS The Customs Service Becomes a Debt Collector, 1895–1914 I used to think that if there was re-incarnation, I wanted to come back as the President, the Pope, or a .400 baseball hitter. But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everyone. —JAMES CARVILLE, 1994

We tend not to associate bond markets with modern Chinese history.1 The Qing Dynasty, like its predecessors but unlike European states, did not rely on public borrowing, which went against Qing constitutional principles. One would search in vain in Chinese history for a “military-fiscal cycle,” which was so crucial in the making of Europe’s modern states.2 However, bond markets became important first after the Sino-Japanese War, when Japan imposed a Hk.Tls. 200 million indemnity. Unable to find the necessary funding from current revenue, the Qing concluded three large loans from international banking consortia, which issued bonds to raise the necessary capital. In 1900, the Boxer Uprising led to an even larger indemnity of Hk.Tls. 450 million, which also was financed through a bond, in this case a single bond from the Qing to the eight countries that had invaded China, claiming to have done so in the defense of civilization. Because provinces ceased to remit revenue to Beijing during the 1911 Revolution, the Republic of China that replaced the Qing once more turned to foreign lenders, contracting in 1913 a £25 million Reorganization Loan from an international consortium of banks, a loan yet again financed through a bond

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issue. Servicing foreign debt to maintain China’s credit in international bond markets, which was necessary to ensure future borrowing, became a major concern for all Republican governments and affected their histories in profound ways. To borrow, one needs security. The Qing had little to offer other than Customs revenue, as the Service provided detailed and publicly available information about it and because the Service was trusted. With each turn of the financial screw, China lost more control over the Customs Service and its revenue. First the Japanese indemnity loans, then the Boxer Indemnity, and finally the Reorganization Loan became charges on Customs revenue. As China’s financial crisis deepened, the conditions attached to the loans became increasingly stringent. The Japanese indemnity loans stipulated that the organization of the Service was to remain unchanged for their duration. Because China’s borrowing exceeded the expected income from Customs revenue, it had to accept that administrative control over other sources of revenue be handed to the Service, including the most lucrative lijin and Salt Tax Administration collectorates as well as Native Customs stations near treaty ports. Western powers exploited the Qing’s financial embarrassment to extract railroad and mining concessions, sometimes directly as a condition for a loan, but more usually indirectly. The 1911 Revolution was a major turning point because the Service assumed direct control over the collection of Customs revenue, thus ousting the superintendents. Until then, although Customs revenue had stood security for the loans, repayments had in fact been made from other sources, with no one asking questions. However, in the face of the Qing collapse, that was no longer considered a viable procedure. Diplomats, bankers, and the Service, under the new IG Francis Aglen, collaborated to ensure that Customs revenue ended up safely in the hands of the Service so that the payments of interest and capital on the loans would continue. The consequence was that the Service became not the kernel of a modern administration for China, as Hart had wanted, but a debt-collection agency for foreign bondholders. The transformation of the Service into a debt-collection agency made it a typical “informal empire” institution.3 If in the case of the Ottoman Empire and Egypt, for example, their creditors had to put in place an agency to enforce debt collection, in the Chinese case they did not even have to do that: the Customs Service was already in place. This development reflected

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the rise of what Peter Cain and Antony Hopkins have called “gentlemanly capitalism” in Britain, that is, the emergence of a southern English gentlemanly elite, usually educated in public schools, who maintained British supremacy through financial means, resorting to military power only as a last resort to force countries to fulfill their debt obligations. Joseph Esherick famously described the 1911 Revolution as “politically progressive” but “socially regressive.”4 According to Esherick, the revolution was progressive in that it brought an end to the Qing Dynasty and two thousand years of monarchical rule but socially regressive in that Chinese elites entrenched their position by seizing control over local government and representative institutions. Esherick’s judgment must be qualified in light of what happened to the Service and China’s Customs revenue during the 1911 Revolution. Because of the alienation of the Service, China emerged out of the revolution not as an independent republic but as a client state.

THE CREATION OF A CHINA LOAN MARKET PRIOR TO 1895

Why were foreign banks and countries willing to lend to China on a substantial scale? It required that they had faith in receiving a return on their investment. That faith was based on a profitable pattern of lending which had begun in the aftermath of the Taiping Rebellion, in the mid-1860s, and the involvement of the Service suggested that those early loans were based on ample security. Over several decades, a small but stable China loan market emerged in London. Without that, it would have been impossible to float the loans raised to pay for the Japanese indemnity. In 1887, Huang Zunxian, the diplomat, reformer, and poet, wrote that “all Western countries issue national bonds. Most people will believe that Western countries are able to maintain large armies and wage wars frequently because their treasuries are overflowing. When they discover that they have enormous debts, they will think that this cannot last.”5 In explaining why this was not true, Huang pointed out that an important difference between China and European countries was that European governments decided on how much money they required for their activities and issued bonds to raise the funds needed to pay for whatever they could not meet out of current revenue; the Qing, in contrast, limited expenditures

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to what reserves and tax income allowed it to do. The Qing, he wrote, was committed to light taxation. Borrowing from the public by issuing government bonds was not an option because “the Ruler does not compete for profit with the people,”6 as stated in The Analects of Confucius. In Chinese dynastic histories, Huang noted, the piling up of debt by a dynasty was invariably presented as a symbol of bad rule and as the portent of a dynasty’s end. Public borrowing was not an instrument in the Qing’s fiscal toolkit. However, already before the Taiping Rebellion, Qing finances had deteriorated. Afterward, the Qing was unable to reinstitute the land tax fully.7 That tax brought in between K. Tls. 14 and K. Tls. 22 million annually; before the rebellion it had delivered over K. Tls. 30 million.8 The lijin brought in new funds, as did Customs duties and the sale of honors and positions, but much of the lijin escaped central control, and considerable parts of both the lijin and Customs duties were retained locally.9 During the Taiping Rebellion, provincial officials had turned to foreign merchants for short-term loans essentially on a private and informal basis. Customs commissioners had become involved when the foreigners making these loans, attracted by the high interests available, insisted that Customs commissioners countersign the promissory notes of Qing officials.10 A steep change came in 1867 when Zuo Zongtang raised a K. Tls. 1 million loan for his campaign against Yakub Beg. This loan was secured on revenue of the Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Ningbo, Hankou, and Shanghai Customs.11 However, Shanghai commissioner George Fitz-Roy declined to endorse the loan bonds on the grounds that he could be held personally liable.12 Robert Hart therefore devised a process that would make the loan an official Qing debt. He insisted that loans issued by provincial officials were to be approved in an imperial edict about which the Zongli Yamen was to inform him. Once he had received that notification, he would then order the relevant Customs commissioners to sign the loan bonds. If this procedure was followed, Hart wrote, the loan would be “a bona fide Government loan.”13 Even so, commissioners would sign “without recourse,”14 meaning that they vouchsafed that proper procedures had been followed but that they could not be held personally liable.15 Using this procedure, the Qing borrowed around £16 million from foreign sources before the Sino-Japanese War. As Frank King has argued, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank was highly effective in creating a market for China loans in Britain. It handled 75 percent of the Qing’s pre-1895 foreign

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borrowing.16 As a transnational banking corporation with its head office in Hong Kong but branches in China’s treaty ports and offices in London and Beijing, it became the interface between China’s silver-dominated economy and the gold-based financial markets of London. In China, it worked through its Chinese compradors, who in turn dealt with the weiyuan of Chinese officials. It accepted Chinese financial practices, including that a loan was paid in full rather than discounted. At the same time, it also emulated the habits of the City in London, issuing loan brochures, having Customs commissioners sign the loan bonds, and including a statement on the bond that Customs revenue stood security. If a cash-flow problem caused short-term liquidity problems, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank advanced funds for the payment of dividends and coupons. It would also buy up bonds when their prices fell, for instance when speculators unloaded them. It arranged for the British legation to transmit imperial edicts sanctioning loans, a process that suggested that they were backed by the British government, even if in reality this was not the case.17 The approval process designed by Hart did lead to the rejection of some loans. In 1877, officials in Shanghai, Fujian, Yunnan, and Hubei attempted to raise a K. Tls. 6.5 million loan. Hart informed the Zongli Yamen, writing that “a Wei-yuen named Hsu in Shanghai is arranging a Tls. 2.5 mln loan to be repaid from Customs revenue over 11 years.”18 Following consultation with provincial officials, the Zongli Yamen instructed Hart to tell commissioners that they “should in no way assist Wei-yuen Hsu in arranging this loan.” Hart’s procedure allowed Beijing to put limits on the borrowing of provincial officials. Robert Hart argued repeatedly that an edict sanctioning a loan made that loan a sovereign debt and hence that it was unnecessary to dress up the bonds in the way the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank insisted.19 However, London investors were unwilling to undo their purse strings unless the Customs Service and especially Robert Hart were involved. As Stuart Rendel wrote a propos of one loan proposal, “He himself is its great guarantee.”20 In short, in the decades before the Sino-Japanese War, the Customs Service and the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank had helped bring about a small market for China loans in Britain. Robert Hart had designed a procedure that prevented provincial officials from contracting loans without Zongli Yamen approval, thus ensuring that they remained limited and were repaid

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as scheduled. The Hongkong and Shanghai Bank used its banking expertise to manage their issue in London. The growing reputation of both the Customs Service and the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank—and a track record of punctual payment—ensured that the Qing had the credit to borrow on a substantial scale after the Sino-Japanese War.

THE JAPANESE INDEMNITY, THE FAILURE OF QING DOMESTIC BORROWING, THE SCRAMBLE FOR CONCESSIONS, AND THE OPEN DOOR NOTE

Japan exacted an indemnity of Hk.Tls. 200 million after its victory in the Sino-Japanese War, to be paid in eight installments over three years. A 5 percent interest charge was levied on any outstanding amounts.21 China was to pay a further Hk.Tls. 30 million to compensate Japan for the retrocession of the Liaodong Peninsula, which it had annexed but which the Triple Alliance of Russia, France, and Germany compelled it to disgorge. Japan also levied a charge of Hk.Tls. 500,000 annually to defray the costs it incurred while it occupied Weihaiwei, a port on the Shandong coast it held as a payment guarantee while indemnity payments remained outstanding. At the time, the Qing Treasury received about Hk.Tls. 88 million in revenue.22 The Qing was in no position to pay these charges out of current revenue. The Qing tried twice to raise funds domestically, but while the first attempt, which was on a small scale, was successful, the second one, on a much larger scale, failed, forcing the Qing to borrow in the international financial markets. Li Wenjie has shown that during the Sino-Japanese War the Qing Treasury was able to issue a domestic bond with some success. Besides needing emergency finances during the war, an additional reason for the Qing to turn to domestic sources was that the drop in the gold value of silver had made the servicing of previous foreign loans far more expensive than originally assumed. A Treasury memorial argued that “in recent years, when provincial treasuries were empty, we borrowed foreign funds at interest, but because of the price of Sterling, we suffered substantial losses. In the vast expanse of China, there are many rich merchants. Surely there are those who are dedicated to the public good and will enthusiastically

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participate.”23 What had looked like a cheap source of money had become an expensive one. During the Qing’s first bond issue, in Guangdong and Guangxi, where Li Hongzhang’s older brother, Li Hanzhang (李瀚章), was governor general, K. Tls. 3 million worth of bonds was placed successfully. The bonds were secured on Customs revenue and foreign opium lijin, which was also collected by the Customs Service. The bonds carried the signatures of the Guangzhou superintendent of Customs and the Guangzhou Customs commissioner, who both jointly handled coupon (interest) and capital payments.24 Jiangsu and Zhejiang also sold substantial numbers of bonds.25 Initially, the value of the bonds dropped because no one believed that the Qing would service them, but when they were indeed serviced, the bonds recovered their value. Robert Hart commented that “this is a very good method. . . . China will not have to borrow abroad if bond issuers and bond holders developed mutual trust.”26 However, this bond issue raised less than Hk.Tls. 5 million, well short of what was needed for the Japanese indemnity. Robert Hart had anticipated the Qing’s need for foreign funds. During the Sino-Japanese War, he arranged two emergency loans by the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, the 1894 Chinese Government 7% Silver Loan for K. Tls. 10 million and the 1895 Chinese Government 6% Sterling Loan for £ 3 million.27 Convinced that China would need a huge loan to finance troop disbandment, indemnity payments, and administrative reform, Hart opened discussions with the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank in April 1895.28 The bank began work on putting together a group of British, French, and German banks to raise the funds.29 However, Prime Minister Salisbury, who was committed to a policy of splendid isolation—avoiding entanglement in European alliance politics—refused to lend official support to the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. Russia, Germany, and France, on the other hand, were keen. A syndicate of Russian and French banks agreed to lend £16 million at 4 percent in a loan that became known as the 1895 £16 Million Franco-Russian 4% Gold Loan. In return for making the loan and guaranteeing it, the Russians hoped for concessions in China’s northeast and in Yunnan. The first would give Russia the upper hand in the struggle between Japan, Russia, and the Qing for influence in Northeast Asia. With Yunnan bordering Burma, Russian concessions there would challenge British influence in Southeast Asia.

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As Campbell wrote Hart, Russia also proposed that “the Chinese Customs Service should be managed by the European Powers jointly.”30 The Qing was able to refuse these demands, but the loan agreement did stipulate that Russia would have the first right of refusal if the Qing decided to hand control over any of its revenue sources to a foreign country.31 The next year, the Qing concluded a secret alliance with Russia. In return for a promise of mutual defense in case of an attack by Japan on either Russia or China, Russia gained the right to construct a railroad through China’s northeast linked to the Trans-Siberian Railroad. A strip of land along the railroad would be ceded to the nominally private China Eastern Railroad Company.32 Round 1 in the battle for concessions had gone to Russia. Britain responded by insisting that the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, which was still regarded as a small bank, to accept assistance from the Rothschilds and participate in a broad German-British banking syndicate. Germany was aggrieved that it had been excluded from the Franco-Russian Gold Loan and was therefore prepared to cooperate with Britain. The result was the 1896 5% Anglo-German Sterling Loan for £16 million, with the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank and the Deutsche-Asiatische Bank the lead partners of a syndicate of British and German banks. The loan was secured on uncommitted Customs revenue and, if these proved insufficient, other sources that would be identified later when necessary.33 The loan agreement stipulated that the administration of the Customs Service would not be changed for the duration of the loan. The final installment of the Japanese indemnity fell due in 1898. If delivered on time, the Qing would avoid having to pay a 5 percent interest charge on outstanding loans. Russia and Britain both wanted the loan. Because of Russia’s support for China during the Sino-Japanese War, the Zongli Yamen initially favored Russia. Russia also would have accepted the land tax as security, rather than lijin taxes, as Britain insisted. As Hart wrote, mortgaging the land tax was politically easier for the Qing because “Likin [lijin] control would hurt private purse of every Chinese official while land tax control would mainly affect Government: therefore Yamen Ministers today would rather give land tax with all its future danger to Russia than lijin with all its promise of internal improvement to British.”34 If the loan went to Russia, its influence across China would have increased greatly, and it might well have tried to take over the Customs Service, as it had attempted earlier. Because “future of Far East [is] at stake,”35

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Hart urged Campbell to work together with the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank to bring pressure on the Foreign Office not just to preserve British interests in China but also to safeguard the integrity of the Customs Service and prevent it from becoming internationalized or split up. In the same month, the London manager of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, Ewen Cameron, told Francis Bertie, the permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office, that “unless the English Government came to the rescue, the Russian arrangement would be put through, with the result that China would become a Russian Province and the Customs pass out of English hands.”36 In Britain’s China policy, China was largely seen as a buffer between Russia and India, its jewel in the crown. Francis Bertie, nicknamed “the Bull,” favored the aggressive defense of British colonial interests. The fight for the third Japanese indemnity loan was part of the Great Game. A problem was that most Customs revenue had already been committed. Hart informed the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, when asked, that “70% of Customs revenue has been pledged. Remainder not available because required for cost of collection, coast light service, and Legations.”37 It was for this reason that the British asked the Qing to agree to Customs Service control of some lijin as well as Salt Tax Administration collection stations. It also demanded the abolition of lijin at treaty ports and the recognition of the Yangzi Valley as a British sphere of influence. This was too much for Russia: it warned the Qing that acceptance of these conditions “will entail the interruption in the friendly relations existing between the two empires.”38 It threatened war. Faced with this dangerous situation, the Qing switched tack and attempted to raise no less than K. Tls. 100 million from domestic sources. As Li Wenjie has shown, the Zhaoxin (照信), or Evident Trust Bond, failed miserably. On January 1, 1898, a Qing Treasury official, Huang Siyong, argued in a memorial proposing the issue of Evident Trust Bonds that Chinese investors would be eager to purchase the bonds because it was “in the national interest and [they] have the endorsement of the Emperor.”39 His faith in the patriotism and loyalty of the Qing’s subjects proved misplaced. The Evident Trust Bond failed for three reasons: the Treasury decided to handle the issue and servicing of the bond itself rather than let banks do so, its size was so large that it quickly overwhelmed the market, and it was hypothecated on the combined land and poll tax as well as the salt tax. In practice, the Evident Trust Bonds became like a traditional exercise in

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extracting donations. Governors were allocated a certain amount of bonds. They subdivided their allotment to subordinate officials, who in turn coerced local elites and lower officials to purchase them.40 No one believed that the Qing would make interest or capital payments, so the bonds became worthless. Because the pressure that had been put on people to purchase the bonds had led to an uproar, in September 1898 the Qing issued an imperial edict ordering a halt to the selling of the bonds.41 The Qing had no option but once more to look abroad. Russia made itself unpopular when, in retaliation for the German seizure of Qingdao and in violation of its secret alliance with the Qing, it seized Dalian (Dairen) and Lüshun (Port Arthur) in the northeast. The Qing therefore turned to Britain and the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank.42 This loan became the 1898 4.5% Anglo-German Gold Loan, again for £16 million. Both countries were again involved because at the time of the previous loan, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank and the Deutsche-Asiatische Bank had concluded an agreement that if any further loans would become available, they would involve each other. As with the previous loans, the loan became a further charge on Customs revenue. Anticipating that this would not be sufficient, the banks pressured that the loan would also became a “first charge” on the lijin collectorates of Suzhou, Song-Hu in the Lower Yangzi, Jiujiang, and eastern Zhejiang, which was estimated to be able to provide Tls. 3.2 million per year. If further funds were needed, the revenue collected at the Salt Tax Administration stations at Yichang and Hankou in Hubei Province and at Jiujiang could also be used. The annual income from these last sources was estimated at Tls. 2.8 million.43 The loan agreement stipulated that the Service would take over the management of all these tax agencies and if necessary any additional ones that had to be called upon to service the loan bond.44 The loan contract prescribed that for the duration of the loan, which was forty-five years, the management of the Service would not change and, additionally, that the Inspector General would be British as long as British trade was larger than that of any other country.45 Having contained Russia in Northeast Asia, secured its position in the Yangzi Valley, captured a large slice of the China loan business, and ensured that the Customs Service would stay as it was, Britain decided it was time to call for international cooperation in China. In January 1898, the British chancellor of the exchequer, its finance minister, declared that “we do not regard China as a place for conquest or acquisition by any European

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or other power. . . . [The government] are absolutely determined even if necessary at cost of war that this door shall not be shut.”46 Britain wanted the United States, as being above European politics and hence neutral, to take the lead in gaining general support for the policy. Julian Pauncefote, now usefully in place in the United States as the British ambassador to Washington, approached the Department of State. Lord Beresford of the Royal Navy, the author of The Breakup of China, toured the United States to garner support for the policy. Neither had much success. A. E. Hippisley, a senior commissioner then in Europe with good connections to the British Foreign Office, was then sent to Washington to lobby W. W. Rockhill. Rockhill had served as U.S. minister to China, was an advisor to Secretary of State John Hay, and had been a friend of Hippisley for a long time. Rockhill was initially unreceptive to Hippisley’s entreaties. But Hippisley piled on the pressure, arguing that “my latest advices from Peking say: ‘the Russification of Peking and North China will proceed as rapidly as that of Manchuria.’” To Rockhill’s argument that the United States was unlikely to be willing to be seen following Britain’s lead in China, Hippisley pointed out that the United States would avoid doing so if it took the initiative. Rockhill was convinced, went on a publishing spree, and wrote a memorandum for Hay, who secured President McKinley’s agreement for the issue of what would become known as the Open Door Note. It insisted that “the Chinese treaty tariff of the time being shall apply to all merchandise landed or shipped” at all treaty ports and that Customs duties “shall be collected by the Chinese Government,”47 meaning, of course, the Customs Service, which remained a Chinese agency. In essence, the Open Door Note recognized the existence of spheres of influence, but in the name of preserving the equality of commercial opportunity for all, it called on all countries not to implement different tariffs and to allow the Customs Service to continue to operate across China. The lending orgy triggered by the Japanese indemnity radically altered the position of the Customs Service. It facilitated the capture by foreign countries of a substantial slice of Qing revenue. It was a strong bureaucracy delivering a stable and sizeable revenue flow that could serve as security for the large loans the Qing needed. The Qing’s financial dependence allowed countries like Britain and Russia to impose conditions on the loans that damaged the Qing’s sovereignty. The result of these developments was that the Service became embroiled in the deepening of financial imperialism in

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China. At the same time, the Customs Service became an issue in the Great Game rivalry between Britain and Russia, thus threatening its continued existence as a self-governing bureaucracy. It did not fully escape from this problem, becoming increasingly associated with and dependent on Britain, but as during the Sino-French War, its international network of contacts, which was able even to access indirectly the U.S. secretary of state and the U.S. president, helped the Service preserve a semblance of independence and avoid being taken over or parceled out among the Powers.

THE CUSTOMS SERVICE AND THE BOXER WAR

The Boxer Uprising must be kept conceptually distinct from the Boxer War. The Boxer Uprising refers to the anti-Christian and antiforeign movement of Boxers in northern China during the hot dry summer of 1900, when the Boxers killed Chinese and foreign Christians.48 If the concern for the fate of their citizens and outrage at Boxer murderousness was genuine, nonetheless the Boxer War was never merely a military action undertaken to safeguard the lives of foreigners in China. That could have been done in cooperation with the Qing. Instead, the Boxer War was between the Qing and the forces of the Eight Allied Nations, none of whom dared to be absent at the imperialist feeding frenzy that would break out if the Qing did fall. Wreaking revenge on the Qing played well at home, too. European populations had come to see colonial possessions as a source of national glory, memories of earlier incidents such as the ones that had occurred in India during the Indian Uprising had inculcated a deep fear of the revenge of the natives, and Christians longed for the punishment of Chinese heathens. The Customs Service was deeply involved in the Boxer War not only because its staff were caught up in it but also both because it threatened the survival of the Service and because Robert Hart played a critical role in arranging a settlement and restoring normality. The Service could do little when the actual fighting was going on, as it was caught in the middle between the Qing and the Allies. However, once Beijing fell to the invaders, with no one certain about what should now happen, a period of dangerous uncertainty opened up in which the partition of China or the outbreak of war between the Eight Allies were real possibilities. This was the kind of situation in which the Service had always managed to come to the fore. In

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the case of the Boxer War, Robert Hart stepped into the breach to prevent worse from following bad.

An Avoidable War

The eminent Chinese historian Kong Xiangji has recently shed new light on the question of why Empress Dowager Cixi decided to take on, so shortly after the Sino-Japanese War, not just one foreign country but all of them at the same time. It is true that the major powers were distracted elsewhere: Britain was fighting the Boers in South Africa and losing, the United States faced an insurgency in the Philippines, the Russians were confronting a violent anarchist movement at home, and the Germans were battling the Hehe in German East Africa. This, then, was an opportune time for the Qing to take on the foreigners who had exploited so greedily the Qing’s weakness after its defeat by Japan. In addition, they had protected Kang Youwei, the Confucian sage who had convinced the Guangxu Emperor to begin a program of wholesale reform in 1898. In the crackdown that followed, the British smuggled Kang out of the country. They protected the Guangxu Emperor, who had been placed under house arrest. The empress dowager had wanted his abdication and possibly his death. In other words, foreign countries had begun to interfere in the affairs of the Qing royal lineage. That was intolerable. Although the empress dowager had motive and opportunity, this does not mean that she wanted or started the Boxer War. In the spring of 1900, Boxers had begun to murder Christians, and countries began to send troops to China, amassing them at Tianjin. In response to a call for help from British minister Claude MacDonald, the British admiral Edward Seymour had set out on June 10 with an international force of some two thousand men from Tianjin to force his way to Beijing, where foreign refugees were gathering and Boxers were becoming numerous. He did not, however, consult with Qing officials before setting out on an expedition not only of little legality but also of dubious military wisdom. The force was tied to a railroad, which was easily sabotaged and which traveled through countryside heavily populated with Qing and Boxer forces.49 Seymour would become stuck, unable to move forward to Beijing or return to Tianjin, as railroad track in front and to the rear of his column was removed.

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In addition, on June 17, Zhili governor general Yu Lu received a diplomatic note from the French consul general, Jean Mary du Chaylard, transmitting an ultimatum from the foreign naval commanders demanding the handover of the strategic Dagu Forts, located southeast of Tianjin. The forts, armed with Krupp artillery, were the last major fortification protecting Beijing from assault by a seaborne invasion, as had happened during the Arrow War. When the Zongli Yamen informed Robert Hart about the Dagu ultimatum, his response was that there must have been a mistake: such an ultimatum, he believed, would not have been issued without authorization from the ministers in Beijing.50 He added that the Allies were sending troops “for self-protection and to assist in pacifying the disturbances; they mean no harm to the Court.”51 However, the ultimatum had indeed been given, and it is understandable that the Qing interpreted it and the Seymour’s expedition as hostile acts. Empress Dowager Cixi convened “conferences in the presence of the throne” of high officials and Manchu grandees. Two opposing factions emerged, one arguing for maintaining peace, the other in favor of resisting the foreign invasion. Cixi declared her position, in favor of war, four days later, only after Yu Lu reported that Qing forces, with the support of Boxer troops, were achieving success on the battlefield. She approved an edict ordering mobilization across China.52 This was not, contrary to what is usually argued, a definite Qing declaration of war. No such document was ever handed to the ministers in Beijing. After the ultimatum, the Qing ordered the ministers out of China. Because the railroad connection with Tianjin had been cut and because Boxers made it dangerous to travel by road, they decided to stay, hurriedly barricading the legation quarter, for whose defense they would have to rely on the four hundred or so soldiers that were available. Had the Qing or the Boxers wanted to take the legations—or simply starve its residents to death—they could easily have done so.53 Why this did not happen may be, as Kong Xiangji has suggested, that Empress Dowager Cixi realized that she had made a huge mistake as soon as she learned that Yu Lu’s reports were mere boasting and that the Dagu Forts had fallen. She hurriedly had placards posted near the legations, stating: “On Imperial Order: Protect the Legations [钦奉旨保护使馆, qin feng zhi: baohu shiguan].”54 The Allies took Tianjin on July 15 after a tough battle pitting twenty thousand Qing troops against an Allied force of some twelve thousand

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men. One seasoned British officer declared that “the casualties at the capture of the Native City were far heavier in comparison to numbers engaged than in any South African battle,”55 referring to the Boer War. In the following weeks, foreign troops amassed in Tianjin in preparation for a march on Beijing. This they reached on August 14, where they found the city abandoned by the Qing court, its officials, and its armies. Empress Dowager Cixi and Emperor Guangxu fled first to Taiyuan in Shanxi Province and then further eastward to Xi’an in Shaanxi Province. In reality, the Boxer War was an unnecessary war triggered by overzealous commanders with an Orientalist disdain for China, which led them to believe that demanding the surrender of the Dagu Forts or sending a substantial military force to Beijing would not be seen as acts of war. The European press whipped up fears of native revenge, and demagogue politicians like Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany clamored that “just as the Huns a thousand years ago . . . may the name of Germany become known in such a manner in China that no Chinese will ever again dare to look askance at a German.”56 Important too was the belief that empire was testimony to a nation’s virility. Japan was first on the scene, and without its forces, the Allied position in Tianjin may well have proved more precarious than it was. Japan’s presence meant that Russia could not stay away. That in turn convinced the British they had to give acte de presence. For Germany, possessing dreams of imperial grandeur, this was a golden opportunity. And so, the Allies—Russia, Japan, Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Netherlands, Belgium, and the United States—ended up in occupation of northern China and Beijing, claiming to have done so in the name of protecting civilization.

Ambiguities and Ambivalences

The Boxer War forced men like Robert Hart and Gustav Detring to make choices they would have much preferred to avoid. When Robert Hart moved into the Legation Quarter, he wrote the Zongli Yamen: “I have assisted in the collection of revenue for forty years and I should stay in Beijing as I have always been treated with honesty and sincerity.” With great delicacy, he informed the Yamen officials that he had opted to join the foreign ministers: “were I to stay while all Ministers left Beijing, I could only cause

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problems for China.”57 When the Boxer War broke out, Gustav Detring, Li Hongzhang’s longtime amanuensis, was caught out. He had been working closely with well-connected Chinese officials, a British investor, and a U.S. mining engineer named Herbert Hoover to develop China’s northern railroads and create a new harbor at Qinhuangdao. His efforts to protect his Chinese colleagues led to accusations of double dealing.58 Suspicion of Detring ran so high that the Allies refused to include him in a committee to manage Tianjin after they had seized it. As E. B. Drew, the Tianjin commissioner, wrote, they could have used Detring with his wide connections, but he was suspected of being “a compatriot who has gone native.”59 Qing officials too were in a difficult situation, especially because they had no reliable guidance about the Qing’s policy. Kong Xiangji has written that it is possible that the Empress Dowager sent provincial officials an edict telling them to protect their provinces and ignore all other edicts coming out of Beijing.60 Given the fluidity of the situation, their best option, in any case, was to hedge their bets. Shanghai circuit intendent Yu Lianyuan (余联沅) agreed to “Nine Articles for Mutual Protection” with the Shanghai consuls, which was endorsed by Zhang Zhidong, the governor general of Hunan and Hubei, and Liu Kunyi, the Jiangnan governor general.61 The agreement provided that while the foreign consuls would take responsibility for the safety of the Shanghai settlement, Liu and Zhang would keep order in the Yangzi provinces. The agreement allowed men like Liu and Zhang to suggest to the Qing that they were keeping foreign forces out of their domains, and at the same time they could indicate to the consuls that they opposed the Boxers. Francis Aglen, the Customs commissioner at Nanjing, met Liu Kunyi regularly. Liu, according to Aglen, became exceedingly nervous at any talk of opposition to the empress dowager.62 Aglen concluded that Liu’s policy was to keep the foreigners out.63 The Norwegian assistant, P. C. Hansson, who had charge of the Nanjing Custom House for some time in 1900, was probably right when he wrote that “there is little sympathy among officials for the Boxers, but that does not mean that they do not hate the foreign devils.”64 Liu refused a British offer of military support, fearing that it would incite other foreign powers to send forces into the area, a view with which Prime Minster Salisbury came to agree.65 Li Hongzhang, governor general of Guangdong and Guangxi, declined to declare his provinces in-

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dependent.66 Robert Hart, whose relation with Li had deteriorated after the latter had begun to follow a pro-Russian policy, suspected that Li might be trying to become emperor with Russian help.67 Li carefully avoided doing anything that might make his intentions clear. Customs commissioners too adopted ambiguous attitudes. They had to contend with the possibility that Robert Hart would become a casualty of the Boxer War. In fact, his death was announced, prematurely, in the Times of July 17, with an obituary that testily criticized his “uncompromising loyalty to those he served” and declared him to possess a “peculiar subjectivity of judgment in connection with all things Chinese.”68 This rumor triggered the beginnings of a succession struggle. In Shanghai, Statistical Secretary F. E. Taylor established an Officiating Inspectorate with the support of the Shanghai consuls and Liu Kunyi.69 In Britain, Campbell and the Foreign Office were opposed to Taylor’s move, and Robert Hart later wryly commented that “24 June seemed a rather early date to arrange how I was to be replaced.”70 Another possibility was that, like China, the Custom Service would be partitioned along regional lines. In Hankou, Commissioner J. H. Hunt built up close relations with Zhang Zhidong, the governor general, in the hope, it was said, that the Yangzi provinces might become independent under Zhang.71 Paul King in Guangzhou readily agreed to Li Hongzhang’s proposal that all Customs commissioners report to him.72 Aglen, a younger man, went for a display of pro-British and pro-Hart loyalties, urging Hart after the occupation of Beijing to come south and begin the rebuilding of China from Nanjing, in the heart of the British sphere of influence.73 If there were suggestive acts and many more rumors, none was willing to declare his hand. The atmosphere of uncertainty deepened after the Allies occupied Beijing. Order broke down in that city, as it had in Tianjin and across northern China. The hunt by the Allies for Boxers meant that whole villages and towns were torched. On September 8, Robert Hart wrote to James Campbell: “their policy ought to be to restore order and confidence and induce people to bring in supplies for sale, but instead of this terrorism (except in the Japanese quarter) seems the order of the day and looting and commandeering are the only methods the soldiers think fit of resorting to.”74 As during the Arrow War, the behavior of the Allies disgusted him: “the command ‘give no quarter’ is translated to mean ‘show no mercy to man,

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woman or child,’ provided they are Chinese.”75 A dangerously unpredictable situation had emerged, one in which no one had much idea about what to do next.

Robert Hart’s Moment

Robert Hart wrote to Campbell shortly after the lifting of the siege of the legations that “I think I can be of use, and only I in all three directions, at this juncture.”76 As Frank King has argued, faced with the Boxer debacle, Hart interpreted certain passages in the Bible as a direct message to him from God to do His work in China.77 Hart pointed to these passages when asked by Campbell to explain the title for a collection of essays, These from the Land of Sinim, which Hart wrote in the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion. Some in the nineteenth century believed that Sinim was a reference to China in the Bible, an idea that has long been discounted. As we have seen, Hart had been a strongly religious young man, and he believed that God was constantly testing him and holding him in readiness. Now, Hart seems to have concluded, the moment for which God had held him in preparation had come. The first problem Hart faced was how to bring about negotiations. Hart pinned his hopes on Prince Qing, who had succeeded Prince Gong in 1884 and ever since had headed the Zongli Yamen.78 However, even the staff at his palace did not know where he was. A search party, protected by Japanese escorts, located Prince Qing outside Beijing,79 but he was reluctant to step forward, arguing that he needed time to recover from a bout of diarrhea.80 He returned to Beijing only on September 4, after further delays justified by bad weather and only after he had received an approving edict.81 Prince Qing and Hart met the same afternoon, with Hart handing him the first of many memoranda on the Boxer Uprising “so that he might fully understand the foreign side of the question.”82 Hart disabused Prince Qing of the idea that all he had to do was issue orders for Beijing’s residents to return to work and officials to return to their posts. With Beijing under foreign occupation, Hart told him, he had in fact no authority. If he acted as if he did, he would be “arrested and either immediately locked up or thrown out of the city.” Hart told him, gently, that it was up to him to be

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courageous and begin the distasteful business of initiating discussions with Allied representatives. Hart did not believe that afternoon that it was wise also to disabuse Prince Qing of the idea that the indemnity would be a “trifling sum” for the repair of a few churches and legation buildings. Prince Qing declined to do anything without Li Hongzhang, who was appointed co-plenipotentiary. Li was slow to make his way to Beijing, moving at a pace only just quick enough to avoid being charged with defying an imperial edict. He first went to Shanghai, meeting with local officials and consuls.83 He moved on to Tianjin only in the middle of September, traveling on board a Russian vessel. He then waited for the arrival of Field Marshall Count Alfred von Waldersee on September 27. Waldersee had been appointed commander-in-chief of the Allied forces, and he had been clear about his intentions to make China tremble before German might. He had arrived much too late to have any effect on the Boxer War and instead unleashed a series of punitive actions against Boxers—or supposed Boxers—which made a return to normality that much more difficult. Li Hongzhang would only make it to Beijing on October 14.84 Hart, though, had not sat still. In articles published in leading magazines in Britain, Germany, and the United States, he condemned Allied atrocities, defended the Boxers as essentially patriotic, and criticized the haughty hypocrisy of missionaries. Above all, he pleaded for a sympathetic treatment of China so that “the China of the future might have something to thank us for and not to avenge” as “China will be a big power at some future day.”85 Hart arranged a Hongkong and Shanghai Bank loan for Prince Qing, negotiated deals with rice dealers to bring food to Beijing, and advised the Zongli Yamen on how to approach the negotiations.86 He recommended a forthright recognition that the siege had been a gross violation of civilized conduct.87 He drafted a diplomatic note and outline agreement to be presented by Prince Qing and Li Hongzhang to the Allies. The first promised the immediate punishment of officials who had supported the Boxers and suggested a general agreement with the Allies collectively to settle issues affecting all of them, to be followed, if so desired, by separate negotiations for affairs involving only one county. The draft agreement contained a Qing acknowledgment that it had been in the wrong to attack the legations and promised full indemnification.88 On October 15, the day after Li Hongzhang arrived, the two Qing plenipotentiaries handed these two texts to the foreign ministers.89

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This only happened after Britain and Germany issued a statement that the Open Door policy would apply only “south of the 38th parallel,” that is, excluding the northeast.90 Shortly after the Allied occupation of Beijing, the Russian minister, M. N. de Giers, had left Beijing, and Russian troops had entered China’s northeast. That had made negotiations impossible and posed for the other Allied countries the question of whether to act similarly. The British-German declaration implied an acceptance of Russian dominance in the northeast. That made possible the return of de Giers to Beijing to participate in the negotiations. The arrival at the same time of Li Hongzhang was no doubt not coincidental. By mid-October, then, the situation had become sufficiently clear for negotiations to begin, and all those required for that were finally assembled in Beijing. Even so, there remained significant hurdles. The Germans demanded that before discussions began, Qing officials considered responsible for the siege were punished. According to Hart, this “frightened the whole mandarinate.”91 High officials and princes were decapitated or asked to commit suicide at such a rate that Li Hongzhang wondered, “if they disappear at this rate, who will be left to punish?”92 Allied brutality strengthened the prowar party at court. Prince Duan, who was close to the empress dowager and whose son had been appointed heir apparent, had sent a letter to all governors ordering them to prepare to take up arms again once the onset of winter caused the Dagu harbor to freeze over.93 It was also true that the Allies preferred to dictate rather than be seen to be having discussions with Qing officials. In addition, they found it difficult to agree on their demands.94 From October to just before Christmas, Hart shuttled back and forth between the Qing plenipotentiaries and the ministers. On Christmas Eve, they were finally ready to summon Prince Qing and Li Hongzhang, telling them that peaceful relations could be resumed once the Qing agreed to the razing of the Dagu Forts, the stationing of Allied troops at the legations and along the Beijing-Tianjin corridor, the postponement of civil service examinations in all areas where Christians had been killed, an embargo on arms imports, and the payment of an indemnity. Hart advised Prince Qing and Li not to raise objections at this point but to seek to modify the Allied demands when the details of the agreement had to be hammered out.95 Hart may have believed that he was serving a higher mission, but he also made sure to look after the Customs Service. He feared that it would

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be “placed under international control similar to Egyptian,”96 referring to its Caisse de la Dette Publique. This is why he insisted that the Qing should negotiate with the Allies collectively and why he designed the indemnity as a single state-to-state bond between the Qing and the Allies.97 The indemnity, as laid down in the Boxer Protocol of October 7, 1901, was set at Hk.Tls. 450 million, to be paid over thirty-nine years, with interest charged at 4 percent per annum on outstanding amounts, meaning that the total China would pay would come to no less than Hk.Tls. 982,238,150 (based on the silver-gold exchange rate prevailing at the time the protocol was signed). The Boxer Protocol identified as security for the Boxer Indemnity Bond any uncommitted Customs revenues; Native Customs stations near treaty ports, which were to be taken over by the Customs Service; and Salt Tax Administration revenues. Hart genuinely believed he had rescued something positive for China and the world from the wreckage of 1900. Not only had peace been restored and trade revived, but reform would now have its day. In February 1901, he enthused to Campbell: “Empress Dowager now accepting Emperor’s views, both issued important reform edict.”98 He submitted many memoranda with suggestions, including of the land tax, which Hart believed alone could easily provide Hk.Tls. 200 million, enabling the Qing not only to pay the indemnities but also rearm, build a modern school system, and reform the bureaucracy.99 However, the humiliation of the Qing had been too deep. A reform program that might have worked after the Taiping Rebellion was no longer viable, and the Service, which had grown hugely in power and had become associated with the growing foreign control of China, became a target of criticism.

BACKLASH: THE RISE OF YOUNG CHINA AND THE FOUNDING OF THE BOARD OF CUSTOMS CONTROL

New pathways to power opened up after the Boxer War. Appointment to official positions had been impossible without success in China’s vaunted civil service examinations. But the Boxer Protocol had proscribed the holding of the examinations in provinces in which Boxers had been active, and the reforms the Qing initiated after the Boxer War led to their complete abolishment in 1905. These reforms aimed at remodeling the bureaucracy

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along Western lines, introducing a Western-style educational system, creating representative institutions, and moving toward constitutional government.100 In addition, the last elders of the Self-Strengthening Movement had died off. Li Hongzhang did so in November 1901, Liu Kunyi in October 1902, and Zhang Zhidong followed a few years later. New men with new ideas able to do new things were now wanted. One of the new men was Yuan Shikai. He had demonstrated his mettle as Qing regent in Korea and had built up the New Army. Although he had not passed the civil service examinations, he succeeded Li Hongzhang as governor general of Zhili after Li’s death, something that before the Boxer War would have been unimaginable. Another was Tang Shaoyi, educated at Queen’s University in Hong Kong and Columbia University in the United States. Tang had served as a superintendent, had accompanied Paul von Möllendorff when he established Custom Houses in Korea, and had acted as the Chinese consul general there. He briefly served as prime minister after the 1911 Revolution. Yuan and Tang would lead the charge to recover Chinese control over the Customs Service. When Tang was appointed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which replaced the Zongli Yamen as a result of the New Policy reforms, Hart worried that “his foreign education will probably lead him to push into Customs affairs to an embarrassing extent.”101 Wu Tingfang represented the growing influence of overseas Chinese. He was born in Singapore, studied at St. Paul’s College in Hong Kong, earned a law degree at University College London, and was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn. He too would become a prominent diplomat. Men like these were very well informed about foreign affairs and in no way had to consider themselves educationally inferior to Customs commissioners. Chinese nationalism also began to make itself felt. In 1904, Chinese students in the United States and Europe protested the Chinese contribution to the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exhibition, put together by the Service and featuring, insultingly to Chinese dignity, prominent displays relating to foot binding, opium smoking, and begging.102 At the same time, rightsrecovery movements gathered steam in China. In 1905, a broadly based protest in China boycotted American products in protest over the U.S. laws limiting Chinese immigration. Powerful critiques of the Customs Service as an institution supporting the imperialist exploitation of China emerged. One was formulated by Zheng Guanying (郑观应), who had served as Dent and Co.’s Shanghai

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comprador in Shanghai in the 1850s and as Swire’s chief comprador. He had been involved in the establishment of the China Merchant Steamboat Navigation Company and knew many of the leading reform thinkers of the age, including Wang Tao and Feng Guifen. He contributed to the Shenbao, the leading daily of the period. In the 1880s and 1890s, he worked for commercial enterprises associated with Li Hongzhang, including the Tianjin and Shanghai Telegraph Company.103 Zheng was no xenophobic conservative Manchu or otherworldly Confucian literatus. In Humble Views for a Prosperous Age, printed in 1895 (although manuscript sections had circulated long before that), Zheng rejected the argument that “Chinese would find it difficult to avoid corruption” as a Western conceit exploited to justify the exclusion of Chinese from the senior ranks in the Customs Service. That claim, one might add, did not sit well with the fact that commissioners lived in colonial mansions and had adopted aristocratic lifestyles with much dining, hunting, and clubbing, or with the fact that British Hong Kong had become a major smuggling center. Zheng was deeply critical of the fact that no Chinese had risen to the rank of commissioner, even though out of the Service’s total staff of 4,343 members, 3,574 were Chinese—and even though many had been educated abroad,104 often, as in the case of Tang Shaoyi, at educational institutions more prestigious than those Customs commissioners had attended. According to Zheng, if in 1860s and 1870s it made sense to have foreigners manage China’s Custom Houses, by the end of the nineteenth century this had become an anachronism.105 Zheng attacked the loss of tariff autonomy, arguing that it was an important aspect of national sovereignty. The United States and Japan, he noted, used high import tariffs to protect their infant industries. He argued that the inability of China to do the same had retarded its industrialization. Only three countries—India, the Ottoman Empire, and China—did not have tariff autonomy. India had become a colony, and the Ottoman Empire too had lost its independence; China, he worried, might suffer the same fate. Zheng pointed to exemption certificates as evidence that foreign businesses had an unfair advantage, with the Service culpable because it enforced them.106 Zheng’s was not a lone voice. Many of the same views that Zheng held were articulated by Chen Chi (陈炽), who held posts in the Treasury, the Board of Punishment, and the Grand Council. In 1895, he had joined Kang Youwei’s Society for Self-Strengthening as its director, and he supported

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Kang’s 1898 reform movement. Chen wrote a foreword for Zheng’s collection of essays. In Ordinary Writings (庸书), he too attacked China’s loss of tariff autonomy, arguing that “if we are not able to change this, China will cease to exist just like India. We have stood by with arms folded and let them do as they wished to the eternal shame of us all!”107 The breakout of the Customs Service from the treaty ports turned Chinese officials and merchants against it. The Boxer Protocol had assigned to the Customs Service the management of Native Customs stations near the treaty ports. Hart, well aware of the dangers, quickly agreed that only those within a radius of fifty li (25 kilometers) of Custom Houses should come under Service supervision.108 Even that, despite instructions to commissioners to proceed slowly in asserting themselves,109 provoked antagonism. In Jiujiang, the superintendent appealed against the demand of the Customs commissioner that Native Customs receipts should be handed over to him. Facing the threat of a market strike, the Qing Treasury ruled that only additional revenue in excess of what had been collected before should be made over to the commissioner.110 In Wuhu, the commissioner was unable to do anything because “both the Superintendent and the Governor have declared their inability to change the tariff.”111 Guangzhou commissioner Frederick Maze was unable to implement any change because “the Cantonese merchants and brokers are not easy to handle, and the seventy-two guilds and the Chamber of Commerce wield an influence which cannot be altogether ignored.”112 The headstrong Belgian Xiamen Customs commissioner, J. A. van Aalst, provoked a mass protest organized by Xiamen merchants and the superintendent’s weiyuan, in which the harbormaster’s office was sacked and three people died.113 Zhang Zhidong and Liu Kunyi, among the most senior of all Qing officials, were furious. They declared that they feared that China would end up being ruled by “foreign officials, and Chinese officials will be no more than village headmen and the people will just be slaves.”114 Zhang Zhidong complained that Hart “has sent foreign officials into the interior, without taking account of the rights of officials or the feelings of the people.”115 The Service would never be able to move very far from the confines of the treaty ports into the Chinese interior. On May 9, 1906, an imperial edict created the Board of Customs Control (税务处, Shuiwuchu, literally the Revenue Affairs Office).116 The board was a Qing agency inserted above the Inspectorate to reestablish Qing govern-

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ment control over the activities and the management of the Customs Service. The edict appointed the Manchu Tieliang administrator general and Tang Shaoyi coadministrator general. John Jordan, who was appointed in 1906 as the British minister to the Qing and who, like Robert Hart, hailed from northern Ireland, dubbed Tieliang a “fire-eating Manchu.”117 By this time, the British had come to know Tang Shaoyi well. In 1904, they had encountered him as Qing plenipotentiary during negotiations over Tibet, during which he had asserted the Qing’s rights. The edict came as a thunderbolt from a clear blue sky to the Service and the diplomats in Beijing. The reaction of the British, who had come to see the Customs Service as theirs, was one of consternation that Chinese officials would dare to defy them. The Hongkong and Shanghai Bank believed that the Board of Customs Control threatened the security of its China loans. Its Beijing agent, E. G. Hillier, wrote Charles Addis, in charge in London, that “unless action is taken, Tang will succeed in his objective of taking over the Customs Service.”118 Lancelot Carnegie, the British chargé d’affaires holding the fort at the British legation until the arrival of Jordan, wrote, “once people in Europe got an idea that the Chinese Government were permitted to meddle with the Customs Service . . . a most disastrous fall in Chinese securities would result.”119 He told the British foreign minister Edward Grey that the Service, although “constituted in abnormal conditions,” was a “legitimate [British] interest” because Customs revenue was “pledged as security for various loans and 1900 indemnity.”120 The British Foreign Office wrote the Qing Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ask for “an explication of the Decree.”121 Tang Shaoyi, well informed about international law, would have none of it. The Board of Customs Control, he pointed out, did not violate the Qing’s 1898 promise not to change service during the life of the 1898 AngloGerman Gold Loan. The Customs Service was not changed, and Hart had been instructed to carry on as before. 122 He noted, pointedly, “I cannot understand that HM Government should have any intention of interfering in the internal administration of China, as this would be a proceeding to which the Chinese Government could not submit.”123 Echoing Zheng Guanying’s criticism, during discussions with British diplomats Tang remarked “with much bitterness” that “equally well or possibly better qualified Chinese were excluded” from the Customs Service, although many now had a foreign education.124

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The British Foreign Office withdrew from its initial hard-line stance. This was not because Tang had been “rather hurt at the abrupt manner in which an explanation had been demanded.”125 Britain realized that a tough attitude toward Tang could only strengthen his position.126 Tang had become a powerful man “entrusted with all matters affecting railway and mining agreements.”127 Alienating Tang was not good for British prospects in China. In addition, Robert Hart supported Young China. He did not believe that the Customs Service would last long if it became “the bondholders’ trustee and the protected representative of the will of the Treaty Powers or the Legations.”128 European rivalries would ensure the demise of the Customs Service if it depended on “foreign support.”129 He advised Edward Grey not to make the mistake of resisting “Chinese control” as “the tendency of the times is so much in that direction that any successor must bend to it or break.”130 Hart’s response to the board was to accept its creation and to backpedal from the policy of drawing close to the British that he had followed after the 1894–1895 Sino-Japanese War. In an IG circular of March 1907, he wrote that the foreign character of the Service needed to become a thing of the past.131 Even if foreigners would continue to serve in the Service, it had to lose its foreignness. As he put it during a 1908 interview, he anticipated that “the foreign element of the Customs Service would gradually disappear.”132 The March 1907 circular appointed ten Chinese to the rank of assistant, which up until then had been the preserve of foreigners. Appointment as assistants meant eligibility for appointment as commissioners. Hart appointed Zhang Futing (张福廷) Customs commissioner of the Yadong Custom House. He instructed Customs commissioners to “reduce the duty assigned to non-Chinese to a minimum and increase that of Chinese to a maximum.”133 In 1907, Hart also established a Customs College, which gave its students a liberal education to prepare them for service at senior levels in the Customs Service. The aim was that in time all recruits would be graduates of the Customs College.134

THE SUCCESSION CRISIS

The establishment of the Board of Customs Control was seen as a Qing hint for Robert Hart to retire. “They considered it almost indecent on his

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part,” one member of the British legation staff wrote to London, for Hart “not to have done so immediately.”135 Hart was seventy-two years old and was no longer in good health.136 Not just Young China believed that it was time to find a successor; his own staff thought the same. In 1902 in Shanghai, they had planned to “hold a plebiscite . . . to determine whom the Service would wish to see as its Chief,” with the idea being that Hart would appoint the victor as his designated successor.137 Hart’s growing nepotism had set a number of senior Customs Service staff against him. He had devolved day-to-day responsibilities to Robert Bredon, his brother-in-law. Hart’s son, Bruce, was one of his secretaries. Frederick Maze had been appointed full commissioner at the age of thirty-five. And so it went on. “He has no Englishman on his staff,” as one embittered complainant put it.138 There were two principal contenders. One was Bredon and the other Hippisley. Hippisley had joined the Customs Service in 1867, was promoted to commissioner in 1882, and had served at the Inspectorate during stints as Chinese secretary and chief secretary. Bredon, from northern Ireland and a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, had joined the Customs Service in 1873 after a period in the army as a surgeon. In 1897, Hart asked Bredon to abandon his plans to retire and to return to China to prepare to take over from him. Having heard Hart talk before about retirement, Bredon wanted assurances. He had talks with Prime Minister Salisbury and Francis Bertie. They promised that “they would support me as far as they could,” with Bertie having added “jocularly” that this would be “perhaps not quite up to the point of going to war for you.”139 In 1898, Hart did appoint Bredon deputy inspector general, but Hart would not, of course, retire for another decade. In 1903, the Foreign Office withdrew its support from Bredon to be able to back Hippisley, who had shown his value to the British cause when he helped conjure up the Open Door Note. He had advised the British Foreign Office during the Boxer Protocol negotiations. When the May 1906 edict was published, Hippisley advised “the most energetic action” and a “show of force.”140 Here, then, was a senior Customs commissioner committed to upholding British interests. Bredon was told already in 1903 that he was no longer the Foreign Office’s preferred candidate, but he made clear that he would not go quietly. He wrote to Irish members of Parliament to ask them to raise questions in Parliament, typifying Hippisley as “an Englishman . . . not devoid of ability, principally of a secretarial kind, slow mentally and bodily,” and whose health was such that he should go on “a cure.”141 Bredon

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refused to accept that being made a KCMG (Knight Commander in the Order of St. Michael and St. George) was sufficient recompense for being sidelined. Bredon could have done little more to alienate the Foreign Office. One of its officials remarked that “Mr Bredon’s talent consisted principally of a ready tongue and a ready pen.”142 Grey concluded that “it was in the interest of China herself ” for Bredon not to succeed to the Inspector Generalship.143 In 1907, when Hart’s retirement seemed to be imminent and hence decisions had to be made about his succession, British diplomats in China as well as British bankers blackballed Bredon largely because he was proChinese. The Hongkong and Shanghai Bank lobbied against him because of the “conspicuous subservience which has especially marked his recent relations with the Peking high authorities, particularly in the matter of the congratulations he appeared so eager to present to the two new High Commissioners on the occasion of the issue of the Imperial Edict.”144 Hillier declared that a Bredon succession would form “a public misfortune.”145, 146 A British IG willing to stand up to upstart Chinese was what was needed. Bredon had the support of both Robert Hart and the new men in charge in Beijing. The British Foreign Office ordered John Jordan to make representations on behalf of Hippisley. He reported back that Tieliang “found Sir Robert Bredon such an agreeable associate that he considered him of more importance to China” than Hart.147 Liang Dunyan (梁敦彦), a Chinese Foreign Office minister who had served as superintendent at Hankou and Tianjin and was a Yale University graduate, also supported Bredon as “the easiest horse to ride,” in Jordan’s snide words.148 Hart wrote in support of Bredon to Grey, stating he did not believe it was true, as some were saying, that Bredon was unpopular in the Service, nor that Bredon was opposed by British expatriate businessmen in China: they had, he pointed out, elected him president of the Shanghai Club.149 Hart advised Grey to let China make its own decision as “a specific nominee will not fail to be regarded by the Chinese with some coldness.”150 The diplomatic representatives of Britain’s gentlemanly capitalists found that asserting control was not as good as having it. Hart’s role in the succession crisis was key because the 1898 agreement provided that the Zongli Yamen would ask Robert Hart “to recommend an Englishman of equal ability,” upon which the Yamen would appoint Hart’s choice “after inquiry,”

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a phrasing that gave the Zongli Yamen an escape clause if they objected to Hart’s recommendation.151 Hart, not easily bested in any bureaucratic tussle, decided to delay a decision by going on leave rather than formally retiring. He appointed Bredon officiating IG, perhaps in the hope that familiarity would breed acceptance of Bredon in Britain, and in 1908 Hart left China for good.152 In his last IG circular, he expressed the hope that “the Customs Service will grow in efficiency and usefulness” and thanked all staff “in all branches and of all nationalities, native and foreign.”153 When Hart’s leave came up for renewal in 1910, the Board of Customs Control insisted that Hart name a successor. Hart decided to put forward five names, thus ensuring that the Qing did have a significant say in the choice of his successor. Bredon and Hippisley were both on Hart’s list, as were Cecil Bowra, Herbert Hobson, and Francis Aglen. Cecil Bowra was the son of Edward Bowra, one of the first commissioners. Cecil was born in 1869 at Ningbo, joined the Customs Service at the age of twenty, and quickly rose through the ranks. He would never become Inspector General, but he held the post in an officiating capacity four times. His son, Maurice, became a leading academic, warden of Wadham College in Oxford, vice chancellor of Oxford University, and president of the British Academy. Hobson had joined the Customs Service in Shanghai at the age of eighteen and served as a student interpreter for Charles Gordon. He became commissioner in 1873, and from 1901 to 1910 was the most senior Customs commissioner, having charge of the Shanghai Custom House. The appointment went to Francis Aglen.154 Aglen was born in Scarborough, Yorkshire, in 1869 and joined the Customs Service seventeen years later. He attended Marlborough College, a leading public school, and married into the Balfour family: an upbringing bound to inculcate British upper-class attitudes. Like Bowra, he had risen quickly in the Customs Service, becoming deputy commissioner in 1896. He had cultivated good relations with the officials of the Board of Revenue and seems to have been generally liked.155 Hart had mentioned Aglen to Grey as one of “several promising juniors,” adding that he had “married a daughter of Professor Balfour and who I think is known to the Premier.”156 Aglen was preferred, one surmises, because he was neither Bredon nor Hippisley, because he was well connected in Britain and China, and because he was still young, thus

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ensuring that the issue of succession would not come up again for a long time. In 1910, he was made officiating Inspector General and was appointed full IG on October 25, 1911, after Hart’s death on September 20.157 All successions in the Customs Service were dramatic turning points accompanied by much intrigue and infighting. Given that Hart had made the Inspector Generalship a powerful position, one controlling a large and multifaceted bureaucracy and deeply involved in the Qing’s fiscal affairs and its foreign relations, this was not surprising. The outcome of the succession struggle would have an enormous effect on the future, not just of the Customs Service but also of China and even international relations. Nothing would illustrate this truth as well as Aglen’s response to the 1911 Revolution.

THE BOND MARKETS TRUMP THE 1911 REVOLUTION

To understand fully the effect of the 1911 Revolution on the Customs Service, it needs to be reiterated that until then “the Inspector General of Customs exercised no direct control over the revenue,” as Stanley Wright put it in his authoritative, if justificatory, history of the collection and use of Customs revenue.158 Superintendents rather than Customs commissioners collected Customs dues. Although the Qing’s loans and the Boxer Indemnity were hypothecated on Customs revenue, the Qing did not necessarily use Customs revenue for this end.159 In the case of the Boxer Indemnity, the Qing allocated quotas to the provinces, leaving it up to them to decide what funds to use.160 It was not the Customs Service but the Shanghai circuit intendent who handled the servicing of the Qing’s loan and the Boxer Indemnity. Hart remarked: “so long as there is no default . . . the procedure will probably not be objected to.”161 The 1911 Revolution changed all this. The Service took over the collection of Customs duties from the Superintendents, it sent the revenue on to foreign banks in Shanghai, and they were used to pay China’s foreign debt obligations. The Customs Service became what Hart had striven to avoid, a Chinese version of Egypt’s Caisse de la Dette Publique. In a 1918 memorandum about the role of the Customs Service in the 1911 Revolution, Francis Aglen claimed that Customs commissioners “instinctively assumed control of the Customs Bank and Revenue collection,” thus

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suggesting that he had little to do with it.162 That assertion cannot stand serious scrutiny. As early as October 14, only three days into the revolution, Aglen instructed Hankou commissioner Sugden to “find a way to deposit Customs collections in the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank.”163 Nine days later, Aglen told Hu Weide (胡维德), the assistant minister at the Board of Customs Control (税务处帮办大臣), with whom Aglen was in regular touch, to surrender control over Customs revenue to him: “the time has arrived to safeguard Customs collections so that they will not be used by the Revolutionary Party to finance their military forces but are preserved to pay back foreign debt.”164 In late November, Jordan weighed in when a default on £80,000 threatened on payments due on the 1898 Anglo-German loan.165 He demanded that the Qing “take steps to have the IG control the whole of the Customs collections.”166 On December 11, Aglen issued IG circular 1865, instructing commissioners to assume control over Customs revenue, after the Board of Customs Control informed him in a dispatch that it agreed with Jordan’s suggestion for “the Inspector General to control all revenue throughout the country for the purpose of paying foreign loans and the Boxer Indemnity.”167 Gunboats proved useful in facilitating the Customs seizure of China’s Customs revenue. In November, Jordan reported to Grey that the resistance of revolutionaries in Hankou and Changsha, who had attempted to detain Customs revenue, had been overcome with the help of “the large number of foreign naval vessels moored in the river.”168 The Japanese had dispatched the Tsushima, Japan’s flagship during the Sino-Japanese War, to Wuhan.169 In truth, neither Yuan Shikai nor the revolutionaries had “much stomach for fighting.”170 The revolutionaries were determined to give no country an excuse to intervene, unsurprisingly so given what had happened during the Boxer War only ten years earlier. Sugden reported to Aglen on October 15 that the revolutionaries were making sure that order was being maintained and that no foreigner was attacked.171 Tianjin commissioner Oiesen received a letter the day before the uprising in that city, recommending that he transfer foreign Customs employees from Native Customs and lijin stations outside the city, “as no harm is intended to them.”172 In Shanghai, Wu Tingfang sent reassuring letters to Commissioner H. F. Merrill.173 In Guangzhou, Hu Hanmin, a leading Sun Yatsen lieutenant, was appointed provincial governor after the 1911 Revolution. He issued a proclamation stating that Guangzhou Customs commissioner Maze was

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“a Chinese official” (华官, huaguan) and noted that the Customs Service had done good work in the past and should continue its operations.174 The takeover of Customs collections was not resisted by either Yuan Shikai or by the revolutionaries. It had become the target of nationalist criticism, but since everyone was aware of its financial importance, everybody wanted to capture control over it and make it work for them, not destroy it. Yuan Shikai had the most to gain, and he played his cards carefully. He had no reason to remain loyal to the Qing, as he had been peremptorily dismissed from all his posts after the deaths of Empress Dowager Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor in 1908. A group of Manchus determined to reassert Manchu supremacy had taken over. Yuan was well aware that support for the Qing had vanished and that its days were numbered. As he told Jordan when the revolution broke out, the Manchus had so little support that they had to “disgorge Tls. 3 mln” from their own pockets just to have the generals make a show of taking to the field.175 The Qing was compelled to recall Yuan to active service because of his connections with the New Army and with officials, foreigners, and commercial elites. He was first made governor general of Hunan and Hubei, thus making him responsible for quelling the uprising in Wuhan.176 On November 1, when his forces showed themselves tardy in the field, he was appointed premier of a newly formed responsible cabinet.177 Yuan cultivated Jordan to make sure that he would have Britain’s support, which was important, even if not decisive, for him to come out on top. Yuan and Jordan had come to know each other while both served in Korea. He kept Jordan abreast of his efforts to convince the Qing to abdicate, briefing him regularly, almost on a daily basis. Well before the actual abdication, Jordan was able to inform Grey, as he did on January 19, that Yuan “had been authorized to carry on on a Republican basis.”178 Jordan informed Grey on January 10 that Yuan had survived a bomb attack, noting that Yuan had shown himself cool under pressure, in more senses than one: he had “lit up a cigarette.”179 When Jordan met him on February 17, after the abdication edict was finally issued, Yuan “warmly acknowledged the support of Great Britain.”180 When Jordan “jokingly told him that he now would no longer be accessible to his old friends,” Yuan had replied, “not at all, come and see me any time night or day and you will always find me the Yuan you have known for so long.”

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Britain did provide meaningful help to Yuan Shikai. Shortly after the outbreak of the revolution, the Qing approached Jordan with a request for an emergency loan. It pleaded that “the nominal overlordship of the Manchus” was necessary to prevent Russia, France, and Germany from smashing the Open Door policy and seizing territory.181 But Britain no longer wanted the Qing to survive: “recognition of Yuan Shih-k’ai affords only hope of securing anything like a stable government,” Jordan stated.182 No loan to the Qing was made. Yuan also needed British help to secure funding for the government of which he now was in charge. The revolution took the form of provincial declarations of independence: this meant that provinces had stopped remitting funds to Beijing. During the 1911 Revolution, Aglen and Hillier arranged for emergency financing for Yuan.183 Already in February 1912, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank began work on a large loan for Yuan.184 In London, Charles Addis estimated that Yuan Shikai would need no less than £60 million.185 His judgment was that only Yuan Shikai could keep China together. He met Sun Yatsen in his home in the affluent Primrose Hill neighborhood of London, but he had little faith in him and advised the

GRAPH 4.1. China’s foreign trade, 1895–1911.

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Foreign Office not to support him.186 Addis did believe that it was necessary to bring the revolution to a conclusion in the shortest possible time. He therefore pushed Yuan Shikai to cooperate with Sun Yatsen, including by demanding that Yuan share loans with Sun.187 The Hongkong and Shanghai Bank’s concern was that the revolution put at risk the security of the China loans it had floated. It needed a government willing to recognize them and able to allocate the necessary revenue to service them. But in addition, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank also believed that China offered good prospects for further business. In fact, a China investment bubble had emerged. The Returns of Trade published by the Customs Service showed that China’s international trade was booming. The increase was the result of the railroad and mining concessions that the Qing had sold off after the Sino-Japanese War. The Peking Syndicate, the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company, the British and Chinese Corporation, the Chinese Central Railways, and the Yangtze Valley Company were some of the larger international syndicates that had invested or speculated in these opportunities. The Treaty of Shimonoseki concluded after the Sino-Japanese War had for the first time given permission to foreigners to establish modern industries. China became seen as the last great opportunity for investment in large infrastructure projects and urban utility companies, investments whose profitability had long been established. Moreover, China was not considered overtaxed or excessively indebted.188 Addis told Bruce Hart in December, when he was in charge of the London Office, that “the City has no doubt of China’s ability to pay.”189 China bonds had outperformed Indian, Japanese, and Russian bonds continuously since the Boxer War.190 Investors were confident that China “has many resources that have not been developed”; the London Office told Aglen that the consensus was that the revolution would lead to a “better government.”191 That faith could only be maintained if China did not default on its existing loans. Aglen, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, the British Foreign Office, and G. E. Morrison, the Beijing correspondent for the Times, cooperated to achieve this aim. The issue dominated Aglen’s correspondence with Bruce Hart, the nonresident secretary in London. Aglen ordered Bruce Hart to keep him informed on Chinese bonds traded in London, Berlin, and Paris. In November 1911, Bruce Hart informed him that their value had initially decreased by 2 to 3 percent but that they had soon recovered. In December, he wrote Aglen that “all Chinese bonds have remained practi-

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cally stationary.”192 Morrison plugged the China bonds in the Times, writing for instance on November 23, 1911, that “it can be affirmed with certainty that the interest on all loans secured on the Maritime Customs will be duly met and punctually paid.”193 There was only one crisis. In early 1912, the prestigious de Hope Bank in the Netherlands, which had handled the placement of China bonds in Amsterdam, informed the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank and the London Office that the Amsterdam Bourse was about to place the 1895 6 percent Anglo-German loan on its register of defaulted bonds.194 In a statement of February 12, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank made it known that an International Bankers Commission had been established in Shanghai, that all Customs revenues were being deposited in foreign banks, and that Tls. 5 million had already accumulated in Shanghai to service China’s loan bonds.195 This was enough to reassure the Amsterdam Bourse. The diversion of Customs revenue to the safety of foreign banks in Shanghai had made this statement possible. In IG circular 1865, Aglen had ordered Customs commissioners to send the revenue they had collected to Merrill in Shanghai. On November 19, Merrill suggested to the Shanghai consuls that all revenue be held in IG accounts dedicated to loan and indemnity payments with the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. When the consuls submitted the issue to their ministers in Beijing, they rejected this proposal. Jordan then suggested that the accounts should be in the name of an International Commission of Bankers set up to administer Boxer Indemnity payments. On January 3, 1912, the ministers in Beijing acceded, having acted with uncommon speed, to an agreement in eight clauses. It made Aglen, as IG, responsible for the collection and transmission of Customs revenue to Shanghai, where it was to be deposited in equal amounts with the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, the Deutsch-Asiatische Bank, and the Russo-Asiatic Bank, into loan service accounts. The International Commission of Bankers, made up of all banks with an interest in China’s loans as well as the Boxer Indemnity, was formed to “decide all questions of priority of claim.” Aglen was to report to the commission, which in turn reported to the diplomatic body in Beijing.196 Even before the Qing had abdicated, the diplomats, the bankers, and the Customs Service had made sure that Customs revenues were safely in foreign hands. If he wanted to be able to raise the loan that he would need, Yuan Shikai had little option but to go along.

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If the bankers were convinced that it would be profitable to invest in China’s development, they also were determined to minimize risk. This they did by clubbing together in a banking syndicate, negotiating collectively, keeping out those willing to offer better terms than they considered advisable, and requiring government support. The Hongkong and Shanghai Bank together with other leading banks from Britain, Germany, France, and the United States formed the China Consortium, which had the support of their governments.197 The consortium prevented interloper banks from making deals with China. G. Birch Crisp and Co. raised £5 million for a 5 percent gold loan with the support of Lloyd George and the Lloyds Bank.198 The consortium advised the Chinese government to cancel the agreement, which it did, having to pay £150,000 in compensation to the Crisp syndicate,199 some of the easiest money ever made. In April 1913, the negotiations that had begun more than a year earlier between Yuan Shikai and the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank resulted in the £25 million Reorganization Loan from the consortium banks to the new Republic of China. The loan was used to pay off all the debts that Yuan Shikai and Sun Yatsen had accumulated, meet missed Boxer Indemnity installments, buy up promissory notes floated by provinces during the revolution, and defray liabilities shortly falling due. Here again we see that bankers pushed Yuan and Sun to cooperate, something that may well help explain why Yuan offered important positions to Sun and other revolutionaries in the new government. Wiping out outstanding debts consumed around £10 million, leaving only another £11 million or so. Yuan Shikai could not use the whole of the £25 million because the bonds were issued at 90, meaning that purchasers paid £90 for a £100 bond, and the banks charged 6 percent to cover costs and make a profit. This £11 million was to be used to finance troop disbandment and maintain the bureaucracy for a year.200 It is unsurprising that it was assumed that the Reorganization Loan was only the first of more loans in the future. The Reorganization Loan was, as usual, hypothecated on any remaining Customs revenue after earlier commitments had been met and on the revenues of the Salt Tax Administration, to be placed under foreign management. The prospectus for the bonds declared that the loan had the “satisfaction of the Ministers of Great Britain.”201 Addis had not been wrong that investors had confidence in China’s ability to pay: the bond issue was four times oversubscribed.202

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However, in China the Reorganization Loan proved to be political dynamite. Tang Shaoyi was appointed premier of Yuan Shikai’s first government. He had been involved in the negotiations and as premier could not have escaped association with the loan.203 Telling Jordan that he “would rather blow out his brains than commit his country to foreign invasion,”204 he resigned. Tang would be assassinated by Nationalist secret service personnel in 1938, after he fell under suspicion of being prepared to be appointed the head of an accommodationist regime after the War of Resistance had begun in 1937. Jordan, too, was not convinced of the wisdom of the loan and believed that the banks were, when all was said or done, relying on the belief that the powers were prepared to use gunboat diplomacy to recover their money. He wrote that “lending money to China is a mild form of gambling. The lenders trust to her great natural resources and to political pressure or intervention,” adding, “the recovery of all this money will be an unpleasant task for our successors.”205 Even Addis believed that the conditions attached to the loan would be difficult for China to swallow. They might, he wrote, “discredit and overthrow the Government.”206 Addis proved prescient. After the revolution, Yuan had, in conformity with Addis’s designs, established a broadly based government. Sun Yatsen was feted in Beijing, and four Revolutionary Alliance members, including Sun, were made cabinet members. However, the Alliance won the parliamentary elections of late 1912 and early 1913. When in April 1913 the conditions of the Reorganization Loan became known, the Alliance members in the National Assembly threatened to impeach Yuan Shikai and urged rejection of the loan. When Yuan refused to give in to their demands, the Reorganization Loan became one of the issues that triggered the Second Revolution, which began in July. Yuan used the New Army to crush it. The Reorganization Loan stood, and Yuan would have the funds to pay his army and keep the government going for another year. There would never be a default on the Reorganization Loan; it was true, as the bankers had believed, that China could pay. But the political price exacted was very high indeed. The banks had won. China emerged out of the 1911 Revolution not proudly as Asia’s first republic but as a state governed by a man who depended on foreign goodwill and foreign money. The Japanese indemnity had taken China to the scaffold of its financial executioners, the Boxer

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Indemnity had pushed its head through the noose of the hanging rope, and the 1911 Revolution had opened the trapdoor. The Customs Service profited from its growing fiscal importance, gaining new functions, including for the collection of some lijin and salt taxes as well as the Native Customs. It also became deeply involved in the management of China’s finances. Hart embraced this role, initially in part to resist the growing influence of Russia but also because he believed that it could lead to the kind of reforms he had always believed the Qing needed to make. After the Boxer Rebellion and the emergence of Young China, he again became supportive of Chinese claims to the Service. Under Aglen, however, the Service willingly became the enforcer of the debts China owed to the banks. There were many reasons why the Customs Service ended up subservient to the interests of foreign bond holders. They included the strengthening of imperialism, the weakening of the Qing, and foreign military intervention. An important reason was the retirement of Robert Hart and the rise of Aglen. Aglen was a believer in the improving functions of financial rectitude and of the need for men like him to act as the stern tutors of sound financial practice for China’s own sake, an aspect of his policies that will be examined in more detail in the next chapter. As important as the Inspector General was, it should be mentioned that Aglen was not alone. His replacement of Hart represented a wider trend in the Customs Service of a deepening Orientalist and racist disdain for China and a belief in Western superiority. Other senior figures in the Customs Service, such as Hippisley, were equally dismissive of the Chinese. Xiamen commissioner van Aalst, the man who had triggered a riot in the city, stated that Hart’s instruction to hire more Chinese taught him that “Chinese Tidewaiters can only be useful as an addition to foreigners. . . . Only if they are supervised, guided, and supported by their foreign colleague can they be effective to some extent.”207 Paul King served as Guangzhou Customs commissioner between 1907 and 1909. In conformity with Hart’s 1907 instruction, he had employed Chinese in some numbers. In 1915, he wrote to Aglen that while he himself did not “see any cause for despair in the tentative experiment,” it was the racism of the foreign outdoor staff that had made it impracticable. They were “naturally very hostile and could see no good in their Chinese colleagues.”208 There were exceptions. In the spring of 1911, when revolutionaries in Guangzhou attacked the offices of the governor general, Guangzhou com-

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missioner Maze, who had been friendly with Hu Hanmin, declined to take active steps, as asked by Jamieson, the British consul, to prevent the smuggling of arms or investigate the bona fides of all travelers as they disembarked.209 Following the revolutionary takeover of the city on November 9, Maze defied Inspectorate orders and instructed Customs vessels to stop flying the Qing ensign and to remove all Qing emblems from their uniforms.210 Maze sent Hu a congratulatory message when he was appointed governor.211 When the British turned the Shamian Concession in Guangzhou into a veritable fortress with barbed wire, Maze protested, arguing that the Chinese would interpret this as a step taken in preparation of an assault on the city itself.212 Aglen was generally supportive of Maze’s actions but also told him: “do not forget that the Consuls support you from behind the scenes.”213 The close examination of the Customs Service offered in this chapter in the years between the Sino-Japanese War and the 1911 Revolution allows us to make two further points. The first is that a short-term financial crisis was just a much a cause of the 1911 Revolution as the long-term social, demographic, and economic problems on which past scholarship has focused. Now that we live once again in a time when sudden fiscal crises cause enormous damage to countries, that this was so in the case of the Qing perhaps does not elicit surprise. The second is that the international context had an influence on the 1911 Revolution. Most studies, in China and elsewhere, have focused on developments in China itself. Yet not just the Customs Service but also banks like the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank and foreign countries including Russia, Britain, and Japan all had a great deal at stake in how the 1911 Revolution panned out. It is not surprising that they attempted to—and succeeded in—shaping events.

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Chapter Five

IMPERIUM IN IMPERIO: 1914–1929 Oh, they are unimpeachable so far as money dealers go, but banking is like a religion: you have to accept certain rather dicey things on faith, and then everything else follows in marvellous logic. —ROBERTSON DAVIES, WHAT’S BRED IN THE BONE

In 1922, Francis Aglen described the history of the Customs Service. “At first,” he wrote, referring to Robert Hart’s time, “we were a purely Chinese institution maintained and supported by the Government because we supplied a certain income. Then the loans came and we became a foreign interest with the Chinese Government’s interest still predominant.”1 After the 1911 Revolution, the Customs became an “unofficial caisse de la dette.” When civil wars broke out after the death of Yuan Shikai in 1916, “the shadow of China managing her own affairs without foreign influence was preserved,” but the Customs became “an imperium in imperio, practically independent in matters of government finance, resting in the last resort not on the Government but on the Foreign Powers.”2 This was not just because the Customs Service seized control over the collection of Customs dues during the 1911 Revolution. That was a sine qua non, but initially there was no surplus as the amounts that were collected were not enough to cover China’s foreign debt liabilities. However, World War I made it impossible for foreign banks to continue to lend to the Yuan Shikai government. The war broke up the banking consortia that had lent

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to China, and so the Reorganization Loan had no offspring. Yuan turned to raise funds through domestic bond issues, but he could only do so if he involved the Service and Aglen became the de facto head of the National Loan Bureau (内国公债局), with veto power over its borrowing and its accounts under his lock and key. In addition, a Customs surplus, that is, an excess of Customs collections over what was required to meet China’s loan and indemnity obligations, emerged. This surplus resulted from improvements in the gold value of silver and, from the end of World War I, rapid economic expansion. In addition, China’s Boxer Indemnity liabilities decreased first because China in 1917 declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary, an act that automatically cancelled their shares of the indemnity, and then because the Allies agreed to postpone theirs for a period of five years. After the October Revolution, China also stopped paying the Russian portion of the Boxer Indemnity. Aglen decided to “collar as much as I can” of the surplus,3 because in 1915 Yuan Shikai had raided the Bank of China and the Bank of Communications, causing Aglen to lose his trust in him, which initially had been high, and to conclude that “public services cannot be administered safely except by foreigners.”4 Aglen controlled China’s most important revenue source, on which its ability to borrow depended. He became China’s “Finance Supremo” (太上财政总长).5 If there was a cure for China, it was sound finance, or so Aglen seems to have thought. Underlying his attitude was the conviction that by insisting that the Beijing government fulfill its promises to its bondholders he was promoting the values—integrity, incorruptibility, dedication to public duty, and hard work—essential for the Republic of China to overcome its difficulties, including for its officials to become honest and for China’s population to have trust in them. The belief that the discipline required for good financial management could be an improving force was not uncommon at this time.6 Hence, Aglen operated a policy aimed at stabilizing government finances, including by having the National Loans Bureau issue further loans but also at ensuring that the bonds that were issued to finance these were paid on time and in full. He squirreled away substantial reserves so as never again to be embarrassed by financial shenanigans, as he had been by Yuan Shikai. Aglen became such a dominant figure that when Gu Weijun, better known in the Anglophone world as Wellington Koo, became minister of

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finance in June 1926, his officials advised that his first act should be to meet with Aglen. When Gu said that he would telephone Aglen to ask him to come over, his officials remonstrated that, like his predecessors, he should visit Aglen rather than the other way around.7 Aglen himself wrote in 1921 that “my relations with other Ministers of State are on the basis of equality,” adding that they addressed him through gonghan (公函), an official letter between equals, rather than ling (令), or orders, despite that formally he was merely the head of an agency under an official subordinate to a Chinese minister of state.8 Gu declined to visit Aglen because he believed it to be beneath the dignity of his office. Gu, as mentioned, was educated at St. John’s College in Shanghai and at Columbia University in New York, where in 1912 he earned his Ph.D. in law with a dissertation entitled “The Status of Aliens in China.” That year Tang Shaoyi recruited Gu into China’s Foreign Office, shortly after which Gu married Tang’s daughter, the first of several marriages to daughters of elite Chinese families. His first assignment was to act as English secretary and foreign policy advisor to Yuan Shikai. Gu rapidly developed into one of the bright lights of the generation that came to the fore in the late Qing and the early Republic. In 1918, at the age of thirty-one, he was appointed China’s minister to the United States. The year after, he was one of China’s three representatives at the Paris Peace Conference, a position he would also hold at the 1921–1922 Washington Conference. When he returned to China, he was famous, a celebrity even, for having stood up for Chinese sovereign rights, and he agreed to join the Able Men Cabinet formed in 1923,9 supported by the pro-Western and anti-Japanese Wu Peifu, nicknamed the Philosopher General because of his success in the Qing civil service examinations. After a short retirement in Shanghai in 1925 when Wu was temporarily forced out of Beijing, Gu rejoined the Beijing government in 1926,10 becoming interim premier and foreign minister a year later. Gu had hoped that through the participation of men like himself, the Beijing government would develop into a modern and efficient government respected abroad as well as in China. This did not happen. Nationalist armies under the leadership of Chiang Kaishek were rolling up all opposition in southern China in the famed Northern Expedition, which had begun in June 1926 and aimed at bringing all of China under Nationalist control. They were in possession of Wuhan by December 1926 and marched into Shanghai in March 1927. Even in the north, the Beijing government of

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which Gu was in charge had little real authority. Zhang Zuolin, the warlord head of the Fengtian faction, with its base in Manchuria, and Wu Peifu, who led the Zhili faction, had been vying for power, going to war twice, once in 1922 and once in 1924. In 1926, Gu’s patron Wu Peifu had suffered humiliating defeats on the battlefield, and the balance of military power shifted to Zhang Zuolin, who became the commander-in-chief of the Northern Alliance, cobbled together from various northern China militaries to resist the onward march of the Nationalists. Zhang was the real power holder. Gu’s writ did not extend much beyond Beijing—or even his own office. During the 1926 Mid Autumn festival, a moment in China’s calendar when debts had to be settled, unpaid soldiers responsible for keeping order in Beijing had surrounded Gu’s offices, demanding their pay wholly in cash and not partly in bonds, as Gu offered. Gu was forced to go into hiding and obtain a short loan from a foreign banker who was also a family friend.11 Even though, then, Aglen seemed all powerful and Gu a mere supplicant, Gu dismissed Aglen in January 1927, probably having wanted to do so from at least the spring of 1926 because of Aglen’s refusal to support further unsecured government borrowing.12 On February 1, 1927, the day after it became known that Aglen was to be fired, the diplomatic body, stirred up by Miles Lampson, the UK minister to China, trooped to Gu’s office in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They demanded an explanation for what Lampson described as a “highly irregular act.”13 Angered, Gu refused, stating that “the fact that you ask this question indicates that you are trying to interfere in China’s internal affairs.”14 During the acrimonious discussion that followed, Gu demanded in what capacity Lampson was speaking. When a bewildered Lampson asked why Gu raised this issue, Gu stated that he had nothing further to say if Lampson was speaking as the British minister, but that if he spoke as a representative of the holders of Chinese bonds, he could understand his concern. When Lampson responded that he therefore was speaking in the latter capacity, Gu said that he had dismissed Aglen on the grounds of “disobedience.” When pressed to explain this further, Gu retorted that disobedience was a common English word that Lampson surely understood, and left.15 The Gu-Aglen train wreck can be read as the collision between an embattled but plucky government standing up against a bullying Britain. That was certainly part of the story, and it was the way Gu portrayed it in his memoirs. But rather more was going on. In analyzing how Gu and Aglen

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ended up at loggerheads in a cold and dark Beijing in the winter of 1927, despite that they had in truth a great deal in common, including an essentially liberal worldview, this chapter first examines Aglen’s leadership of the Customs Service from the 1911 Revolution until the beginning of the Northern Expedition. Aglen’s reign illustrated the persistence of a tutorialist liberalism, reflecting the education Aglen had received in the certainties of late Victorian Britain. Besides a commitment to sound finance and clear social hierarchies, that liberalism also included a belief in the racial and moral superiority of the British upper classes and the unreliability of those he thought of as natives and the white lower classes, both of whom he treated as children needing stern parenting. World War I had affected Aglen deeply, on the one hand confirming to him the importance of discipline and hierarchy but also leaving him with a sense of guilt about living a life of luxury in China while family and friends were dying in Flanders. Aglen developed a deep admiration for military values and adopted tough attitudes; he rejected the kind of compromise-seeking, clerkly, and scholarly administrators Hart had accorded primacy. He was ill-prepared to respond to the rise of the Nationalists in the 1920s or, for that matter, the post–World War I lessening of status hierarchies, the loosening of social and cultural constraints, and the search for individual fulfillment and enjoyment that marked his younger European staff in the 1920s. Aglen ended up locked in confrontation with significant numbers of his staff. By the mid-1920s, he realized he had become a man out of time and began looking for a way out of China and back to Britain, a move he also may have desired because in 1925 his first wife had died after a long wasting disease, leaving him with five children under the age of twenty. We then turn to Gu Weijun, whose actions are important in the history of the Customs Service because he transformed the issues of Chinese control of the Service and tariff autonomy into major concerns of enormous political significance, tying them to a version of Chinese history as one of persistent victimization by Western imperialism since the Opium War. Despite his success in mobilizing public opinion, by 1927 he too ended up in a historical cul-de-sac. At the 1919 Paris and 1921–1922 Washington Conferences, he appealed to President Woodrow Wilson’s rhetoric about selfdetermination to argue that German pre–World War I rights in Shandong Province should be returned to China and that tariff autonomy too should

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be restored. He established the phrase “unequal treaties,” which referred to the Nanjing and Tianjin treaties, arguing that they had been forced at gunpoint on China and hence were invalid. Gu’s attempts to harness Wilson’s rhetoric made him famous, but it would be the Nationalists and not Gu who would reap the benefit. Gu was an early spin doctor, adept at using the press to mobilize public opinion, which had become a force in Chinese politics as a result of the spread of newspapers and magazines. In 1915, he advised Yuan Shikai to leak elements of Japan’s Twenty-one Demands and ongoing secret negotiations in the hope of securing Western and especially U.S. support.16 He established a Far Eastern Information Office in Washington when he was appointed minister to the United States, with the aim of countering the frequently negative reports about China in the foreign press.17 During the 1923 Lincheng Kidnap Incident, when a train holding twenty-five foreigners was held ransom, Gu, then serving as minister of foreign affairs, once more turned to the press. During secret negotiations with foreign diplomats about compensation and indemnities, Gu leaked their demands and wrote articles under a pseudonym denouncing them for interfering in China’s internal affairs.18 As he no doubt had anticipated, Aglen’s dismissal was widely reported in the press.19 Gu recalled that “China’s media generally believed that it was a legal action to defend China’s sovereignty and the rights of the Chinese government.”20 The dismissal was, in part, a public relations stunt. Issues of finance were at the heart of things, as they had been during the 1911 Revolution. Aglen’s departure was, as Gu wrote in his memoirs, “strenuously opposed by China’s bankers.”21 Gu hoped to use Aglen to knock Zhang Jia’ao (张嘉璈), the director of the Bank of China, off his perch. If Aglen believed himself important, in Gu’s analysis he was merely a shield used by Zhang and his fellow bankers to protect their financial interests and force their will on the government.22 Zhang and several other bank directors in Beijing rushed to Gu’s office once the news of Aglen’s removal broke. The Bank of China, like other modern Chinese banks, was a major holder of China’s national bonds, whose value Aglen had done so much to protect. By dismissing Aglen, Gu hoped to end “the close collaboration between the I.G. and China’s banking world.”23 Zhang stated, according to Gu, that “Shanghai businessmen would like to know what the Government would do in case the bond market would be thrown into chaos,”

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which was likely because Aglen’s dismissal “would cause bondholders to lose confidence.”24 Gu responded to Zhang by stating that he believed it “inappropriate” for banks to threaten the Chinese government. He assured Zhang that his government had naturally considered all possible consequences of its action and that he had taken all necessary precautions. The financial collapse Zhang feared, he argued, would not come about if the banks “remained quiet and obeyed the Government’s actions (as they should).”25 Such assurances were somewhat incredible, given the dire straits in which Gu’s government found itself. Aglen’s dismissal would not help Gu. The bankers had already decided not to make further loans available to Gu’s government, and they would not do so again. They in fact had begun discussions with the Nationalists, as had Aglen. While Aglen’s dismissal would stand, that did not mean that the contest between the Northern Alliance and the Nationalists was over. That would not happen until the summer of 1928.26 Most bankers, including Zhang Jia’ao, adopted a wait-and-see attitude and kept their options open. The fate of the Customs Service remained similarly undecided. The uncertainties of the situation made it impossible to arrange for a permanent successor to Aglen. As a stopgap measure, Aglen was granted an extension of one year, which he was to spend on leave in Britain. Arthur Edwardes was appointed, on Aglen’s nomination, as Officiating Inspector General. How did the Nationalists, who had made the recovery of tariff autonomy and the nationalization of the Customs Service a major plank in their platform, manage to capture the Customs Service intact? No matter how objectionable the Customs Service was to the Nationalists, they were not blind to the fact that it was the one important bureaucracy that continued to operate throughout the country, that it delivered a steady and growing revenue stream, that the interests of China’s coastal elites were tied up with its fate, and that much diplomatic mileage could be had from controlling it. The Nationalists succeeded by some very careful political maneuvering, by indicating that they would continue to recognize China’s international and domestic debt obligations, by exploiting rifts within the Customs Service, and by having the good fortune that Frederick Maze was willing to subordinate himself to the Nationalists at least superficially. Maze believed that Aglen’s policies had violated those on which Robert Hart had built up the Service. He presented as a return to Hartian principles the withdrawal of

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the Customs Service from the banking of Customs dues and from decisions about their use. All these reasons made it possible for the Customs Service to survive once more a Chinese revolution.

FRANCIS AGLEN, THE CUSTOMS SERVICE, AND THE BANKS

Rather than dismissing Aglen’s actions as those of an insensitive, patronizing, and offensive imperialist, this section seeks to understand them and to analyze their consequences for China and the Customs Service. Aglen was shaped by his upper-class upbringing, of course. But in examining his actions, I also draw attention to the effect of World War I and the reality that he had charge of the Customs Service at a time when China was disintegrating politically. The officials that had run the country in the past had suffered a profound collapse of nerve, and no new leadership was emerging to take hold of the country. It was this vacuum of leadership that created the opportunity for Aglen to become China’s finance czar, and, in his own mind, with the duty to do so.

China’s Finance Czar

Aglen’s first step toward a prominent role in China’s fiscal administration began in 1913, when Yuan Shikai, in the aftermath of the Second Revolution, established the National Loans Bureau. The bureau was supervised by a sixteen-member board of directors made up of representatives of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Communication, the Customs Service, the Bank of China, and the Bank of Communications, as well as some smaller banks and six bondholder representatives. Aglen was appointed vice chair of the bureau, responsible for managing its accounts. Without his signature, no funds could be released.27 The proven inability of the Qing to issue bonds had illustrated the necessity of putting Aglen essentially in charge of the National Loans Bureau, even if his predominance was veiled in order to assuage nationalist sentiment. The bureau issued the first National Loan in 1914. Before doing so, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Communications provided funds of one year’s interest to Aglen, who created an Interest Guarantee

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Fund, which was held at foreign banks. The 1914 National Loan Bond issue was successful. The stated aim was to raise the relatively small amount of $16 million in silver dollars, but demand was so high that in fact $24 million was raised.28 To give some sense of the value of the silver dollar, after various tests the Customs Service concluded that at this time the exchange rate between the Hk.Tls. and the silver dollar should be set at 100 to 156.65;29 that is, roughly $1.50 was equal to 1 Hk.Tls. The terms for the loan bonds were attractive. Interest was paid at 6 percent, the bonds were issued to the public at 94, meaning that a bond with a nominal value of 100 yuan sold for ninety-four yuan, and an extra 6 percent interest was paid to early purchasers. The bonds could be used to pay taxes, although not Customs dues, and banks could count them as part of their capital reserve. One reason the bonds proved popular was because, in Aglen’s words, “it developed here more along Chinese and less on foreign lines”—meaning that officials were pressured to purchase them.30 The 1914 National Loan was not backed directly by Customs revenue because Customs revenue was not even sufficient to finance China’s foreign debt obligations. Instead, it was secured on a profit of nearly $3 million earned by the Beijing-Hankou Railway.31 Redemption was to begin in 1917, with interest coupons drawn and redeemed half-yearly in June and December. A Ministry of Finance report showed that bonds were purchased in most provinces and that overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia were major investors. China’s modern banks made substantial purchases of the National Loan bonds: the Bank of Communications took no less than $6.2 million; Zhang Jia’ao’s Bank of China absorbed $2.7 million. Because the bonds could be counted toward the capital reserves of the banks but could be purchased at a significant discount, they augmented their banks’ lending capacity, making credit available at competitive rates. The capital created through bond issues was important to the rise of the modern Chinese banking sector after the 1911 Revolution; they in turn helped bring about the “Golden Age of the Chinese bourgeoisie.”32 The 1915 National Loan, issued for the purpose of “restructuring old debt and replenishing the treasury,”33 was equally successful, raising nearly $26 million. This time, the loan was hypothecated on the revenue of all Native Customs stations not yet assigned to the service of other loans, the lijin revenues of Shanxi Province, and the revenues collected by the Zhangjiakou Tax Office. The National Loans Bureau was again made responsible

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for servicing the bonds. The bonds were issued to the public at 90, interest was set at 6 percent, and purchasers received an immediate 3 percent interest bonus.34 Redemption was to begin in 1918. The banks were again major purchasers. To raise funds for the Beijing government through bond issues was not necessarily irresponsible. It was reasonable to believe that the political situation would gradually stabilize as the government put its house in order, established better control over China’s tax system, and developed new sources of revenue. To leverage the revenue that was coming in through bond issues made sense at this moment of crisis, when so much needed to be done to industrialize China, build a modern transportation network, and develop education. As argued in chapter 4, China’s borrowing remained limited, and its taxation was light. National bonds too could foster a sense of nationalism, at least among those able to purchase them. Supporting the market value of the bonds, however, became essential to maintain the possibility of future borrowing and to keep the allegiance of the bondholding classes. That would not prove easy and would require all of Aglen’s ingenuity. Yuan Shikai’s monarchical movement of 1915 created a first crisis. It triggered a rebellion that began in Yunnan and southern China and then spread north. To finance his military campaign against it, Yuan Shikai raided the holdings of the Bank of China and the Bank of Communications. The result was that confidence in the notes issued by the two banks suffered, which prompted Yuan in May 1916 to declare a moratorium on their convertibility into silver. Their value collapsed, and an inflationary spiral took off in Beijing. The Tianjin and Shanghai branches of the two banks ignored Yuan’s moratorium. They continued to service drawn interest coupons of the two National Loans to stave off collapse. They were able to do this because Aglen used the Interest Guarantee Funds in his control to support them. This crisis ended with Yuan’s death on June 6. One of its effects was to make Aglen suspicious of Beijing officialdom. Aglen trusted Yuan and believed in him, which is why he had supported him during the 1911 Revolution and was willing to lend the National Loans Bureau his personal support. He wrote Paul King, when King was nonresident secretary, that “the Government intends to keep faith with subscribers.”35 He did not oppose Yuan’s monarchical movement because, he told King, the “Republic is of course a sham . . . [and] Yuan can I think be trusted to steer clear of trouble.”36 Yuan’s raiding of the Bank of China and

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GRAPH 5.1. Customs revenue, 1912–1926.

the Bank of Communication destroyed Aglen’s confidence, leading him to state that “in their hearts they know better than anyone that the Customs has [prevented] disaster over and over again solely because it was foreign run.”37 Aglen took Yuan’s violation of financial rectitude as having put his own good reputation at risk. He seems to have vowed never to be placed in a similarly embarrassing position again. The cancellation of the German and Austrian-Hungarian portions of the Boxer Indemnity and the declaration of a moratorium on its Allied shares enabled Aglen to service the National Loan bonds. In addition, China’s economic growth resulted in a near doubling of Customs revenue, from Hk.Tls. 40 million in 1917 to Hk.Tls. 80 million in 1927. From 1915 to 1921, the gold value of silver, for once, appreciated, meaning that less silver was needed to defray China’s loan obligations. Graph 5.1 illustrates the growth of Customs revenue from 1914 until 1926. Aglen could not have known that China’s economic and financial position would improve so much. Although the National Loans Bureau survived the crisis caused by Yuan Shikai’s monarchical movement, to Aglen the future looked troubled because the Salt Tax Administration was not

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delivering the expected revenues, endangering the servicing of the Reorganization Loan. Payments of the first two national loans were scheduled to begin at the end of 1917, and these alone required $7 million per year.38 (At this time, March 1920, 1 Hk.Tls. was equivalent to 72 silver dollar cents.)39 To secure the necessary funds, as a first step Aglen virtually compelled the Beijing government to allocate the cancelled German Boxer Indemnity payments to the National Loans Bureau. He deposited an equivalent portion of Customs revenue into a National Loan Service interest account at the Shanghai branch of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, thus ensuring that no Beijing official could touch them.40 Once he had achieved this, he breathed a sigh of relief, believing that he had taught the Chinese a salutary lesson: But for my connection with the loans I am sure that they would have been repudiated. However they are now secured on funds which I collect and retain and I have managed, while reducing the paper amount in the Bank of China and the Bank of Communications, to pile up cash in the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. . . . The Chinese must learn that they cannot use foreigners for window dressing purposes and I am convinced the lesson of these internal loans will be a valuable one.41

Aglen also assumed control over deferred Boxer Indemnity payments to the Allies. He did so by agreeing to a 1917 National Loan for $100 million hypothecated on these payments. This meant that Customs revenue to support the loan was transferred to the National Loan Bureau, whose expenditures he controlled. The procedure also stabilized the Bank of China and the Bank of Communications.42 The loan bonds could be bought with the paper currency notes the two banks issued, and hence the demands for these rose. The bonds traded at 60 percent of their nominal value. It is unsurprising that they proved popular. In 1921, China’s financial prospects once again became bleak. After 1922, Boxer Indemnity payments to the Allies would have to resume, and the gold value of silver resumed its long-term decline. In response to the growing crisis, Zhou Ziqi, the minister of finance, proposed the creation of a Consolidated Debt Service for secured and unsecured domestic debt in March 1921. Aglen was involved in designing the proposal.43 While the 1914 and 1915 National Loan bonds had kept their value in China’s bond markets, unsecured loan bonds had not. Zhou was a graduate of Columbia

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University. He had a background in China’s diplomatic service and in Chinese banking, having served as a director of the Bank of China. Zhou argued that annually the Beijing government needed $39 million to service its domestic debt—well beyond its current limited means.44 He proposed that holders of unsecured debt should be enabled to exchange their old bond certificates for new Consolidated Debt bonds, which were to be issued in two series, one carrying a 6 percent and the other a 7 percent interest rate, depending on the interest rates of the original bonds. Zhou argued that bondholders should be asked to exchange their old bonds for new Consolidated Debt bonds not at the nominal value of the new bonds but at a much lower rate, sometimes as low as 15 percent of their face value. He argued that most bondholders had invested in unsecured bonds largely for speculative reasons and had been well aware of their real value. He no doubt knew what he was talking about. Zhou proposed that for the service of the Consolidated Debt, which was to be under Aglen’s control, $14 million from the Salt Tax Administration and $10 million from the alcohol and tobacco monopolies should be set aside, with any shortfall to be made up from the Customs surplus. He was no doubt aware that by 1921, little revenue from the first two sources reached Beijing and hence that the Customs surplus was the real security. Zhou Ziqi’s proposal was duly sanctioned. The Consolidated Debt Service meant that Aglen gained control over the entire Customs revenue. Aglen believed this essential to secure the future of the Customs Service, writing in 1920 to Paul King, the nonresident secretary, “money talks and the more financial strings I get in my hands the safer we are.”45 Another consequence was that he became responsible for the protection of the interests of China’s bondholders and felt himself obliged to do his best on their behalf. Irony of imperialist ironies, a quintessential gentlemanly capitalist became a defender of Chinese financial interests. The domestic bonds included in the Consolidated Debt Service were the 8% Military Loan issued by Sun Yatsen’s government in Nanjing in 1912, the Patriotic Loan issued by the Qing in its dying days, the 1912 National Loan, the 1918 Long-Term National Loan, the 1919 7% Loan, and the 1920 National Loan, amounting to a total of $202 million, of which until 1921 only $11 million had been redeemed.46 Graph 5.2 shows that Consolidated Debt bonds appreciated quickly, substantially enlarging the capital reserves of China’s banks and augmenting the wealth of the holders of Chinese bonds.

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GRAPH 5.2. Consolidated debt bonds, January 1922–October 1926.

Aglen defended the Consolidated Debt Service strenuously. According to him, “it is a fact and not a mere assumption that were anything now to upset the Loan Service, there would be widespread ruin. The Chinese banks in Shanghai and Tientsin have enormous holdings in these bonds.”47 In 1921, he refused to release any funds that had accumulated in his Consolidated Debt accounts to underwrite a new $30 million National Loan issue.48 Throughout 1924, the British Foreign Office argued for “the priority of unsecured foreign loans over the Consolidated Loans Service.” This included a large Vicker’s loan, which had been facilitated by John Jordan and whose failure had ruined many people. However, Aglen stuck to his guns: the Consolidated Debt Service “is well established and to upset it will lead to a general smash.”49 He declined to include unsecured foreign loans, like the Vicker’s loan, in the Consolidated Debt Service.50 His policy was, he wrote to Bowra, “to throw domestic loans unto the Consolidated Debt Office” to prevent bankruptcies.51 The same values and attitudes that had made Aglen seize control over Customs revenue, believing that Chinese officials could not be trusted, also made him a defender of China’s banks and led to his clash with Gu Weijun in 1926 and 1927.

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Even if more work needs to be done before we can be sure, it seems likely that Aglen’s support of China’s modern banks helped the Chinese economy. As Cheng Linsun has shown, between 1912 and 1927, 266 new banks opened. Although half of these went bankrupt and although speculation in Chinese bonds was rife, their combined capital rose from $27 million to $166 million. Thomas Rawski has argued that this extra capital “provided an important stimulus to the growth of specialization, production, and trade.”52 China’s rapid economic growth during World War I and in the 1920s, when Shanghai became a city of neon lights, was in part made possible by Aglen’s stewardship of China’s financial affairs. It should be noted that after the five-year deferment of the Boxer Indemnity expired in 1922, most countries agreed not to cancel their share of the Boxer Indemnity but to put it in the hands of mixed committees made up of Chinese citizens and their own nationals obliged by agreement to use these funds for “good” purposes such as education and river conservancy.53 Leisurely reflection had led to a sense of embarrassment at the punitive nature of the Boxer Indemnity, probably enhanced by the realization that what they had regarded as a lack of civilized conduct by the Qing was nothing compared to what had just been perpetrated on the battlefields of Europe. At a time of civil wars in China, the fear was that, if the purpose of these funds was not determined in advance, they simply would be spent on paying soldiers and buying arms.

The Wyatt Case

One story the Customs Service was keen to tell about itself was that it had an excellent esprit de corps. While no doubt always more true among the higher indoor ranks than for the Customs as a whole, during Aglen’s reign the Customs Service was a decidedly unhappy place, as is suggested by a spate of personal breakdowns. A. G. Bethell had joined in 1898 and served as Customs commissioner in Mengzi (1921–1923), Ningbo (1924–1925), and Suzhou (1926–1927). He was lame: he had thrown himself in front of a train in a suicide attempt.54 F. J. Mayers was born in Qufu in 1870 as the son of the Chinese secretary to the British legation. He joined the Customs Service at the age of eighteen, became an expert in lijin collection, and was

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promoted to commissioner in 1911. In 1924, he suffered a nervous breakdown while serving as Customs commissioner at Changsha.55 Other cases mentioned in Aglen’s letters for just 1924 included “young Warry,” P. L. O. Hill, and W. R. M. Parr.56 Aglen’s attitude as a fiscal disciplinarian was mirrored by his uncompromising attitude toward the growing assertiveness of labor in the 1920s. The troubled situation in the Customs Service had many causes. The staff of the Customs Service had grown large and diverse. At times such as during World War I, its cosmopolitan nature was put under stress because of strong nationalist loyalties. Germans and Austro-Hungarians were in fact dismissed unceremoniously from the Service in 1917, after China declared war on the Central Powers. The value of salaries and other entitlements had declined in part because of the drop in the value of silver and in part because neither Hart during his last years nor Aglen during World War I believed it politically advisable to increase wages. Aglen would also have found it distasteful to do so when back home great sacrifices were being made for the war. World War I also led to demands from lower-level staff for better treatment, both financially and socially. During World War I, labor movements had grown stronger and more confident and had eroded cultures of deference and subordination. The war had strengthened Aglen’s belief in the importance of discipline, hierarchy, self-sacrifice, and hard work. In 1918, he made enquiries—only polite ones, of course—whether he could decline a decoration proposed by Lloyd George for his “contributions to the war.” He did not feel that he had done anything to help Britain.57 Enforcing prohibitions against trade with the enemy, though, had greatly harmed German business in China, which had grown rapidly before World War I. Aglen’s respect for those who did serve was high. After the war, he published a Customs “Roll of Honour” that listed Customs staff who had served with the Allies (only with them, not with the Germans or Austro-Hungarians), together with their decorations. He ordered Paul King to take army service into account in postwar recruitment. “The clerk type,” Aglen wrote, had “failed.”58 “I go for character more than brilliance and a boy who did well at his public school and made good in the war should be passed.”59 He hired as his personal secretary someone who had “worked for Smuts in South Africa, and Lloyd George, and is a war man.”60

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The war had also made Aglen suspicious of the lower ranks in the Customs Service. Recruitment in Europe had become difficult as the home armed services mopped up all available personnel, and in the early days of the war, a number of key staff had enrolled, having been swept up in the early enthusiasm for the war. The dismissal of Germans and AustroHungarians had thinned out Customs ranks further. Paul King scoured London to find replacements, but he had been largely unsuccessful. In addition, those who were willing to join the Service thereby made themselves suspect. King wrote to Aglen that he told candidates: “you want a billet in the Customs, you do not consider it any part of your duty to assist Great Britain in her war with Germany, but you wish me to believe that although you slack and shirk at home, you will not do so in China.”61 Aglen also had a knack for being tactless and insensitive. In 1912, senior commissioners, including Henry Merrill, Paul King, C. P. Dawson, and R. H. R. Wade, had formed a Customs Association after Aglen had begun to dismiss older members. After four decades, many staff members had become very old, but the lack of an adequate pension system meant that many had been kept on.62 A list of those “unsuitable for work” in Shanghai included nine members too old and frail, or supposedly too drunk and corrupt, to work.63 In one case, a dementia sufferer ended up roaming the streets of Shanghai. These senior commissioners pleaded for the introduction of a pension system, but Aglen responded by arguing that those dismissed should have had the good sense and self-discipline to build up their savings; it was their lack of a responsible attitude that now left them without money. This argument failed to recognize the decline in the value of silver. Aglen dismissed the proposal for a Customs Association as an affront to his personal integrity: “that action against the I.G. should be contemplated is unthinkable in that it would presuppose a head of the Service neglectful of its interests and privileges. . . . I am perhaps able to judge better than the Committee what it is politic and feasible to attempt.”64 The commissioners regretted “that the I.G. cannot see his way to letting cold reasoning yield to a well-grounded sentiment of humanity.”65 In 1917, Aglen responded to a demand by the outdoor staff for a wage increase by arguing—publicly—that they should spend less money on drink in Customs clubs, “avoid irregular domestic encumbrances” (that is, with Chinese women), and show “character and self control.” They had little to complain

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about, he added, because they were “men of no expert qualifications, from whom little is demanded.”66 Aglen was not well equipped to deal with demands for better social and financial treatment by the lower ranks in the Service after the war. In February 1919, H. Wyatt spearheaded a movement to establish a union in Shanghai. He called a meeting of all foreign staff, including indoor staff, at Shanghai’s Palace Hotel.67 Wyatt had joined the Customs Service as a watcher in 1903 and in 1919 became chief examiner in Shanghai. The movement would lead to Wyatt’s resignation, questions in Britain’s Parliament,68 and negative reports in the English-language China press, including in the North China Daily News, a newspaper no one could accuse of harboring socialist leanings.69 Considerable sympathy existed for Wyatt, including among commissioners. C. P. Dawson, the chief tide surveyor in charge of the Shanghai outdoor staff at the time, was sympathetic. Dawson had been one of the commissioners who had protested Aglen’s treatment of old Customs staff in 1912 and supported the creation of a Customs Association that year. He reported to Aglen that “dissatisfaction” had existed among outdoor staff for the last eight years, and that the “distrust of the I.G. . . . was genuine and deep-rooted.”70 Outdoor staff had been “pushed into a dark corner, treated like school children, and have never been encouraged to state their views.”71 None of this could have come as a surprise to Aglen. In 1915, Paul King had written Aglen that “I am familiar with all the rotten talk about the Service which goes on in Customs Clubs and which is responsible for the discontent that does exist.”72 It may well be the case that senior Customs officials, like King, were not averse to fanning Wyatt’s labor movement to make life uncomfortable for Aglen. In 1919, F. E. Taylor, statistical secretary from 1899 to 1902 and the man who had set up a provisional Inspectorate in Shanghai during the Boxer War, published, after he had retired, a scathing article about the Customs Service under Aglen in the Peking Leader, complaining that “senior Commissioners are displeased with the want of courtesy shown to them” and arguing that “the outdoor branch is seething with discontent.”73 A Hk.Tls. 5,000 payment “in recognition of unpaid services as Officiating Inspector General in 1900” on his retirement in 1919 had not soothed Taylor’s anger.74 He painted Aglen as an insensitive autocrat unable to keep

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up with the times, preferring to maintain an intricate set of correspondences so bulky that it overwhelmed the Service’s administration rather than switch to using the telephone. The issue of race was an important factor. Wyatt wanted wage improvements and better working conditions, but he also sought to restrict the labor union to white outdoor staff.75 This was to eradicate the social stigma attached to being an outdoor member, which resulted from the fact that many had Chinese wives and children and worked closely with Chinese colleagues. When Wyatt called his meeting at the Palace Hotel, Shanghai commissioner Wade talked to “a few men.”76 They reported that whether a foreign outdoor staff member was shunned depended “in a large measure on each man’s own self: the society he keeps and the marriage he makes. The Chinese marriages are the cause of most of the stigma, and that of course reflects unfavourably on other comrades.” His successor, Lyall, who supported Wyatt, agreed: low pay, low rank, and home leave only after ten year’s of service meant that foreign outdoor staff members did not get much opportunity to meet and marry British women. They had fathered “Eurasian children,” with the result that white foreigners and Chinese alike did not mix with them.77 Lyall agreed with Wyatt’s charge that the gulf between indoor and outdoor staff was huge: “Commissioners almost without exception know nothing of the Outdoor men. They do not know them personally, nor the houses they live in, nor the lives they lead, nor the work they do.”78 Stella Benson, a noted author who married James O’Gorman Anderson, who would have a long career in the Service, wrote in her diary that when she and James invited an “outdoor man for a drink,” the situation was so awkward that their guest could not look anyone in the face and answered questions with his back turned.79 The issues of pay, race, and status were intertwined. Outdoor staff did not want to be white coolies. In 1915, one recruit tendered his resignation a day after arriving at his post in Hankou: “on my present pay, [it is impossible] to meet all expenses incurred by living and performing my duties. It is unacceptable to have a Probationary or 3rd Class Tidewaiter to buy his own furniture and supply his own means of transport.”80 The new recruit demanded that the Hankow Customs arrange for a rickshaw to pick him up every morning for work, so that he would not have to walk through streets

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crowded with Chinese. When his demand was refused, the recruit left for a job with better conditions in Shanghai. The issue of race was implicated in justifications for upholding the dominance of foreigners in the Customs Service. Men like Aglen grew anxious because World War I had destroyed the magic aura that had surrounded Europeans. As Aglen put it, “the foreign prestige bubble has been completely pricked.”81 When a foreigner Customs employee was found to have taken bribes, thus undermining the idea that white dominance in the Customs Service was justified because Chinese were corrupt and Westerners were not, Aglen issued a strongly worded IG circular: “it must be clear to every foreign member of the Service that the fundamental reason for the employment of foreigners in the Chinese Maritime Customs Service is their personal integrity.”82 The Customs as a foreign-dominated institution would survive only as long as it maintained its “high reputation for unimpeachable personal integrity.”83 That way of thinking, combined with the worry that the Customs had recruited the wrong sort of foreigner during the war, made Aglen even more determined to uphold the hierarchies, values, and discipline he believed in so strongly, especially against a background in which Chinese nationalism had become politically powerful, as evidenced for instance by the May Fourth Movement and the Chinese demands for an end to extraterritoriality and for tariff autonomy, made at the Paris Peace Conference. Wyatt proceeded cautiously, even deferentially. Upon the request of his bosses, he adjourned the meeting at the Palace Hotel to the Customs Club, asked all non-Customs staff to leave, and insisted that no one talk to the press.84 Lyall reported to Aglen that Wyatt was not a rabble-rouser but in fact “quite sedate and respectful,”85 deft at chairing meetings, and useful to “dissipate ill feeling and mistrust.”86 Knowing Aglen’s sensitivities, Lyall stressed that outdoor staff had made donations to support the war effort and to help out Customs staff who had fallen on hard times. However, “the hat has gone around too often, and each time a man has seen a colleague die and his wife and family dependent on charity, his own case seemed more and more acute.”87 Wyatt presented the union as helpful to the Service by “promoting cooperation between the I.G. and his subordinates, and expressing the concerted and considered views of the staff to the I.G.”88

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Wyatt did not call his proposed organization a labor union but instead a Customs Association. That did not help him, and not only because of the 1912 attempt to establish a Customs Association. Earlier, during the Boxer Rebellion, Taylor had formed a Customs Association, which had prompted Aglen to write to Hart afterward that he thought the idea unwise because “there was no guarantee we should not have ended up with a committee of Tidewaiters.”89 As he had in 1912, Aglen saw Wyatt’s Customs Association as an attack on his personal integrity. It implied that “the Inspector, besides being unsympathetic, is not to be trusted” and that “a means had to be found of bringing pressure on the I.G. to extort concessions, which otherwise he would not be willing to grant.”90 The words “Customs Association” did not have a positive ring to Aglen’s ears. Aglen was determined to defeat Wyatt. He disregarded assurances from Lyall that the “movement is not getting out of hand”91 and that “if it came to a collision, even if the I.G. won, the result could only be bad.”92 He did agree to meet a delegation of outdoor staff, including Wyatt, which he did on October 29 and 30, 1919. He received them as supplicants, not as members of a “departmental organization,” as that might imply, according to Aglen, that they would be entitled to have influence in the running of the Customs Service.93 At the meeting, Wyatt presented a long list of grievances about pay, shoddy accommodation, inferior home-leave arrangements, long working hours, social discrimination, interference in private lives, a lack of promotion opportunities, and a system of confidential staff reports against which no appeal could be made. Aglen replied with a lengthy lecture on his reasons for refusing to recognize a union because “without discipline the Service would soon go to pieces.” He stated that while he was working on a pension scheme, among many other affairs that kept him busy, he would not rush it into existence. These statements were later communicated to all staff. To impose order and discipline, Aglen appointed Hayley Bell outdoor deputy commissioner to Shanghai in 1920. Hayley Bell had fought at Ypres and the Somme, ending up with the rank of lieutenant colonel and receiving a Distinguished Services Medal. Lyall reported that while in fact he did his best for his subordinates, he also managed to alienate them by sticking to army manners. He insisted on “calling himself colonel and speaks in a way that is resented.”94 He became known as Bayley Hell.

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Wyatt was dismissed after he called a meeting to discuss a pension scheme, which Aglen did announce quickly, despite his earlier protestations that he would not be hurried. Hayley Bell “informed him that he considered that the issue of an invitation by him to both the indoor and outdoor staff to attend a Staff Meeting was an act of insubordination,” adding, “this means war: if you wish for it I am ready for you.”95 Aglen then traveled to Shanghai, called a meeting of all staff, and explained his objections to Wyatt’s actions. When Wyatt refused to express “regrets for his actions to the Inspector General,” he was given the option to resign or to be dismissed. He chose the former.96 The pension scheme was important in taking the sting out of the union movement. It provided 25 percent of one’s final salary in gold paid by the Service and an additional 25 percent in silver financed by a 6 percent deduction of salary. Retirement became compulsory at the age of sixty. After his dismissal, Wyatt continued with his attempts to form a labor union. He failed because “everybody is joining the Superannuation Scheme.”97 People chose the certainty of a secure pension over Wyatt’s labor union. Although he would have denied this, Aglen had bought off the protesters. The Wyatt case illustrates well Aglen’s approach to managing the internal affairs of the Customs Service. However, a few additional points need to be made. Between 1914 and 1926, Aglen increased the amount of money used for managing the Customs Service from $4.8 to $7.5 million, and he increased funds set aside for land purchases and building repairs from $0.1 to $1.2 million.98 Aglen used these funds not just to finance his pension scheme but also to undertake an extensive building and repair program, including of jetties, Custom Houses, and Custom residences. Just one example is the still iconic Shanghai Custom House on the Shanghai Bund, which was built between 1925 and 1927 on a budget of £3 million. Its foundation stone was laid by Superintendent Zhu Youji (朱有济) and Shanghai commissioner Frederick Maze in November 1925, whose names were inscribed on it, and hence still must be, only a few months after the outbreak of the May Thirtieth Movement—a massive anti-British strike. 99 It was opened in December 1927, after the Nationalists captured the city, in a ceremony that Maze had stripped down to a bare minimum, for obvious reasons.100 The bells of the Shanghai Custom House that then began to toll the Westminster chime over the Shanghai Bund were inscribed in Chinese with 寸阴是竟

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TABLE 5.1 Senior Chinese and foreign staff, 1916 and 1925 Commis- Senior sioner assistant

Chief assistant

Second assistant

Third assistant

Fourth assistant

Learner

Clerk

Copyist

Foreign staff,1916

68

46

35

42

50

35

0

0

0

Chinese staff,1916

1

4

3

6

15

46

28

622

485

Foreign staff,1925

74

30

43

21

30

20

0

0

0

Chinese staff,1925

0

5

13

23

70

40

26

686

426

Source: Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi (China’s modern Maritime Customs Service), 510.

(cunyin shijing) and its Latin translation, as preferred by Aglen, “Tempus Edax Rerum”—Time Devours All Things.101 The Customs Archives do not record the actions and sentiments of Chinese members in any great detail. If lower-level foreign staff were not treated well, the same was true, in spades, for Chinese staff. It is telling that in the official correspondence series between commissioners and Aglen little attention is paid to them. Aglen turned the clock back on Robert Hart’s policies to promote Chinese into the upper ranks of the Customs Service and reduce its foreign character. When the first class of some twenty Customs College students graduated in 1914, Aglen devised a procedure that ensured that most would not become assistants, let alone commissioners. He created a new rank of probationers (见习, jianxi), where Customs College graduates would stay until “their abilities or their performance of work entitle them to be promoted to fill vacancies.”102 Table 5.1 compares the number of foreign and Chinese indoor staff at various Customs ranks in 1916 and 1925. It shows that the careers of Chinese indoor staff continued to lag behind and that the higher ranks remained foreign dominated. The same was true for Chinese in the outdoor branch. The highest position any Chinese achieved was that of tidewaiter. The higher ranks of examiner, appraiser, tide surveyor, and harbormaster were all occupied by foreigners.103

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Aglen embodied the high noon of British imperialism in China. He was convinced of the superiority of the British upper classes, believing that the right to rule fell to them almost naturally because of their character, breeding, and integrity. He was ill-equipped to deal with the demands shook loose by World War I, not only by an increasingly nationalist China that wanted to drive out imperialism but also of lower-class foreigners in the Service. Aglen was right that after the death of Yuan Shikai, only the mere shadow of a Chinese government remained. That allowed him to give the Customs Service a whole new task in managing China’s loans. If Hart had extended the role of the Customs Service by constructing the Marine Department, Aglen made it important in the world of banking and finance. As imperialist as Aglen was—and as insensitive to Chinese aspiration—it must also be said that he faced a China in disintegration. What Aglen did not understand was not only that Chinese nationalism could not be resisted but also that he was being used by China’s bankers—as Gu Weijun did see.

GU WEIJUN, INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES, AND ANTI-IMPERIALISM

We now turn to the great post–World War I international conferences where Gu Weijun elevated the Customs Service and tariff autonomy into key demands of Chinese nationalism. At Columbia, Gu Weijun had gained a solid training in international law. In addition, by participating in debating societies, he had honed his talents for arguing on his feet and putting on a performance. Gu’s platform at the Paris Peace Conference and the Washington Conference had several planks. First, he appealed to international law to make the case for the return of German rights in Shandong to China, for an end to the unequal treaties, and for the restoration of tariff autonomy. Second, he worked hard to mobilize public opinion both in China and internationally. Finally, he was careful to suggest that he represented a moderate, reasonable, pro-Western, and especially pro-U.S. stream in Chinese politics. Thus, his suggestion was that accepting China’s demands was the right thing to do and in the strategic interest of the Allies. The belief that foreign countries would accept China’s case once it was articulated in Western principles of international law was a miscalculation.

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The weakness of that position was that foreign countries could accept China’s case in principle but argue that China had not yet matured sufficiently; it remained “in the waiting room of history.”104 Gu also overestimated the extent of President Woodrow Wilson’s support for China’s case. Although Gu had been assured of U.S. backing, Wilson “was not prepared to challenge the entire imperialist system.”105 His true position was that non-European states should be granted self-determination after further “gradual and orderly” reform. Moreover, the United States was not yet a hegemonic power able to impose its will. In Asia, it would have to deal with Japan but also Britain. As the Nationalists would demonstrate, more than just good arguments and good behavior would be needed to gain acceptance of China’s demands: the mobilization of the population, boycotts, and force would be necessary as well. Most countries have had to earn their independence, usually paying for it with the blood of their people. Merely asking for it has rarely been sufficient. Gu may have failed in his immediate objective, but that does not mean that his passionate defense of China’s sovereign rights was historically inconsequential. His persistence meant that he won the argument, which was accepted by foreign countries at the 1925 Special Tariff Conference in Beijing. His efforts were instrumental in securing agreement to the levying of a Customs surtax in Washington and ultimately the restoration to China of tariff autonomy. The analysis offered in this section focuses on Gu’s management of China’s diplomatic strategy from the Paris Peace Conference to the Special Tariff Conference in Beijing, especially the performative aspects of his approach, in which he was a pioneer, and the demand for tariff autonomy, which directly affected the Customs Service. Gu’s efforts helped make the Customs Service an important public issue in China and the recovery of tariff autonomy a key demand of Chinese nationalism.

The Paris Peace Conference

An important issue at the Paris Peace Conference was the so-called Shandong Question, that is, the issue whether pre–World War I German rights in Shandong should be handed to Japan or be restored to China. On January 27, 1919, Japan’s representative, Baron Makino Nobuaki, had argued that

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the Shandong question was a matter between China and Japan. It did not involve other countries and was based on treaties, signed by both countries, that should be observed. The next day, Gu Weijun delivered an electrifying performance, speaking for half an hour without notes in front of U.S. president Wilson, French premier George Clemenceau, the British prime minister Lloyd George, and Arthur Balfour, the British foreign minister. Gu rejected Baron Makino’s claim, arguing that Japan had threatened the use of force to compel China to accept the Twenty-one Demands and thus, according to international law, it was invalid.106 He added that Shandong, being the birthplace of Confucius, was China’s “cradle of civilization,” a Holy Land for the Chinese that it could not possibly give up.107 Gu demanded that the Peace Conference restore Qingdao, the port city in Jiaozhou Bay, to China immediately, on the grounds that China had declared war on Germany and hence that all previous treaties about it had become invalid.108 Gu recounted in his memoirs that after he finished speaking the Chinese delegation spontaneously broke out into applause, that President Wilson came over to him to express his congratulations, and that Lloyd George, Arthur Balfour, and Robert Lansing, the U.S. secretary of state, had done the same.109 David Miller, a U.S. advisor, wrote that Gu “made one of the really brilliant speeches” at the conference.110 A Japanese official sourly observed that “China seems to have started on a venture to captivate the world by her tongue and pen.”111 The Western press, according to Gu’s memoirs, “made a point of reporting that, with the exception of Japan, the delegates of all other powers had unanimously been supportive.” He received a flood of congratulatory telegrams from “China’s President, Premier, the Foreign Office and other government leaders as well as from provincial authorities, civil servants in Shandong, and student associations.” They praised his performance as “masterful.”112 Chinese expectations of the Peace Conference had been very high. Japan had used World War I, when France, Britain, and Russia were fighting in Europe, to demand China’s agreement to the Twenty-one Demands. These required China to accept Japan’s position in Shandong, recognize Japan’s special interests in the northeast and Mongolia, agree to joint operation of China’s iron and steel industries, and vouch that no other country would be given control over any of its coastal areas. One group of demands, insisting that China appoint Japanese officials to some of its ministries,

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was dropped. During World War I, Japan signed secret agreements with Britain that recognized Japan’s interests in Shandong. It also had signed a diplomatic note with the United States that confirmed the Open Door policy, but whereby the United States also recognized that Japan had a special interest in China because of its propinquity. The hope in China was that Paris would undo Japan’s gains. The Chinese delegation consisted of some sixty people, including ministers to various countries, advisors, experts, and secretaries, important public figures and intellectuals, and journalists. Hopes that the conference would lead to an end to Japanese encroachment in China and China’s recognition as an equal nation had been raised by Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points of 1918, in which he called, among other things, for an end to secret agreements, an “impartial adjustment of all colonial claims,” self-determination, and the creation of the League of Nations. China was gripped by Woodrow Wilson fever and the hope that the Paris Peace Conference would do right by China.113 When Gu was China’s minister to the United States, he had met Wilson several times and was assured by him that “there would be nothing for China to fear from the discussions” at Paris.114 While in Paris, members of the U.S. delegation repeatedly assured him of U.S. support.115 When the Peace Conference opened, China submitted a list with seven aspirations and two demands. The first included the elimination of spheres of influence in China, the withdrawal from Chinese territory of foreign armed forces, an end to extraterritoriality, the return to China of foreign concessions and settlements, and the restoration of tariff autonomy. China’s two demands were the retraction of Japan’s Twenty-one Demands and a rejection of Japan’s claims to Shandong. A Chinese memorandum submitted in support of the restoration of tariff autonomy first reviewed the history of what it termed China’s unequal treaties. The memorandum argued that they were of dubious legality as they had been forced upon China by war. The subsequent trade treaties had forced on China a 5 percent ad valorem tariff that was “not only unjust, but also unscientific,” meaning that they did not adhere to economic principles. They had “brought great harm to China’s wealth and its commerce”116 because China had been unable to use a differentiated tariff to assist its economic development. The tariff was unfair because China’s trade partners could impose high tariffs on imports from China. The memorandum pointed out the problem that

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the requirement of international agreement made it impossible to revise them. The McKay Treaty signed after the Boxer War had provided for a tariff rate of 12.5 percent in return for the abolition of lijin, but because not all agreed, this treaty had not been implemented, meaning that the promised increases in Customs revenue had not materialized. The memorandum concluded by proposing that tariff autonomy should be restored to China. Fitting in with Wilson’s gradualist conception, it suggested that there should be a transition period of two years, in which China would negotiate separate tariff schedules with its trade partners, none of which would be higher than 12.5 percent. With his performance, Gu may have grabbed the headlines, but he was nonetheless outmaneuvered by Japan. Some basic realities were against him, of course. The continued existence of the Anglo-Japanese alliance virtually compelled Britain to side with Japan. Japan had emerged out of World War I as a creditor nation, the Japanese Imperial Navy had cooperated with the British Royal Navy in the Mediterranean, and Japan’s power in East Asia was undoubted. President Wilson needed Japan’s cooperation to establish the League of Nations. Although in the United States public sympathy was with China, it is unclear how far the United States really was prepared to go in the defense of China. The Chinese delegation was internally divided, which undermined the case it put forward. A Sun Yatsen delegate, Wang Zhengting (王正廷), had been included to suggest that China could speak with one voice.117 In reality the members made one another’s lives difficult, bickering even over who sat in what chair during meetings. In his memoirs, Gu recalled that one KMT representative, Wang Jingwei, spread a rumor in the Chinese press that Gu had become engaged to a daughter of Cao Rulin, whose house would be sacked by May Fourth Movement protesters who suspected him of harboring pro-Japanese sympathies.118 Gu blamed internal strife and Japanese perfidy for having caused a rather serious weakness in his argument. Documents relating to a ChineseJapanese agreement of September 1918,119 containing evidence of China’s gratitude for Japan having provided a large loan to China on its entry into World War I, undermined Gu’s argument that China had signed under force majeure. The documents had been sent to Paris in a suitcase that had mysteriously disappeared, and hence Gu did not know of them. He

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blamed the Beijing Foreign Office and Japanese intelligence.120 The result was that Baron Makino Nobuaki could stand up after Gu had enthralled his audience and make the point that the Chinese government had in fact recognized the Japanese takeover of German rights in Shandong.121 Makino was much less eloquent than Gu, but the point detonated a bomb directly under Gu’s argument. What was most likely decisive in determining the outcome of the dispute was Japan’s tough negotiation tactics. Japan demanded the inclusion of a statement about racial equality in the covenant setting up the League of Nations. This spoke to a long Japanese grievance, but Japan also used the issue instrumentally. Gu tried but failed to convince the Japanese delegation not to raise the issue, on the grounds that for “China there were more important questions at stake.”122 He did not want to be put into the position of having to side with Japan. For Japan, on the other hand, the demand for racial equality was a negotiation chip that it could trade in for recognition of its claims in Shandong. Neither Britain nor the United States, each for its own reasons, wanted to have a statement on racial equality included in the League’s protocol. Aglen commented, perceptively, “the Japanese handled it magnificently, making the pace with ‘Race Equality’ and keeping Kiaochow as the hare to win with.”123 On April 22, Gu, Wang Zhengting, and Lu Zhengxiang, China’s third representative, were called to a meeting with President Wilson, Prime Minister Lloyd George, and Premier Clemenceau. They informed them, somewhat apologetically, that their decision was that Japan would be given the former German economic privileges and railroad rights in Shandong, although formal sovereignty over Qingdao would be restored to China eventually. Gu protested furiously,124 but Wilson argued that this was the best he had been able to do for China. He attempted to console Gu with the suggestion that he could raise the Shandong Question at the League of Nations in the future.125 After student protests broke out in China, Gu asked whether China could sign the peace treaty reserving its right to raise the Shandong issue in the future. When even this much was denied, the Chinese delegation decided to withhold its signature altogether. It is difficult to see that Gu could have done anything else unless he was prepared to lose all credibility.126 Gu’s strategy of appealing to Wilsonianism and relying on U.S. support had failed.

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The Washington Conference and the Special Tariff Conference

The main aim of U.S. president Harding at the Washington Conference was to secure Japanese agreement to naval arms limitations in the Pacific. The conference, however, was also convened to deliberate “Questions in the Pacific Area and the Far East.” Harding wanted to prevent a renewal of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, which had expired in 1920, restore collective responsibility in East Asia, and seek a commitment from all powers involved to adopt an attitude of restraint. While the Chinese delegation was excluded from meetings about the question of arms limitations, it was included in those about Far Eastern questions. Once more, Chinese expectations were high. China sent a delegation twice as large as the one that had attended the Paris Peace Conference. The general diplomatic strategy was similar to that adopted at Paris, namely to defend China’s case on the basis of international law, gain the support of the United States and other Western countries, and build up public support through the press. The delegation appointed a director and vice director for publicity, whose activities were supervised by Gu Weijun.127 Before agreeing to participate, China declared that it would do so only if all participating countries would be regarded as enjoying equal status. At the opening of the conference, China submitted “ten principles.” They were whittled down under U.S. pressure to “respect for China’s sovereignty and independence and its territorial integrity” and for “equality of opportunity” in China, that is, the Open Door policy. Agreeing with such principles was easy; what they meant in practice was harder to decide. In a debate about geographic scope and hence to what area these general principles should apply, Gu insisted that China include all “twenty-two provinces,” including the northeast and Tibet. The United States and Britain preferred a much vaguer definition, talking about “China proper” to avoid a host of difficult issues. Gu’s vehemence irritated Secretary of State Lansing, who observed that “the sympathy of all was with China to begin with . . . [but] the course of Koo [Gu] and Sze [Alfred Sze, 施肇基, Shi Zhaoji], particularly Koo, is causing much discontent and weakening of that sympathy.”128 Gu would again be disappointed. The naval arms limitation issue was difficult enough. The United States and Britain did not want the conference

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sidetracked by a drawn-out fight between Japan and China about Shandong and therefore refused to have it discussed, despite Gu’s protestations that it was an international issue that affected all countries. They went no further than agreeing to send observers to separate negotiation sessions between China and Japan. These were cantankerous and became embarrassing for China’s representatives when they offered to buy back the Shandong railroad from Japan for $25 million, only to be informed by China’s bankers that there was no chance such a large sum could be raised.129 Gu Weijun submitted to the Washington Conference a closely argued “declaration on the issue of China’s tariff,” which reiterated the points he had made at the Paris Peace Conference. He emphasized that even if China collected an effective 5 percent tariff, although its income would rise by about Hk.Tls. 15 million, it still would not have enough funds for regular government purposes such as education and health care, nor for improvements to its transportation system. Gu requested an immediate rise of China’s tariff to a maximum of 17.5 percent, to be agreed to in discussions between China and its trade partners individually. The full restoration of tariff autonomy would then follow after a transition period. The Washington Conference established a China Tariff Subcommittee, at which Gu lowered the demand for a maximum tariff to 12.5 percent and suggested that it was to be in force for the next ten years. He also announced that “China declares that it does not wish to make any fundamental change in China’s Customs administration, nor will it put to other uses Customs revenue dedicated to the service of foreign loans.” The Washington Conference approved a text, drafted by the United Kingdom, which agreed to an immediate implementation of an “effective 5% tariff ” as agreed in 1918.130 Because of the depreciation of silver before that date, the actual tariffs had been lower than 5 percent. It also agreed to the convening of a Special Tariff Conference within months to consider the abolition of lijin taxes and the levying of a 2.5 percent Customs surtax,131 which would have produced a 50 percent increase in Customs revenue. Although the Washington Conference went some way to meeting China’s demands, it did not go so far as to accept tariff autonomy for China. Gu Weijun objected strenuously, stating that “the current system is a violation of China’s sovereignty. . . . [It] causes continuous and serious harm to China’s revenue, and prevents China from developing and maintaining an effective and stable government.”132 Gu would sign the Washington Con-

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ference agreement but with a reservation clause stating that “all countries represented at this Conference enjoy tariff autonomy, yet they do not grant China this right, which is regrettable. At a future opportunity, China reserves the right to raise the issue again for renewed discussion.”133 The Special Tariff Conference opened in Beijing on October 26, 1925, three years after the Washington Conference, rather than just months, as had originally been agreed. The delay was caused by political turmoil in China and the first and second Zhili-Fengtian wars. The second war was a large military confrontation, with hundreds of thousands of soldiers taking to the battlefield.134 A diplomatic dispute with France about whether China should pay France’s share of the Boxer Indemnity in gold or in the French franc was another reason for the postponement. However, in the fall of 1925, Beijing sent invitations to thirteen countries, including the nine powers that had attended the Washington Conference, to come to Beijing to “complete the task of the Washington Conference.” It reminded the recipients that China had reserved the right to raise the issue of tariff autonomy.135 The Special Tariff Conference was not convened by a government of which Gu Weijun was a member. Feng Yuxiang, nicknamed the “Christian Warlord,” had rebelled against Wu Peifu during the Second Zhili-Fengtian War and taken Beijing. He installed his own government and invited Sun Yatsen to come to Beijing for peace talks. Sun did do so, abandoning his base in Guangdong, but he would die from cancer in March 1925. Gu regarded the new authorities as “a revolutionary government without any constitutional basis.”136 For the new government, the hosting of an important international conference was politically useful; it implied that it was being taken seriously by the world’s most important nations. Had it succeeded in regaining tariff autonomy, its reputation would have burned brightly, and its treasury would have been refilled. The agenda of the conference was restricted to tariff issues. Japan would have refused to attend had the Shandong Question been on it as well. Britain insisted that the uses to be made of China’s Customs revenue would also be discussed.137 Shen Duanling, the minister of foreign affairs, opened the conference by stating, as Gu had done at Versailles, that although treaties were sacred and should be observed, international law accepted that changed circumstances provided grounds for revision. He then declared, “the negotiated tariff implemented for the past eighty years in China no longer suits present conditions.” Wang Zhengting, who had represented

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Sun Yatsen’s government at the Paris Peace Conference, spoke next. He reminded his audience that the Washington Conference had agreed that tariff autonomy should be restored to China at an appropriate moment. He then proposed a transition period until January 1, 1929, before the full restoration of tariff autonomy. Before then, China should be permitted to levy a Customs surtax of 5 percent on general commodities and 20 or 30 percent on luxury goods.138 Aglen observed that the aim of the Chinese negotiators was to avoid “entering into details . . . they will get them to commit to all kinds of generalities, including renunciation of extraterritoriality.”139 Stanley Wright, who had been the Service’s statistical secretary, helpfully put together a monograph for the conference on China’s loans and on the positive role the Customs Service had played in ensuring that they were paid and in maintaining China’s credit abroad. On November 19, 1925, at a subcommittee meeting, all parties agreed to recognize that “China enjoys the right to tariff autonomy” and even settled on a date for the full restoration of tariff autonomy, January 1, 1929, as proposed by Shen.140 However, in April 1926, the government fell, soon after Feng Yuxiang was driven out of Beijing, and on June 1, 1926, the Nationalists began their Northern Expedition. On June 10, 1926, the diplomats in Beijing decided to adjourn the conference until China again had a functioning government. It would never be reconvened and so produced no treaty recognizing China’s tariff autonomy. Today, tariff autonomy is no longer seen as an essential prerequisite of a sovereign nation. Most countries willingly adhere to internationally agreed tariffs, with infringements arbitrated by an international body, the World Trade Organization. If at the time of the first Opium War low tariffs were uncontroversial, by the late nineteenth century, this changed as critics like Zheng Guanying and Chen Chi made the case that the existing tariff regime had been imposed on China to its harm. Gu helped elevate tariff autonomy to a core nationalist issue through his performances at international conferences, which were never just diplomatic events but also public spectacles, especially so in the age of modern media. Gu constructed around tariff autonomy and the foreign domination of the Customs service a narrative of China in modern times, one of victimization and foreign aggression, that has proved enduring. However, it would be the Nationalists and not Gu who would profit from his rhetoric.

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THE CUSTOMS SERVICE AND THE RISE OF THE NATIONALISTS

The Customs Service presented a conundrum for the Nationalists. On the one hand, the recovery of tariff autonomy and an end to foreign dominance of the Customs Service were major planks of their political platform. However, the Customs Service could be as useful to them as it had been to their predecessors. The trick was to find a way to capture control over it without being seen to be selling out. They were able to do so because of changes in the international situation, because of the reluctance of China’s bankers to continue to support the Beijing government, and because of a rivalry between Francis Aglen and Frederick Maze, who was sympathetic to the Nationalists and ambitious for the top job in the Customs Service. The Nationalists carefully maneuvered so that it seemed that the Customs Service somehow fell into their lap under a new leadership willing to subordinate the Service to their authority and to their goals. They played a blinder.

The Rise of the Nationalists

The direct involvement of the Nationalists with the Customs Service went back to 1919. That year, Sun Yatsen had established what he referred to as a military government (军政府, jun zhengfu) in Guangzhou. Short of funds, he demanded a share of the Customs surplus proportionate to the revenue collected in areas he claimed to control. Aglen, unsurprisingly, did not think much of Sun Yatsen. In 1924, he had written to Bowra that “if truth be known he is probably not in full control of his faculties.”141 Aglen’s disparagement made it easy for him to agree in 1919, after discussion with the Beijing government and the diplomatic body, that the better course of wisdom was to accede to Sun’s request for money. Aglen sent Sun a total of Hk.Tls. 2.1 million that year through the Guangzhou branch of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank.142 Sun’s government soon fell, but it returned not once but twice and each time renewed its claim to a share of Customs revenue.143 Aglen evolved the useful formula, providing for a good deal of flexibility and IG discretion, that the Customs would cooperate with any “de facto Government” and “follow its instructions when not in conflict with China’s international agreements.”144

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In February 1923, Sun once more established himself in Guangzhou, but this time he did so with the help of Soviet advisors and the Chinese Communists. Sun again demanded, through a request transmitted by the British consul general in Guangzhou to the diplomatic body in Beijing, that Guangzhou’s share of the Customs surplus be handed to him. This time, with the Nationalists so closely associated with the spread of communism, the ministers refused. They now argued that there was no surplus, that accepting Sun’s demand would lead to similar requests from semiautonomous leaders in China’s northeast and elsewhere, and that it would endanger the Consolidated Debt Service.145 The standoff that ensued would lead to what would be the last serious episode of gunboat diplomacy in Chinese waters. Sun issued statements, widely reported in the press, that if the diplomatic body did not agree to his request, he would either order the Guangzhou Custom House to stop remitting revenue to the Inspectorate or declare Guangzhou a free port. In December, Sun stated “to protect the peace and security of Guangdong Province, from now on no revenue collected by the Guangzhou Custom House will be remitted to the Zhili Clique,” referring to the Beijing government.146 He added that he would remit Guangzhou’s pro-rata share of revenue dedicated to servicing foreign loans but not those for domestic loans. The diplomatic body replied that they would “not tolerate intervention in the Customs Service by any party” and would “take strong action” if it did happen.147 The Guangzhou consuls ordered the nine gunboats in Canton to prepare for action. The United States sent reinforcements from the Philippines, and the U.S. minister to China traveled to Guangzhou to put pressure on Sun to desist.148 The Nationalists could not really lose. They either gained a useful source of funding or they made political capital by being seen to be standing up against nasty imperialists. When asked by a reporter whether he would offer resistance if military forces were deployed, Sun declared dramatically, “Our forces are far weaker. The four Great Powers will defeat us. But honor will be with us.”149 Wu Chaoshu (伍朝樞), his minister of foreign affairs, gave numerous interviews to the press, arguing that the allocation of the entire Customs revenue to the north was “helping the northern warlords to kill our people. It is unfair and unjust. We swear that we will resist until death.”150 Large mass rallies were organized in Guangzhou, and the First Congress of a reconstituted KMT, held in January 1924, adopted a resolu-

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tion that criticized Aglen by name, declared that the goal of the Nationalists was to reclaim Customs revenue, and that as long as foreigners were in charge of the Customs Service, it would be used to “inflict serious damage” on the Chinese economy.151 Neither side was really prepared to push toward a military confrontation. Sun’s government in Guangdong was, in truth, weak. It had little money, its military was made up of disparate forces of local militarists, and the extra taxes it imposed to build up a war chest were unpopular locally. Sun did much protesting but did not follow up on the threat to take over the Guangzhou Custom House.152 With respect to the ministers, the chances that their initial resort to tough language would be followed by deeds were slim. The mutual suspicion between Japan, the Soviet Union, and Britain prevented concerted action. In April 1924, Aglen worried that “the powers are not serious about China.”153 He believed this was dangerous because the “China Question” would become a major issue again in the future. But the China Question was no longer live in European politics. No country was willing to dispatch a force to China. The foreign ministers in Beijing therefore settled for washing their hands of the issue by declaring that on reflection they had concluded that China’s international agreements did not give them the right to interfere in the disposal of the Customs surplus.154 The outbreak of the May Thirtieth Movement of 1925 escalated matters. The movement was the result of Shanghai settlement police shooting dead demonstrators who protested the deaths of Chinese workers in a Japanese cotton mill. It ripped through China, leading to strikes and market boycotts. Like the ministers in Beijing, the Municipal Council, which managed the international settlement, wanted to act tough. It rejected demands for Chinese representation in the council, increased taxation including on Chinese, and passed a bylaw proscribing political criticism. Shanghai’s financial and business elites supported the strike. Officiating IG J. W. Stephenson was told they did so because of the hidebound attitude of the council: “native bankers, a very conservative class, would not support students so strongly except with the object of taking the opportunity to express their general exasperation.”155 Stephenson was warned that Britain was in danger of losing its position in China unless it made “a gesture of good feeling, an indication that matters will be settled on the basis of principles of justice rather than a show of force.”156

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In Guangzhou, the disaster was repeated when nine demonstrators were killed outside the Shamian Concession Area. The Nationalists responded by organizing a boycott of Hong Kong, policed by pickets who targeted especially British trade. Aglen sent Customs war hero Hayley Bell to Guangzhou, where he, insensitively, patrolled the Shamian Bund in military uniform.157 He too was all for a tough stance. He declared on June 2, 1926, that “if ever, [the] moment for intervention is now approaching.”158 However, this no longer fitted British policy. Unable to go it alone, it opted for a policy of accommodation rather than resistance. In November, the Foreign Office advised Aglen to be cooperative: “a friendly and helpful attitude toward the Nationalist Administration, not only at Canton but also at other places coming under their control, might render the Customs indispensable and so favourably effect future relations. Even if cooperation of this sort means in fact Tariff Autonomy, that has been promised and the British Government are prepared to face it.”159 The British consul in Canton had regular meetings with Chen Youren (陈友仁).160 The Customs was informed that Britain would not undertake unilateral action even if it meant that the Customs Service would be lost.161 At the time of the 1911 Revolution, Aglen had stated that the Customs Service ultimately depended on British military power in China. If Britain was then willing to deploy the Royal Navy on behalf of the Customs, this was no longer the case, forcing Aglen to adopt a different approach.

The Customs Surtax and Aglen’s Abandonment of the Northern Government

Financial need drove the Nationalists to swallow their antagonism toward the Customs Service. They began the Northern Expedition to unify China in June 1926. Warfare is inevitably expensive. Scruple made way for pragmatism. Song Ziwen (宋子文), or T. V. Soong, as he is better known in the West, had taken charge of Nationalist finances and had been able to raise, he claimed in a 1926 report, nearly $80 million.162 Roughly a third had come from issuing government debt—wagers on its future success. A considerable portion also came from a lucrative opium monopoly. In September 1926, the Nationalists further decided that they would begin to collect what they called the inland tax (内地税, neidishui).163 This tax was set at half the Customs dues on all imports, with higher rates for luxury products:

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it was the Washington surtax by a different name. Its collection required the cooperation of the Customs Service because Nationalist collectors needed to know Customs assessments before they could collect a further half on it. Chen Youren explained to the British Consul that the National Government “has of course no intention of interfering” with the Customs Service164 but asked whether the Customs Service personnel might meet with the collectors of the tax “to avoid any misunderstanding.” As inducement, the Nationalists promised to stop their boycott of Hong Kong if the Customs Service cooperated.165 An arrangement was worked out, and the pickets who had enforced the boycott metamorphosed into tax collectors. The poachers were to become gamekeepers. Aglen feared disaster, writing, “complete renunciation of territorial status that is treaty port system will make it impossible for British government to protect lives and property, will end effective foreign control of Customs, and will destroy last vestige of credit bringing ruin to thousands of foreign and Chinese creditors.”166 But Britain’s unwillingness to defend foreign privilege, including the Customs Service and extraterritoriality, meant that the policy he had followed from the 1911 Revolution was now shipwrecked. Already in 1922, he had written to G. F. H. Acheson, the nonresident secretary, that he planned to return to Britain in 1925 because “changes are taking place” requiring “a new man.”167 He had become disillusioned. In January 1926, he wrote Acheson’s successor, Bowra, that “the 1911 Revolution was a pseudo-revolution, a movement to get rid of one set of bad rulers to make place for a much worse lot. The real revolution when it comes will be a revolution of the people of China and it will make the world sit up and notice.”168 In a semiofficial circular of December 1926, Aglen remarked that “ground which for decades has seemed as solid as a rock is crumbling in all directions,” with labor “making demands calculated to interfere seriously with Service discipline,” with the prestige of foreigners in tatters, and with the Service the butt of “anti-foreign feeling . . . evoked for the purposes of political propaganda.”169 Despite his anxieties and against his instinct, Britain’s unwillingness to contemplate military action forced Aglen to agree to local accommodation with the Nationalists and to collaborate with them in collecting the Customs surtax.170 The change in British policy was no doubt important in making him decide on this course of action. At the same time, under Song Ziwen’s stewardship, the Nationalists adopted a conciliatory attitude

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toward the Customs. An important step was their acceptance of the Consolidated Debt Service, about which Aglen cared so much, as did of course China’s bankers. In Guangzhou, Sun had declared that the Nationalists would recognize only China’s international loans and not the domestic bonds. However, in December 1926, they signaled to Aglen that the Nationalists would not repudiate the Consolidated Debt Service. “Influential bankers” told Aglen that the “domestic loans under my management will not be repudiated.”171 Another reason was that China’s bankers were distancing themselves from the northern government. Already in April 1926, even before the Northern Expedition had begun, Shanghai bankers told Aglen during a visit that they were no longer willing to provide funds to the Beijing government.172 They had proposed a National Treasury, as this could be sold as fitting the rightsrecovery movement. According to Aglen, “what the bankers want is to be given a lock to the National Treasury, and to put the keys in my hand, to prevent funds going to the militarists.”173 While in London in August 1926, Aglen received a telegram from Zhang Jia’ao, sent on by Arthur Edwardes, the officiating IG in Beijing. It stated that “Dr Koo [Gu Weijun] has forwarded to you proposals for making loan on Customs to which I urge you to reply favourably and thus help both the Central Government and the reopening of the Customs Conference,”174 that is, the Special Tariff Conference. Edwardes appended a note stating “above message written by Minister of Finance and Chang [Zhang Jia’ao] compelled to sign.” In September, Aglen was told that Zhang Jia’ao continued to oppose any further loan.175 Following his return to China, Aglen traveled to Shanghai and to Wuhan to meet Nationalist officials. The Nationalists had set up a Customs Affairs Office (关务署) within Song Ziwen’s Ministry of Finance to implement the Customs surtax. Shrewdly, the Nationalists appointed as director general a person likely to be able to smooth relations with the Service. This was Chang Fu-yun, who earned a BA at Harvard in 1914, an LL.B in 1917, and who had worked in Beijing’s Foreign Office from 1920 to 1923. He was not a member of the KMT. Song and Chang Fu-yun had decided on a policy of not interfering with the Customs Service in southern China for a shortterm gain but, as it was “the backbone of China’s credit,”176 to wait until the Northern Expedition was over to seize the whole of it. They had informed the Hankou Commissioner, J. W. H. Ferguson, that they were prepared to work with Aglen as a fait accompli and did not seek his removal.177

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Seeing that the Nationalists were successfully reeling in Aglen, Gu Weijun ordered him to return to Beijing. Aglen refused, arguing that “urgent Customs business requires I remain a few days.”178 Aglen also refused to implement a 2.5 percent Customs surtax from February 1, 1927, in the north.179 Gu called a cabinet meeting at which he argued, according to his memoirs, that “the first duty of a public official, especially when he is a foreigner, is to obey government orders.”180 The cabinet then approved Gu’s proposal that Aglen be removed from office.181 Aglen rushed back to Beijing to undo his dismissal.182 Playing for time, he stated to Gu that the complexities of the affairs in which he was involved meant that he could not immediately hand over power to a successor. Lampson pressed Gu hard, and the London office of the Customs Service briefed the press in London.183 Gu, however, refused to give in, probably in part because Zhang Zuolin, who had just been appointed as leader of the Northern Alliance, was furious with Aglen because of his refusal to implement the Customs surtax.184 To save Aglen some embarrassment, Gu agreed that Aglen would not have to resign immediately but could enjoy a year of leave—in Britain, not China.185 But the order stood, and Aglen vacated the Inspector Generalship on February 13. As an interim measure, Arthur Edwardes was appointed as officiating IG. As Gu Weijun was bound to have realized, that placed the Nationalists in a legal dilemma. The Nationalists could accept Aglen as an appointment made legitimately by a predecessor regime. But accepting Edwardes as officiating IG implied accepting an order of a government they had declared illegal and with whom they were at war. Ferguson informed Edwardes that the Nationalists would not have direct contact with him but would liaise with the Inspectorate through Frederick Maze, the Shanghai commissioner.186 Gu’s dismissal of Aglen threatened to split the Customs Service into two parts.

The Succession Struggle Between Edwardes and Maze

Aglen’s dismissal ensured that, as during the 1911 Revolution, a succession crisis in the Customs Service was to coincide with a major turning point in Chinese history. Edwardes had joined the Customs Service in 1903 after having been educated at Haileybury College, which had been founded by

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the East India Company and continued to serve as a training ground for British colonial administrators. Edwardes served during World War I in Belgium, commanding No. 59 Company of the Chinese Labour Corps, like a number of other British Customs staff.187 He had been wounded and resigned with the rank of Captain. After his return to China, Aglen promoted him to deputy commissioner. In 1923, Aglen appointed Edwardes his personal secretary, with his respect for those who had served probably playing a role in Edwardes’s selection. He sent him to Guangzhou in 1924, where Edwardes was wounded once more during the Shamian Incident. Afterward he appointed him as chief secretary. Edwardes was opposed by Frederick Maze, whom Hart had taken under his wing, although he had broken with Maze senior, his sister’s husband, whose father had been a business partner of Robert’s father. Hart promoted Frederick early and gave him important assignments, including at the Inspectorate in Beijing. He was Guangzhou commissioner during the 1911 Revolution, when he maintained cordial relations with Hu Hanmin and held a garden party for Sun Yatsen when he visited the city. Aglen appointed Maze to succeed Lyall as Shanghai Customs commissioner in 1925, thus unwittingly putting Maze into an excellent position from which to mount a challenge for the top job. Following Aglen’s harsh intervention in the Wyatt case, Lyall had joined the ranks of the Customs malcontents,188 feeling let down and even humiliated by Aglen. Lyall was not in favor of the kind of stern and tough attitude that Aglen believed indispensable. When the May Thirtieth Movement broke out, he advised Aglen that “unless Chinese public opinion [is] appeased quickly injury to British trade is likely to be permanent.”189 At his retirement in May 1927, Lyall wrote a letter attacking Aglen’s policies, surely with Maze’s knowledge and support, stating that he believed it “my duty to give expression to the fears that have been around, in many members of the Service, by the policy adopted by the Inspectorate in revenue matters.” He argued that Aglen’s decision to take control of Customs revenue and to use it to enable the government in Beijing to issue public loans not merely had “dissipated current Customs revenue” but in addition had “saddled the future Customs revenue with a capital debt of 242 million dollars.” He recommended that “Sir Robert Hart’s system of leaving the banking and disposal of the revenue entirely in the hands of the Superintendents should be resumed as soon as possible.”190 Maze later instituted precisely this policy.

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Edwardes labored under clear disadvantages. The Nationalists remembered well that in 1925 he had closed the Canton Custom House on the suggestion of the British consul general and in defiance of Sun Yatsen’s instructions.191 His appointment of Kishimoto Hirokichi as chief secretary and his trip to Shenyang were maladroit in the extreme, not only because it suggested a sympathy for Japan, not uncommon among British residing in China at the time, but also because Japan opposed any increase in the tariff to protect its trade with China.192 Edwardes suggested the creation of a “non-political commission,” made up of representatives on the Treaty Powers, as well as the Nationalists and the Beijing government, to oversee the implementation of a surtax and allocate it on a pro rata basis. Edwardes was in effect holding out for the internationalization of the Customs Service, something that the Nationalists could never have accepted for both ideological and practical reasons.193 In Shanghai, Maze made the best of the situation. When they took the city in March 1927, he made contact with Nationalist leaders, including General Bai Chongxi, who had led the Nationalist military campaign for Shanghai.194 He met Chang Fu-yun, who found Maze “sympathetic to the aspirations of the Chinese people for the reform of the Customs Service . . . he willingly cooperated with the Kwan Wu Shu [Customs Affairs Office] . . . and had the approbation of the Chinese business community.”195 He refused to suppress a Customs Association that was established in May 1927 in Shanghai and that demanded full Chinese control over the Customs Service after a five-year transition period. He wrote Edwardes, “it would be futile to come to an issue just now over a secondary question of minor importance.”196 He worked closely with Guo Taiqi (郭泰祺), the KMT-appointed superintendent at Shanghai who during World War II would serve as China’s ambassador to the United Kingdom. He also, no doubt crucially, enabled the Nationalists to issue Hk.Tls. 30 million in Treasury certificates, secured on the Customs surtax he agreed to collect in Shanghai.197 To handle the semiannual Service personnel movements, Maze and Chang Fu-yun agreed that the best option was for Edwardes to send the appropriate orders to Maze, who then would inform the Customs Affairs Office.198 Edwardes refused to comply with the Chang Fu-yun–Maze arrangement,199 believing it a threat to his authority, which it was. He communicated only with Song Ziwen, but that provoked Chang Fu-yun, who

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believed that Edwardes’s refusal to recognize him, his formal superior, was yet another instance of British arrogance. Edwardes attempted to remove Maze with the help of Miles Lampson, who instructed Shanghai consul general Sidney Barton to suggest to Maze that he should resign as a “loyal British subject.”200 The rumor—or truth—then began to make the rounds that Maze had demanded a British honor as compensation.201 Edwardes also requested Song’s permission to dismiss Maze, writing “will I, in my capacity of Officiating Inspector-General of Customs, have your authority to instruct Mr Maze to proceed on a year’s leave immediately, with retirement at the end of such leave?”202 In this exchange, Edwardes could call himself officiating Inspector General because on October 3, 1928, the Nationalists had appointed him as such. But the fact that they had recognized him only in an officiating capacity suggested a level of distrust, which Edwardes may not have fully understood. It left open the possibility of a change, and the Nationalists had at the same time appointed Maze as deputy Inspector General.203 Song declined Edwardes’s request. The Nationalists removed Edwardes only after they were certain it was safe to do so. After their armies conquered Beijing, Chang Fu-yun traveled there to take over the Customs Affairs Office. He learned that “the relationship between Chang Kia-ngao [Zhang Jia’ao] and Aglen was entirely personal and not supported by the banking world.”204 At an evening dinner in the splendiferous environment of the British legation, the British minister Miles Lampson made clear that he supported Edwardes, but only because of personal reasons and that the British Foreign Office would accept as IG whoever the Nationalists decided to appoint.205 The Foreign Office did not want to jeopardize negotiations with the Nationalists about tariff revision then underway. Chang Fu-yun reported to Nanjing also that he had been visited by an Inspectorate official who had told him that Edwardes had “supplied Chang Tso-lin [Zhang Zuolin] with more than 600,000 dollars.” The Peking representatives of the Bank of China and the Bank of Communications informed Zhang that they would assist the Nationalists in raising a new loan of $9 million dollars. Thus, Chang Fu-yun learned that the British government would accept Maze, that China’s bankers were on their side, and that Edwardes had supplied the enemy of the Nationalists with substantial funding. Edwardes then made the fatal mistake of refusing to give effect to a Nationalist order to deposit funds for the Consolidated Debt Service in the

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Bank of China.206 Ding Guitang, a Chinese assistant posted at the Shanghai Custom House who functioned as a back channel between Maze and the Nationalists, had arranged with Maze that these funds would be deposited with the Bank of China.207 Edwardes had made himself untenable and decided to jump before he was pushed and resigned on December 31, 1928.208 Maze was appointed as Inspector General on January 8, 1929.209 After the Northern Expedition armies reached Beijing and so brought all of China under their control, in most areas more nominally than in truth, they issued a declaration on June 15, 1928. It stated that the reason that the pretext used by foreign countries to deny China tariff autonomy, namely that it did not have a unified government, had now fallen away. In the second half of 1928, all foreign countries signed new trade treaties with China that recognized China’s tariff autonomy—with the exception of Japan. In December 1928, the Nationalists announced a new national tariff, with an average rate of 8.5 percent on most commodities,210 that is, a rate only a little higher than had actually been levied since the introduction of the Customs surtax and that remained well below the international norm. Two things had happened. First, the Nationalists had been able to seize the Customs Service. They had retreated from their initial hostility to anything connected with the Customs Service, they had carefully bided their time, and they had given assurances to foreign countries and domestic bond holders that their takeover of the Customs Service would not fundamentally upset their interests. They established a Customs Affairs Office with a man as director general who had the kind of background and career that made him familiar to foreign diplomats and consuls. In Maze, they had found a new head of the Customs Service whom they had known for a long time, who had shown to be sympathetic to their aspirations, and who suggested that he was pliable. Maze would agree to an end to foreign hiring, the improvement of conditions of employment for Chinese working in the Customs Service, the deposit of Customs collections in a Chinese bank, and a withdrawal of Customs involvement in decisions about the use of Customs revenue. The second was that the Customs Service had once more survived a crisis that could have ended with its breakup. Maze moved quickly to dampen understandable anxieties in the Service. In January 1929, he extracted a statement from Chang Fu-yun that “it has not been contemplated to dispense with the services of foreigners, to abolish the pension scheme, or

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to effect changes in the general system of the Customs administration.”211 He issued a semiofficial circular, whose contents Customs commissioners were to convey to all staff, scotching the rumor that the Nationalists had appointed him on the promise that he would retire in two years. “I will remain in charge of the Service for some years to come, to restore and maintain confidence, increase, if possible, efficiency, and provide for the future.”212 He assured staff that the pension fund would not be handed over to the Nationalists. He emphasized that he had issued the circular with the full knowledge and agreement of Chang Fu-yun. Maze’s accommodation of the Nationalists did not go down well with the British community in Shanghai or in London, but things did settle down quickly, and any lingering sympathy for Edwardes vanished when he accepted a Japanese offer to become their advisor in Manchuria after they seized the region in 1931. The rise of Chinese nationalism was closely entangled with control over the Customs Service and the issue of tariffs. After the 1911 Revolution, a new sort of politics emerged. Gu Weijun became a major public figure after his adroit performances at international conferences. The modern media, which reported on such events, gained a significance they had not had before. Behind the show of modern politics, the reality that money mattered could be hidden but not ignored. In the rise to power of the Nationalists, ideology, mass movements, the mobilization of public sentiment, and war all played their role. But it is also clear that the Nationalists’ pragmatic courting of the Customs Service and of the Shanghai bankers, however disguised, had also smoothed their path to power. That dependence profoundly affected the nature of the state they brought into being. Origins matter: what is done as a matter of temporary expedience can have longlasting effects.

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FIGURE 1 Robert Hart. Source: Courtesy of Special Collections, Queen’s University of Belfast.

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FIGURE 2 (opposite page, top) David Marr Henderson, returning from a shooting trip, Shanghai, estimated 1870–1890. Source: Henderson Collection. Courtesy of Felicity Somers Eve. FIGURE 3 (bottom) China Navigation Company’s vessel approaching Shanghai, 1906–1907. Source: Courtesy of John Swire and Co. FIGURE 4 (left) Lighthouse, at Turnabout (Niushan), Fujian Province. Source: Henderson Collection. Courtesy of Felicity Somers Eve.

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FIGURE 5 (top) Shanghai Bund, estimated 1890–1893. Source: Henderson Collection. Courtesy of Felicity Somers Ever. FIGURE 6 (bottom) Shanghai Custom House, estimated 1890–1893. Source: Henderson Collection. Courtesy of Felicity Somers Eve.

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FIGURE 7 (top) Commemorative photograph of Frances Aglen’s meeting with Chinese Staff Club, 1923. Source: Courtesy of the Second Historical Archives of China. FIGURE 8 (bottom) Tianjin commissioner’s residence, 1915. Source: Courtesy of the Second Historical Archives of China.

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FIGURE 9 (top) Shanghai Bund, early twentieth century. Source: Courtesy of the Second Historical Archives of China. FIGURE 10 (bottom) The port of Xiamen, early twentieth century. Source: Courtesy of the Second Historical Archives of China.

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FIGURE 11 (top) The Wuhu Bund, 1911–1912. Source: Swire Collection. Courtesy of John Swire and Co. FIGURE 12 (bottom) Docks along the Min River near Fujian, 1915. Source: Courtesy of the Second Historical Archives of China.

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FIGURE 13 Hankou Custom House, date unknown. Source: Courtesy of the Second Historical Archives of China.

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FIGURE 14 (top) Coast inspector’s residence at Shantou. Source: Courtesy of the Second Historical Archives of China. FIGURE 15 (bottom) The Wenzhou Custom House docks, date unknown. Source: Courtesy of the Second Historical Archives of China.

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FIGURE 16 (top) The Shantou commissioner’s official residence, 1925–1926. Source: Courtesy of the Second Historical Archives of China. FIGURE 17 (bottom) Frederick Maze, unknown date. Source: Courtesy of the Second Historical Archives of China.

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FIGURE 18 Customs revenue steamer, unknown date. Source: Courtesy of the Second Historical Archives of China.

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FIGURE 19 Portrait photograph of Lester K. Little, 1927. Source: Courtesy of the Little family.

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FIGURE 20 Ding Guitang, unknown date. Source: Courtesy of the Second Historical Archives of China.

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FIGURE 21 The Wuhu Bund area, 2006. Source: Photograph by author.

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Chapter Six

TARIFF NATION, SMUGGLERS’ NATION The Customs Service in the Nanjing Decade, 1929–1937 A smuggler is a person who though no doubt highly blameable for violating the laws of his country is frequently incapable of violating those of natural justice and who would have been in every respect an excellent citizen had not the laws of his country made that a crime which nature never meant to be so. — NORTH CHINA DAILY NEWS , JULY 24, 1933, QUOTING ADAM SMITH

We Irish absorb politics with our mother’s milk. —FREDERICK MAZE

In November 1933, Frederick Maze1 organized a farewell party for Minister of Finance Song Ziwen, who had just resigned in protest against Chiang Kaishek’s demands for funds to conduct military campaigns and his conciliatory policy toward Japan.2 Maze presented Song with a silver cup bearing the inscription, “Presented to His Excellency Dr TV Soong by the Inspectorate Secretaries . . . in grateful recognition of his far-sighted and enlightened administration of the Maritime Customs Service.”3 As minister of finance, Song was the minister with responsibility for the Customs Service. In accepting the cup, Song spoke proudly about how he had transformed the Customs Service from an imperium in imperio into a “national nonpartisan institution.”4 Shanghai greats who added luster to the ceremony included Li Ming (李铭), the Chairman of the Bankers Association; Yu Qiaqing (虞洽卿), better known as Yu Ya-ching, who had a seat on the Shanghai

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Municipal Council and was the director of the San Peh Steam Navigation Company and other enterprises; and Wang Xiaolai (王晓籁), the chairman of the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce. In their speeches, they paid effusive tribute to Song’s stewardship of China’s financial affairs and also to the Customs Service. The North China Daily News entered into the spirit of the occasion. It reported on Song’s “revelations surrounding the Customs controversy,” that is, the way Maze had seized the IG-ship in 1929.5 At that time, the North China had ridiculed him as someone whose ambition had gotten the better of him and who had gone native: “throughout the long list of China’s foreign servants no parallel can be recalled for the humiliating oath which Mr Maze demeaned himself to take.”6 The British consul at Shanghai had reported, with obvious distaste, to Miles Lampson that Maze “swore to comply strictly with the terms of Dr Sun’s last will, to obey the Government’s laws and orders, to perform the duties of his office loyally and to the utmost of his abilities . . . [and] that should he break its terms he would be willing to submit to severe punishment by the KMT.”7 In London, the Times remarked at his inauguration that Maze was the first IG to take his oath of office in Chinese and that he had publicly bowed three times to a photograph of Sun Yatsen and the Nationalist flag, calling such behavior “extraordinary.”8 In its 1933 volte face, the North China argued that Song’s comments had shone a new light on Maze’s actions. It now declared that Aglen’s reign had brought “into prominence what, in view of the traditions explicitly laid down by Sir Robert Hart, must now be regarded as excrescent heresies.” It condemned Aglen for having made the Customs “an adjunct of Legation Street” and praised Maze for having steered the Service along “lines appropriate to the changed conditions and in conformity with Sir Robert Hart’s basic policy,” a line of thinking about the Customs Service’s past Maze had worked hard to promote. Maze’s sendoff for Song Ziwen was a ceremonial occasion in which the imperatives of courtesy were not denied. However, the mutual admiration the two displayed at the occasion also had a basis in reality. The march by the Nationalist armies into Beijing in 1928 did not lead to the triumphant establishment of a new popular government. The authority of the Nationalists was limited to the Lower Yangzi region, and even there it was not solid. During the 1930 Battle of the Central Plains, the major opponents of the Nanjing Nationalists, including warlords from northern and southern

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China as well as KMT figures opposed to Chiang Kaishek, nearly succeeded in defeating Chiang’s armies. In 1931, Yangzi floods killed millions and inundated vast swathes of land, with the Nationalists unable to mount an effective response. That fall, Japan occupied the northeast, and in February 1932 it established a new state there, Manchukuo, entailing not just the loss of a great deal of territory but also about one-fifth of Customs revenue. The Nationalists survived all this, but only barely, and to a substantial degree because of Song’s and Maze’s collaboration, one that had brought considerable benefit to each but also had serious consequences for both. For the Nationalists, the attraction was the use of the revenue the Customs Service collected and control over the one bureaucracy that operated effectively throughout the country. Song had raided the coffers of Shanghai’s capitalists during the Nationalists’ conquest of power,9 but he had also begun an ambitious financial reform program aimed at a balanced budget, a unified currency, the elimination of myriad local taxes, a clear separation of provincial and central taxes, the development of new revenue sources, and a national economy protected by high tariffs.10 His strategy was to rely at first on a few key resources—largely Customs dues—to finance the cleanup of the Northern Expedition and so buy time for reform. Graph 6.1 suggests that the policy was making headway and that without Customs revenue the Nationalists would have been doomed. The consolidated tax

GRAPH 6.1. Government income, 1929–1937.

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mentioned in graph 6.1 was collected on a number of commodities such as kerosene and tobacco products and was paid by producers at the place of production. Once paid, no further taxes, including the lijin, were supposed to be levied.11 Maze had taken a gamble when he aligned the Customs Service with the Nationalists. While it was clear that Gu Weijun’s Peking government would not last, the victory of the Nationalists had not been certain in 1928 and for several years afterward its future remained unpredictable. Maze, though, believed that under Aglen and Edwardes an ignoble end to the Customs Service threatened, and so he had agreed to the Nationalists’ demands for an end to foreign hiring, which had in fact stopped in 1926 when the Northern Expedition began, and control over Customs revenue.12 The tradeoff was that the Customs Service was not abolished and that the Service would experience an extended Indian summer in the 1930s. If both sides benefitted from the arrangement, each was also affected by it in profound ways. In an article meant to debunk uncritical assessments of the post–World War II regimes that had emerged out of decolonization, Charles Tilly pointed out that such regimes seized bureaucracies built by foreigners to further their own self-interest and entrench their hold on power. They often became “coercive and self-seeking entrepreneurs.”13 Maze’s farewell to Song, attended by the Shanghai wealthy, suggests that Tilly’s argument can be applied to the Nationalists. Men like Song, his successor Kong Xiangxi, who was also his brother-in-law, their family members, and coastal elites such as Yu Jiaqing and Wang Xiaolai profited from the new status and power they had, thanks in part to having seized the Customs Service. While the Nationalists needed the funds it delivered, their association with the interests of foreigners and China’s coastal elites also damaged their reputation, not just at the time but also in subsequent historiography: they were judged to have abandoned revolution.14 There was a further consequence. Dependent on Customs revenue, the Nationalists raised tariffs to maximize income at a time when, it should be noted, a severe worldwide bout of protectionism in the aftermath of the 1929 stock market crash led other countries to raise their tariffs as well. The consequence of the Nationalist’s high tariff regime for China was a smuggling epidemic of enormous proportions. This strengthened regionalism, fueled violence, and created openings for the Japanese to extend their in-

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fluence in northern China. Rather than a cohesive, modern, and efficient nation, China became a land of smugglers. For the Service, association with the Nationalists brought genuine advantages. It continued to collect Customs dues, retained its financial functions, and remained in charge of the provision of navigational facilities. In addition, the Nationalists put the Service in charge of the prevention of waterborne smuggling, the policing of the China coast, and the regulation of junk traffic. The Service was able to overcome the dismay provoked among treaty port foreigners by the decision to throw in its lot with the nationalists, as the North China’s reporting indicates. However, what could not be changed was that the authority of the Nationalists was limited and that their bureaucracies rarely worked well. That caused difficulties in areas where the presence of the Nationalists was largely nominal. In addition, regardless of its immediate utility to the Nationalists, the Service was living on borrowed time. The end to foreign hiring meant that in the not too distant future, no foreigner would remain on its establishment. We begin with a close analysis of Frederick Maze. His attitude toward the Nationalists was one of upholding their claims to be the legitimate government of all of China, but at the same time he was willing to make pragmatic deals with their opponents. This required intellectual and rhetorical flexibility. Force majeure was a legal construction exploited by Maze on the one hand to pay lip service to the claim of the Nationalists to be China’s legitimate government and on the other hand to forge practical accommodations with regional authorities. Maze was also deeply concerned with the historical reputation of the Service. Knowing that the end of the foreign Inspectorate system was nigh, he promoted a number of historical projects to secure a positive reputation for the Service in China’s history. After examining Maze’s attitude and policies, we then turn to the rise of smuggling, a subject about which the Service’s archives provide rich material. Besides detailing how smuggling was organized and how regional governments supported and profited from it, I discuss and evaluate the preventive activities of the Service. I also analyze the role of the Customs Service in a series of wars and conflicts between the Nationalists and local governments as well as the Japanese. Control over Custom Houses was often a major issue in these because of their financial, political, and diplomatic significance. Its ability to act semi-independently—and the unwillingness of anyone to kill the goose that laid golden eggs—enabled the

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Service to foster settlements and prevent ruptures in many cases, especially in southern China.

FREDERICK MAZE

Assessments of Maze have been diverse. Writing about Maze’s stewardship of the Customs Service during the War of Resistance, Nicholas Clifford argued that Maze made the best of a difficult situation.15 For Robert Bickers, Maze was the epitome of British perfidy, with Maze only interested in preserving the Service and his own reputation.16 Certainly, clarity of purpose, transparency, and frankness of expression were not among Maze’s virtues, and he would not have regarded them as such. Below, I examine the geopolitical context in which Maze had to operate, his deeper motives as suggested in a revealing exchange of letters, and his patronage of Customs historical projects to enhance our understanding of Maze’s motives, policies, and modus operandi.

The Geopolitical Context

Let me begin with examining the geopolitical and domestic situation as it impinged on the Customs Service in the 1930s. One of the realities that Maze faced was that Britain had stopped caring very much about China. In 1926, Britain had decided to accommodate Chinese nationalism not because of any great respect for the Nationalists but because British weakness made it prudent to seek a retreat from the “mock Raj” in China.17 If Maze therefore could not count on significant British support, he also had to deal with the hostility toward the Nationalists among British China hands, many of whom yearned for the days of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, which formally had expired at the time of the Washington treaties. J. O. P. Bland was one such person. Bland had been a Customs official and had served as private secretary to Robert Hart in 1894 through 1896. He then worked for the Shanghai Municipal Council and wrote for the Times of London as “Our Correspondent.” After he returned to Britain, he became a China pundit, writing books about Qing history and keeping up a steady stream of letters to the Times from the Thatched Hut Club in

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London, of which J. D. Campbell also had been a member. To Bland, the Nationalists were “a Cantonese party” and “one of the chief causes of unrest and civil war in China since 1911.”18 Bland was a Japan supporter: “continued friendship with Japan is as vital today as it was when the statesmen of 30 years ago signed the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.”19 Unlike Robert Hart, Maze could not use the London Office to mobilize support for the Customs Service. The British Foreign Office shunned the nonresident secretary, and the Nationalists naturally preferred to use their own diplomats stationed in London. Stanley Wright believed that the London Office should be abolished because it is “treated less than dust between the chariot wheels.”20 All the nonresident secretary did was arrange passage for Customs personnel going back to China from leave21 and attend the funerals of deceased senior Customs staff.22 In the mid-1930s, British attitudes toward the Nationalists became more favorable. During his trip to Britain in 1934, Maze met with Foreign Office officials, including John Simon, the foreign secretary, and also with Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald.23 The Times published a positive article about “progress in China” after Maze had spoken about rural reconstruction, road building, irrigation projects, and social and public works.24 A large 1935–1936 exhibition of Chinese art organized by the Royal Academy of Art at Burlington House in London attracted more than four hundred thousand visitors. Guo Taiqi, the Chinese ambassador, became “popular” in London.25 Hsiung Shi-i’s play, Lady Precious Stream, was a sensation in London’s theater district.26 In 1935, the British moved their diplomatic mission from Beiping, as Beijing became known after the Nationalists made Nanjing their capital, to Nanjing and elevated its status from that of a legation to an embassy. Nonetheless, a sense of impotency paralyzed the British diplomats. They believed the best they could do was “quietly cultivate Chinese goodwill while doing nothing to antagonize Japan.”27 Maze had no illusion about Japan, unlike Bland. In 1935, he concluded that Japan “evidently means to master the Far East.”28 He had done so after the Japanese had rejected a proposal by him to restore full control over pilotage matters to the Nationalists. Britain had agreed to this, but the Japanese ambassador Ariyoshi rejected it, leading Maze to comment: “the strong stance of the Japanese Government is merely another example of their general domineering attitude toward China at this point.”29 Maze believed that only if “England and America are prepared to combine and

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face the issue” could “Japan’s unwarranted activities . . . be checked.”30 That was unlikely. The United States remained staunchly isolationist, and Britain would not do anything unless the United States joined in. Maze dealt with Japan’s assertiveness by increasing its stake in the Customs Service. After his appointment as IG, Maze held a series of conversations with Yoshizawa, the Japanese consul general in Shanghai. Maze, who was fifty-eight and would have retired two years later if normal procedure had been followed, told Yoshizawa that he planned to recommend a British citizen as his successor.31 After consultations with the Japanese government, Yoshizawa informed Maze that the Japanese government would not object as long as Kishimoto Hirokichi, the highest-ranking Japanese in the Service, remained chief secretary, the post to which Edwardes had appointed him. Maze put the agreement in writing and informed the British consul general in Shanghai of these conversations, probably to show British diplomats that he had British interests at heart. Maze did require Kishimoto to leave the Inspectorate for a year to gain experience as a commissioner of a major port, in this case Dairen, but, as he had promised, he brought him back in 1931 as chief secretary. In 1934, when Maze was away, officiating IG Lawford sent Kishimoto away from the Inspectorate, appointing him commissioner of Tianjin. When Maze returned, he reversed the decision and sent Lawford to Qingdao, a pleasant city, but not Shanghai, and located in the middle of Japan’s area of influence in China.32 In the mid-1930s, an agreement was reached between Britain and Japan during secret discussions in China, in which Maze had been involved and which provided for Kishimoto’s eventual succession to Maze. In preparation, Kishimoto had been appointed deputy IG.33 In early 1937, a new British ambassador, Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, who clearly had little knowledge of Asian affairs, pressed Maze to approach Kong Xiangxi, the minister of finance, to discuss his retirement and so make the transition come about. Maze replied that “the British and Japanese understanding in respect of the promotion of Kishimoto and the appointment of a Chief Secretary of British nationality cannot be liquidated at present.”34 The Nationalists were unlikely to agree to Kishimoto as IG. If, on the other hand, the Nationalists appointed a Chinese as IG, the Japanese would “endeavour to destroy the existing Inspectorate system.” Maze wrote Knatchbull-Hugessen that his policy had been “for Tokyo to protect rather than disrupt the Customs by the appointment of additional Japanese Assistants.” Knatchbull-Hugessen

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saw the sense in what Maze was arguing.35 The Anglo-Japanese alliance had a long afterlife in China, at least with respect to the Customs Service. Maze naturally also had to take account of the Nationalists. Ding Guitang was their front man in the Customs Service. Maze had come to know Ding well after March 1927, when Maze was Shanghai commissioner and Ding was transferred to Shanghai as third assistant A. Ding was from Liaoning Province. He studied at the Fengtian High School before enrolling in the Customs College in Beijing in 1912, and hence he became one beneficiary of Hart’s attempts to accommodate Young China.36 After graduation, he first served in Manchuria and from 1919 he was for seven years in Beijing at the Inspectorate, giving him plenty of opportunity to establish useful connections among Chinese officials, senior Customs staff, and students at the Customs College. Ding established a Customs Club for miscellaneous staff in Shanghai, thus extending his support base further.37 After Ding helped Maze in his fight to capture the IG-ship,38 he was promoted quickly, being appointed Chinese secretary and elevated to deputy commissioner in 1929, which was followed by promotion to commissioner a year later. Maze would rely heavily on Ding as a fixer during the earlier years of the Nationalists. He grew suspicious of him, however, when Lawford ordered Kishimoto to Tianjin, as he believed that Ding had put Lawford up to this, in the hope of being appointed deputy IG himself.39 Ding was sent to Europe and the United States on an investigative tour, and the London Office was instructed to keep tabs on him.40 Maze was then in a delicate position. Britain was not willing to go to bat for the Customs Service, and the Japanese were maneuvering to assume Britain’s position in China, including by taking control over the Service. The Nationalists naturally tried to prevent that. Maze’s continued occupancy of the post of IG was the consequence of the impasse that resulted; his retirement would open up the question of who would succeed him, a question no one wanted to risk confronting full on at this time. That is why Maze would stay on until 1943.

Prenostalgia and the Invention of a Customs Tradition

Frederick Maze once quoted Robert Hart as having answered the question “how long the Inspectorate would last” with “I never give it more than ten

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years.”41 Maze added, “if this was his view in more peaceful and settled times, can we give it more than—or as much as—ten years now?” Maze would serve much longer than he probably had anticipated when he became IG, but as soon as he took over, he initiated projects to “place the deeds of the Administration, including the Marine Department, on the map for future historians.”42 Maze believed that “if we fail to do so now our successors (whoever they may be) may (and probably will) neglect to do so in the future.” In anticipation of the day that the Customs Service would become fully Chinese, Maze used his position to write its history in the way he thought appropriate. The funeral of the Service was to be conducted with appropriate decorum, and the body was to be treated with dignity. Maze fastened on Robert Hart to fashion a positive legend about the Service. In August 1929, Maze circulated to the entire Customs staff photographs of a 1914 statue of Robert Hart which was being re-sited on a high plinth on the Shanghai Bund in front of the Shanghai Custom House. Its four panels declared that Hart was a “Trusted Counsellor of the Chinese Government” and a “True Friend of the Chinese People” who had “accomplished a work of great beneficence for China and the world.” The photograph and the accompanying IG circular were circulated widely among people with connections to the Customs Service in China, Europe, and the United States.43 The statue was taken down by the Japanese after they seized the International Settlement. It has not yet been put back and is unlikely to be any time soon. To advance the canonization of Hart, Maze supported a proposal by Stanley Wright to create a Robert Hart Memorial Library. Its core would be the Reference Library of the Statistical Department, with its series of correspondences, reports, charts, maps, surveys, and monographs “collected from the beginning of Customs history.”44 The library would collect material on the Chinese economy, agriculture, industry, and development of China.45 The Nationalists supported the proposal but insisted that it be called “The Customs Reference Library of the Republic of China.”46 They were not going to pass up this opportunity to incorporate the Customs into their world and elide its foreign background. The Customs Reference Library was opened to the public on October 10, 1931, on Sinza Road in Shanghai, on the symbolically important twentieth anniversary of the 1911 Revolution. A joint committee of the Customs Affairs Office and the Inspectorate was established to run it, with Wright and Ding Guitang repre-

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senting the Inspectorate. To ensure that the full record was available, in 1933 Maze ordered commissioners to go through their archives and send to the library copies of documents destroyed in the Inspectorate archives during the Boxer Uprising.47 Stanley Wright became the Customs historian. Wright had served as statistical secretary and personal secretary. He had written The Collection and Disposal of the Maritime and Native Customs Revenue Since the Revolution of 1911, published in 1927 and again in 1935.48 Its narrative agenda was to suggest that the Customs Service had always worked for China’s interests, preventing bankruptcy and collapse and keeping China together. Maze put Wright to work on a mammoth seven-volume documentary history of the Customs Service, which became Documents Illustrative of the Origins and Development of the Chinese Customs Service. It consisted of IG circulars, dispatches, memoranda, and reports and was to provide “a clearer comprehension of what the Service is and what it stands for, and what it has been able to accomplish.”49 In 1936, Wright had written a pamphlet for internal distribution, The Origin of the Chinese Customs Service, which argued that Robert Hart had not been “permitted to confine itself to the ordinary Customs routine” but had become “a trusted counsellor and guide” to the Qing in the handling of diplomatic affairs; he had “carried out for the Government all needed surveys of the coast, harbours, and rivers, publishing numerous charts still in use” and had helped the government “take in hand the erection of light houses and aids to navigation.”50 Documents Illustrative provided the evidence for this benign view of the history of the Customs Service “to illustrate as far as possible the variety and importance of our activities during the past eight decades.”51 It was published in 1938, after Japan had occupied northern China. If that was late, Wright’s magnum opus, Hart and the Chinese Customs Service, to which he had dedicated much time and energy, appeared only in 1952, after the Communists had occupied China and long after the historiographical initiative had passed from British hands into Chinese ones for the Chinese-speaking world and into American ones for the rest. There were other Customs historians. T. Roger Bannister published his Coastwise Lights of China in 1932. The book celebrated the benefits to trade that the Service’s lighthouses provided. Maze prohibited lightships from engaging in preventive activities so as to ensure that nothing would happen to tarnish the high regard in which the work of maintaining China’s

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lighthouses was held. In 1933, Maze instructed Bannister to use the trade reports “to write up China’s trade since the end of the East India Company,”52 its history before then having been covered in H. B. Morse’s history of the East India Company’s trade with China. This would become History of the External Trade of China. Its message was that the Customs Service had made possible the growth of China’s foreign trade to the benefit of China and the world. Maze also supported the work of G. R. G. Worcester, who had served in the Marine Department as river and coast inspector, participating in antismuggling operations along the southern coast and Yangzi River and surveying and marking navigable channels to ensure the “safe navigation of various types of ship, from aircraft carrier to sampan.”53 Worcester had become interested in China’s junks, and “as it was discovered that I could write a bit and draw a bit,” Maze “took me off all Customs work and put me on to Chinese Nautical Research.”54 Worcester traveled for eight years around China, including during the War of Resistance, studying Chinese vessels of all type. A first volume was published in 1941, after which Worcester began writing “a very much larger book.” Like Joseph Needham, whom he may well have met in Chongqing, his aim was to restore pride and history to China. “The important topic of Chinese naval architecture has been utterly neglected,” he wrote, as the Chinese were “the originators of the balanced lug sail, the balanced rudder, the water-tight compartment, the lee board, and many other devices.”55 Maze had told Worcester that “I was to understand that no credit was to go to me” and that the Customs Service “would get any praise.”56 Junks were a Maze obsession. He ordered large copies of junks to be made, donating twelve to the Science Museum in London, where they are still part of the permanent exhibition, and one to U.S. president Roosevelt.57 The ceiling mosaic of the Customs House Building on the Shanghai Bund features junks. The suggestion being made was that the Customs Service was a respectful protector of an important Chinese tradition that was being overtaken by modernity and forgotten by China. John Fairbank, the doyen of U.S. China studies, nearly joined the ranks of Maze’s historians. While he was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, Fairbank met Morse. Morse lent Fairbank his own semiofficial letters written as Customs commissioner.58 Fairbank, so his letters to Nonresident Secretary Lawford suggested, had indicated an “intention of eulogising the work of

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Messrs Merrill and Morse in a historical book on China.”59 Fairbank went to China in early 1932 with a letter of introduction from Morse, where Maze received him “cordially” and “gave him permission to consult the early Circulars.”60 That permission, though, was withdrawn when Morse’s wife alleged that “her husband would not have died when he did had it not been for the base ingratitude and dishonesty of an American Rhodes scholar whom Mr Morse had befriended and who had betrayed his confidence.”61 Fairbank had taken the letters with him to China, using them at “some Peking college,”62 and he had refused to return them, even when he was admonished to do so by a solicitor.63 Outraged, the Customs Service closed ranks, and Fairbank was not allowed sight of IG circulars, although it also declined to go to bat for Morse’s wife on the grounds, as Wright argued, that before 1910 semiofficial letters “were not recognized as official property.”64 Nonresident Secretary Lawford commented that Fairbank’s “history will be as remarkable for what it omits as for what it contains.”65 Fairbank would not try. He would write a great deal about Robert Hart, editing the early parts of Hart’s diary and Hart’s letters to James Campbell in painstakingly and lovingly researched editions.66 His major work, Diplomacy on the China Coast, is a monument to scholarship and to narrative verve, but it covers the period between the Opium War and the founding of the Customs Service rather than the history of the Customs Service itself. For Fairbank, the exclusion from the Customs Archive would prove beneficial; in Beijing, he became acquainted with the scholar-diplomat Tsiang Ting-fu (蔣廷黻), who had been collecting and editing Qing documents on Qing foreign relations, which provided the source material for Fairbank’s magnum opus. Even if Maze and Wright were appalled by Fairbank’s documentary presumptiveness, his intention to make Americans, Harvard graduates specifically, the center of the Service’s history probably irritated them just as much, and possibly more.67 It was one thing for the United States to be emerging as a world power; it was another for it to dominate the Service’s history as well. There is no evidence that the letters of Morse and Merrill, now preserved in Harvard University’s Houghton Library, were not genuinely gifted to Fairbank, even though one wonders at his determination to hang on to them despite the adamant wishes of a bereft widow. Given that many notes in Wright’s handwriting and initialed by him are all over the

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correspondences about this affair, it is possible that Wright was behind the effort to deny Fairbank access to Customs materials. This is further suggested by comments in Fairbank’s memoirs, in which Fairbank wrote that Wright was “cannily concerned lest I compete with his work in Customs history. When he heard I was going to Peking to begin Chinese, he relaxed visibly.”68 Wright suggested that the Service take out an injunction against Fairbank to prevent him from using the materials already in his possession.69 He would deny access to the Service’s archives to others as well.70 Wright also had a hand in the removal of the Hart-Campbell correspondence from the London Archives, which later led to an enormous row between Maze and his successor.71 Wright was not the first historian, nor the last, to be possessive about the Service’s archive. Maze was right to foresee a future in which historians would not be kind to the Service. The Chinese communists would mobilize some of China’s best scholars, including Feng Youlan, Chen Hansheng, and Qian Jiaju, to deploy the Customs archive to publish a series of documentary collections illustrating the damage that imperialism had done to China, with the Service in a lead role.72 Tragically, during the Cultural Revolution, Feng, Chen, and Qian fell under suspicion of having secretly wanted to promote bourgeois capitalism. The paranoid argument was that they had intended their volumes to be read against the grain, not as evidence for the damage done to China by this tool of imperialism but for how China had profited by it.73

A James Bond Complex

What, then, do we make of Maze? He married late, in 1917, when he was well into his forties, not to an English or British woman but to Laura Gwendoline of Australia. When Maze finally did retire in 1943 at the age of seventy-two, he did not return to Britain. He first went to Cape Town in South Africa and then moved to Victoria in British Columbia, founding in 1955 the Victoria Branch of the Union of English Speaking People, an organization dedicated to promoting contact among English-speaking public figures, in the belief that Anglo-Saxon values and principles were the foundation for a benevolent world order. Among many British members, probably including Maze, to prevent the dominance of the United States in

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international relations was a less explicit but nonetheless important goal. Maze’s marriage and his postretirement moves are suggestive of Maze’s attitudes toward Britain and British imperialism. He was an Irishman, like Hart, born into a family in social decline and for whom employment in the Service was an important avenue toward social prestige and wealth, one that would come to an end once the Service was fully nationalized. Maze accepted that this day would come, and he was generally supportive of Chinese nationalism, as Hart had been too. If retreat was inevitable, however, Maze wanted it to be a retreat with honor. It is frequently difficult to know what Maze really thought, so enamored was he of playing politics. It is clear, though, that he was genuinely angry with Aglen because he believed that Aglen’s policies had nearly caused the ignominious destruction of the Service. Aglen’s “supreme folly” was that like Horatio Lay he had tried to be “Master and Servant” at the same time and so nearly caused “shipwreck.”74 In a self-justificatory letter to a British China-coast journalist, Maze wrote that Robert Hart had adopted an accommodating attitude toward Chinese authority even “before the ‘Young China Party’ emerged into prominence.” Aglen’s failure to do so during the far more nationalistic 1920s was “stupid” and “dangerous.”75 Class may well have played a role in Maze’s hatred of Aglen. Aglen had all the advantages of birth, upbringing, and wealth that Maze lacked. Aglen could do no good in Maze’s eyes. He recounted to W. F. Tyler, a retired coast inspector, that Aglen once visited Jiujiang and was seated next to the commissioner’s wife at a banquet.76 Aglen’s “idea of entertaining” her was, Maze wrote, “not to whisper sweet nothings into her shell-like ear, but to enquire what were the principal Exports of the District.” He added “perhaps if you . . . had been in his place on that occasion you might have in the end lightly—very lightly—touched upon articles of Entry.” Aglen was, in Maze’s eyes, a stuffy, humorless, English fool. Maze’s letter to Tyler in which he recounted this anecdote was part of a revealing exchange between the two. Tyler was an ex–Royal Navy captain who in a colorful career had served in the Chinese navy during the Battle of the Yalu and the Siege of Weihaiwei in the first Sino-Japanese War. He had been an adviser to Yuan Shikai, and during the 1913 Second Revolution had, so he claimed, prevented the Chinese navy from abandoning Yuan.77 He had also surveyed the Yellow River from Ji’nan to the sea. His memoirs, Pulling Strings in China, remain a good read. Tyler was sympathetic to

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Maze, believing that when he had seized the IG-ship, this had been for the best: “you did not only what you wished, but what the situation and general interests needed.”78 But unlike Maze, he did not despise Aglen. Aglen had been, in Tyler’s view, “highly principled, doing what he thought was right with little regard to praise or blame.” Tyler advised Maze that “as the Hunghutzu [红胡子, hunghuzi, brigand] who becomes a Tuchun [督军, dujun, military governor] sheds the cruder characteristics that raised him to his place, so should you drop yours.”79 He went on to argue that Maze had made his own fortune, unlike his predecessors, including Robert Hart. He had been driven on by naked ambition, “deliberately watching with ears cocked, nostrils expanded: snuffing the air and waiting for the possibility of a certain opportunity.” When the moment came, he had acted with “a greater daring, a greater ruthlessness.” In his reply, more boisterous than angry, Maze justified his coup by arguing “in the lives of great men frailties and meannesses are found as great, or often greater, than vices and follies of the meanest men. But in the presence of the great occasion the great soul and genius flash out and conquer transcendent.”80 In his letter to Tyler, Maze wrote about Hart as “a philosopher and a poet; imaginative and sentimental; modest, patient, sagacious, and resolute; he overcame formidable obstacles and accomplished a work of great beneficence for China and the world.”81 Maze had underlined “resolute.” This, I believe, is an important hint for how Maze saw himself. He believed that he had acted with resoluteness when he yanked the IG-ship from Edwardes and hitched the future of the Customs Service to that of the Nationalists. He had seen the danger, assessed the situation, and intervened with a daring act, going against convention and veiling his intentions. Maze probably would have agreed with Tyler’s assessment of the Nationalists. In his 1929 memoirs, Tyler stated that the Customs had to deal with the Nationalists because, even if “a ganglion of interests centred at Nanking . . . it is the only nucleus of some measure of concerted action.”82 He had added that “we do not know as yet what China, as an entity, really means nor what it really wants.”83 Tyler, and probably Maze as well, were prepared to align themselves with the Chinese nationalists but viewed them at the same time with jaded eyes. If the power of the Service had declined and the claims of Chinese nationalism were ultimately undeniable, they continued to have confidence in their own superiority.

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Maze was convinced of his own skills, especially in playing politics. He liked to think of himself as decisive, and he was perfectly willing to go outside accepted boundaries. He believed he lived in a dangerous time, one in which the values and traditions of the Customs Service were endangered. He feigned acceptance of the Nationalist’s right to rule but also believed that they needed to be saved from themselves. He enjoyed circumventing legal and bureaucratic niceties, liked to be fashionable, was from the Celtic fringe, avoided being in England, and did not much go for the English, including English women. In this way, he shared characteristics with James Bond, a figure of the late British empire, and his perhaps was a not entirely uncommon response of those who had profited from the British empire but now faced an uncertain future as nationalisms strengthened all around the world—and because their regional and class backgrounds made it unlikely they would have the same position of power and prestige back in Great Britain as they now enjoyed.

AN EPIDEMIC IN SMUGGLING

We now turn from the historiographical and biographical to the economic, social, and the political. For most Chinese, the internal affairs of the Customs Service and its relation with the Nationalists were rather less relevant than the fact that it enforced the high tariffs imposed by the Nationalists. That hit them in their pockets. The first Nationalist import tariff, announced in December 1928 and implemented beginning February 1, 1929, stipulated Customs duties ranging from 7.5 to 27.5 percent, roughly in line with what had been in effect agreed to at the Special Tariff Conference of 1925. The 1931 import tariff had sixteen gradations, with duties in the highest category set at 50 percent. That year, the Nationalists increased export tariffs for the first time to an average of about 7.5 percent. In 1933, import tariffs were raised once more, with the maximum rate being 80 percent.84 Smuggling became even more of an attractive option when in February 1930 import duties were placed on a gold basis to counteract a more than 30 percent depreciation of the gold value of silver from 1929 to 1930.85 The effect of the new tariff regime is usually approached from an economic perspective, with the main question being whether it was economically

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productive. Whether this was true is a difficult question, one involving a judgment about the hypothetical issue of what would have happened had China stuck with low tariffs. It is clear, as Felix Boecking has argued, that the Nationalists raised tariffs largely because of fiscal reasons rather than out of a concern for China’s economy, even if the Nationalists naturally justified tariff increases as arising from its determination to protect the Chinese economy.86 Having loudly proclaimed that Chinese nationalism was in part about reclaiming tariff autonomy, it also would have seemed odd had they stuck with a low tariff regime. It should be noted, too, that World War I had destroyed the late nineteenth-century international trading order, which had been based on free trade and the gold standard. Even before the war, British dominions had introduced high tariffs, usually to raise revenue, and rapidly industrializing countries like Germany had used tariffs to shelter their industries. After World War I, attempts to return to the nineteenth-century free-trade regime were ineffective. Just before the 1929 stock market crash, the U.S. Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, with an average ad valorem tariff of about 49 percent. If perhaps unjustly held responsible for the 1930s slump in the United States,87 other countries retaliated. China was not doing anything out of the ordinary. Here I will not enter into the debate over whether high tariffs were economically beneficial to China, which requires complex econometric analysis. Nor do I discuss opium smuggling, which has been well covered elsewhere.88 The Customs had little to do with the opium trade because the Nationalists had legalized the trade under the guise of opium suppression, because it was too dangerous—and because it was futile, as Customs seizures of opium ended up back with the Nationalists’ Opium Suppression Bureau, which, despite its name, in fact traded in opium.89 The Service focused its preventive activities on such mass commodities as sugar, kerosene, cotton, artificial silk, cigarettes, and salt. If culturally far less problematic than opium smuggling, these commodities served basic human needs and thus the smuggling in them had perhaps an even greater effect on everyday lives. High tariffs on essentials such as these could not but lead to evasion. We know something about this smuggling because the Inspectorate collected data on all fines imposed by its Custom Houses as well as the proceeds of the auctions they conducted of confiscated goods. From these data I have produced graph 6.2, which traces Customs fines and seizures by region from 1932 to 1936. The

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GRAPH 6.2. Smuggling in 1930s China.

graph makes clear that Customs fines and seizures increased rapidly up to 1934 as the Customs Service put in place preventive measures but that they then leveled off, with Customs effectiveness declining especially in northern China as it fell under the sway of the Japanese. Below, I provide a regional survey of smuggling to illustrate what was in fact a fairly obvious picture, namely, an upsurge in smuggling as the Nationalists tried to maximize their revenue by increasing tariffs. Smuggling was regionally based and provided one way by which local governments resisted the blandishments of the Nationalists. The survey will also make clear that Hong Kong and extraterritoriality helped foster the upsurge of smuggling, Hong Kong because it was a free port and hence commodities were cheap there and extraterritoriality because it made it impossible for the Service to take tough action. Under Hart, the principle had become established that the Customs could seize goods and impose fines, but it could not make arrests or confiscate ships. In 1934, the Nationalists promulgated a Preventive Law confirming this.90 This had not been a problem as long as low tariffs made smuggling, other than in contraband, rarely worth the effort. However, a high tariff regime changed this situation.

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Extraterritoriality meant that the Service was left to fight smugglers with one hand tied behind its back. Smuggling, then, was not, as argued at the time, a symbol of the lack of modernity and discipline of the Chinese people but had its roots in imperialism.

Southern China

Hong Kong was the center of smuggling in southern China. From Hong Kong, it was easy to ship goods to ports along the southern China coast. If there was little policing of such illicit activity by the Hong Kong authorities, those of the Guangdong authorities were actively engaged in smuggling. As soon as the 1929 tariff was implemented, smuggling surged. In 1929, Stanley Wright reported to Maze that in Jiangmen (江门, or Kongmoon in the Customs’ orthography), on the West River in the Pearl River delta, three times as many manufactured cotton goods were on the market than Jiangmen statistics showed.91 Trading associations had been established in Hong Kong and Shantou. Merchants were charged 6 percent of the value of the goods they ordered. According to Maze, in 1932 sugar could be bought in Hong Kong for $7.89 per picul; it cost $22.80 in Fuzhou.92 As in the case of opium, seizures had little real effect: “if a consignment is seized, it usually finds its way back to the [smuggling] organization.” At auctions, the smugglers bid “for between 84% and 100% of the value of the goods,” with others intimidated from lodging a counterbid. Smuggling was so well established that merchants ordered their wares “ex go-down Hong Kong” rather than “c.i.f. Swatow,” that is, including cost, insurance, and freight to Shantou, as in the past.93 A 1931 report by E. A. Pritchard, the statistical secretary, on smuggling at Shantou in the north of the province noted that the suggestion in Customs Returns of Trade annuals of an effective “tariff wall” was entirely “fallacious.” Shantou markets were well stocked with “artificial silk, woollens, cotton thread, sharks’ fins, bicho-de-mer [sea cucumber], foreign sugar, household stores, ginseng, etc.”94 The Guangdong government protected the smugglers. As Maze wrote in a 1933 letter to Song Ziwen: “there is no doubt that one smuggling organization is under the control or the protection of the Bureau of Public Safety and armed escorts in the shape of plain-clothes detectives accompany the goods.”95 He went on:

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Gunboats [of the Guangdong Government] and Salt Revenue Vessels, particularly the latter, are plying regularly between Canton, Whampoa, and Hong Kong. They load and or tow in full cargoes of high duty articles, and are now beginning to extend their activities to the smuggling on a large scale of motor cars, not to speak of their well-established activities in regard to the smuggling of sugar which amount to almost a monopoly.

The Guangdong Government bought foreign sugar from Taiwan and Java “to be delivered into gunboats” at Hong Kong, from which the sugar was transported to “a so-called sugar refinery without paying duty.” The factories repackaged the sugar as a local product. This happened not only with sugar. “The Canton Government have already created monopolies of cement, liquid fuel, and a semi-monopoly on kerosene fuel.”96 The Customs Service estimated that the loss of revenue on sugar alone in Guangdong was CGU 379,000 in September 193497 and CGU 576,000 in December.98 (CGU stands for Customs Gold Units, which were issued by the Central Bank and worth about 1.5 Hk.Tls.) Smuggling involved serious violence. Canton Events and Rumours, a biweekly internal Customs intelligence report on Guangdong, noted that “within a space of ten days, three passenger junks were blown up by mines laid in the reaches by outlaws consequent upon the refusal of shipping companies to pay the protection fees demanded by desperadoes.”99

Smuggling Between Taiwan and Fujian

Smuggling between Taiwan and Fujian took place on a vast scale. In September 1934, Maze appointed Wang Wenju, a graduate of the Customs College, to gather intelligence covertly. Wang’s cover was an appointment as honorary vice consul to the Nationalists’ Consulate General in Taibei, or Taihoku, as its official Japanese name was at the time. A comparison of Chinese and Taiwanese trade statistics suggested to Wang that “only 22% of goods” passed through legal channels.100 According to Wang, in 1935 nearly sixty million pounds of sugar were smuggled to southern China, and thirty million pounds the next year. During each of these two years, some 850,000 gallons of kerosene found its way to China.101 Other popular smuggling items were dried and salted fish, matches, cotton goods, silk, and tea.102

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Goods were not only smuggled to Fujian: “1.4 million piculs of sugar” went to Dalian, of which “300,000 [was] for the Kuantung Leased Territory, 400,000 for Manchukuo, and 700,000 for Shantung.”103 The Kuantung (Guandong, 关东) Leased Territory refers to an area in the south of Liaoning Province first leased by Russia in 1898 and in 1905 assigned to Japan after the Russo-Japanese War. Xiamen received by far the most goods smuggled from Taiwan. Smugglers terrorized the Xiamen Custom House. According to Wang, who toured the southern China coast before moving to Taiwan, hundreds of runners (水客), that is, smugglers carrying goods as personal luggage, “used powerful weapons and all kinds of illegal methods to force themselves onto the shore.”104 Deputy Commissioner Ye Yuanzhang (葉元章) refused to come out of his office unless armed guards protected him. He had been intimidated by a bomb attack. At one New Year’s party when staff were assembled in the Customs Club, an armed person came in and forced them at gunpoint to kowtow. The assistant in charge of the Preventive Office was attacked on the street; he escaped by fleeing into the Xiamen branch building of the Bank of China.105 In Taiwan, shippers had established the Exporters Association of Formosa in 1933. It had 250 members, maintained offices in southern Taiwan and Xiamen, and its meetings were attended by officials from the Japanese governor general’s office. The association ran runners on Japanese liners. It paid whatever fines the Customs Service might inflict.106 According to Wang, Taiwanese smugglers were well informed about the movements of Customs preventive craft.107 Smuggling junks sailing from Jilong, Danshui, Gaoxiong, and smaller ports such as Jiugang, Dongshi, Houlong, and Lugang were able to avoid them.108 They also used the tactic of sailing in convoy, offering a couple of ships up to the Preventive Fleet so that the rest could sail through. In Jilong, two Taiwanese, Gao Bannan (高板南) and Peng Wuqu ( 彭武取), closely connected with leading Taiwanese families, acted as customs brokers with whom Chinese junks all had to deal. They were, according to Wang Wenju, critical players in this smuggling network.109 The United States adopted the Silver Purchase Act in 1934 in an attempt to stem the collapse of the value of silver after the 1929 stock market crash. The Act required the U.S. Treasury to purchase silver at a level far higher than its market price. Silver smuggling became a lucrative business in

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China. Taiwanese smugglers established the Benriya (便利屋, Bianliwu), or Convenience Chamber, which organized “four hundred Formosan loafers” to act as runners.110 The Benriya cooperated closely with money exchangers in Xiamen. Wang reported that on one Japanese vessel, the SS Harada Maru, of the 268 passengers only seventeen were regular customers and that the value of silver it had carried to Japan amounted to more than Yen 500,000. He believed that Yen 210 million worth of silver had been taken to Japan that year.111

The Lower Yangzi Region

Shanghai was the fifth-largest port in the world and China’s major center of smuggling. High-value items such as jewelry, bird’s nests, and shark fins were smuggled into Shanghai to cater to the tastes of the rich. In 1932, $8 million worth of ginseng arrived from the United States.112 One problem particular to Shanghai resulted from the fact that a large number of foreigners, serving in diplomatic missions or with foreign forces, were entitled to import supplies duty free. Shanghai companies did so on their behalf, substituting Shanghai-made fakes for the real thing and then selling the latter on the market.113 Lax procedures made smuggling easy at Shanghai. A 1932 report by Shanghai deputy commissioner Percy Joly revealed that “supervision on wharves is non-existent.” Substitution of low tariff goods for high tariff ones was common. Even within the Custom House itself, there were serious problems. A case was discovered in which a tingchai responsible for carrying documents between the appraising department and the general office in the Custom House colluded with a clerk in a shipping firm, substituting or altering duty memorandums as they went between the two offices.114 In Shanghai, too, smugglers resorted to violence and intimidation. As Joly reported, “our uniformed officers are being intimidated when on escort and in the course of their ordinary duties.”115 Hangzhou Bay, to the south of Shanghai and with a coastline of many small and large islands, teemed with smugglers. An undercover Customs investigation by Wang Huamin is insightful about the economics of smuggling. A typical sea-going junk could carry 150 to 200 fifty-kilo bags of silk yarn. Shippers would pay from $600 to $800 for each trip, with the laodah,

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the skipper, receiving $160. The goods were landed close to a road, from which a bus took them to Ningbo in half an hour. Carriers received 40 to 60 cents per bag.116 At sea, “the chief loafer can issue small flags which will protect the junks from piracy.”117 In addition, when a boat is engaged to convey goods to be smuggled, the investors invariably appoint a pilot. The pilot represents their interests and is usually an experienced laodah from the awaiting district. If the amount demands special prudence then another man may be appointed to transmit the final orders to the pilot. A piece of wood or paper with certain characters is split. The pilot receives one half on departure. The pilot is only instructed to steer the boat to the waiting point. A man with the other half will appear to give the final instructions as regards landing.118

As in Guangdong, the Customs was unable to secure the cooperation of local officials, even here, in the heartland of the Nationalists. In June 1935, Shanghai commissioner Lawford reported to Maze that “all efforts have been made to make local authorities aware of seizure rewards, but they either are not cognizant of or do not carry out the instructions of the Executive Yuan.”119

Northern China

Figure 6.2 shows that Customs fines and seizures dwindled in northern China after 1933. As elsewhere, high tariffs were resented by merchants and by consumers. In addition, the Nationalists were seen as southerners, and many former officials and businessmen had lost out after the Nationalists moved the capital to Nanjing. Hence, animosity to the Nationalists in northern China was widespread. After the creation of Manchukuo, the Japanese extended their influence into Hebei and Chahar, the two provinces to the south and west of Manchukuo and in which Beiping and Tianjin were located. In 1933, following clashes along the Great Wall, a demilitarized zone was established, making it impossible for the Customs Service to do its job. In 1935, the He (Yingqin)-Umezu Agreement stipulated that the KMT withdraw from the area altogether. With Japanese support, Ru Yingeng formed the Jidong (East Hebei) Autonomous Anticommunist Council (冀东反共

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自治政府, Jidong Fangong Zizhi Zhengfu). In 1936, E. A. Pritchard, the preventive secretary, described the result as follows: this strangling of Customs authority in eastern Hebei and the assistance rendered to the Chi Tung [Jidong] Autonomous Government by the Japanese Authorities has resulted in the presentation of a picture probably unique in world history. At Nanlichuang [Nanlizhuang], some 2 miles from and in full view of Chinwangtao [Qinhuangdao], at places along the coast near to the railway . . . may be seen daily vessels of all kinds discharging vast quantities of sugar, artificial silk yarn, cotton and woollen piece goods, kerosene oil, sea products, dyes, cigarette paper.120

At Tianjin, “the amount and variety of illicit cargo has to be seen to be believed.” When Pritchard visited the railway goods yard, he found forty thousand sixty-kilo bags of sugar, in addition to large quantities of “kerosene oil, cigarette paper, canned goods, wire netting, dyes, and miscellaneous goods.” Warehouses in Tianjin were located mostly in the Japanese concession. Pritchard estimated that the loss to the revenue amounted to $25 to $30 million. The Customs Service established the Chief Investigation Bureau, which policed the main trunk railroad lines in China in an attempt to throw up a cordon around northern China, but this effort was not very successful.121 One more point needs to be made. The Customs staff profited from smuggling because they received seizure rewards of 40 percent of the value of the confiscated goods. In a report of October 1931, the Shantou commissioner remarked that “every tidewaiter has netted somewhere between Hk.Tls 100 and Hk.Tls. 1,100 during each of the last three quarters . . . this port is looked upon as one of the plums in the Service.”122 The same was true for those serving on the Preventive Fleet. Coast Inspector H. E. Hillman observed: “we have lately engaged an enormous number of foreigners the majority of whom have promptly got married on the strength of their seizure rewards.”123 The prohibition on hiring foreigners applied to unrestricted contracts; the Customs Service remained able to hire foreign experts for limited-term contracts. Despite the stigma attached to service in the outdoor branch, in 1931 applications to the outdoor branch were three times as large as for the indoor branch, with many applicants being university graduates or having a background in teaching or business.124

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PREVENTIVE MEASURES

The Customs Service embraced its new responsibility for the prevention of smuggling with great energy. Besides building a Preventive Fleet, the Service established a Tariff Secretariat to upgrade internal procedures, took over the Native Customs stations along the coast on Nationalist orders, registered China’s sailing junks, brought Customs brokers under tighter regulation, and instituted land patrols in some areas. The Customs Service established a Preventive Secretariat under Preventive Secretary A. H. Forbes in February 1931. Three years later, the Customs Preventive Fleet had grown from five outmoded ships to a force with twenty-six Customs Preventive steamers, of which thirteen were Xing-class vessels larger than forty-two meters; another thirteen were Hai-class vessels of between thirty and forty-two meters. They were assisted by twelve Customs Preventive launches and fifty-two smaller craft, including vessels captured from smugglers.125 The construction of the fleet was financed by a Shanghai Tls. 4.3 million loan with the Banque de L’Indochine. The loan was treated as an operational expense and so counted as a first charge on Customs revenue.126 The Preventive Fleet was distributed over four main areas, each with a headquarters in a major port and equipped with modern communication facilities to allow the rapid exchange of information and facilitate coordinated action.127 Data contained in the Annual Reports on the Trade of China in the 1930s suggest that the Preventive Fleet was a huge success. In 1933, Customs Preventive Craft seized “27 power vessels, 485 junks, and 122 ‘snake boats,’ ” defined as “oar propelled shallow draught vessels used for smuggling,” with the proceeds of fines and seizures coming to $6.4 million.128 The following year, they confiscated “87 power craft, 752 junks, and 43 snake-boats,” with income from fines and seizures reaching nearly $8 million. Nearly 730,000 kilograms of silk yarn had been seized, as well as nearly two million pounds of sugar. If such numbers were impressive, in truth the Preventive Fleet was an instance of Customs momumentalism at sea, as the building of the Shanghai Custom House had been on land. A 1937 review of the Preventive Service by Percy Joly concluded that “the smartness, the ‘spit and polish’ of the earlier days was not always suitable.”129 A 1934 inspection of Customs Preventive Ship Haian confirms that making an impression was more important than

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effectiveness. The inspection report lauded “the ship’s company” for its “smartness and general ability. Rifle drill and fire quarters were smartly and efficiently performed.” A criticism was that the vessel lacked uniform bedding for her berths.130 The 1937 report noted that while “we were proud for others to watch our ships putting to sea,” smugglers were grateful for the information so provided on the movements of Customs preventive craft. Coast Inspector Hillman criticized the makeup of the fleet at its design stage. Hillman had done duty on small Royal Navy vessels patrolling British fishing grounds in the North Sea. He repeatedly warned that Xing-class vessels could do little against large steamers, as “a large steamer with, say, a speed of 12 knots could easily get away from a ship of 187 feet, even if she had a speed of 15 knots,” because the latter “would have to come down to, say, 10 knots in heavy seas.”131 Hillman argued that large ships were too expensive and could not operate in shallow waters. He advocated the use of small vessels with small crews, based at a shore station and doing duty in rotation, so that crews would have enough rest in a comfortable bed on shore to undertake taxing night patrols, when alertness was essential to avoid navigational hazards in shallow waters. Hillman would be proved right. Joly’s memorandum argued that what were called “puff-puff boats” had proved more economical and efficient. These were small vessels captured from smugglers. They did not give China “face.”132 “Hiding their lights under bushels” and “in poor repair,” they nonetheless proved more efficient than Preventive Fleet cruisers.133 Puffpuff boats were named after the noise of their engines, which were an early form of the diesel engine, usually with a combustion chamber separate from the piston. Between twenty and twenty-five meters long, they were made of wood, and they had a high bow, like fishing vessels.134 The use of puff-puff boats was an apt symbol of smugglers using outmoded and dirty technologies to run rings around the advanced, clean, and expensive equipment of the modern state, which had been adopted to impress as much as anything. In reality, the Preventive Service barely paid its way. In 1933, Pritchard, who succeeded Forbes as preventive secretary, estimated that the Preventive Fleet cost about $6 million in 1934, an amount nearly equal to that earned from fines and seizures.135 Moreover, Japanese expansionism made it impossible for the Preventive Fleet to operate. Exploiting a 1935 agreement between China and Japan to demilitarize northern China, the Japanese

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insisted that Preventive Fleet vessels operating there could not carry any arms. In addition, the Japanese Third Fleet did not tolerate the presence of the Preventive Fleet far off the China coast. In 1936, the Service decided that the Preventive Fleet craft could go no further offshore than three miles, rather than twelve miles, as China’s territorial waters had been defined.136 Essentially, the Japanese locked the Preventive Fleet up in port. Putting its own house in order was a less visible—and more embarrassing—but nonetheless important way for the Customs Service to gain a grip on smuggling. Investigations by the Tariff Secretariat showed how lax procedures were nearly everywhere. Tariff Secretary C. Bos, appointed in 1929 when the secretariat was established, conducted an inspection visit of ports in Manchuria and in northern China. He found at Dalian that “verification and classification is not carried out according to proper procedure,” while the facilities of the Custom House were cramped, preventing proper examination of luggage. At Tianjin, “great uncertainty exists as to the proper duty paying value” of ad valorem goods . . . the present exclusively Japanese staff is neither able, nor competent, to enforce the new Import Tariff.” Examination offices were “disgracefully dirty” and “cramped.” 137 A 1930 reported noted that “our facilities in staff, accommodation for cargo, and examination and appraisal are nearly everywhere insufficient.”138 Guangzhou, for instance, lacked “a working control over privately owned wharves, jetties, and warehouses.”139 In 1931, Bos found that at Qingdao “the situation is worse than I expected. No preventive work, such as steamer duty, wharf duty, boarding duty, etc. is being done.”140 Ship’s papers were handed in to the Custom House without any Customs official checking them; examination of cargo was perfunctory. Bos appointed young assistants and appraisers to ports he had identified as not up to standard. He dispatched them with the instruction that “you will soon stumble upon practices that are not in accord with the more developed Shanghai procedures,” which, as we have seen, were not as secure as they might have been, either.141 He advised them to institute a system of spot checks, rather than ordering examiners to check all cargo, which was unfeasible and therefore demoralizing. He also ordered that ports note down wholesale values of goods on index cards; over time, reference to them would point up irregularities that could then be investigated. The post of chief inspector of examiners, subordinate to Bos, was created with the duty to inspect procedures at all ports.142 Bos instituted

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classes for examiners and had commissioners file quarterly reports on examination and valuation work. All ports were required to send copies of import and export applications to a Central Scrutiny Office, which was attached to the Tariff Secretariat. That enabled a second check on local duty assessments.143 The collection of information was the most effective way to prevent smuggling. Wang Wenju, the Customs deputy commissioner working undercover in Taipei, relied on published statistics, contacts among Taiwanese businessmen, local officials, and a “Formosan millionaire” who “exerts considerable influence locally, and introduced me to local civil and police officials.”144 A friendship he developed with the Jilong harbormaster was particularly valuable. This person gave Wang sight of the Jilong shipping register. Wang copied the names of junks, their tonnage, their ports of departure, date of arrival, destination, and date of departure.145 He then passed this information on to the Preventive Service. Well aware that the Customs Service had a network of informants in Taiwan, junkmen covered up their junk numbers with mats while in port. The Jilong shipping register therefore allowed Wang to relay to the Preventive Secretariat information that would otherwise be unobtainable. In April 1937, Wang claimed that smuggling from Taiwan to the southern China coast had greatly reduced. He provided the figures shown in table 6.1. According to Wang, the stark drop recorded for 1936 was “a remarkable improvement, due chiefly to the Customs preventive efficiency, the Chinese currency reform, and the closing of Mako as base to all smuggling vessels.”146 Mako was the Japanese name for Magong (马公), a port on Penghu Island, between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland. It had been a Japanese naval base from 1901 but was closed in 1935 to junks for security reasons. In 1935, the Nationalists introduced a fiat currency and nationalized silver in an attempt to stem the outflow of silver caused by U.S. silver purchases.147 For the Customs Service to have any real chance of preventing smuggling, it needed to establish control over China’s thousands of junks, ships able to sail silently through shallow coastal waters and up rivers and creeks. Traditionally, the Customs Service had only dealt with steamers, leaving the policing of junk traffic to Native Customs stations. In 1931, the Nationalists ordered seagoing junks to register with the Customs Service and carry ship’s papers.148 The Customs Service was also given control over Native Customs stations. In 1933, Pritchard wrote optimistically that “control over

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TABLE 6.1 Smuggling between Taiwan and southern China, 1931–1936 Junks Number 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936

772 559 681 1,174 1,835 717

Tonnage

Motorboats Number

Tonnage

41,124 22,046 18,777 32,175 38,098 15,153

110 242 344 424 466 73

3,859 8,742 9,636 9,320 13,950 1,935

Total Number 882 801 1,025 1598 2,319 790

Tonnage 45,001 30,788 28,413 41495 52,048 17,088

Source: “Wang Wenju to Maze” (April 1, 1937) in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with Acting Deputy Commissioner Detached for Service with Wai-chiao Pu in Formosa,” Second Historical Archives, 679/31726.

junk trade is gradually being established, and Customs action has resulted in many junks, formerly engaged in smuggling, reverting to legitimate trade.”149 Pritchard’s optimism proved unfounded. The Service seized many hundreds of junks each year. However, as an IG circular of 1934 acknowledged, junkmen, “faced with an unfamiliar situation,” were proving slow “to fall in readily with the new order of things.”150 Similarly, the Customs Service’s control over coastal Native Customs stations would be more nominal than real. Reports of Chinese staff sent to investigate these Native Customs stations make clear that no quick progress could be expected. Deputy Preventive Secretary Lu Bin (路斌, Lu Ping) entered the Customs Service in 1914 after graduating from the Customs College. He was sent to investigate Native Customs stations from Shanghai to Shanhaiguan. At Haizhou, a local clerk was “worried about local opposition because high tariffs meant increased prices.”151 At a Native Customs station near Qingdao, Lu “could find nobody except a boatman who was taking a nap.” At another place, he found that there was “no collection at all” and that “the station does not have a steelyard nor a copy of the tariff.” A report covering the coast from Zhejiang to Hong Kong complained that at Sanduao in Fujian “the Kuanchang [关长, guanzhang, station chief] [was] at cards in his general office with his staff.”152 Its author had “every suspicion that a majority of staff are in close touch with the smugglers.” At one station, “a guard was dressed in foreign clothing and behaved like a gentleman,” and a night watchman

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“was all in expensive silk.” Such condemnations of Chinese Customs Service staff of their countrymen working in Native Custom stations reflected their self-orientalizing adoption of the views and prejudices of their Western superiors.

BROKERING DEALS

Maze was a complex man, but the policy he followed was in reality quite simple: uphold Nationalist authority formally and deal pragmatically with whatever realities exist on the ground. Just two months after his appointment as IG, in March 1929, Maze instructed commissioners that their words could, and often should, be at variance with their deeds: The Government cannot officially recognize the suppression of their supremacy by a provincial authority, and in the event of the Commissioner receiving instructions from a local government concerning Customs matters . . . he is to point out that in view of the above principles—the application of which is to keep the Customs out of politics and thus help to sustain China’s credit, etc—he cannot act unless authorised by the Inspector General. But if such representations are not accepted and if official pressure is exercised [by the local authorities], the Commissioner may be compelled to bend to force majeure to avoid a deadlock and undesirable friction . . . when dealing with Chinese authorities we must always distinguish between what is essential and what is non-essential and shape our action accordingly.153

That policy justified a wide range of actions and had a distinctly theatrical aspect. James O’Gorman Anderson, when posted as deputy commissioner to Kowloon in 1930 and 1931, provided the following description of how he implemented Maze’s policy of flexibility, a description that also suggests that Maze’s use of the argument of force majeure was not imperialist sophistry, as might be thought, but a turbocharged translation, echoing Western legal frameworks, of the Chinese phrase “nothing can be done” (没有办法, meiyou banfa). That phrase is ubiquitously used in China as a clincher to make clear that a situation is not as it should be but that it cannot be changed or is not worth the effort to change. All sensible political systems must have something like it. Anderson wrote:

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My chief card is force majeure. This word is very dear to all Chinese Govts, de jure or de facto (and in any case debilitated). An example. The Minister of Finance of the Central Government instructs me in majestic terms to cease remitting revenues to the “rebellious dogs of the Canton faction” and to let him have them. This means I get a friend among the rebellious dogs to send an old steam tug, with five or six indifferently armed soldiers on board, to make an armed demonstration at one of my revenue stations outside Hong Kong. We could perfectly easily blow up anything in the way of armed force the Cantonese could possibly send along, including their navy. . . . But instead of that I telegraph the Central Govt that I have been compelled to yield to force majeure. All is then well until the next crisis.154

Below I examine several instances of Maze’s application of the argument of force majeure in dealing with conflicts between the Nanjing Nationalists and their regionally based opponents. In a 1935 letter to J. H. Macoun, the nonresident secretary in London, Maze noted that “in many districts the only outward signs of Nanking’s authority are the Maritime Customs Houses in the hands of foreigners.”155 Maze’s general approach was to strive to accommodate the demands of local governments while upholding the theoretical superiority of the Nationalists and at the same time to temper their claims: “my difficulty invariably is to persuade the Nanking Authorities to deal with [local opposition] in a logical manner and not attempt to assume positions which they cannot maintain.”156 The tutorialist instinct, even if moderated by the acceptance of Chinese nationalism, remained strong.

South China

In May 1931, Chen Jitang, the real power holder in Guangdong Province, formed a Guangzhou Nationalist Government in opposition to Nanjing. He attracted to it famous KMT figures, including Wang Jingwei, the KMT number two driven from the top spot by Chiang Kaishek; Sun Fo, Sun Yatsen’s son; Hu Hanmin, another rival of Chiang Kaishek; and Chen Youren, the former KMT foreign minister. They were all Cantonese, while many Nanjing Nationalists, like Chiang Kaishek, originated from the Lower Yangzi region. Chen Jitang’s government needed to raise funds and hoped to do so by issuing bonds backed by local Customs revenues. In September

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1932, the Guangdong Nationalists moved to detain the “additional duties,” referring to duties levied in addition to the original 5 percent duties in accordance with the new tariff. Up until this time, the two were treated separately in Customs accounts, making the distinction easy to make. Maze protested, arguing that the 5 percent duties were not sufficient to cover all of China’s foreign and domestic obligations. The reply was “we beg to inform you that the KMT has withdrawn from Chiang Kai-shek all power and authority hitherto exercised by him,” and it ordered Maze to relocate the Inspectorate to Guangzhou.157 Here was a situation that called out for treatment by the force majeure approach. Maze discussed the situation with Song Ziwen and as a result was able to tell A. C. E. Braud, the Guangzhou Customs commissioner, that Nanjing had agreed to a compromise settlement. It stipulated that Braud could retain a proportionate share of all Customs revenue once all domestic and internal obligations had been met and hand that to Chen Jitang. According to Maze, the national surplus amounted to between $2 and $3 million per year.158 The Guangdong Nationalists rejected Nanjing’s offer, as Maze expected. Chen then threatened to seize all Custom Houses in Guangdong and Guangxi.159 Maze was informed that Chen was about to appoint his own IG and that Stephenson, the Kowloon commissioner, had been asked whether he would accept appointment. Confronted with this threat, Song informed Maze that “you are to instruct the Liang Kwang [Guangdong and Guangxi] Commissioners that if insurgents seize the additional revenues, the Commissioners must adopt attitude of submitting to force majeure and yielding under protest.”160 The Guangdong Nationalists gained control over Guangdong Customs duties, Maze succeeded in maintaining the unity of the Service, and the Service remained formally a Nationalist institution. A full rupture was avoided. The Guangdong National Government was formally disbanded after the founding of Manchukuo, but Chen Jitang did not give up Guangdong’s autonomy until 1936. Throughout this time, further negotiations continued. Ding Guitang made a trip to Guangzhou in 1934, during which he held negotiations with Guangdong authorities. Ding reported to Maze that “many of the Government Officials at Canton are sympathetic with [sic] our difficulties.” His main proposal was that the Customs Service collaborate with the provincial Preventive Service. The latter would continue to operate, but its seizures would be handed to the Customs Service, upon which the

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Service would pay 40 percent of any proceeds of their sale as well as all local taxes. The proposal was rejected because, he was told, the Provincial Preventive Bureau had been “established for the purpose of protecting the local tax collection,” and “they have no confidence in the Customs preventive fleet because they said they have private information that some of the Customs preventive vessels have been working in collusion with some privately organized smuggling organs.”161 This may not have been completely fanciful. A 1946 novel by C. S. Archer, China Servant, centers on the plot of how an upright assistant in the Customs outwitted a scheme by the crooked Customs coast inspector and a Guangxi owner of a shipping line and a bus company to use the Customs Service to drive Chinese junks out of business. Archer worked for the Service and during World War II served in the RAF in Southeast Asia, including at Imphal.162 While Archer’s work was fiction, when the book was published, Nonresident Secretary C. A. Pouncy wrote Lester Little, the IG at the time, that Archer “reproduces conditions as they existed on the Kowloon frontier,” suggesting that Archer’s story had some basis in fact.163 Pouncy knew what he was talking about: in 1939 he was in charge of the Preventive Office at the Inspectorate. There is no doubt that the prohibition of vessels of less than one hundred tons to engage in overseas trade, the forced registration of all junk vessels, and the efforts of the Preventive Service to suppress junk smuggling played in the hands of owners of modern transport companies, such as Yu Qiaqing, who attended, it will be remembered, Maze’s farewell party for Song Ziwen. Be that as it may, Nanjing gradually brought Guangdong into line by making concessions, which it was able to do because Guangdong merchants needed to export commodities to other regions in China, and this the Nationalists could prevent. In December 1934, the Nanjing Nationalists informed their Guangdong counterparts through the Customs Service that they would permit a “shipment to Shanghai for a period of one month of 60,000 quintals sugar produced by Canton Factory,” demanding in return “several things toward unifying Customs administration at Canton.”164 A quintal was about one hundred pounds. In 1935, the Nanjing Nationalists also agreed to provide the Guangdong Nationalists with a large number of Legal Tender notes in exchange for silver held by the Guangdong government, at a favorable rate.165 The Nationalists promised that Guangdong would receive substantial grants from Nanjing if the Guangdong and Nan-

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jing Preventive Services were reintegrated, and that favorable tariff rates would be applied to Guangdong on sugar and rice imports.166 Such measures, the collapse of the Canton Bank, currency shortages, the firing of “silver bullets,” and resentment by Guangdong farmers at the low prices they received on products subject to a Guangdong government monopoly helped weaken Guangdong’s autonomy. So did such incidents as the death of a Guangdong representative who “was accidentally killed by a fall from his horse” when sent to Chiang Kaishek for talks.167 As time went on, more and more Guangdong Nationalists left the region, and in March 1936 Chen Jitang took refuge in Hong Kong, after his air force had defected. On July 20, 1936, Canton commissioner Lester Little wrote Maze “situation normal . . . from today I am considering all Southwest Political Council Huchao [护照, huzhao, licenses] null and void,”168 meaning that Guangdong had been reintegrated into the world of the Nanjing Nationalists. A month later, the “Salt and Preventive Department vessels” of the Guangdong authorities were handed over to the Service.169

Bertram Lennox-Simpson Seizes the Tianjin Custom House

Nanjing’s problems with the Guangdong Nationalists were difficult, but those involved asserted a common KMT identity, and they often knew one another well. In northern China, the situation was different, as there the KMT’s support was superficial. The Tianjin Custom House played an important role in the 1930 War of the Central Plains, when Chiang Kaishek was challenged on the battlefield by a powerful alliance involving the Shanxi warlord Yan Xishan and other northern China militarists, the Guangxi warlord Li Zongren, and, once more, Wang Jingwei. In early 1930, Yan Xishan’s forces moved into Hebei and occupied Tianjin, China’s second-most important port in terms of revenue. That posed the question of what to do with the Tianjin Custom House. Maze proposed that the Tianjin Custom House should continue to operate as a regular part of the Customs Service and remit its share of foreign and domestic loan obligations to the Inspectorate in Shanghai. The remainder was to be held locally.170 While Yan indicated his support of this proposal, the Nationalists refused. On April 30, 1930, Yan ordered the detention of Customs funds, which were held at the Tianjin branch of the

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Bank of Communications.171 The Nationalists retaliated by ordering Maze to instruct Tianjin commissioner Hayley Bell to deposit Customs collections with the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank.172 A standoff ensued: Yan Xishan did not take over the Custom House but also refused to remit any revenue to Shanghai. Negotiations continued for a month and a half. Maze made various proposals, including for an equitable division of the Tianjin Customs surplus. He indicated that he was willing to meet Yan in person.173 He asked Shanghai’s bankers to issue a statement condemning Yan’s “declared intention to raid the Tientsin revenue” and to state that they would not recognize any bonds backed by Tianjin Customs revenue.174 Yan too was warned that the Tianjin Custom House would be shut if he did take it over and that Tianjin duties would then be collected at ports from which ships sailed to Tianjin.175 Hayley Bell transferred Tianjin Custom House files to the safety of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank to make sure that they would not fall into Yan’s hands.176 Trying to avoid a showdown, local Tianjin officials suggested that Customs collections be held in escrow for the duration of the fighting.177 And then, suddenly, Bertram Lennox-Simpson, the author of Indiscreet Letters from Beijing, showed up. Lennox-Simpson was one of those British expats who had little good to say about the Nationalists. He believed that the Customs Service had become Song Ziwen’s personal tool: “the Customs, under the present Inspector General, is not a Chinese institution but a semi-foreign thing which TV Soong [Song Ziwen] uses for his own purpose.”178 On June 16, 1930, Lennox-Simpson marched into the Tianjin Customs House and demanded that it be handed over to him. Hayley Bell complied, whereupon the Nationalists ordered Maze to close the Tianjin Custom House and collect Tianjin duties in the ports from which vessels for Tianjin departed.179 The closure of the Tianjin Custom House infuriated Yan Xishan.180 Maze sent Ding Guitang to Tianjin, instructing him to meet with local officials and even secretly with Yan: “when you see Y, mention to him that in my opinion the keeping neutral custody of the surplus of Additional Duty is reasonable. Y should comment on this point and if it is agreeable to him, you will ask me to bring it about.”181 A July 5 counterproposal insisted that, in addition, Maze agree not to close any further Custom Houses, that staff appointed by Lennox-Simpson be retained, and that a new commissioner would be appointed by Yan on Maze’s nomination.182

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A good deal about this incident remains obscure. For whatever it is worth, according to an after-the-fact report by Hayley Bell, Su Tiren, Yan’s special financial commissioner for Hebei, gave out that Lennox-Simpson had acted “without the Marshal’s knowledge.”183 There were suggestions that the British legation supported Lennox-Simpson, suggestions Maze took seriously, writing to London that “Tientsin consular tacit recognition of Simpson’s improvised Customs arrangement is prejudicing efforts to effect compromise this end.”184 Nanjing’s Foreign Ministry lodged a protest in London.185 It is certainly curious that Lionel Giles, the Tianjin consul, arranged meetings between Su Tiren and Hayley Bell. Wang Zhengting, the Nationalist foreign minister, wrote Song Ziwen that LennoxSimpson had stated that Lampson, the British minister, had been aware of his intentions.186 The incident ended Hayley Bell’s China career. Ding Guitang informed Maze on June 28, 1930 that local Tianjin officials and Zhang Xueliang, the leader of the Fengtian faction in China’s northeast, wanted Hayley Bell out of the way.187 This became easy to accomplish for Maze because Hayley Bell had concluded that “no active steps would now be taken against the Maritime Customs.”188 He had ordered Tianjin Customs files and forms returned from the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, including the Customs secret telegraphic code.189 When Lennox-Simpson walked into the Custom House, the Customs Service’s war hero who so frequently had been called on to deal with local trouble seems to have panicked, offering no resistance and handing over “the official code book, the telegram book, and other confidential documents.”190 Maze ordered Hayley Bell to his own summer bungalow at Beidaihe, the beach resort near Beijing. Hayley Bell, however, traveled to Shanghai in the hope of clearing his name. Maze did not want him there, probably in case he revealed that Maze had been in contact with Yan, and so Hayley Bell was bundled unto a ship bound for Britain, where he retired after serving for a short period as nonresident secretary. Zhang Xueliang is not known for having been politically astute, but this time he played his cards shrewdly. He sat on the fence for much of the War of the Central Plains, although he did indicate early on to Ding that he believed that Yan would lose the war.191 Ding Guitang stayed in touch with Zhang throughout the crisis. When it became clear that the Nationalists would prevail, Zhang declared his support for Nanjing. When Yan’s forces began their withdrawal from Tianjin, Zhang’s Fengtian forces moved in to

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take over. He requested Ding to relay to Maze that he would appoint his own superintendent but that he wanted Maze to appoint a new commissioner.192 On September 23, Ding passed on to Maze Zhang Xueliang’s message, “I will not at all interfere with the Tientsin Customs to maintain the authority of the central government,” but he did expect the appointment of someone sympathetic to him.193 Ding added that “the Japanese are not liked by him.”194 Following discussions with Song Ziwen, Maze appointed Luigi de Luca, believed “acceptable” because his brother had known Zhang Xueliang well.195 The Tianjin Custom House was reopened on October 3.196 Lennox-Simpson had gambled, but he had backed the wrong horse and paid with his life.197 On November 11, he died in the Victoria Hospital in the British concession from wounds sustained in an attempt on his life on October 1.198 Lennox-Simpson had remitted funds to Yan Xishan, appointed family members of local Tianjin officials to the Tianjin Custom House, and used the information that his access to Customs files had given him to expose “inefficiency and corrupt practices,”199 including about fraud by Tianjin Customs personnel. When the war turned against Yan, LennoxSimpson offered his services to Zhang Xueliang, promising “in one way or another, I can produce at once for you $2,000,000 in hard cash.”200 Yan’s defeat, though, meant that Lennox-Simpson’s position had become untenable and in fact a hindrance to any settlement. Who ordered his killing—the Nationalists, a disgruntled employee, a local gangster—is not clear.

The Japanese Occupation of the Northeast

The Japanese occupation of China’s northeast created a severe crisis for the Customs Service, not only because the northeast’s Custom Houses were financially important but also because this time the conflict was not an internal Chinese one but involved a foreign country. Maze tried to create a situation whereby, despite the Japanese creation of the new state of Manchukuo, the northeast’s Custom Houses would remain part of a unified Customs Service. This time, the Nationalists refused to go along. If they were flexible as long as the issues were internal Chinese ones, they refused to have the Customs operate in the territory of a Japanese puppet state. In November 1931, when Japan had begun its military operations in the northeast, Maze wrote to Song to suggest that Custom Houses there should

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not be closed. Maze referred to the Arrow War as a precedent. Then, the Qing and the British had agreed to keep the Shanghai Custom House open even though they were at war. Maze now stressed the “international character” of the Customs Service.201 Maze went on to propose that if “Japan should occupy any area wherein Chinese Customs Houses are located . . . steps ought to be take to endeavour to obtain recognition of the principle that . . . the Administration should be neutralized, as it were, and be permitted to continue to work—conditionally perhaps—under the direct control of the Inspectorate.” In the spring, after Manchukuo had been created, an unsigned memorandum, with all the hallmarks of something drafted by Maze, proposed a “Customs Union” between Manchukuo and China.202 The memorandum explained that “the Chinese Customs Service is a unique organization unparalleled anywhere in the world and should be the best intermediary for an alliance between China and Manchuria.” Maze once more turned to Ding Guitang to act as a broker. He sent Ding to Shenyang, in the accompaniment of Jinzaburo Fukumoto, the Dairen commissioner, for discussions with Manchukuo representatives. They were to suggest that in return for the preservation of the integrity of the Customs Service, Manchuria should be allowed to retain a share of uncommitted Manchurian Customs revenues, the formula Maze had also used in the case of Guangdong and in Tianjin.203 This time Maze was slapped down, but only after the Japanese had rejected the idea. Maze informed Song on March 21 that the Japanese had declined his proposal because “Manchu-kuo as a new state is badly in need of funds and looks to the Customs Service as its main source of revenue.”204 The Japanese did not want Manchukuo to be a money-losing enterprise. It was three days later that Zhang Fuyun told Maze that that the Nationalists “had decided that no arrangement or understanding of any kind” should be made, as it would imply de facto recognition.205 It is likely that only very few Nationalists, if any, had been made aware of Maze’s demarche. Probably even Zhang Fuyun had been kept in the dark. The same day that Zhang told Maze that no arrangement was possible, Maze assured Zhang that he had merely expressed “personal views” to his Manchukuo interlocutors, which had been “privately proffered before the Government registered its decision.”206 Maze also had western Customs commissioners who had been working at Custom Houses in the northeast

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write exhaustive reports after they returned to China. Running to over one hundred pages, the reports detailed determined resistance to Japanese aggression, the hardships they had suffered when bringing their staff back to China, and the efforts they had made to ensure that funds were remitted whenever possible. The reports were clearly written for the purpose of demonstrating the loyalty of the Customs Service to the Nationalists.207

More Shadow Diplomacy

After 1932, there would be no repeat of such a large-scale confrontation as the War of the Central Plains or the Japanese conquest of the Northeast. However, lesser conflicts did occur, and Maze kept up his habit of conducting shadow negotiations. In 1933, he dispatched Ding Guitang to Beiping to advise northern China officials in negotiations with the Japanese. The Japanese had sent General Okamura Yasuji, the military attaché to Manchukuo who would become commander-in-chief of Japan’s forces in China during the War of Resistance Against Japan. Ding reported to Maze that Okamura had come in a personal capacity and wanted to make informal arrangements about rail traffic between Manchukuo and northern China, about handing over control of the passes in the Great Wall back to China, and about other Customs issues.208 When the North China Daily News reported that Ding had stated that the Chinese would not insist on return of the Great Wall passes, there was widespread public condemnation of the Customs Service. Maze upbraided Ding, who defended himself by arguing that he simply had been misquoted. The discussions did lead to an agreement to restore train connections between northern China and Manchukuo, but the Japanese declined to promise cooperation in the prevention of smuggling.209 Maze was also involved in negotiations with the leaders of the 1933 Fujian Rebellion. That rebellion was carried out by the 19th Route Army, which had fought the Japanese at Shanghai in January 1931 and rose up when ordered to suppress communists in Fujian. On December 1, 1933, Maze told Fuzhou commissioner E. T. Williams that the Fujian government would be allowed to retain $320,000, being the surplus of collections in Fuzhou and Xiamen after deductions had been made to pay for indemnities and domestic and international loans. The response was that this meant a reduction because

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the 19th Route Army had received $780,000 monthly from Nanjing before the rebellion. Maze then threatened to close the Fuzhou Custom House, as had been done in Tianjin. The Fujian government made a counterproposal that it would be allowed to retain $345,000 and that the Customs would levy a local surtax. This deal was acceptable by both sides.210 Maze’s policy was to keep the Service operating throughout China, regardless of who was in effective local control. This foreshadowed the approach he would take after the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. He probably did so in the belief that he was following in Hart’s footsteps, who also had tried to keep Custom Houses open when Qing and foreign forces were waging war on each other. Even if the Nationalists could never have stated so openly, Maze’s policy could be useful to them, as they lacked any real presence in many places. A Custom House in such places provided them with a wedge into a locality. The history of the Nanjing Decade has for some time been caught up in an increasingly sterile debate about whether the Nationalists did the best they could under difficult circumstances and did much to modernize the country or whether they were from the beginning an incompetent and militaristic regime bound to fail. By bringing the Customs Service into the discussion, a new set of issues emerges that might help to push the discussion forward. It is clear, regardless of how one judges the Nationalists, that tariffs were hugely important during the Nanjing Decade and shaped its history in fundamental ways. High tariffs are bound to generate smuggling and sustain regional opposition. Yet that does not necessarily mean that customs services and tariffs are necessarily antithetical to state-building agendas. Customs duties are a form of indirect taxation, which is far easier for a weak regime to collect than, for instance, an income tax. Before free trade became the norm, many states, including Britain and the United States, depended heavily on customs dues. In addition, by creating a bureaucracy that operates nationwide, a customs service prepares the ground for thinking in larger than regional terms, as was for instance the case for the Customs Union that German states developed before unification in 1870.211 In the case of China, this is even more so, because Customs dues were leveraged to issue state debt to a large public, which so became affected by and hence interested in national affairs. The Customs Service furthered national awareness by symbolically representing a national authority in a

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standard way. Lighthouses, uniforms, ensigns, photographs of Sun Yatsen in Custom Service offices, exercises such as the registration of junks and the marking of waterways by a uniform scheme instituted by a single bureaucracy were all minor but nonetheless telling ways in which the modern state became a reality in the lives of the Chinese people, even if often a resented one. So did the advancement of a single vocabulary for imported commodities, the use of standardized forms and procedures, the circulation of Customs staff throughout the country, and the enforcement of a single tariff. The Preventive Service demarcated a single coastline with impressively modern vessels. Custom Houses outlined what was China and what was not. That was made visible on the charts of the China coast produced by the Marine Department. In all these ways, the Service helped give substance to what China meant. The history of the Service reflected this development. In the years after the Taiping Rebellion the Service was made up of relatively autonomous Custom House districts, in which the Customs commissioner was king. Hart had to work hard and proceed cautiously in imposing the will of the Inspectorate. As the Service’s central bureaucracy expanded, the commissioner’s role became increasingly confined. Even the conflicts between Nanjing and its regional opponents helped, in the long run, integrate China. Maze’s policy was one of keeping the Customs Service as an integrated and disciplined bureaucracy operating throughout China. As Tilly would have agreed, modern state making is not just a matter of well-meaning and honest persons extending the power of a fair and efficient government from the center. It is also the gradual accretion of messy deals and imperfect settlements and of the transformation of men like Song Ziwen, Yu Qiaqing, Li Ming, and Wang Xiaolai from robber barons into statesmen. The evidence from the archive of the Customs Service suggests that this process was underway in 1930s China, even if it bore fruit more in the south than in the north.

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Chapter Seven

MAINTAINING INTEGRITY, 1937–1949

Our thoughts next turn to the future. The nations of the world face a task of rehabilitation which will, in many ways, be just as stupendous as was the prosecution of the war. We in the Customs Service have our part to play in this task, and we shall meet countless difficulties and problems. Let us face the future with faith and courage, and with the determination of every member of the Staff to overcome all difficulties and to work unitedly to restore our great organization to its historic and proud position as China’s leading civil service. —LESTER LITTLE, AUGUST 15, 1945, IG MESSAGE TO STAFF ON JAPAN’S SURRENDER

The traditional spirit of readiness to serve should not perish on our account and thereby cause us to be regarded as culprits of the Customs in the universe. —MESSAGE OF APRIL 11, 1949, FROM TIANJIN CUSTOMS STAFF TO LESTER LITTLE AFTER THE COMMUNISTS’ SEIZURE OF THE CITY

In case of a change in Government at Shanghai, and consequent interruption of communications and refusal by the authorities to recognize my authority, there are no instructions I can give, but I may express the confident hope that come what may, the Staff will remember that they are servants of China. —LESTER LITTLE’S MESSAGE OF APRIL 26, 1949, TO STAFF AT HIS DEPARTURE FROM SHANGHAI FIRST TO GUANGZHOU AND THEN TO TAIPEI

This chapter follows the Customs Service from the summer of 1937 until the summer of 1952.1 The year 1937 is an obvious starting point: in July, China and Japan began a war that would last eight long and difficult years. The year 1952 is less obvious. Although the Customs Service became unable to

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carry out its functions shortly after the beginning of World War II in China, it nonetheless continued to exist, and it survived both World War II and the Civil War. At the eve of the Communist victory, no foreign Customs Service employee remained in mainland China, but most Chinese staff decided to stay, believing that the Communists would need them just as all those who had come before had. Through a Communist back channel, they had received the promise that they would be allowed to stay in their posts. In 1952, however, at the time of the Korean War, the Communists turned on the Service, carrying out a campaign in which thousands were compelled to confess the errors of their ways, hundreds were found guilty of serious corruption, and a number committed suicide. The Customs Service was thoroughly cowed, and its members were forced to confess that the values and principles of which they had once been proud and that they had striven to uphold had in fact sustained Western imperialist domination. This was the moment the Customs Service truly died, one year short of a century after its birth. I record the decline of the Service at various levels, in a variety of places, and in a range of situations, aiming, first of all, to bring out the human side of the story. This was a collapse that occurred in slow motion, and it was all the more painful for that. First, the Japanese occupied large parts of China and made it impossible for the Customs Service to operate. Then, after 1945, the Service attempted to reestablish its position in coastal China, which it initially did with success, but it gradually was overwhelmed by the problems that came with the Civil War period, including inflation. And, finally, it had to respond to the arrival of the Communists. The word “integrity” loomed large in the Customs correspondences and documents of these difficult years. Maintaining its integrity became an obsession for the Customs Service. For Frederick Maze, that meant maintaining the territorial integrity of the Service, as he had attempted to do when the Japanese took China’s northeast in 1932. After Pearl Harbor, the Customs Service had been divided into two parts, one operating in Japanese-occupied areas of China under a Japanese IG, and the other, a far smaller one, from Chongqing in unoccupied China. Little, in charge of the Inspectorate in Chongqing, had little option but to fall back upon a moral interpretation of the word “integrity.” The two parts of the Service were reunited in 1945, and from then on, Little, too, became concerned about preserving the territorial scope of the Service, hoping that it might survive

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the division of China into Communist and Nationalist parts. Maintaining the integrity of the Service, territorially but also reputationally, was the Service’s main concern during this period. A third theme was the continuing struggle of Ding Guitang and other Chinese, including Chang Fu-yun, the director general of the Customs Affairs Office, to make the Customs Service fully Chinese. Ding represented the Westernized, or self-orientalized, coastal elites in China. Ding and his senior Chinese colleagues had every reason to believe that soon the Service would be theirs: if nothing else, the passage of time would ensure that the remaining foreigners would retire. After Pearl Harbor, the Nationalists intended to appoint Ding as IG, but they failed, in part because of a clever Maze maneuver, but also because the United States reached for the Customs Service when it decided it had to develop a new role in China, seeing benefits in the Service as Britain and other foreign countries had before. Ding stayed in China in 1949 no doubt because he hoped that now his time had finally come, but that too would not be the case. This period, then, was one when dreams died: those of Maze, of Little, and of Ding Guitang. It was also the time during which the in-between spaces in which the Service had thrived were closed down and when the international linkages from which it had profited ceased to have the value they once enjoyed. In the final analysis, the Customs Service had been able to exist because enough power holders saw it as a useful institution. This had changed. If the hostility of the Communists to the Service was only natural, the Nationalists also turned against it in 1943, after they failed in their bid to appoint a Chinese IG. The Americans wanted it, briefly, but after World War II they declined to be drawn into a Chinese quagmire. The British still wanted it, but they had ceased to matter.

THE JAPANESE ONSLAUGHT

The Service was not prepared for the outbreak of war in 1937. Even if there had been many crises before that had petered out, its staff must have had their worries as tensions between China and Japan intensified and fears about a second world war deepened. But in July 1937 Frederick Maze was in Britain, having left China on March 26 to attend the coronation of King George VI as counselor to the Chinese delegation, headed by Kong Xiangxi,

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the minister of finance. The most pressing issue Customs commissioners raised in their correspondences with the Inspectorate was their preparations for their annual summer getaways to villas owned by the Customs Service at the seaside resort of Beidaihe near Beijing or on Guling Mountain, known as “Nature’s Air Cooler,” near Jiujiang.2 Maze had left Japanese chief secretary Kishimoto Hirokichi to “sign for the Inspector General” in Shanghai, perhaps in the hope that having a Japanese in a prominent situation might be useful as relations between China and Japan worsened. Yet, once actual fighting began, the situation inevitably became awkward. On the 26th, an Emergency Committee was formed of Inspectorate secretaries minus Kishimoto, although Kishimoto continued to sign IG circulars.3 The circulars studiously restricted themselves to routine affairs, such as revisions to junk regulations, upcoming Customs Service examinations, and rulings of the Customs Tariff Board of Inquiry and Appeal.4 “Keep calm and carry on” seems to have been the Service’s motto. Maze arrived back in China on August 24,5 more than ten days after Chiang Kaishek had opened a second front in Shanghai. The Battle of Shanghai became the point of no return. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese and Japanese troops battled for three months first to the north and west of Shanghai and then in the Chinese sector of the city after the Japanese had landed forces to the south. Once the Japanese had emerged victorious in November, they stormed to Nanjing, the Nationalist capital, where they massacred its population. A return to peace became impossible. On September 21, Maze laid down the fateful policy that Customs commissioners should stay put if at all possible. In an IG circular of that day, he wrote that “the tragic conflict between China and Japan” had begun with “dramatic suddenness.”6 He acknowledged concerns about safety, which Customs commissioners now wrote about frequently, and declared that the final decision about whether to evacuate had to be taken by the commissioner as the responsible person on the spot. But he made his own views clear: “It is incumbent to all to stand firm and remain at their respective posts as long as possible, not only from a sense of duty and loyalty to the country and the Government we serve, but also in the interest of the Service and in conformity with its ancient traditions.” Maze’s policy was to sit tight as the Japanese tsunamied through and then resume functioning to restore trade, making whatever practical arrangements were necessary. Below, I use the semiofficial correspondences of Customs commissioners

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along the Yangzi River, as well as in Guangzhou, to survey the consequences of that policy. With some exceptions, most regarded it as their duty to stay and support the Service at this critical juncture.

Shanghai

Because the Shanghai Custom House was located on the Shanghai Bund in the International Settlement, Custom staff there, among them the majority of the foreigners, were rarely exposed to direct physical danger. However, on August 14, the fighting was brought home to them. On that day, the Chinese Air Force targeted the Idzumo, Japan’s flagship, which was provocatively moored in the Huangpu River off “Little Tokyo,” the Japanese part of the International Settlement. Fearing antiaircraft fire, the airplanes released their bombs from a great height, with the result that some ended up exploding between the Cathay and Palace Hotels, only meters from the Custom House. Among the many deaths of Bloody Saturday, as August 14 became known in expat Shanghai lore, was Hu Chih-nan (Hu Zhinan), a Customs tidewaiter; he was last seen at the Palace Hotel “a few minutes before the explosion of the bomb took place at the corner of the Bund and the Nanjing Road.”7 At first, the outbreak of war provided a chance for the Service to shine, and this chance was grabbed by some with alacrity. W. J. Gorman, chief of the Fire Office of the Customs Service, was proud of the heroics of his men on Bloody Saturday. Bombs had hit an oil depot of the Asiatic Petroleum Company on the Pudong or eastern side of the Huangpu River. Gorman and his men prevented the installation from going up in flames. He claimed that “during our operations firemen were wading knee deep in oil which at various sections reached boiling point.”8 Two fire-fighting floats had pumped eight thousand gallons of water per minute. “I can honestly say,” he concluded, “it was one of the most marvelious [sic] fire stops I can ever remember.” The Customs River Police dealt with “all the shipping, foreign men-of-war, and innumerable craft” that sought refuge on the stretch of the Huangpu River along the Bund and the Quai de France. “Thousands of lighters, tugs, launches, ferries, house and motor boats, and even steamers had to be provided with berthing space.”9 The Service managed “the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of evacuees” and “the supplies

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of petroleum oils and various other necessities required by the military as well as the civilian population of the city.” The Customs was once again doing what Hart had exhorted it to do: be useful in whatever way possible. The early thrill soon made way for despondency and fear. A number of Chinese staff resigned to enlist and fight for their country.10 But to get away from Shanghai, others applied for transfers or leave, pleading illness or the need to take care of parents living elsewhere. The Customs medical officer in Shanghai, Dr. Ling Chuh Huan, buckled under the strain and was sent on leave in November 1937: he suffered from “severe neurosis with depressions and needs complete rest.”11 Because so many foreigners, including Japanese, worked for the Service, inevitably some staffmembers fell under suspicion. At least one employee was picked up by Nationalist secret agents and hauled to Nanjing for interrogation.12 The Japanese did not enter the International Settlement or the French Concession. Fearing the USSR, which threatened its Kuantang Army in Manchukuo, they wanted a quick end to military operations, a goal that would be jeopardized had they attacked the settlement and the French Concession. That meant that the Japanese could not seize the Inspectorate or the Shanghai Custom House, but having spent blood and treasure in the conquest of Chinese Shanghai, they also did not want the Service to continue to function, and they made sure it could not. They seized the river craft of the Shanghai Custom House and the Preventive vessels in Shanghai,13 and the Japanese military took control over most of Shanghai’s trade. To evade Customs duties, the Japanese military landed cargo in military transports at the Japanese wharves of Little Tokyo, where “Customs officers are not permitted to function.”14 Sugar, artificial silk, and cigarette paper were dumped on the Shanghai market. Because of an influx of opium, Shanghai commissioner Lawford suspected a “plan by the Japanese military for the narcotisation of the Shanghai area.”15 He wrote that “the Japanese Military offices in Hongkew [虹口, Hongkou] are being used as a distributing centre for heroin.”16 Lawford was probably right: military operations are always expensive, and occupations need to be paid for. Loot from godowns in Hongkou flooded the market.17 The Shanghai Custom House still stood proudly on the Bund, but with the Yangzi River closed, the Japanese in control of the coast and the Huangpu River, and with the Japanese bringing in goods, the Service had little to do other than wait for a turn for the better.

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Wuhu

Wuhu was an important city on the Yangzi River in Anhui Province, a twohour drive to the west of Nanjing via the new motorway built in the early 1930s. The city, with a substantial foreign community, had for a long time been a center in the interregional rice and timber trade. The war came to Wuhu in the fall of 1937 as the Nationalists fled from Nanjing, and many high officials embarked in Wuhu on vessels bound for Wuhan in central China, where the Nationalists hoped to regroup. To close down this escape route, the Japanese rushed to Wuhu, taking it on December 10, even before they had entered Nanjing. The Wuhu commissioner in the summer of 1937 was F. D. Goddard. As soon as the war began, Goddard had written the Inspectorate about the preparations he was making to take refuge on a gunboat moored in the Yangzi River off the Wuhu Bund, stating that “to leave the entire staff on its own would be unpleasant” but that he nonetheless believed it might be “imperative” to do so.18 One Inspectorate secretary remarked that “he is indecently early in putting these thoughts on paper—he is a Chinese official.”19 Maze warned Goddard that “it would not be proper for me to approve officially any advance plans for evacuation.”20 However, Goddard was pessimistic: “it is difficult to believe that the end of this tragedy will be other than a victory for Japanese arms, at least in north and east China.”21 Goddard grew increasingly anxious when his means of escape were commandeered first by Kong Xiangxi, who demanded the use of a Custom vessel to take him to Wuhan, and then by the Chinese military, which seized a houseboat he had rented to be able take his staff upriver out of the firing zone. When the Japanese entered, Wuhu descended into chaos, as we know not from Goddard but from the report of a missionary who stayed with his flock. This missionary wrote that “conditions had been extremely uncomfortable and soldiers got badly out of hand.”22 Wuhu became a ghost town, with no more than five thousand of the original 150,000 residents still present. Goddard had not gone to Wuhan but to Shanghai. The missionary reported that he had been allowed by the Japanese “to remove Goddard’s piano and a few personal belongings” from the Custom House, suggesting that Goddard had left in a hurry. Goddard tendered his resignation in May 1938, three years before becoming entitled to his pension. He believed,

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rightly as it turned out, that the prospects for the Customs Service were not good. He decided to cash in his accumulated benefits, foregoing the pensions that would have been his had he served out his time. The plummeting exchange value of the Chinese dollar convinced him of the wisdom of cutting his losses.23 But Goddard’s prescience was the exception rather than the rule.

Jiujiang

Jiujiang had been a center in the rice trade like Wuhu, and tea and porcelain from the nearby Jingdezhen kilns also flowed through its port. Like Nanjing and Zhenjiang, Jiujiang had never really recovered from the devastation of the Taiping Rebellion. Although Jiujiang suffered a first Japanese attack on December 20, when twenty airplanes conducted an air raid,24 serious fighting would not reach the city until the summer of 1938. After the fall of Wuhu and Nanjing, the war moved north to Xuzhou in northern Jiangsu Province. There the Nationalists lost a major battle in the spring of 1938. To prevent an immediate Japanese advance toward Wuhan, Chiang Kaishek burst the Yellow River dikes; the resulting flood stopped the Japanese, literally, in their tracks. But they regrouped and then decided to battle their way to Wuhan in the summer of 1938 following the Yangzi River, when its water level stood high, so that the navy could assist the infantry as it forged ahead along both banks of the river. Jiujiang was located just upriver from the Madang Barrier, one of the main obstacles in the way of Japan’s advance. The barrier consisted of chains and “fifteen to twenty coastal and river steamers,”25 which had been loaded with rocks and sunk. Artillery was placed in the hills north of Jiujiang, machine gun nests dotted the area, and minefields had been laid. Three Nationalists divisions defended the area, with a fourth held in reserve not far away. German advisers who had assisted with the barrier’s construction assured the Nationalists that it would be able to hold out for at least six months. Percy Joly, the Jiujiang Customs commissioner, was born into a Chinacoast family and had joined the Customs Service in 1910. Like Goddard, when the war broke out, he had completed twenty-seven years of service

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and was close to retirement. Joly too considered a British gunboat, the HMS Cockchafer, as his ultimate guarantee of safety. His response to the war, however, was the opposite of Goddard’s. As he waited through the autumn of 1937 and the spring of 1938 for the inevitable Japanese assault, Joly developed a close relationship with Chinese civil and military leaders. The Japanese took Anqing in Anhui Province on May 13, the last major Chinese city before the Madang Barrier. Following the fall of Nanjing, the Chinese implemented a scorched-earth policy, removing everything that might be useful to the Japanese. Machinery, equipment, tools, bullion, and people flowed inland through the port of Jiujiang, including the sleepers and rails of the Jiujiang-Nanchang Railroad.26 According to Joly, Chinese troops behaved in an exemplary way: “some twenty or more divisions representing units from all over the country must have passed through, and I was struck by their high morale, determination, and discipline. . . . Some troops paid for everything, and the relations between them and the civilian population was excellent.”27 He assured Maze, “I shall retain happy memories of many delightful meetings and acts of courtesy, both in my official capacity and as an individual.”28 Joly was no fool. He attributed the surprisingly rapid fall of the Madang Barrier on June 28 to the cowardly action, no doubt handsomely rewarded, of a Chinese general, later executed, who declined to fight a Japanese landing party.29 The Japanese were therefore able to attack the barrier from the rear. Japanese behavior appalled him as violating all standards of civilized conduct. He had witnessed “country yokels . . . shot down in cold blood by the Japanese, parties of innocent peasants attempting to cross the river being killed without warning, the machine gunning by aeroplanes of clusters of farm house.” Joly, then, had real sympathy for the Nationalists, reflecting a change in public attitudes in Europe and elsewhere toward the Nationalists’ cause. He no longer could see Chinese politics or war as a charade of little concern to him, as James O’Gorman Anderson had regarded the differences between the Nanjing and Guangzhou Nationalists. Now the Nationalists were seen as offering an admirably plucky resistance to Japanese brutality.30 The Japanese entry into Jiujiang compelled Joly to seek safety aboard the HMS Cockchafer. Using the ship’s wireless, he sent a telegram to Maze stating that food was not a real problem: “there are plenty of chickens” and

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“rice has been obtained for the Chinese employees.” They were “blessed” with a plot of grass on which they played “exciting games—single wicket cricket against civilians and baseball against the Americans.”31 They could wash because they had rigged up a shower in the compound of the Asiatic Petroleum Company. Nothing better illustrates the rapid decline in the world of Customs commissioners as the fact that they now had to be concerned about safety, food, water, and hygiene. Joly left Jiujiang in December 1938, after Wuhan had fallen and the fighting along the Yangzi had stopped. Because he had closed the Custom House and it could not be opened without having official dealings with the Japanese, which meant recognizing them, the Jiujiang Custom House remained closed. Joly made his way to Shanghai, where Maze put him to work to write reports and calculate damages—the natural response of bureaucracy to war.

Hankou

E. N. Ensor was the Hankou Customs commissioner. He had joined the Customs Service in 1909 and hence was only two years away from retirement. Born in northern Ireland, he had a stellar career, serving as tariff secretary for two years from 1935, during which time he had established the Chief Investigation Bureau to prevent railroad smuggling. Ensor’s experience in working with Nationalist railway authorities stood him in good stead as Hankou’s commissioner, a post to which he had been appointed just before the outbreak of war, in March 1937. After the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, the Guangzhou-Hankou Railroad became China’s main link to the outside world, including for bringing in military supplies and for exporting goods to international markets. To make up for the loss of Customs dues, the Nationalists ordered the Customs Service to collect an interport duty, including on goods carried by rail, a charge the railway authorities did their best to resist. Ensor dealt with railway obstructionism by creating realities on the ground rather than by trying to secure the agreement of the railway leadership, something his experience told him would lead to constant friction and few results. He first deployed staff outside the Hankou Railroad Station. As Customs staff

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developed relations with railway personnel, the natural instinct to avoid unnecessary labor meant that Customs staff were permitted first to move into the railway goods yard and then into the station itself.32 Regardless of what their bosses might want, for railroad personnel it was much easier to have the Service conduct its business in the station; otherwise, they would have to deliver the goods to Customs officers outside. In May 1938, Maze wrote a special letter to Ensor, expressing his admiration for what he had accomplished, noting that Custom Houses such as the Hankou Customs “are now bearing practically the whole burden of maintaining China’s credit abroad.”33 Ensor became infected by the “Wuhan Spirit,” which developed after the city became China’s center of resistance.34 In December 1937, he had advised “staff to evacuate their families,” adding that he was “willing to consider requests for evacuation from the staff themselves.”35 But in January 1938, he suspended the evacuation order, belittled Japan’s threat, and downplayed staff concerns about money shortages.36 In October 1938, Ensor did order a general evacuation when the Nationalists withdrew from Hankou, thus avoiding the costly battles they had lost at Shanghai and Nanjing, but he stayed in the hope of keeping the Hankou Custom House open.37 As at Shanghai, the Japanese did not allow the Hankou Custom House to function after they seized Wuhan. The Chinese staff, Ensor reported, “are confined to the French concession. They are without passes and therefore cannot pass by the Japanese sentries stationed at the French Concession.”38 The Japanese military took over Wuhan’s trade. For “an ad valorem charge of 30–35% to cover freight and charges,”39 Ensor wrote, the Japanese military shipped in from Shanghai “tinned foods, beer, cheaper grades of piece goods . . . Shanghai-made cigarettes, and Socony and APC candles.”40 By April 1939, Ensor had had enough. He advised Maze that it was futile to stay,41 but Maze did not allow him to leave. The next year, when he had completed his statutory thirty years of service, Ensor requested permission to retire: “I have three children none of whom are likely to be selfsupporting, and if for any reason I failed to get my Superannuation benefits it would be a great hardship.”42 Maze did not budge. Staff Secretary Hu Fuzhen commented on Ensor’s application that permission would set a precedent: “the Japanese would push for a Japanese Commissioner.”43 Ensor would have to stay put, and he did, until Pearl Harbor.

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Guangzhou

The first year of the War of Resistance was fought largely in northern China and the provinces lining the Yangzi River. Guangzhou, however, beginning in the spring of 1938 became a military target subjected to regular aerial bombardment because it was the terminus of the Hankou-Guangzhou railroad line. Canton Events and Rumours reflected the terror Japanese bombing provoked and the animosity it generated toward Japan. For instance, on May 12, the Wongsha Railroad Station was attacked, with the result that “two thousand civilians were killed or wounded, about 400 houses demolished, and many people rendered homeless, as most bombs fell on residential areas.”44 In June, 1,650 people were killed and over six thousand wounded; many hospitals, including foreign ones, were heavily damaged. Guangzhou Customs commissioner Little wrote, “I have seen indescribable results of mass slaughter by Japanese planes. To maintain that Canton bombing is not indiscriminate is to play with words.”45 The damage was so great that the Japanese were unable to restore any semblance of normality after they occupied the city in October 1938.46 When the Japanese entered Guangzhou, in charge of the Guangzhou Custom House was Acting Deputy Commissioner E. D. G. Hooper rather than Lester Little, whose health had broken down. Maze approved his departure on one of the last steamers to leave the city.47 In accordance with evacuation plans drawn up beforehand, on October 20 Hooper ordered the dispersal of staff to Hong Kong and Macao, from which they could “return at a moment’s notice.” Hooper stayed together with some fifty Chinese to guard the Custom House,48 located in the British Concession on Shamian Island in the Pearl River. Shamian proved hardly safe. The Japanese did not enter the concession, but “fires were springing up all around,”49 probably as a result of sabotage. An explosion of an ammunitions dump at Wongsha Railroad Station blew in all its windows. Hooper, seeing a chance to impress his superiors, played to the hilt the role of a British colonial officer facing down native brutality by sheer sangfroid. A few days after the Japanese occupied Guangzhou, Hooper decided that “the time had come” for a meeting with the Japanese consul general, Katsuo Okazaki, to protest the Japanese seizure of Customs vessels and their entry into the buoy yard. Katsuo misinterpreted Hooper, telling him that he understood that he had to protest so that he then could reopen

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the Guangzhou Custom House under force majeure. Hooper told him that “the Custom House at Canton had never been closed” and warned that if it was closed, “grave international complications” would follow.50 Kazuo declined to play the role Hooper had in mind for him. On November 9, he told Hooper that the Japanese would take over control of the Custom House but that it would be allowed to function on condition that Hooper show Japanese officials all of the documents they might ask for, that he make no payments without Japanese approval, and that he request permission before sending any of his staff on duty outside Shamian. Faced with the choice between being evicted and so “jeopardise the integrity of the Customs or continuation to function in the Custom House under protest,” Hooper chose the latter, as he had been instructed.51 As at Shanghai and Hankou, the Japanese military took over Guangzhou’s trade; in Guangzhou, too, the Custom House remained open in name only. Under Maze, the Customs Service responded to events in the same way that it had done to Japan’s seizure of the northeast in 1932. The belief was that the Service would be able to stay aloof from the fighting and that, as in the past, it could resume operation once the armies returned to their barracks, regardless of the outcome. The policy to stay put was based on a failure to understand that the Japanese really did want the West out of East Asia and that they had the means to make this come about. At the same time, Maze’s insistence that the Customs Service should stay and continue to operate, and the fact that most, although not all, commissioners did their best to do so illustrates the strength of the discipline of the Service and its continuing self-belief. The repercussions of the outbreak of war were extremely serious. The Nationalists lost their major source of revenue. In 1937, that still amounted to US$100 million, but it dropped to US$15 million in 1938 and US$11 million the year after.52 Given the Nationalists’ dependence on Customs revenue, this was disastrous. A good argument can be made that their economic problems, including hyperinflation, began when this source of revenue disappeared. For the Customs Service, the consequences were also severe. Its operational expenses had always been the first charge on the revenue. In October 1937, Maze had cancelled all forthcoming retirements because he wanted as many staff as possible in place during the crisis.53 A year later, the lack of funds compelled him to retire all he believed he could spare.54 On

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December 30, 1937, he warned commissioners to be “economical” because little revenue was being collected.55 Two months later, he instructed them to dismiss crews of the Preventive Fleet, beginning with junior staff, as they were most likely to be able to find alternative employment.56 Staff on leave abroad were urged to find employment elsewhere. The drop in value of the Nationalist currency caused hardship all around, but especially to foreign staff with significant foreign exchange requirements, caused for instance by having to pay tuition fees for children in boarding schools abroad.57 Japan failed to bring China to its knees, but they did succeed in destroying Western supremacy in China. Nothing quite symbolizes this as well as the fact that gunboats, which had functioned from the days of the Opium War as a potent symbol of Western might, lost their ability to provoke fear. In December 1937, Japanese airplanes sank the USS Panay and damaged the HMS Ladybird on the Yangzi River near Nanjing. The United States and Britain protested a great deal but could do nothing about it or even secure an apology from Japan, which argued the attacks had been accidents. For Customs commissioners, gunboats became no more than a means to flee.

HUIT CLOS

In 1941, the year he completed his fiftieth year in the Customs Service, Maze wrote from Shanghai to the nonresident secretary in London, J. H. Cubbon: My present position (in some respects precarious) is largely due to the fact that I have reasserted, as it were, and followed Hart’s proposition that we are here to supplement, not supplant authority, and I think that the fact that I have not disappeared in the maelstrom of political intrigue and confusion now existing may be partly attributed to this fact. But at the present time, of course more than this is needed: I have the difficult task of trying to coordinate the wishes of Chungking with the demands of Tokyo—to function in enemy territory on behalf of the Government without its protection.58

This suggests, first, that Maze continued to see the world through a prism shaped by the Service’s past and that the legacy of his uncle weighed heavily on him. Second, it shows that Maze believed that there still was a space

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between China and Japan in which the Service could function. That space narrowed as time went on until it effectively vanished, leaving Maze in an impossible position. The period began with Maze believing that a modus vivendi might be conjured up if British help was enlisted and the international side of the Customs Service was once more brought to the fore. When this failed, Maze grew increasingly anxious as it became clear that he might be asked to disavow the Nationalists. There has been some suggestion that Maze might have been willing to go that far,59 but that is unlikely. In 1939, when it became a distinct possibility that the Japanese would insist that Maze accept formal appointment as the IG by a new Nationalist government under Wang Jingwei and supported by the Japanese, he wrote Cubbon: it is supposed that they will endeavour to assume direct charge of the Customs establishments . . . [and] they will “appoint” me I.G. . . . [If this comes to pass,] I may be compelled to shift the Inspectorate either to Hong Kong, Kunming, or Chungking; nor can I formally take up an appointment with the enemies of the recognized Government. I have not merely my reputation to consider, I have also to bear in mind the standing of the post of the Inspector General, which was enhanced by the achievements of Sir Robert Hart—in other words, I have no intention of following the example of Mr Edwardes.60

Edwardes, it will be remembered, had accepted an advisorship to the Manchurian Customs Service.

Trying to Make It Work: The Anglo-Japanese Customs Agreement

Britain and Japan signed a Customs Agreement on May 2, 1938, in Tokyo. It stipulated that Customs revenue collected by Custom Houses in Japaneseoccupied areas would be deposited in the Yokohama Specie Bank. The revenue was to be used first to pay for the maintenance of the Customs Service and second to defray China’s international financial obligations. The agreement provided for the release to Japan of Boxer Indemnity payments held back from September 1937.61 The Anglo-Japanese agreement was humiliating to the Nationalists: two foreign states, with one of which it was at war, decided what was to be done

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with one of its bureaucracies and how its major source of revenue was to be used. It was an odd arrangement, possible only because neither Japan nor China had declared war for fear of triggering the U.S. neutrality laws, because Britain could claim that its interests were at stake because Customs revenue stood security for China’s foreign loans, and because loan agreements stipulated that the organization of the Customs Service would not change for the duration of these loans. Important too was that Japan did not yet want to take on the European powers or the United States. The issue of what to do with Customs revenue was raised first by the Japanese occupation of Tianjin in August 1937. Threats by the Japanese military to close Tianjin to foreign trade led to discussions between Tianjin commissioner W. R. Myer, Maze, and Kong Xiangxi.62 The British Foreign Office involved itself when it instructed Robert Craigie, the British ambassador to Japan, to initiate discussions with the Japanese Foreign Office in hopes of gaining Japanese Foreign Office approval for depositing Customs collections in a neutral bank.63 The British foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, who resigned over Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement in 1938, in this instance believed it was in Britain’s interest to accommodate Japan and even to negotiate over the heads of the Nationalists: “while the acquiescence of the Chinese Government is important, I feel that the integrity of the Customs is so important that refusal by Chinese Government should not preclude agreement.”64 When it became clear that the Japanese military in Tianjin would not budge,65 the Office of Customs Affairs acquiesced, instructing Maze: “you may provisionally permit the Tianjin Customs Commissioner to use his discretion to deposit Tianjin revenue in a stable local bank,”66 of which the Yokohama Specie Bank was of course one. The issue returned after Japan’s seizure of Shanghai. On January 28, 1938, Maze informed Kong Xiangxi that “the Japanese have pressed the Shanghai Commissioner to place Shanghai revenue in Yokohama Specie Bank, promising to permit periodic withdrawals for service of all obligations and maintenance of the Service.”67 Kong, who was now in Hankou, told the British ambassador, Archibald Clark-Kerr, that he wanted Japan to be seen to be the aggressor68 but also that he would not block a solution whereby two or more foreign banks would receive all revenue collected in occupied areas. He demanded that any surplus be held in escrow “for the duration of hostilities.”69

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Although the Customs agreement concluded in Tokyo did not adhere to Kong’s minimalist demand that one other foreign bank besides the Yokohama Specie Bank was to act as a custodian bank, the Nationalists did not reject it. British officials urged its acceptance in Chongqing; in Britain Leith-Ross worked on the Chinese ambassador, Guo Taiqi. Maze sent Tariff Secretary Carl Neprud, an American, to Chongqing to make the case on behalf of the Customs Service. Song Ziwen, who Neprud met in Hong Kong, was noncommittal but “understood that it was in China’s interest to have Great Britain, France, and America take an active interest in China.”70 In Chongqing, Kong Xiangxi told Neprud that “as long as Customs establishments can continue to function in the occupied area, the powers will have something to work on.”71 The Nationalist government merely “disavowed responsibility and reserved freedom of action.”72 Maze wanted a firmer statement of approval. On June 15, he asked for explicit agreement for depositing Customs funds in the Yokohama Specie Bank. When faced with this request, Kong became “visibly nervous and somewhat provoked.”73 In a message sent on by the British embassy, he proposed that “the I.G. might find a way of acting as contemplated by means of a purely banking transaction.”74 In practical terms, he wanted Maze to open a Customs overdraft facility at the Central Bank to pay China’s foreign obligations while using Shanghai balances as security to raise funds to pay the Central Bank.75 The Central Bank continued to have an office in the International Settlement, in the Customs Building on the Bund. The problem was that Japan had not been serious. It had strung Britain, and Maze, along at a time when its military attack on China, especially its aerial bombardments, was provoking worldwide criticism. The Shanghai branch of the Yokohama Specie Bank never remitted funds to Maze for the payment of China’s international loans. On January 15, 1939, Kong pulled the plug on the overdraft facility for the Customs with the Central Bank.76 From April 1, 1939, the Central Bank charged 7.5% interest on existing Customs overdrafts.77 The Nationalists decided that they would only pay a share of Boxer Indemnity and other loan obligations proportionate to the revenues collected by Custom Houses still under its effective control. Maze’s hope of being able to continue to operate the Service lay effectively in tatters.

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Maze and the Wang Jingwei Government

In 1939, the Japanese approach to the war changed. Having realized that no one single battlefield victory would compel a Nationalist surrender, they turned to a strategy aimed at degrading Nationalist forces through limited offensives and turning China’s population against it by a sustained bombing campaign. At the same time, it fostered an alternative to the Nationalists. The hope was to turn the conflict into a civil war between the Nationalists and that alternative, with Japan formally in the position of just providing support for the latter. The Japanese settled on Wang Jingwei as the most suitable person to lead this alternative government. Wang had patched up his relationship with Chiang Kaishek in 1932 and joined the Nationalist government that year. In December 1938, however, he decided that further military resistance was foolish. He left Chongqing to begin a peace movement aimed at a negotiated end to the war.78 For the Service, the problem was that if a new Wang Jingwei government insisted on issuing a formal appointment to the IG, this would mean a formal severing of relations with the Nationalist government in Chongqing. A Wang government would not come about until March 1940, but in September 1939, Maze believed that its inauguration was imminent. Maze’s personal secretary, A. S. Campbell, wrote a long memorandum that month about this eventuality. Campbell predicted that a Wang Jingwei government would insist on appointing Maze as the IG for its Custom Houses, that it would demand a written reply, and that it would bar him from continuing as IG for Custom Houses in Nationalist areas.79 Japan probably hoped that steps like these would put pressure on Western countries to distance themselves from Chiang Kaishek in Chongqing and come to terms with a new Japanese order in China. Britain, for one, had significant financial and commercial interests in Japanese-occupied areas. Campbell concluded that the Customs Service “is rapidly forced into an impossible position” because “the position of that loyal body, the Chinese staff, cannot be ignored.” They would be in violation of Nationalist antitreason laws if they accepted appointment in a Wang Jingwei Customs Service. Campbell pointed out to Maze that “the consequences may be serious” for him too.80 According to Campbell, the creation of a Wang Jingwei government left the Customs Service no other option than to withdraw from Japanese-occupied areas.

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Maze became extremely worried. He wrote to Cubbon that, in a meeting at the Japanese embassy with Minister-at-Large Sotamatsu Kato, he had stated, “I was prepared informally to cooperate within limits in respect of the conduct of current work with the Japanese authorities and even with the ‘Reformed Government’; that the method of cooperation was to be left to myself; . . . [but] that official regional control would be tantamount to squashing the integrity of the Customs Service.”81 In an aide-mémoire sent to the British and American ambassadors, he reiterated this stance.82 To Stanley Wright, he wrote that he had been in constant telegraphic contact with “representatives of the interested powers” in London, Paris, and Washington.83 Maze made sure to implicate as many people as possible so that he would not at a later date be hung out to dry. Although a Wang Jingwei government was established, Maze was spared having to make a choice. He wrote to Cubbon that with the help of Kishimoto he had been able to persuade “the Japanese authorities (here and in Tokyo)” not to change his status.84 “An intermediary,” whose identity Maze did not reveal, had suggested to the Japanese that Wang Jingwei would find it “expedient . . . to proceed on the assumption that they are, as it were, the continuation of the former Nanking Government, and as such in their minds the inheritors of all Government Departments, including the Customs Service.”85 Whether or not as a result of Maze’s suggestion, the establishment of the Wang Jingwei government in March 1940 was presented as the return of the central government to Nanjing.86 No new appointment needed to be issued to Maze or to any other Nationalist official in occupied China. The minister of finance of the Wang Jingwei government, Zhou Fohai, merely sent Maze a letter congratulating him on his many years of meritorious service,87 which Maze placed in his desk drawer without replying, thus avoiding the dilemma that the inauguration of the Wang Jingwei government had threatened to create.88 Shortly after, Maze offered Kong Xiangxi an opportunity to dismiss him, which if refused could then be taken as an indication of his support and later used as such. In a letter of May 31, Maze wrote Kong to suggest that he should make preparations for his succession, as he wanted to retire in any case but also because many in the Nationalist leadership were critical of the fact that the Service continued to function in occupied areas. In addition, Maze told Kong that it was sensible to make preparations in case “the worst happened.” He added that he was prepared to stay but only if that

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was really what was wanted.89 Kong wrote shortly after that “your loyalty to the Government and your firmness of purpose and resourcefulness in handling an extremely difficult situation are much appreciated”90 and that he was delighted that “the I.G. has ignored all documents received from the bogus authorities and has maintained a firm stand.”91 By this time, Maze’s attitude toward the Japanese had in fact already hardened. War had broken out in Europe in 1939, and Germany’s alliance with Japan made Japan an enemy of Britain. Maze had concluded that Japan would lose the war: “Japan is in a quandary. She can win battles at a great cost, but she cannot conquer China. China will tire her in the end.”92 In January 1940, Maze refused to bow to Japanese pressure to appoint a Japanese to succeed Coast Inspector L. R. Carrell, who had died in office.93 Maze wrote Cubbon that “it is unreasonable to expect me to place an enemy subject in charge of an important Department of the Customs,” and he threatened the Japanese by telling them that if they insisted, he would “move the Inspectorate to an unoccupied part of the country.”94 Carrell was succeeded by Captain Sabel, a U.S. citizen and the most senior member of the Marine Department after Carrell.95 Maze declined to cooperate with the Japanese in reopening the Yangzi River.96 He wrote Ambassador Clark-Kerr that “in the absence of instructions from, or information regarding the views of, the Chinese Government, I do not intend to move on the matter.”97 Maze rejected a Japanese demand to appoint Japanese Customs officers to Kowloon, install a Japanese bank as the Customs collecting bank there, and enforce the tariff proclaimed by the Wang Jingwei government.98 In 1941, as war between Japan and Britain and the United States became likely, Maze began to prepare for a Japanese takeover. On the advice of Cubbon, in February 1941 he moved any surplus funds held by the Customs Service in Shanghai not to London, hardly a very safe place at the time, but to New York. Cubbon was empowered to draw on these funds to pay half-salaries to all those on leave.99 He evacuated from Shanghai and other ports in Japanese areas as many staff as he believed could be missed,100 and he dispatched confidential Inspectorate archives to Singapore, where they would prove safe not because the Japanese could not take this city, as Maze may have thought, but because the Japanese never found them. Finally, in March 1941, Maze wrote to Clark Kerr that “it is time that the Preventive vessels [at Hong Kong] are immobilized and that the British should there-

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fore consider seizing them.”101 On April 9, the Royal Navy requisitioned six Customs vessels at Hong Kong.102 The Japanese were outraged.103 The Japanese ambassador to the Wang Jingwei government told Maze that he held him responsible for what he described as Britain’s violation of the integrity of the Customs Service,104 thus turning a Maze argument against him. The Japanese punished him by ordering the Yokohama Specie Bank to withhold “payment of the ‘occupied’ ports’ quota to meet Inspectorate expenditure.”105 The Customs Service would have to survive on whatever funds it still had. There would be one more difficulty for Maze. He agreed with a request of Shanghai commissioner Lawford to retire in November 1941. Like other commissioners in occupied ports, Lawford had continued to serve well beyond his official retirement age. Maze wanted to appoint Y. Akatani, who had joined the Customs Service in 1907, perhaps to convince the Japanese once more to allow Customs revenue to be used for the maintenance of the Service. Nonetheless, the appointment of the Shanghai commissionership was a delicate issue. Once again, Maze ensured that he could cover himself. He sent Kong Xiangxi a message informing him of the likely appointment so that he had been given a chance to object. He informed the British Foreign Office, which told Maze that they would prefer him not to appoint Akatani but also stated that “if however you are convinced that Japan will resort to extreme measures, the Foreign Office agree that, rather than disrupt the administration, it would be better to yield.”106 As it happened, the appointment was not made until after Pearl Harbor. At that time, only two Customs commissionerships were held by Japanese, both in ports of little significance, Ichang and Zhifu. Maze had not anticipated that the Japanese would not be prepared to let the Service function in any real way. The pedigree of the Service, his supreme confidence in his own abilities, and perhaps his lingering memories of the Anglo-Japanese alliance were responsible for this giant miscalculation. Maze was not alone. The British and U.S. ambassadors to Japan continued to write about Japanese militarism as an aberration opposed by other more sensible figures in Japan. The Customs agreement between Britain and Japan demonstrates that many in Britain, even opponents of appeasement, believed that it might be possible to work with Japan. It was only the Japanese attack on British positions in East and Southeast Asia and on Pearl Harbor that would finally bury such thinking. For Customs staff

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caught up in Maze’s effort to achieve the impossible, the consequences were grave. Some one hundred of them would spend the years between Pearl Harbor and the fall of Japan in internment camps.

Handing Over to the United States

On December 10, 1942, Li Jianmin (李建民), the head of the Wang Jingwei government’s Customs Affairs Bureau, wrote to Maze that “under instructions of Mr Chow Fu-hai (周佛海, Zhou Fohai), Minister of Finance, you are hereby dismissed and also requested to hand over to Mr Kishimoto, the new Inspector General.”107 What Maze had fought to prevent now came about: the Customs Service was divided into two different sections, one functioning under Kishimoto in Japanese-occupied areas and the other under an Inspectorate established in Chongqing. Kishimoto’s was by far the largest: more than 80 percent of the revenue that the Service still collected was from occupied China.108 The history of the Kishimoto Inspectorate and of the Custom Houses under his control is difficult to reconstruct. After the war, most relevant documents were removed from the archive to wipe the Wang Jingwei period from history. Kishimoto’s circulars were canceled, and those issued from Chongqing in separate series were renumbered to follow on from those issued by Maze before Pearl Harbor. We do know that the Kishimoto Inspectorate abolished the Customs Gold Unit, adopted tariffs favorable to Japanese industry and agriculture, and that most senior positions were allocated to Japanese, most of whom with long careers in the Customs Service.109 Yet, although this can only be conjecture, Kishimoto’s policy seems to have been to limit change as much as he could manage, perhaps with the aim of facilitating a future reunification of the Service. Without further evidence, one should not assume that Kishimoto shared the anti-Chinese and anti-Western aims of his masters. He, too, was a Customs man. As to the Nationalists, they were generally angry with Maze and furious with the British after they surrendered Hong Kong without much of a fight and then used Chinese forces dispatched to Burma to shield the retreat of British forces there to India. They wanted to appoint a Chinese IG, which was prevented by pressure brought by Clark-Kerr and Arthur Young, the U.S. financial advisor.110 On January 7, 1941, Cecil Joly, Tengyue’s

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commissioner, was called to Chongqing, appointed temporary acting IG, and charged with establishing a new Inspectorate.111 Joly would have a horrible time. When he arrived in Chongqing in April 1942, he found “the respect of the I.G. greatly declined.”112 The interport duty was abolished, and the Internal Revenue Bureau was to collect the Wartime Consumption Tax that replaced it,113 leaving the Customs Service without any tax to collect. New Inspectorate secretaries had been appointed, Joly reported to London, “without my being consulted.”114 They had, he went on, “decided many questions before my arrival,” including about the treatment of foreign colleagues, most of whom were to become advisors, if they were retained at all. For the difficulties he encountered, Joly blamed the British collapse in front of Japanese assaults, general “antiforeignism,” and a desire among Chinese Customs officials in unoccupied areas to exploit the opportunity to secure plum Customs jobs.115 Joly’s appointment was on an ad interim basis, and the Nationalists remained committed to appointing a Chinese IG. Kong Xiangxi set in train a covert operation to bring Ding Guitang to Chongqing. Kong probably thought that Ding would be acceptable to Britain and the United States, as Ding was well known among foreigners in China. The mission was led by Zhu Dejun (朱德军), who, like Ding Guitang, hailed from the northeast and whose father Ding knew.116 Zhu made his way to Shanghai, where he met Ding, telling him that “the Central Government hopes that you come to Chongqing as soon as possible to become Inspector General.”117 In March 1942, Ding had been imprisoned in Bridge House, the Kempeitai’s Shanghai headquarters, together with Maze and other senior Customs officials, on suspicion of having provided intelligence to the Nationalists.118 He had been released but was kept under constant surveillance. He was able to leave in December, perhaps with Kishimoto’s help, as Maze claimed after he arrived in Chongqing,119 by gaining permission to travel for medical treatment to Beijing, where his medical records were kept at the Peking Union Medical College.120 He absconded from the train at some station along the line, was helped along by local puppet forces whose commanders had known Zhu Dejun’s father, and arrived in Chongqing on February 7, 1943, two months after the tenth plenum of the KMT Central Committee resolved that a Chinese IG should succeed Maze.121 Ding arrived too late. After his release from Bridge House, Maze secured a berth on a repatriation ship, given priority over other internees perhaps

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because of his age but perhaps also because his reputation and contacts could be expected to enable him to stand up for the remaining internees. His ship arrived in early September 1942 in Lourenço Marques in Portuguese East Africa. Maze’s original plan had been to go to Britain first and then to Chongqing, but he changed his mind, deciding that he would first report back for duty in Chongqing.122 Kong Xiangxi had preferred him to go to Britain, probably wanting him out of the way, but the British government “felt that [Maze’s] presence and influence” in Chongqing was “most desirable.”123 They arranged “Priority A” passage to Calcutta, from where a China Airlines plane took him to Chongqing, where he arrived in December.124 At his insouciant best, Maze sent a dispatch to Kong Xiangxi in which he declared that he had resumed his duties. He could do so because Joly’s appointment letter had stated that Joly would serve “until such time as Frederick Maze arrives in Chungking.”125 Maze thus was able to escape from the compromising position in which he had ended up before Pearl Harbor and conjure up a new situation in which it would not be possible for the Nationalists simply to appoint their own man. He was a “cunning old fox,” as Charles Addis of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank and the Bank of England stated in March 1943.126 Maze’s reception was frosty not just among the Nationalists but also among Customs staff. Kong declined to announce that Maze was back in charge but instead demanded that he account for himself, including for what he had done in Shanghai and why he had not moved the Inspectorate.127 Maze believed that Kong was acting dishonestly, trying to shift the blame on him even though a good deal of the responsibility for what had been done—or not done—rested with Kong. “This typical Oriental chicanery is beneath contempt,”128 he vented to Cubbon in London. Senior Customs staff blamed Maze for the mess they were in and for not having done anything to safeguard their position. Cubbon wrote Joly, “had the former Inspectorate had the foresight to appoint a permanent liaison in Chungking . . . the way would have been paved for the Service to have carried on as before.”129 Instead, “the Service has suffered greatly through the resultant lack of adequate representation.”130 Referring to Customs staff, Joly told Maze that “with their stamina undermined by malnutrition, they are breaking down more and more.”131 Changsha commissioner Gawler wrote to Maze that most no longer had faith in his assurances that he was

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doing his best for them, adding, “in any case, what are promises when there is their mere existence to consider?”132 Maze wrote Cubbon that he too had “observed in Chungking [Chongqing] educated members of the Chinese staff obliged to live in improvised quarters because they cannot afford to live in suitable accommodation; and the Foochow [Fuzhou] Commissioner recently reported that tingchai were obliged to sell not merely their furniture but also their children.”133 The Service was going to the dogs, and Maze had concluded that the inevitable, and long expected, would now finally come to pass. The days of a role for foreigners in the Service were over. Nationalist hostility and a growing corruption problem made the position of the Customs Service irretrievable.134 If convinced that the Japanese would lose the war, he was not certain about the chances of the Nationalists to keep the country together: “It is conceivable that the Communistic Administration in the north and Wang Ching-wei’s bogus government in Nanjing may cause some embarrassment.”135 He believed that the only real option was to leave on the best possible terms that might be had. He told Kong that he had always been sympathetic to the aspirations of the Nationalists but urged the retention of the remaining foreigners as advisors and a gradual transition to full Chinese control.136 A loan was raised for “paying emoluments of American and British employees” in internment, and Kong gave him assurances but no firm undertakings about pay and the retention of foreigners in some capacity.137 Once again, Maze explained his stance as fitting Customs traditions: the Chinese assumption of full control constituted the fulfillment of Robert Hart’s prediction that “the day must come that national and natural forces, always in operation, will eject us from so anomalous a position.”138 Maze may have sincerely believed that he was doing his best, but the Nationalists no longer wanted him, and Customs staff held him responsible for the fate that had befallen them.139 Kong allowed Maze to announce his resumption of charge on March 1.140 He resigned three months later, as surely had been agreed,141 and was given a fulsome farewell thanking him for all he had done for China. Thus the honor of the Customs Service was preserved. By then it was also agreed that Little would be appointed acting IG, with Ding Guitang holding the fort until his arrival.142 The Nationalists opted not to press the issue of the IG-ship when they were negotiating replacements for the unequal treaties, including the restoration to China of foreign concessions and settlements

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as well as the abolition of extraterritoriality. These were important issues not because the Nationalists had any chance of moving into the foreign concessions and settlements any time soon but because they spoke to a century-long history of humiliation and because it took a propaganda advantage away from the Wang Jingwei government. Little’s appointment resulted also from a new U.S. appreciation of the Customs Service. Arthur Young, the U.S. financial advisor, had reversed his earlier opposition to the Customs Service. After Pearl Harbor, he pleaded its cause with Kong Xiangxi.143 “There is in China today,” he stated, “no greater need in any field, apart from the war effort, than for the development and general application of a proper standard of responsibility in the field of public administration.”144 The Customs was to serve as a kernel for such a government. Young’s view was echoed in Washington. In June 1943, a U.S. State Department memorandum noted that “this Government has not in years past taken the active interest in the Customs as exhibited by Britain.”145 However, “for the sake of American commercial interests but also for the sake of China’s own interests,” it had become in the U.S. national interest to “support and pursue a policy looking to the maintenance of an efficient Customs service and a retention of competently trained foreign personnel” until “competent and otherwise satisfactory officers” were ready to replace them. Young and U.S. State Department officials would have blushed had they realized how much they sounded like their British predecessors. But the context was different. Pearl Harbor had ended U.S. isolationism and the United States was cautiously and carefully groping toward a superpower role, one fitting its belief that it was destined to bring freedom and democracy to the world. When during the negotiations about new treaties the issue of the IG came up, the Nationalists suggested to the British a simple exchange of notes confirming an end to the requirement that the Inspector General had to be British. The British alerted the United States, stating that while Britain was willing to release its claim, it proposed to include a statement in the note expressing the hope that the Customs Service would be maintained “as at present constituted in China’s own interest and in the holders of Chinese bonds.”146 The United States expressed support for a British statement to this effect.147 The Nationalists accepted the situation; the abolition of the unequal treaties was the bigger prize. They also believed that they could achieve their aim via the back door. As Kong told Maze, they would appoint

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Little as acting or officiating IG, merge the Inspectorate and the Customs Affairs Office after a decent interval, and then make Little an advisor.148 That did not happen. In April 1944, Little was appointed full IG, at a time when the Nationalists needed the United States more than ever. Little, as a long-serving Customs man and a U.S. citizen, was an obvious choice.149 He was a New Englander from Rhode Island, had earned his BA at Dartmouth College, and had joined the Customs Service in 1914. He had a strong sense of duty, a pronounced streak of puritanism, and a belief in the United States as a force for good in the world.150 There was worry about his health, which had broken down in 1937, as it would do again ten years later, compelling him to spend some time at the Mayo Clinic. He wrote Ding Guitang from there that there was nothing physically wrong with him but that he was “seriously underweight. They advised a prolonged period of rest, freedom from responsibility, and a rich diet!”151 Following his repatriation from Guangzhou, he had joined the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, which was the forerunner of the CIA, but when approached by Kong to return to China, he “felt bound in duty,” as he stated to the U.S. State Department, “to accept the post . . . to prevent an apparently planned reorganization of the Customs to eliminate therefrom the foreign officers of various nationalities.”152 Unlike Maze, Little was not yet prepared to let that happen. In steering the Service during the last years of the war, Little gave priority to fighting corruption. The survival of the Customs Service, he believed, depended on “the personal honesty of the individual employee.”153 He rejected the argument that “because times are hard and Customs pay low, we should be more lenient in dealing with men who have accepted bribes, falsified accounts, etc.” This was a time for personal sacrifice, he seems to have believed, so that the good name of the Customs Service could be preserved. It must have been difficult for Little to have to issue Chongqing circular 610 of September 20, 1943, which had been negotiated before his arrival in August.154 The circular “compulsory retired” eighty-six foreign employees, including many internees. Their retirement was backdated to July 31, 1943,155 meaning that they would be entitled to benefits only up to that date. A batch of internees repatriated in the fall of 1943 on the USS Gripsholm learned their fate only upon their arrival back home.156 Unsurprisingly, they received the news with “with considerable disappointment and, yes, disgust.”157

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Under Little, a measure of stability returned to the Customs Service, but it lost the independence it once had. It had been excluded from the provisions of the Treasury Law, but that exemption was lifted in May 1942. From then on, its budgets would be approved by the Nationalists. In December 1943, Chiang Kaishek ordered the abolition of the Wartime Consumption Tax on the grounds that it was “vexatious,”158 with the result that the Service no longer had a significant tax to collect. It only supervised a few Custom Houses, and at these its main responsibility was checking for contraband.159 More usefully, Ding Guitang was sent to Xinjiang, an area that had just returned to Nationalist control after it had been occupied by the Soviets, and he there established a series of Custom Houses to assert Nationalist authority. That was the kind of work the Customs Service had always been good at. Little focused largely on postwar planning, establishing a Planning Secretariat to draw up detailed plans for the Service’s return to the coast.160 The result was that the Customs Service would be much better prepared to resume functioning in Japanese-occupied areas than other Nationalist bureaucracies.

THE FAILURE OF THE POSTWAR REHABILITATION EFFORT

Japan’s acceptance on August 15 of the Potsdam Declaration, in which the Allies demanded Japan’s unconditional surrender, ended Japan’s gambit to establish its dominance over East Asia. But that only opened a whole lot of other difficult questions, including about the future of European empires, the position of China in Asia, and the role that the United States and the Soviet Union were going to play. At this point nul, the Nationalists, understandably, tried to capture the initiative. They rushed back to the coast to retrieve their prewar position and to achieve, finally, their historical mission of transforming China into a modern cohesive nation-state ruled by Chinese. They would fail because of hyperinflation, the slow recovery of international trade, intrabureaucratic rivalries, a lack of foreign support, and the fact that their mobilizational strategies during the War of Resistance had allowed them to outlast Japan, but only at the price of much social and political resentment. During this period, the Service continued to battle for its future with some success, but in the end it bowed to the inevitable.

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The Return to the Coast

The immediate takeover went smoothly enough. Two weeks after Japan’s surrender, Ding Guitang flew from the Zhijiang Air Base of the United States’ 14th Air Force in Hunan to Nanjing, where he arrived on August 31.161 After meeting with He Yingqin, the commander-in-chief, and other Nationalist officials, he moved on to Shanghai to start Customs rehabilitation work. Kishimoto had paid off all Japanese employees on August 15, given them their pension benefits, and arranged their transport home. He resigned a week later, handing authority over to Commissioner Qiu Zuoqi, instructing him to take charge temporarily of the Shanghai Office of the Inspectorate. Ding assumed control of that office on September 12 and of the Shanghai Custom House the next day. He reported to Little that except for the removal of “railings and pipings,” Custom Service buildings and the archives were “in good order.”162 He put in a good word for his former colleagues, writing that “the ex-Japanese employees, especially the older ones, were more or less responsible for keeping Customs property and archives intact.”163 Having a virtually intact archive was important, as it would make it easy to reclaim property, deal with personnel issues, resume functioning, and of course claim damages. Ding acquitted himself of the task he faced with customary deftness. During a trip to Nanjing, he was able to have the Service exempted from Chiang Kaishek’s order that a single committee should supervise the resumption of control, arguing that precious time would thereby be lost.164 He thus was able to steal a march on his colleagues in other Nationalist agencies. In late November, he reported to Little that the Shanghai Customs Service was in control of “500 godowns and huge quantities of materials.”165 He transferred personnel from Nanjing, Ningbo, Zhenjiang, Suzhou, Hangzhou, and even from distant Bengbu and Anqing in Anhui Province to guard these new and highly valuable assets. Ding also restored the 1934 tariff, abolished the interport duty that had continued to be collected in occupied areas, fused the foreign and Chinese Customs clubs, and announced that the exchange rate between the Customs Gold Unit and the Nationalist Currency would stand at 1 to 20.166 He was appointed an expert to the “Office of Special Financial Representatives.”167 Ding’s success resulted from his talents as a fixer and negotiator able to get on well with foreigners. He built good relations with Americans in

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Shanghai, who were in effective control of the port. In October 1945, Ding negotiated with the U.S. navy for the supply of two rescue-and-salvage ships, two buoy tenders, two survey ships, two coastal patrol ships, and two minesweepers, as well as six smaller vessels able to operate on the Yangzi River.168 That allowed Captain Everest, the coast inspector ad interim until Captain Fred Sabel’s arrival, to begin fixing all the buoys, beacons, and lights that had been destroyed.169 To thank “American authorities in Shanghai [who] have done their best to help us in all possible ways,”170 Ding hosted a dinner on December 8, the fourth anniversary of Pearl Harbor, to welcome the arrival of Sabel three days earlier on the USS Grant,171 the first steamer to arrive at Shanghai after the war.172 The thirty-two mostly American guests included the top brass of the American military in Shanghai, including Commodore E. E. Duvall Jr., the leading naval officer in Shanghai, and General B. A. Johnson, in charge of the Foreign Liquidation Commission’s Shanghai office. Ding’s guests were seated at four round dinner tables decorated with fresh flowers, to feast on a sumptuous Chinese banquet. For their drinks, guests could choose between fruit juice; Canadian Club, John Haig, and Johnnie Walker Black Label whiskies; Hennessey and John Exshaw no. 1 brandy; and Chinese Shaoxing wine. Fresh fruit and Hills Brothers coffee were served after the meal, and those who wished could smoke Three Castle, Camel, Garrick, and Cavalcade cigarettes, or Alhambra cigars—all luxuries probably only available because they had been brought in by the USS Grant and costing a vast sum of money.173 The expense of the dinner left Little, back in Chongqing, apoplectic, as “entertainment on such a lavish scale often defeats its own purpose.”174 Ding, well aware of the puritanical instincts of his boss, put in his claim after the dinner had been given.175 He probably had not wanted to be outhosted in his own country and thought of the party as a good investment to secure a favorable attitude from the Americans. Although the Customs Service concentrated its efforts on Shanghai in accordance with its prewar planning, naturally it also resumed as quickly as possible control over Custom Houses elsewhere. For instance, on September 24, Acting Deputy Commissioner Lin Lianfang (林联芳) was put in temporary charge of the Hankou Custom House.176 On September 15, Lin left Chongqing on the SS Ming Lien, with nine other Customs employees and “500 officials of various units of the Central Government.”177 They reached Hankou after four days, having slept on deck and having benefitted

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from Japanese help sailing safely through a mined portion of the Yangzi River. At Shashi, they found the Custom House demolished. In Hankou, the Sixth War Zone Headquarters authorized Lin to take charge of all Customs property, as well as all stations the Japanese had established to collect interport duty. The Xiamen Custom House was taken over by C. P. Rouse, a British commissioner, on October 1. Huo Chih Chien (霍启谦, Huo Qiqian) was appointed Guangzhou Custom commissioner on October 6.178

A Cornucopia of Trouble

The Service had responded quickly to the outbreak of peace. It reopened Custom Houses, resumed its prewar functions, and pocketed a vast mass of materials the Japanese abandoned. It would be nice to believe that when Ding Guitang sat down at his banquet on December 8, he was in a relaxed mood, knowing that he had done as well as could be expected during the previous three months and could look toward the future with confidence. However, this is unlikely to have been the case. His correspondence of this period reveals a Custom Service rapidly being overwhelmed by a growing range of problems. Already in early October, Ding reported to Little that Shanghai’s population had swollen to five million people because of the influx of a great number of wealthy refugees who had fled the Communists.179 Accommodation was in short supply; landlords had so little faith in any authority that they charged low rents but insisted on “key money” (订费, dingfei) of “one or two gold bars for one room, or five to ten for one house.”180 When Ding arrived back in Shanghai, prices were lower than in Chongqing, but they quickly began to shoot up. In Chongqing, talks between Chiang Kaishek and Mao Zedong had not gone well, and in December the United States dispatched George Marshall, the U.S. chief of staff during World War II on a mediation mission. Dependence on the United States, the Communist revolution, rapidly worsening inflation, and rivalries between Nationalist bureaucracies had grown into major difficulties, likely to have prevented Ding from enjoying his banquet with an untroubled mind. Personnel issues are never easy, as anyone knows who has had a little administrative experience; those the Customs Service faced after the war were horrendous. Morale was at a low ebb, pay was insufficient, those who had

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stayed in occupied China were suspected of collaboration, and that longfestering issue, how to achieve the complete Sinification of the Service, continued to breed resentment. In addition, the Customs was understaffed. Ding Guitang wrote to Little on October 8, 1945, that while the authorized establishment of the Service was two thousand persons, he believed that an additional five thousand were required for the “liberated areas and Manchuria and Formosa.”181 Rather than gaining staff, the Service was shedding it. The Service lost 465 Japanese and sixteen Italian employees as there was no place in the postwar Service for ex-Axis persons,182 although one of the Italians, S. Toscani, was retained because he had paid for his opposition to Mussolini and to the Japanese by being interned at Weixian in Shandong Province. In addition, the Service would have lost 880 staff hired under the Kishimoto regime had it conformed to regulations.183 Ding did fire them, but he rehired nearly all back immediately after holding a “competitive examination” on September 23.184 If that could still be justified because of the Nationalists’ general policy of treating wartime behavior with understanding and because officials were not held to have acted treasonably if they merely stayed in their post, Ding also decided to retain “temporarily” senior staff at the level of deputy commissioner and above.185 This was deeply controversial because in November 1943, the Inspectorate had ordered all staff of the rank of deputy commissioner and above to make their way to unoccupied China. If they failed to comply, unless they were prevented from doing so by force majeure, they would be dismissed with no possibility of later reinstatement.186 Little was flabbergasted at Ding’s action, protesting, “I have no authority to ignore, even temporarily” the government’s order that “staff of Deputy Commissioner rank and above are to be dismissed.”187 However, Chang Fu-yun, the director general of the Customs Affairs Office, supported Ding. He was able to secure approval for the idea that the investigation of senior officials should not be conducted by the courts, as was the case for all other bureaucracies, but that a Customs committee should do so.188 Thus was formed the Staff Investigation Committee for Customs Personnel in Occupied Areas (沦陷区官员审查委员会, Lunxianqu Guanyuan Jiancha Weiyuanhui).189 The committee asked senior staff to submit evidence that force majeure had prevented them from leaving Japanese-controlled

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China. It upheld the claims of all applicants except that of Qiu Zuoqi, because “he had attended as Kishimoto’s representative the funeral of Wang Jingwei,” who had died in November 1944. The committee also decided to hand Sam Peh So (沈博尘, Shen Bochen) to the local authorities on suspicion of treason, a case to which I shall return later.190 This was a whitewash. As Ding explained to Little, Chang Fu-yun wanted “to shield the Customs from criticism for retaining former staff.”191 In protecting senior staff who had complied with the 1943 order, Ding Guitang and Chang Fu-yun were not merely protecting those with whom they had worked closely before Pearl Harbor. Ding regarded them “as better qualified in education, experience, and ability than those stationed in Free China before the outbreak of the Pacific War.”192 If protecting their own faction was part of their aim, they also were motivated to keep foreigners out. Ding replied to Little’s criticism by stating that the days in which the Service “would be run by foreign colleagues for another hundred years” had come to an end.193 To have some foreigners would be “useful,” he maintained, but “there is no necessity, from an administrative point of view,”194 and “the general public does not want foreigners in charge of the outdoor.”195 Ding tried to prevent attempts by Little to appoint U.S. commissioners to prominent positions. He objected to Carl Neprud’s appointment as Shanghai Customs commissioner, because with Captain Sabel as coast inspector and Little as IG, “if Mr Neprud is appointed Shanghai Commissioner, the three Customs chiefs in Shanghai will all be American.”196 Neprud would be appointed head of the general office of the Shanghai Custom House, a less visible post. The Customs Affairs Office blocked Little’s bids to appoint foreign Customs commissioners to Tianjin and Guangzhou.197 The Nationalists—and the Customs Service—may have been dependent on the Americans, but they did not want a return to the prewar situation in which few Chinese occupied top positions in the Customs Service. As to the internees, on September 7 Ding visited the Pudong Camp, “where a large number of Customs staff and their families were interned.” He handed each “thirty tins of cigarettes as a token of sympathy” and passed on a message from Little, which made predictable statements about hopes for a new era of peace and the recovery of mental and physical health, while it also tried to be assuring by stating that he was lobbying the Ministry of

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Finance for improved financial treatment.198 Those who had escaped the 1943 cull were offered home leave for half a year. A number would take up this offer; others decided to return to work immediately. Ding did have his comeuppance. Driving his efforts was an attempt to construct a narrative of the Custom Service as a thoroughly patriotic organization that had stood steadfast during the Japanese occupation and had consistently acted honorably and reputably. The blow was, predictably, delivered by the one person the Staff Investigation Committee had decided to hand to the Shanghai courts to be tried as a traitor. This was the aforementioned Shen Bochen.199 He took revenge and accused Ding at the Shanghai Supreme Court of collaboration, corruption during and after the war, and shielding family and friends.200 Shen alleged that Ding made him the sacrificial lamb for the Service’s wartime misdeeds to punish him for having accused in 1936 the Ji’nan Custom commissioner Li Tung-wha (李桐华, Li Tonghua) of sugar smuggling.201 The court exonerated Ding on the basis of his own testimony, a supportive statement by Little, and letters from Japanese officials and the Kempeitai demonstrating that Shen had colluded with them.202 The Service closed ranks against lowly Tidewaiter Shen. Nonetheless, and whatever the truth, the case was damaging. It lifted the veil of secrecy on what had been done in practice during the war and made clear that it was just as capable of corruption as other bureaucracies. If personnel issues made the postwar recovery of the Customs Service difficult, the institutional environment too deteriorated. If Chang Fu-yun at the Customs Affairs Office and some senior KMT leaders such as Song Ziwen remained fans, few others were. When Chang Fu-yun arrived in Nanjing, he was denied access to the Nanjing Office of the Inspectorate, with “Kuomintang big shots” pressuring him to accept the situation.203 Soon after the end of the war, the Nationalists passed a law abolishing the Inspectorate and incorporating its functions into those of the Customs Affairs Office. This was not implemented only because Song Ziwen, now president of the Executive Yuan, opposed it, dealing with the difficulty by simply not passing the order to Chang’s Customs Affairs Office,204 allowing him to ignore it. The spaces that Hart had so carefully marked out to allow the Customs Service to demonstrate its usefulness were being shut down one after the other. In direct competition with the Service, during the war General Dai Li had been made director general of the Preventive Bureau of the Ministry of

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Finance. It had established “inspection posts at the strategical points along the land and water lines to inspect passengers, detect traitors, to prevent subversive movements, and at the same time to inspect cargoes.”205 After the war, the Preventive Bureau was closed, and Dai Li’s power declined, but he still managed to establish a Communications Police under the Ministry of Communications. In September 1946, Song Ziwen convened meetings involving Dai Li, Little, and Ding, which resulted in an agreement that the Customs Service would have responsibility for the prevention of smuggling, and the Communications Police would focus on investigating subversive activities.206 If this looked workable on paper, it was not in practice. One device Dai Li used to undermine the Service was to keep up a steady stream of accusations of corruption. While many were probably true, the point really was to trigger personal orders by Chiang Kaishek to investigate Dai’s allegations, thus tying the Service up in inquests that were as time consuming as they were demoralizing.207 Dai Li also attempted to take over the Service from within. He wanted his agents to be made tidewaiters in Shanghai, but this was blocked by Song Ziwen.208 Other bureaucracies also attempted to obtain control over parts of the Service’s portfolio of functions. In October 1947, the Ministry of Communications asserted authority over “over aids to navigation, [and] berthing in harbours,” speaking, in Ding’s words, “a lot of nonsense about sovereign rights, extra-territoriality,” and so on.209 Nothing undermined the Service or expressed the general Nationalist attitude toward the Service as much as the deliberate policy to pay Customs staff less than other Nationalist officials. During the war, the Service had lost the right to set its own pay. As early as January 8, 1946, Little wrote Song Ziwen that “the general inadequacy of Customs pay (1) to meet living costs and (2) to retain our staff ” made it impossible to combat widespread corruption.210 Little appealed to Song, writing that unless pay was improved, he would be unable to deal effectively with corruption.211 He acknowledged that it had become an issue during the War of Resistance in unoccupied China and that as to “the occupied area, I am told that corruption was the rule rather than the exception.”212 Staff complained that “the Postal employees and those in the Shanghai Power Company, Telephone Company, Tramway Company, and the China Merchants [Steam Navigation Company] are much better paid.”213 Morale was disintegrating because “now victory has come at long last but there does not seem to be any prospect

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for the improvement of our treatment.”214 By September 1947, the situation had become so desperate that Customs staff asked for an additional month’s pay just to tide them over the Mid-Autumn Festival.215 In October 1948, the senior Chinese staff in Shanghai submitted a collective petition to Little, arguing that “the Customs pay for Chinese staff is now only ten to forty-five percent of pre-war rates” so that “a general spirit of despondency permeates the bulk of the staff.”216 The Customs Service was left to wither on the vine. As a result, it turned into a self-serving and exploitative organization. During the war, Customs staff had established so-called cooperative societies. Servicing no less than three thousand members in Shanghai alone, many of whom were not “service listed,” the societies provided relief to its members by distributing “at a nominal price daily necessities.”217 It could supply these because of the seizures Customs Service staff made of “wheat, flour, cloth, tea, etc.”218 Neither Ding nor Little liked the cooperative societies, knowing that they lived off “abuse and corruption.” They contemplated abolishing them but decided that they should be retained temporarily because of the terrible economic situation.219 An institution that served society had become one that used its powers to serve its members. If the conditions of the War of Resistance and the Civil War made that development understandable, it nonetheless also undermined its reputation. Little, true to his background, worked hard to combat the rot that had set in. He appointed investigation commissioners who toured Custom Houses to investigate them. One of these, a man named Wei Kung Shuo, in 1946 pleaded with Little to rescind his order for him to go Xiamen. He feared that Xiamen smugglers would hire “local rascals” to kill him. Wei recounted how at Kunming the acting deputy commissioner had invited him to his home to “demonstrate his revolver and his pistol.” He had been shadowed by an armed guard throughout his stay in the city. In Changsha, he was told by one suspect that the military had told him that they would protect him as “we can fix the Inspector with a grenade.”220 Little could also shoot himself in the foot. In September 1947, the Ministry of Finance refused to release a scheduled Sterling allotment because the Customs Service had seized the luggage of the sister-in-law of Zhang Jia’ao, who, it will remembered, had worked closely with Francis Aglen and was the director general of the Bank of China. Ding wrote Little, “it was in my opinion very impolitic in the interests of the Customs Service to strictly enforce Customs

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laws.”221 Civil War China was not a good place for a straight-laced New Englander. The Customs had become isolated not only in China but also internationally. Britain had its hands full in India, which moved to independence and partition during these years. Japan was out of the picture. What precisely the USSR wanted is not clear, but the Soviets were no friends of the Customs Service. That left the United States, but it was in occupation of Japan, it did not need China for any strategic or economic reason, and it was far more concerned about the rise of leftist and communist movements in Europe. When it became clear that the Nationalists would lose the Civil War unless it received major U.S. aid, the U.S. Congress did pass the China Aid Act of 1948. Sabel had been dispatched to Washington to plead the Service’s case. He reported back that although about US$20 million had been allocated to Customs rehabilitation work, “I feel that a great opportunity has been lost . . . no one had a clear understanding of what is required in China and no definite program in connection with the aid to China was available.222 The United States was not prepared to go to bat for the Customs Service as Britain had in the past and declined to make it a significant element of its China policy. In 1947, Little buckled under the pressure and was sent back to the United States to recuperate. Once patched up, to his credit, he returned to China, determined not to be like Maze and leave his staff in the lurch. His last year in China was awful, but there were a few compensations. In 1948, he bought pieces by China’s most famous contemporary painters, including Qi Baishi (齐白石) and Xu Beihong (徐悲鸿),223 whose works now probably are worth more than the amount of U.S. aid allocated to the Customs rehabilitation project. When he left, Little made sure to take with him a copy of the correspondence between Hart and Campbell,224 somewhat hypocritically: he had venomously pursued Maze for trying to keep his hands on the Hart correspondence.225 In short, during the Civil War, the conditions that had allowed the Customs Service to exist and prosper in the past disappeared. The Nationalists had turned against it. No foreign power was prepared to back it up or was in a position to do so. The Service lost its discipline and cohesion and, worse, its reputation. The Service could only have survived if trade had been restored, cities had been revitalized, and prewar transnational connections had been revived. None of that happened. Except for the United States, the

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world had become poor. Leftist and nationalist movements wanted a new sort of modernity and not a return to the prewar period. The Cold War created a new division between capitalist and communist countries, one that the Service would not be able to bridge. The transnationalism that had flourished between the middle of the nineteenth and the middle of the twentieth century disappeared. The Service was out of time.

THE END OF THE SERVICE

I do not propose to dwell long on the final expiration of the Customs Service. The deeper causes of death are clear enough and have already been analyzed above. In any case, reconstructing the final sequence of events in any detail is impossible, as we would need access to CCP archives, and they remain firmly closed. Thus, I can only offer a brief sketch. Within days after Japan’s surrender, the threat the Communists posed became clear when they seized the most important ports in northeastern Shandong, including Weihai, Yantai, and Longkou,226 crucial for the Communists because of the trade in salt, opium, cotton, and gold they conducted through these ports and also for ferrying cadres and troops to northeastern China, from which they would conquer the rest of the country a few years later. The Communists are generally thought to have followed a cautious policy toward the areas they occupied, seeking to win over as many as they could rather than impose a new revolutionary order at gunpoint. Letters by Customs staff in northern Shandong from early 1946 suggest that this was true for that area. The Customs Service was left in place, and staff received salaries, even though only at a minimal level. They were sent to reeducation camps to learn what the Communists were all about.227 The Communists also allowed Customs staff to leave for Nationalist areas, probably to reduce the pressure on resources. Yet revolutions are never bloodless. The Nationalists retook the area for a brief period in October 1947. Han Zhaolian, who was appointed the Zhifu Customs commissioner, reported to Little that the Communists had spread mines throughout Yantai when they left. He added that “an unhappy phenomenon is that people who underwent tremendous suffering at the hands of the Communists on account of accusations against them by their enemies now come back to take revenge.

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The general opinion is that if the Communists one day stage a return, there would most likely be a massacre.”228 It should have been clear early on that the Customs Service would have a low place in the new Communist order. When the Communists took Tianjin in 1949, they grouped the city’s government organs into three classes. The first consisted of the postal service, the railways, the telegraph, and the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company. The second consisted of the banking sector, and the third was made up of the administrative agencies that the Communists declared least useful. The Customs Service belonged to the third group.229 When a month later the Communists took Qingdao, a Customs report sent to the Inspectorate in Shanghai stated that the “postal Service is treated much better.”230 Even so, most Chinese staff did not move to Taiwan. The Nationalists had become a byword for incompetence and corruption, they had ended up treating the Customs Service as an unwanted stepchild, and their odds of surviving in Taiwan were not considered good until the United States dispatched the Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Straits in the summer of 1950, after the Korean War began. Chinese staff of the Service also stayed put because it was believed that its tradition of usefulness and service would carry it through yet another change of rulers. A Shanghai District Staff Association petition to Little and Ding of March 1949 put it this way: At the present juncture when peace or war is still a matter of uncertainty, it seems necessary for the Service to follow the old tradition and maintain its original stand—let not the political change of a temporary nature affect the Service. The final benefit of the nation should be our aim and no anxiety should be caused by the passing difficulties that may be forthcoming.231

The petition noted that Customs staff in Tianjin and Beiping had stayed in their posts and that they had been able to restore trade between Tianjin and ports to the south.232 Even if the expectation was that normal trade would resume fairly soon after the Communist takeover, there would still be a period of upheaval, and so the Service made preparations. It stocked up. In Shanghai and no doubt elsewhere, the Service purchased large amounts of food, cooking oil, and other daily necessities. In early 1949, an Emergency Committee was established, with sections for accounting, purchasing, transport, protection

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and rescue, and planning. Inevitably, Ding Guitang was in charge of the committee.233 The plan was to be able to provide staff with all that they would need for at least three months.234 By the end of March, more than enough rice and flour had been laid in to do so.235 Supplies would be distributed to staff when needed in small amounts to prevent them from selling them on the black market. Besides purchasing foodstuffs and other daily necessities, the committee purchased silver coins whenever market conditions allowed.236 If one concern was surviving the arrival of the Communists, another was avoiding what had happened after Pearl Harbor, when the Service had become divided. In January 1949, the Inspectorate began to plan for how to keep the Service together “for the good of the country.”237 Two scenarios were envisioned, one in which the Nationalists would order the Inspectorate away from Shanghai and one if they allowed it to stay. In the first case, a Shanghai Office of the Inspectorate would be established under a “suitable officer.” Little, who as IG would have to stay with the Nationalists, was to do everything possible to “protect him if [the] present government regains the north.”238 In the second case, the Inspectorate would make contact with the Communists and act under force majeure, once more taking advantage of that useful device, while a regional Inspectorate headed by a deputy IG or a senior commissioner would manage Custom Houses in Nationalist areas. This arrangement would allow “a ready and smooth re-unification.”239 As it turned out, the Nationalists would order the Inspectorate south. Little left Shanghai in May 1949, moving to Guangzhou with the Nationalist government to establish a Guangzhou Inspectorate Office there. Only a few staff traveled with Little, claiming a “lack of transportation facilities.”240 It only made sense to try to come to an understanding with the Communists before they arrived. Ding Guitang sent representatives to Hong Kong in January to make contact with Communist secret agents. It is not clear whether Little knew about this or not. Ding’s representatives approached Pan Hannian (潘汉年), one of the Communists’ most important secret agents.241 Pan asked for instructions from Zhou Enlai, who indicated that, as long as the Customs Service preserved its archives, its warehouses, and its assets, all staff would be allowed to keep their posts and their salaries. This did not mean that Ding had already decided to throw in his lot with the Communists. After Little arrived in Guangzhou, he reported to the

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Ministry of Finance that he had not believed it necessary to compel senior Shanghai staff to come to Guangzhou. Ding objected to Little’s phrasing: it might be taken to indicate that Shanghai staff had disobeyed his orders. Ding wrote that “it was clearly understood that we would stay here by your order so that our status in the Customs would not be affected.”242 He wanted Little to make the situation crystal clear to the Ministry of Finance. Ding was just making sure to cover all possibilities when he contacted the Communists. The Communists entered Shanghai on May 26, 1949. As promised, they retained the original staff. In a letter to Shanghai, Little wrote that he was glad that the “new authorities thus correctly recognize non-political and civil service nature of the Customs.” He suggested that the Shanghai Office of the Inspectorate request permission from the Communists for the Shanghai Office to continue to use the wireless: “we still are one Service which should be kept united in interest of the Chinese people and future of trade, lights, etc.”243 He sounded much like Maze. That permission is unlikely to have been granted, but the request illustrates that the preservation of the Customs Service was still considered a key objective, as Maze did when the Japanese arrived, and that it was believed that, by subordinating the Service to the Communists and demonstrating that it was willing to work for them, the Service would be able to survive. Little would not stay in Guangzhou for very long. The Communists seized the city in October 1949, forcing Little to move on to Taipei. With Communist forces massing on China’s eastern seaboard in preparation for an invasion, which was called off only when in the summer of 1950 President Truman ordered the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait, the future looked grim. Little decided that it was time to go and applied for leave. On January 5, 1950, Yan Xishan, the man who had seized (or not) the Tianjin Custom House and had dominated Shanxi Province from the 1911 Revolution until 1949, and who now had the title, if not the substance, of being the chairman of the Executive Yuan of the Republic of China, addressed Lester Little at a small ceremony. He praised Little for all he had done, including for ensuring that the craft of the Customs Preventive Fleet had been sent to Taiwan and also for transporting China’s bullion there.244 Yan expressed the wish that he would return after his leave. Little would not do so.245 Staff Secretary Luo Qingxiang (罗清祥) and Chief Secretary Fang

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Du (方度) took over as officiating IGs until more permanent arrangements could be made. Thus came to an end the era in which a foreigner had been in charge of a major branch of the Chinese government. Back in the People’s Republic of China, the crackdown came in 1952. After 1949, the Communists went about establishing the People’s Republic with skill, energy, and decisiveness. Inflation was brought under control, weapons were taken out of society, cities were emptied out, banditry was suppressed, and the peasantry was put back to work, with land reform giving them ownership of land and hence enhanced motivation to produce the food the country needed. Party cells were inserted into government institutions and businesses to keep a watch on them. Their senior members, especially those about whose loyalty there was doubt, were sent to Universities of Revolution (革命大学) to learn what the new China would be all about and to have their backgrounds investigated. But otherwise upheaval was kept to a minimum, and people were given a chance to buy into the new order. The People’s Republic stood for hope: overseas Chinese flocked back to China, believing that a new dawn had broken out and that China needed and wanted their help. For the Customs, hopes were dashed when in 1952 the CCP Party Small Group in the Inspectorate under Li Bangding (李邦定) launched a savings campaign (节约运动, jieyue yundong). This was part of the Three Anti Campaign against corruption, waste, and collusion with the enemy. It investigated the accounts of China’s Custom Houses to uncover foreign currency holdings. Warehouses were checked to find what had been snuck away or confiscated when foreigners and wealthy Chinese departed. It soon became clear that quite a bit had. A report on the Jiangmen Customs claimed that it had in its possession goods and food with a value US$56 million.246 The Jiulong Customs had in its accounts HK$306,203, plus an unspecified amount in gold.247 The Wuhan Customs was discovered to have one thousand kilograms of the highly valuable element tungsten, of which China was a key world supplier, as well as twenty thousand kilograms of iron nails and ninety-six cases of paper.248 In a report of August 16, 1952, the party group in charge of the Three Anti Movement in the Customs Service summarized its progress. The party group claimed that the campaign had been held in a “healthy” manner, meaning that it had stuck to the principle that “a few are dealt with strictly, but most with leniency” (少数从严， 多数从宽, shaoshu cong yan,

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duoshu cong kuan). It had found 117 “Big Tigers,” that is people who had been found to have been corrupt to the tune of 10 million yuan, and 269 “Small Tigers,” who had embezzled between ten and one million yuan, and a further 1,162 Customs staff had been found guilty of lesser levels of corruption. To put the yuan figures into context, in 1955 the People’s Republic of China carried out a currency revaluation whereby 10,000 yuan became 1 yuan. About half of the gains from corruption had been recovered. Seventy staffmembers had been found guilty of criminal acts and hence probably thrown into jail; 1,192 were given an administrative punishment, presumably demotions. The party group also discovered that 572 “old Customs staff ” had maintained contact with “imperialists,” including merchants and special agents, and smuggling was continuing on a large scale in southern and eastern China. Up to the date of the report, seventeen staff members had committed suicide.249 The campaign was not just about uncovering wrongdoing and recovering financial assets and commodities. The aim was also to change minds. Customs staff involved in the Savings Campaign were asked to write “reflection and self-criticism statements” (反省检讨书, fanxing jiantao shu).250 In one of these, the author wrote that initially he had supported the Three Anti Campaign, believing that he had nothing of which he needed to be ashamed. But the campaign had taught him that he had indeed been infected by “old thinking” and had not been able to overcome his “individualism” and “bourgeois” habits. Now he realized, he wrote, that throughout his career he had assisted British and American imperialists. He had initially failed to engage “genuinely and actively” in the campaign and so had harmed “the people’s cause,” but now he had learned better. In the rest of his confession, which ran to many pages, he set out in detail what corrupt practices had taken place in Customs departments in which he had worked and then provided information on his colleagues. Without knowing more about the context and the author, we cannot know to what extent the author of this confession was being sincere or simply formulaic. But that does not really matter. The values and traditions for which the Service were repudiated and its history denied. Thus the curtain came down on the Customs Service.

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Epilogue

ECHOES AND SHADOWS

A book must end with regrets. Writing history, or any writing, is an exercise in imperfection, and having to end means that I will no longer be able to correct the many errors that remain. In addition, having to stop also means having to say farewell to, or at least to distance myself from, the people—and their affairs, histories, memories, and activities—who have been central to the story I have attempted to narrate and with whom I have spent a great deal of time. As I read through the correspondences of Hart, Aglen, Maze, Little, Ding Guitang, and others, in which in letter after letter they recorded their lives month by month, week by week, or even day by day, I have come to see them as individuals, some interesting, shrewd, and generous, others haughty, blinkered, and selfish, most a combination of these things, but in all cases very much alive, and human, and I shall miss their company. Any historian must guard against identifying himself with the subjects of his work, but he must also remain aware that those he writes about are human beings and not just avatars for ideas, movements, forces, or events. One of the great pleasures of studying the history of the Customs Service has been, first, to read in the archives in Nanjing about a Custom House somewhere in China, consulting the correspondences of its commissioners,

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looking at the blueprints of its facilities, and leafing through dossiers about events and affairs in which it became embroiled—and, then, to go on a field trip to see what still remained. One such journey in 2006 took me to Wuhu, the city on the Yangzi River where Joly in 1937 waited for the coming Japanese onslaught and developed a new respect for the country in which he spent his career. As my companions and I drove to the waterfront, we came upon a sight all too familiar in today’s China: a whole neighborhood flattened to make way for a new high-rise development. Astonishingly, the one building that had been spared demolition and that loomed up out of the sea of rubble was the old Wuhu Custom House. The site plans for the new development pasted on a billboard along the road made clear that Wuhu’s urban planners had meant to destroy it also. Upon asking, I learned that after the work had begun, they decided to spare it, in the belief, I assumed, that its presence would increase the value of what they were building. The Customs past was no longer one to be erased but had become worth preserving. The red PRC flag now flies from a tall flagpole on top of a fully restored Wuhu Customs House. Another such trip in the autumn of the same year took me to Gaoyou (高邮), a small town along the Grand Canal near Yangzhou in Jiangsu Province, briefly in the Service’s orbit when it administered a Native Customs station there. Gaoyou is the home of one of the first postal stations in Chinese history, hence its Chinese name “high post,” having had a post office already in the Qin Dynasty, the dynasty that unified the country in the third century BC. Wanting to attract tourists, Gaoyou officials had restored the post office in the angular architectural style of pre-Song China, noting on a placard mounted on a wall that Marco Polo had once visited the place. A modern post office was open right next to it. For those who wanted to mail a letter, a post box stood outside its entrance. It drew my attention because it was not in the same style as other post boxes in China today. It was round, made of cast iron, stood on a pedestal, its color was green, yellow round discs adorned its top, and it had an overhanging rim to protect the mail slot from rain. It thus conformed, substantially, to the design of post boxes as laid down in circular 156 of December 1906 of the Imperial Post Office of China.1 China’s modern national post office was established by Robert Hart in 1897, although Hart had for decades worked to gain permission for it. It was separated from the Customs Service in 1911. Green was not an obvious color for post

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boxes. Those in Victorian England were red, as they remain in the United Kingdom today. Hart used the color green regularly in Customs flags and ensigns, and although he never explained why, it may have been a nod to his Irish roots. Green continues to be used by the postal services of both Taiwan and the People’s Republic. Thus, if many people in Europe and the United States encounter China in their daily lives without necessarily knowing it, Chinese meet the remains of the Customs Service, and perhaps Irishness, whenever they post a letter. Institutions like the Service may die, but their existence is preserved in the material sediments history leaves behind all around us. They then can suddenly jump out at us, evoking a different age, as happened to me at Gaoyou, and as Proust, who provided the first epigraph to this book, said. Gulangyu (鼓浪屿), an island just off Xiamen in Fujian Province, is also known as “piano island” because, so local tourist information booklets say, it had the highest concentration of pianos in China and is the hometown of a long list of great pianists, some world famous, such as Xu Feiping and Yin Chengzong, the latter being one of the composers of the Yellow River Piano Concerto. I was able to stay on the island several times in the very pleasant “training center” that the present Customs Service has built on the site of the Xiamen Customs commissioner’s official residence. Its location on a hill overlooking the Pacific, with a path to a lovely sandy beach, gave insight into the colonial lives some commissioners enjoyed. As relaxing as my stays on Gulangyu have been, I gained some valuable insights too. A Xiamen University colleague took me to all the Customs facilities that do remain on Gulangyu amid the Mediterranean mansions that rich Chinese, some from overseas, and Westerners built here before 1949. They included the harbormaster’s house, now handsomely restored, where the radio mast from which once messages were sent to the captains of the Service’s Preventive fleet still stands. The apartment block for foreign assistants also remains, as does the grand Post Office that the Service built, not on Gulangyu but on the Xiamen Bund. Our tour included a visit to a museum where today’s Customs Service exhibits antiquities seized from smugglers and so, the information booklet suggested, saved them for the Chinese nation. My colleague remarked that this may well be true but that another way of reading the museum was to see it as a shopping catalogue or display window.

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Another Xiamen University colleague was equally cynical about Xiamen’s efforts to turn Zheng Chenggong, of whom a huge statue in Xiamen’s port greets the visitor who approaches the city by water, into a Chinese national hero. He pooh-poohed this, noting that Zheng was only half-Chinese: he had a Japanese mother and cared more about his far-flung trade network than he did about the Ming. That comment not only has helped shape my understanding of the Customs Service but also showed that, on the ground, it is regarded as good sport to deflate the solemnities of the national narratives being constructed about the emergence of New China, which are often used to sustain the claim to power of its current leadership. There were other such trips, to Shanghai, of course, where I was allowed into the Custom House on the Bund to admire the ceiling mosaics—but not given access to the archives that are there, kept behind thick metal doors. I also visited Zhenjiang, Danshui, Nanjing’s waterfront area at Xiaguan, as well as Bengbu and Fengyang in northern Anhui. Like Gaoyao, Fengyang was a Native Customs station briefly managed by the Service. It is located in north-central Anhui along the Huai River, in an area that is flat, windy, and waterlogged, not unlike Holland, even if far from the sea. Not much remained of the Customs building here about which I had learned in the archives, although its sites were identifiable. The pontoon in the river seemed to hail from a long time ago, but, whatever its age, it did good service. Noteworthy, too, was the fact that although the place is called Fengyang on official maps, the name Fengyang Guan—the Fengyang toll or Customs House—was well understood locally. This trip was important in visualizing to me the significance of China’s domestic waterways. All the way to Fengyang, we traveled along rivers and canals, through places with names that echoed their histories as tollhouses, such as “Toll on the Huai” (临淮关, Linhuaiguan), fording places, ferry points, and trading settlements dominated by Hui-nationality people, who traditionally specialized in interregional trade. Over these inland waterways, the goods that were imported into China were transported around the country, and products were carried out over them as exports. These waterways made up an interlocking network, which in turn made the Chinese empire, as the environmental historian J. R. McNeill observed, “the most ecologically resilient and resourceful state on earth,” with “a Nile in the north, a Ganges in the south, and a man-made Mississippi linking

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them,” spanning the nearly arctic Northeast and the subtropical south.2 China was well endowed with resources. It had, and has, two main staple foods: rice and wheat. Copper, important for coinage and guns, and hardwoods, used in buildings, including imperial mausoleums, were brought up from the far south and even Southeast Asia over its rivers and canals to Beijing, as was jade. Rice was transported from the agriculturally productive provinces in the middle Yangzi region and Sichuan (as was opium) to population centers downriver and in the north. Salt, critical for health and important also as a spice, was carried from a few salt fields, for instance in Shandong or Anhui, all over the empire. If we understand something about how the Customs Service managed China’s ports and sea lanes, we know yet very little about the all-important infrastructure of China on the water. This is true even for the Grand Canal, which should be just as much a symbol of China as the Great Wall, but also for the very busy Suzhou Creek that connected Shanghai to its rich hinterland, and many other rivers and canals. Without their existence, the Customs Service could not have existed. If the Customs Service naturally pushes our gaze outward from the treaty ports, we should not forget to look the other way, into China, along the Yangzi, Pearl, and West rivers and the many other waterways that linked the treaty ports to their hinterlands.3 The Service may have ceased to exist shortly after 1949, but it has had an important afterlife. One reason that the archives of the Service remained closed until the late 1990s was because it was so very good at maintaining records, including personnel records. Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution swarmed all over the archives, as an earlier generation of Communist cadres had done in the early 1950s. The Red Guards combed the Customs archive for information in their hunt for bourgeois running dogs and capitalist roaders, with Customs staff being an obvious target for their attention and the Service a prime site of suspicion. Today, the forms they used can still be found in between some pages of the files of the archives. They are neatly printed, with wide columns and clear categories to order the information in the archives in a new way. The Red Guards worked in the kind of bureaucratic and orderly manner of which the Service would have approved. During the revolution, Zhou Enlai, so I have been told, closed the archive and put it under military guard to put a stop to the persecution of Customs families. Although now open to researchers, it remains under military guard, with the result that soldiers practiced assault

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exercises, conducting mock attacks on the reading room of the archives, as I was reading Customs documents. These shadows the Customs Service cast over post-1949 China, its involvement in revolution and in persecution, is part of the history of the Customs Service, although it cannot yet be written. If it is clear that the Customs Service had many different dimensions and functions, that does not absolve us from trying the answer the question of how, in the final analysis, we should understand its historical significance. What was its place in the longue durée of the past, of China and the countries with which it was connected? I have conceptualized the Service as a frontier regime with its own ways of doing things, its own history, its own culture, and operating in accordance with its own lights. It emerged when state apparatuses expanded around the globe and was part of that process. I have suggested that it became a historical object of desire, an institution coveted by all and sundry, because it delivered money—and because it worked, regardless of what the various factions that wanted to control it might say publicly. During the Qing, the British wanted it to be theirs and claimed that it was so when the Russians tried to get hold of it. They ended up surprised when Young China showed that it was not. If Young China wanted it, so did the Nationalists and the Japanese. The autonomy of the Service was of course always relative and never absolute. The Service’s history brings out the enormous importance of finance and banking, especially in the history of Republican China. China’s hoarding of vast reserves today is in line with the behavior of past dynasties, but it may also be based on the wish never again to be indebted to bankers and Western countries. Finance is a difficult subject, and there is something mysterious or cult-like about money: it casts a spell that works until it’s broken, but once that happens, a disastrous collapse ensues. That happened during the War of Resistance and the Civil War, when revenue ceased to be collected, China’s bonds lost their value, and the state became impoverished. The Customs Service, too, demonstrates that when a country is poor and weak, that does not necessarily mean that its leaders are dumb, a mistake that was made in the past, when for instance Qing leaders were accused of being bound by tradition and unable to understand the modern world, and one that today continues to be all too common. In fact, one might argue that a lack of wealth and military strength puts a premium on

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being politically shrewd. That is not to say that China’s leaders could not misjudge the world in which they lived or act merely out of selfish interests. Plenty of examples of that have been given in this book. But it also contains many examples of the opposite. History does not have to teach lessons, but I think this one does. When the British arrived in China, they set out to teach the Qing how to behave in a civilized way in a system of equal nation-states, the geopolitical system the West was comfortable with. The Qing state was foolish, as Mao Haijian has so convincingly argued,4 to try to resist Britain’s military challenge with arms. However, it is also true that things worked best if each side did not take themselves too seriously, allowed compromises and hybrid constellations to appear, avoided the resort to arms, and had an awareness of the deep problems, the “constitutional dilemmas,” as Philip Kuhn called them.5 Those who talk today about bringing China into the modern world may have to accept that this process will have to be one of give and take if it is to succeed. There is no need to make the Service into something nobler than it really was. It is not difficult to construct harsh criticisms of it and its leaders. It needs no great leap of imagination to understand why to Young China the Customs Service appeared an affront to Qing dignity, to Nationalists a violation of Chinese sovereignty, and to Communist revolutionaries just another part of a capitalist superstructure that kept Old China poor, weak, divided, exploited, and exploitative. Yet, despite that, the dedication to creating orderly markets accessible to all, to facilitating peaceful contact between China and its diverse trade partners, to maintaining a workable middle ground for all, to restraining profiteering and the abuse of position and status through regulation and impartial bureaucracy was also real. At times, the Customs Service did keep China together when little else did. The Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm admitted to a grudging admiration for the “Age of Capital,” partly in light of what followed in the “Age of Extremes,” which ran so contrary to the visions for the twentieth century envisaged by Marxist intellectuals.6 While we need not buy into the selfjustifications of those who built and sustained the Customs Service nor forgive their excesses, we also need to be on guard against the dogmas of today. Like Hobsbawm, I am willing to admit to a certain admiration for the Customs Service. Writing its history has given me a new respect for civil service–type bureaucracies, for cosmopolitanism, for the dedication to

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keeping borders open, and for creating middle grounds and compromises. One advantage of being open to the achievements of the past is that it allows for less ideological, or at least less judgmental or presentist, readings of China’s modern history. Let me make one final qualification. I have written about the Service largely as a way to bring the foreign back into China’s modern history, even if I also have pointed out its mixed nature and its European entanglements. Once we broaden our perspective, its history can also be understood as part of the history of the growth of China’s maritime commodity trade. That can be seen as having begun in the Ming Dynasty, which lifted its ban on maritime trade in 1567, after it had been in place for nearly two centuries, even if it was frequently, and increasingly, violated.7 As maritime trade grew, China developed overseas relations with Japan, the Philippines, and Southeast and South Asia. The Qing imposed its own maritime ban in its effort to wipe Zheng Chenggong’s trade network from the Chinese seaboard, but that was done speedily, and the Qing’s ban was lifted after just two decades. China’s overseas trade thrived once more, with silver, tea, cotton, porcelain, and opium being the main commodities. When Prince Gong gave his support to the Customs Service during the last years of the Taiping Rebellion, he did so in a specific military and political context, but it was not extraordinary for him to see the benefits of overseas trade. Even to have foreigners watch over foreign merchants, and have them pay up, was not necessarily an unprecedented step. When Mao came to power in 1949, he too imposed a ban on overseas trade with the West. More precisely, he decided to lean toward the Soviet Union, and then when the Korean War broke out, the Americans imposed a trade embargo. But Mao also initiated the move to lift the People’s Republic’s ban on trade with the West when he agreed to meet Henry Kissinger in 1972. Deng Xiaoping completed the process when he began his reforms in 1978. The cities that were assigned the responsibility of pioneering the resurrection of China’s maritime links were, unsurprisingly, those that had thrived from China’s overseas trade in earlier periods. From this perspective, the Customs Service was but a moment in a much longer trajectory, one in which the Customs Service managed China’s overseas steamer trade in a foreign interregnum whose consequences continue to be worked through.

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NOTES

INTRODUCTION 1. It was at this time that Paul Cohen published the first edition of Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984). 2. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (London: Continuum, 2004), 6–20. 3. James Williams, “Corruption Within the Chinese Maritime Customs with Special Reference to the Level of Integrity Maintained by the Expatriate Staff ” (M.Phil. diss., Bristol University, 2008). 4. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi (History of China’s modern Maritime Customs Service) (Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 2002). 5. Wang Zhaoming, Haiguan Duibian Niandai: Renzhi Haiguan Sishier Dai Jingli (A transformative age in the Customs Service), foreword by Lu Haiming (Taipei: Yuli, 1993). 6. Ren Zhiyong, “Wan Qing Haiguan yu Caizheng: Yi Haiguan Jiandu wei Zhongxin” (The late Qing Customs Service and finance: the role of the superintendents) (Ph.D. diss., Peking University, 2007). 7. Zhan Qinghua, Quanqiuhua Shiye: Zhongguo Haiguan Yangyuan yu Zhong-Xi Wenhua Chuanbo (A globalizational perspective of foreign staffs in the Chinese Maritime Customs Service and transcultural communication between East and West, 1854– 1950 [sic]) (Beijing: Zhongguo Haiguan Chubanshe, 2008), 2.

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8. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi; James Hevia, English Lessons: The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century China (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004); and Robert Bickers, The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire (London: Allan Lane, 2011). 9. James Fichter, “Imperial Conflict and Cooperation: Anglo-French Relations in Asia and the Middle East in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” Cambridge University World History Seminar, November 10, 2011. 10. John Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), 465. 11. Joseph Esherick, “Harvard on China: The Apologetics of Imperialism,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 4, no. 4 (December 1972); James Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995). 12. Bristol University hosts a website dedicated to the study of the Customs Service at https://www.bris.ac.uk/history/customs. For the catalogue of the Service’s archives, see https://www.bris.ac.uk/history/customs/resources/archive.html. For an extensive bibliography, see https://www.bris.ac.uk/history/customs/customsbibliographies. 13. See the bibliography mentioned in note 12. Examples are Paul King, In the Chinese Customs Service: A Personal Record of Forty-Seven Years (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1924); John Pal, Shanghai Saga (London: Jarrolds, 1963); W. F. Tyler, Pulling Strings in China (London: Constable, 1929); C. A. S. Williams, Chinese Tribute (London: Literary Services and Production, 1969); G. R. G. Worcester, The Junkman Smiles (London: Chatto and Windus, 1959); C. S. Archer, China Servant (London: Collis, 1946); C. S. Archer, Hankow Return (London: Collins, 1941); Hwang Ching-hsun, Haiguan Suiyue: Wode Zhongshen Shiye (Life in the Customs Service: my lifelong career) (unpublished typescript available at the library of the Institute of Modern History, Academica Sinica, Taiwan); Lam Lok Ming, Haiguan Fuwu Sawu Nian Huiyilu (Recollecting thirty-five years of service in the Customs Service); Lu Haiming, Haiguan Duibian Niandai: Renzhi Haiguan Sishier Dai Jingli (A transformative age in the Customs Service: experiences during forty-two years of employment in the Customs Service) (Taipei: Yuli, 1993); L. C. Arlington, Through the Dragon’s Eyes: Fifty Years’ Experiences as a Foreigner in the Chinese Government Service (London: Constable, 1931). 14. Besides the bibliography of Service publications mentioned in note 12, see, for example, Stanley Wright, Robert Hart and the Chinese Customs Service (Belfast: Queen’s University Press, 1952); Stanley Wright, The Collection and Disposal of the Maritime and Native Customs Revenue (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General, 1927); Luo Guanzhong, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, trans. C. H. Brewitt-Taylor (N.p.: Silk Pagoda, 2008); G. R. G. Worcester, The Junks and Sampans of the Yangtse (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1972); Thomas Wade, Wen-chien Tsu-erh chi (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1905); J. A. van Aalst, Chinese Music (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General, 1884); W. A. P. Martin, Cycle of Cathay (Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson, and Ferrier, 1900); H. B. Morse, The International Relations of the Chinese Empire (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1910–1918); Friedrich Hirth, China and the Roman Orient (Shanghai: Kelly and Welsh, 1885); A. T. Piry, Le Saint Edit (Shanghai, 1879); Joseph Edkins, Chinese Currency (Shanghai: Presbyterian Mission Press, 1901); T. T. H. Ferguson, De Ziel van het Moderne China: De Drie Volksbeginselen

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van Soen Jat-sen (The soul of modern China: the three people’s principles of Sun Yatsen) (Amsterdam: van Kampen, 1929). 15. Chen Xiafei and Han Rongfang, eds., Archives of China’s Imperial Maritime Customs: Confidential Correspondence Between Robert Hart and James Duncan Campbell, 1874–1907 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1990–1993). 16. For example, descendents of Customs Service officials left messages on the Customs Project website. http://www.bristol.ac.uk/history/customs/discussionboard.htm. Perry Anderson regaled me with stories about his father’s life in China; Felicity Somers Eve showed me the papers of her grandfather, D. M. Henderson, who built most of China’s lighthouses; Yee Wah Foo told me stories about the connections of her grandfather, Ambassador Fu Bingchang, with the Customs Service; and Philip Bowring shared with me his thoughts and his biography about his great-grandfather John Bowring. 17. But see Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680, 2 vols. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988–1993); Wang Gungwu and Ng Chinkeong, eds., Maritime China in Transition, 1750–1850 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrasowitz, 2004); Robert Bickers, “Shibeishan in 1932,” Provincial China 1, no. 1 (2009). 18. Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000). 19. Dava Sobel, Longitude: The Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time (London: Penguin, 1995).

1. THE BIRTH OF A CHAMELEON 1. The following paragraphs rely on Zeng Jingting, “Lu Suhun Renji Wanglo yu Xinyou Zhengbian” (On Sushun’s network and the Xinyou Coup) (M.Phil. diss., National Chenggong University, 2009), chaps. 3–4; Tang Li and Yu Zukun, Gong Qingwang Yixin: Zhenghai Chenfu Lu (Prince Gong: living through political storms) (Wuhan: Wuhan Renmin Chubanshe, 2006), chaps. 7–10; and Luke Kwong, “Imperial Authority in Crisis: An Interpretation of the Coup d’Etat of 1861,” Modern Asian Studies 17, no. 2 (1983): 221–238. A lively and suggestive fictionalized portrait is provided in Min Anchee, Empress Orchid (London: Bloomsbury, 2004). 2. John Wong, Deadly Dreams: Opium and the Arrow War (1856–1860) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), is the most recent scholarly work on the Arrow War. For a selection of British documents, see D. Bonner-Smith and E. W. R. Lumby, The Second China War, 1856–1860 (London: Navy Record Society, 1954). 3. Zeng, “Lu Suhun Renji,” chap. 2. 4. Arthur Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period, 1644–1912 (Washington, D.C.: United States Printing Office, 1943), 668. 5. Verification and Annotation Committee, “Gong Qinwang Yixin” (The loyal prince of Gong, Yixin), in Qing Shi Gao (Draft history of the Qing Dynasty) (Taipei: Academia Historica, 1986), 7859–7860. 6. “Yu Neige jie Zanrang Zhengwu Dachen Ren” (Instruction to the grand secretariat to release the regents from their responsibilities), November 2, 1861, quoted in Zeng, “Lu Suhun Renji,” appendix 3.

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7. On the founding of the Zongli Yamen, see Banno Matasaka, China and the West, 1858–1861: The Origins of the Tsungli Yamen (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964). 8. Zeng, “Lu Suhun Renji,” 158–165. 9. Ibid., 61–76. 10. James Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 3, The Shoo King (Taipei: Southern Materials Center, 1983), 490. 11. Verification and Annotation Committee, “Gong Qinwang Yixin,” in Qing Shi Gao, 7860. 12. Mary Wright, The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: The T’ung-chih Restoration, 1862–1874 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1957), 43–67. 13. See Hart’s journal entries between March 20 and December 6, 1858, in John Fairbank, Richard Smith, and Katherine Bruner, eds., Robert Hart and China’s Early Modernization, 1854–1863 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), 184–229. Hereafter Hart Journals 1854–1863. 14. For a history of the China Station, see Gerald Graham, The China Station: War and Diplomacy, 1830–1860 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). 15. On debates in the British community in Guangzhou, see Chen Song-chuan, “The British Maritime Public Sphere” (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 2009). 16. “Treaty of Nanking,” in Stanley Wright, ed., Documents Illustrative of the Origin, Development, and Activities of the Chinese Customs Service (Shanghai: Statistical Department of Inspectorate General, 1938), 6:1. Hereafter Docs. Ill. 17. “Supplementary Treaty of Hoomen Chai (The Bogue),” in Treaties, Conventions, etc. Between China and Foreign States (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs, 1917), 1:390–400. 18. For the process, see the “Supplementary Treaty of Hoomen Chai (The Bogue)” and “General Regulations under which the British Trade is to be conducted,” in Treaties, Conventions, etc. between China and Foreign States, 1:383–400. 19. Pär Cassell, Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in China and Japan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 20. John Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), 267–370. 21. See also Ren Zhiyong, “Wan Qing Haiguan yu Caizheng: Yi Haiguan Wei Zhongxin” (The late Qing Customs Service and finance: the role of the superintendents of customs) (Ph.D. diss., Peking University, 2007), 88. 22. Quoted in Jack Gerson, Horatio Nelson Lay and Sino-British Relations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), 211. 23. Stanley Wright, The Origin and Development of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, 1843–1911 (Shanghai, 1936, marked “for private circulation”), 9. 24. “Memorandum by Mr Thomas Wade on the provisional system at Shanghai,” 1854, in Docs. Ill., 6:34. 25. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 389. 26. Quoted in Wright, Origin and Development, 17–18. 27. Chen, “British Maritime Public Sphere,” 72–99. 28. Alexander Michie, The Englishman in China During the Victorian Era: As Illustrated in the Career of Sir Rutherford Alcock (London: Blackwood, 1900); Fairbank, Trade

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and Diplomacy, 163; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. “Alcock, Sir (John) Rutherford,” http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/293. 29. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 173. 30. Ibid., 417–438. 31. “Notification of 9th September 1853 by Mr Rutherford Alcock, HBM Consul at Shanghai, introducing provisional system,” in Docs. Ill., 6:20–21. 32. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 416–419. 33. “Memorandum by Mr Thomas Wade,” in Docs. Ill., 6:35. 34. Quoted in Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 432. 35. “Suggestions for an Improved Administration of Customs,” Alcock to Bowring, July 6, 1854, in Docs. Ill., 6:48–50. 36. Entry in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. “Alcock, Sir (John) Rutherford.” 37. Wong, Deadly Dreams, 86–91. Bowring was goaded on by Harry Parkes; see 69–83. 38. “Suggestions for an Improved Administration,” in Docs. Ill., 6:49. 39. Ibid., 6:48. 40. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 456–459. 41. Wright, Origin and Development, 14; Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 460. 42. Taiping Tianguo Bowuguan (Taiping History Museum), ed., Wu Xu Dang’an Xuanbian (Wu Xu archives collection) (Nanjing: Jiangsu Renmin Chubanshe, 1983); “Da Wen Guanyu Jiang Haiguan Shuishou” (Wu Xu’s answers to question about revenue collected at the Shanghai Custom House) (July 1857); “Wu Xu Binsong yu Li Taiguo Huiyi Haiguan Tiaokuan” (Wu Xu submits maritime custom service regulations discussed with Horatio Lay) (May 1859), 6:224, 6:300. 43. Taiping Tianguo Bowuguan (Taiping History Museum), ed., Wu Xu Dang’an Xuanbian (Wu Xu archives collection), “Wu Xu Chen Jiang Haiguan Xinguan Yan Waiguo Ren Wei Sishui Bangban Shuiwu Yuanyou Jielüe” (Wu Xu’s memorandum concerning the reasons for employing a foreigner as assistant to administer the revenue at the new Shanghai Custom House) (May 17, 1859), 6:316. 44. Taiping Tianguo Bowuguan (Taiping History Museum), ed., Wu Xu Dang’an Xuanbian (Wu Xu archives collection), “He Guiqing zhi Wu Xu” (He Guiqing to Wu Xu) (May 1859), 6:316. 45. Quoted in Gerson, Horatio Nelson Lay, 60–61. 46. Wright, Origin and Development, 13. 47. Ibid., 15. 48. On Gutzlaff, see Jessica Lutz, Opening China: Karl F. A. Gutzlaff and Sino-Western Relations (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2007). 49. Jonathan Spence, The China Helpers: Western Advisers in China, 1620–1960 (London: Bodley Head, 1969), 96–104. 50. D. C. M. Platt, “The Role of the British Consular Service in Overseas Trade, 1825–1914,” The Economic History Review 15, no. 3, n.s. (1963): 497. 51. Gerson, Horatio Nelson Lay, 31. 52. Ibid.; Wright, Origin and Development, 14. 53. Spence, China Helpers, 96–112. 54. Lydia Liu, The Clash of Empires (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), chap. 2; Zhan Qinghua, Quanqiuhua Shiye: Zhongguo Haiguan Yangyuan yu

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Zhong-Xi Wenhua Chuanbo (Globalization perspective of foreign staffs in the Chinese Maritime Customs Service and transcultural communication between East and West) (Beijing: Zhongguo Haiguan Chubanshe, 2008), 47. 55. “Rule 10 of the Rules of Trade Appended to the Treaty of Tientsin” (1858), in Docs. Ill., 6:65–66. 56. Taiping Tianguo Bowuguan (Taiping History Museum), ed., Wu Xu Dang’an Xuanbian (Wu Xu archives collection), “Wu Xu Bing Li Taiguo Yu Yanqing Waiguoren Bangban Ge Kou Shuiwu” (Wu Xu reports on Horatio Lay wishing to hire foreigners to manage the revenue affairs of the ports), 6:273. 57. Taiping Tianguo Bowuguan (Taiping History Museum), ed., Wu Xu Dang’an Xuanbian (Wu Xu archives collection), “Lao Chongguang Zao Yuehai Guanwu Qingxing Pian” (Memorial of Lao Chongguang about the Canton Customs), 6:33. 58. Quoted in Zhan Qinghua, Quanqiuhua Shiye, 50. 59. Taiping Tianguo Bowuguan (Taiping History Museum), ed., Wu Xu Dang’an Xuanbian (Wu Xu archives collection), “He Guiqing Pai Li Taiguo Wei Zong Shuiwusi Zha” (He Guiqing instruction appointing Horatio Lay as IG) (January 1859), 6:270; Zhan Qinghua, Quanqiuhua Shiye, 45. 60. Taiping Tianguo Bowuguan, Wu Xu Dang’an Xuanbian, “He Guiqing Pai Li Taiguo Wei Zong Shuiwusi Zha” (He Guiqing instruction appointing Horatio Lay as I.G.), 6:270. 61. Tang Li and Yu Zuku, Gong Qingwang Yixin (Prince Gong), chaps. 5–7. 62. Ren Zhiyong, “Wan Qing Haiguan yu Caizheng,” 93–94. 63. Taiping Tianguo Bowuguan (Taiping History Museum), ed., Wu Xu Dang’an Xuanbian (Wu Xu archives collection), “Wu Xu Shang He Guiqing Bing” (Wu Xu’s report to He Guiqing) (March 31, 1859), 5:23; Zhan Qinghua, Quanqiuhua Shiye, 46. 64. Zhan Qinghua, Quanqiuhua Shiye, 48. 65. Taiping Tianguo Bowuguan (Taiping History Museum), ed., Wu Xu Dang’an Xuanbian (Wu Xu archives collection), “Xie Huan zhi Wu Xu Han” (Xie Huan to Wu Xu) (April 28, 1859), 5:37. 66. Taiping Tianguo Bowuguan (Taiping History Museum), ed., Wu Xu Dang’an Xuanbian (Wu Xu archives collection), “He Guiqing zhi Wu Xu Han” (He Guizing to Wu Xu) (April 19, 1859), 6:295. 67. Taiping Tianguo Bowuguan (Taiping History Museum), ed., Wu Xu Dang’an Xuanbian (Wu Xu archives collection), “Wu Xu Binsong yu Li Taiguo Huiyi Haiguan Tiaokuan” (Wu Xu submits maritime custom service regulations discussed with Horatio Lay) (May 1859), 6:301. 68. History of Managing Barbarians: Xianfeng Reign (Beijing, Zhonghua Shuju, 1979), 2687. 69. Zhongguo Lishi Xuehui (China Historical Association), ed., Di Er Ci Yapian Zhanzheng (The Second Opium War), “Qinchai Dachen Yixin Deng Zou Tongchao Yangwu Quanju Zhangcheng Tai Zhe” (Plenipotentiary Yixin and others submit a memorial to propose a set of regulations in six clauses for the general management of foreign affairs) (January 5, 1861), 5:340–342. 70. History of Managing Barbarians: Xianfeng Reign, “Yixin Gei Li Taiguo Zha Yu Pailing Jicha Gekou Yangshui” (Prince Gong instructs Horatio Lay to investigate foreign revenue at all ports), 8:2704–2705.

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71. Zhan Qinghua, Quanqiuhua Shiye, 50; “Ju Shang Pin Zhuo Yixin Deng Zhaoban,” (Let Prince Gong and others act in accordance with the note submitted), in History of Managing Barbarians, Xianfeng Reign, 8:2688. 72. Zhan Qinghua, Quanqiuhua Shiye, 73. 73. “Lay to Elgin and Wade” (March 22, 1861), in Gerson, Horatio Nelson Lay, 215. 74. Ibid. 75. “Lay to Hart,” May 9, 1862, in Horatio Lay, Our Interests in China: A Letter to H.R.H. Earl Russell (London: Harwicke, 1864), 12. 76. Circular 1, 1861 (June 30, 1861), in Robert Bickers and Hans van de Ven, eds., China and the West: The Maritime Customs Service Archive from the Second Historical Archives of China (Woodbridge: Thomason Gale, 2004–2008), reel 2. 77. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi (China’s modern maritime customs service) (Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 2002), 60. 78. Ibid., 70. 79. The memoranda are summarized in ibid, 67–68. For the originals, see History of Managing Barbarians: Xianfeng Period, 8:2916. 80. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 68. 81. Ibid., 69. 82. Stanley Wright, Robert Hart and the Chinese Customs Service (Belfast: Queen’s University Press, 1952), 225. 83. Gerson, Horatio Nelson Lay, 233. 84. Lay, Our Interests in China, 13. 85. Ibid., 19. 86. Wright, Robert Hart, 227. 87. “Lay to Hart,” May 9, 1862, in Lay, Our Interests in China, 12. 88. Ibid. 89. Lay, Our Interests in China, 3–5. 90. Quoted in Wright, Robert Hart, 230. 91. Ibid., 234. 92. Ibid., 233. 93. Entry for May 9, 1863, in Hart Journals 1854–1863. 94. “Lay to Hart,” May 9, 1862, in Lay, Our Interests in China, 12. 95. Quoted in Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 100. 96. John Fairbank et al., eds., Robert Hart and China’s Early Modernization: His Journals, 1863–1866 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1991), 578. Hereafter Hart Journals 1863–1866. 97. Ibid., 265–269. 98. Gerson, Horatio Nelson Lay, 140. 99. Hart Journals 1854–1863, entry for June 9, 1863. 100. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 101–102. 101. Ibid., 103–104. 102. Hart Journals 1854–1863, 273. 103. Ibid., 276. 104. Ibid., 317. 105. Prince Gong appointed Hart as IG on November 15, 1863. See “Translation of a Despatch of 15th November 1863 from Prince Kung,” Docs. Ill., 6:143–144.

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106. Gerson, Horatio Nelson Lay, 228–229. 107. Ibid. 108. Ibid., 233. 109. Ibid., 173–175. 110. Wright, Robert Hart, 169–170. 111. Ibid., 175. 112. Hart Journals 1854–1863, 114, 75, 138. 113. Entry for April 18, 1864, Hart Journals 1854–1863, 91. 114. John Fairbank, “Meadows on China,” Far Eastern Quarterly 14, no. 3 (1955): 365–371. 115. Thomas T. Meadows, Desultory Notes on the Government of China, and on the Chinese Language, Illustrated with a Sketch of the Province of Kwang-tung (London: Allen and Co., 1847), 1–2. 116. Ibid., i. 117. Hart Journals 1853–1864, 66. 118. Ibid., 193–194. 119. Ibid., 192–205. 120. “Letter to Captain Forbes,” June 27, 1867, Queen’s University Belfast, Special Collections, Wright MS 16 (Far East). 121. Entry for July 8, 1958, Hart Journals 1854–1863. 122. Li Lan and Deirdre Wildy, “A New Discovery and Its Significance: The Statutory Declarations Made by Sir Robert Hart Concerning His Secret Domestic Life in Nineteenth-Century China,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 43 (2005). Further information on the relationship and Hart’s way of providing for his Chinese offspring can be found Chen Xiafei and Han Rongfang, Archives, using the helpful index. 123. Entry for March 17, 1864, Hart Journals 1863–1866, 73. 124. Entry for August 14, 1864, Hart Journals 1863–1866, 178. 125. Contrary to what Fairbank argues, see Hart Journals 1854–1863, 320–324. On Robert Hart’s views about his marriage, see Mary Tiffen, Friends of Sir Robert Hart: Three Generations of Carrall Women in China (Crewkerne: Tiffania, 2012), 81–114. 126. Entry for August 21, 1864, Hart Journals 1863–1866, 185. 127. Entry for June 2, 1864, in Hart Journals 1863–1866, 132. 128. Entry for July 29, 1864, in Hart Journals 1863–1866, 165. 129. Entry for June 26, 1864, in Hart Journals 1863–1866, 184. 130. Entry for July 4, 1864, in Hart Journals 1863–1866, 153–154. 131. On this point, see Fairbank commentary, Hart Journals 1863–1866, 152–153. 132. See entries for August 1864 in Hart Journals 1863–1866, 166–189. 133. Entries for July 3, 4, and 15, 1864, in Hart Journals 1863–1866, 152–154. 134. Entry for July 10, 1865, in Hart Journals 1863–1866, 301. 135. Circular 8, “The Customs Service, the spirit that ought to animate it, the policy that ought to guide it, etc.,” 1864, in Docs. Ill., 1:36–37. 136. Entry for August 15, 1864, Hart Journals 1863–1866, 181–182. 137. Entry for December 24, 1864, Hart Journals 1863–1866, 54. 138. Entry for July 15, 1863, Hart Journals 1863–1866, 153. 139. Entry for December 24, 1864, Hart Journals 1863–1866, 54. 140. Provisional Instructions for the Guidance of the Indoor Staff (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General, 1878), 5.

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141. Jean Baptiste du Halde, A Description of the Empire of China and Chinese Tartary (London: Edward Cave, 1741), 2:334. Geographical terms transposed into pinyin. 142. Quoted in Ramon Myers and Wang Yeh-chien, “Economic Developments 1644– 1800,” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 9, part 1., ed. Willard Peterson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 575. 143. Ibid., 621. 144. Ibid., 565–567. 145. The following paragraphs are based on ibid., 617–621. 146. Ibid., 590. 147. Halde, A Description of the Empire of China, 1:334. 148. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 35. 149. Ge Zhaoguang, Zhaizi Zhongguo: Chongjian Youguan “Zhongguo” de Lishi Lunshu (We hold the middle states: reconstructing historical narratives about “China”) (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 2011), 196–253. 150. Qi Meiqin, Qingdai Queguan Zhidu Yanjiu (Research on the system of Qing tollhouses) (Huhehaote: Neimenggu Daxue Chubanshe, 2004), 13–16. 151. Ibid., 39–41, 71–84. 152. Ren Zhiyong, “Wan Qing Haiguan yu Caizheng,” 10. 153. On the fiscal background and the role of the magistrate, see Madeleine Zelin, The Magistrate’s Tael: Rationalizing Fiscal Reform in Eighteenth-Century China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); John Watt, The District Magistrate in Late Imperial China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972). 154. Qi Meiqin, Qingdai Queguan Zhidu Yanjiu, 193–197. 155. Circular 8, “The Customs Service, the spirit that ought to animate it, the policy that ought to guide it, etc.,” 1864, in Docs. Ill., 1:36–37. 156. Qi Meiqin, Qingdai Queguan Zhidu Yanjiu, 217–219. 157. Ibid., 214. 158. Ibid., 215. 159. Ibid., 221. 160. Ibid., 296. 161. Ibid., 297. 162. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 312. 163. Qi Meiqin, Qingdai Queguan Zhidu Yanjiu, 299. 164. See “Ningpo Customs: Correspondence with Taotai, 1861–1868” and “Jiandu Ge Shu Lai Guan Zhaohui” (Notes from superintendent offices, 1863), in China and the West, reel 174. See also “Haiguan Jiandu Zhi Xiamen Guan Han” (Letters from the customs superintendent to the Xiamen Custom House) and “Despatches, etc., from Taotai, Shanghai Customs, 1861–62,” in China and the West, reel 175. 165. Hans van de Ven, “A Hinge in Time: The Wars of Mid Century,” in Cambridge History of War, vol. 4: War and the Modern World, ed. Roger Chickering, Dennis Showalter, and Hans van de Ven (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 16–44. 166. Christopher Bayly, The Making of the Modern World, 1780–1914 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 125. 167. Hart Journals 1863–1866, Fairbank commentary, 98. 168. Quoted in Wright, Robert Hart, 252. 169. Hart Journals 1863–1866, 2:242.

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170. “Hart’s Memorandum of November 1864 on the Foreign Customs Establishments in China,” in Docs. Ill., 6:184. 171. Ibid., 185.

2. ROBERT HART’S PANOPTICON 1. “Hart to Lord Marquess” (Granville) (August 26, 1885), attached to “Hart to Campbell” (December 21, 1885), letter 1381, in Chen Xiafei and Han Rongfang, eds., Archives of China’s Imperial Maritime Customs Service: Confidential Correspondence Between Robert Hart and James Duncan Campbell (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1990–1993), 2:278–279. Hereafter Archives. 2. Entry for July 26, 1864, in John Fairbank et al., eds., Robert Hart and China’s Early Modernization: His Journals, 1863–1866 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), 162. Hereafter Hart Journals 1863–1866. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., 162–163. 5. Stanley Wright, Robert Hart and the Chinese Customs Service (Belfast: Queen’s University Press, 1952), 114. 6. Ibid., 115. 7. “Despatch from Hon. F. W. A. Bruce, British Minister to China, to Hon. John E. Ward, US Minister, on Action Open to China to Protect her Revenue” (November 9, 1859), in Stanley Wright, ed., Documents Illustrative of the Origin, Development, and Activities of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General), 6:72–73. Hereafter Docs. Ill. 8. IG circular 2 of 1870 (Accounts: receipts and payments, ten prohibitions) in IG Circulars, first series, in Robert Bickers and Hans van de Ven, eds., China and the West: The Maritime Customs Service Archive from the Second Historical Archives of China (Woodbridge: Thomason Gale, 2004–2008), reel 2. Hereafter China and the West. 9. Ibid. 10. “Despatch from Mr Anson Burlingame, US Minister at Peking, to US Consul General at Shanghai, on Political Relations of Foreigners with Chinese” (June 15, 1864), in Docs. Ill., 6:162–167. 11. Entry for December 7, 1867, Hart Diary, vol. 10. (Held at the Queen’s University of Belfast as part of the Robert Hart collection. I am grateful to George Mak for making a proof copy available to me.) 12. Entry for October 30, 1867, Hart Diary, vol. 10. 13. Entry for September 19, 1867, Hart Diary, vol. 10. 14. Entry for October 17, 1867, Hart Diary, vol. 10. 15. Entry for November 11, 1867, Hart Diary, vol. 10. 16. Entry for August 3, 1866, in Hart Journals 1863–1866, 395. 17. His publications include, among others, Der Prophet Habakuk (Munich: Literarisch-Artistische Anstalt der J.G. Cotta’schen Buchhandlung, 1860); Technische und historische Zeitrechnung der Hebräer and werwandten Völker (The technical and historical calendar of the Hebrew and related peoples) (Göttingen, 1853); The Treaty Rights of the Foreign Merchant (Shanghai, Celestial Empire Office, 1875); The Burlingame

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Mission: A Political Disclosure (London: N. Trübner, 1872); On the Historical Antiquity of the People of Egypt: Their Vulgar Kalendar and the Epoch of Its Introduction (London: Dulau, 1863); Baby-Worlds: An Essay on the Nascent Members of Our Solar Household (London: Dulau, 1863); and The True Figure and Dimensions of the Earth (London, 1862). 18. Entry for July 28, 1864, in Hart Journals 1863–1866, 164. 19. Fan Baichuan, Qing Ji de Yangwu Xinzheng (The new policy toward foreign affairs during the Qing Dynasty) (Shanghai: Shanghai Shudian, 2003), 1:589–590. 20. “Judgment” (January 28, 1873), in Privy Council, On Appeal from Her British Majesty’s Supreme Court for China. China and Japan: Between Robert Hart, Appellant, and Johannes von Gumpach, Respondent, 295–304. 21. Entry for September 12, 1867, Hart Diary, vol. 10. 22. Wright, Robert Hart, 341–343. 23. “Judgment” (January 28, 1873), in Privy Council, On Appeal, 310–316. 24. IG circular 28 (British Subjects in Chinese employ) (1870), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 25. IG circular 20 (Indoor Staff List, Foreign) (1870), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 26. For a discussion of three cases, see Wright, Robert Hart, 434–458; and “Hart to Campbell,” letter 1032 (February 4, 1883); “Campbell to Hart,” letter 1109 (September 21, 1883); “Hart to Campbell,” letter 1130 (November 13, 1883); Hart to Campbell, letter 1133 (November 18, 1833); and “Hart to Campbell,” letter 1138 (December 5, 1883), all in Archives, 1:816–817, 898–900, 921–922, 925, 929–930; and “Campbell to Hart,” 1165 (February 8, 1884), in Archives, 2:15–16. 27. “Hart to Campbell” (April 8, 1877), quoted in Wright, Robert Hart, 459. 28. “Hart to Campbell,” letter 1186 (March 31, 1884), in Archives, 2:37–38. 29. “Campbell to Hart,” letter 1406, in Archives, 2:304–306. 30. “Origin of the Joint Investigation Court” (July 23, 1864), in Docs. Ill., 6:168–170. 31. Ren Zhiyong, “Wan Qing yu Caizheng: Yi Haiguan Jiandu Wei Zhongxin” (The late Qing Customs Service and finance: the role of the superintendents of Customs). 32. Fan Baichuan, Qing Ji de Yangwu Xinzheng, 1:565. The following paragraphs rely on ibid., 1:564–580. 33. Ibid., 565. 34. See “Haiguan Jiandu Zhi Xiamen Guan Han” (Correspondence from the superintendent of Maritime Customs to the Xiamen Custom House), SHAC 679(2)/177, in China and the West, reel 175; “Ningpo Customs: Correspondence with the Taotai/Minutes of Joint Investigation Cases, 1861–1868,” SHAC 679(2)/1365, in China and the West, reel 174; “Jiang Haiguan Lai Han Tongzhi Er zhi San Nian” (Shanghai Custom House in-letters, 1863–65), SHAC 679(2)/1713. 35. E.g., “From H. E. Taotai,” July 2, 1861, in “Ningpo Customs: Correspondence with Taotai,” in SHAC, 679(2)/1365, in China and the West, reel 174. 36. IG circular 24 (Commissioners and Superintendents: Relations between) (1873), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 37. IG circular 8 (The Customs Service: The Spirit that Ought to Animate it, the Policy that Ought to Guide it, the Duties it Ought to Perform, General Considerations and Special Rules) (1864), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 38. Entry for July 26, 1864, Hart Journals 1863–1866.

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39. Quoted in Richard Horowitz, “Politics, Power, and the Chinese Maritime Customs: The Qing Restoration and the Ascent of Robert Hart,” Modern Asian Studies 40, no. 3 (2006): 563. 40. Ibid., 571–572. 41. Ibid. 42. Fan Baichuan, Qing Ji de Yangwu Xinzheng, 1:573. 43. Ibid. For praise of Drew’s performance in Jiujiang, see “Hart to Campbell” (February 26, 1869), in John Fairbank et al., eds., The I.G. in Peking: Letters of Robert Hart, Chinese Maritime Customs Service, 1868–1907 (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975), 1:47. 44. IG circular 25 (Service Reorganization: Regulations and Explanations) (1869), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 45. Hart Journals 1863–1866, Fairbank commentary, 202–203. 46. IG circular 13 (Collections and Expenditures: How to be Rendered) (1870), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 47. Hart Journals 1863–1866, Fairbank commentary, 205. 48. “Hart’s Memorandum of November 1864 on the Foreign Customs Establishments in China,” Docs. Ill., 6:172–195. 49. IG circular 25 (Subordinates to Inspector General’s Address) (1869), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 50. Fan Baichuan, New Policy, 1:572. 51. IG circular 13 (Superintendents of Customs, Position vis-à-vis) (1873), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 52. Ibid. 53. “Qing Xianfeng Shiyi Nian Zhi Xuantong Ernian Quanguo Ge Haiguan Linian Shuishou Fenpei Tongji Biao” (Table 13: annual collections throughout China of each custom house and its allocation, 1861–1910), in Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi (China’s modern maritime customs service) (Beijing: Renmin Daxue Chubanshe, 2002), 464–465. 54. IG circular 8 (Statistics of Trade, to be Prepared Quarterly) (1868), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 55. IG circular 9 (Circulars Hereafter Will as a Rule be Issued in Printed Form) (1869), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2; Fairbank et al., eds., Robert Hart and China’s Early Modernization, 117. 56. IG circular 2 (Correspondence with Inspector General: Memorandum of Rules to be Observed) (1863), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 57. IG circular 12 (Accounts, Returns, etc) (1870), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 58. IG circular 26 (Despatches and Enclosures: Folding and Docketing of) (1868), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 59. IG circular 2 (Correspondence: Despatches, Enclosures, and Dockets) (1873), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 60. IG circular 15 (Semi-Official Correspondence with I.G.) (1874), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 61. See China and the West, reels 106–173. 62. IG circular 16 (Stationary Consumed, and Forms in Actual Use, Calling for Return of) (1868), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2.

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63. IG circular 21 (1869), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 64. IG circular 10 (Establishment on 1 April 1863, Calling for List of) (1863), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 65. IG circular 25 (Service re-organization), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. The highest commissioners’ pay was Tls. 9,000. Deputy commissioners earned from Tls. 3,600 to Tls. 3,000. See IG circular 25 of 1866 (Service re-organization), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 66. IG circular 4 (Confidential Reports on Staff) (1868), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 67. IG circular 15 (Regulations for Service Reorganization) (1869), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 68. IG circular 20 (Indoor Staff List, Foreign) (1873), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. A provisional list of indoor staff for 1873 can be found in ibid., 467–473. 69. IG circular 25 (Service Re-organization) (1869), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 70. Ibid. 71. IG circular 10 (Marine Department) (1868), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 72. Horowitz, “Politics, Power, and the Maritime Customs,” 549. 73. IG circular 10 (Marine Department) (1868), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 74. IG circular 2 (Tonnage Dues) (1868), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 75. Quoted in T. Roger Banister, The Coastwise Lights of China: An Illustrated Account of the Chinese Maritime Customs Light Service (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Chinese Customs, 1932), foreword. 76. Ibid., 3. 77. Ibid., 3–4. 78. IG circular 10 (Marine Department) (1868), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 79. Ibid. 80. Henderson’s career can be traced though the D. M. Henderson papers, donated by Felicity Somers Eve to the Institute of Civil Engineers in the United Kingdom, yet to be catalogued. 81. IG circular 10 (Marine Department) (1868), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2; Bannister, Coastwise Lights, 5. 82. IG circular 38 (Marine: Coast Lights: How to Manage) (1878), in Docs. Ill., 1:383; Bannister, Coastwise Lights, 5. 83. IG circular 10 (Marine Department) (1868), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 84. Ibid. 85. The two memoranda are attached to IG circular 25 (Tonnage Dues, Application of) (1870), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 86. Ibid. 87. Ibid. 88. Bannister, Coastwise Lights, 6–10.

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89. Ibid., 9. 90. “Chinese Pilotage Service: General Regulations,” attached to IG circular 30 (Pilotage Regulations: Amended) (1868), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 91. IG circular 128 (Berthing of Vessels: Rules to be Observed by Harbour Masters) (1881), in IG Circulars, second series, reel 3. 92. IG circular 28 (Meteorological Stations) (1869), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 93. “Documents Relating to: 1. the Establishment of Meteorological Stations in China; and 2. Proposals for Cooperation in the Publication of Meteorological Observations and Exchange of Weather News,” Chinese Maritime Customs Project Occasional Papers, https://www.bris.ac.uk/history/customs/papers.html. 94. For relevant documents, see “River Police: Shanghai Customs: Controlling Whampoo and Soochow Creek,” SHAC 679/824. 95. Glen Dudbridge, ed., Aborigines of South Taiwan in the 1880s: Papers by George Taylor (Taipei: Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines, Institute of Formosan History, Academia Sinica, 1999), 12. 96. Ibid., 12–21. 97. Thomas Hughes, “Visit to Tok-e-tok,” in Dudbridge, ed., Aborigines, 22. 98. Ibid., 23–32. 99. Ibid., 3–13. 100. George Taylor, “A Ramble Through Southern Formosa,” in ibid., 96–97. 101. Robert Bickers, “Yijiu Sa Er Nian de Shibeishan” (Shibeishan in 1932), Provincial China 1, no. 1 (January 2009): 3. 102. IG circular 17 (Statistical Department) (1873), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 103. On the Qing adoption of statistics, see Andrea Breard, “Robert Hart and China’s Statistical Revolution,” Modern Asian Studies 40, no. 3 (2006): 605–629. 104. IG circular 31 (Accounts, New System of, Two Memoranda Regarding) (1869), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 105. IG circular 7 (Accounts, enclosing Mr Campbell’s Memorandum) (1870), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 106. IG circular 2 (Accounts: Receipts and Payments, Ten Prohibitions Regarding) (1870), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 107. Ibid. 108. IG circular 31 (Accounts: Keeping and Rendering of) (1868), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 109. IG circular 26 (Audit Secretary and Assistant Audit Secretary: Appointment and Duties of) (1874), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 110. Wright, Robert Hart, 267. 111. “Hart’s Memorandum of November 1864 on the Foreign Customs Establishments in China,” in Docs. Ill., 6:189. 112. Ibid. 113. Report, September 18, 1903, “Confidential Reports on Examinations by the London Office,” SHAC 679(9)/1557–8. 114. IG circular 3 (Non-Resident Secretary, Mr Campbell, Appointed) (1874), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2.

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115. “Hart to Campbell” (July 21, 1875), in Archives, letter 176, p. 144–145. 116. “The Origin and Organization of the Chinese Customs Service” (Shanghai: Statistical Department of IG of Customs, 1922). 117. Catherine Ladds, “Youthful, Likely Men, Able to Read, Write, and Count,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 36, no. 3 (2008): 230–231. 118. Ibid., 231. 119. Letter of September 22, 1887, in “Waiji Neiqin Zhiyuan Ruguan Kaoshi Jimi Baogao” (Confidential reports on examinations by the London office), SHAC 679(9)/ 1557–8. 120. Ibid. 121. Ibid. 122. IG circular 4 (Passenger’s Luggage, Duty-free Goods, Steam Tugs) (1867), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 123. Ibid. 124. “National Partisanship: Customs Officials Instructed not to Display,” “Hart to J. Man” (December 26, 1867), in Docs. Ill., 6:223. 125. “A list of Commissioners, Deputy Commissioners, and First, Second, Third and Fourth Class Clerks in the Chinese Maritime Customs Service” (30 June 1873) in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 126. Ladds, “Youthful, Likely Men,” 228–235. 127. Report of August 21, 1891, in “Waiji Neiqin Zhiyuan Ruguan Kaoshi Jimi Baogao” (Confidential reports on examinations by the London office), SHAC 679(9)/1557–8. 128. Report on Mr. Guernier’s exam, February 7, 1896, in ibid. 129. Report on Mr. Lenox Simpson, May 15, 1896, in ibid. 130. Report on Mr. Bertram Lenox-Simpson, September 8–11, 1896, in ibid. 131. Robert Bickers, Britain in China: Community, Culture, and Colonialism, 1900– 1949 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 34. 132. Jan Ferguson, De Rechtspositie van Nederlanders in China (The Hague: Nederlandse Boek en Steendrukkery, 1925). 133. Jan Ferguson, Tien Jaar China (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1937). 134. China 8:4 (1934). China was a Dutch journal. 135. China, 6:4, 7:1 (1932). 136. Jan Ferguson, Fragments of Confucian Lore (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1920). 137. Report on Mr. James Carew O’Gorman Anderson, June 16, 1914, in “Waiji Neiqin Zhiyuan Ruguan Kaoshi Jimi Baogao” (Confidential reports on examinations by the London office), SHAC 679(9)/1557–8. 138. Quoted in Wright, Robert Hart, 268. 139. IG circular 25 (Service Re-organization) (1869), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 140. IG circular 3 (Confidential reports) (1868), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 141. “Rules and Regulations for the Administration of the Imperial Maritime Customs Service,” attached to IG circular 25 (Service Re-organization) (1869), in IG Circulars, first series, in China and the West, reel 2. 142. Ibid. 143. Ibid. 144. Ibid.

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145. Ibid. 146. Ibid. 147. Provisional Instructions for the Guidance of the In-Door Staff (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General, 1878). 148. Ibid. 149. “Hart to Campbell” (August 24, 1883), letter 1100, in Archives, 1:886. 150. C. A. S. Williams, Outlines of Chinese Symbolism and Art Motives (New York: Dover, 1976). 151. C. A. S. Williams, Chinese Tribute (London: Literary Services and Production Ltd., 1969).

3. THE CUSTOMS SERVICE DURING THE SELF-STRENGTHENING MOVEMENT, 1870–1895 1. For overviews, see Kuo Ting-yee, “Self-Strengthening: The Pursuit of Western Technology,” and Albert Feuerwerker, “Economic Trends” in J. Fairbank et al., eds., The Cambridge History of China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 10:491–541, 11:2–69. 2. André Gunder Frank, “The Development of Underdevelopment,” Monthly Review 18 (1966). 3. Benjamin Elman, “Naval Warfare and the Refraction of China’s Self-Strengthening Reforms,” Modern Asian Studies 38, no. 2 (2004): 283–326. 4. James Hevia, English Lessons: The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century China (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004), 119–184. 5. See Lydia Liu, The Clash of Empires (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), 108–139. 6. Benjamin Elman, On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550–1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005), 321–322. 7. Zhan Qinghua, Quanqiu Shiye: Zhongguo Haiguan Yangyuan yu Zhong-Xi Wenhua Chuanbo (A globalizational perspective of foreign staffs in the Chinese Maritime Customs Service and transcultural communication between East and West, 1854–1950) (Beijing: Zhongguo Haiguan Chubanshe, 2008), chaps. 3–5; Lydia Liu, Clash of Empires, 108–139. See also Elman, On Their Own Terms. 8. Zhan Qinghua, Quanqiu Shiye, chaps. 3–5. 9. Medical Reports can be found at shttp://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/data_rescue _china.html. 10. John Fairbank et al., H. B. Morse: Customs Commissioner and Historian of China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press), 118, 296. 11. E.g., Port Catalogues on the Chinese Customs Collection at the Austro-Hungarian Universal Exhibition, Vienna, 1873: To Illustrate the International Exchange of Products (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General, 1973); Catalogue of the Chinese Collection of Exhibits for the New Orleans Exposition, 1884–5 (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General, 1884); Catalogue Special de la Collection Exposee au Palais de Champ de Mars, Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1878 (Shanghai: Bureau de Statistiques de la Direction General des Douanes, 1878).

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12. “Campbell to Hart” (June 18, 1875), letter 165; “Campbell to Hart” (September 10, 1975), letter 193; letter 244 (16 March 1876), in Chen Xiafei and Han Rongfang, eds., Archives of China’s Imperial Maritime Customs Service: Confidential Correspondence Between Robert Hart and James Duncan Campbell (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1990–1993), 1:134–135, 1:154, 1:188. Hereafter Archives. 13. “Campbell to Hart” (March 16, 1876), letter 244, in Archives, 1:188; Stanley Wright, Robert Hart and the Chinese Customs Service (Belfast: Queen’s University Press, 1952), 468. 14. “Hart to Campbell” (July 21, 1875), letter 176, in Archives, 1:144–145. 15. “Campbell to Hart” (January 4, 1884), letter 1151, in Archives, 2:1–2. 16. Emmanuel Hsu, “The Great Policy Debate in China, 1874: Maritime Defense vs. Frontier Defense,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 25 (1964–1965): 212–228. 17. Ibid. 18. Fan Baichuan, Qing Ji de Yangwu Xinzheng (The new policy toward foreign affairs during the Qing Dynasty) (Shanghai: Shanghai Shudian, 2003), 2:987–1015. 19. “Campbell to Hart” (October 30, 1874), letter 109, in Archives, 1:79–80. 20. “Campbell to Hart” (November 6, 1874), letter 110, in Archives, 1:81–82. 21. Richard Wright, The Chinese Steam Navy, 1862–1945 (London: Chatham, 2000), 41–47. Wright, Robert Hart, 469. 22. “Hart to Campbell” (December 10, 1879), letter 640, in Archives, 1:476–477. 23. “Hart to Campbell” (December 21, 1879), letter 643, in Archives, 1:479. 24. Wright, The Chinese Steam Navy, 49. 25. “Hart to Campbell” (December 21, 1879), letter 643, in Archives, 1:479. 26. “Hart to Campbell” (October 11, 1879), letter 622, in Archives, 1:462–463. 27. “Hart to Campbell” (August 20, 1881), letter 853, in Archives, 1:666–667. 28. “Hart to Campbell” (September 11, 1881), letter 860, in Archives, 1:672–673. 29. “Hart to Campbell” (August 26, 1881), letter 855, in Archives, 1:668–669. 30. “Hart to Campbell” (October 16, 1881), letter 868, in Archives, 1:678–679. 31. “Hart to Campbell” (August 11, 1883), letter 1095, in Archives, 1:881–882. 32. “Hart to Campbell” (January 24, 1881), letter 771, in Archives, 1:598. 33. “Campbell to Hart” (April 22, 1881), letter 808, in Archives, 1:628–629. 34. “Campbell to Hart” (May 25, 1883), letter 1068, in Archives, 1:853–854. 35. “Campbell to Hart” (July 19, 1883), letter 1088, in Archives, 1:873–874. 36. “Hart to Campbell” (April 26, 1880), letter 673, in Archives, 1:509–510. 37. Wright, The Chinese Steam Navy, 50. 38. “Campbell to Hart” (December 28, 1883), letter 1149, in Archives, 1:940–942. 39. “Campbell to Hart” (June 8, 1883), letter 1075, in Archives, 1:860–861. 40. See Wright, The Chinese Steam Navy, 54. 41. For the politics behind Japan’s naval buildup, see Charles Schenking, Making Waves: Politics, Propaganda, and the Emergence of the Japanese Navy (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005), 55–79. 42. Wright, The Chinese Steam Navy, 53. 43. “Hart to Campbell” (September 29, 1882), letter 978, in Archives, 1:773–774. 44. “Hart to Campbell” (June 8, 1883), letter 1076, in Archives, vol. 2; John Fairbank, Richard Smith, and Katherine Bruner, eds., Robert Hart and China’s Early Modernization, 1854–1863 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), Fairbank commentary, 354. Hereafter Hart Journals 1854–1863.

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45. “Hart to Campbell” (July 24, 1883), letter 1090, in Archives, 1:856–857. 46. “Hart to Campbell” (July 5, 1883), letter 1083, in Archives, 1:869–870. 47. “Hart to Campbell” (January 25, 1884), letter 1162, in Archives, 2:12–13. 48. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi (History of China’s modern maritime customs) (Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 2002), 273. 49. “Hart to Campbell” (October 29, 1883), and “Campbell to Hart” (November 2, 1883), letters 1125 and 1126, in Archives, 1:914–916. 50. Lloyd Eastman, Throne and Mandarins: China’s Search for a Policy During the Sino-French Controversy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), 108–110. 51. Ibid., 122–124. 52. “Hart to Campbell” (November 7, 1882), letter 995, in Archives, 1:788–789. 53. Eastman, Throne and Mandarins, 116. 54. “Campbell to Hart” (July 4, 1884), letter 1222, in Archives, 2:76–77. 55. “Campbell to Hart” (May 23, 1884), letter 1208, in Archives, 2:62. 56. “Campbell to Hart” (November 9, 1883), letter 1129, in Archives, 1:920. 57. For Campbell’s letters to Hart about his hopes and his frustrations about Gladstone’s attitude during his time in France, see Archives, vol. 2, letters 1243–1266. 58. Antony Hopkins, “The Victorians and Africa: A Reconsideration of the Occupation of Egypt, 1882,” Journal of African History 27, no. 2: 372–389. 59. “Hart to Campbell” (December 13, 1884), letter 1274, in Archives, 2:135–136. 60. “Hart to Campbell” (September 7, 1884), letter 1238, in Archives, 2:92–93. 61. F. E. Hamer, ed., Personal Papers of Lord Rendel: Containing His Unpublished Conversations with Mr. Gladstone and Other Famous Statesmen, Selections from Letters and Papers Reflecting the Thought and Manners of a Period (London: E. Benn, 1931), 243–266. 62. “Campbell to Hart” (September 26, 1884), in Archives, 2:99–100. 63. “Hart to Campbell” (January 2, 1883), letter 1019, in Archives, 1:808. 64. “Hart to Campbell” (December 10, 1882), letter 1012, in Archives, 1:800. 65. “Hart to Campbell” (December 21, 1885), letter 1381, in Archives, 2:278; Hamer, Papers of Lord Rendel, 243–266. 66. “Hart to Campbell” (December 13, 1884), letter 1274, in Archives, 2:135. 67. “Campbell to Hart” (January 8, 1885), letter 1284, in Archives, 2:148–149. 68. “Campbell to Hart” (January 2, 1885); “Hart to Campbell” (January 8, 1884), letters 1280 and 1282, in Archives, 2:143–145, 2:146–147. 69. Robert Campbell, James Duncan Campbell: A Memoir by His Son (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), 62. 70. Hamer, Papers of Lord Rendel, 248–251; Xie Shicheng, Li Hongzhang Pingzhuan (A critical biography of Li Hongzhang) (Nanjing: Nanjing University Press, 2006), 491–492. 71. Campbell, James Duncan Campbell, 83. 72. Ibid., 62–63. 73. “In-telegram 329” (Lai Dian Di San Er Jiu Hao) (February 21, 1885), in Zhongguo Jindai Jingji Shi Ziliao Congkan Bianji Weiyuanhui (Compilation committee for collection of materials on China’s economic history), eds., Zhongguo Haiguan yu Zhong-Fa Zhanzheng (The chinese maritime customs and the Sino-French War) (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1983), 81. 74. Campbell, James Duncan Campbell, 63. 75. Ibid., 64.

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76. Xie Shicheng, Li Hongzhang, 495. 77. Ibid. 78. Eastman, Throne and Mandarins, 190–194. 79. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 255–261. 80. Campbell, James Duncan Campbell, 87. 81. Ibid., 103. 82. Albert Feuerwerker, “Economic Trends in the Late Ch’ing Period, 1870–1911,” in John Fairbank et al., eds., The Cambridge History of China, vol. 11: The Late Ch’ing, 1800–1911, part 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 63. 83. Stanley Wright, The Origin and Development of the Chinese Customs Service, 1843–1911 (Shanghai, 1936, marked “for private circulation only”), 43–45. 84. Sun Xiufu, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Da Shi Ji (A chronology of the Chinese modern Maritime Customs Service) (Beijing: Zhongguo Haiguan Chubanshe), 92–93. 85. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, table 11, 464–465. 86. Hao Yen-p’ing, The Commercial Revolution in Nineteenth-Century China: The Rise of Sino-Western Mercantile Capitalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 1. 87. Loren Brandt, Commercialization and Agricultural Development: Central and Eastern China, 1870–1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 15. 88. Feuerwerker, “Economic Trends,” 40–52. 89. David Faure, China and Capitalism: A History of Business Enterprise in Modern China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2006), 3. 90. Thomas Rawski, Economic Growth in Prewar China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), xx. 91. Ibid., 8. 92. Hsiao Liang-lin, China’s Foreign Trade Statistics, 1864–1949 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), 8. 93. Lin Man-houng, China Upside Down: Currency, Society, and Ideologies, 1808–1856 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), 96–107. 94. Ibid., 94–114. 95. Yan Se, “Essays on Real Wages and Wage Inequality in China, 1858–1936,” Ph.D. diss., UCLA, 2007; Wang Yuru, “Economic Growth and the Medium–Long-Term Cycles in Modern China, 1880s, 1930s,” http://eh.net/eha/system/files/eha-meeting-2008/ papers/wang-y. 96. Decennial Reports on the Trade, Navigation, Industries, etc., of the Ports Open to Foreign Commerce in China and Corea, and on the Condition and Development of the Treaty Port Provinces, vol. 1: 1882–1891 (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs, 1893–1933), 321. 97. Ibid., 170. 98. On the silk trade, see Lillian Li, China’s Silk trade: Traditional Industry in the Modern World, 1842–1937 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981). 99. Decennial Reports, 1:321. 100. Ibid., 1:319. 101. Hsiao Liang-lin, China’s Foreign Trade Statistics, 74–125. 102. This research is summarized in Feuerwerker, “Economic Trends,” 19–22. 103. Decennial Reports, 1:321. 104. Ibid., 1:551.

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105. Ibid., 1:174. 106. Ibid., 1:295. 107. Ibid., 1:295. 108. Ibid., 1:150. 109. Ibid., 1:551. 110. Ibid., 1:304. 111. Ibid., 1:298. 112. Ibid., 1:428. 113. Ibid., 1:3, 21, 13–19. 114. Ibid., 1:167. 115. Ibid., 1:321. 116. Ibid., 1:319. 117. Ibid., 1:323. 118. Lin Man-houng, China Upside Down, 110. 119. Kris Mitchener and Hans-Joachim Voth, “Trading Silver for Gold: NineteenthCentury Asian Exports and the Political Economy of Currency Unions,” 7. http://lsb.scu .edu/~kmitchener/research/Mitchener_Voth_silver%20for%20gold.pdf. 120. See Hsiao Liang-lin, China’s Foreign Trade Statistics, 138–165. 121. Hamashita Takeshi, Zhongguo Jindai Jingji Shi Yanjiu (Research in China’s modern economic history), trans. Gao Shujuan (Nanjing: Jiangsu Renmin Chubanshe), 276–405. 122. Yao Yudong, Chongran Zhongguo Mengxiang (Reigniting the China dream) (Beijing: Zhongxin Chubanshe, 2010), 96. 123. Yan Se, “Real Wages and Wage Inequality in China, 1860 to 1936.” 124. Ibid., 328. 125. Lin Man-houng, China Upside Down, 86–87. 126. Mitchener and Voth, “Trading Silver for Gold,” 8. 127. “Hart to Campbell” (November 7, 1882), letter 995, in Archives, 1:789.

4. THE RISE OF THE BOND MARKETS: THE CUSTOMS SERVICE BECOMES A DEBT COLLECTOR, 1895–1914 1. The epigraph to this chapter is from “Greenspan’s Rates of Wrath,” Time (November 28, 1994). 2. John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688–1783 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989). 3. Peter Cain and Antony Hopkins, British Imperialism: 1688–2000 (Harlow: Longman, 2002), chaps. 3–7. 4. Joseph Esherick, Reform and Revolution in China: The 1911 Revolution in Hunan and Hubei (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 8. 5. Quoted in Li Wenjie, “Zhongguo Zaoqi Guozhai de Duncuo: Zhaoxin Gupiao Faxing Shimo” (The failure of early national debt issues: the history of the Evident Trust Bond issue) (M.Phil. diss., Peking University, 2007), 6. 6. Ibid., 10. 7. Ibid., 7–8. 8. Ibid., 8–9.

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9. The standard work on lijin is Luo Yudong, Zhongguo Lijin Shi (History of lijin in China) (Shanghai: Shangwu Shudian, 1936). Li Wenjie, “Zhongguo Zaoqi Guozhai de Duncuo,” 51–52. 10. “I.G. Shanghai Despatch” (January 22, 1868), in Stanley Wright, ed., Documents Illustrative of the Origin, Development, and Activities of the Chinese Customs Service (Shanghai: Statistical Department of Inspectorate General, 1938), 6:228. Hereafter Docs. Ill. 11. “I.G. Despatches, Shanghai Series” (July 19, 1867; January 19, 23, 1868), in Docs. Ill., 6:211, 6:232–235. 12. Stanley Wright, Robert Hart and the Chinese Customs Service (Belfast: Queen’s University Press, 1952), 363. 13. “I.G. Circular 11” (Local Loans, Bonds, or Notes of, Not to be Signed by Commissioner) (1867), in Docs. Ill., 1:80–81. 14. “I.G. Despatch, Shanghai Series” (January 18, 22, 1868), in Docs. Ill., 6:228–232. 15. “I.G. Circular 11” (Local Loans, Bonds, or Notes of, Not to be Signed by Commissioner) (1867), in Docs. Ill., 1:80–81. 16. A full table of Hongkong and Shanghai Bank lending can be found in Frank King, The History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 1:548–549. 17. Ibid., 1:535–553. 18. “I.G. Circular 21” (Loans: No Imperial Authority for the Reported Negotiations) (1877), in Docs. Ill., 1:370. 19. “I.G. Despatches, Shanghai Series” (July 19, 1867), in Docs. Ill., 6:211; King, History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, 2:349–350. 20. Wright, Robert Hart, 655. 21. Li Wenjie, “Zhongguo Zaoqi Guozhai de Duncuo,” 39. 22. Albert Feuerwerker, “Economic Trends in the Late Qing Empire, 1870–1911,” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 11: The Late Ch’ing, 1800–1911, Part 2, ed. John Fairbank et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 63. 23. Li Wenjie, “Zhongguo Zaoqi Guozhai de Duncuo,” 1. 24. Quoted in ibid., 34. 25. Ibid., 36. 26. “Out-Letter 634” (去函Z字第634号) (September 30, 1894) in Zhongguo Jindai Jingji Shi Ziliao Congkan Bianji Weiyuanhui (Compilation committee for the collection of materials on China’s economic history), eds., Zhongguo Haigguan yu Zhong-Fa Zhanzheng (The Chinese Customs Service and the Sino-Japanese War) (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1983), 113. 27. Wright, Robert Hart, 654–655. 28. King, History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, 2:265. 29. Ibid. 30. “Campbell to Hart” (5 September 1895), telegram 936, in Zhongguo Jindai Jingji Shi Ziliao Congkan Bianji Weiyuanhui (Compilation committee for the collection of materials on China’s economic history), eds., Zhongguo Haigguan yu Zhong-Fa Zhanzheng (The Chinese Customs Service and the Sino-Japanese War) (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1983), 168; Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi (China’s modern Maritime Customs Service) (Beijing: Renmin Daxue Chubanshe, 2002), 297. 31. Stanley Wright, The Collection and Disposal of the Maritime and Native Customs Revenue Since the Revolution of 1911 (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General, 1927), 67.

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32. Immanuel Hsu, “Late Ch’ing Foreign Relations, 1866–1905,” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 11: The Late Ch’ing, 1800–1911, Part 2, ed. John Fairbank et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 109–114. 33. Wright, Collection and Disposal, 67–68; King, History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, 1:270–280. 34. “Hart to Campbell” (December 27, 1897), telegram 3179, in Chen Xiafei and Han Rongfang, eds., Archives of China’s Imperial Maritime Customs Service: Confidential Correspondence Between Robert Hart and James Duncan Campbell (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1990–1993), 3:1402. Hereafter Archives. 35. Ibid. 36. “Campbell to Hart” (December 24, 1897), letter 2660, in Archives, 3:303–304. 37. “Hart to Campbell” (December 30, 1897), telegram 1403, in Archives, 3:1403. 38. Quoted in King, History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, 2:287. 39. Li Wenjie, “Zhongguo Zaoqi Guozhai de Duncuo,” 42. 40. Ibid., 51–54. 41. Ibid., 73. 42. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 300–302; King, History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, 2:283–291. 43. “Inspector General to the Deputy Commissioner for the Lijin Work of the Soochow and Sung-Hu Collectorates,” (April 9, 1898), in Docs. Ill., 2:119; King, History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, 2:287–288. 44. “I.G. Circular 820” (Lijin Pledged as Security for Loan: Collection in Certain Districts Entrusted to the Customs Service) (1898), in Docs. Ill., 2:104. 45. Wright, Collection and Disposal, 68–69. 46. “Campbell to Hart,” telegram 3209 (January 18, 1898), in Archives of China’s Imperial Maritime Customs: Confidential Correspondence Between Robert Hart and James Duncan Campbell, 1874–1907 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1990–1993), 1405. 47. The Open Door Note Submitted by U.S. Secretary of State John Hay (September 6, 1899), http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/opendoor.htm. 48. The standard work on the Boxer Uprising is Paul Cohen, History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). See also Joseph Esherick, Origins of the Boxer Uprising (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). 49. David Silbey, The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game (New York: Hill & Wang, 2012), 83–90. 50. “Zongli Yamen to Hart” (June 19, 1900), in Docs. Ill., 2:241. 51. “To Their Excellencies the Senior Secretaries of the Zongli Yamen” (Zhi Zongshu Zongban Daren) (June 20, 1900), Out-Letter Number 1 in “Copies of I.G. Out-Letters” (Zong Shuiwusi Shu Guhan Chaoben), SHAC 679(7)/112. The numbers refer to the number given in the table of contents of the file. Hart began numbering the correspondence in this file only from his second letter, which he numbered New Series Number 1. 52. Kong Xiangji, “Wan Qing Shi Tan Wei” (Explorations in Qing history) (Chengdu: Bashu Shushe, 2001), 232–246. 53. Ibid., 253. 54. Ibid., 246.

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55. “Journal of Captain Edward H. Bayly,” in China, 1900: The Eyewitnesses Speak, ed. Frederic Sharf and Peter Harrington (London: Greenhill, 2000), 106. 56. Quoted in Roger Thompson, “Military Dimensions of the Boxer Uprising in Shanxi,” in Warfare in Chinese History, ed. Hans van de Ven (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 311. 57. Ibid. 58. “Journal of Captain Edward H. Bayly,” in Sharf and Harrington, eds., China, 1900, 111, 114. 59. Ibid. 60. Kong Xiangji, “Wan Qing Shi,” 246. 61. Yi Huili, Zheng Guanying Pingzhuan (Critical biography of Zheng Guanying) (Nanjing: Nanjing Daxue Chubanshe, 1998), 590. 62. “Aglen to Campbell” (July 24, 1900), in Zhongguo Jindai Jingji Shi Ziliao Congkan Bianji Weiyuanhui (Compilation committee for the collection of materials on China’s economic history), eds., Zhongguo Haiguan yu Yihetuan Yundong (The Chinese Customs Service and the Boxer movement) (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1983), 77. 63. “Aglen to Hart” (September 15, 1900), in “Shanghai Semi-Official Correspondence,” SHAC 679/32214, in Robert Bickers and Hans van de Ven, eds., China and the West: The Maritime Customs Service Archive from the Second Historical Archives of China (Woodbridge: Thomason Gale, 2004–2008), reel 106. Hereafter China and the West. 64. “Hansson to Hart” (19 June 1900), in Zhongguo Jindai Jingji Shi Ziliao Congkan Bianji Weiyuanhui (Compilation committee for the collection of materials on China’s economic history), eds., Zhongguo Haiguan yu Xinhai Geming (The Chinese Maritime Customs Service and the 1911 Revolution) (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1983), 75. 65. “Hansson to Hart” (June 19, 1900), in ibid., 75. 66. Yi Huili, Zheng Guanying, 593. 67. “Hart to Campbell” (September 8, 1900), letter 2896, in Archives, 3:501. 68. The Times (July 17, 1900). 69. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 339. 70. “I.G. Circular 961” (Inspector General, Peking: Correspondence with Yamen and Proceedings Generally During Siege of Legation) (1900), in Docs. Ill., 2:238. 71. “Hippisley to Bredon” (June 3, 1901), in “Hankow Semi-Official Correspondence, 1900–04,” SHAC, 679/32135, in China and the West, reel 148. 72. “King to Hart” (September 16, 1900), in Zhongguo Jindai Jingji Shi Ziliao Congkan Bianji Weiyuanhui (Compilation committee for the collection of materials on China’s economic history), eds., Zhongguo Haiguan yu Yihetuan Yundong (The Chinese Customs Service and the Boxer movement), 73. 73. “Aglen to Hart” (August 31, 1900; September 26, 1900; November 15, 1900), “Shanghai Semi-Official Correspondence,” SHAC 679/32214, in China and the West, reel 106. 74. “Hart to Campbell” (September 8, 1900), letter 2896, in Archives, 3:501. 75. “Hart to Campbell” (October 14, 1900), letter 2905, in Archives, 3:508. 76. Quoted in Wright, Robert Hart, 737. 77. Frank King, “Sealing the Mouth of Outrage: Notes on the Meaning and Intent of Hart’s These from the Land of Sinim,” Modern Asian Studies 40, no. 3 (2006): 729–736. 78. “Memorandum 1” (August 21, 1900), in “Boxer Disturbances,” Queen’s University Belfast, Special Collections, 15/4/F. 79. “Zongshu Kun Gang Zhi Hede Han” (Kun Gang of the Zongli Yamen to Robert Hart) (August 23, 1900), in Zhongguo Jindai Jingji Shi Ziliao Congkan Bianji

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Weiyuanhui (Compilation committee for the collection of materials on China’s economic history), eds., Zhongguo Haiguan yu Yihetuan Yundong (The Chinese Customs Service and the Boxer movement), 27. 80. “Zongshu Zongban Zhi Hede Han” (August 28, 1900), in ibid., 29. 81. “Qu Han” (Out letter) (September 15, 1900) (no number), in ibid., 32. 82. Memorandum 3, in “Boxer Disturbances,” Queen’s University Belfast, Special Collections, 15/4/F6. 83. “Aglen to Hart” (September 15, 1900), in “Shanghai Semi-Official Correspondence,” SHAC 679/32214, in China and the West, reel 106. 84. Wright, Robert Hart, 739. 85. “Hart to Campbell” (November 26, 1900), letter 2919, in Archives, 3:519. 86. Memorandum 1 (August 21, 1900), Queen’s University Belfast, Special Collections, 15/4/F6. 87. “Memorandum on the Siege of the Legation Number 1” (September 1, 1990), in “Copies of I.G. Out-Letters,” SHAC 679(7)/112. 88. “Tongxing Zhuanyue Nigao” (Draft special treaty) and “Zhaohui Nigao” (Draft diplomatic note) attached to “Memorandum on the Siege of the Legations Number 3,” in “Copies of I.G. Out-Letters,” SHAC 679(7)/112. 89. “Hart to Campbell” (October 15, 1900), letter 2906, in Archives, 3:509. 90. T. G. Otte, The China Question: Great Power Rivalry and British Isolation, 1894– 1905 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 208–213. 91. “Hart to Campbell” (November 4, 1900), letter 2914, in Archives, 3:514. 92. “Hart to Campbell” (November 1, 1900), letter 2912, in Archives, 3:513. 93. “Memorandum on the Attack on the Legations Number 6,” in “Copies of I.G. Out-Letters,” SHAC 679(7)/112. No date, but listed between documents dated October 31 and November 13 in the table of contents. 94. “Hart to Campbell” (November 6, 1900), telegram 3683, in Archives, 3:1450. 95. “Memorandum on the Attack on the Legations Number 7” (January 16, 1901), in “Copies of I.G. Out-Letters,” SHAC 679(7)/112 . 96. “Campbell to Hart” (September 5, 1900), telegram 3656, in Archives, 3:1446; “Hart to Campbell,” (August 15, 1901), letter 2981, in Archives, 3:569. 97. “Memorandum on the Attack on the Legations Number 4,” in “Copies of I.G. Out-Letters,” SHAC 679(7)/112. 98. “Hart to Campbell” (February 9, 1901), telegram 3713, in Archives, 3:1452. 99. “Hart’s Memorandum on the Attack on the Legations,” in Zhongguo Jindai Jingji Shi Ziliao Congkan Bianji Weiyuanhui (Compilation committee for the collection of materials on China’s economic history), eds., Zhongguo Haiguan yu Yihetuan Yundong (The Chinese Customs Service and the Boxer movement) (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1983), 41; “Hede Zhengdun Liyuan Jielüe” (Hart’s memorandum on fiscal reform) (April 22, 1901), in “Copies of I.G. Out-Letters,” SHAC 679(7)/112. 100. Douglas Reynolds, China, 1898–1912: The Xinzheng Revolution and Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993). 101. “Hart to Campbell” (November 19, 1905), letter 3405, in Archives, 3:926. 102. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 387. 103. Yi Huili, Zheng Guanying. 104. Ibid., 554.

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105. Zheng Guanying, Shengshi Weiyan Zengding Xinbian (Humble words of warning for a prosperous age), new and enlarged ed. (Taipei: Taiwan Xuesheng Shuju, 1965), 1:551. 106. Ibid., 543–549. 107. Quoted in Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 384. 108. “I.G. Circular 976” (Native Customs, Proposed Control of) (1901), in Docs. Ill., 267. 109. I.G. Circular 1045 (Native Customs, Treatment of Fees, etc) (1902), in Docs. Ill., 325. 110. “Waiwubu Zhaxing Zong Shuiwusi” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs dispatch to IG) (July 16, 1902), in Docs. Ill., 2:320; Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 358. 111. Merrill, “Wuhu Handing Over Charge Memo” (April 1904), in “Handing Over Charge Memoranda-Wuhu,” SHAC, 679/17609. 112. Frederick Maze, “Canton Handing Over Charge Memorandum” (June 20, 1914), in “Canton Handing Over Charge Memoranda,” SHAC, 679/17633. 113. Tsai Weipin, “The Inspector General’s Last Prize: The Chinese Native Customs Service, 1901–1931,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 36, no. 2 (2008): 251–253; Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 383; Tsai Wei-pin, “The Inspector General’s Last Prize,” 250–252. 114. Quoted in Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 384. 115. Ibid. 116. The translation of Shuiwuchu as Board of Customs Control is taken from H. S. Brunnert and V. V. Hagelstrom, Present-Day Political Organization of China (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1912), 86. 117. “Jordan to Langley” (January 30, 1912), in Jordan Papers, National Archives UK, FO 350/8. 118. “Private Letter, Hillier (HSBC) to Charles Addis” (August 1906), in “Chinese Customs Administration,” National Archives UK, FO 371/181. 119. “Carnegie to Grey” (July 2, 1906), in ibid. 120. “Carnegie to Grey” (May 16, 1906), in ibid. 121. “FO Despatch” (May 11, 1906), in ibid. 122. “Carnegie to Grey” (July 16, 1906), in ibid. 123. “Carnegie to Grey” (May 16, 1906), in ibid. 124. “Carnegie to Grey” (July 16, 1906), in ibid. 125. Ibid. 126. “Hippesley to Addis” (August 10, 1906), in ibid. 127. “Affairs of China” (July 2, 1906), in ibid. 128. “Hart to Sir Cecil Clementi Smith” (October 21, 1906), in Docs. Ill., 7:206–212. 129. “Hart to Gardner” (July 29, 1906), in Chinese Customs Administration, National Archives UK, FO 371/181; see also “Hart to Campbell” (May 20, 1906), letter 3452, in Archives, 3:960–961 130. “Hart to Grey” (September 27, 1907), in “Hart’s Succession,” National Archives UK, FO 676/14A. 131. “I.G. Circular 1419” (Staff: Division of Work Between Chinese and Foreigners, Instruction) (1907), in “I.G. Circulars,” vol. 10, 1907–09, SHAC 679/26899, in China and the West, reel 9.

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132. Straits Times (June 15, 1908). 133. “I.G. Circular 1419” (Staff: Division of Work Between Chinese and Foreigners, Instruction) (1907), in “I.G. Circulars,” vol. 10, 1907–09, SHAC 679/26899, in China and the West, reel 9. 134. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 511. 135. “Sir Robert Hart’s Successor as I.G. of Chinese Customs,” FO Confidential Print, 8818, January 1907, in National Archives UK, FO 371/181. 136. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 413–422. 137. “Ernest Satow to Bertie” (December 10, 1902) in National Archives UK, FO 676/14A. 138. Ibid. 139. “Some Notes of His Career in China by Sir Robert Bredon, Now D.I.G. Imperial Chinese Customs,” in “Chinese Customs Administration,” National Archives UK, FO 371/385. 140. “Hippisley to Addis” (August 10, 1906), National Archives UK, FO 371/181. 141. “Some Notes of His Career in China by Sir Robert Bredon, Now D.I.G. Imperial Chinese Customs,” in “Chinese Customs Administration,” National Archives UK, FO 371/385; also in “Bredon D.I.G. Miscellaneous Letters,” SHAC, 679(7)/123. 142. “FO Secret Print 8818” (January 1907), in National Archives UK, FO 881/9083. 143. “Grey to Jordan” (October 10, 1907), in National Archives UK, FO 881/9083. 144. “Hillier to Addis,” in “Chinese Customs Administration,” National Archives UK, FO 371/181. 145. Ibid. 146. “Minutes of Visits of Sir John McLeavy Brown and Mr. Addis: Robert Hart Retirement” (August 21, 1906), in “Chinese Customs Administration,” National Archives UK, FO 371/181. 147. “Jordan to Grey” (September 25, 1907), in “Chinese Customs Administration,” National Archives UK, FO 371/385. 148. “Jordan to Grey” (September 23, 1907), in “Chinese Custom Administration,” National Archives UK, FO 371/385. 149. “Hart to Grey” (September 27, 1907), in “Hart Succession,” National Archives UK, FO 676/14A. 150. Ibid. 151. “Despatches from the Tsungli Yamen to Sir Claude MacDonald” (February 10, 1898), in Docs. Ill., 6:597. 152. “I.G. Circular 1483” (Inspector General Sir Robert Hart About to Hand Over) (1908), in “I.G. Circulars,” vol. 10, 1907–09, SHAC 679/26899, in China and the West, reel 9. 153. Ibid. 154. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 422–424. 155. Ibid., 421. 156. “Hart to Grey” (September 27, 1907), in “Hart Succession.” National Archives UK, FO 676/14A. 157. “Despatch from Revenue Council to the I.G. of Customs,” in National Archives UK, FO 233/134. 158. Wright, Collection and Disposal, 1.

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159. See also Hans van de Ven, “Military and Financial Reform in the Late Qing and Early Republic” in Caizheng yu Zhongguo Jindai Lishi Lunwenji (Finance and modern history), ed. Lin Man-houng (Taipei: Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, 1999), 49–50. 160. Ibid. 161. “I.G. Circular 1040” (Native Customs Revenue: Apportionment of) (1902), in “I.G. Circulars, 1902–1904,” SHAC 679/26897, in China and the West, reel 7. See also Wright, Collection and Disposal, 99. 162. “Memorandum by Sir Francis Aglen on the Chinese Revolution of 1911 and the Maritime Customs Service,” in Docs. Ill., 7:234. 163. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 477. 164. “Aglen to Hu Weide” (October 23, 1911), in Zhongguo Jindai Jingji Shi Ziliao Congkan Bianji Weiyuanhui (Compilation committee for the collection of materials on China’s economic history), eds., Zhongguo Haiguan yu Xinhai Geming (The Chinese Maritime Customs Service and the 1911 Revolution), 330. When Aglen proposed that Customs dues be handed to the Customs Commissioners, Hu Weide’s comment was that he needed to consult Yuan. See “Aglen to Jordan” (November 20, 1911), in ibid., 332. 165. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 481. 166. Ibid., 481; “Aglen to Jordan,” in Zhongguo Jindai Jingji Shi Ziliao Congkan Bianji Weiyuanhui (Compilation committee for the collection of materials on China’s economic history), eds., Zhongguo Haiguan yu Xinhai Geming (The Chinese Maritime Customs Service and the 1911 Revolution), 332. 167. Circa 1865, reel 11. The dispatch was not dated in the IG circulars, but it is identical to one quoted in Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 481, which was dated December 6, 1911. It did say “all revenue throughout the country,” but it seems reasonable to assume that Customs revenue only was meant. 168. “Jordan to Grey” (November 23, 1911), in Zhongguo Jindai Jingji Shi Ziliao Congkan Bianji Weiyuanhui (Compilation committee for the collection of materials on China’s economic history), eds., Zhongguo Haiguan yu Xinhai Geming (The Chinese Maritime Customs Service and the 1911 Revolution), 341. 169. “Sugden to Aglen” (October 11, 1911), “Hankow Semi-Official Correspondence,” in “Hankow Semi-Official Correspondence, 1910–1911,” SHAC 679/3238, in China and the West, reel 151. 170. “Jordan to Campbell,” (January 4, 1912), “Legation Correspondence re Customs,” National Archives UK, FO 350/8. 171. “Sugden to Aglen” (October 15, 18, 1911), in “Hankow Semi-Official Correspondence, 1910–1911,” SHAC 679/3238, in China and the West, reel 151. 172. “Oiesen to Aglen” (October 29, 1911), in Zhongguo Jindai Jingji Shi Ziliao Congkan Bianji Weiyuanhui (Compilation committee for the collection of materials on China’s economic history), eds., Zhongguo Haiguan yu Xinhai Geming (The Chinese Maritime Customs Service and the 1911 Revolution), 278. 173. “Wu Tingfang to Merrill,” (November 10, 1911) in “Shanghai Semi-Official Correspondence, 1911–1913,” SHAC 679/32217, in China and the West, reel 109. 174. “Maze to Aglen” (November 12, 1911), in Zhongguo Jindai Jingji Shi Ziliao Congkan Bianji Weiyuanhui (Compilation committee for the collection of materials on

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China’s economic history), eds., Zhongguo Haiguan yu Xinhai Geming (The Chinese Maritime Customs Service and the 1911 Revolution), 216. 175. “Jordan to Campbell” (January 4, 1912), in “Legation Correspondence re Customs,” National Archives UK, FO 350/8. 176. Hou Yijie, Yuan Shikai Quanzhuan (Complete biography of Yuan Shikai) (Beijing: Dangdai Zhongguo Chubanshe, 1994), 198. 177. Ibid., 194. 178. “Jordan to Grey” (January 19, 1912), in “China: Revolution and Civil War,” National Archives UK, WO 106/26. 179. “Jordan to Langley” (January 10, 1912), in “Legation Correspondence re Customs,” National Archives UK, FO 350/8. 180. “Jordan to Langley” (February 17, 1912), in “Legation Correspondence re Customs,” National Archives UK, FO 350/8. 181. “National Relief Association” (November 16, 1911), National Archives UK, FO 223/134. 182. “Jordan to Grey” (January 19, 1912), in “China: Revolution and Civil War,” National Archives UK, WO 106/26. 183. “Aglen to Jordan” (December 6, 1911), in Zhongguo Jindai Jingji Shi Ziliao Congkan Bianji Weiyuanhui (Compilation committee for the collection of materials on China’s economic history), eds., Zhongguo Haiguan yu Xinhai Geming (The Chinese Maritime Customs Service and the 1911 Revolution), 335. 184. Wright, Collection and Disposal, 84–85. 185. King, History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, 2:481–491. 186. Ibid., 2:177, 477–478. 187. Ibid., 2:477. 188. Robert Hart, “Memorandum by Sir Robert Hart Concerning the Indemnity to Be Paid by China” (1901), in Docs. Ill., 6:606. 189. “Bruce Hart to Aglen” (December 19, 1912), in “London Office Letter Book,” SHAC679/32816, in China and the West, reel 73. 190. William Goetzmann, Andrey Ukhow, and Ning Zhu, “China and the World Financial Markets, 1870–1939: Modern Lessons from Historical Globalization,” Economic History Review 60, no. 2 (2007). 191. “Caruthers to Aglen” (October 22, 1911), in Zhongguo Jindai Jingji Shi Ziliao Congkan Bianji Weiyuanhui (Compilation committee for the collection of materials on China’s economic history), eds., Zhongguo Haiguan yu Xinhai Geming (The Chinese Maritime Customs Service and the 1911 Revolution), 338. 192. “Thorne to Aglen” (November 25, December 9, and December 23), in “Letters to and from the I.G., Semi-Official,” SHAC 679/31840, in China and the West, reel 76. 193. “Imperial and Foreign Intelligence: Chinese Customs Loans: A Re-Assuring Statement,” Times (November 23, 1911) 194. “Bruce Hart to Aglen” (January 31 and February 3, 1912), in “Letters to and from I.G., Semi-Official,” SHAC 679/31840, in China and the West, reel 76. 195. “Chinese Loan Service: Payments Expected Shortly,” Times (February 7, 1912). 196. Wright, Collection and Disposal, 5–6. 197. King, History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, 2:482–491. 198. Ibid., 490. 199. Ibid., 490–491.

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200. Ibid., 503–505. 201. Ibid., 506. 202. Ibid., 502. 203. Wright, Collection and Disposal, 84. 204. “Jordan to Langley” (May 4, 1912), and “Jordan to Langley” (May 21, 1912), in “Legation Correspondence re Customs,” National Archives UK, FO 350/8. 205. “Jordan to Langley” (March 25, 1912), in “Legation Correspondence re Customs,” National Archives UK, FO 350/8. 206. “Jordan to Langley” (May 21, 1912), in “Legation Correspondence re Customs,” National Archives UK, FO 350/8. 207. Quoted in Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 510. 208. “King to Aglen” (March 2, 1915), in “Letters to and from I.G., Semi-Official,” SHAC 679/31841, in China and the West, reel 77. 209. “Maze to Aglen” (April 29, 1911), in Zhongguo Jindai Jingji Shi Ziliao Congkan Bianji Weiyuanhui (Compilation committee for the collection of materials on China’s economic history), eds., Zhongguo Haiguan yu Xinhai Geming (The Chinese Maritime Customs Service and the 1911 Revolution), 192. 210. “Maze to Aglen” (November 10, 1911), in Zhongguo Jindai Jingji Shi Ziliao Congkan Bianji Weiyuanhui (Compilation committee for the collection of materials on China’s economic history), eds., Zhongguo Haiguan yu Xinhai Geming (The Chinese Maritime Customs Service and the 1911 Revolution), 206–207. 211. For the text, see “Maze to Aglen” (December 11, 1911), in Zhongguo Jindai Jingji Shi Ziliao Congkan Bianji Weiyuanhui (Compilation committee for the collection of materials on China’s economic history), eds., Zhongguo Haiguan yu Xinhai Geming (The Chinese Maritime Customs Service and the 1911 Revolution), 214–215. 212. “Maze to Aglen” (January 12, 1912), in Zhongguo Jindai Jingji Shi Ziliao Congkan Bianji Weiyuanhui (Compilation committee for the collection of materials on China’s economic history), eds., Zhongguo Haiguan yu Xinhai Geming (The Chinese Maritime Customs Service and the 1911 Revolution), 216. 213. “Aglen to Maze” (November 16, 1911), in Zhongguo Jindai Jingji Shi Ziliao Congkan Bianji Weiyuanhui (Compilation committee for the collection of materials on China’s economic history), eds., Zhongguo Haiguan yu Xinhai Geming (The Chinese Maritime Customs Service and the 1911 Revolution), 210.

5. IMPERIUM IN IMPERIO, 1914–1929 1. “Aglen to Acheson” (October 28, 1922), in “Aglen Letters,” SOAS, MS 211355. 2. Gu Weijun, Gu Weijun Huiyilu (Memoirs of Gu Weijun), trans. Zhonguo Shehui Kexue Yuan Jindai Shi Yanjiusuo (Modern History Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1983), 1:308. 3. “Aglen to King (October 22, 1919), in “Confidential Letters from I.G., 1914–1920,” SHAC 679/31677. 4. Aglen to King (November 8, 1915), in “Confidential Letters from I.G., 1914–1920,” SHAC 679/31677. 5. Gu, Gu Weijun Huiyilu, 1:308.

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6. See Emily Rosenberg, Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900–1930 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999). 7. Gu, Gu Weijun Huiyilu, 1:284. 8. “Aglen to Acheson” (January 2, 1921), in “Aglen Letters,” SOAS, MS 211355. 9. Stephen Craft, V. K. Wellington Koo and the Emergence of Modern China (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004), 75. 10. Gu, Gu Weijun Huiyilu, 1:269, 277–278. 11. Ibid., 1:284–291. 12. “Aglen to Bowra” (April 7, 1926), in “Aglen Letters,” SOAS, MS 211355. 13. Gu, Gu Weijun Huiyilu, 1:308–309. 14. Ibid, 1:309. 15. Ibid., 1:309–310. 16. Craft, Wellington Koo, 36. 17. Ibid., 32–33. 18. Ibid., 77. 19. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi (China’s modern Maritime Customs Service) (Beijing: Renmin Daxue Chubanshe, 2002), 603–609. 20. Gu, Gu Weijun Huiyilu, 1:134. 21. Ibid., 1:131. 22. Ibid., 1:134. 23. Ibid., 1:313. 24. Ibid., 1:307–308. 25. Ibid., 1:307. 26. Kwong Chi Man, “Northeast Asia and the Northern Expedition, 1925–1928: A Strategic History,” Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 2010. 27. “Caizhengbu Cheng Wei Sheli Guonei Gongzhaiju Niju Zhangcheng” (Draft regulations for the National Loans Bureau submitted by the Ministry of Finance” (August 1, 1914), in Qian Jiaju, Jiu Zhongguo Gongzhai Shi Ziliao: 1894–1949 Nian (Sources for the history of the public debt of Old China, 1894–1949) (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1984), 40; Stanley Wright, The Collection and Disposal of the Maritime and Native Customs Revenue Since the Revolution of 1911 (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General, 1927), 132–133. 28. Wright, Collection and Disposal, 132. 29. “IG Circular 2550” (Revenue Collection: Dollar rates of Exchange and Remittances) (of 1916), in Stanley Wright, ed., Documents Illustrative of the Origin, Development, and Activities of the Chinese Customs Service (Shanghai: Statistical Department of Inspectorate General, 1938), 3:320–324. Hereafter Docs. Ill. 30. “Aglen to King” (December 31, 1914), in “Confidential Letters from I.G.,” SHAC 679/31677. 31. “Minguo Sannian Gongzhai Tiaoli” (Regulations for the National Loan of 1914), in Qian Jiaju, Jiu Zhongguo Gongzhai Shi Ziliao, 43. 32. Marie-Claire Bergere, The Golden Age of the Chinese Bourgeoisie, 1911–1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), chaps. 2–4. 33. “Sinian Neiguo Gongzhai Tiaoli” (Regulations for the National Loan of 1915), in Qian Jiaju, Jiu Zhongguo Gongzhai Shi Ziliao, 45. 34. Ibid., 47; Wright, Collection and Disposal, 135.

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35. “Aglen to King” (December 31, 1914), in “Confidential Letters from I.G., 1914– 1920,” in SHAC 679/31677. 36. “Aglen to King” (October 6, 1915), in “Confidential Letters from I.G., 1914–1920,” SHAC 679/31677. 37. “Aglen to King” (November 8, 1915), in “Confidential Letters from I.G., 1914– 1920,” SHAC 679/31677. 38. “Aglen to King” (September 20, 1917), in “Confidential Letters from I.G., 1914– 1920,” SHAC 679/31677. 39. Wright, Collection and Disposal, 151. 40. Ibid., 139. 41. “Aglen to King” (September 20, 1917), in “Confidential Letters from I.G., 1914– 1920,” SHAC 679/31677. 42. Ibid. 43. “Aglen to Acheson (February 1, 1921), in “Aglen Letters,” SOAS, MS 211355. 44. “Caizhengbu Zhengli Neiguo Gongzhai Queding Ben Xi Jijin Cheng Da Zongtong Wen” (Ministry of Finance report to the president about the capital and interest reserve fund for the Consolidated Bond) (March 3, 1921), in Qian Jiaju, Jiu Zhongguo Gongzhai Shi Ziliao, 65–68. 45. “Aglen to King” (March 2, 1920), in “Confidential Letters from I.G.,” 1914–1920,” SHAC 679/31677. 46. Wright, Collection and Disposal, 171. 47. “Aglen to Bowra” (March 11, 1924), in “Aglen Letters,” SOAS, MS 211355. 48. Wright, Collection and Disposal, 179. 49. “Aglen to Bowra” (December 20, 1924), in “Aglen Letters,” SOAS, MS 211355. 50. “Aglen to Bowra” (March 11, 1924), in “Aglen Letters,” SOAS, MS 211355. 51. Ibid. 52. Thomas Rawski and Lillian Li, Chinese History in Economic Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 120. 53. Frank King, “The Boxer Indemnity: ‘Nothing But Bad,’” Modern Asian Studies 40, no. 3 (2006): 678–680, 683–685. 54. Stella Benson diary, entry for November 12, 1923, University Library, Cambridge University. 55. “Aglen to Bowra” (February 16 and March 11, 1924), in “Aglen Letters,” SOAS, MS 211355. 56. “Aglen to Bowra” (March 11, 1924; May 13, 1924) in “Aglen Letters,” SOAS, MS 211355. 57. “Aglen to King” (March 17, 1918) in “Confidential Letters from I.G., 1914–1920,” 679/31677. 58. “King to Aglen” (December 25, 1916), in “Confidential Letters from I.G.,” 1914– 1920, 679/31677. 59. “Aglen to King” (October 22, 1919), in “Confidential Letters from I.G.,” 1914–1920, 679/31677; “Aglen to Acheson” (May 24, 1921), in “Aglen Letters,” SOAS, MS 211355; Aglen to King” (August 5, 1919), in “Confidential Letters from I.G.,” 1914–1920, SHAC 679/31677. 60. “Aglen to King” (March 16, 1921), SOAS, MS 211355. This was perhaps P. N. Shone, who was attached to the Inspectorate for only two years. All others were long-time Customs employees.

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61. “King to Aglen” (July 20, 1915), in “Letters to and from I.G., Semi-Official,” SHAC 679/31841, in Robert Bickers and Hans van de Ven, eds., China and the West: The Maritime Customs Service Archive from the Second Historical Archives of China (Woodbridge: Thomason Gale, 2004–2008), reel 77. Hereafter China and the West. 62. “Wade to Aglen” (April 18, 1915), in “Shanghai Semi-Official Correspondence, 1914–1917,” SHAC 679/32217, in China and the West, reel 110. 63. Ibid. 64. “Semi-Official Circular 6” (Customs Association vis-à-vis Inspector General) (February 10, 1913), in Docs. Ill., 3:88–91. 65. “Merrill to Aglen” (June 26, 1912), Docs. Ill., 3:87. 66. “Circular 2612” (Out-door Staff: Consideration in re General Increase of Pay) (1917), in “Inspector General Circulars, vol. 15,” SHAC 679/26905, in China and the West, reel 14. 67. “Wade to Aglen” (February 10, 1919), in “Shanghai Semi-Official Correspondence,” 1918–1920,” reel 111. 68. For a copy of the question in Parliament, see “Chinese Customs Service,” National Archives, UK FO 228/3497. 69. “The Customs Outdoor Staff: The Men’s Grievances,” North China Daily News, 30 March 1920, copy in “Chinese Customs Service,” National Archives UK, FO 228/3497. 70. Dawson’s Notes, appended to “Wade to Aglen” (February 25 and March 5, 1919), in “Shanghai Semi-Official Correspondence,” 1918–1920, SHAC 679/32220, in China and the West, reel 111. 71. Ibid. 72. “King to Aglen” (August 17, 1915), in “Letters to and from Inspector General, Semi-Official, 1915–1917,” SHAC 679/31841, in China and the West, reel 48. 73. F. E. Taylor, “The Maritime Customs Service: A Plea for Reform,” Peking Leader (January 10, 1919). Copy in “Chinese Customs Service,” National Archives UK, FO 228/3497. 74. “Aglen to Acheson” (April 20, 1921), in “Aglen Letters,” SOAS, MS 211355; for the payment to Taylor, see “Aglen Memorandum for Bowra” (September 2, 1918), in “Handing Over Charge Memoranda: I.G. to Chief Secretary,” SHAC 679/17574. 75. “Lyall to Aglen” (March 5, 1919), and a letter likely May 1919 in “Shanghai SemiOfficial Correspondence,” 1918–20,” SHAC 679/32220, in China and the West, reel 111. 76. “Wade to Aglen” (February 7, 1919), in ibid. 77. “Lyall to Aglen,” date unclear but likely June 1919, in ibid. 78. “Lyall to Aglen” (June 19, 1919), in ibid. 79. Stella Benson diary, entry for November 12, 1922, Manuscripts Room, University Library, Cambridge University. 80. “S. P. Weldt to Carl,” enclosed in “Carl to Aglen” (November 15, 1915), in “Hankow Semi-Official Correspondence, 1959–1920,” SHAC 679/32140, in China and the West, reel 153. 81. “Aglen to Bowra” (November 20, 1926), in “Aglen Letters,” SOAS, MS 211355. 82. “Semi-Official Circular 36” (Foreign Outdoor Staff: Dishonesty in Lower Ranks) (January 23, 1923), in Docs. Ill., 3:682–683. 83. “Aglen to King” (August 24, 1916) in “Confidential Letters from the I.G., 1914– 1920,” SHAC 679/31677.

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84. “Wade to Aglen” (March 5, 1919), in “Shanghai Semi-Official Correspondence, 1918–1920,” SHAC 679/32220, in China and the West, reel 111; “Wade to Aglen” (February 10, 1919), in ibid. 85. “Wade to Aglen,” (March 5, 1919), in ibid. 86. “Lyall to Aglen,” date unclear but likely November 1919, in ibid. 87. “Wade to Aglen” (February 25, 1919) and “Lyall to Aglen,” in ibid. 88. “Lyall to Aglen,” date unclear but likely April 1919, in ibid. 89. “Aglen to Hart” (October 12, 1900), in “Shanghai Semi-Official Correspondence, 1900–05,” SHAC 679/32214, in China and the West, reel 106. 90. “Circular 2912” (Outdoor Staff: I.G. Appreciation of War “Carried on” with Ranks Depleted to War) (March 8, 1919), in Docs. Ill., 3:485. 91. “Wade to Aglen” (March 5, 1919), in “Shanghai Semi-Official Correspondence, 1918–1920,” SHAC 679/32220, in China and the West, reel 111. 92. “Lyall to Aglen” (May 1919), in ibid. 93. “Semi-Official Circular 29” (Outdoor Staff Deputation to the I.G.) (November 11, 1919), Docs. Ill., 3:503–510. 94. “Lyall to Aglen” (March 1920), in “Shanghai Semi-Official Correspondence,” SHAC 679/32220, in China and the West, reel 111. 95. “Memorandum on Wyatt Agitation,” in “Chinese Customs Service,” National Archives UK, FO 228/3497. 96. Ibid. 97. “Lyall to Aglen” (March 1920), in “Shanghai Semi-Official Correspondence, 1918– 20,” SHAC 679/32220, in China and the West, reel 111. 98. Wright, Collection and Disposal, 197–214; Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 863–880. 99. “Maze to Stephenson” (November 25, 1926), in “Shanghai Semi-Official Correspondence, 1925–26,” SHAC 679/32222, in China and the West, reel 113. 100. “Maze to Edwardes,” date unclear but likely November 1927, in “Shanghai SemiOfficial Correspondence, 1927–28,” SHAC 679/32223, in China and the West, reel 114. 101. “Aglen to Stephenson,” date unclear but likely June 1926, in “Shanghai SemiOfficial Correspondence, 1925–26,” SHAC 679/32222, in China and the West, reel 113. 102. “Circular 2228” (Customs College, Peking: Students Graduated from) (June 30, 1914), in Docs. Ill., 3:189–190. 103. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 510. 104. Amit Chaudhuri, “The Waiting Room of History,” London Review of Books 26, no. 12 (2004): 3–8. 105. Enez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), quoting N. Gordon Levin, “Woodrow Wilson and World Politics.” 106. Xu Guoqi, China and the Great War: China’s Pursuit of a New National Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 248. 107. Craft, Wellington Koo, 51. 108. Ibid. 109. Gu, Gu Weijun Huiyilu, 1:185–187. 110. Xu, China and the Great War, 249. 111. Ibid. 112. Gu, Gu Weijun Huiyilu, 1:186.

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113. Manela, The Wilsonian Moment, 107–111. 114. Craft, Wellington Koo, 48. 115. Ibid., 48–49. 116. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 536. 117. Gu, Gu Weijun Huiyilu, 1:172–177. 118. Ibid., 1:192. 119. Ibid., 1:187–189. 120. Ibid., 1:188–189; Xu, China and the Great War, 260. 121. Manela, The Wilsonian Moment, 179. 122. Craft, Wellington Koo, 53. 123. “Aglen to King” (May 24, 1919), in “Confidential Letters from the I.G., 1914–1920,” SHAC 679/31677. 124. Gu, Gu Weijun Huiyilu, 1:196–197. 125. See also Manela, The Wilsonian Moment, 178–184. 126. Gu, Gu Weijun Huiyilu, 1:206–210. 127. Ibid., 1:221. 128. Craft, Wellington Koo, 69. 129. Gu, Gu Weijun Huiyilu, 1:228. 130. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 541–542. 131. Ibid., 542. 132. Ibid. 133. Ibid., 543. 134. On the wars, see Arthur Waldron, From War to Nationalism: China’s Turning Point, 1924–1925 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 73–118. 135. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 572. 136. Gu, Gu Weijun Huiyilu, 1:277. 137. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 572–575. 138. Ibid., 575–576. 139. “Aglen to Bowra” (November 20, 1926), in “Aglen Letters,” SOAS, MS 211355. 140. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 576. 141. “Aglen to Bowra” (August 21, 1924), in “Aglen Letters,” SOAS, MS 211355. 142. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 551; Wright, Collection and Disposal, 205. 143. Shenbao (February 21, 1921), quoted in Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 352–353. 144. “I.G. Semi-Official Circular 34” (Revenue Collection: Canton Government’s Intention to take Control of) (February 7, 1921), in “Inspector General’s Semi-Official Circulars,” SHAC 679/930, in China and the West, reel 48; See also “I.G. Semi-Official Circular 41” (Customs Administration and Intra-Provincial Warfare) (February 29, 1924), in ibid. 145. “Bowra to Acheson for I.G.” (October 11, 1923), in “I.G. Correspondence with Tsai-cheng Pu and Executive Yuan,” SHAC 679/32744. 146. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 563. 147. Ibid., 564. 148. Ibid. 149. Ibid., 563. 150. Ibid., 561–563.

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151. Ibid. 152. Wright, Collection and Disposal, 187. 153. “Aglen to Bowra” (May 27 and July 15, 1925), in “Aglen Letters,” SOAS, MS 211355. 154. Wright, Collection and Disposal, 187. 155. “Stephenson to Bowra for I.G.” (June 14, 1925), in “I.G. Correspondence with Tsai-cheng Pu and Executive Yuan,” SHAC 679/32744. 156. Ibid. 157. Donna Brunero, “Through Turbulent Waters: The Foreign Administration of the Chinese Customs Service,” Ph.D. diss., University of Adelaide, 2000, 128–131. 158. “From Bell, Canton, to I.G.” (June 2, 1926), in “I.G. Correspondence with Tsaicheng Pu and Executive Yuan,” SHAC 679/32744. 159. “Stephenson to Aglen” (November 22, 1926), in ibid. 160. For reports, see “British Policy in China; Dismissal of Customs InspectorGeneral,” National Archives UK, FO 228/3298. 161. “Stephenson to Aglen” (December 4, 1926), in “I.G. Correspondence with Tsaicheng Pu and Executive Yuan,” SHAC 679/32744. 162. Hans van de Ven, War and Nationalism in China, 1925–1945 (London: Routledge, 2003), 88–92. 163. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 594–595. 164. Ibid., 594. 165. Ibid., 594–599. 166. “Aglen to Stephenson” (November 18, 1926), in “I.G. Correspondence with Tsaicheng Pu and Executive Yuan,” SHAC 679/32744. 167. “Aglen to Acheson” (October 28, 1922), in “Aglen Letters,” SOAS, MS 211355. 168. “Aglen to Bowra” (January 16, 1926), in “Aglen Letters,” SOAS, MS 211355. 169. “Semi-Official Circular 51” in “Inspector General’s Semi-Official Circulars,” SHAC 679/930. 170. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 592–599. 171. “Aglen to Stephenson” (December 29, 1926), in “I.G. Correspondence with Tsaicheng Pu and Executive Yuan,” SHAC 679/32744. 172. “Aglen to Bowra” (April 7, 1926), in ibid. 173. “Aglen to Bowra” (March 13, 1926), in “Aglen Letters,” SOAS, MS 21355. 174. “Edwardes to Bowra for I.G.” (August 24, 1926), “I.G. Correspondence with Tsaicheng Pu and Executive Yuan,” in SHAC 679/32744. 175. “Stephenson to Bowra for I.G.” (September 1, 1926), in ibid. 176. Chang Fu-yun, “Reformer of the Chinese Maritime Customs” (Oral history, 1976, 1979, and 1983), conducted by Blaine Gaustad and Rhoda Chang, Regional Oral History Office, UC Berkeley Bancroft Library, 116. http://archive.org/stream/reform chinese00chanrich/reformchinese00chanrich_djvu.txt. 177. “Ferguson to Edwardes” (February 9, 1927), in “I.G. Correspondence with Tsaicheng Pu and Executive Yuan,” SHAC 679/32744. 178. “Aglen to Edwardes” (January 18, 1927), in “I.G. Correspondence with Tsai-cheng Pu and Executive Yuan,” SHAC 679/32744. 179. For documents relating to Aglen’s stance on the issue, see “I.G. Correspondence with Tsai-cheng Pu and Executive Yuan,” SHAC 679/32744. 180. Gu, Gu Weijun Huiyilu, 1:306. 181. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 603.

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182. “I.G. Semi-Official Circular 53” (February 2, 1927), in “I.G. Semi-Official Circulars,” SHAC 679/930, in China and the West, reel 48. 183. Ibid., 605–607; ‘Lampson to Foreign Office” (January 28, 1927), in “British Policy in China: Dismissal of Customs Inspector-General,” National Archives UK, FO 228/3298. 184. “Lampson to Foreign Office” (January 28, 1927), in “British Policy in China: Dismissal of Customs Inspector-General,” National Archives UK, FO 228/3298. 185. Gu, Gu Weijun Huiyilu, 1:311–324; “Aglen to Ferguson” (February 10, 1927) in “I.G. Correspondence with Tsai-cheng Pu and Executive Yuan,” SHAC 679/32744. 186. “Ferguson to Edwardes” (March 26, 1927), in ibid. 187. Record of Services and Honours Attained by Members of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, War 1914–1918. http://archive.org/details/ cu31924023172640. 188. “Lyall to Aglen” (June 19, 1919), in “Shanghai Semi-Official Correspondence,” SHAC 679/32220, in China and the West, reel 111. 189. “Stephenson to Bowra for I.G.” (June 14, 1925), in “I.G. Correspondence with Tsai-cheng Pu and Executive Yuan,” SHAC 679/32744. 190. “Lyall to I.G.” (May 28, 1927), in “Tariff Revision 1926,” SHAC 679/17980. 191. Chang Fu-yun, “Reformer of the Customs Service,” 117. 192. “From O.I.G. from Moukden” (September 17, 1927), in “I.G. Correspondence with Tsai-cheng Pu and Executive Yuan,” SHAC 679/32744. 193. Chang Fu-yun, “Reformer of the Customs Service,” 118–121. 194. “Maze to Edwardes” (March 25, 1927), in “Shanghai Semi-Official Correspondence, 1927–28,” SHAC 679/32223, in China and the West, reel 114. 195. Chang Fu-yun, “Reformer of the Customs Service,” 117. 196. “Maze to Edwardes” (May 21, 1927), in “Shanghai Semi-Official Correspondence, 1927–28,” SHAC 679/32223, in China and the West, reel 114. 197. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 614. 198. Chang Fu-yun, “Reformer of the Customs Service,” 116. 199. Ibid., 121–121. 200. Ibid., 161. 201. Ibid., 161–2. 202. Brunero, “Turbulent Waters,” 163. 203. Chang Fu-yun, “Reformer of the Customs Service,” 132. 204. Ibid., 125–131. 205. Ibid., 125–126. 206. Lam Lok-ming, Haiguan Fuwu Sawu Nian Huiyilu (Recollecting thirty-five years of service in the Customs Service) (Hong Kong, Longmen, 1982), 1–5. 207. Ibid. 208. Brunero, ‘Turbulent Waters,” 165. 209. “Maze to ACE Braud” (January 8 1929), in “Guomin Zhengfu Xingzhengyuan Caizhengbu Ling” (Instructions from the national government), SHAC 679(5)/217. 210. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 620–623. 211. “Chang Fu-yun to Maze” (January 21, 1929) in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with Kuan-wu Shu [Customs Affairs Office],” SHAC 679(6)/1213, in China and the West, reel 193. 212. “Semi-Official Circular 56” (Misleading Reports re Compulsory Retirement of I.G.) (6 March 1929), in “Inspector General’s Semi-Official Circulars,” SHAC 679/930, in China and the West, reel 48.

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6. TARIFF NATION, SMUGGLERS’ NATION: THE CUSTOMS SERVICE IN THE NANJING DECADE, 1929–1937 1. The quotation from Maze used as the second epigraph for this chapter is from Nicholas Clifford, “Sir Frederick Maze and the Chinese Maritime Customs, 1937–1941,” Journal of Modern History 37, no. 1 (1965): 20. 2. “China: Soong Out,” Time (November 6, 1933). 3. “I.G. Circular 4746” (His Excellency Dr T. V. Soong: Presentation to, by Customs Staff of Silver Cup) (1933), in Stanley Wright, ed., Documents Illustrative of the Origin, Development, and Activities of the Chinese Customs Service (Shanghai: Statistical Department of Inspectorate General, 1938), 5:326. Hereafter Docs. Ill. 4. Ibid., 5:332. 5. The article is appended to “I.G. Circular 4746,” mentioned in ibid., 332–335. 6. “The Customs,” North China Daily News (January 12, 1929), copy in “Chinese Customs Service,” National Archives UK, FO 228/3943. 7. “Garstin to Lampson” (January 11, 1929), in ibid., National Archives UK, FO 228/3943. 8. Times (January 11, 1929): 12. 9. See Parks Coble, The Shanghai Capitalists and the Nationalist Government, 1927– 1937 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980). 10. See Wu Jingping, Song Ziwen Pingzhuan (Critical biography of Song Ziwen) (Fuzhou: Fuzhou Renmin Chubanshe, 1992), 72–184; Zhang Xianwen, Zhonghua Minguo Shi (The history of Republican China), 2:128–191. 11. Arthur Young, China’s Nation-Building Effort (New York: New York University Press, 1983), 22. 12. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi (China’s modern Maritime Customs Service) (Beijing: Renmin Daxue Chubanshe, 2002), 625–633. 13. Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” in Bringing the State Back In, ed. Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschenmeyer, and Theda Skocpol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 171. 14. Lloyd Eastman, The Abortive Revolution: China Under Nationalist Rule, 1927–1937 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974). The Communists advanced this understanding in their propaganda at the time. 15. Clifford, “Maze and the Chinese Maritime Customs,” 18–34. 16. Robert Bickers, “Purloined Letters: History and the Chinese Maritime Customs Service,” Modern Asian Studies 40, no. 3 (2006): 700–723; Robert Bickers, “The Chinese Customs at War, 1941–1945,” Journal of Commonwealth History 36, no. 2 (2008). 17. Robert Bickers, Britain in China: Community, Culture, and Colonialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 117. 18. “New Chinese Cabinet,” in “Letters to the editor,” Times (January 5, 1932). 19. “To the Editor of the Times,” in “Letters to the Editor,” Times (February 29, 1932). 20. “Wright to Maze” (June 27, 1939), in “Private Correspondence between I.G. and Non-Resident Secretary,” SHAC 679/31735, in Robert Bickers and Hans van de Ven, eds., China and the West: The Maritime Customs Service Archive from the Second Historical Archives of China (Woodbridge: Thomason Gale, 2004–2008), reel 91. Hereafter China and the West.

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21. Ibid. 22. Reports on these appear regularly in “Letters to and from Inspector General,” 1929–1937, in China and the West, reels 79 and 80. On the Aglen funeral, see “Walsham to Maze” (May 31, 1932), in “Letters to and from Inspector General,” SHAC 679/31846, in China and the West, reel 79. For those who attended the funeral of Mrs. Hippisley, see “Maze to Macoun” (April 2, 1935), in “Confidential Correspondence with Non-Resident Secretary,” SHAC 679/31687, in China and the West, reel 89. Colonel Hayley Bell was one. Hippisley was said to have been “anti Hart and anti Aglen.” 23. “Macoun to Lawford” (July 5, 1934), in “Confidential Correspondence with NonResident Secretary,” SHAC 679/31687, in China and the West, reel 89. 24. “Macoun to Lawford” (December 28, 1934), in ibid. The article was published in the November 20, 1934, edition of the Times of London. 25. “Macoun to Maze” (March 13, 1936), in “Letters to and from I.G., 1936–1937,” SHAC 679/31848, in China and the West, reel 80. 26. Dianna Yeh, “Entangled Identities: Britain, China, and the Politics of Performing Chineseness in Britain,” paper presented at “Britain and China: Pasts, Presents, and Futures,” August 24–26, 2011. 27. Stephen Endicott, British China Policy, 1933–1937 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1975), 141. 28. “Maze to Macoun” (December 17, 1935), in “Confidential Correspondence with Non-Resident Secretary,” SHAC 679/31687, in China and the West, reel 89. 29. “Maze to Macoun” (July 2, 1935), in ibid. 30. “Maze to Macoun” (July 30, 1935), in ibid. 31. “Newton to Minister [Lampson]” (April 17, 1929), in “Chinese Customs Service,” National Archives UK, FO 228/3943. 32. Chang Fu-yun, “Reformer of the Chinese Maritime Customs” (Oral history, 1976, 1979, and 1983), conducted by Blaine Gaustad and Rhoda Chang, Regional Oral History Office, UC Berkeley Bancroft Library, 142–143. http://archive.org/stream/reformchinese 00chanrich/reformchinese00chanrich_djvu.txt. Zhang has the incident occurring in 1933, but it must have been 1934. 33. Clifford, “Frederick Maze,” 28. 34. “Maze to Knatchbull-Hugessen,” likely February 1937, in “Confidential Letters of Frederick Maze,” SOAS, PP MS 2, vol. 13, 1936–1939. 35. “Knatchbull-Hugessen to Maze” (February 13, 1937), in ibid. 36. “Ding Guitang Dabian Shu” (Ding Guitang defense statement), in “Shen Bochen Konggao Fu Zong Shuiwusi An” (Shen Bochen’s suit against the DIG), SHAC 679(9)/180; Yang Zhiyou, “Huaji Yangguan Fu Zongshuiwusi Ding Guitang” (Ding Guitang: a Chinese DIG in the Foreign Customs Service), Minguo Dang’an (Republican China) 3 (2003): 111. 37. “Maze to Chang Fu-yun” (September 29, 1931), in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with Kuan-wu Shu,” SHAC 679(6)/1215, in China and the West, reel 195. 38. Lam Lok Ming, Haiguan Fuwu Sawu Nian Huiyilu (Recollecting thirty-five years of service in the Customs Service) (Hong Kong: Longmen, 1982), 5–6. 39. Chang Fu-yun, “Reformer,” 142–143. 40. “Maze to Macoun” (July 4, 1935), in “Confidential Correspondence with NonResident Secretary,” SHAC 679/31687, in China and the West, reel 89; “Macoun to Maze”

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(June 25, 1935), in “Zong Shuiwusi Lundun Banshichu Hanjian” (Letters between the IG and the London Office), SHAC, 679(9)/3000, in China and the West, reel 100. 41. Letter by Maze further unidentified but marked “Confidential and Personal,” in “Sir Frederick Maze,” 679(9)/8588. 42. “Maze to Wright” (September 24, 1936), in “Confidential Letters of Sir Frederick Maze,” vol. 13, 1936–1939, SOAS, PP MS 2. 43. “Memorandum, I.G. of Customs, Statistical Department to Chief Secretary,” August 23, 1929, in “Mr Robert Hart’s Career,” SHAC 679(1)/11043. 44. “Maze to Shu” (November 4, 1929), in “Zong Shuiwusishu Hanwen Juan Zongdi 39 Hao: Haiguan Tushuguan” (Chinese correspondence dossier no. 39: Customs Reference Library), SHAC 679(6)/89. 45. Yuan Shou-yung, “Appendix: A Report on the Customs Reference Library for the Information of the New Library Committee” (October 1, 1946), in “Customs Reference Library,” SHAC 679(1)/17966. 46. Ibid. 47. “Semi-Official I.G. Circular 91” (January 5, 1933), in Docs. Ill., 5:118–119. 48. Stanley Wright, The Collection and Disposal of the Maritime and Native Customs Revenue Since the Revolution of 1911 (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General, 1927), 2–3. 49. Preface, frontispiece, Docs. Ill. 50. Stanley Wright, Origin and Development of the Chinese Customs Service, 1843– 1911: An Historical Outline (Shanghai, 1936, marked “for private circulation only”). 51. “Maze to Wright” (September 24, 1939), in “Confidential Letters of Frederick Maze,” vol. 13, SOAS, PP MS 2. 52. “Maze to Stephenson” (August 3, 1933), “Letters to and from I.G., Semi-Official, 1933–35,” SHAC 679/31847, in China and the West, in reel 80. 53. G. R. G. Worcester, The Junkman Smiles (London: Chatto and Windus, 1959), 11. 54. Ibid. 55. “Ding to Little” (October 19, 1945), in “Jieshou Hou Fu Zong Shuiwusi Zhi Zongshu Guanyu Renshi Anpai Jimi Han” (Confidential correspondence from DIG to IG about personnel arrangements post takeover), SHAC 679(9)/1397. 56. Worcester, The Junkman Smiles, 11. 57. “Illustrated Catalogue of the “Maze Collection” of Chinese Junks in the Science Museum” (Shanghai, 1938). For the donation to Franklin Roosevelt, see Eleanor Roosevelt, My Day, October 26, 1950, retrieved from http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/ displaydoc.cfm?_y=1950&_f=md001736. 58. “Maze to Macoun” (April 19, 1934), in “Zong Shuiwusi Zhi Lundun Banshichu Hanjian” (Letters between the I.G. and the London Office), SHAC, 679(9)/3000, in China and the West, reel 100. 59. “Lawford to Maze” (July 4, 1934), in ibid. 60. “Lawford to Macoun” (April 9, 1934), in ibid. 61. “Macoun to Maze” (March 1, 1934), in ibid. 62. “Macoun to Maze” (March 1, 1934), in ibid. 63. “Macoun to Lawford” (April 30, 1934), in “Letters to and from I.G., Semi-Official, 1933–34,” SHAC 679/31847, in China and the West, reel 80. 64. Wright marginal comment, “Macoun to Lawford” (April 30, 1934), in ibid.

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65. “Lawford to Macoun” (July 4, 1934), in “Zong Shuiwusi Zhi Lundun Banshichu Hanjian” (Letters between the I.G. and the London Office), SHAC, 679(9)/3000, in China and the West, reel 100. 66. See John Fairbank et al., eds., The IG in Peking: Letters of Robert Hart, Chinese Maritime Customs, 1868–1907 (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975); John Fairbank et al., eds., Entering China’s Service: Robert Hart’s Journals, 1854–1863 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986); John Fairbank et al., eds., Robert Hart and China’s Early Modernization: His Journals, 1863–1866 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991). 67. “Macoun to Lawford” (May 25, 1934), in “Letters between the I.G. and the London Office,” SHAC, 679(9)/3000, in China and the West, reel 100. 68. John Fairbank, Chinabound: A Fifty-Year Memoir (New York, 1982), 37. 69. “Macoun to Lawford” (August 13, 1934), in “Letters to and from I.G., SemiOfficial, 1933–34,” SHAC 679/31847, in China and the West, reel 80. 70. “Macoun to Maze” (March 22, 1935), in ibid.; and “Maze to Chang Fu-yun” (February 25, 1932), in “I.G. confidential correspondence,” SHAC 679(6)/1215, in China and the West, reel 195. 71. “Wright to Maze” (July 20, 1939), in “I.G. Correspondence with Non-Resident Secretary,” SHAC 679(1)/31486. See also Bickers, “Purloined Letters,” 700–723. 72. The three made up the Compilation Committee that compiled the books listed under the committee’s authorship in the bibliography. 73. Tang Degang, “Qian Jiaju Lun Hu Shi” (Qian Jiaju on Hu Shi) in Shuyuan yu Renyuan (Book bonds and people bonds), 34–35. 74. Letter marked “Confidential & Personal,” in “Sir Frederick Maze,” SHAC 679(9)/8588. 75. Letter marked “Copy. Strictly Private.” Maze insisted that no reference would be made to him. In “Frederick Maze,” SHAC 679(9)/8588. 76. “Maze to Tyler” (February 4, 1931), in ibid. 77. William Tyler, Pulling Strings in China (London: Constable, 1929), 233–241. 78. “Tyler to Maze” (December 19, 1930), in “Frederick Maze,” SHAC 679(9)/8588. 79. Ibid. 80. “Maze to Tyler” (February 4, 1931), in ibid. 81. Ibid. 82. Tyler, Pulling Strings, 281. 83. Ibid. 84. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 780–781. 85. Hsiao Liang-lin, China’s Foreign Trade Statistics, 1864–1949 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), 192. 86. Felix Boecking, “Tariffs, Power, Nationalism, and Modernity: Fiscal Policy in Guomindang-Controlled China,” Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 2008, 102–150. 87. Douglas Irwin, “The Smoot-Hawley Tariff: A Quantitative Assessment,” Review of Economics and Statistics 80, no. 2 (1996): 326–333. 88. Edward Slack, Opium, State, and Society: China’s Narco-Economy and the Guomindang (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001). 89. “Myers to Maze” (April 22, 1932), in “Shanghai Semi-Official Correspondence, 1932,” SHAC 679/32225, in China and the West, reel 116; “Ensor to Maze” (November 26, 1930), in “Wuhu Semi-Official Correspondence,” SHAC 679/20400; “Stephenson

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to Maze” (January 10, 1931), “Letters to and from I.G., Semi-Official, 1931–32), SHAC, 679/31846; “Dawson Grove to Maze” (May 2, 1933), in “Chinkiang [Zhenjiang] SemiOfficial Correspondence,” SHAC 679/3220; “Ensor to I.G.” (November 26, 1930); “Kiukiang Commissioner [de Cartier] Memorandum” (November 26, 1930); and “Hankow Commissioner Lebas Memorandum” (December 6, 1930), “Nanking Commissioner Forbes Memorandum” (November 26, 1930), all in “General Considerations Concerning Smuggling,” SHAC 679/20400. 90. “Customs Preventive Law,” in “Customs Publications,” SHAC 679/25494. 91. “Maze to Zhang Fuyun” (August 9, 1929), in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with Kuan-wu Shu,” SHAC 679(6)/1213, in China and the West, reel 193. 92. “Maze to Song” (August 1, 1932), in “Minister of Finance,” SHAC 679/28345. 93. E. A. Pritchard, “Memorandum on Smuggling in the Swatow District,” appended to “Fletcher to Maze” (April 10, 1931), in “Swatow Semi-Official Correspondence,” SHAC 679/32370, in China and the West, reel 141. 94. Ibid. 95. “Maze to Soong” (March 8, 1933), in “Minister of Finance,” SHAC 679/28345. 96. “Maze to Kung” (May 31, 1934), in ibid. 97. “Maze to Kung” (October 22, 1934), in ibid. 98. “Maze to Kong” (January 29, 1935), in ibid. 99. “Canton Events and Rumours” (April 16–30, 1931), SHAC 679/32415. 100. Ibid. 101. “Wang to Maze” (April 1, 1937), in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with Acting Deputy Commissioner Detached for Service with Wai-chiao Pu in Formosa,” SHAC 679/31726. 102. “Wang to Maze” (April 20, 1936), in ibid. 103. “Wang to Maze” (March 2, 1935), in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with Acting Deputy Commissioner Detached for Service with Wai-chiao Pu in Formosa,” SHAC 679/31725. 104. Wang Wenju, Langan Haiguan Sishinian (Making up the numbers for forty years in the Customs Service) (unpublished manuscript available at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan), 48–49. 105. Ibid., 48–58. 106. “Wang Wenju to Maze” (September 3, 1935), in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with Acting Deputy Commissioner Detached for Service with Wai-chiao Pu in Formosa,” SHAC 679/31725. 107. “Wang Wenju to Lawford” (December 21, 1934), in ibid.; “Preventive Secretary Printed Note No. 9” (June 12, 1933), in “General Considerations Concerning Smuggling and Preventive Work throughout China,” SHAC 679/20346, in China and the West, reel 218. 108. “Wang Wenju to Lawford” (November 23, 1934), in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with Acting Deputy Commissioner Detached to Wai-chiao Pu Formosa,” SHAC 679(1)/31725. 109. “Wang Wenju to Lawford” (December 15, 1934), in ibid. 110. “Wang Wenju to Maze” (January 22 and April 30, 1934), in ibid. 111. “Wang Wenju to Maze” (November 17, 1935), in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with Acting Deputy Commissioner Detached for Service with Wai-chiao Pu in Formosa,” SHAC 679/31726.

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112. “I.G. to Ports” (February 15, 1932), in “General Considerations Concerning Smuggling and Preventive Work Throughout China, 1911–1932,” SHAC 679/20362, in China and the West, reel 217. 113. “I.G. to Barentzen” (December 1, 1934) in “General Considerations Concerning Smuggling and Preventive Work at Shanghai,” in SHAC 679(1)/20403. 114. “Customs Preventive Note No. 12” (November 22, 1933), in “General Considerations Concerning Smuggling and Preventive Work Throughout China, 1935–1948,” SHAC 679/20364, in China and the West, reel 218. 115. “Shanghai Despatch 25” (August 20, 1932), in “Establishment of Preventive Department at Shanghai,” SHAC 679(1)/17559. 116. Wang Hua Min, “Smuggling Along Hangchow Bay,” appended to “Shanghai Despatch” (June 12, 1935) in “General Considerations Concerning Smuggling and Preventive Work at Shanghai,” SHAC 679(1)/20403, in China and the West, reel 231. 117. Wang Hua Min, “Memorandum to Shanghai Commissioner 1 May 1935,” in ibid. 118. Ibid. 119. “Shanghai Despatch to I.G.” (June 12, 1935), in ibid. 120. E. A. Pritchard, “Report by the Preventive Secretary on the Situation in North China” (May 1936), in “Preventive Memoranda for Frontier Stations,” SHAC 679(9)/6278. 121. For files on the Chief Inspection Bureau, see China and the West, reels 269–282. 122. “Fletcher to Maze” (October 9, 1931), in “Swatow Semi-Official Correspondences,” SHAC 679/32370, in China and the West, reel 141. 123. “Hilliard to Lawford” (November 8, 1934), in “Swatow Semi-Official Correspondence,” SHAC 679/32371, in China and the West, reel 142. 124. “Muets to Maze” (July 20, 1931) in “Shanghai Semi-Official Correspondence,” SHAC 679/32225, in China and the West, reel 116. 125. “General Information,” in “Preventive Service: General Considerations,” SHAC 679/27761. For a list of Customs vessels, see “List of Customs Vessels of 40’ Overall in Length,” SHAC 679/27787. 126. “I.G. to Manager Banque de l’Indo-Chine” (November 24, 1932), in “Preventive Loan,” SHAC 679/27948. 127. “Circular 4241” of 1931 (Territorial Waters: Limit of 12 Marine Miles), in “I.G. Circulars, 1930–31,” SHAC 679/26910, in China and the West, reel 19. 128. “Establishment of Preventive Department in 1930” and “Extracts from the Reports on Trade Showing the Development of the New Organization, 1931–1936,” in Docs. Ill., 7:326–332. 129. “Memorandum on the Growth of the Former Preventive Fleet and the Development up to 1937” (August 26, 1946), in “General Considerations re Preventive Fleet,” SHAC 679/27787. 130. “Coast Inspector Despatch 5687 to Shanghai” (December 18, 1934); Yuan Tsin’s report is an attachment. In “General Considerations Concerning Smuggling and Preventive Work,” SHAC 679/20363, in China and the West, reel 217. 131. “Hillman to Walsham” (March 6, 1931), in “General Considerations Concerning Smuggling and Preventive Work,” SHAC 679/20326, in China and the West, reel 217. 132. Hillman, comments on “Memorandum” (February 14, 1931) in ibid. 133. “Memorandum on the Growth of the Former Preventive Service” (August 26, 1946), in “General Considerations re Preventive Fleet,” SHAC 679/27787.

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134. “Coast Inspector Despatch” (December 18, 1934), in “General Considerations Concerning Smuggling and Preventive Work,” SHAC 679/20363, in China and the West, reel 217. 135. E. A. Pritchard, “Review of Customs Preventive Work” (August 15, 1933), in Docs. Ill., 7:340. 136. “I.G. Circular 5307,” in “General Considerations Concerning Smuggling and Preventive Work” (July 7, 1936), SHAC 679/20364, in China and the West, reel 218. 137. “Bos to Maze” (August 24, 1929), in “Creation of Tariff Secretariat,” SHAC 679/17350. 138. Bell, “General Considerations Governing the Control of Smuggling” (May 28, 1930), in “Preventive Service: Formation of,” SHAC 679/3925. 139. Bell, “Memorandum No. 12 to I.G.” (May 28, 1930), in ibid. 140. “Bos to Maze” (June 30, 1931), in “Tariff Secretariat Semi-Official Correspondence,” SHAC 679/31798. 141. “Instructions to Assistants and Appraisers Transferred to Dairen and Tsingtao,” appended to “Bos to Maze” (October 2, 1929), in “Tariff Secretariat Semi-Official Correspondence,” SHAC 679/31798. 142. “I.G. Circular 4098” (Chief Inspector of Examiners: appointment of Mr A. W. L. Oliver), in “Inspector General Circulars, 1928–1930)” (1930), SHAC 679/26909, in China and the West, reel 18. 143. “Memorandum to the I.G.: Improvements Introduced (Confidential)” (no date, probably 1931), in “Creation of Tariff Secretariat,” SHAC 679/17350. The document mentioned that Bos had made twenty-seven port visits in the preceding two years, the last of which took place in July 1931. 144. “Wang Wenju to Maze” (March 20, 1935), in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with Acting Deputy Commissioner Detached for Service with Wai-chiao Pu in Formosa,” SHAC 679/31725. 145. “Wang Wenju to Maze” (February 7, 1935), in ibid. 146. “Wang Wenju to Maze” (April 1, 1937), in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with Acting Deputy Commissioner Detached for Service with Wai-chiao Pu in Formosa,” SHAC 679/31726. 147. Young, China’s Nation-Building Effort, 216–238. 148. “I.G. Circular 4371” (Junks: Regulations for the Control of Seagoing Junks), in “Inspector General’s Circulars, 1931–1932),” SHAC 679/26911, in China and the West, reel 20; “Establishment of Preventive Department,” Docs. Ill., 7:327–328. 149. E. A. Pritchard, “Review of Customs preventive Work” (August 1933), in Docs. Ill., 7:338–343. 150. “I.G. Circular 4969” of 1934 (Junks: Revised Regulations for the Control of Seagoing Junks), in Docs. Ill., 5:443–446. 151. Lu Ping, “Report on a Tour of Investigation from Shanghai to Shanhaiguan,” attached to “Shanghai Office of the Inspectorate to I.G.” (October 14, 1932), in “General Considerations Concerning Smuggling and Preventive Work throughout China, 1932–1935,” SHAC 679/20363, in China and the West, reel 217. 152. “Report on Inspection Tour Along the Coast of Chekiang, Fukien, and Kwangtung” (June 15, 1932), in “General Considerations Concerning Smuggling and Preventive Work throughout China,” in China and the West, reel 217.

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153. “Inspector General’s Semi-Official Circular 57,” in “Inspector General SemiOfficial I.G. Circulars (confidential) (March 13, 1929), SHAC 679/930, in China and the West, reel 48. 154. Quoted from his father’s diaries by Perry Anderson in Spectrum: From Left to Right in the World of Ideas (London: Verso, 2005), 373. 155. “Maze to Macoun” (July 30, 1935), in “Confidential Correspondence with NonResident Secretary,” SHAC, 679/31687, in China and the West, reel 89. 156. “Maze to Macoun” (December 17, 1935), in ibid. 157. “I.G. Semi-Official Circular 88” (September 22, 1932), in “I.G. Semi-Official Circulars (Confidential),” SHAC 679/930, in China and the West, reel 48. 158. “Maze to Braud” (June 4, 1931), in “Confidential Telegrams to and from I.G.,” SHAC 679/32741. 159. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 685–686. 160. “Soong to I.G.” (June 9, 1931), in “Confidential Telegrams to and from I.G.,” SHAC 679/32741. 161. “Ting Kwei-t’ang to I.G.” (January 30, 1934), in “Mr. K.T. Ting’s Report on His Special Mission to Canton,” SHAC 679/14715. 162. “Youguan Canjia Di Er Ci Shijie Dazhan Zaxiang Wenjian” (Miscellaneous documents concerning participation in World War II), SHAC 679(9)/3017. 163. “Pouncy to Little” (August 12, 1946), in “I.G. Correspondence with N.R.S.,” SHAC 679/31486. 164. “Lawford to Little” (December 1, 1934), in “Telegrams to and from I.G., 1933– 1937,” SHAC 679/32743. 165. “Canton Events and Rumours, 1934–1936,” SHAC 679/32416. 166. “Lawford to Canton” (December 1, 1932); “Little to Maze” (September 2, 1935), “Maze to Little” (September 24, 1935), “Little to Maze” (July 17 and 18, 1936), in “Telegrams to and from I.G., 1933–1937,” SHAC 679/32743. 167. “Canton Events and Rumours” (July 1–16, 1936), SHAC 679/32416. 168. “Little to Maze” (July 20, 1936), “Telegrams to and from I.G., 1933–1937,” SHAC 679/32743. 169. “Little to Maze” (August 27, 1936), in ibid. 170. “Tientsin Customs: Seizure of: Customs Procedure” (IG semiofficial circular 69), in Docs. Ill., 4:302. 171. “Tientsin Customs: I.G.’s Observations on Seizure of ” (IG semiofficial circular 72), in Docs. Ill., 4:389. 172. “Maze to Hayley Bell” (April 30, 1930), in “Confidential Telegrams to and from I.G.,” SHAC 679/32741. 173. “Tientsin Customs: I.G.’s Observations on Seizure of ” (IG semiofficial circular 72), in Docs. Ill., 4:389. 174. “Maze to Stephenson” (May 14, 1930), in “Confidential Telegrams to and from I.G.,” SHAC 679/32741. 175. “Maze to Hayley Bell” (May 8, 1930), in ibid. 176. “Tientsin Customs: I.G.’s Observations on Seizure of ” (IG semiofficial circular 72), in Docs. Ill., 4:390. 177. “Haley Bell to Maze” (May 29, 1929), in “Confidential Telegrams to and from I.G.,” SHAC 679/32741.

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178. “Copy of Mr Simpson’s letter to Marshall Chang Hsueh-liang” (September 21, 1930), in Docs. Ill., 4:426. 179. “Maze to Hayley Bell” (June 18, 1930), in “Confidential Telegrams to and from I.G.,” SHAC 679/32741. 180. “Grierson to Maze” (July 3, 1930), in ibid. 181. Included in “Maze to Hayley Bell” (June 27, 1930), in ibid. 182. “Peel and Ting for Maze” (July 5, 1930), in ibid. 183. “Tientsin Customs: I.G.’s Observations on Seizure of ” (IG semiofficial circular 72), in Docs. Ill., 4:391. 184. “Maze to Stephenson” (June 25, 1930), “Confidential Telegrams to and from I.G.,” SHAC 679/32741. 185. “Maze to Zhang Fuyun” (June 24, 1930), in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with Kuan-wu Shu,” SHAC 679(6)/1213, in China and the West, reel 193. 186. “Wang Cheng-ting to Soong” (August 9, 1930), in ibid. 187. “Maze to Chang Fu-yun” (September 24, 1930), in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with Kuan-wu Shu,” SHAC 679(6)/1213, in China and the West, reel 193; and “Ting to Maze” (28 June 1930), in “Confidential Telegrams to and from I.G.,” SHAC 679/32741. 188. Hayley Bell, “The Tientsin Commissioner to the I.G.” (September 28, 1930), in Docs. Ill., 4:411. 189. Ibid., and “Maze to Hayley Bell” (June 29, 1930), in “Confidential Telegrams to and from I.G.,” SHAC 679/32741. 190. “Tientsin Customs: I.G.’s Observations on Seizure of ” (IG semiofficial circular 72), in Docs. Ill., 4:391; and “Mr Ke’s letter to the Inspector General,” in ibid., 403. 191. Attached to “Shaw to Maze” (June 26, 1930), in “Confidential Telegrams to and from I.G.,” SHAC 679/32741. 192. “Peel, Grierson, and Ting to Maze” (September 18, 1930), in ibid. 193. “Ting to Maze” (September 23, 1930), in ibid. 194. Idem; “Ting to Maze” (September 23, 1930), in ibid. 195. “Maze to Chang Fu-yun” (October 15, 1930), in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with Kuan-wu Shu,” SHAC 679(6)/1213, in China and the West, reel 193. 196. “Tientsin Customs: I.G.’s Observations on Seizure of ” (IG semiofficial circular 72), in Docs. Ill., 4:401. 197. Jacqueline Young, “Seeing Ghosts: Putnam Weale and the 1911 Revolution,” paper presented at “Britain and China: Pasts, Presents, and Futures,” Bristol University, August 25, 2011. 198. “Tientsin Customs: I.G.’s Observations on Seizure of ” (IG semiofficial circular 72), in Docs. Ill., 4:401. 199. Ibid., 4:396. 200. “Copy of Mr Simpson’s Letter to Chang Hsueh-liang” (September 21, 1930), in Docs. Ill., 4:425. 201. “Maze to Chang Fu-yun” (November 17, 1931), in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with Kuan-wu Shu,” SHAC 679(6)/1214, in China and the West, reel 195. 202. “Maze to Chang Fu-yun” (March 5, 1932), in ibid. 203. “I.G. Semi-Official Circular 95” (April 20, 1933), in “Inspector General SemiOfficial Circulars,” SHAC 679/930, in China and the West, reel 48.

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204. “Maze to Song “21 March 1932,” in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with Shu), SHAC 679(9)/1216, in China and the West, reel 195. 205. “Chang to Maze” (March 24, 1932), in ibid. 206. “Maze to Chang,” undated, but between March 21 and 24, 1932, in ibid. 207. For the report, see Docs. Ill., 5:155–261. 208. “Ting to Maze” (November 8, 1933), in “Telegrams to and from I.G., 1933–1937,” SHAC 679/32743. 209. Ibid., “Maze to Ding” (November 19, 1933), and “Maze to Ding” (November 20 and 21, 1933), SHAC 679/32743. 210. “Williams to Maze” (November 26 and December 6, 1933); “Maze to Williams” (December 1 and 3, 1933), in “Telegrams to and from I.G.,” in “Confidential Telegrams to and from I.G.,” SHAC 679/32743. 211. See Christopher Clark, Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1937–1941 (London: Penguin, 2007), 394.

7. MAINTAINING INTEGRITY, 1937–1949 1. The three epigraphs to this chapter are from “I.G. order 145” (August 15, 1945), in “Fu Zong Shuiwusi Yu Juan Zong” (Deputy inspector general orders), SHAC 679(9)/7102; “Little to Chang Fu-yun” (April 11, 1949), attaching a letter from Bien Din Son, in “Yu Guanwushu Laiwang Miling Micheng” (Confidential correspondence with the Office of Customs Affairs), SHAC 679/32760; and Little, “I.G. order 343” (April 26, 1949), in “Removal of Inspector General from Shanghai to Canton,” SHAC 679/17339. 2. The mood of the commissioners can be judged from reading their semiofficial correspondences with the IG. On the concern about summer bungalows, see “Goddard to Maze” (July 1, 1937), in “Wuhu Semi-Official Correspondence, 1937–1938,” SHAC 679/32174. 3. “I.G. Semi-Official Circular 154” (July 26, 1937), in “I.G. Semi-Official Circulars,” vol. 2, SHAC 679/26776, in Robert Bickers and Hans van de Ven, eds., China and the West: The Maritime Customs Service Archive from the Second Historical Archives of China (Woodbridge: Thomason Gale, 2004–2008), reel 49. Hereafter China and the West. 4. E.g., I.G. Circulars 5529 to 5570, in “I.G. Circulars,” SHAC 679/26919, in China and the West, reel 26. 5. “I.G. Circular 5570” (Sir Frederick Maze, Inspector General, Resumes Charge) (August 25, 1937), in “I.G. Circulars,” SHAC 679/26919, in China and the West, reel 26. 6.“ I.G. Semi-Official Circular 159” (September 21, 1937), in “I.G. Semi-Official Circulars, vol. 2,” SHAC 679/26776, in China and the West, reel 49. 7. “Lawford to I.G.” (November 17, 1937), in “Medical Attendance: Shanghai,” SHAC 679/16702. 8. “Gorman to Harbour Master Shanghai” (August 23, 1937) in “Shanghai SemiOfficial Correspondence,” SHAC 679/32230, in China and the West, reel 120. 9. “Lawford to I.G.” (November 25, 1938), in “Port I.G. Series, Shanghai, vol. 35,” SHAC 35679(3)/3418. 10. “Olson to I.G.” (November 20, 1937), in ibid.

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11. “Lawford to I.G.” (November 17, 1937), in “Medical Attendance: Shanghai,” SHAC 679/16702. 12. “Lawford to I.G.” (November 9, 1937), in “Port I.G. Series, Shanghai, vol. 35,” SHAC 35679(3)/3418. 13. North China Daily News (January 28, 1938), in ibid.; “Smuggling Report for November 1937,” in “Smuggling Reports: Shanghai,” SHAC 679/28140; “Maze to Archibald Clark Kerr” (March 23, 1938), in “Inspectorate Correspondence with British, American, and French Embassies,” SHAC 679/28356. 14. “Smuggling Report for December 1937,” in “Smuggling Reports: Shanghai,” SHAC 679/28140. 15. “Lawford to Pritchard” (March 15, 1938), in “Correspondence with Shanghai,” SHAC 679/27884. 16. Ibid. 17. “Smuggling Report for October 1937,” in “Memorandums to and from Deputy I.G.,” SHAC 679/26140. 18. “Goddard to Maze” (August 30, 1937), in “Wuhu Semi-Official Correspondence, 1937–1938,” SHAC 679/32174. 19. “Goddard to Maze” (July 19371, ) in ibid. 20. “Maze to Goddard” (September 15, 1937) in ibid. 21. “Maze to Goddard” (August 30, 1937), in ibid. 22. “Hilliard to Maze” (March 11, 1938), in “Confidential and I.G.S. Correspondence with Kiukiang, Nanking, Chinkiang, Soochow, Hangchow, Wuhu,” SHAC 679/31526. 23. “Goddard to Maze” (June 22, 1938) in “Wuhu Semi-Official Correspondence, 1937–1938,” SHAC 679/32174. 24. Joly, “Confidential Report on Occurrences Preceding and Following the Fall of Kiukiang” in “Confidential and I.G.S. Correspondence with Kiukiang, Nanking, Chinkiang, Soochow, Hangchow, Wuhu,” SHAC 679(1)/31526. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Hans van de Ven, War and Nationalism in China, 1925–1945 (London: Routledge, 2003), 1–2. 31. “Ensor to Maze” (September 21, 1938), in “Hankow Semi-Official Correspondence, 1938,” SHAC 679/32148, in China and the West, reel 157. Ensor included Joly’s telegram in his own letter. 32. “Ensor’s Comments on Canton Commissioner’s Telegram of 1 November 1937,” in “Hankow Semi-Official Correspondence, 1938,” SHAC 679/32148, in China and the West, reel 157. 33. “Maze to Ensor” (May 10, 1938), in ibid. 34. Stephen MacKinnon, Wuhan, 1938: War, Refugees, and the Making of Modern China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 2–3. 35. “Ensor to Maze” (December 30, 1937), in “Hankow Semi-Official Correspondence, 1937,” SHAC 679/32147, in China and the West, reel 157. 36. “Ensor to Maze” (January 14, 1938), in “Hankow Semi-Official Correspondence, 1938,” SHAC 679/32148, in China and the West, reel 157.

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37. “Ensor to Maze” (October 22 and December 4, 1938), in ibid. 38. “Ensor to Maze” (January 24, 1938), in ibid. 39. “Ensor to Maze” (April 27, 1939), in “Hankow Confidential and I.G.S. Letters,” SHAC 679/31524. 40. “Ensor to Maze” (January 24 and April 27, 1939), in “Hankow Semi-Official Correspondence, 1939–1942,” reel 158. 41. “Ensor to Maze” (April 27, 1939), in “Hankow Confidential and I.G.S. Letters,” SHAC 679/31524. 42. “Ensor to Maze” (July 25, 1940), in ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. Canton Current Events and Rumours, May 16–31, 1938, SHAC 679/32417. 45. “Little to Maze” (June 10, 1938) in “Maze to B. E. F. Hall, Commissioner Canton,” “Sino-Japanese Dispute, Canton, 1937–1943,” in China and the West, reel 296. 46. Van de Ven, “Bombing, Japanese Pan-Asianism, and Chinese nationalism,” 103–107. 47. “Little to Maze” (June 8, 1938), in “L. K. Little’s Career, 1930–1942,” in 679/11509, in China and the West, reel 309. 48. “Commissioner’s Order 17” (October 17, 1938), in “Sino-Japanese Dispute, Canton, 1937–1943,” in China and the West, reel 296; “Hooper to Maze” (November 15 and 21, 1938) in ibid. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid.; and “Hall to Maze” (December 27, 1938), in ibid. 52. Calculated at market rather than official rates. See “Customs Revenue Collection,” in “Haiguan Zuojin Xingzheng Dongtai” (Recent developments in Customs administration), SHAC 679/31754. 53. “I.G. Semi-Official Circular 161” (October 5, 1937), in “I.G. Semi-Official Circulars, vol. 2,” SHAC 679/26776, in China and the West, reel 49. 54. “I.G. Semi-Official Circular 171” (May 27, 1938), in ibid. 55. “I.G. Semi-Official Circular 165” (December 30, 1937), in ibid. 56. “I.G. Semi-Official Circular 168” (February 19, 1938), ibid. 57. “I.G. Semi-Official Circular” (May 26, 1938) and “I.G. Semi-Official Circular” (September 13, 1938), in ibid. 58. “Maze to Cubbon” (May 3, 1941), in “I.G.S. Correspondences with Non-Resident Secretary,” SHAC 679/31478. 59. Robert Bickers, “The Chinese Maritime Customs at War, 1941–45,” Journal of Commonwealth History 36, no. 2 (2008): 298. Sun Xiufu argues that, even if Maze compromised in many ways with the Japanese, he continued to treat Chongqing as the legitimate government of China. Sun Xiufu, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shounao Gengdie yu Guoji Guanxi (Changes in chiefs of the Chinese Maritime Customs and international relations) (Beijing: Zhongguo Haiguan Chubanshe, 2010), 313–314. 60. “Maze to Cubbon” (September 14, 1939), in “I.G.S. and Confidential Letters to Non-Resident Secretary, 1939–1940,” SHAC 679/31476. 61. Aaron Shai, The Origins of the War in the East: Britain, China, and Japan, 1937–39 (London: Croon Helm, 1976), 131. 62. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi (China’s modern Maritime Customs Service) (Beijing: Renmin Daxue Chubanshe, 2002), 807–809; Shai, Origins of the War

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in the East, 144n67; “Myers to Maze” (August 30, 1937), “Maze to Myers” (September 23, 1937), and “Myers to Maze” (October 7, 1937), in “Confidential Telegrams to and from I.G.,” SHAC 679/32743. 63. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 809–810. 64. “Eden to Howe” (November 20, 1937), in Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–1939, Second Series, vol. 21, Far Eastern Affairs, ed. W. N. Medlicott et al. (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary’s Office, 1984), 266. 65. “Affleck to Eden” (November 6, 1937), in ibid., 255. 66. “Howe to Mr Eden” (November 20, 1937), in British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, Part 2, Series E, from the First to the Second World War, ed. Ann Trotter et al. (Bethesda, Md.: University Publications of America, 1991–1997), 245. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi, 811. 67. “Maze to Kong” (January 28, 1939), in “Caizhengbu Lai Wen” (Correspondence from Ministry of Finance), SHAC 679(4)/5. 68. “Clark Kerr to Maze” (February 25, 1938), in ibid. 69. “Kung to Maze” (January 7 and February 3, 1938), in ibid. 70. Neprud, “Report on a Special Mission to Hankow” (June 22, 1938), in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with Tariff Secretary,” SHAC 679/31674. 71. Ibid. 72. Ibid. 73. Ibid. 74. “British Diplomatic Mission Hankow” (June 16, 1938), in “Caizhengbu Lai Wen” (Correspondence from Ministry of Finance), SHAC 679(4)/5. 75. Ibid. 76. “Kong to Maze” (January 15 and 28, 1939), in ibid. 77. “Kong to Maze” (April 1, 1939), in ibid. 78. The Wang Jingwei period is, to some extent, preserved in the Second Historical Archives of China in Nanjing, and the Customs catalogue is under class mark 2085. 79. A. S. Campbell, personal secretary, “Memorandum for I.G.” (September 13, 1939), in “I.G.S. and Confidential Letters to Non-Resident Secretary,” SHAC 679/31476. 80. Ibid. 81. Ibid. 82. Ibid., and “Aide memoire” (August 7, 1939), in ibid. 83. “Letter to Stanley Wright,” enclosed in “Maze to Cubbon” (September 24, 1939), in ibid. 84. “Maze to Cubbon” (May 4, 1940), in ibid. 85. Ibid. 86. Zhang Xianwen, Zhonghua Minguo Shi (The history of the Republic of China) (Nanjing: Nanjing University Press, n.d.), 3:513. 87. “Maze to Cubbon” (May 4, 1940), in “I.G.S. and Confidential Letters to NonResident Secretary,” SHAC 678/31476. 88. “Maze to Cubbon” (May 4, 1940), in ibid. 89. Quoted in Sun Xiufu, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shounao Gengdie yu Guoji Guanxi, 323–334. 90. Attached to “Maze to Cubbon” (July 16, 1940), in “Non-Resident Secretary I.G.S. Correspondence,” SHAC 679/31479. 91. Ibid.

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92. “Maze to Cubbon” (June 10, 1940), in “I.G.S. and Confidential Letters to NonResident Secretary,” SHAC 679/31476. 93. “Maze to Kung” (January 9, 1940), in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with Ministry of Finance,” SHAC 679/32751, appending a summary of a meeting between Maze and the secretary of the Japanese Embassy on January 5; “Maze to Cubbon” (January 14, 1940), in “I.G.S. and Confidential Letters to Non-Resident Secretary, 1939–1940,” SHAC 679/31476. 94. “Maze to Cubbon” (January 14, 1940), in ibid. 95. “Maze to Kong (January 9, 1940), in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with Ministry of Finance,” SHAC 679/32751. 96. “Maze to Kung” (January 25, 1940), in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with Ministry of Finance,” SHAC 679/32751. 97. Campbell, “Summary of Interview of I.G. and Secretary of Japanese Embassy” (December 26, 1939), in “I.G.S. and Confidential Letters to Non-Resident Secretary,” SHAC 679/31476. 98. “Maze to Clark Kerr” (March 6, 1941), in “I.G.S. Correspondence with NonResident Secretary,” SHAC 679/31478. 99. “Maze to Cubbon” (February 25, 1941), in ibid. 100. Ibid. 101. “Maze to Clark Kerr” (March 7, 1941), in ibid. 102. “Maze to Cubbon” (March 18, 1941), in ibid. 103. “Craigie to Foreign Office” (April 9, 1941), in “Chungking I.G.S. Correspondence,” SHAC 679/31512, in China and the West, reel 331. 104. Copy of “Horiuchi to Maze” (May 14, 1941), in “I.G.S. Correspondence with Non-Resident Secretary,” SHAC 679/31478. 105. “Maze to Kong” (September 8, 1941) in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with Ministry of Finance,” SHAC 679/32753. 106. “Noble to Maze” (June 20, 1941), delivered “by hand,” in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with British Embassy, SHAC 679/32777,” in China and the West, reel 306. 107. “Li Jianmin to Chow Fu-hai,” in “Frederick Maze’s Confidential Letters and Reports, 1900–1901,” vol. 20., SOAS, PPMS 2. 108. “The Chinese Maritime Customs Service: General Conditions During the Past Eighteen Months and Future Prospects,” undated, in “Organization of New Inspectorate General,” SHAC 697/25572. 109. Sun Xiufu, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shounao Gengdie yu Guoji Guanxi, 340–350. 110. “Joly to Cubbon” (April 6, 1942), in “Private Letters from Inspector General to Non-Resident Secretary,” SHAC 679/31737, in China and the West, reel 98. 111. “I.G. Circular” (January 12, 1942), in “Organization of New Inspectorate General,” SHAC 679/25572; Sun Xiufu, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shounao Gengdie yu Guoji Guanxi, 381. 112. “Joly to Cubbon” (April 16, 1942), in “Private Letters from I.G. to Non-Resident Secretary,” SHAC 679(1)/31737, in China and the West, reel 98. 113. For Joly’s report to Maze, see “Maze to Kong” (December 17, 1943 [1942]), in “Maze’s Confidential Letters and Reports,” SOAS, PPMS 2, vol. 16. 114. “Joly to Cubbon” (April 6, 1942), in “Private Letters from I.G. to Non-Resident Secretary,” SHAC 679/31737, in China and the West, reel 98. 115. Ibid.

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116. Zhu Qian, “Ding Guitang Tuoxian Ji” (Ding Guitang’s escapes from danger), Dang’an yu Shixue (Archives and the study of history) (1997): 5. 117. Ibid.; and “Maze to Cubbon” (February 11, 1943), in “Confidential and Personal Correspondence Between Little and Maze,” SHAC 679/31746, in China and the West, reel 316. 118. “Ding Guitang Dabian Shu,” in “Shen Bochen Konggao Zong Shuiwusi An” (Shen Bochen’s suit against the DIG), SHAC 679(9)/180. 119. “Maze to Cubbon” (February 11, 1943), in “Confidential and Personal Correspondence between Little and Maze,” SHAC 679/31746, in China and the West, reel 316. 120. Ibid., and “Ding Guitang Defense Statement,” SHAC 679(9)/180. 121. “Maze to Cubbon” (March 1, 1943), in “Confidential and Personal Correspondence Between Little and Maze,” SHAC 679/31746, in China and the West, reel 316. 122. “Maze to Cubbon” (October 5 and November 9, 1942), in “Sir Frederick Maze,” SHAC 679(9)/8588, in China and the West, reel 312. 123. “Non-Resident Secretary Confidential Note” (October 6, 1942), in ibid. 124. “Cubbon to Maze” (October 29, 1942), in ibid. 125. “Maze” (December 17, 1943), in “Maze’s Confidential Letters and Reports,” SOAS, PPMMS 2, vol. 16. 126. “Addis to Cubbon” (March 15, 1943), in “Non-Resident Secretary’s Letters to I.G., 1942–44,” SHAC 679(1)/31484, in China and the West, reel 98. 127. “Maze to Cubbon” (February 11 and March 27, 1943), in “Confidential and Personal Correspondence Between Little and Maze,” SHAC 679/31746, in China and the West, reel 316. 128. “Maze to Cubbon” (March 27, 1943), in ibid. 129. “Cubbon to Joly” (August 31, 1942), “Personal and Confidential Correspondence with Non-Resident Secretary,” SHAC 679/31684, in China and the West, reel 94. 130. Cubbon to Little” (June 22, 1943), in ibid. 131. “Joly to Maze” (May 8, 1943), in “I.G. Correspondence with Staff,” SHAC 679/31741; “Joly to Maze” (February 1943), SHAC 679/31742, in China and the West, reel 315. 132. “Gawler to Maze” (March 15, 1943), in “Changsha I.G.S. Letters,” SHAC 679/31522. See also “Gawler to Maze” (May 24, 1943), in ibid. 133. “Maze to Cubbon” (January 26, 1943), in “Confidential and Personal Correspondence Between Little and Maze,” SHAC 679/31746, in China and the West, reel 317. 134. “Maze to Cubbon” (February 20, 1943), in ibid.; “Maze to Cubbon” (December 28, 1942), in “Confidential and Personal Correspondence between Little and Maze,” 679/31747, in China and the West, reel 317. 135. “Maze to Cubbon” (August 14, 1943), in “Sir Frederick Maze,” SHAC 679(9)/8588, in China and the West, reel 312. 136. “Maze to Cubbon” (January 26 and February 20, 1943), in “Confidential and Personal Correspondence Between Little and Maze,” SHAC 679/31746, in China and the West, reel 317. 137. “Maze to Cubbon” (May 31, 1943), in ibid. 138. “Maze to Sabel” (August 24, 1943) and “Maze to Cubbon” (August 14, 1943), in “Sir Frederick Maze,” SHAC 679(9)/8588, in China and the West, reel 312. 139. Robert Bickers, “The Chinese Maritime Customs at War, 1941–1945,” 303–305. 140. “Maze to Cubbon” (March 1, 1943), in “Confidential and Personal Correspondence between Little and Maze,” SHAC 679/31746, in China and the West, reel 317.

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141. “Hsu to Little” (May 5, 1944), in “I.G. Correspondence with Staff, 1941–1945,” SHAC 679/31741, in China and the West, reel 315. 142. “Maze to Cubbon” (April 28, 1943), in “Confidential and Personal Correspondence Between Little and Maze,” SHAC 679/31746, in China and the West, reel 317. 143. The aide memoire is mentioned in “Joly to Cubbon” (April 6, 1942), in “Private Letters from I.G. to Non-Resident Secretary,” SHAC 679/31737, in China and the West, reel 98. 144. Arthur Young, “Strictly Confidential” (September 10, 1942) in “Correspondence Between Statistical Secretary and Assistant Statistical Secretary,” SHAC 679(1)/30365. 145. “Interest of the United States in Maintenance of Administrative Integrity of Chinese Maritime Customs: Appointment of an American as Acting Inspector General of Customs” (June 11, 1943), in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1943, China, 687. http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/FRUS .FRUS1943China. 146. “Ambassador in the UK to Secretary of State,” in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1942, China, 368. http://digital .library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/FRUS.FRUS1942China. 147. Ibid., 373. 148. “Maze to Cubbon” (April 28, 1943), in “Confidential and Personal Correspondence Between Little and Maze,” SHAC 679/31746, in China and the West, reel 317. 149. “Cubbon to Maze” (February 1, 1943), in “Non-Resident Secretary Letters to I.G.,” in SHAC 679/31484, in China and the West, reel 98. 150. “Little to Joly” (October 29, 1942), in “L. K. Little’s Career,” SHAC 679/32756, in China and the West, reel 309. See also Sun Xiufu, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shounao Gengdie yu Guoji Guanxi, 353–355. 151. “Little to Ding,” (August 27, 1947), in “Zong Shuiwusi yu Fu Zongshuiwusi Laiwang Siren Jiyao Hanjian” (Personal and confidential correspondence between the IG and the DIG), SHAC 679/31731, in China and the West, reel 314. 152. “Memorandum by the Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs (Ballantine) in U.S. Department of State,” in Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1943, China, 687. 153. “I.G. circular Letter” (June 25, 1945), in “Despatches from I.G.,” SHAC 679(1)/65. 154. Sun Xiufu, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shounao Gengdie yu Guoji Guanxi, 353 155. “I.G. Circulars, Chungking Series 610” (September 20, 1943), in SHAC 678(8)/153, in China and the West, reel 34. 156. “Sabel to Little” (January 5, 1944), in “I.G. Correspondence with Staff, 1941–1945,” SHAC 679/31741, in China and the West, reel 315. 157. Ibid. 158. “Little to Foster Hall” (December 16, 1944), in “Zong Shuiwusi Lundun Banshi Chu Hanjian” (London Office files, Z letters), SHAC 679(9)/3000, in China and the West, reel 100. 159. See relevant documents in “Post-War Customs Regulations: The Chinese Maritime Customs Service,” SHAC 679/31752; and “The Chinese Maritime Customs Service: General Conditions During the Past Eighteen Months and Future Prospects” (undated, probably 1943), SHAC 679/25572. 160. Little, “Planning Secretary: duties of ” (April 17, 1944), in “Dossier of Rehabilitation Plan,” SHAC 679/1058.

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161. “Ding to Little” (August 31, 1945), in “D.I.G. Confidential Despatches,” SHAC 679/31453. 162. “Ding to Little” (September 15, 1945), in ibid. 163. “Ding to Little” (December 17, 1945), in “I.G. and D.I.G. Confidential I.G.S. Letters,” SHAC 679/31455. 164. Ding to Little” (September 15, 1945), in “D.I.G. Confidential Despatches,” SHAC 679/31453. 165. “Ding to Little” (November 27, 1945), in “I.G. and D.I.G. Confidential I.G.S. Letters,” SHAC 679/31455. 166. “Little to Ding” (October 26, 1945), in ibid.; Sun Xiufu, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi Da Shi Ji (A chronology of the Chinese modern Maritime Customs Service) (Beijing: Zhongguo Haiguan Chubanshe, 2005), 426. 167. “Ding Guitang Defence Statement,” SHAC 679(9)/180. 168. “Memorandum of Admiral C. T. Joy” (October 15, 1945), in “D.I.G. Confidential Despatches,” SHAC 679/31453. 169. “Everest to Little,” in “Marine Department: Function etc., of,” SHAC 679/3847. 170. “Ding to Little” (IGS 251, December 12, 1945), in “I.G. and D.I.G. Confidential I.G.S. Letters,” SHAC 679/31455. 171. “Little to Sable” (July 4, 1944), in “I.G. Correspondence with Staff, 1941–1945,” SHAC 679/31741, in China and the West, reel 315. 172. “Little to Ding” (September 7, 1945), in “I.G. and D.I.G. Confidential I.G.S. Letters,” SHAC 679/31455; “Ding to Little” (December 5, 1945), in “Post-war Customs regulations,” SHAC 679/31752, in China and the West, reel 316. 173. “Ding to Little” (December 12, 1945), in “D.I.G. Confidential Despatches,” SHAC 679/31453. 174. “Little to Ding,” in “I.G. and D.I.G. Confidential I.G.S. Letters,” SHAC 679/31455. 175. “Ding to Little” (December 12, 1945), in “D.I.G. Confidential Despatches,” SHAC 679/31453. 176. Sun Xiufu, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shounao Gengdie yu Guoji Guanxi, 427. 177. “Lin Lianfang to Little” (September 25, 1945), in “I.G. and D.I.G. Confidential I.G.S. Letters,” SHAC 679/31455. 178. Sun Xiufu, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi Da Shi Ji, 427–428. 179. “Ding to Little” (October 4, 1945), in “D.I.G. Confidential Despatches,” SHAC 679/31453. 180. Ibid. 181. “Ding to Little” (October 8, 1945), in “Secret Correspondence from Deputy I.G. to I.G. re Personnel Arrangements Following Resumption of Control,” SHAC 679(9)/1397. 182. “I.G. Despatch to Shu” (no date), in “I.G. and D.I.G. Confidential I.G.S. Letters,” SHAC 679/31455. 183. “Ding to Little” (September 15), 679/31453. 184. Ding, “Report on Taking over of Staff Department,” enclosed in “Ding to Little” (December 17, 1945), in “I.G. and D.I.G. Confidential I.G.S. Letters,” SHAC 679/31455. 185. Ibid. 186. Sun Xiufu, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi Da Shi Ji, 404. 187. “Little to Ding” (13 October 1945), “I.G. and D.I.G. Confidential I.G.S. Letters,” SHAC 679/31455.

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188. Chang Fu-yun, “Reformer of the Chinese Maritime Customs” (Oral history, 1976, 1979, and 1983), conducted by Blaine Gaustad and Rhoda Chang, Regional Oral History Office, UC Berkeley Bancroft Library, 148. http://archive.org/stream/reform chinese00chanrich/reformchinese00chanrich_djvu.txt. 189. “Ding to Little” (November 20, 1945), in “Post-War Customs Regulations,” SHAC 679(1)/31752; “Copy of English version of Chinese Despatch to Shu,” attached to “Little to Ding” (November 24, 1945), in “L. K. Little’s Personal and Confidential Letters,” SHAC 679/32826, in China and the West, reel 317. 190. See also “Little to Ding” (September 23, 1945), in “General Telegrams I.G., vol. 7,” SHAC 679/32824. 191. “Ding to Little” (November 20, 1945), in “Post-War Customs Regulations,” SHAC 679(1)/31752. 192. “Ding to Little” (September 24, 1945), in “Secret Correspondence from Deputy I.G. to I.G. re Personnel Arrangements Following Resumption of Control,” SHAC 679(9)/1397. 193. “Ding to Little” (October 8, 1945) in “D.I.G. Confidential Despatches,” SHAC 679/31453. 194. “Ding to Little” (October 13, 1945), in “Secret Correspondence from Deputy I.G. to I.G. re Personnel Arrangements Following Resumption of Control,” SHAC 679(9)/1397. 195. “Ding to Little” (September 24, 1945), in “D.I.G. Confidential Despatches,” SHAC 679/31453. 196. “Ding to Little” (December 5, 1945), in “Post-War Customs Regulations,” SHAC 679(1)/31752; see also “Little to Ding” (November 7 and 14, 1945), “L. K. Little’s Personal and Confidential Letters,” SHAC 679/32826, in China and the West, reel 317. 197. “Little to Major Monroe” (August 31, 1945), in “I.G. and D.I.G. Confidential I.G.S. Supplementary Letters,” SHAC 679/31455. 198. “Ding to Little” (September 15, 1945), in “D.I.G. Confidential Despatches,” SHAC 679/31453; Little, “To All Customs Colleagues Released from Internment,” August 31, 1945, in “Secret Correspondence from Deputy I.G. to I.G. re Personnel Arrangements Following Resumption of Control,” SHAC 679(9)/1397. 199. “Ding Guitang’s Defence Statement,” in “Shen Bochen’s Suit Against the D.I.G.,” SHAC 679(9)/180. 200. Ibid. 201. Ibid. 202. “Shanghai Gaodeng Fayuan Jianchachu Buqisu Chufen Shu” (Decision not to pursue or punish by the Procuratorate Office of the Shanghai High Court) (December 19, 1947), in ibid., SHAC 679(9)/180. 203. Chang Fu-yun, “Reformer of the Chinese Customs,” 148. 204. Ibid., 149. Chang Fu-yun’s statement is corroborated by “Little to Ding” (September 26, 1945), in “I.G. and D.I.G. Confidential Inspectorate General Supplementary Letters,” SHAC 679/31455. 205. “Li Donghua to Little” (September 12, 1946), in “Tsingtao Confidential and I.G.S. Letters,” SHAC 679/31505. 206. “Li Donghua to Little,” (September 12, 1946), in “Tsingtao Confidential and I.G.S. Letters,” Tsingtao IGS, 679/31505. 207. Chang Fu-yun, “Reformer of the Chinese Customs,” 149.

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208. Ibid., 150. 209. “Ding to Little” (October 18, 1947), in “Private and Confidential Letters between the I.G. and the Deputy I.G.,” SHAC 679/31731. 210. “Little to Song” (January 8, 1946), in “Confidential Despatches from the I.G. to the Various Custom Houses and Deputy I.G. (Shanghai) Confidential Reports to I.G.,” SHAC 679(9)/200. 211. “Little to Song” (January 8, 1946), in ibid. 212. Ibid. 213. “Ding to Little” (November 8 and December 27, 1945), in ibid.; “Monroe to Little” (May 6, 1948) in “Xiamen Guan Miling Chen” (Xiamen IGS), SHAC 679/31556. 214. “Lai Sheng Lao to Little” (December 21, 1945), “Semi-Official Letters from Inspector General to Ports,” SHAC 679/989. 215. “Ding to Little” (September 22, 1947), in “Private and Confidential Letters Between the I.G. and the Deputy I.G.,” SHAC 679/31731; “Little to Foster Hall” (April 1946), in “Non-Resident Secretary I.G.S. Letters to I.G.,” SHAC 679/31480; “Rouse to Little” (January 30, 1948), in “I.G. Confidential Correspondence with Commissioners and Secretaries,” SHAC 679/31638. 216. Shanghai Chinese Staff to Little” (October 12, 1948), in ibid. 217. “Little to Ding” (October 22, 1945), in “I.G. and D.I.G. Confidential Inspectorate General Supplementary Letters,” SHAC 679/31455. 218. Ibid. 219. Ibid. 220. “Wei Kung Shuo to Little” (September 28, 1946), in “I.G. Confidential and Supplementary Correspondence with Investigation Commissioners,” SHAC 679/31688. 221. “Ding to Little” (September 13, 1947), in “Private and Confidential Letters Between the I.G. and the Deputy I.G.,” SHAC 679/31731. 222. “Sable to Little” (May 31, 1948), in “I.G. Confidential and Supplementary Correspondence with Investigation Commissioners,” SHAC 679/31688. 223. “Little to Chow Pao-yi” (October 1, 1948), in ibid. 224. John Fairbank et al., eds., The IG in Peking: Letters of Robert Hart: The Chinese Maritime Customs Service, 1868–1907 (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975), xvii. 225. For an account of Little’s clash with Maze over the Hart-Campbell Correspondence, see Robert Bickers, “Purloined Letters: History of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service,” Modern Asian Studies 40, no. 3 (2006): 691–723. 226. Sun Xiufu, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi Da Shi Ji, 426–427. 227. “Cheng Ke Kung to Chefoo Commissioner” (February 27, 1946), in “Chefoo Confidential and I.G.S. Letters,” SHAC 679/ 31503; “Tseng Kwang Chuh to Little” (undated) in ibid. 228. “Han Chao Lien to Little” (November 1, 1947), in ibid. 229. “Little to Chang Fu-yun” (April 11, 1949), in “I.G. and I.G.S. Letters with the Office of Customs Affairs,” SHAC 679/32760. 230. “Liu E Lo to Little” (April 23, 1949) in “Tsingtao Confidential and I.G.S. Letters,” SHAC 679/31505. 231. “Petition by the Committee of the Customs Staff Association for Shanghai District to I.G.” (March 24, 1949), in “Shanghai Qu Haiguan Tongren Jinxiuhui Yaoqi Gaishan Yuangong Daiyu yu Fu Zong Shuiwusi Liushou Shanghai Wentie” (Petition by the

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Improvement Society of Shanghai Colleagues for salary improvements and the issue of the deputy IG remaining in Shanghai), SHAC 679(6)/640. 232. “Little to Chang Fu-yun” (April 11, 1949), in “I.G. and I.G.S. Letters with the Office of Customs Affairs,” SHAC 679/32760. 233. See the report of First Meeting of Emergency Committee (February 21, 1949), in “Shanghai Confidential and I.G.S. Letters,” SHAC 679/31534. 234. I.G.’s order (pi) to “Petition Committee of Customs Staff Association for Shanghai District to I.G.” (April 18 and March 28), 679(6)/640. 235. “Wang Hsueh Tsun to Little” (March 23, 1949), in “Shanghai Confidential and I.G.S. Letters,” SHAC 679/31534. “Chang Yung Nian to Little” (February 15, 1949), in ibid. 236. “Ding to Little” (May 2, 1949), “D.I.G. Confidential Despatches and Instructions,” SHAC, 679/31456. 237. “Tso Changchin to Little” (January 4, 1949), in “I.G.S. Correspondence from the Guangzhou Office of the Inspectorate,” SHAC 679/31458. 238. Tso Chang-chin to Little” (January 4, 1949), in ibid. 239. Ibid. 240. “I.G. to Pu,” (May 17, 1949), in “Guangzhou Zongshu yu Ge Guan Laiwang Dian Kuailan” (Overview of telegrams between the Guangzhou Inspectorate general office and the Custom Houses), SHAC 679(6)/301. 241. Huang Qixiang, “Jiefang Qianxi de Liangjian Miwen” (Two secrets from the eve of liberation) in “Pan Hannian Zai Shanghai” (Pan Hannian in Shanghai), Shanghai Tan (Shanghai Bund) 4 (1989), http://www.quanxue.cn/ls_gonghe/PaiHanNian/ PaiHanNian28.html. 242. “Ding to Little” (May 20, 1949), in “Inspectorate General Supplementary Correspondence of the D.I.G,” SHAC 679/31456. 243. “Little to Shanghai Office” (May 31, 1949), in “Letters and Telegrams Between the I.G. and the Guangzhou Office of the Inspectorate,” SHAC 679/29093. 244. Lam Lok Ming, Haiguan Fuwu Sawu Nian Huiyilu (Recollecting thirty-five years of service in the Customs Service) (Hong Kong: Longmen, 1982), 39. 245. Robert Bickers, The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire (London: Allen Lane, 2011), 1. 246. “Jiangmen Custom House to Li Bangding” (February 19, 1952), in “Haiguan Zongshu Jieyue Weiyuanhui Jiancha Jiangmen, Shantou, Kunming Guan Tanwu Qingxing De Youguan Wenjian” (Documents of the Savings Committee of the Inspectorate General relating to corruption at the Jiangmen, Shantou, and Kunming Custom Houses), SHAC 679/26858. 247. “Li Bangding Report” (February 16, 1952), in ibid. 248. “Hankou Custom House to Li Bangding” (June 11, 1952), in ibid. 249. “General Report of the Inspectorate General of Customs About the Three Anti Campaign,” (August 16, 1952), in “Shanghai Guan Ji Tianjin Guan Sanfan Yundong Cailiao” (Materials relating to the three anti movement at the Shanghai and Tianjin Custom Houses), SHAC 679/27244. 250. Qian Shenqi, “Fanxing Jiantao Shu” (Letter of reflection and examination) (March 13, 1952), in ibid.

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EPILOGUE: ECHOES AND SHADOWS 1. “Postal Circular 156” (December 26, 1906), Tianjin Municipal Archives, W2-1-2838, “Circulars, etc, vol.2, Circulars 135–261, Instructions 1–112, P.S.D. Notes 1–2 Tung Yu 1–2 1906–1911 Youzheng Tongling.” I am grateful to Dr. Ts’ai Wei-pin for providing me with this reference. 2. J. R. McNeill, “Chinese Environmental History in World Perspective,” in Sediments of Time: Environment and Society in Chinese History, ed. Mark Elvin and Liu Ts’ui-jung (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 31, 34–35. 3. See, for an excellent example of work in this direction, Wu Songdi, Gangkou-Fudi: He Zhongguo Xiandaihua Jincheng (Port-hinterland: and the progress of China’s modernization) (Jinan: Qishu Chubanshe, 2005). 4. Mao Haijian, Tianchao de Bengkui (The collapse of the heavenly dynasty) (Beijing: Sanlian, 1995). 5. Philip Kuhn, Origins of the Modern Chinese State (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002), 18–26. 6. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital (London: Abacus, 2008), 16–17. 7. Lin Man-hoang, “The Shift from East Asia to the World: The Role of Maritime Silver in China’s Economy in the Seventeenth to Late Eighteenth Century,” in Maritime China in Transition, 1750–1850, ed. Wang Gungwu and Ng Chin-keong (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 2004), 81.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABBREVIATIONS AND SHORT REFERENCES USED IN THE NOTES Archives: Chen Xiafei and Han Rongfang, eds., Archives of China’s Imperial Maritime Customs: Confidential Correspondence Between Robert Hart and James Duncan Campbell, 1874–1907 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1990–1993). China and the West: Bickers, Robert, and Hans van de Ven, comps., China and the West, The Maritime Customs Service Archive from the Second Historical Archives of China, Nanjing. Woodbridge, Conn.: Thomson Gale, Primary Source Microfilm, 2004–2008. Docs. Ill.: Wright, Stanley. Documents Illustrative of the Origin, Development, and Activities of the Chinese Customs Service. Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General, 1938. Hart Diary: Robert Hart Collection, Special Collections, Queen’s University of Belfast, M/S 15/1. Hart Journals: Fairbank, John, Richard Smith, and Katherine Bruner, eds., Robert Hart and China’s Early Modernization: His Journals, 1863–1866; and Fairbank, John, Richard Smith, and Katherine Bruner, eds., Entering China’s Service: Robert Hart’s Journals, 1854–1863. National Archives: National Archives of the United Kingdom at Kew, formerly known as the Public Records Office. SHAC: Second Historical Archives of China, Nanjing. SOAS: School of Oriental and African Studies, London.

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370 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Xu Guoqi. China and the Great War: China’s Pursuit of a New National Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Yan Se. “Essays on Real Wages and Wage Inequality in China, 1858–1936.” Ph.D. diss., UCLA, 2007. Yang Zhiyou (杨智友). “华籍洋关副总税务司丁贵堂” (Ding Guitang: the Chinese DIG of the Foreign Customs Service). In “民国档案” (Republican archives) 3 (2003): 111–114. Yao Yudong (姚余栋). “重燃中国梦想” (Reigniting the China dream). Beijing: Zhongxin Chubanshe, 2010. Yi Huili (易惠莉). “郑观应评传” (Critical biography of Zheng Guanying). Nanjing: Nanjing University Press, 1998. Young, Arthur. China’s Nation-Building Effort. New York: New York University Press, 1983. Zelin, Madeleine. The Magistrate’s Tael: Rationalizing Fiscal Reform in EighteenthCentury Ch’ing China. Berkeley: California University Press, 1984. Zeng Jingting (曾靖婷). “论肃顺人际网络与辛酉政变” (On Sushun’s network and the Xinyou coup). M.Phil. diss., National Chenggong University, 2009. Zhan Qinghua (詹庆华). “全球化视野: 中国海关洋员与中西文化传播” (A globalizational perspective of foreign staffs in the Chinese Maritime Customs Service and transcultural communication between East and West, 1854–1950). Beijing: Zhongguo Haiguan Chubanshe, 2008. Zhang Xianwen (张宪文). “中华民国史” (The history of Republican China). Nanjing: Nanjing University Press, n.d. Zheng Guanying (郑观应). “盛世微言增订新编” (Humble words of warning for a prosperous age). New enlarged ed. Taipei: Taiwan Xuesheng Shuju, 1965. Zhu Qian (朱权). “丁贵堂孤岛脱险记” (Ding Guitang’s escape from the lone island of Shanghai). In “档案与史学” (Archives and historical studies) 5 (1997): 56–58.

C6345.indb 380

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INDEX

Able Men Cabinet, 174 Acheson, G. F. H., 209 Addis, Charles, 157, 165–66, 168–69 Aglen, Francis: appointment of, 161–62; banks and, 179–95, 210; dismissal of, 175, 177–78, 211; Edwardes and, 178, 211–12; finance and, 9, 15, 134, 172–95, 200, 204; Gu and, 173–75, 177–78, 185, 210–11; Robert Hart and, 149, 176, 178, 194–95, 218; imperialism of, 8, 195; Paul King and, 181, 187–89, 197; Liu Kunyi and, 148; Maze and, 220, 231–32; Nationalists and, 205, 207–11; 1911 Revolution and, 162–63, 166–67, 170–71; northern government abandoned by, 208–11; papers of, 18; Special Tariff Conference and, 204; succession crisis after, 211–15; tutorialist liberalism of, 176; wages and, 187–90; WWI influencing,

C6345.indb 381

176, 179, 187–88, 191, 195; Wyatt case and, 186–95, 194, 212 Aisin-Gioro Dzai Sun, 23, 25 Aisin-Gioro I Ju. See Xianfeng Emperor Aisin-Gioro Isin. See Gong, Prince Akatani, Y., 279 Alcock, Rutherford, 31–33, 60 Anderson, Benedict, 97 Anderson, James O’Gorman, 97, 247–48 Anderson, Perry, 97 Anglo-German Gold Loan, 142, 157, 163 Anglo-Japanese Customs Agreement, 273–75, 279 anti-imperialism, Gu and, 195–204 appeals process, 71 Archer, C. S., 250 archives, 17–18, 79, 306–7 arms limitation, 201

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382 INDEX

arms race, naval: Germany and, 110–12, 132; Japan and, 107, 111; Li Hongzhang and, 107–11; London Office and, 104, 107–12 Armstrong vessels, 108–11 Arrow War, 35, 41, 61–62, 255 Atherton, W., 67 audit secretary, 91–92 Austria-Hungary, 147, 173 Ayaou, 47–48 Bai Chongxi, 213 Balfour, Arthur, 197 Bank of China, 173, 177, 179–81, 183, 215 Bank of Communications, 173, 179–81, 183, 252 banks: Aglen and, 179–95, 210; Bank of China, 173, 177, 179–81, 183, 215; Bank of Communications, 173, 179–81, 183, 252; foreign, Customs revenue in, 167; IG collaborating with, 177; Yokohama Specie Bank, 273–75; Yuan raiding, 173, 181–82. See also Hongkong and Shanghai Bank Bannister, T. Roger, 227–28 Barrow, John, 52 Barton, Sidney, 214 Batchelor, H. C., 93 Battle of Shanghai, 262 battleships, 109–11 Bayly, Christopher, 61 Beijing Field Force, 25 Belgium, 147 Bell, Hayley, 192–93, 208, 252–53 Bentham, Jeremy, 31 Beresford, Lord, 143 Bertie, Francis, 141, 159 Bertin, Emile, 111 Bethell, A. G., 186 Bickers, Robert, 222 Big Ben chime, 2

C6345.indb 382

Bisbee, A. M., 84 Black Flags, 112–13 Bland, J. O. P., 222–23 Board of Customs Control: founding of, 153–58; reaction to, 157–58 Boecking, Felix, 234 bond market: Board of Customs Control and, 153–58; Boxer War and, 144–53; Britain and, 139–43; Consolidated Debt bonds in, 184–85, 185; Customs Service as debt collector and, 9, 14–15, 133–71; before 1895, 135–38; Evident Trust Bond and, 141–42; Robert Hart and, 136–37, 139–41, 144–45, 147, 149–53, 154, 156, 158–62, 170; Li Hongzhang and, 148–49, 151–52; National Loan Bond Issue and, 179–80, 182; 1911 Revolution and, 134–35, 162–71, 165; Qing and, 133–43; rise of, 14–15, 133–71; SinoJapanese War indemnity and, 133, 138–44; Taiping and, 135–36 Bonham, George, 35 Bos, C., 244 Bowra, Cecil, 161, 205, 209 Bowring, John, 32–33, 60 Boxer indemnity, 10, 15, 133–34, 153, 183, 203; Anglo-Japanese Customs Agreement and, 273, 275; canceled portions of, 173, 182, 186 Boxer Rebellion: archives destroyed during, 79; defined, 79, 144; Prince Qing and, 150 Boxer War: ambiguities in, 147–50; avoidability of, 145–47; bond market and, 144–53; Cixi and, 145–48, 153; Customs Service and, 144–53; Eight Allied Nations in, 144–47, 149–53; end of, 15; Robert Hart and, 144–45, 147, 149–53; McKay Treaty and, 199; in Tianjin, 145–47 Braud, A. C. E., 249

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383 INDEX

Bredon, Hester, 48 Bredon, R., 93, 122, 127, 129, 159–61 Britain: Anglo-German Gold Loan and, 142, 157, 163; Anglo-Japanese Customs Agreement and, 273–75, 279; Board of Customs Control and, 157–58; bond market and, 139–43; Boxer War and, 145–47, 152; changed attitude of, 27; concessions and, 139–41; Customs Service and, 7–8, 13, 26–27, 295, 307–8; gentlemanly capitalism in, 135; Great Game rivalry of, 144; Gu and, 175–76; imperialism of, 7–8, 13, 47, 195; Japan and, 272–75, 278–80; Nationalists and, 207–9, 222–25; neutrality abandoned by, 23; Qing relations with, 131; Royal Navy of, 27, 29, 279; Tibet and, 119; weakness of, 27, 62 British consul, 28–29 British National Archives, 18 Bruce, Frederick, 29–30, 60–61, 67–68, 94 bureaucratic rhizome, 4–5 bureaucratization: of Customs Service, 75–82, 100–102; dispatches, 77–78; forms, 80–82; IG circulars, 76–78; semiofficial correspondence, 78–80 Burlingame, Ansom, 67–68, 97 “Bystander’s View, A,” 82, 90 Cain, Peter, 135 Campbell, A. S., 276 Campbell, James, 91, 116; Robert Hart and, 18, 93, 106, 115, 140–41, 149–50, 153, 229–30, 295; in London Office, 93, 106–9; as nonresident secretary, 93, 106–7; recruitment and, 93–96 Canton: Custom House, 213; smuggling in, 237; trade and, 28–30, 36

C6345.indb 383

Cao Rulin, 199 Carnegie, Lancelot, 157 Carr, Lewis, 32 Carrell, L. R., 278 Caruthers, A. S. H., 97 centralization, 66, 83–84 Chang Fu-yun, 210, 213–16, 290–92 Chaylard, Jean Mary du, 146 Chefoo Convention, 119 Chen Chi, 155–56, 204 Chengde Summer Palace, 23 Cheng Linsun, 186 Chen Hansheng, 230 Chen Jitang, 248–49, 251 Chen Youren, 208–9, 248 Chiang Kaishek: Nationalists and, 174, 217, 219, 248–49, 251, 262, 276, 286–87, 289, 293; Wang Jingwei and, 276 China: Bank of, 173, 177, 179–81, 183, 215; civil wars in, 186, 295; Consortium, 168; Cultural Revolution in, 2, 230, 306; domestic waterways of, 305–6; finance as cure for, 173; finance czar of, 179–86; globalization of, 5–7, 88; historical shifts in, 62; Japan’s conflict with, 16–17, 105, 110, 115, 219–21, 223–25, 254–56, 259–80, 286; knowledge transmitted from, 106; modernization of, 41–42; new imperialism in, 10, 112, 132; northern, 240–41; People’s Republic of, 300–301; Question, 207; regional rivalries in, 28; Shandong Question and, 196–200, 202–3; Station, 27. See also economy, Chinese; Sino-French War; SinoJapanese War; southern China; Young China China Servant (Archer), 250 Chinese language: attitudes toward, 98; foreigners learning, 45, 98, 100

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384 INDEX

Chinese staff, 190–91, 194, 246–47; commissioners and, 155; IG, 11, 261, 280–81, 300; Japanese restrictions on, 269 circuit intendent, 33, 55 circulation register, 58 civil wars, in China, 186, 295 Cixi, Empress Dowager: Boxer War and, 145–48, 153; controversial, 132; death of, 164; Gong and, 24–26, 114; Sino-French War and, 116; Xianfeng Emperor and, 23; Xinyou Coup by, 24–26, 60 Clarendon, Lord, 34, 67 Clark-Kerr, Archibald, 274, 278, 280 Classic of History, 25 Clayson, William, 109 Clemenceau, George, 197, 200 Clifford, Nicholas, 222 Cohong, 28, 30 Collection on Science, A, 106 command economy, 52–53 commission, 127 commissioners: ambiguous attitudes of, 149; Chinese, 155; investigation, 294; on staff, 10, 28, 38–39, 58, 60, 63, 71–84, 91–92, 94, 98–100, 104, 136–37, 149, 154–56, 158–63, 167, 188–90, 194, 247, 249, 254, 258, 262, 268–72, 279, 291, 294, 304. See also specific commissioners Communists: Customs Service and, 11, 260–61, 296–301, 308; foreigners dispatched by, 2, 296; in Shanghai, 299; in Tianjin, 297 concessions, 138–44 Confucius, 25, 136, 197 Consolidated Debt bonds, 184–85, 185 Consolidated Debt Service, 184–85, 185, 206, 210, 214 consolidation tax, 219, 220 consuls: as foreigners, 28–29; Robert Hart restraining, 66–71

C6345.indb 384

Convention of Tianjin, 114, 116 copper, 129, 130 cosmopolitanism, 94, 98, 187 cotton: exports, 122, 123, 124; imports, 124, 124–25 Craigie, Robert, 274 cruisers, 108–9, 111 Cubbon, J. H., 272, 277–78, 283 Cultural Revolution, 2, 230, 306 Customs Affairs Office, 215, 292 Customs Association, 192 Customs Reference Library, 226 Customs revenue: in foreign banks, 167; foreign trade expansion and, 117, 117–20, 120; growth in, 182, 182; as indirect taxation, 257; Nationalists and, 219, 219–20; National Loan Bond Issue and, 180; as security, 134, 141 Customs Service. See Maritime Customs Service Dagu Bar, 85–86 Dagu Forts, 146–47, 152 Dai Li, 292–93 Davis, H. Tudor, 38 Dawson, C. P., 188–89 Deng Xiaoping, 2, 129, 309 Desultory Notes on the Government and People of China, and of the Chinese Language (T. Meadows), 46 Detring, Gustav, 112–13, 147–48 Ding Guitang: comeuppance of, 292; integrity and, 261, 281, 283, 286–94, 297–99; Kong Xiangxi and, 281, 283; Maze and, 215, 225–26, 249, 252–56, 261 Dingyuan, 110–11, 132 dispatches, 77–78 Disraeli, Benjamin, 35 domestic waterways, 305–6 Drew, E. B., 74, 97, 148

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385 INDEX

East Asian naval arms race: Germany and, 110–12, 132; Japan and, 107, 111; Li Hongzhang and, 107–11; London Office and, 104, 107–12 “East Is Red, The,” 2 economy, Chinese: as command economy, 52–53; 1880s turning point in, 104, 120–27, 123–24, 126; growth of, 182–83, 186; underdevelopment of, 104–5, 116–32 Eden, Anthony, 274 Edwardes, Arthur: Aglen and, 178, 211–12; Kishimoto appointed by, 213, 224; Maze and, 211–15, 220, 232; Nationalists and, 213–16; as Officiating IG, 210–11, 214 Eight Allied Nations, 144–47, 149–53 1880s, as turning point, 104, 120–27, 123–24, 126 1895, loan market before, 135–38 Elgin, Lord, 23, 35, 39, 41, 83 Elman, Benjamin, 105, 132 Emergency Committee, 297–98 Ensor, E. N., 268–69 Esherick, Joseph, 135 esprit de corps, of Customs Service, 186 Evident Trust Bond, 141–42 exemption certificates, 35 Exporters Association of Formosa, 238 exports, 122, 123, 124 extraterritoriality, 34, 66, 68, 236, 284 Fairbank, John, 7–9, 29, 54, 61, 228–30 Fan Baichuan, 72 Fang Du, 299–300 Faure, David, 121 Feihe, 115 Feng Guifen, 155 Fengyang, 305

C6345.indb 385

Feng Youlan, 230 Feng Yuxiang, 203–4 Ferguson, Jan Willem Helenus, 96, 210–11 Ferguson, Thomas, 96 Ferry, Jules, 115–16 Feuerwerker, Albert, 121 finance: Aglen and, 9, 15, 134, 172–95, 200, 204; as cure, 173; czar, 179–86; Gu and, 174–78; importance of, 5; Maritime Customs Service and, 5, 8, 14–15, 91; minister, 4, 220, 224, 261, 265, 274–75, 277, 279, 281–82, 284; WWI and, 172–73. See also bond market financial imperialism, 143 Fitz-Roy, George, 40, 92, 136 Fitz-Roy Kelly, Sir, 67–68 Forbes, A. H., 242 Forbes, Charles S., 83–84 force majeure, 199, 221, 247–48, 271, 290, 298 foreign banks, Customs revenue in, 167 Foreign Board of Inspectors, 31–34 foreigners: Chinese learned by, 45, 98, 100; Communists dispatching, 2, 296; consular officers, 28–29; at Guangzhou Custom House, 36, 40; Salt Tax Administration employing, 12; at Shanghai Custom House, 26, 33–34, 38; staff, 4, 6, 17, 26, 28–30, 33–34, 36, 38, 40, 55, 63, 101, 186–95, 194, 283, 300 foreign trade expansion: causes of, 127–28, 128; consequences of, 129– 32, 130–31; Customs revenue and, 117, 117–20, 120; Customs Service and, 116–32; Self-Strengthening Movement and, 116–17, 118, 120 forms, in bureaucratization, 80–82 Fortune, Robert, 52 Fournier, Francois, 113

11/7/13 9:02 AM

386 INDEX

France, 23–24, 139, 203; battleships and, 110; weakness of, 27, 62. See also Sino-French War Frank, André Gunder, 104 frontier regime, 4–5, 64–65 Fujian: Rebellion, 256–57; smuggling in, 237–39 Fuzhou Custom House, 51, 257 Fuzhou Dockyard, 109, 111 Gaoyou, 303 gentlemanly capitalism, 135 George, Lloyd, 168, 187, 197, 200 Germany, 115, 139–40, 147, 151–52, 173; Anglo-German Gold Loan and, 142, 157, 163; naval arms race and, 110–12, 132; Shandong Question and, 196–97 Giles, Lionel, 253 Giquel, Prosper, 111–12 Gladstone, William, 107, 114 globalization, 5–7, 88 Goddard, F. D., 265–66 gold standard, 129 Gong, Prince: career’s end, 132; Cixi and, 24–26, 114; father-in-law of, 35; Robert Hart and, 40–41, 43, 62, 132; Lay and, 13, 38–39, 42–44; Maritime Customs Service and, 13, 38–39, 55, 72, 101, 309; Pure Criticism and, 113; Wenxiang and, 49; Xinyou Coup by, 13, 24–26, 37, 60 Gorman, W. J., 263 governance, trade separated from, 62–63 Grand Canal, 306 Granville, Earl, 65 Great Game rivalry, 144 Grey, Edward, 157–58, 160–61, 163–64 Guangdong, 139, 236–37, 249; Nanjing and, 250–51; opposition to, 36; tollhouse, 51, 55, 59 Guangxi, 22, 36, 119, 139, 249–50

C6345.indb 386

Guangxu Emperor, 145, 147, 164 Guangzhou, 40, 47, 86, 299; Sun’s government in, 205–6; tariffs at, 58; trade in, 29–30, 59, 125, 126 Guangzhou Custom House, 163–64, 206; Chinese name of, 51; foreigners in, 36, 40; Japan and, 270–72; Maze and, 170–71 Guernier, R. C., 95 Guiliang, 35 Gulangyu, 304 gunboats, 108–10, 163, 206, 265, 267, 272 Guo Taiqi, 213, 223, 275 Gutzlaff, Karl, 34, 45 Gu Weijun: Aglen and, 173–75, 177–78, 185, 210–11; anti-imperialism and, 195–204; Britain and, 175–76; fall of, 220; finance and, 174–78; importance of, 176–77, 216; at international conferences, 15, 176–77, 195–204 Haian, 242–43 Hamashita Takeshi, 128 Hangzhou Bay, 239 Hankou Custom House, 268–69, 288–89 Han-Manchu relations, 49 Hannen, Charles, 73 Hannen, James, 67 Hansson, P. C., 148 Han Zhaolian, 296 Hao Yen-p’ing, 120 harbormasters, 84, 87 Harding, Warren, 201 Hart, Bruce, 96–97, 159, 166 Hart, Robert, 222, 235, 258, 264; age of, 60; Aglen and, 149, 176, 178, 194–95, 218; bond market and, 136–37, 139–41, 144–45, 147, 149–53, 154, 156, 158–62, 170; Boxer War and, 144–45, 147, 149–53; bureau-

11/7/13 9:02 AM

387 INDEX

cratization by, 75–82, 100–102; “A Bystander’s View” by, 82, 90; James Campbell and, 18, 93, 106, 115, 140–41, 149–50, 153, 229–30, 295; characteristics of, 8, 13; Chinese family of, 47–48, 93; consuls restrained by, 66–71; Customs Service built up by, 64–102, 104, 130, 172, 227, 292; documentation and, 18–19, 51, 75–82; education of, 43–51; Gong and, 40–41, 43, 62, 132; imperialism rejected by, 13, 47, 149–50; influence of, 8–9, 11–14, 35; Lay and, 40, 43–44, 50, 70; London Office and, 93, 106–10; Marine Department and, 82–90; marriage of, 48; Maze and, 159, 212, 223, 225–26, 231–32, 257; panopticon of, 64–102; post office and, 303–4; Qing supported by, 50, 61; recruitment and, 92–100; religion and, 44–48, 50–51; “Rules and Regulations for the Customs Service” by, 98–99; science primers and, 105–6; Sino-French War and, 112–15; succession crisis after, 158–62; superintendents sidelined by, 72–75; transition to, 27, 40–51, 63; Thomas Wade and, 71; wages and, 187; Zongli Yamen and, 40, 43–44, 49, 61, 69–70, 73–74, 82, 84, 106, 115, 136–37, 146–47, 151, 160–61 He Guiqing, 36–37, 73 Henderson, David Marr, 84 Hevia, James, 105 He Yingqin, 287 Hillier, E. G., 157, 160 Hillman, H. E., 241, 243 Hippisley, A. E., 143, 159–61, 170 Hirth, Friedrich, 126 historians, Customs Service, 227–30 Hobsbawm, Eric, 308 Hobson, Herbert, 161

C6345.indb 387

Hong Kong, smuggling in, 234–37 Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, 160, 166–68, 205, 252; Board of Customs Control and, 157; loans from, 136–41, 151 Hooper, E. D. G., 270–71 Hoover, Herbert, 148 Hopkins, Antony, 135 Hornby, Edmund, 70 hostages, 23 Huang Siyong, 141 Huang Zunxian, 135–36 Hu Chih-nan, 263 Hue, Treaty of, 113 Hu Fuzhen, 269 Humble Views for a Prosperous Age (Zheng), 155 Hunt, J. H., 149 Hutchins, William, 107 Hu Weide, 163 IG. See Inspector General IG circulars: in bureaucratization, 76–78; Hart’s, 83–84, 91, 98, 158, 161 impeachment, Li and, 114, 132 Imperial Household, revenue allocated to, 119–20 imperialism: Aglen’s, 8, 195; British, 7–8, 13, 47, 195; financial, 143; Gu and, 195–204; Robert Hart rejecting, 13, 47, 149–50; new, 10, 112, 132 imports: cotton, 124, 124–25; kerosene, 124, 125; rice, 124, 125 indirect taxation, 257 informal empire institution, 134 inland tax, 208–9 Inspector General (IG): banks collaborating with, 177; Chinese, 11, 261, 280–81, 300; circulars, 76–78, 83–84, 91, 98, 158, 161; control by, 4, 10–11, 82; imperial edict appointing, 39; role of, 5; strife and, 35;

11/7/13 9:02 AM

388 INDEX

Inspector General (continued) Zongli Yamen and, 73. See also specific IGs integrity: of Customs Service, 16–17, 255, 259–301; Ding and, 261, 281, 283, 286–94, 297–99; Little and, 259–61, 270, 283–86, 288–95, 297– 99; Maze and, 260–62, 265, 267–85, 295, 299; obsession with, 260 International Bankers Commission, 167 international conferences: Gu at, 15, 176–77, 195–204; Paris Peace Conference, 15, 176–77, 195–200; Special Tariff Conference, 196, 201–4, 210; Washington Conference, 15, 176–77, 195, 201–4 internment camps, 280, 291 interregional trade, 53 investigation commissioners, 294 investigations and examinations register, 58 isolationism, U.S., 224, 284 James Bond complex, Maze’s, 230–33 Japan: Anglo-Japanese Customs Agreement and, 273–75, 279; Boxer War and, 147; Britain and, 272–75, 278–80; China’s conflict with, 16–17, 105, 110, 115, 219–21, 223–25, 254–56, 259–80, 286; Chinese staff restricted by, 269; exports, 124; gold standard in, 129; Guangzhou Custom House and, 270–72; in Nanjing, 262, 267; Nationalists and, 261–62, 264–69, 271–74, 280; in naval arms race, 107, 111; occupation by, 219, 254–56, 274; Shandong Question and, 196–200, 202–3; Shanghai and, 263–64, 274; trade with, 53–54; Twenty-one Demands of, 197–98; U.S. and,

C6345.indb 388

272, 274, 278, 284. See also SinoJapanese War Jiangmen Custom House, 300 Jiujiang Custom House, 73–74, 266–68 Jiulong Custom House, 300 Joint Investigation Court, 71 Joint Rule, 25 Joly, Cecil, 97, 280–82 Joly, Percy, 96, 239, 242–43, 266–68 Jordan, John, 157, 160, 163–65, 169, 185 junks, 121, 228, 238–40, 245–46 Kangxi Emperor, 45, 55 Kang Youwei, 145, 155–56 Katsuo Okazaki, 270–71 kerosene imports, 124, 125 King, Frank, 136, 150 King, Paul, 149; Aglen and, 181, 187–89, 197; as nonresident secretary, 97, 181 Kishimoto Hirokichi: appointment of, 17, 213, 224; Customs Service and, 4, 17, 213, 224–25, 262, 280–81 Kleczkowsky, C., 68 Kleinwächter, F., 73–74, 79 Knatchbull-Hugessen, Hughe, 224 knowledge, transmission of, 105–6 Kong Xiangji, 145–46, 148 Kong Xiangxi: Ding and, 281, 283; as finance minister, 4, 220, 224, 261, 265, 274–75, 277, 279, 281–82, 284 Koo, Wellington. See Gu Weijun Ladds, Catherine, 93 Lampson, Miles, 175, 211, 214, 218 Lansing, Robert, 197 Lao Chongguang, 36, 40 Lawford, Lancelot, 224–25, 228–29, 240, 264, 279 Lay, Horatio, 10–11, 92; abrasive attitude of, 35, 43–44; appointment of, 34–35, 38–39; cosmopolitan-

11/7/13 9:02 AM

389 INDEX

ism and, 94; fines of, overturned, 67; Gong and, 13, 38–39, 42–44; Robert Hart and, 40, 43–44, 50, 70; Taiping and, 39–40; transition from, 27, 39–44, 63; Treaty of Tianjin and, 35–38 Lay-Osborn Flotilla, 41–43, 83–84, 107 Lennox-Simpson, Bertram, 95–96, 251–54 Liang Dunyan, 160 Liangguang, 36 Li Bangding, 300 liberalism: Aglen’s, 176; Alcock’s, 31 lighthouses: benefits of, 14, 227; complexity of, 88; Marine Department and, 84–90; Shanghai and, 85–86; South Cape, 88–90; as symbols, 14, 87–90; Yangzi River and, 85–86 Li Hongzhang, 25, 43, 49, 60, 73, 119; bond markets and, 148–49, 151–52; brother of, 139; death of, 154; impeachment and, 114, 132; naval arms race and, 107–11; SinoFrench War and, 113–14, 116 Li Jianmin, 280 Li Ming, 217, 258 Ling Chuh Huan, 264 Lin Lianfang, 288–89 Lin Man-houng, 122 Little, Lester K.: appointment of, 17, 283–84; integrity and, 259–61, 270, 283–86, 288–95, 297–99 Liu, Lydia, 106 Liu Ao, 89 Liu Kunyi, 148–49, 156 Liu Lichuan, 30 Liu Yongfu, 113 Li Zongren, 251 loans: Anglo-German Gold Loan, 142, 157, 163; from Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, 136–41, 151; market, creation of, 135–38; National Loans Bureau and, 173,

C6345.indb 389

179–80, 182–83; negotiation of, 104; Reorganization Loan, 133–34, 168–69, 173 London Office: James Campbell in, 93, 106–9; East Asian naval arms race and, 104, 107–12; Robert Hart and, 93, 106–10; Qing and, 14; role of, 116, 131, 223; in Self-Strengthening Movement, 14, 103–16 long-distance trade, growth of, 52–54 lower Yangzi region, smuggling in, 239–40 Lu Bin, 246 Luo Qingxiang, 299–300 Lu Zhengxiang, 200 Lyall, Leonard, 190–92, 212 MacDonald, Claude, 145 MacGowan, Dr., 46 Macoun, J. H., 248 Makino Nobuaki, 196–97, 200 Manchukuo, 219, 238, 240, 249, 254–55 Manchus: Han relations with, 49; as upstarts, 54. See also Qing Mao Haijian, 308 Mao Zedong, 6, 289, 309 Marine Department: Robert Hart and, 82–90; lighthouses and, 84–90; role of, 19, 87; transportation revolution of, 103 Maritime Custom Houses: control over, 221–22; growth of, 117–19, 118; locations of, 3; modern use of, 6; names of, 51. See also specific custom houses Maritime Customs Service: AngloJapanese Customs Agreement and, 273–75; archives of, 17–18, 79, 306–7; backlash against, 153–58; behavior in, 92–100; Board of Customs Control and, 153–58; Boxer War and, 144–53; Britain

11/7/13 9:02 AM

390 INDEX

Maritime Customs Service (continued) and, 7–8, 13, 26–27, 295, 307–8; bureaucratization of, 75–82, 100–102; centralization of, 66, 83–84; as chameleon, 22–63; Communists and, 11, 260–61, 296–301, 308; continuity in, 51–63, 56–57; control of, 4, 10–11, 82, 153–58, 221–22; as debt collector, 9, 14–15, 133–71; decline of, 260, 272–85, 294–95; echoes and shadows of, 302–9; end of, 296–301; esprit de corps of, 186; finance and, 5, 8, 14–15, 91; foreign trade expansion and, 116–32; founding of, 61–62, 102; as frontier regime, 4–5, 64–65; Gong and, 13, 38–39, 55, 72, 101, 309; Robert Hart building up, 64–102, 104, 130, 172, 227, 292; historians, 227–30; as imperium in imperio, 172–217; influence of, 5–6, 9, 12; institutions similar to, 12–13; integrity of, 16–17, 255, 259–301; introduction to, 1–21; Japanese occupation and, 254–56; Kishimoto and, 4, 17, 213, 224–25, 262, 280–81; knowledge transmitted through, 105–6; in Nanjing Decade, 217–58; Nationalists and, 9, 11, 15–17, 178–79, 205–16, 219, 219–35, 240, 242, 245–57, 280–86, 293, 298, 307–8; 1911 Revolution and, 134–35, 162–72; panopticon of, 64–102; Qing and, 7–10, 13–15, 18, 31, 33–39, 50, 60–61, 74, 307–8; role of, 3; “Rules and Regulations for the Customs Service” for, 98–99; SelfStrengthening Movement and, 103–32; during Sino-French War, 112–16; Statistical Department of, 90–91; study of, 7–9; surtax of, 208–11, 215; Taiping and, 26; tariffs

C6345.indb 390

and, 217–58; tollhouses and, 28, 52, 54–61, 56–57; U.S. in, 97–98, 229, 291, 295; Young China and, 15, 153–59, 307–8. See also Customs revenue; London Office; Marine Department; staff, Customs Service Marshall, George, 289 Martin, W. A. P., 105 Mayers, F. J., 186–87 May Thirtieth Movement, 207, 212 Maze, Frederick, 156, 163–64; Aglen and, 220, 231–32; deals brokered by, 247–58; Ding and, 215, 225–26, 249, 252–56, 261; Edwardes and, 211–15, 220, 232; geopolitical context of, 222–25; Guangzhou Custom House and, 170–71; Robert Hart and, 159, 212, 223, 225–26, 231–32, 257; integrity and, 260–62, 265, 267–85, 295, 299; James Bond complex of, 230–33; in Nanjing Decade, 217–33, 236–37, 240, 247–58; Nationalists and, 15–16, 178–79, 220–25, 232, 247–57, 282–84; papers of, 18; prenostalgia and, 225–30; recruitment of, 95; Shanghai Custom House building and, 193; Song and, 217–20, 236, 249–50, 254–55; in succession struggle, 211–15; Wang Jingwei government and, 276–80 Ma Zhendu, 17, 20 McKay Treaty, 199 McNeill, J. R., 305 Meadows, John, 46 Meadows, Thomas, 46 Merrill, H. F., 163, 167, 188, 229 meteorological stations, 87 Mill, John Stuart, 31 Miller, David, 197 Ming Dynasty, 309 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 154

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391 INDEX

Min River Tollhouse, 54–55, 56 modernization, 41–42 monarchical movement, 181 Moorhead, R. B., 124–25, 127 Morrison, G. E., 166–67 Morse, H. B., 106, 228–29 muck and truck commodities, 122 Myer, W. R., 274 Myers, Ramon, 52–53 Nanjing: Custom House, 148; Guangdong and, 250–51; Japan in, 262, 267; Taiping capital in, 22, 25; Treaty of, 28–30, 32, 45 Nanjing Decade: Customs Service in, 217–58; Maze in, 217–33, 236–37, 240, 247–58 Napoleon III, 112 nationalism, 154, 191, 195, 216 Nationalists: Aglen and, 205, 207–11; Britain and, 207–9, 222–25; Chiang and, 174, 217, 219, 248–49, 251, 262, 276, 286–87, 289, 293; control by, 174–75, 178; Customs revenue and, 219, 219–20; Customs Service and, 9, 11, 15–17, 178–79, 205–16, 219, 219–35, 240, 242, 245–57, 280–86, 293, 298, 307–8; Edwardes and, 213–16; Japan and, 261–62, 264–69, 271–74, 280; Maze and, 15–16, 178–79, 220–25, 232, 247–57, 282–84; Northern Expedition of, 15, 204, 208, 215, 220; opposition to, 218–19; postwar rehabilitation effort and, 286–87, 289–93, 295–96; rise of, 205–8, 216; Sun and, 165– 66, 168, 184, 199–200, 203–6, 210, 212–13, 258; tariffs and, 16, 155–56, 220–21, 233–36, 240, 242, 257; U.S. and, 154, 284–85, 295, 299 National Loan Bond Issue, 179–80, 182 National Loans Bureau, 173, 179–80, 182–83

C6345.indb 391

navy: Lay-Osborn Flotilla and, 41–43, 83–84, 107; Qing, 104–5, 107–12; Royal, 27, 29, 279. See also East Asian naval arms race nepotism, 159 Neprud, Carl, 275, 291 Netherlands, 147 Neutrality Act, 42 new imperialism, 10, 112, 132 Nian Rebellion, 6, 9, 14, 22 1911 Revolution: Aglen’s response to, 162–63, 166–67, 170–71; bond market and, 134–35, 162–71, 165; Customs Service and, 134–35, 162–72; trade and, 165 Ningbo, 85–86 Ningbo Custom House, 51 nonresident secretary, 223; James Campbell 93, 106–7; Paul King, 97, 181 North China Daily News, 217–18, 221, 256 northern China, smuggling in, 240–41 Northern Expedition, 15, 204, 208, 215, 220 northern government, Aglen abandoning, 208–11 Okamura Yasuji, 256 Old Shanghai, 1–2 Open Door Note, 143, 159 Open Door policy, 107, 152, 165, 198, 201 opium, 124, 124, 234 Opium War, 27–29 Osborn, Sherard, 42 Our Interests in China, 41–42 overseas trade, growth of, 52–54, 309 Pan Hannian, 298 Paris Peace Conference, 15, 176–77, 195–200

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392 INDEX

Parkes, Harry, 71 Pauncefote, Julian, 107, 143 Pearl Harbor, 279–80, 284 Pearl River, 86 People’s Republic of China, 300–301 personally completed register, 58 pilotage services, 87 pirate suppression, 29 post office, 303–4 post-Taiping leadership, 132 postwar rehabilitation effort: failure of, 286–96; Nationalists and, 286–87, 289–93, 295–96; Song and, 292–93 Pouncy, C. A., 250 prenostalgia, 225–30 Preventive Fleet, 3, 9, 242–44, 258 Pritchard, E. A., 236, 241, 243, 245–46 Privy Council, 70 promotions, 98 Prosperous Age, 51–52 “Provisional Rules for the Clearing of Ships,” 32 puff-puff boats, 243 Pure Criticism, 113–14, 116, 132 Qian Jiaju, 230 Qianlong Emperor, 59–60 Qi Meiqin, 54 Qing: bond market and, 133–43; British relations with, 131; Customs Service and, 7–10, 13–15, 18, 31, 33–39, 50, 60–61, 74, 307–8; end of, 135; Robert Hart supporting, 50, 61; hostages taken by, 23; institutional adaptability of, 101–2; Lay-Osborn Flotilla and, 41–43; London Office and, 14; navy, 104–5, 107–12; post-Taiping leadership of, 132; Prosperous Age of, 51–52; responsibility localized by, 66; statistics and, 90–91; in Taiwan, 89; trade under, 52–54

C6345.indb 392

Qing, Prince, 150–52 Qiu Zuoqi, 287 Qiying, 23 race, wages and, 190–91 racial equality, 200 Ready, O. G., 95 recruitment: attitudes and, 98–100; James Campbell and, 93–96; Customs Service staff, 92–100; Robert Hart and, 92–100; in U.S., 97–98; WWI and, 188 regional rivalries, 28 Rendel, George, 108, 110–11 Rendel, Stuart, 19, 107–8, 114–15 Rendel gunboats, 108–10 Ren Zhiyong, 72, 119 Reorganization Loan, 133–34, 168–69, 173 “Returns on Trade” report, 80–81, 90 revenue: for Imperial Household, 119–20; Salt Tax Administration, 134, 142, 153, 168, 182, 184. See also Customs revenue Revolutionary Alliance, 169 rice: imports, 124, 125; price, 130, 131; as staple, 306 River Police, 87, 263 Riviere, Henri, 113 Rockhill, W. W., 143 Royal Navy, 27, 29, 279 “Rules and Regulations for the Customs Service,” 98–99 Russell, Earl, 67 Russia, 139–40, 142, 144, 149, 173, 295 Ru Yingeng, 240 Salt Tax Administration: control of, 141, 168; foreigners employed at, 12; revenues, 134, 142, 153, 168, 182, 184 science primers, 105–6 security, Customs revenue as, 134, 141

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393 INDEX

Self-Strengthening Movement, 25, 72, 154; beginning of, 103; Customs Service and, 103–32; 1880s as turning point in, 104, 120–27, 123–24, 126; foreign trade expansion and, 116–17, 118, 120; London Office in, 14, 103–16; Sino-French War and, 104, 110, 112–16, 132; Sino-Japanese War and, 111, 132 semiofficial correspondence, 78–80 Sengge Rinchen, 24, 27, 37 Seymour, Edward, 145 shadow diplomacy, 256–58 Shandong Question, 196–200, 202–3 Shanghai: Battle of, 262; Communists in, 299; experiments in, 28–39; Foreign Board of Inspectors in, 31–34; foreign past of, 1; Japan and, 263–64, 274; lighthouses and, 85–86; Old, 1–2; River Police, 87, 263; smuggling in, 239; trade in, 125, 126; U.S. in, 287–88 Shanghai Custom House, 18, 255, 305; building of, 193–94; chimes, 2, 193–94; Chinese name of, 51; closure of, 30; foreigners appointed to, 26, 33–34, 38; reestablishment of, 32 Shen Baozhen, 109 Shen Bochen, 291–92 Shen Duanling, 203 Shimonoseki, Treaty of, 166 silk exports, 122, 123, 124 silver: appreciation of, 182; copper and, 129, 130; depreciation of, 127–30, 128; rice prices and, 130, 131; U.S. and, 238, 245 Sino-French War: battleships in, 110– 11; Cixi and, 116; Customs Service during, 112–16; Robert Hart and, 112–15; Li Hongzhang and, 113–14, 116; Self-Strengthening Movement

C6345.indb 393

and, 104, 110, 112–16, 132; Vietnam in, 112–14 Sino-Japanese War, 5, 14, 257; indemnity, 133, 138–44; Self-Strengthening Movement and, 111, 132; Treaty of Shimonoseki and, 166 Small Sword Society, 30, 32 Smith, Adam, 31, 217 Smith, Arthur J., 32 smuggling: in Canton, 237; epidemic, 233–41, 235; in Fujian, 237–39; in Hong Kong, 234–37; in lower Yangzi region, 239–40; in northern China, 240–41; preventive measures, 242–47, 246; in Shanghai, 239; Adam Smith on, 217; in southern China, 236–37; in Taiwan, 237–39, 245, 246; tariffs and, 220–21, 233–36, 240, 242, 257 Song Ziwen, 209–10, 213–14, 252–53, 258; farewell party for, 217–18, 220, 250; Maze and, 217–20, 236, 249–50, 254–55; Neprud and, 275; postwar rehabilitation and, 292–93 Sotamatsu Kato, 277 South Cape lighthouse, 88–90 southern China: deals brokered in, 248–51; smuggling in, 236–37 Special Tariff Conference, 196, 201–4, 210 Spence, Jonathan, 35 staff, Customs Service: foreigners, 4, 6, 17, 26, 28–30, 33–34, 36, 38, 40, 55, 63, 101, 186–95, 194, 283, 300; in internment camps, 280, 291; loss of, 290; recruitment, 92–100; reports on, 81. See also Chinese staff; commissioners; Inspector General; superintendents Statistical Department, 90–91 steamer trade, 116–17, 127–28, 131, 309 Stephenson, J. W., 207, 249 Storey’s Gate, 106

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394 INDEX

succession crisis: after Aglen, 211–15; after Robert Hart, 158–62 Sun Yatsen: government established by, 205–6; Nationalists and, 165–66, 168, 184, 199–200, 203–6, 210, 212–13, 258; Wang Zhengting representing, 199–200, 203–4 superintendents: Robert Hart sidelining, 72–75; on staff, 29–30, 37–40, 55, 58–61, 66–75, 98, 100, 102, 134, 162; tollhouse, 55, 58–60. See also specific superintendents Supplementary Treaty of Humenzhai, 29–30 Sushun, 23–25, 37, 39 Su Tiren, 253 synarchy, 7–8, 28, 63 Taintor, E. C., 97 Taiping: bond market and, 135–36; Customs Service and, 26; Jiujiang and, 266; Lay and, 39–40; leadership after, 132; Nanjing capital of, 22, 25; Opium War and, 29; suppression of, 13, 122; trade to, 30 Taiwan, 297; smuggling in, 237–39, 245, 246; South Cape lighthouse in, 88–90 Tang Shaoyi, 154–55, 157–58, 174 tariffs: autonomy of, 176–78, 195, 198–99, 202–4, 208, 215–16; Customs Service and, 217–58; at Guangzhou, 58; Nationalists and, 16, 155–56, 220–21, 233–36, 240, 242, 257; smuggling and, 220–21, 233–36, 240, 242, 257; Special Tariff Conference on, 196, 201–4, 210; U.S., 234 Tariff Secretariat, 242, 244–45 taxation, 140–41, 170; consolidated tax, 219, 220; Customs surtax, 208–11, 215; indirect, 257; inland

C6345.indb 394

tax, 208–9; light, 136, 181; Wartime Consumption Tax, 281, 286 Taylor, F. E., 149, 189, 192 Taylor, George, 89 tea exports, 122, 123, 124 textile industry, 131 Three Anti Campaign, 300–301 Tianjin: Boxer War in, 145–47; coast, 85; Communists in, 297; Convention of, 114, 116; Custom House, 96, 251–54; Japanese occupation of, 274; trade, 126; Treaty of, 24, 34–39, 41, 61, 119 Tibet, 119 Tieliang, 157, 160 Tilly, Charles, 220, 258 Tok-e-Tok, 89 tollhouses: Customs Service and, 28, 52, 54–61, 56–57; Guangdong, 51, 55, 59; Min River, 54–55, 56; registers of, 58; reported collections, 56–57; superintendents of, 55, 58–60; Yangzi Maritime, 54, 56 Tonkin, 112–14 tonnage dues, 58–59 trade: Cantonese and, 28–30, 36; governance separated from, 62–63; in Guangzhou, 29–30, 59, 125, 126; interregional, 53; with Japan, 53–54; 1911 Revolution and, 165; overseas, growth of, 52–54, 309; under Qing, 52–54; in Shanghai, 125, 126; steamer, 116–17, 127–28, 131, 309; to Taiping, 30; Tianjin, 126; Yangzi River, 125–27, 126. See also foreign trade expansion transit certificates, 79 Translators College, 69, 105 transportation revolution, of Marine Department, 103 treaties: Hue, 113; McKay, 199; Nanjing, 28–30, 32, 45; Shimonoseki,

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395 INDEX

166; Supplementary, of Humenzhai, 29–30; Tianjin, 24, 34–39, 41, 61, 119; unequal, 177, 195 tribute system, 53–54 Tsiang Ting-fu, 229 tutorialist liberalism, 176 Twenty-one Demands, 197–98 Tyler, W. F., 231–32 underdevelopment: causes of, 127–28, 128; development of, 104–5, 116–32 unequal treaties, 177, 195 United States: Boxer War and, 147, 151; in Customs Service, 97–98, 229, 291, 295; handing over to, 280–86; isolationism of, 224, 284; Japan and, 272, 274, 278, 284; Mao Zedong and, 309; Nationalists and, 154, 284–85, 295, 299; Open Door Note and, 143; in Shanghai, 287–88; silver and, 238, 245; tariffs, 234 van Aalst, J. A., 156, 170 Vietnam, 112–14 Viguier, S. A., 84 Vine, Charles, 91 von Gumpach, Johannes, 69–70 Wade, R. H. R., 188, 190 Wade, Thomas, 30, 32, 34–35, 39, 119; Robert Hart and, 71; Wynand and, 66–67 wages: Aglen and, 187–90; Robert Hart and, 187; race and, 190–91 Wang Huamin, 239 Wang Jingwei, 199, 248, 251, 276–80 Wang Tao, 155 Wang Wenju, 237–39, 245 Wang Xiaolai, 218, 220, 258 Wang Yeh-chien, 52–53 Wang Zhengting, 199–200, 203–4, 253

C6345.indb 395

Ward, Frederick, 49 Wartime Consumption Tax, 281, 286 Washington Conference, 15, 176–77, 195, 201–4 Wei Kung Shuo, 294 Wenxiang, 49, 62 Western knowledge, transmission of, 105 Williams, C. A. S., 100 Williams, E. T., 256 Wilson, Woodrow, 176, 196–200 Woodruff, F. E., 97 Worcester, G. R. G., 228 World War I: Aglen influenced by, 176, 179, 187–88, 191, 195; finance and, 172–73; recruitment and, 188; Twenty-one Demands and, 197–98 Wright, Stanley, 162, 223, 226, 277; historians and, 227, 229–30; papers of, 19 Wu Chaoshu, 206 Wuhan Custom House, 300 Wuhan spirit, 269 Wuhu, 265–66, 303 Wu Jianzhang, 30, 32 Wu Peifu, 174–75, 203 Wu Tingfang, 154, 163 Wu Xu, 32, 36–38 WWI. See World War I Wyatt, H., 189–93 Wyatt case, 186–95, 194, 212 Wynand, 66–67 Xiamen, 86, 156, 238–39, 294, 304–5 Xianfeng Emperor, 22–25, 37, 38, 61 Xinjiang, 3, 108, 286 Xinyou Coup, 13, 24–26, 37, 59–60 Yadong Custom House, 119, 158 Yangzi Maritime Tollhouse, 54, 56 Yangzi River: lighthouses and, 85–86; trade, 125–27, 126

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396 INDEX

Yan Se, 129 Yan Xishan, 251–54, 299 Yokohama Specie Bank, 273–75 Yongzheng Emperor, 79 Yoshizawa, 224 Young, Arthur, 280, 284 Young China: Maritime Customs Service and, 15, 153–59, 307–8; rise of, 153–58, 170 Yuan Shikai, 15, 154, 163–69, 174, 177; banks raided by, 173, 181–82; monarchical movement of, 181; National Loans Bureau established by, 179 Yu Lianyuan, 148 Yu Lu, 146 Yu Qiaqing, 217, 250, 258 Zeng Guofan, 6, 25, 43, 49, 132 Zeng Jize, 113 Zhang Futing, 158 Zhang Fuyun, 255 Zhang Jia’ao, 177–78, 180, 210 Zhang Xueliang, 253–54

C6345.indb 396

Zhang Zhidong, 113, 116, 132, 148–49, 154, 156 Zhang Zuolin, 175, 211, 214 Zhan Qinghua, 106 Zhaowei, 109 Zhaoyong, 109 Zheng Chenggong, 305 Zheng Guanying, 154–57, 204 Zhenjiang, 125–26 Zhenyuan, 110–11, 132 Zhifu, 296 Zhou Enlai, 298, 306 Zhou Ziqi, 183–84 Zhu Dejun, 281 Zhu Youji, 193 Zongli Yamen, 41, 55, 71–72, 114, 150; creation of, 38; Robert Hart and, 40, 43–44, 49, 61, 69–70, 73–74, 82, 84, 106, 115, 136–37, 146–47, 151, 160–61; IG reporting to, 73; Ministry of Foreign Affairs replacing, 154; South Cape lighthouse and, 89 Zuo Zongtang, 89, 108, 132, 136

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