The Ghost of Namamugi: Charles Lenox Richardson and the Anglo-Satsuma War 9781898823841

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THE GHOST OF NAMAMUGI

The grave of Charles Lenox Richardson in Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery, today.

The Ghost of Namamugi Charles Lenox Richardson and the Anglo-Satsuma War Ž by

Robert S. G. Fletcher

THE GHOST OF NAMAMUGI CHARLES LENOX RICHARDSON AND THE ANGLO-SATSUMA WAR

First published 2019 by RENAISSANCE BOOKS P O Box 219 Folkestone Kent CT20 2WP Renaissance Books is an imprint of Global Books Ltd ISBN 978-1-898823-83-4 [Hardback] ISBN 978-1-898823-84-1 [e-Book] © Robert S.G. Fletcher 2019 The Richardson letters published in this volume © Michael Wace 2019 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Set in Garamond 11 on 12.5 pt by Dataworks Printed and bound in England by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd., Chippenham, Wilts

For Christine

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CONTENTS Ž List of Illustrations List of Abbreviations Map of Locations Note on the Text

ix xi xii xiii

PART I The Many Deaths of Mr Richardson Introduction 1 2 3 4

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‘Afloat and Settled in China’, 1853–1862 The British Empire and Bakumatsu Japan, 1862–1863 Anatomy of an ‘Outrage’, 1862–1864 Namamugi Remembered

11 28 48 89

PART II The Letters of Charles Lenox Richardson, 1853–1862 Note on the Letters and Acknowledgements Index

vii

119 241

List of Illustrations Ž Plates facing page 114 Plate 1. ‘Shanghae. From an Original Sketch’. Illustrated London News, No. 702, 16 Sept. 1854, p. 261. Mary Evans Picture Library. 2. ‘The Bombardment of Kagosima. From a Sketch by Our Special Artist’. Illustrated London News, No. 1230, 7 Nov. 1863, pp. 476–477. Mary Evans Picture Library. 3. F.B. Youel, ‘Ground Plan of the Foreign Settlement at Shanghai’, 1855 (detail). TNA: FO 925/2299. 4. ‘C. S. Richardson’ [sic]. J.C. Fraser album. Undated. Yokohama Archives of History. 5. Richardson’s last letter home, 3 Sept. 1862, Yokohama. Michael Wace collection. 6. ‘Nanjing Road, looking east’. Print, undated, c. 1918. Michael Wace collection. 7. ‘Yokohama. Rough sketch to accompany my report as called for by Rear Admirals Kuper, C.B., and Jaures, British and French Naval Commanders in Chief ’. Capt. F. Brine, 10 May 1863. TNA: WO 78/1014. 8. ‘My portrait of Opening Wedge!’ Charles Wirgman, Japan Punch. 1862. Yokohama Archives of History. 9. ‘Precautions taken by “Our Artist” after caricaturing a “thin skinned” Community’. Charles Wirgman, Japan Punch. 1862. Yokohama Archives of History. 10. ‘Namamugi’, from the series ‘Scenes of Famous Places along the Tokaido Road’ (Tōkaidō meisho fūkei). Utagawa Sadahide. 1863. 2009.5009.19. Museum of Fine Art, Boston. 11. The body of Charles Lenox Richardson. Attributed to William Saunders. 1862. Album Dirk de Graeff van Polsbroek, Het Scheepvaartmuseum, Amsterdam, s.3628(02). ix

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12. ‘H.E. Col. St. John Neale, H.B.M. Chargé d’Affaires, Yokohama, 1862’. J.C. Fraser album. Yokohama Archives of History. 13. ‘Mon ami, Capt. Howard Vyse, Consul Anglais, le jour avant son départ pour Hakodate, dans l’extrème Nord du Japon’. 1860. Album Dirk de Graeff van Polsbroek, Het Scheepvaartmuseum. 14. Portrait of Shimazu Hisamitsu. Attributed to Harada Naojirō, c. 1888. Shoko Shuseikan Museum, Kagoshima. 15. Untitled portrait of Sir A. Kuper, Commander in Chief of H.M. Naval Forces in Japan. Felice Beato. 1864. Album Dirk de Graeff van Polsbroek, Het Scheepvaartmuseum, s.3628(04). 16. ‘The Murder of Richardson on the Tokaido – Japan’. James Smyth. 1863. Yokohama Archives of History. 17. ‘The Killing at Namamugi’ (Namamugi no hassatsu). Hayakawa Shōzan. 1877. 1949,0514,0.11.1–3. British Museum, London. 18. ‘View on the Tokaido’. Felice Beato. 1863. Yokohama Archives of History. 19. Untitled group photograph of Western representatives and commanders at Yokohama. Felice Beato. 1864. Album Dirk de Graeff van Polsbroek, Het Scheepvaartmuseum. 20. ‘Satsuma delegation to discuss reparations demands from the British’. Felice Beato. 1864. No. B2–18A. Leiden University Library. 21. ‘Satzuma’s Envoys Paying the Indemnity Money at Yokohama for the Muder of Mr. Richardson. From a Sketch by Our Special Artist in Japan’. Charles Wirgman. Illustrated London News, No. 1246, 20 Feb. 1864, p. 189. Mary Evans Picture Library. 22. Richardson’s grave in the Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery. 2017. Author’s photograph. 23. Untitled photograph of the memorial tablet at Namamugi, c. 1922. Michael Wace collection.

List of Abbreviations Ž ADAE ADM CM CP JH MW NACP NCH OCM FO CLR TNA JT YAH

Archives des Affaires Etrangères (La Courneuve, Paris) Admiralty papers (the National Archives, UK) China Mail (newspaper, Hong Kong) Correspondence Politique, Japon (ADAE, Paris) Japan Herald (newspaper, Yokohama) Michael Wace papers (private collection) National Archives (College Park, Maryland) North China Herald (newspaper, Shanghai) Overland China Mail (newspaper, Hong Kong) Foreign Office papers (the National Archives, UK) The letters of Charles Lenox Richardson (private collection) The National Archives (UK) Japan Times (newspaper, Tokyo) Yokohama Archives of History (Yokohama kaikō shiryōkan)

xi

Map of main locations mentioned in this book

xii

Note on the Text In this book, Chinese words, personal names and place names are transliterated according to the pinyin system; for Japanese, I have used the Revised Hepburn system. Where a word or name is well-known in English by a different spelling, or without diacritics, I have made use of those instead, such as Canton, Peking, Tokyo and Shogun. In reproducing the correspondence of Charles Lenox Richardson and that of his contemporaries, I have chosen to keep their original romanizations. Where a clarification has been necessary, this is indicated in the notes. Richardson’s earnings at Shanghai were keenly anticipated by his family in London. Estimating their relative value today is complex, but the Measuring Worth project sets out some of the factors involved: http://eh.net/howmuchisthat/. By way of comparison, in the mid-1850s a junior clerk in the Civil Service might make £125–£300 a year. A young clerk at the East India Company’s London offices might earn £100 a year; a more experienced man, in his thirties, between £400–£500; and a doctor, with a ‘fairly fashionable’ practice, perhaps £1000–£2000.

xiii

The body of Charles Lenox Richardson, lying awaiting burial in the house of William Gregson Aspinall, Yokohama, on the morning of 15 September 1862. The photographer is unknown, but was probably William Saunders, a Briton active in Shanghai from the early 1860s. One of the first Western photographers in Japan, Saunders landed in Yokohama two weeks before the murder, seeking new subjects with which to expand his portfolio. Days after taking this photograph he advertised his services in the Japan Herald, including ‘portraits, &c., in the newest and most approved styles’: the earliest-known advertisement by a photographic studio in Japan.

xiv

PART I

The Many Deaths of Mr Richardson

Introduction Ž

IN THE EARLY 1970s, a friend of mine graduated from high school in a quiet part of Tokushima prefecture. He took a job with a petrochemical company in Kawasaki, and lived in the company’s bachelor dormitory on a hill in Okamura-chō, Yokohama, overlooking the bay and the shipyards. Every day he got up at five, turned on his radio, and listened to British and American pop music over coffee before heading to work: down the hill to the subway, changing trains, and onto the Keihin Kyūkō line. Most days, the trains were packed, and my friend has never been one for crowds. He immersed himself in the books his company colleagues recommended to him: Natsume Sōseki, Mori Ōgai, and the historical novels of Shiba Ryōtarō. As the train crossed Yokohama and rounded the bay for Kawasaki, it passed through Namamugi: a working suburb, quite like the others, scarcely distinguishable from the urban sprawl. Yet the announcement for Namamugi station always gave him chills. Here, in 1862, a young British merchant had lost his life at the hands of a samurai retainer: a murder story half remembered from my friend’s school days. A century later, at much the same spot, a passenger train hit a freight car before colliding with an oncoming train. One hundred and sixty-two people died in Japan’s worst rail disaster. In my friend’s mind, these events overlapped; Namamugi assumed an ominous air. Perhaps, he thought to himself, that merchant had become an onryō, a vengeful spirit, haunting the railway line and causing the accident. Perhaps he haunted it still. …

By the late summer of 1862, the small foreign enclave at Yokohama was already a bustling place. Hemmed in on all sides by canals and by its rapidly developing harbour side, Yokohama had been a mere 3

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village until its selection, three years before, as the site of one of Japan’s first new treaty ports. As the merchant warehouses multiplied and the population grew, bakufu (Tokugawa shogunate) officials struggled to align their vision of a neat and cloistered foreign community with its expanding, boisterous reality. On 14 September, three British residents crossed the bay to Kanagawa, seeking a change of scene. Hoping to visit the temples at Kawasaki on a fine Sunday afternoon, merchants Woodthorpe Clarke and William Marshall, and Marshall’s cousin Margaret Borradaile, mounted horses and took to the Tōkaidō: the famed high road between Edo and Kyoto. Charles Lenox Richardson, a British merchant visiting Yokohama after ten years at Shanghai, decided to join them for a spot of exercise. That morning, in the opposite direction, Shimazu Hisamitsu set out from Edo with an escort 200 strong (pl. 14). The father of the daimyō of Satsuma (and the real power in that south western domain), Hisamitsu had temporarily succeeded in gaining influence at the imperial court, amidst an escalating struggle for authority between Edo and Kyoto. Since the coming of the Perry Expedition in 1853, the question of how to handle foreigners and their demands had reawakened old resentments against the Tokugawa hold on power, and been the making and unmaking of many a political reputation. Events earlier that summer had worked to Hisamitsu’s advantage. But favour was fleeting in the turbulent bakumatsu period. After five months spent mediating between the court and the bakufu, Hisamitsu was now making the long journey home disappointed, unable to cement his ascendency in national politics or to secure a private audience with the Shogun. The two parties met at Namamugi, a small fishing village within the limits provided for foreigners’ excursions. Accounts of what happened next have never been fully reconciled. Richardson’s party may have provoked the escort and refused to yield the road. Hisamitsu may have been spoiling for an opportunity to implicate the bakufu in a violent showdown. Either way, the British party was attacked and wounded as they fled. Marshall and Clarke barely made it to the safety of the American Consulate at Kanagawa. Margaret Borradaile, ‘fearfully shattered in nerves and in body’, rode her horse

INTRODUCTION

5

to within an inch of its life to raise the alarm at Yokohama. Charles Richardson, however, was seen to receive a number of blows before falling from his horse at the roadside. His body, ‘a most ghastly and horrible spectacle’, was recovered later that day. In Japan this ‘Namamugi Incident’, the Namamugi jiken, is remembered as a pivotal moment in the ‘re-opening’ of the country. It has been explored in histories, commemorated in public memorials, retold in fiction and textbooks and re-staged for television and film. Richardson is practically a household name. Indeed, the Namamugi Incident forms part of a resilient narrative of national modernisation and the road to the Meiji Restoration, narrated often and with great consistency. Richardson’s death, the story goes, brought swift retribution at Kagoshima, the seat of power of the Shimazu clan, where a Royal Navy squadron bombarded Hisamitsu’s castle town to extract compensation for the murder. This demonstration of British firepower – the Japanese know it as the Anglo-Satsuma War (Satsu-ei sensō) – convinced the Shimazu clan, the vanguard of the Meiji Restoration, of the futility of resisting Western trade and ideas and of the need for a transformation of political power. The outlines of this analysis were laid down early: ‘thenceforward’, wrote John Reddie Black of the Richardson affair in 1879, ‘[Satsuma] became more than ever desirous of cultivating European arts and sciences, with a view to placing Japan really on a platform with other nationalities’.1 In 2006 that narrative was even inscribed on the Yokohama grave of Charles Richardson itself. ‘This is the tomb of the victim of Namamugi’, the new epitaph declares, ‘on whom our country’s modernisation is established’. Yet for all the attention paid to Namamugi, to Kagoshima and to Richardson himself, there remain material gaps in our understanding of all three. One hundred and fifty years on, an air of mystery still surrounds precisely what happened that September day. Subtly different 1

J.R. Black, Young Japan: Yokohama and Yedo, 1858–1879 (London, 1883), p. 234. For a more scholarly reading of the incident’s ramifications in Japan (‘a characteristic case of the way in which foreign and domestic crises … would repeatedly combine in later years to force the bakufu into major concessions’), see: C. Totman, The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu, 1862–1868 (Honolulu, 1980), pp. 14–15.

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interpretations had circulated from the outset, in the survivors’ witness statements and the coroner’s report. When the news broke in Britain, and as public opinion debated how best to respond, these differences were amplified into divergent representations of Charles Lenox Richardson’s character and behaviour. In parliament and in print, Richardson’s death was rehearsed again and again. For champions of British trade in Asia, urging armed intervention to meet this latest ‘outrage’, Richardson was a man of unblemished character: ‘a fine and manly specimen … [of ] gentle manner and chivalrous disposition’, who had every right to be on the road, had been anxious to avoid a conflict, and had been making way for the procession at the moment he was attacked.2 In contrast critics of empire and of Palmerston’s foreign policy blamed an arrogant Charles Richardson for the disrespect he must have shown the procession. He became an avatar of merchant belligerence and cupidity with no defensible claim to the support of the state; Richardson, not Hisamitsu, was the real villain of the piece. And yet most of these contrary interpretations seem to have been drawn from the same initial reports. Beyond the thin biographical details sketched out by the treaty port press, no more rounded picture of the man emerged. This has remained true down to the present day, so that Richardson remains better known as a casualty than as a man; alluded to, rather than studied; he has a Wikipedia page, but no entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Richardson’s place in history seems so sure we often think we know him better than we really do. The collection of personal letters at the heart of this book represent a chance to put this right. Between 1853 and 1862, throughout the length of his time in Asia, Charles Richardson maintained a private correspondence with his family back in England. These letters, passed down through the family and never before available to scholarship, cover a decade of immense change in Britain’s commercial and political activities in East Asia. They describe Richardson’s first encounters with maritime China and his attempts to establish himself at Shanghai; his efforts to comprehend the violent upheavals 2

JH, No. 44, 20 Sept. 1862, p. 173.

INTRODUCTION

7

transforming Chinese lives beyond treaty port limits; and the ebb and flow of mercantile opportunities and the constant search for new markets. They reveal his thoughts on world events, his yearning for quotidian news from home, and his hopes, ambitions and frustrations as a young man and as a merchant. The last letter home, from Yokohama, was sent days before his death. Historians’ assessments of what exactly transpired that day on the Tōkaidō are often built upon judgements of Richardson’s character. Yet we have never before had the chance to hear from Richardson himself. These letters offer readers a glimpse into the life of a man thus far known to history only for his death. There are further grounds on which to consider a reassessment of the Richardson affair, too, including a remarkable imbalance in how and where this story has been remembered. Well-known in Japan, the events at Namamugi and Kagoshima are, among wider British audiences, largely forgotten. A rare British treatment of the incident’s international implications speaks of its ‘disproportionate impact’: ‘the overall importance to Britain of what occurred in Japan was small … What were Britain’s incidents were Japan’s major events’. Even scholars of Britain’s mercantile empire seldom touch on the course of events that led to the bombardment of Kagoshima – the first armed conflict between Britain and Japan – perhaps reflecting that Japan itself sits somewhat uneasily within many wider histories of European colonial expansion.3 And yet this is unfortunate, for at the time these events stirred the pens of not only Lord Palmerston and his Foreign Secretary, Lord 3

H. Ion, ‘The Namamugi Incident and the Satsu-Ei and Bakan Wars’, in G.C. Kennedy and K. Neilson (eds.), Incidents and International Relations: people, power and personalities  (Westport, CT, 2002), pp. 1–23. Though the incident is often noted in English-language histories of Japan (and in foreigners’ memoirs of the period), it has few book-length treatments. Indeed, thanks to the attentions of Pat Barr and James Clavell, it is probably better-known to English readers of fiction than of history (see chapter 4 below). One exception is Miyazawa Shin’ichi’s Englishmen and Satsuma, though this is as much a collection of documents as it is a work of historical analysis: S. Miyazawa, Eikokujin ga mita bakumatsu satsuma: Englishmen and Satsuma (Kagoshima, 1988). For a more reflective examination, see: M. Hashimoto, ‘Collision at Namamugi’,  Representations, No. 18 (1987), pp. 69–90. The literature in Japanese is much more comprehensive, though it does not share the particular emphasis of this book. For a useful introduction, see the work of Hagiwara Nobutoshi, in: N. Hagiwara, Satsuei sensō (Tokyo, 1998); and N. Hagiwara, Shika (Tokyo, 2001).

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THE GHOST OF NAMAMUGI

John Russell, but Richard Cobden, Frederick Harrison, William Gladstone, Lord Robert Cecil, and many other figures prominent in British political life. The rediscovery of the Richardson letters presents an opportunity to revisit the Namamugi Incident with an eye to its British and imperial dimensions. Doing so reveals a host of questions awaiting further exploration: about the conduct of British gunboat diplomacy and the dynamics of mid-Victorian expansion; about the place of Japan in British political imaginaries; about the rhetoric that helped turn an Englishman’s death into an ‘outrage’; and about the controversy – far more protracted than commonly recognised – all this provoked back in Britain itself. As news of the punitive destruction of Kagoshima came in (initial reports incorrectly suggested that up to 80,000 of its inhabitants had perished) public opinion divided, and an eighteen-month debate ensued on Britain’s place in maritime Asia, its obligations to its merchants, and the ideologies of non-intervention, empire and free trade. This would suggest that, however small the fallout of the Namamugi Incident may have ultimately been for Britain, its consequence was felt much more heavily at the time. Tussles with Japan paled in comparison to troubles in China, but many at the time feared – some even hoped – that that might not be so. How these events have been successively recalled in Japan, and how they came to be forgotten in Britain, is itself a question worthy of study. This book seeks to draw out these and other under-explored themes in the existing literature on the Namamugi Incident. Chapter 1 begins by locating Charles Richardson within the world of the mid-Victorian treaty port, where inaction, opportunity, boredom and crisis could tumble over one another at the speed of a steamer slipping over the horizon, or of rumours from inland rippling through the settlement. In introducing the political and commercial contexts that helped to shape Richardson’s time in Shanghai, I will offer my own take on his personality, as suggested by his letters. Chapters 2 and 3 re-examine the relationships between local British merchants, the British Government and its representatives, and bakumatsu officials in the wake of the Namamugi Incident. In particular, they explore why Richardson’s death – by no means the

INTRODUCTION

9

first European fatality in treaty port Japan – achieved such notoriety at the time, and how the ‘outrage’ it provoked both facilitated the despatch of a punitive expedition and itself became the target of criticism. The fourth and final chapter considers how the death of Charles Richardson has been remembered, recalled and repackaged in different contexts over the past 150 years. It has been Richardson’s fate to die many times down the decades, in different guises and circumstances. He has been, variously, a hero of free trade, a symbol of chauvinism and a martyr for modernisation. His death still serves as a window onto debates about the origins and nature of the Meiji Restoration. These letters cannot in themselves reconcile the competing images of Charles Lenox Richardson; nor can they definitively explain what happened that day on the Tōkaidō. But they are our best chance to get to know a man to whose death, it would seem, we are sure to return.

1

‘Afloat and Settled in China’, 1853–1862 Ž

BY THE TIME Richardson’s ship pulled into Shanghai, the Treaty of Nanjing was ten years old. The rights and wrongs of the Opium War had divided British opinion, but with peace came soaring expectations of the gains: in the years before Richardson’s departure from England, the idea of China buzzed as the latest frontier of British commerce. Westerners’ ignominious ‘confinement’ to Canton seemed a thing of the past. Foreigners now had the right to reside at Fuzhou, Xiamen, Ningbo and Shanghai. Their encounters with the Chinese were to be shielded under the provisions of extraterritoriality. Hong Kong was ceded to Britain’s control and, drawing on its vast military reserve in India, became the pivot of British maritime power along the China coast. Among the newly-opened treaty ports, Shanghai was quick to emerge as the merchants’ favoured prospect. Sitting near the mouth of the vast Yangtze river, many pictured Shanghai becoming the premier interface between the world and the productive regions of Middle China. A prosperous walled city and its suburbs – perhaps 200,000 strong by Richardson’s time – had commanded an important trade in cotton long before the Westerners came. But with the formal opening of Shanghai to foreign trade in November, 1843, a separate settlement was staked out, three-quarters of a mile to the north, beyond the city walls and the narrow Yanging Creek, on a low, flat stretch of land where the Wusong and Huangpu rivers met (pl. 3). Between the two sites – the walled Chinese city, and the foreigners’ self-proclaimed ‘model settlement’ – lay a ‘deep cultural and psychological gulf ’; both Chinese and foreigners produced 11

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detailed maps of their own communities that rendered the other a blank space.1 At the time of Richardson’s arrival the foreign settlement was about 430 acres in size: exclusive, upstart, and expressly orientated towards the river; a bustling anchorage, ‘the Liverpool of China’.2 A few short years of activity had already been sufficient ‘to turn the course of trade in all the chief staples…from the long-beaten track of Canton’ toward its northern rival.3 At Shanghai the water’s edge had already become the Bund, that much mythologised embankment running north to south along the Huangpu, lined by floating jetties and impressive two-storey commercial buildings that were office, storehouse and residence combined. Artists’ panoramas of the waterfront from the time present it as a coherent, finished artefact (pl. 1); in fact, scarcely a month went by without construction, demolition and improvement.4 Behind the Bund lay private houses laid out on a small grid, then a large, open race course running down to a quiet creek. Only those Chinese attached to foreign firms and families (mostly Cantonese) were allowed to reside in settlement limits. Perhaps fifty foreign trading firms operated in this compact space, and around two hundred and fifty foreigners lived there, mostly Britons – though hundreds more might be at anchor on the Huangpu, the sailors whose labour drove the settlement’s growth, and who the ‘respectable’ merchant community worked hard to keep at a distance.5 In some respects it was not dissimilar, in 1

2 3

4

5

L.C. Johnson, Shanghai: from market town to treaty port, 1074–1858 (Stanford, CA, 1995), p. 338. See also: R. Murphey, Shanghai: key to modern China (Cambridge, MA, 1953), pp. 32–51. S. Osborn, A Cruise in Japanese Waters (Edinburgh, 1859), p. 3. TNA: FO 228/146, R. Alcock to G. Bonham, No. 11 (‘Shanghai Trade Report for 1851’), 13 Jan. 1852. By 1852 the total value of foreign trade at Shanghai had overtaken that of its more established rival, Canton. See further: E. Politzer, ‘The Changing Face of the Shanghai Bund, circa 1849–1879’, The Arts of Asia, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Mar.-Apr., 2005), pp. 64–81. E. Lampe, ‘The Problem of the Sailors: power, law and the formation of the merchant community in treaty port China, 1842–1860’, in L. Yu-ju and M. Zelin (eds.), Merchant Communities in Asia, 1600–1980 (London, 2015), pp. 177–239. This was a particular concern of merchant and official communities at Shanghai, where smaller vessels could come to anchor within two hundred yards of the Bund. At Canton, in contrast, most vessels anchored several miles from the merchants’ residences. See: TNA: FO 228/64, G. Balfour to J.F. Davis, No. 54, 16 May 1846; FO 228/77, R. Alcock to J.F. Davis, No. 62, 14 June 1847.

‘AFLOAT AND SETTLED IN CHINA’, 1853–1862

13

size and in scene, to the rough-edged Yokohama Richardson would know in his final days. But if the Treaty of Nanjing had thrown China open on paper (at least in British readings of the text), it seldom felt so to merchants on the ground. Qing officials’ principal concern was to incorporate the Western presence into existing administrative habits of handling ‘outsider’ groups; to them, the treaty presented a means to deflect the impact of unfettered foreign access. The right to trade and reside was governed more by local agreements than by claims to uncontested sovereignty. Disagreement, compromise and confusion characterised Richardson’s Shanghai, and as a gateway to the interior it dangled as a prospect, but receded out of reach. Among British merchants a chorus of complaint about Chinese obfuscation and obstruction soon began to swell, channelled by a strident local newspaper, the North China Herald, until a Second Opium War (1856–1860) broke out in the middle of Richardson’s stay.6 Born in Hackney in 1833, Charles Richardson was nineteen when he set sail for China. His youth should be borne in mind while reading his correspondence; touchingly, one letter home asked for a longer coat to be sent out, as he was still growing.7 The family had some experience in trade. His grandfather and his uncle had captained merchant vessels; another uncle, John Lenox, was already trading in silk from Shanghai, and it was through his office that the young Charles got his introduction to treaty port life. A multitude of hopes and ambitions must have informed Richardson’s decision to go to China, but one reason cuts through clearly: his parents, and his four sisters, needed the money, and there was money to be made in Shanghai. ‘As long as…I have it in my power’, he wrote to reassure his sister Agnes in 1852, ‘it shall never be said that Charles Lenox Richardson let his own immediate family want any creature comforts’. Richardson’s father seems to have been a particular liability. As the recipient of most of the letters Charles sent back 6

7

Such was the mood on the eve of Richardson’s arrival in Shanghai. ‘In words’, reported the Consul, ‘we have asserted resistance to insult or wrongful treatment, but in acts we have not seldom temporized and submitted, and the fruit of this policy we now are beginning to reap’: TNA: FO 228/147, R. Alcock to J. Bowring, 17 June 1852. CLR: 6 Nov. 1856.

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from China, his debts and regular requests for assistance form a recurrent worry across ten years of correspondence. Shanghai presented a chance to change all that. ‘Just let me get afloat and settled in China’, Richardson promised his sister on the eve of departure, ‘and we will see what we can do in the way of making him comfortable … We will show the people how to go ahead … My prospects every day dawn brighter and brighter’.8 Yet Richardson’s China was a place convulsed by civil war. Violence, dislocation and political turmoil formed the backdrop to his time in Shanghai, as the small foreign settlement, the old city and its hinterland were rocked by the forces historians would later call the Taiping Rebellion. Between 1850 and 1864 this tumultuous conflict – partly brought on by the dislocating demographic and economic effects of the treaty ports themselves (not that the merchants, Richardson included, really acknowledged the fact) – would ravage much of eastern China and claim tens of millions of lives. To the Qing, the Rebellion formed a threat to their authority that eclipsed that posed by Western nations on the coast. To Whitehall, it was as baffling as it was alarming; enthusiasm for the movement’s Christian overtones soon yielded before fears of what might happen should Manchu authority collapse. For Richardson, it was a constant menace to trade, and the source of much of his bad luck. ‘I wonder if this unfortunate Country is ever going to see peace again’, he wrote home in 1860. ‘The whole 7 years I have been out here there has always been some infernal row going to take place somewhere’.9 Indeed, on the very day Richardson sent his first letter home from Shanghai, the North China Herald captured the sense that a new phase of China’s troubles was beginning, making the present period ‘the most momentous to Foreigners, since our residence in the country’.10 His remarks on the conflict follow the general trajectory of British Shanghai opinion, from an initial contempt for Qing weakness and a fleeting admiration of rebel forces, to toeing the line about observ8 9 10

MW: C.L. Richardson to A. Richardson, 16 Feb. 1852 [fragment letter]. CLR: 16 Aug. 1860. NCH, No. 138, 19 Mar. 1853, p. 130. This was the paper’s first substantial attempt to draw together and reflect upon the reports of wider disturbances received from beyond the Shanghai district.

‘AFLOAT AND SETTLED IN CHINA’, 1853–1862

15

ing neutrality, to openly calling for British intervention to restore trade, ‘exterminate these Rebels, and reduce China once more to a state of tranquillity’.11 In the winter of his first year, 1853, Richardson joined much of the foreign community to watch Qing and rebel armies trade cannon fire and battle for the control of the old city. ‘You could feel the heat while standing on English ground’, he told his father.12 By the spring of 1854 a kind of siege mentality had begun to set in. The Shanghai press painted a picture of an isolated foreign community ‘on the farthest confines of Asia’, surrounded by conflict, abandoned by the Qing state, and dependent on its own resources, and those of the Treaty Powers, for survival.13 Actual attacks on the foreign settlement were few, though artillery exchanges and gunfire between Qing and rebel forces during the seventeen-month siege regularly fell on foreign property within the settlement. As the conflict wore on, and Shanghai swelled with refugees from the interior, the British merchant community not only bemoaned its impact on the silk and tea trades, but became increasingly concerned about a potential enemy within. ‘If a rising takes place’, the Herald noted ominously in 1860, ‘every hong will find foes in its own servants’.14 Charles Richardson may have started out as an assistant in his uncle’s office, but he threw himself into new plans for the settlement’s defence. His name appears regularly in the meetings of land holders drawing up schemes to fortify the settlement and patrol its streets. A British Volunteer Corps – later the Shanghai Volunteers – was formed in April 1853, its infantry section and mounted vidette committed to regular drill and the defence of foreign property; and while it is not clear when Richardson signed up, he was there in its ranks when the Volunteers were involved in one of their first shooting incidents, a skirmish with Qing troops that November that left seven dead and a small number injured. Richardson wrote excitedly to his father: 11 12 13 14

CLR: 3 June 1856. CLR: 17 Dec. 1856. NCH, No. 193, 8 Apr. 1854, p. 142. NCH, No. 524, 11 Aug. 1860, p. 127.

16

THE GHOST OF NAMAMUGI

After a little firing we drove [the Imperial Soldiers] off the Foreign ground. They are a most confounded set of Cowards. There was upwards of 200 of them and not 30 of us … however, they got it pretty smartly.

In April 1854, Richardson took part in an attack that entered Shanghailander lore as ‘the Battle of Muddy Flat’.15 With the Chinese city in rebel hands and Qing encampments laying siege, the Volunteers and British and American troops and sailors combined to drive the closest Qing camps further away from the foreign settlement (an act which, the Herald conceded, ‘may be various estimated as unprecedented, violent, or illegal; – all we contend for is that it had become necessary’).16 Richardson was one of six Volunteers tasked with holding a bridge on the line of retreat – ‘hot work and no mistake’, he remembered; ‘from the way the shot was flying, [it was] a perfect miracle that more of us did not lose the chance of seeing England again’.17 Indeed, the Volunteer Corps and subsequent committees for settlement defence seem to have been a big part of Richardson’s life in Shanghai. When Taiping forces returned to the Shanghai hinterland in the early 1860s, he was quick to join the new Cavalry troop, and stood guard on the barricades by night during his final months in the settlement.18 The turbulent times at Shanghai in 1853–1854 left their mark on the foreign settlement, prompting the creation of both the influential Foreign Inspectorate of Customs (later the Imperial Maritime Customs Service) and the Shanghai Municipal Council. As a violent introduction to treaty port life, they shaped Charles Lenox Richardson, too. Three themes stand out from his descriptions of these 15

16 17

18

This confused skirmish would later be celebrated as the first significant trial of arms of what became the Shanghai Volunteer Corps. In 1904, the North China Herald produced a commemorative account of ‘that memorable fight’ for its fiftieth anniversary, encouraging its readers to reflect on ‘the stirring events which were of frequent occurrence in the fifties’: Anon., The Battle of ‘Muddy Flat’ (Shanghai, 1904). NCH, No. 193, 8 Apr. 1854, p. 142. CLR: 13 Apr. 1854 and 8 May 1854. In hindsight, the American merchant William Shepherd Wetmore recognised that ‘to the unexpected co-operations of the rebels [with the foreigners’ attack on the camps]…we were chiefly indebted for our easy victory, and that had it not been for them the result for us would have been disastrous’: Battle of ‘Muddy Flat’, p. 7. CLR: 24 Dec. 1861; CLR: 23 Jan. 1862.

‘AFLOAT AND SETTLED IN CHINA’, 1853–1862

17

experiences in his letters home. The first is the great resentment he felt towards any attempt – by the Chinese or his own consular officials – to shut up his fellow merchants within the settlement’s limits. This powerful sensitivity to confinement had been a rallying cry for the China British since the humiliating encirclement and closure of the Canton factories during the First Opium War. Richardson’s very first letter home from Shanghai addressed this issue. Stopping at Canton on his passage out, he had found it ‘a miserably confined place’, where ‘the Europeans have only a sort of Garden they can go into to take exercise … and if you should happen to get outside the wall of the City it is a great chance if you never get back again … [H]ere, thank goodness, it is quite a different story’, and Richardson’s more martial activities were intended to help keep things that way; to insist on British merchants’ rights to move within treaty limits; to claim the space, in a sense; to increase their knowledge of and access to China, its people and its trade.19 And doing this, he believed – probably with most in Shanghai’s foreign community – ultimately relied on force of arms. So he marched with the Volunteers and took part in defence committees; and wrote home to explain that the British merchant could expect no peace if he was not prepared to fight; that without a serious clash with European arms every so often, the Chinese were prone to ‘forget their good manners’; that, as he put it at the start of what would be his final year in Asia, ‘we are all soldiers here now’.20 Again, it is worth pointing out that this pugnacity was fairly typical in the Shanghai settlement, though it was the subject of some derision from other British territories, notably Hong Kong, and was also of growing concern to pockets of public opinion back in London. Secondly, Richardson’s letters show how the turmoil surrounding the foreign settlement served as a form of entertainment. After all, the Shanghai of the 1850s was ‘an abominably dull hole’, Richardson wrote.21 Thus the battle between the Qing and the rebels 19

20 21

CLR: 19 Mar 1853. Unfavourable comparisons between Canton and Shanghai form a recurrent theme in British consular despatches. See, for instance: TNA: FO 228/104, R. Alcock, ‘Note on our present position and the state of our relations in China’ (18 Jan. 1849). CLR: 6 Apr 1860; CLR: 25 Jan. 1862. CLR: 6 Mar. 1859.

18

THE GHOST OF NAMAMUGI

for the city became ‘a magnificent sight’, so much so the Herald warned residents against packing into the Church tower to watch it, lest it give way under their weight.22 In 1857, Richardson watched another engagement from the roof of the Custom House, and confessed he would miss the action should either party clear out.23 Later, the barricades formed by the Volunteers around the settlement became social spaces in themselves, with ‘tables and chairs, creature comforts of all kinds, not forgetting various beverages which’, the Herald assured readers, ‘are however rigidly denied to the sentry on guard’.24 Between all these moments of more or less drama, the rumoured movements of Taiping groups and ‘the difficulty of obtaining information of a trustworthy character as to what is going on in the interior to which we are debarred access’ furnished a near-limitless supply of conversation and conjecture.25 A third, and related point, is the quiet assumption of a freedom from real danger that runs through Richardson’s descriptions of all this. It is tempting to put this down to bravado, or to a simple desire – quite understandable – not to alarm his family at home. But I think it also formed part of the ‘illusion of security’ that historian Robert Bickers has described as slowly taking hold of British visions of China – the idea of a sense of distance from even quite proximate danger; that the application, by the British, of even a small amount of force was sufficient to keep grave threats at bay.26 Richardson’s experiences seemed to teach him that there was little to fear from superior Chinese numbers; that the Chinese could not shoot; that, as the British prepared for a renewed assault on the Taku forts in the Second Opium War, he would ‘be much surprised if the first thrashing does not put them straight’.27 In hindsight, with the image of Namamugi floating before us, it is hard not to feel that these were unfortunate lessons to learn. … 22 23 24

25 26

27

CLR: 17 Dec. 1853; NCH, No. 192, 1 Apr. 1854, p. 138. CLR: 19 Nov. 1857. NCH, ‘The Advance of the Tai-Ping Insurgents on Shanghai’, No. 526, 25 Aug. 1860, p. 134. TNA: FO 228/148, R. Alcock to J. Bowring, No. 112, 1 Nov. 1852. R. Bickers, The Scramble for China: foreign devils in the Qing empire, 1832–1914 (London, 2011), p. 127. CLR: 19 Nov. 1857; CLR: 6 Apr. 1860.

‘AFLOAT AND SETTLED IN CHINA’, 1853–1862

19

For Charles Richardson, letter-writing was pleasurable, if exhausting work. When the mail was due it could dominate his day from eight in the morning until six; in humid Shanghai summers he described himself as ‘wet through’ from the effort.28 Most of his letters home seem to have been written in periods of down time, when trade was slack – a fact which may account, if only in part, for their often downbeat tone about his commercial prospects. In addition to his business dealings he seems to have maintained a correspondence with half a dozen or so family friends, but it is his letters to his mother and, predominantly, his father that have survived. With the latter he discussed friends and relations, the turmoil in China, and news of the progress of the war in Crimea, the Indian ‘Mutiny’ and the American Civil War. They also offer a glimpse into the varied commercial life of a British Shanghai merchant in the 1850s: tea, silk, ‘curios’ from newly-opened Japan, part-ownership in the steam tug Meteor, even trading in ornaments looted from the Summer Palace: a bit of this, a bit of that. Richardson initially worked as an assistant to his uncle, John Lenox, accruing a number of debts to him as he settled himself in Shanghai. But he seems to have quickly begun to work as one of the clerks at Mackenzie Bros. & Co., which in 1854 became Aspinall, Mackenzie and Co., when William Gregson Aspinall – later of Yokohama and Kobe – took control of the firm. At this time most of Shanghai’s larger firms had just two or three partners, but between four and eight foreign clerks. Richardson thereby occupied a relatively junior position in the community, but as Britain’s first Consul there had noted in 1846, one of the key differences between Shanghai and Canton was that at the former ‘trade [is] carried on in a great degree by clerks, and many young and inexperienced in their Profession’.29 It was only in the later 1850s that Richardson appears in the lists of foreign leaseholders and as a named attendee at community meetings. For now, Richardson took his first steps in the silk trade, inspecting and purchasing silk for himself, as well as for the company. He impressed Aspinall enough to be taken on as a salaried 28 29

CLR: 7 Sept. 1855; CLR: 9 July 1853. TNA: FO 228/64, G. Balfour to J.F. Davis, No. 54, 16 May 1846.

20

THE GHOST OF NAMAMUGI

employee, but in December 1855, Aspinalls suddenly and spectacularly, crashed. The firm had been involved in an audacious speculation in tea before defaulting to the tune of more than $300,000. The case gained some notoriety, not merely for the distress it caused Chinese teamen and their families, or that it was the first bankruptcy of its kind to be dealt with under the Treaty, or even that the Shanghai press was accused of hushing up the collapse, but because Aspinall was arrested after fleeing to Hong Kong in a desperate bid to escape his Chinese creditors.30 As an employee Richardson carried no liability for the firm – though he did owe it some $2000, and it was a clear setback nonetheless. ‘I regret that just at present I am not in a position to comply with your request of pecuniary assistance’, he informed his father that winter: ‘the fact is Aspinall & Co have smashed … and I am in no better position than when I first arrived at Shanghai’.31 With the company’s collapse, Richardson moved into a similar inspecting and purchasing role for Bowman & Co., before increasingly striking out on his own. At the time of his death it was common to describe Richardson as a wealthy and successful merchant. The idea is still reflected in much of the historiography.32 The problem with this claim is not that it is necessarily untrue; it is simply that we have never before had the means to examine it. Richardson’s letters home provide only fleeting details of his business dealings. The most conspicuous silence is on opium. This was ‘the great unspoken word at Shanghai’; so seldom was it mentioned in British trade records or the treaty port press that ‘the casual observer might never have been aware of the significance of this product to the economy of the city’.33 Yet opium played a pivotal role in the integration of China into world markets, and in the 30

31 32 33

For details, see my note below on CLR: 7 Dec. 1855. The case was carefully followed in the Overland China Mail, which accused the North China Herald of seeking to cover-up this embarrassing affair: ‘Failure at Shanghai’, OCM, No. 121, 15 Dec. 1855; ‘Resolutions of Shanghae Teamen’, OCM, No. 122, 15 Jan. 1856; ‘Mr Aspinall and Mr Consul Robertson’, OCM, No. 124, 15 Mar. 1856; ‘Mr Aspinall’s Case’, OCM, No. 125, 15 Apr. 1856; ‘Aspinall, Mackenzie & Co.’s Insolvency’, OCM, No. 132, 15 Nov. 1856. CLR: 7 Dec. 1855. For example: Hashimoto, ‘Collision at Namamugi’, p. 69. Johnson, Shanghai, pp. 227–228.

‘AFLOAT AND SETTLED IN CHINA’, 1853–1862

21

growth of European colonialism in Asia. It was ‘one of the most empire-friendly commodities’ of the entire nineteenth-century, building the fortunes of the great merchant houses and fuelling a vast triangular trade that bound the economies of Britain, India and China together.34 It quickly assumed such spectacular proportions at Shanghai that Britain’s first Consul there feared his country’s entire trade with China would soon become ‘in consequence really a smuggling one’.35 In Richardson’s Shanghai opium underpinned the bulk of commercial transactions, balancing foreign merchants’ books and earning substantial profits where British textiles and manufactures had failed to take root. In such a context, it almost certainly provided the means through which Richardson and the firms for which he clerked paid for the tea and silk they exported. Yet it is mentioned just once in Richardson’s entire correspondence home, in a line confessing frustration at the Taipings’ attempts to disrupt sales of the drug. Such action was ‘ruining our trade’, he complained: a ‘state of affairs some people at home will say is beneficial’, he added, but were surely ‘mistaken’ in doing so.36 Otherwise, his lips were sealed. What does emerge clearly from the Richardson letters, however, is a tone conspicuously less buoyant than contemporary references to Richardson’s ‘success’ would suggest. Between 1853 and 1856 the Crimean War worked to suppress demand for silk: ‘everything appears to be in a state of stagnation’, Richardson wrote; ‘the end of last season sadly crippled me’.37 Even as that war ended, the convulsions of the Taiping rebellion and the spread of maritime 34

35 36 37

J.L. Hevia, ‘Opium, Empire and Modern History’, China Review International, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2003), pp. 307–326. In 1849 Rutherford Alcock, British Consul at Shanghai, estimated that 16,000 chests of opium were sold at that port alone. By the late 1850s around 60,000 chests of opium per annum were imported into China from British India – double the trade of the mid-1840s. See further: T. Brook and B.T. Wakabayashi, Opium Regimes: China, Britain and Japan, 1839–1952 (Berkeley, CA, 2000); A. Farooqui, Smuggling as Subversion: colonialism, Indian merchants, and the politics of opium, 1790– 1843  (Lanham, MD, 2005); J.F. Richards, ‘The Opium Industry in British India’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 39, No.s 2–3 (2002), pp. 149–180; C. Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy: a study of the Asian opium trade, 1750–1950 (London, 1999). TNA: FO 228/31, Balfour to Pottinger, No. 33, 9 Apr. 1844. CLR: 3 June 1856. CLR: 4 Apr. 1855.

22

THE GHOST OF NAMAMUGI

piracy continued to frustrate Richardson’s business at Shanghai. No sooner had he arrived but fighting along the Yangtze led to a near-total stoppage of British imports. Goods piled up in Shanghai warehouses, while the Qing siege of the Chinese city left foreign merchants in constant doubt as to their ability to draw on supplies of silk and tea.38 Richardson’s line in tea, in particular, was lost to more Southern ports.39 Silk exports proved more robust – throughout the 1850s, the disease called pebrine all but wiped out the European silkworm, drastically increasing demand for raw silk from China – but reading these letters home, it is impossible to escape the conclusion that trade was, for Richardson, fretful across the 1850s, giving way to a palpable weariness by the early 1860s. ‘To tell the truth I have not been over fortunate since I have been in this part of the world’, he wrote in 1857; by 1860 rebel movements had again brought his trade to a standstill; 1861 was ‘the worst year that the China Trade has experienced for many a long day’; and at the start of 1862, his final year in China, he wrote home: ‘what kind friend has been putting it into your head that I am a millionaire? If such was the case – or a portion of one – I should not stop in this abominable country long’.40 All this mattered because, as Richardson often mentioned in his letters, he only ever intended to stay in Shanghai long enough to restore the family finances and settle his father’s debts. From the beginning he had planned to send regular remittances home, but often struggled to find the means to do so. ‘I would do anything on earth to make my Mother and Sisters comfortable’, he assured his father in 1859, but ‘I have little or no money of my own … and unless I look sharp may rot out the rest of my existence in this infernal hole’.41 Richardson’s record as a merchant, then, was mixed; what turned things around was property. At some point late in his stay in Shanghai, Richardson was able to purchase land – both part shares and 38

39 40 41

TNA: FO 228/161, R. Alcock to G. Bonham, No. 45, 8 July 1853; FO 228/177, R. Alcock to J. Bowring, No. 54 (‘Shanghai Trade Report for 1853’), 26 June 1854. CLR: 3 June 1856. CLR: 6 Mar. 1857; 14 June 1860; 5 Oct. 1861; 6 Feb. 1862. CLR: 26 May 1859.

‘AFLOAT AND SETTLED IN CHINA’, 1853–1862

23

in full – along the Nanjing and Fujian Roads (pl. 6). It is not clear where the capital came from – the letters refer to this as a use of ‘Mother’s money’ a couple of times – but the gamble paid off.42 For in the early 1860s refugees streamed into Shanghai, fleeing a decade of displacement and civil war, and land prices and rents suddenly shot up.43 In September 1862, even the British Consulate got in on the act, auctioning off seven of its twenty-seven acres (including two prominent lots on the Bund) in order to cash in on this real estate boom.44 Richardson, like most foreign residents and active Volunteers, may have had little sympathy for the refugees – ‘the place is crowded with swells from the North’, he wrote. Ironically, they had provided him with his ticket home. Even so, Richardson died with substantial debts, and parts of his Shanghai estate were soon sold off to cover them. Some properties remained in family hands, however, including a prominent premises on the Nanjjng Road, the management and sale of which kept a China connection alive into the twentieth-century. …

What kind of a man, then, was Charles Lenox Richardson? Devoted to his family, especially to his sisters; hard-working, if not altogether successful; a keen sportsman, who sought to enliven the tedium of settlement life with shooting parties, horse-racing, and service in the Volunteer Corps. He was young, too – like so many around him – in a port where ‘a man of forty was a greybeard’.45 Yet even as the letters provide a more rounded picture of his character, it is hard not to think of his violent end. How different a person would Richardson have needed to be for there to have been a different 42 43 44 45

CLR: 2 May 1862. Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 132, 178. Politzer, ‘Changing Face’, p. 78. A. Michie, The Englishman in China During the Victorian Era (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1900), i, p. 260. As a student interpreter, Ernest Satow was no older than Richardson when he first came to China; but while he lived to recant for his more youthful indiscretions (‘at the age of nineteen and a half a boy is still a boy … I ought to have manifested more respect for my elders’), Richardson, of course, did not: E.M. Satow, A Diplomat in Japan: the inner history of the critical years in the evolution of Japan when the ports were opened and the monarchy restored (London, 1921), pp. 70–71.

24

THE GHOST OF NAMAMUGI

outcome that day on the Tōkaidō? The letters give no definitive answer, but they help us to think in more subtle and informed ways about the challenges he and others like him faced in navigating the commercial frontiers of empire. For the frequent state of alarm in which he lived, the violence he witnessed, and the chaos he sensed in the country beyond the settlement do seem to have left their mark. Richardson’s letters show a hardening attitude to Shanghai, a place he had once said to have liked, ‘tolerably’.46 Increasingly, the Chinese were ‘cowards’ and ‘uncivilised’. In 1860, he hoped for a renewed British war to humiliate the Chinese once and for all, for ‘these animals must be thrashed or else in a year or two we shall have all the bother over again’.47 These sentiments were common enough in the foreign settlement, but would nonetheless have raised some eyebrows in England. And he saw the change in himself. ‘I am afraid you are too soft hearted and do not like to see the iron of human nature in other people’, he wrote to his father, ‘but it is a very necessary ingredient out here, I can assure you’.48 One incident, in December 1859, stands out. That winter the issue of foreigners’ behaviour in the treaty ports had already been gaining traction in the British press. In Yokohama the British Consul-General, Rutherford Alcock, launched a broadside against foreigners’ ‘indecorous and violent conduct’, and blamed British improprieties towards the locals for bringing about a stoppage of trade.49 In Shanghai, the North China Herald republished Alcock’s censorious despatch, as well as an anonymous letter on similar forms of abuse in their own settlement, in which four young gentlemen were seen repeatedly knocking the lanterns out of the hands of Chinese passers-by and smashing them to the ground. ‘There is of late, in our settlement and vicinity, evidence of a growing hostility to foreigners’, the author warned. ‘There are bounds beyond which wrong cannot be perpetuated without violent reaction’.50 46 47 48 49

50

CLR: 9 July 1853. CLR: 12 May 1860. CLR: 5 Oct. 1859. See, for instance: The London and China Telegraph, 18 Feb. 1860; NCH, No. 489, 10 Dec. 1859. NCH, No. 492, 31 Dec. 1859. Hong Kong’s Overland China Mail looked on in judgement. ‘In the Shanghae paper there appears correspondence complaining of young

‘AFLOAT AND SETTLED IN CHINA’, 1853–1862

25

Worse was still to come. A few weeks later Hong Kong’s Overland China Mail published the story, hushed up in the Shanghai press, about an attack made – again by four young gentlemen – on a Chinese servant in their employ. ‘An act of brutality has come before the Consular Court’, the paper wrote, ‘committed by four members of the sporting fraternity’ – Richardson was named. The four were alleged to have taken offence at the servant warming himself before their fire, and assaulted him so badly that he was ‘taken to the hospital in a sad state, with one rib broken, and other severe injuries.’ Three of the men were fined 150 taels for this; Richardson was fined 200; all were warned by the Consul that deportation would be the punishment for any subsequent offence.51 Richardson twice referred to the incident in his correspondence home. On the first occasion he apologised for being behind on his letters, ‘as I had met with an accident and broke the 3d bone in the back of my right hand … [A]ltho’ perhaps it does not redound to my credit I could not help it. The truth is a man was insolent and I knocked him down’.52 Four months later he wrote about it again to his mother, who by now had read about it in the London press. ‘The Hong Kong paper hatched up a tissue of lies’, Richardson wrote; he’d contemplated suing them for libel. Yet, he openly admitted,

51

52

Foreigners causing annoyance and threatening to raise mobs among the Chinese … if persisted in, [it] will soon make us as unpopular in Shanghae and in Japan, as we ever were in Canton of old’: OCM, 14 Jan. 1860. OCM: 30 Jan. 1860; The London and China Telegraph, 17 Mar. 1860, p. 170. It wasn’t just the ‘frightful violence’ of the incident that offended the China Mail, but the hypocrisy of the foreign community’s attitudes towards violence. ‘Any offences committed by the Chinese are noised about, often in an exaggerated form’, the paper complained, ‘but the same publicity is not given by the people of the “model settlement” to the offences which they commit against the Chinese’: ‘Fact and Fiction from Shanghae’, CM, 26 Jan. 1860. A tael in this period was roughly equivalent to 6s 8d, a third of a pound sterling. CLR: 14 May 1860. Richardson’s standing among the merchants at Shanghai seems not to have been adversely affected by the assault. Officials remembered it, however (as we shall shortly see), and invoked it as an example of the impulsive and intolerant conduct of employees of some of the lesser firms. In addition to the complications such incidents presented British officials, we might explain the strength of their feeling in terms of a wider concern to uphold the ‘respectability’ of Western society in the treaty ports – a concern that also underwrote residents’ persistent efforts to maintain social barriers between themselves and the settlement’s white working populations, especially sailors. Such ‘ungentlemanly’ conduct was socially dangerous, in this context: it transgressed the lines of civility and class that foreign residents were at such pains to create. See: Lampe, ‘Problem of the Sailors’.

26

THE GHOST OF NAMAMUGI

‘I was the only person to blame for striking the Animal – the other men had nothing to do with it… but were fined because they were present’.53 Shanghai had taught Charles Richardson that out here insult, however small, could never be brooked; and that the most everyday encounters affecting his personal dignity redounded upon British national prestige. ‘In China’, as even Britain’s Consul in the port warned London, ‘small beginnings have large endings’.54 Forget tea, or silk, or exotic objects from afar – prestige was the most precious commodity of all. …

It feels wrong to speak of conclusions when describing a person’s life, so let us take our leave of Richardson on a more positive note. Richardson may have come to hate Shanghai – ‘I am sick of this place’, he wrote a year before departing – but Japan seemed a brighter prospect.55 When he died, the Japan Herald described him as a visitor to Yokohama on his way home to England, and retirement. It is an assumption echoed in all the writing on Namamugi ever since. But it seems just as likely that Richardson was actively considering a new, second career in Japan. After all, his erstwhile colleagues had made the jump before him: Kenneth Ross Mackenzie, William Gregson Aspinall and many others besides. With pebrine disease still crippling silk production in Europe, and with ongoing concerns about supply in a China ravaged by civil war, growing numbers of ambitious silk merchants were pinning their hopes on Japan, ‘despite the danger, fraud and cheating’ the first traders encountered there.56 And so, from the onset of the new era 53 54

55 56

CLR: 14 May 1860. TNA: FO 228/147, Alcock to Bowring, 17 June 1852. Alcock went on to accuse the Qing authorities of seeking to undo Britain’s treaty rights ‘by a series of apparently small encroachments and aggressions’, with the intention ‘to damage our local position, territorial and social’ and ‘to cripple and restrict our trade’. CLR: 3 July 1861. Y. Makimura, Yokohama and the Silk Trade: how eastern Japan became the primary economic region of Japan, 1843–1893 (Lanham, MD, 2017), p. 103. Raw silk made up 66% of Japan’s exports in 1860, and 86% in 1862; it remained Japan’s single largest export item until 1940.

‘AFLOAT AND SETTLED IN CHINA’, 1853–1862

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of foreign trade in Japan, Yokohama and Shanghai were increasingly linked; any account of Shanghai’s fortunes would be incomplete, wrote the North China Herald in 1860, ‘were we to omit mention of Japan, of which our port is the nearest neighbour, and so far the natural organ …’.57 Yokohama gave Shanghai’s foreign merchants fresh cause for commercial optimism amidst the troubles of the Taiping rebellion; Shanghai, in turn, sent forth the capital, expertise and shipping on which exploratory trades relied.58 In the final years of Richardson’s correspondence from Shanghai, Japan appears as a place of great hope, a new commercial frontier about which people said good things, and a country ‘out of which great things will come...’. He began purchasing Japanese lacquerware, earthenware and swords – some to trade but, notably, some for himself and his family to keep.59 One Kobe merchant would later claim that Richardson had just agreed to join William Aspinall’s new Japan firm – that former colleague, of course; co-founder of the more successful Aspinall, Cornes and Co. of Kobe and Yokohama; and a pall-bearer at Richardson’s funeral.60 And then there is Richardson’s description of the place, from the one letter he sent home from Yokohama, and the last in our collection (pl. 5). It was ‘the finest country I have been in out of England’, he wrote: ‘most magnificent hill and sea scenery … [Yeddo] is a most wonderful city … The official quarter…would do credit to any Western power … I’ll tell you all about these things when we meet’.61 Japan, then, might just have been Richardson’s new beginning. But that is the thing with fresh starts. It is so hard to leave your old self behind.

57 58 59 60 61

NCH, No. 493, Supplement (‘The Year 1859’), 7 Jan. 1860. See, for example: J. McMaster, Jardines in Japan, 1859–1867 (Groningen, 1966). CLR: 6 Apr. 1860. MW: H. Carew to F.M. Heath, 3 Nov. 1944. CLR: 3 Sept. 1862.

2

The British Empire and Bakumatsu Japan, 1862–1863 Ž

What instinct is it which has brought wealthy England, from her sea-girt isles, into an attitude of hostility with opulent Japan, also bulwarked by the ocean? Two continents divide the children of either group of islands, and yet, in the nineteenth century, they are face to face amid the roar of artillery.

China Mail (1863)

SHORTLY AFTER NOON on 15 August 1863, batteries along the shoreline of Kagoshima opened fire on a British naval squadron arranged around the bay. They had caught them at anchor. The flagship Euryalus was soon enveloped in an exchange of fire so intense that old hands likened it to the siege of Sebastopol. Her Captain and Commander, both standing alongside their Admiral, were killed on the bridge by the same shot. As the ship hurriedly cleared for action and commenced shelling the town (starting a blaze that would rage for days), her band struck up the popular tune: Oh, Dear, What Can the Matter Be? The answer to that question is deceptively straightforward, and was set out at the time by Britain’s Chargé d’Affaires in Japan, Colonel Edward Neale, in a note penned while at anchor off Kagoshima. The attack on Richardson’s party at Namamugi, eleven months before, was ‘an unprovoked outrage’ that had ‘filled with great and just indignation the British Government and people’. It warranted a punitive indemnity, financial compensation, and the execution of the chief perpetrators. After months of delay, the bakufu had finally done its 28

THE BRITISH EMPIRE AND BAKUMATSU JAPAN, 1862-1863

29

part, delivering £100,000 to the British Consulate in Yokohama. But Satsuma continued to hold out. Now Neale had brought a British squadron to Kagoshima to deliver a final ultimatum, only to encounter further equivocation. ‘The formal reply of the Prince of Satsuma… has now reached me’, Neale informed Admiral Kuper on the 14th: a communication in every respect evasive of the point at issue, as confirming rather than repudiating the outrage for which redress has been long sought … Under these circumstances, I have the honour to request you to enter upon such measures of coercion, by reprisals or otherwise, as you may deem expedient and best calculated to awaken the Prince of Satsuma to a sense of the serious nature of the determinations which have brought Her Majesty’s squadron to this anchorage.1

At daybreak Kuper directed the Pearl to cross the bay and seize three valuable steamers recently purchased by the Shimazu clan. When the shore batteries saw these vessels being lashed to the side of the Royal Navy’s warships, they opened fire, ‘an act which it became necessary immediately to resent’. Euryalus brought her guns to bear, and the bombardment of Kagoshima – the Satsu-ei sensō – began.2 In Britain and in Japan, historians have tended to view the bombardment as a self-evident act of retribution: a display of imperial power to extract compensation and avenge the killing of a Briton abroad. The Prime Minister of the day, Lord Palmerston, had once declared that just as a Roman could claim protection anywhere he might speak the words Civis Romanus sum, so also a British subject ‘in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him against injustice and wrong’.3 The Namamugi affair seems, at first glance, a clear example 1

2

3

TNA: FO 881/1183: E. Neale to A.L. Kuper, Euryalus, 14 Aug. 1863, encl. in E. Neale to J. Russell, 26 Aug. 1863. Kuper’s despatch on the action would later be criticised, notably for its claim that the British had not anticipated resistance to their attempt to seize Shimazu Hisamitsu’s steamers in the bay. Nonetheless, it remains a useful guide to the chronology of the engagement: A. Kuper to E. Neale, 17 Aug. 1863, encl. in E. Neale to J. Russell, 26 Aug. 1863. See: G. Hicks, ‘Don Pacifico, Democracy and Danger: the Protectionist Party critique of British foreign policy, 1850–1852’, International History Review, Vol. 26, No. 3 (2004),

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of putting this principle into practice; one historian, writing around its centenary, judged it ‘a classic piece of gunboat diplomacy’.4 And yet a variety of peculiar conditions had to come into alignment for the death of a merchant to be translated into diplomatic and naval action. After all, Richardson’s murder was by no means the first to have occurred in the young foreign settlement at Yokohama. ‘There are seven foreign graves on the bluff of Treaty Point’, the American merchant Francis Hall recorded in 1860: ‘six of the occupants died violent deaths, five out of the six having been assassinated in the streets’.5 For all Palmerston’s rhetorical flourish, midVictorian Britain seldom contemplated military intervention to protect private interests alone: a larger, ‘national interest’ had to be seen to be at stake.6 In our case, we need to understand why it was that the events at Namamugi and later at Kagoshima achieved such notoriety in their own time. Explaining them away as ‘a classic piece of gunboat diplomacy’ risks obscuring more than it reveals. …

In the early 1860s, few Britons relished the prospect of a fight with Japan. There, the China Mail warned, ‘we would find a better organised and a more formidable foe than in China, and one war would not extinguish in [their] hearts…the conservative feeling of centuries’.7 But within a month of word of Richardson’s death reaching London, the Foreign Secretary, Lord John Russell had despatched instructions to Yokohama sanctioning the use of military force, should Britain’s man-on-the-spot deem it necessary.

4

5

6

7

pp. 515–540. W. Watson, ‘The Namamugi Incident, 1862: a chapter in Anglo-Japanese relations’, History Today, Vol. 14, No. 5 (1964), pp. 318–325. F. Hall, diary for 29 Feb. 1860, in F.G. Notehelfer (ed.), Japan through American Eyes: the journal of Francis Hall, Kanagawa and Yokohama, 1859–1866 (Princeton, 1992). For a thoughtful consideration of broader patterns of political violence across the bakumatsu period, see: Y. Tamura, ‘The Continuity of Violence in the Stages of the Shi-Shi Movement of Nineteenth-Century Japan’, Social Thought and Research, Vol. 20, No. 1–2 (1997), pp. 169–186. J.G. Darwin, ‘Imperialism and the Victorians: the dynamics of territorial expansion’, The English Historical Review, Vol. 112, No. 447 (Jun., 1997), pp. 614–642. ‘The Japan Crisis’, OCM, 15 Oct. 1861.

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How had these doubts and reservations been overcome? What was the decision-making process that led from Namamugi to Kagoshima, linking the death of an Englishman to the partial destruction of a city? How, in imperial terms, was the power of the metropole now transmitted to its periphery? To answer these questions, we need to interrogate much more closely the role of the foreign merchant community in Yokohama itself, and its success in turning a local ‘outrage’ into a cause that warranted intervention to protect and extend their activities. Richardson’s fateful visit to Japan came at a critical moment for the foreign merchants of Yokohama. In May Colonel Neale – newlyarrived in the country – had caused outcry when he announced that London had agreed to Japanese requests to delay the promised opening of key ports, including Osaka.8 To the foreign merchants, these London Protocols spelled their ‘perpetual exclusion’ from the country’s greatest commercial prospects. In their eyes it offered proof of the bakufu’s contempt for Britain’s apparent timidity; only ‘when they begin to think us less amiable we shall begin to find them more faithful’.9 Coming on top of calls elsewhere in the press that Britain consider quitting the country altogether, this decision left the merchants acutely sensitive to any perceived backsliding.10 It compounded a general fear that, just three years after it had formally begun, foreign trade with Japan was already facing an existential threat. Official obstruction and harassment was working to restrict supplies of silk and tea. Trade had not reached the optimistic projections of Yokohama’s early foreign residents. Unlike Shanghai, there 8

9

10

The various foreign treaties signed with the bakufu in 1858 had also scheduled Edo, Niigata and Hyōgo (Kobe) to be opened to trade between July 1859 and January 1863. But Osaka was the great prize. Foreign residents were, John Rennie Black remembered, ‘extremely averse to the postponement’. The earliest issues of the new Japan Herald were ‘taken up with these and kindred subjects’: Black, Young Japan, pp. 70–71. JH, No. 41, 30 Aug 1862. While Neale was tarred by his association with this concession, his French counterpart Gustave Duschene de Bellecourt had urged his government not to postpone the opening of Osaka, in particular: ADAE: CP 59 (Japon), Vol. 5, No. 135, Bellecourt to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 25 Jan. 1862; and Vol. 5, No. 140, Bellecourt to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 26 Feb. 1862. Throughout the spring, while Alcock was in Europe (and before Neale arrived in Japan), Bellecourt was on hand to observe the ‘English’ merchants’ growing agitation over this question: ADAE: CP 59 (Japon), Vol. 5, No. 152, Bellecourt to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 29 Mar. 1862. For example: ‘The Japan Crisis’, OCM, 15 Oct. 1861.

32

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had been no great success stories, most merchants merely making enough to cover their rent, food, firearms and alcohol.11 They complained daily of their ‘confinement’ within settlement limits and resented their lack of access to its hinterland.12 Eight days before Richardson’s party took to the Tōkaidō, the new weekly paper, the Japan Herald, was again lamenting the prospects for trade: ‘we fear we have been deceived; our hopes are proving illusions; the progress we looked for is changed to retrogression; and the future of the country is clouding over, growing dark’.13 Nor were the merchants convinced that the local British representatives were fully on their side. The potential for friction between officials and merchants existed on many a frontier of empire, but in the weeks and months before Richardson was killed relations in Yokohama became particularly acrimonious. Rutherford Alcock’s strictures against the merchants were notorious – ‘nothing could have been well worse than the conduct of [this] body generally’, he wrote, ‘and the acts of many individuals are altogether disgraceful’ – so that officials’ inability ‘to restrain the irregularities of such lawless and unscrupulous characters’ had become a familiar topic in the British press.14 The antipathy was mutual. Reporting on Alcock’s departure for China in 1865, the Japan Herald observed a general feeling ‘that our interests and our rights are quite as open to injury now, as they were the day Sir Rutherford arrived’.15 As we shall shortly see, his replacement during the Namamugi Incident, Colonel Neale (pl. 12), would inspire even less confidence. News of the London Protocols had left a marked sense of betrayal; there was particular anger that Alcock had left the country ‘without a single word’ about the possibility of such a deal.16 In the background, resentment also festered over officials’ abuse of a preferential rate of 11

12

13

14 15 16

T.S. Munson, The Periodical Press in Treaty-Port Japan: conflicting reports from Yokohama, 1861–1870 (Leiden, 2013), p. 10. They were especially indignant when, in January 1862, the settlement gates had been shut without their consent: Black, Young Japan, p. 72. JH, No. 42, 6 Sept 1862. The Japan Herald was first issued on 23 November 1861, and by Alfred W. Hansard, son of Thomas Curson Hansard, the publisher of Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates. The paper ran until 1866. See, for instance: The London and China Telegraph, 18 Feb. 1860. JH, 27 May 1865, cited in Ion, ‘Namamugi Incident’, pp. 16–17. JH, No. 43, 13 Sept. 1862, p. 169.

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exchange between foreign currencies and Japanese ichibus, thereby doubling and trebling their own salaries – to the point that the profits from these coin exchanges seemed to eclipse those from genuine trade at the port. This was no arcane matter: it opened the officials’ criticism of merchant avarice to the equally damning charge of hypocrisy.17 Relations in the settlement were dealt a further blow over the summer. During an altercation in July, a man under American protection had drawn a pistol and threatened ‘to blow out the brains’ of a Chinese servant working for a British merchant house. The British merchants marched straight to their consul, Francis Howard Vyse (pl. 13), to demand redress. But Vyse refused to lodge charges of assault with his American counterpart, asking only for the lesser charge of trespass instead. The Herald was indignant, implying that Vyse was setting good relations with the Americans above the interests and rights of British merchants. As the case’s ‘protracted proceedings’ ran on it became the talk of the town, the Court ‘crowded by all the respectable portion of the community’. It was not simply Yokohama’s reputation that was at stake (much ink had been spilled in trying to overturn its unruly image). The case also spoke to a rising anxiety among the merchants – including Samuel Gower, the agent for Jardine, Matheson and Company (hereafter Jardines) – that simply not enough was being done by officials to protect British trade at the port.18 ‘We the officials’, Dr Willis wrote home, ‘are heartily hated by a large section of the people, who lose no opportunity of letting us know as much’.19 For the merchants to achieve the changes they desired, it was increasingly felt, they would need to seek out sympathetic voices beyond their locality – perhaps in Shanghai, perhaps back in London. That would involve playing a weak hand well. As W.G. Beasley demonstrated long ago, there never emerged a coherent, 17

18

19

Francis Hall wrote about the issue at length, including for the New York Tribune: Notehelfer, Japan through American Eyes, pp. 56–58. British officials did not abandon their ‘exchange privileges’ until late in 1864. JH, No. 39, 16 Aug. 1862, p. 153. For Shanghai’s criticism of foreigners’ disreputable conduct at Yokohama, see: NCH, No. 489, 10 Dec. 1859. YAH: William Willis correspondence [hereafter Willis corr.], Vol 44/2, No. 40, W. Willis to G. Willis, 4 Aug. 1862.

34

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interventionist mercantile lobby for Japan and its waters to rival that of the ‘old China hands’.20 Many felt the home government knew and cared little about the country, especially when compared to the greater commercial prospect of China: ‘what is fatal to us here’, Willis wrote to his brother in Monmouth, ‘is the generally believed unimportance of Japan’.21 What little was known was not necessarily helpful, either. In 1861 The Edinburgh Review criticised a stream of ‘superficial’ publications on Japan which had misled a ‘credulous public’ into believing ‘that the triumph of European civilization in Japan’ was ‘already secure’.22 Foreign merchants in Yokohama felt the tyranny of distance, too: the mail to London could take two and a half months, and there was no direct telegraphic link before the 1870s. ‘Japan is far off’, the Japan Herald sighed: ‘via longa vita brevis’.23 Nor could the settlement rely on unwavering support from its fellow communities in other treaty ports. Hong Kong’s China Mail, for example, would shortly call for Britain to withdraw from Japan altogether, where the Treaty of Commerce had been inadvertently signed with the Shogun, not the Emperor; where trade was minimal and too dependent on official protection; and where even the geography – none of the innumerable creeks and inlets of the China coast – militated against the chance of turning a profit through contraband.24 Two weeks before Richardson’s death, the Japan Herald described a desperate situation for the foreign merchants of Yokohama. It was all they could do to hope for some kind of crisis to transform their position, ‘some Harry Parkes [to] get our political relations into confusion; some Admi-

20

21 22 23 24

W.G. Beasley, Great Britain and the Opening of Japan, 1834–1858 (London, 1951), p. 50. The classic study of the activism of British China merchants is: M. Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800–1842  (Cambridge, 1951); but see also: G. Melancon, Britain’s China Policy and the Opium Crisis: balancing drugs, violence and national honour, 1833–1840 (Aldershot, 2003); S. Chen, Merchants of War and Peace: British knowledge of China in the making of the Opium War (Hong Kong, 2017). YAH: Willis corr., Vol 44/4, No. 83, W. Willis to G. Willis, 1 Oct. 1863. ‘Japan and the Japanese’, The Edinburgh Review, Vol. 113, No. 229, (1861), pp. 62–63. JH, No. 45, 27 Sept. 1862, p. 179. CM, No. 926, 13 Nov. 1862, p. 182. See also: CM, No. 921, 9 Oct. 1862, p. 163. The Japan Herald was, predictably, indignant: JH, No. 54, 29 Nov. 1862, p. 217.

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ral Seymour [to] stir them up with shot and shell…’.25 As things turned out, they did not have long to wait. …

At four o’clock in the afternoon of 14 September, Margaret Borrodaile galloped back into Yokohama, her hair flying and her face flecked with blood. Her news sent the foreign settlement into a panic. Groups of merchants took up their revolvers and rushed out along the Tōkaidō, looking for the rest of her party and their assailants. They were joined in the search by the French Minister Gustave Duchesne de Bellecourt who, with his mounted escort, made for Kanagawa at all possible haste. But his British counterpart, Colonel Edward Neale, hesitated, fearing what might happen should the merchants and the daimyō procession meet again on the road. Such caution may have been prudent. But it underestimated the strength of feeling within the foreign community. The extraordinary events of the next twenty-four hours would ensure that Neale himself – almost as much as Shimazu Hisamitsu – would be cast by the merchants and the merchant press as the real threat to the survival of Britain’s position in Japan. At this moment of crisis Britain’s most experienced diplomat in Japan was out of the country. Between March 1862 and March 1864 Sir Rutherford Alcock was replaced by Colonel Neale, and although Neale had served in the eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans in the 1840s and ’50s, and as Secretary of Legation in China since 1860, he was not seen to possess the same extensive experience.26 The foreign residents of Yokohama were quick to cast 25

26

JH, No. 41, 30 Aug. 1862, p. 161. Sir Harry Parkes (1828–1885), Consul in Canton during the Second Opium War, present at its recapture by British forces in 1858, and imprisoned by the Chinese during the march on Peking in 1860; ‘a hero to the British traders whose privileges he defended’: J. Wells, ‘Parkes, Sir Harry Smith (1828–1885), diplomatist’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/21353, accessed 2 Feb. 2017. Rear-Admiral Sir Michael Seymour (1802–1887) had arrived as Commander-in-Chief of the China Station in the spring of 1856, in time to oversee the actions at Canton, Fatshan Creek and the Taku Forts that constituted Britain’s initial successes of the Second Opium War. He had returned to England by the time of the disastrous second battle at Taku in June 1859. For a short overview of Neale’s career, see: H. Cortazzi, ‘Lt Colonel Edward St John Neale: Chargé d’Affaires at Edo/Yokohama, 1862–64’, in H. Cortazzi (ed.), British Envoys

36

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doubt on his mettle and his judgement. ‘Our chief is not the man for Japan’, Willis wrote home a week after the incident. ‘He is much despised here, and looked upon as an old woman’.27 On the afternoon of the 14th, upon hearing of the attack, Neale ordered the Legation’s small armed escort to make ready, before thinking better of sending them to ‘run the gauntlet through hundreds of armed men’ somewhere on the high road. Instead, deciding that ‘water-communication with Kanagawa was speedy and safe’, he sent a cutter across the bay to bring back Marshall and Clarke. He was then shocked to discover that the escort had set out for the Tōkaidō anyway, swept up in the ‘pitch of indignation’ coursing through the foreign settlement, and accompanied by his own consul, Howard Vyse. Neale hastily despatched the escort’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Applin, to intercept them ‘and see that all was right’.28 Applin caught up with the escort two miles out, their numbers increased by the bands of merchants who had independently set off looking for Richardson. Applin told Vyse that Neale was ‘extremely incensed that the guard should have been taken out of Yokohama without his especial orders’, but was persuaded that, to Vyse’s thinking, it was ‘his duty at all hazards to recover and identify his missing countryman’, and that – despite Neale’s evident anger – the escort’s search should go on.29 ‘Much allowance must doubtless be made for the excitement of the moment’, a chronicler of early Yokohama later wrote, ‘when men’s blood was up at the sudden report of the wanton butchery of their unarmed countrymen’. Nonetheless, with Applin now also being ‘carried away by the general feeling’, Neale’s authority over his subordinates had effectively slipped away.30 The escort eventually found Richardson’s body at the roadside, and together with the French mounted guard brought it back to 27 28 29

30

in Japan, 1859–1972 (Kent, 2004), pp. 22–32. YAH: Willis corr., Vol. 44/2, No. 43, W. Willis to G. Willis, 21 Sept. 1862. TNA: FO 410/6, E. Neale to J. Russell, 16 Sept. 1862. TNA: FO 410/6, ‘Minutes of a meeting of the merchants resident in Yokohama, held September 15, 1862’, encl. in E. Neale to J. Russell, 21 Sept. 1862. F.O. Adams, The History of Japan, from the earliest period to the present time  (2 vols., London, 1874), i, p. 197.

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Kanagawa. That evening, amidst a rumour that Neale had sent a further messenger demanding the escort’s recall, the merchants ‘resolved at once to call a public meeting, a strong feeling having arisen in the breasts of many that it was practicable by prompt measures to arrest the murderers, and inflict a severe lesson upon the perpetrators of such crimes’.31 At 10.00 p.m. virtually the entire foreign community gathered in the house of Edward Clarke, a representative of Dent and Company, one of the great China firms. Howard Vyse sat in the chair, but Neale was not invited. Over the next two hours the merchants vented their frustration at Neale’s missed chance to intercept Shimazu Hisamitsu’s procession. They demanded that their representatives seek reparations; pointedly praised the ‘prompt and active steps’ undertaken by Bellecourt and the French guard; and voted their ‘special and sincere thanks’ to Applin and Vyse. They specifically noted the ‘noble and spirited manner’ of their actions in recovering ‘the body of our poor friend … which would have lain rotting in the road had they waited the orders of a superior’. At midnight the merchants then appointed a committee to act as their deputation – Frederick Bell of Adamson and Company, Jardines’ agent Samuel Gower, and the Rev. Michael Buckworth Bailey – and resolved to meet again a few hours hence.32 The deputation set to work immediately, holding meetings through the night with the British, French and Dutch naval commanders. Britain’s Admiral Kuper (pl. 15) was woken up for the purpose. To each of them they urged the immediate despatch of a force to arrest Hisamitsu and his men.33 The French and Dutch commanders apparently concurred in the need for prompt action. Kuper agreed to back ‘any practicable measures’, but confessed that – having only just arrived at Yokohama – he would need to defer 31

32

33

Adams, History of Japan, i, p. 199; FO 410/6, ‘Minutes of a meeting of the merchants resident in Yokohama, held September 15, 1862’, encl. in Neale to Russell, 21 Sept 1862. Neale later adamantly denied that such a message had been sent. See the correspondence enclosed in: ADAE: CP 59 (Japon), Vol. 7, No. 193, Bellecourt to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 20 Sept. 1862, esp. f. 96. FO 410/6, ‘Minutes of a meeting of members of the Foreign Community of Yokohama, held on the night of the 14th September, 1862’, encl. in Neale to Russell, 16 Sept. 1862. For Kuper’s account of this meeting, see: TNA: ADM 1/5790, A. Kuper to J. Hope, 20 Sept. 1862.

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to Neale’s advice. All three commanders undertook to meet again in the morning. The deputation then retired to the residence of Duchesne de Bellecourt, ‘who entered most thoroughly into their feelings and concurred in their views of the course of action to be pursued…’. Only then did they go to Neale.34 It was now around 3.00 a.m. Neale bridled at the delegation’s attempts to force his hand. He told them so, adding that he ‘dissent[ed] most completely’ from the ‘impracticable and Quixotic coercive measures’ they now proposed. He agreed to talk further with great reluctance, and only because his Dutch and French colleagues had already consented to meet.35 Nonetheless, Neale ‘considered it a most unusual proceeding’ and ‘evinced considerable annoyance at any meeting having been held by the community’.36 At 6.00 a.m. he met with his consular officials, Bellecourt and the naval commanders at the French Minister’s house to insist that any form of immediate reprisal would be ‘tantamount to a sudden commencement of hostilities with the Government of Japan’, and thus ‘fraught with all the evils and consequences of actual war’. He also made a somewhat hamfisted attempted to quell the emotions stirred up by Richardson’s murder, stating that a previous Japanese attack on the legation at Yedo ‘still more loudly called for reparation’ than this more recent ‘outrage’. The only viable course of action, Neale argued, was to wait on comprehensive instructions from London, while urging on the Japanese Government greater measures for the protection of Yokohama. Neale later insisted that Bellecourt had agreed with this stance ‘in every material respect’.37 At 8.00 a.m. the foreign community re-assembled once more. Neale did not attend, but Vyse read out an account of the 6.00 a.m. meeting that differed substantially from the version his superior would later send to London. Vyse stressed ‘that there had been considerable discussion, and much difference of opinion’, and that 34

35 36

37

FO 410/6, ‘Minutes of a meeting of the merchants resident in Yokohama, held September 15, 1862’, encl. in Neale to Russell, 21 Sept. 1862. FO 410/6, Neale to Russell, 16 Sept. 1862. FO 410/6, ‘Minutes of a meeting of the merchants resident in Yokohama, held September 15, 1862’, encl. in Neale to Russell, 21 Sept. 1862. FO 410/6, Neale to Russell, 16 Sept. 1862.

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‘the French Minister and Commander were for decided and active measures’. He also claimed ‘that Colonel Neale had stated that he had not received any official intimation of the murder’, and that Neale had said ‘that he had himself been attacked in the legation at Yedo…and that he did not see how residents in Yokohama could expect to be exempt from equal liabilities’. Whatever the veracity of those claims, they left the merchants in no doubt that any hope of a forceful response to Richardson’s murder – perhaps even of a chance to transform the position of foreign trade in Japan – now rested on a direct appeal to London. They resolved to draw up a written statement on the attack, their meetings, the steps they had taken and the response they had received to be ‘transmitted without loss of time’ to Lord John Russell in London. The race was on to control the narrative, and to re-tell the story of Richardson’s murder. They set to work immediately. At half-past five in the afternoon, immediately after Richardson was laid to rest, the merchants met one last time to complete and sign their statements. They were handed to Howard Vyse, who requested Neale to include them in the next despatch home – but not before adding that duplicates had been made and forwarded through the committee for the archives of the Legation.38 Twenty-four hours of tension and alarm had exposed deep divisions within the Yokohama foreign settlement. For the time being, Neale had talked his countrymen down from effecting reprisals; but he had not done so, he explained to London, ‘without occurring obloquy’.39 Britain’s merchants and their chief representative were now at loggerheads, and whatever the Foreign Secretary chose to believe of the merchants’ statements, their barbs contrasting praise for the French Minister’s boldness with contempt for their own official’s timidity must have made for galling reading. Vyse’s actions found him basking in the merchants’ admiration, his standing quite restored from that low point over the summer. But Neale and Vyse 38

39

FO 410/6, ‘Minutes of a meeting of the merchants resident in Yokohama, held September 15, 1862’, encl. in Neale to Russell, 21 Sept. 1862; F.H. Vyse to E. Neale, 20 Sept. 1862, encl. in Neale to Russell, 21 Sept 1862. The letter carried eighty-four signatures, to which Neale added an acerbic covering note: ‘Thirty-six of these signatures are those of American and Dutch subjects; the remainder are British; but no members of the respectable houses here appear among them’. FO 410/6, Neale to Russell, 16 Sept. 1862.

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were left ‘on the worst terms’. In his despatch to Russell, Neale denounced ‘the highly improper course’ that Vyse had taken, and which had ‘embarrassed me in the discharge of my duties’.40 A private letter further explained the acute ‘embarrassment and anxiety’ caused by Bellecourt’s proposed acts ‘of retaliation and defiance’, and his flagrant courting of British merchant opinion.41 It was perhaps this last aspect of the crisis that troubled London most of all. When it mattered most, Neale’s personal authority had faltered, and a belligerent merchant community – an overwhelmingly British body – had rallied around the decisive, reassuring figure of his French counterpart. Months would now pass before a decision was reached about how to respond to Richardson’s death. But when it came, it did so in light of the crisis of authority that had overtaken Britain’s man-on-the-spot, and the need for action – at least in part – to recapture the initiative. …

There was something in the circumstances of the Namamugi affair that quickly marked it out as ‘the most atrocious’ of the attacks yet experienced by the foreign residents of Japan.42 It had taken place, shockingly, ‘in the open day, upon the broad high road, before more than 200 witnesses’ – including European survivors. Unlike past attacks it was not, apparently, the work of an isolated zealot, but had occurred ‘in the presence of one of the magnates of the land’, raising hopes that someone might finally be brought to book.43 The fact that an English woman counted among the victims also made this a ‘spe40

41

42

43

YAH: Willis corr., Vol 44/3, No. 60, W. Willis to G. Willis, 16 Jan. 1863; FO 410/6, Neale to Russell, 21 Sept. 1862. TNA: PRO 30/22/50, E. Neale to J. Russell, 16 Sept. 1862. This letter was subsequently shown to the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston. TNA: FO 46/25, R. Alcock to J. Russell, 29 Nov. 1862; and encl. R. Alcock, ‘Memorandum on Admiral Hope’s despatch to the Admiralty in reference to Japanese Affairs’. JH, No. 44, 20 Sept 1862, p. 173; see also: JH, No. 45, 27 Sept 1862, p. 179. Foreign magistrate Mizuno Tadanori agreed that the failure to bring assassins to justice was ‘particularly reprehensible in the case of the Namamugi affair, for although it took place before the eyes of the lord himself, his retainers have been allowed to escape’: T. Mizuno to M. Inoue, 20 April 1863, cited in W.G. Beasley, Select Documents in Japanese Foreign Policy, 1853–1868 (Oxford, 1955), pp. 240–241.

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cial outrage’. Coming as it did in the wake of the Indian Rebellion of 1857–1858, in which the figure of the Englishwoman assaulted by a native man had become a cultural icon, the clash at Namamugi posed a challenge to the masculinity and the capacity for protection of what was still an overwhelmingly-male foreign community.44 Particular features of the bombardment of Kagoshima, too, helped it to garner wider attention. The entire British legation had been there to witness events, having ostensibly embarked with the squadron to serve as interpreters ‘but in reality’, Ernest Satow remembered, ‘in order to “makee look see”’.45 The engagement made a powerful impression on this erudite body of observers. Dr William Willis, the legation’s medical officer and with Satow aboard the Argus, recalled the ‘grand sight’ of Euryalus opening fire and ‘the grandeur and magnificent splendour of the immense fire on shore’ (see pl. 2).46 It also captured the imagination of a more technicallyminded audience in England, for whom the bombardment offered a trial of the Royal Navy’s new, heavier, breech-loading Armstrong guns. (Reports from Kagoshima of their unreliability – breeches split, carriages collapsed – would see the Navy revert to favouring muzzle-loaders for a number of years.)47 But the importance that came to be afforded to Namamugi and Kagoshima transcended the particularity of their circum44

45

46 47

NACP: Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Kanagawa, Japan, 1861–1897 (National Archives Microfilm M135, roll 1): E. Neale to G.S. Fisher, 6 April 1863. The so-called ‘Mutiny’ had posed a grave threat to British control in India, and the severity of the conflict ‘came to be embodied by the fate of British women and the defilement of their bodies’: A. Blunt, ‘Embodying War: British women and domestic defilement in the Indian “Mutiny”, 1857–58,’ Journal of Historical Geography, Vol. 26, No. 3 (2000), pp. 403– 428. Narratives about the rape of English women by Indian men, in particular, cast a long shadow, recurring through the wave of British ‘Mutiny’ novels that appeared from 1857. As Nancy Paxton has shown, these narratives served both to legitimate colonial control (by insisting on the debased character and lawlessness of Indian men) and to ‘shore up traditional gender roles’ among Britons, assigning British women the role of victim while ‘mobiliz[ing] literary traditions about chivalry in service to the Raj’: N. Paxton, ‘Mobilizing Chivalry: rape in British novels about the Indian Uprising of 1857’, Victorian Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1 (1992), pp. 5–30. E.M. Satow, diary for 13 Sept. 1862, in R. Morton and I.C. Ruxton (eds.), The Diaries of Sir Ernest Mason Satow, 1861–1869 (Kyoto, 2013), p. 81. YAH: Willis corr., Vol 44/4, No. 81, W. Willis to G. Willis, 12 Sept. 1863. W.B. Rowbotham, ‘The Bombardment of Kagoshima, 15th August, 1863’, Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, Vol. 108 (1963), p. 278.

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stances. They occurred amidst a feeling – as widespread as it was vague – that Japan now stood at a crossroads, its future orientation and prospects teetering in the balance, ‘a lurid star of the first magnitude’.48 Two months before Namamugi, US Consul George Fisher was predicting for Yokohama future growth ‘not unlike what it has been in Canton and Shanghai … the time is not distant when this will be the greatest entrepot for the Empire, as Shanghai is rapidly becoming that for the Empire of China’.49 Critics of the Opium Wars still hoped that intercourse with Japan may yet flourish without repeating the bloody mistakes that marred Britain’s record in China.50 A few months later Hong Kong’s China Mail painted a bleaker picture, but was nonetheless moved by the sense of the moment: ‘to read certain pages of history…is pleasant and fascinating; but to see, as it were, before our eyes, history living and moving, is surely more interesting still…’.51 As historian Yokoyama Toshio has observed, the early 1860s did not merely witness a sea change in British depictions of Japan; because of its remoteness ‘Japan became a country which…authors felt free to use for any kind of argument’.52 Namamugi and Kagoshima further owed their prominence to a prevailing expectation they might involve Britain in a general war with Japan, perhaps even in occupation. That didn’t happen, of course, but it is easy to lose sight of just how high the stakes seemed at the time to statesmen, politicians and commentators who could not know the future. As the deadline to meet British demands drew near, the Peace Society thought Britain was set to embark ‘in all probability in a succession of ignoble and costly wars’. Richard Cobden agreed, fearing the likelihood of war to be far greater here 48

49 50

51 52

NCH, No. 625, 19 July 1862, p. 114, republished in: JH, No. 38, 9 Aug 1862. On the ground in Yokohama, a British engineer preparing the settlement’s defences sensed ‘the present [to be] the turning point of our position in Japan’: TNA: FO 46/40: F. Brine to Commander of Royal Engineers in China, 27 May 1863. NACP: Kanagawa Despatches (M135, roll 1): G. Fisher to W.H. Seward, 1 July 1862. ‘The State of Our Relations with Japan’, The Herald of Peace, No. 157, 1 July 1863, pp. 217–219. ‘Japan and the West’, OCM, 31 Jan. 1863. T. Yokoyama, Japan in the Victorian Mind: a study of stereotyped images of a nation, 1850– 1880 (Basingstoke, 1987), p. 87.

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than in China (‘where the people are not warlike’).53 Even those inclined to sneer at such ‘peace-mongers’ accepted that ‘a very short time ago, it seemed but too probable that we should have to continue our intercourse with the Japanese according to “the holy text of pike and gun”’.54 It would not be an easy undertaking. Kuper himself warned that victory in a wider conflict with Japan would require naval and land forces ‘on a much larger scale than any yet sent to China’.55 Frederick Harrison and Charles Cookson – both jurists troubled by British belligerence in the 1860s – feared that bombarding Kagoshima would prove insufficient, and that Britain would be dragged along a haphazard course of annexing territory and assuming protectorates across the Japanese archipelago.56 These warnings sound outlandish now, but they were not unfounded. During the eleven month interval between Namamugi and Kagoshima the Admiralty, consular officials and the merchant press raised a number of such possibilities. Initially, attention focused on the ‘Loochoo Islands’ – the Ryūkyū Kingdom (present Okinawa prefecture). Unofficial designs for greater imperial influence there had been floated since the 1840s.57 Now, as the British considered ways to put pressure on the Shimazu clan, the extent of Satsuma’s authority over the Islands was finally made plain, raising once more the question of some form of British intervention.58 For the Japan Herald, now was the time to eject Satsuma from Ryūkyū altogether, to oversee ‘the separation of Loochoo from Japan’, to 53

54

55 56

57

58

‘Memorial to Earl Russell’, The Herald of Peace, No. 164, 1 Sept. 1863, p. 251; R. Cobden to H. Grey, 3 June 1864, in A. Howe and S. Morgan (eds.), The Letters of Richard Cobden, 1860–65, (4 vols., Oxford, 2007–15), iv, pp. 517–518. ‘Editor’s Portfolio’, Colburn’s United Service Magazine and Naval and Military Journal (1864), i, pp. 273–274. TNA: ADM 1/5284, A. Kuper to Secretary to the Admiralty, 28 April 1863. F. Harrison, ‘The Destruction of Kagoshima’, The National Review, No. 35 (Jan., 1864), pp. 288–289; C.A. Cookson, ‘England and Japan’, in R. Congreve (ed.), International Policy: essays on the foreign relations of England (London, 1866), p. 460. R.S.G. Fletcher, ‘“Returning Kindness Received”? Missionaries, Empire and the Royal Navy in Okinawa, 1846–1857’, The English Historical Review, Vol. 125, No. 514 (June, 2010), pp. 599–641. TNA: FO 46/25, E. Neale to J. Russell, 28 Oct. 1862. Neale’s French counterpart, Duchesne de Bellecourt, was similarly alive to the potential implications of the Namamugi Incident for the Ryūkyū Islands: ADAE: CP 59 (Japon), Vol. 7, No. 199, Bellecourt to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Edo, 8 Oct. 1862.

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appoint a Resident to advise its King, and to make Naha ‘a free trade port’. The advantages to foreign trade were obvious and would radiate out across the North Pacific, just as Hong Kong had proved ‘the fulcrum on which the lever has rested which is opening up China’.59 Nor was this the only annexationist idea doing the rounds. Writing while on leave in London, Rutherford Alcock, British Minister Plenipotentiary in Japan, raised the idea of occupying Nagasaki. The consul at Nagasaki, Charles Winchester, proposed occupying an Inland Sea island, perhaps Awaji. The Admiralty, meanwhile, noted the advantages that would accrue from a tighter British hold over the Bonins.60 Nothing came of these visions, but they are important nonetheless. For a time, the Japanese archipelago held out the prospect – at least to some interested Britons – of potential points d’appui; its islands and its coastline a springboard for the further projection of British commerce and power. Together, these visions remind us of Japan’s place in wider discussions of British imperialism in maritime Asia. The bombardment of Kagoshima also mattered to contemporaries because it did not prove the one-sided affair that images of ‘gunboat diplomacy’ so often convey. The squadron was caught off guard when Satsuma’s batteries opened fire: it took two hours to form up into line of battle. Perseus was forced to slip her cable, Racehorse ran aground, while aboard Euryalus the doors to the magazine were found to have been blocked by carelessly stowed boxes. By the time the squadron was in position, a typhoon was raging in the bay, snapping spars, forcing ships out of line, and bringing on an early dusk that forced the squadron to suspend their bombardment until the following morning. Indeed, the entire engagement was characterised more by confusion than by the triumph of British arms; if it was indeed ‘a fair test of what foreign fleets can do, should the war become more general’, then the results were not encouraging. The British sustained sixty casualties, half in the flagship Euryalus (hulled ten times, her rigging and spars were ‘cut to pieces’), so that readers were troubled to learn of the deadly work done by Satsuma’s 59 60

JH, No. 45, 27 Sept. 1862, p. 179. Alcock, ‘Memorandum on Admiral Hope’s despatch’; TNA: FO 46/38, C. Winchester to J. Russell, 26 June 1863; TNA: FO 46/40, Admiralty to A.H. Layard, 29 July 1863.

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‘splendid artillerists’.61 The squadron had burned much of the castle town, but also departed without attempting a landing (let alone securing the arrest of Richardson’s assassins), so that some ashore could feel rightly pleased ‘that the English ships did not succeed in coming and that they were swept out and chased away…’.62 Willis thought Kagoshima ‘a sad affair in so far as many lives and some very valuable were lost’; Satow felt ‘we came away for the most part in a great state of discontent; nearly everyone wanted to go in again the next day, instead of leaving…’.63 The best that the Overland China Mail could say was that it was ‘wonderfully indecisive’, and it was precisely that indecision which now stoked debate in London about the whole course of action.64 The recriminations rumbled on even after Satsuma’s envoys had agreed to come to terms. Other countries’ newspapers, meanwhile, seized the opportunity to paint Britain as a bully and to decry ‘British barbarity’, much to the chagrin of Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, the future Lord Salisbury.65 All this was amplified by the heightened interest in foreign affairs that characterised British politics in the 1860s. The year of the Namamugi Incident had witnessed ‘an explosion of societies and publications devoted to international issues’; over the following two years Cobden remarked on how ‘nothing except foreign politics seems to occupy the attention of the people, Press or Parliament’.66 In such an atmosphere, and with Britain seemingly ‘in the thick of 61

62

63

64 65

66

‘The Japanese War’, The New York Times, 21 Nov. 1863, p. 2; OCM, 11 Sept. 1863. This was a considerable shock, for nineteenth-century Europeans habitually read the sophistication of technology, particularly military technology, as an index of a society’s level of ‘civilisation’. See: M. Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: science, technology, and ideologies of Western dominance (Ithaca, NY, 1989). Yokohamashi shi, Shiryō-hen (Yokohama, 1969), v, p. 102, cited in Hashimoto, ‘Collision at Namamugi’, p. 85. YAH: Willis corr., Vol 44/4, W. Willis to G. Willis, 12 Sept. 1863; Satow, diary for 13 Sept. 1862, in Morton and Ruxton, Diaries, p. 81. OCM, 15 Oct. 1863. R.A.T. Gascoyne-Cecil, ‘Foreign Policy of England’, Quarterly Review, Vol. 115 (Apr., 1864), pp. 481–529. For The New York Times ‘the burning and shelling of an unprepared Japanese city’ was ‘something sickening and horrible beyond expression’: ‘British Barbarity’, The New York Times, 24 Nov. 1863, p. 4. A. Howe, ‘Free trade and global order: the rise and fall of a Victorian vision’, in D. Bell (ed.), Victorian Visions of Global Order: empire and international relations in nineteenthcentury political thought  (Cambridge, 2007), p. 35; J.A. Hobson, Richard Cobden: the international man (London, 1918), p. 322.

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a policy which involves itself in the affairs of every state from Finland to Sicily, and from Japan to the Caspian’, the Richardson affair was taken up as a means to make broader attacks on the conduct of the Government.67 Parliament’s debate on Kagoshima occurred alongside narrow votes of censure against British military actions in southern Africa and New Zealand. It dynamized new voices critical of Britain’s role in the world, including the Positivists (Frederic Harrison considered it ‘a turning-point in our whole Eastern, one may say almost our whole foreign, policy’), so that Kagoshima played an important part in the development of a new, humanitarian critique of empire.68 It also marked the final round in that great antagonism between Palmerston, Cobden and their radically different conceptions of British power; both men died in 1865.69 In these circumstances, the details of the Richardson affair – a dead British merchant, the celebrated Tōkaidō, a fledgling foreign settlement, a Royal Navy squadron, a city aflame – became evocative symbols in a wider debate over the nature and direction of British expansion. The Namamugi incident seemed of a piece with recent naval activity in Brazil, so that ‘these two cases furnish fair specimens of the nature of English foreign policy towards the weakest powers’.70 It spoke to contemporary anxieties about renewed struggles in China. It was a gateway onto larger questions of political economy, non-intervention and free trade.71 It brought into sharp focus a thoroughly modern horror of man’s growing capacity to destroy lives by bombardment; it asked parliamentarians to trace ‘the line between what is and what is not permissible in war’.72 With 67

68

69

70 71

72

J. McCarthy, A History of Our Own Times: from the accession of Queen Victoria to the general election of 1880 (4 vols., London, 1882), iii, p. 208. G. Claeys, Imperial Sceptics: British critics of Empire, 1859–1920 (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 84–86. A. Howe, ‘Two Faces of British Power: Cobden versus Palmerston’, in D. Brown and M. Taylor (eds.), Palmerston Studies I and II (Southampton, 2007), pp. 168–192. Gascoyne-Cecil, ‘Foreign Policy’, p. 499. For example: G.S. Morrison, Our Position and Policy in Japan (Brighton, 1863), encl. in TNA: FO 46/38, G.S. Morrison to R. Alcock, 4 Dec. 1863. TNA: PRO 30/22/14D, C. Buxton to J. Russell, 29 Jan. 1864. After all, even Napoleon had spared Vienna, and had such a bombardment taken place in Europe ‘the tenth part of the destruction we have caused at Kagosima [sic] would be visited as a barbarous outrage’: Harrison, ‘Destruction of Kagoshima’, pp. 279–280.

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stakes like these, it is little wonder that every detail of the Richardson affair would be pored over and contested, much more so than most accounts of its after-effects acknowledge. The stage was set to replay Richardson’s death ad infinitum. For scholars of Britain and of Japan alike, it can be our window onto the discourses and dynamics of the age.

3

Anatomy of an ‘Outrage’, 1862–1864 Ž

For both britain and Japan, the 1860s were turbulent years in international affairs. Researchers working on the politics of the bakumatsu era have been drawn to the diversity, complexity and entanglement of its voices and opinions.1 Historians of the British Empire, too, are increasingly mindful of ‘the chaotic pluralism of private and sub-imperial interests’ that characterised mid-Victorian expansion.2 In the same way, understanding the fallout of the Namamugi incident also means getting away from explanations that prioritise interstate relations, or that speak of ‘British’ and ‘Japanese’ policy as if coherent and united positions existed at the time. Instead, the challenge is to explain how particular interests were able to achieve purchase over the course of Britain’s response to the Richardson affair, and to pay attention to its information milieu: the forms and means by which information from the periphery was gathered, processed and disseminated at home. To do this, we must recognise up front the motivating power of ideas (including the idea of ‘outrage’ itself), while tracing the actions of the groups that promoted them. The chaotic events of 14–15 September had demonstrated that there was no clear, axiomatic way to respond to Richardson’s death. Instead, a reaction favouring armed intervention would have to be built, and a particular image of Richardson propagated for the purpose. Compared with their counterparts at Shanghai or Canton, the British merchants of Yokohama held less sway in London. But there 1 2

For example: Totman, Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu. Darwin, ‘Imperialism and the Victorians’.

48

ANATOMY OF AN ‘OUTRAGE’, 1862-1864

49

lay an advantage in their relative isolation, too. For much of the 1860s, British policy towards Japan was relayed through a persistent fog of confusion. Officials admitted struggling to understand Japanese factions, distinguish Japanese personalities and make sense of a tumultuous political environment. They openly despaired of ‘the great difficulty of obtaining any reliable information in this country’.3 Bakufu politics, glimpsed through fleeting images and inferences, left even seasoned observers feeling adrift: ‘so tangled is Japanese policy’, the American Francis Hall confided in his diary, ‘that no one dare affirm that he understands it’.4 Even Rutherford Alcock confessed as much: After a three years residence [in Japan], during which my whole time and thoughts were devoted to the one object of obtaining reliable information on the Government, state of parties and political condition of the people, I feel still embarrassed and perplexed with doubts on some of the most vital points.5

Indeed, it was only over the course of handling the Richardson affair itself that fundamental questions about the shogunate’s authority were finally clarified for British policymakers and reading publics.6 Such enduring confusion about Japan had long exasperated the Yokohama merchants. Now, it presented them with a chance to 3

4 5

6

TNA: FO 46/40, Neale to Major-General Brown, 12 May 1863. Britain’s military officials were no better informed. ‘The total absence of reliable information as to what is taking place amongst the rival princes in the interior of Japan renders it very difficult to form an opinion as to our future position in this country…’: TNA: FO 46/40, A. Kuper to Admiralty, 13 July 1863. For similar complaints by France’s Minister in Yokohama, see: ADAE: CP 59 (Japon), Vol. 6, No. 161, Bellecourt to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 11 June 1862. F. Hall, diary for 25 June 1863, in Notehelfer, Japan through American Eyes, p. 490. TNA: FO 46/37, R. Alcock, ‘Memorandum on Japanese Affairs’, 15 Dec. 1863. It was in recognition of this that before Alcock agreed to return to Yokohama, he demanded an increased budget for gathering political information, better student interpreters (reliance on Dutch as a lingua franca greatly added to the potential for mistranslation), and an improvement to ‘tardy’ and ‘uncertain’ mail services. ‘The patience with which this negotiation has been pursued has been of the most essential importance and value in adding immensely to our knowledge of the working of the Japanese system’, wrote Britain’s consul in Nagasaki. ‘A sudden bombardment might have given us the entirety of our demands but we should have known nothing of the extraordinary system which has been so strangely developed to us’: TNA: FO 46/38, C. Winchester, letter from Kanagawa, 26 June 1863.

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influence events. They lost no time in getting their side of the story into print. …

Subtly different interpretations of what had transpired on the Tōkaidō had circulated from the outset, in settlement rumours, the survivors’ witness statements and the columns of the treaty port press. But from November 1862, when word of the incident arrived in London, to March 1864, when the Commons debated a motion of censure on the navy’s conduct at Kagoshima, Richardson’s death was restaged in print to suit a multiplicity of positions and arguments. A vast range of opinions on British conduct in East Asia now latched on to the person of the unfortunate Mr Richardson. In the pamphlet war that ensued, Richardson’s character mattered, for it was thought to offer clues into what may have happened at Namamugi; even Palmerston’s government recognised that for every respectable merchant house there were a ‘host of little traders’ whose ‘preposterous pretentions’ were an unseemly, unwelcome liability.7 This was why, with the outcome of Russell’s instructions to Yokohama still unknown, some merchants felt compelled to write to the Foreign Secretary and defend ‘the character of the persons who have gone to Japan’.8 If the advocates of intervention were to build a convincing case, it would need to be on behalf of a man above reproach. The first full issue of the Herald since the attack obliged, offering readers a sketch of this ‘fine and manly specimen of a young Englishman’. Richardson’s ‘excellent qualities both of head and heart, with his gentle manner and chivalrous disposition, were concealed 7

8

Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, HC Deb 9 February 1864, vol. 173, cols 394–395. In this respect, contemporary reactions to the Richardson incident can be usefully compared with that at Qingpu in 1848, when a number of foreigners were assaulted by Chinese boatmen while distributing Christian tracts, and were fortunate to escape. ‘I attribute much’, wrote Alcock from Shanghai, ‘to the rare example of Christian forbearance and temper which seems to have marked the conduct of these missionaries from the first to the last. This, added to the power they fortunately possessed from fluency in the language…seems to have been the means of their preservation’: TNA: FO 228/89, R. Alcock to J.F. Davis, No. 19, 10 Mar. 1848. TNA: FO 46/40, J. Hughes to J. Russell, 11 July 1863.

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under a quiet exterior’. Where others may have been quick to anger ‘he preferred the more godlike [temper] of forgiving and forgetting’. Only a few days before his death he had been telling a friend – sadly unnamed – ‘that it was a great satisfaction to him to think that he had left Shanghai without leaving a single disagreeable reminiscence with any member of the community’.9 It is hard to know how wellknown Richardson really was in the Yokohama settlement. He had not been there long, but the foreign community was not large, and some do seem to have remembered him fondly from their earlier, Shanghai days. Either way, here was a picture of a young man of unimpeachable character; Charles Richardson senior kept a handwritten copy of this passage in his effects.10 On that fateful day, the story went, Richardson had behaved with characteristic sensitivity, innocence and chivalry. Some accounts stressed that he had been struck while attempting to protect Margaret Borradaile from harm. William Marshall’s inquest testimony was particularly important in absolving the foreigners of any blame in the incident. ‘We did not go faster than a walking pace for a least a quarter of a mile before we came up to the procession’, Marshall said. He stressed their mindfulness of their surroundings: ‘we neither spoke, nor made gestures, nor did anything else whatever to give offence’. When Richardson found the way ahead barred, he reportedly turned in his saddle … looked back, and said, ‘We are stopped’. Clarke said, ‘Don’t go on, we can turn into a side road.’ I said, ‘For God’s sake, let us have no row’. Our horses were quietly being turned around when … [Richardson was struck].11

Marshall’s was the only account to report these exact words, but the emphasis on Richardson’s innocence was near ubiquitous. Richardson had had every right to be on the road: they were still four miles from treaty limits. A Japanese interpreter for the customs-house 9 10 11

JH, No. 44, 20 Sept 1862, p. 173. MW: miscellaneous papers: private letters of condolence. TNA: FO 410/6, ‘Minutes of Evidence touching the Death of Mr C.L. Richardson, taken before Consul Vyse and a Coroner’s Jury’, 15 Sept. 1862, encl. in: E. Neale to J. Russell, 16 Sept. 1862.

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whom they had passed had made no indication of ‘any impropriety or supposed danger’ in their continuing on the road.12 The party had been peaceable and unarmed, and had made every effort to avoid conflict. Vyse described them riding ‘two and two, keeping close to the left hand side of the road’ and ‘immediately turn[ing] back’ at the moment they were stopped.13 Bellecourt concurred. So, too, did his American counterpart George Fisher: ‘in regard to the causes or reasons for this barbarous assassination’, he told Washington, ‘I am at some loss what to say’.14 Fisher did, however, later find the words, for he had ‘strongly suspected’ Richardson’s party of having ‘acted hastily, if not imprudently and given offence to the Japanese officials and guards’ in ‘some way … impossible to ascertain’ at the time. He later believed Richardson to have been a ‘hasty’ and ‘impudent’ man.15 As the debate over Kagoshima picked up steam, and others raised similar doubts (parliamentary criticism of the government’s Japan policy contained ‘a considerable item of invective against the British Residents here’), a number of voices came forward to insist on Richardson’s good character. In the process, he became a kind of avatar for the whole merchant community. To defend his name was to try and improve the reputation of the British in Yokohama.16 To question his behaviour, meanwhile, was ‘to slander both the dead and the living’; it was the conduct of those who declared themselves ‘the patron of all that is not of their own nation’, and who sought to ‘excuse every outrage committed upon their own countrymen’.17 If Richardson was blameless in this version of events, then Hisamitsu was a cruel wretch. His name remained ‘a byword among 12 13 14 15 16

17

JH, No. 44, 20 Sept. 1862, p. 174; Adams, History of Japan, p. 191. FO 410/6, F.H. Vyse to E. Neale, 15 Sept. 1862, encl. in: Neale to Russell, 16 Sept 1862. NACP: Kanagawa Despatches (M135, roll 1): G. Fisher to W.H. Seward, 18 Sept. 1862. Ibid., G. Fisher to W.H. Seward, 22 Sept. 1862. The foreign residents of Yokohama seem to have been particularly sensitive to public criticism; the artist Charles Wirgman, of the Illustrated London News and, from 1862, Japan Punch, was assaulted for some of his caricatures: CM, 20 Nov. 1862. His response, naturally, was to lampoon the incident (pl. 9). TNA: FO 46/41, J.B. White to the editor of The Times, 5 Nov. 1863, encl. in Borradaile to J. Russell, 6 Nov. 1863; TNA: FO 46/41, G.S. Morrison, Our Position and Policy in Japan (Brighton, 1863), encl. in G.S. Morrison to E. Hammond, 7 December 1863.

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foreigners’ for years. Whenever it appeared in the Herald (which, given Satsuma’s rising national prominence, was often) it was as ‘the old villain’ or ‘the unscrupulous, ambitious murderer’; the man behind a crime so foul ‘that the meanest coward in Europe would have scorned to commit’.18 Such accounts were also the most likely to stress the ‘mutilation’ of Richardson’s body. This went beyond the grisly lists of wounds – ‘both arms severed, the bowels opened, two wounds on the shoulder, and the head half severed from the body’ – that accompanied official reports.19 Instead, Richardson’s cadaver was scrutinised for evidence of how and when each wound had been made, so that his remains gave final witness to Shimazu Hisamitsu’s cowardly malice. Two weeks after the murder, Howard Vyse revisited Namamugi to investigate rumours that Richardson had been attacked again as he lay wounded at the roadside. His evidence of how the dying man had been ‘hacked’ made for gruesome reading, and was widely reported.20 For some it made this not a murder, but a ‘Butchery’ worthy of ‘North American Indians’, whereby the Japanese had forfeit any right to be considered ‘civilized’.21 As Hashimoto Mitsuru has argued, it seems likely that the foreigners’ indignation on this point stemmed from a misunderstanding of the retainers’ actions: in ‘hacking’ at poor Richardson, Hisamitsu’s samurai had sought to end the suffering of a mortally wounded man.22 To British audiences in the treaty ports and at home, it merely confirmed the ‘barbarity’ of Japan’s overmighty nobles. With the foreign party innocent of all provocation, contemporaries put forward theories to establish Hisamitsu’s murderous intent. Some believed that he had set out from Edo ‘smarting’ at his treatment by the Shogun ‘and ready to take advantage of any oppor18

19

20

21 22

JH, No. 49, 25 Oct. 1862; JH, No. 51, 8 Nov. 1862; JH, No. 44, 20 Sept. 1862, p. 173. John Reddie Black expressed some remorse for this pattern of vilification in later years, and sought to provide a more balanced estimation of his character: Black, Young Japan, pp. 99–101. TNA: ADM 1/5790, J. Montgomerie to A. Kuper, 15 Sept. 1862, encl. in A. Kuper to J. Neale, 15 Sept. 1862. Adams, History of Japan, pp. 194–195. The New York Times was one of many publications to describe how ‘the ruffians had attacked [Richardson] a second time, and mutilated him in the most dreadful manner’: ‘Affairs in Japan’, The New York Times, 12 Jan. 1863, p. 2. ‘The Late Murder’, Japan Express, Vol. 1, No. 18, 20 Sept. 1862. Hashimoto, ‘Collision at Namamugi’.

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tunity … for gratifying his desire of vengeance upon the bakufu’.23 Others chased down rumours that he had made an overt threat to assault foreigners on the high road.24 A third explanation sought to pin this violent outburst on his petulant irritability: rumour had it that Hisamitsu had wished to return to Kagoshima aboard his own steamer, but had resented being ordered to take the long and customary overland route home.25 At the inquest, where Dr Willis performed the autopsy, the jurors did not dwell on such motivations: they found Richardson to have been ‘feloniously, wilfully and of malice aforethought’ killed by ‘certain Japanese’ unknown.26 In his diary, however, Willis clearly held Hisamitsu responsible, pouring scorn on the ‘absurd conceit and pride’ with which men of his rank ‘look down upon foreigners in the light you would look upon dogs’. It was ‘a great pity and mistake’, he wrote after witnessing the bombardment of Kagoshima, that ‘we did not teach Satsuma and his followers a far more severe lesson’.27 …

Immediately after the funeral, Yokohama’s foreign merchants assembled and approved a motion from the Jardines agent Samuel Gower (who days before had been urging Vyse to do more to defend British trade) to issue an extra to the Japan Herald carrying their collective written statement, and to get this into circulation along the China coast.28 O.R. Keele, Hansard’s partner at the helm of the Herald, was also at the meeting, and was happy to oblige. As its historian, Todd Munson, has written, the Yokohama foreign commu23 24 25

26

27 28

Adams, History of Japan, p. 190. Black, Young Japan, p. 125. TNA: FO 46/41, White to the editor of The Times. See further: n 161 on letter CLR: 29 June 1862, below. TNA: FO 410/6, ‘Minutes of Evidence touching the Death of Mr C.L. Richardson, taken before Consul Vyse and a Coroner’s Jury’, 15 Sept. 1862, encl. in: Neale to Russell, 16 Sept. 1862; YAH: Willis corr., Vol 44/5, No. 93, W. Willis to G. Willis, 16 Jan. 1864. TNA: FO 410/6, ‘Minutes of a meeting of the merchants resident in Yokohama, held September 15, 1862’, encl. in Neale to Russell, 21 Sept. 1862; S.J. Gower to F.H. Vyse, 5 Sept. 1852., cited in G. Fox, Britain and Japan, 1858–1883 (Oxford, 1969), pp. 100– 101.

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nity ‘arrogated to itself an unprecedented degree of press freedom in the 1860s, making it perhaps the most open and eclectic publishing locale in Asia’.29 Many individual merchants had experience in writing copy for newspapers back home, but as a body the instinct to prepare pamphlets, articles and correspondence formed a significant part of their immediate response to the crisis. Members of the delegation – Bell, Bailey and Gower – now wrote to the Herald to reiterate how incensed Neale had been that the guard had set off without him. For his part, Neale attempted to quash the stubborn rumour that he had twice ordered its recall.30 On the 16th, the delegation wrote a short preface to their statement for the attention of the Foreign Secretary, explaining to him why Neale’s inaction had made the ‘unusual step’ of preparing a statement necessary, and urging upon him ‘the general opinion amongst the foreign officials and naval authorities, as well as the mercantile community … [that] a severe lesson inflicted on the spot would have been the best means of preventing a recurrence of a similar crime’. (‘Directly opposed to the facts’, Neale added in the margin.)31 A few days later, the Japan Express – a hand-written sheet printed off woodblocks by the American merchant, Raphael Schoyer – made one of its few surviving forays into print. Setting aside its usual rivalry with the Herald, it defended the ‘great forbearance and singular fairness’ of the foreign delegation, and shared in the indignation of the hour: ‘What course will England pursue?’ is on the mind of every one. England has but one course open to her … Punish the Daimios whose retainers have spilled English Blood. They are known!!!, and can be reached.32 29 30

31

32

Munson, Periodical Press, pp. 3–4. ADAE: CP 59 (Japon), Vol. 7, No. 193, Bellecourt to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 20 Sept. 1862, f. 96. TNA: FO 410/6, F.H. Bell, M.B. Bailey and S.J. Gower to J. Russell, 16 Sept. 1862, encl. in Neale to Russell, 21 Sept. 1862. ‘The Late Murder’, Japan Express, Vol. I, No. 18 (20 September, 1862). This issue of the Japan Express, which I found tucked inside the French Minister’s despatches to Paris, would seem to be unknown to a leading historian of the Yokohama periodical press, who states that issues dated 5 July 1862 and ‘Monday June 15’ (no year) are the only two in existence: Munson, Periodical Press, p. 77.

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Across 1863 the Herald – the leading voice for the concerns of the foreign community – kept Richardson’s name alive, pushing for a showdown and making the idea of armed intervention ever more conceivable.33 It anxiously monitored how the issue played out in the home and China press. In Shanghai the ‘feeling’ the case aroused was ‘naturally…very strong, for Richardson had a very wide circle of acquaintances and was most deservedly popular and beloved here’. One thunderer in the North China Herald emphatically backed the use of force so that ‘the proudest and most powerful nation of the world shall be avenged for the massacre of her sons’.34 By the late summer, the Japan Herald reflected with pride on the attention that Japan’s foreign community now received in the British press – even if it still had cause to resent the tone of some of the coverage.35 Central to this message was an image of Richardson as a martyr for the cause of free trade. This was vital to the merchants’ bid to conflate Britain’s response to Richardson’s death with their own demands for ever greater commercial access. These were evocative symbols to deploy in the 1860s in Britain, where a vague awareness of the persecution of Christians and of the exclusion of foreigners made up much of what was known of Japan, and where the ideology of Free Trade ran at its peak. By the start of 1863 the Yokohama merchants had become adept at equating their restlessness with the march of progress – ‘one cannot help feeling at times’, wrote Francis Hall, ‘…that the fate of the Portuguese in the seventeenth century threatens us’ – while depicting Neale and other officials as a brake on deeper access.36 Crucially, the habit of connecting Richardson’s murder with the survival of foreign trade with Japan had 33 34

35 36

An idea which, as we have seen, had been raised even before Richardson’s death. MW: miscellaneous papers, manuscript letter from Shanghai on the death funeral of Charles Lenox Richardson [n.d. 1862]; NCH, No. 669, 23 May 1863, p. 82. JH, No. 83, 26 Sept. 1863, p. 99. F. Hall, diary for 1 June 1863, in Notehelfer, Japan through American Eyes, p. 480. This was all of a piece with the tendency of the merchant press to exaggerate the impact of external actors on the politics of a ‘static’, timeless Japan. Recent historians, instead, have stressed the dynamism and significance of internal changes in the East Asian region: T. Hamashita, ‘Tribute and Treaties: maritime Asia and treaty port networks in the era of negotiation, 1800–1900’, in G. Arrighi, T. Hamashita and M. Selden (eds), The resurgence of East Asia (London, 2003), pp. 17–47.

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become widespread. The Overland China Mail, for instance, keenly awaited London’s response to the murder, for ‘by [this] decision … will undoubtedly be determined the next position to be occupied by foreigners in the country’.37 The Japan Herald had long since become accustomed to reading violence against foreigners in this way, sifting each new ‘assassination’ for evidence of its wider ‘character’, and investing individual cadavers with lesser or greater consequence.38 The Richardson affair was no exception, and was instantly read in terms of a premeditated campaign to grind the commercial treaties out of existence: The state of things at which we have arrived, and of which the late savagery may be called the culminating point … is one … which calls loudly for some determined steady line of action … Step by step we have retreated from our position and the spot that yesterday was occupied by our feet is to-day in the possession of the enemy who are again pressing us for concessions. And what in the meantime is the state of the country? Ask any man or woman … In two years they tell you Foreigners are to be swept from the soil.39

The following week, to drive the point home, the Herald compiled a comprehensive list of all the attacks on foreigners since the opening of Yokohama. Its conclusion was unambiguous: it now fell to the British Government to see that those, like Richardson, who had ‘responded to the call’ and ‘come here as “pioneers of trade and civilization”’ should not be abandoned to assassination ‘or driven out by threats until our trade is annihilated and our prestige destroyed’.40 Framing Richardson’s murder in this way greatly increased its impact in Britain. It created a simple framework through which those with no knowledge of Japan could imagine the stakes and empathise with the merchants; as Britain’s Foreign Secretary put it neatly, if crudely, the Japanese ‘appear from a distance to be divided into free traders and protectionist parties, as we have 37 38

39 40

OCM, 1 Jan. 1863. See, for example, its discussion of ‘the murderous assault at HBM’s legation’: JH, No. 32, 28 June 1862. JH, No. 44, 20 Sept. 1862. JH, No. 45, 27 Sept. 1862, p. 178.

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been at home’.41 It helped to overcome more positive impressions of Japan and the prospects of trade there, either emanating from more optimistic voices (such as the US Consul, George Fisher) or belonging to an earlier wave of Japan literature in Britain.42 It also added a raw urgency to themes long favoured by the Japan Herald. Two weeks before the murder, a correspondent going by the nom de plume ‘Opening Wedge’ had again despaired of London’s decision to delay the opening of Osaka (pl. 8). The Japanese authorities ‘have outwitted us’, he wrote, ‘and…we shall not be further into the interior than we now are’.43 Over the following months editorials drew knowingly on this spatial imaginary of ‘confinement’ to the coast – that powerful motif of the Opium Wars. It was particularly effective, with British influence, commerce and civilisation being ‘imprisoned’ within ‘narrow’ and ‘vulnerable’ enclaves. Even those hostile to the merchants’ demands found themselves using this language.44 As Hong Kong’s China Mail put it in January 1863, ‘it is only too well known that our liberties and privileges in Japan have been gradually curtailed, until they have reached those narrow limits by which we are virtually confined to a spot of earth …’.45 Much of this writing bordered on the hysterical, but we should recognise that the merchants’ fears were not wholly unfounded: blunting the

41 42

43

44 45

TNA: PRO 30/22/101, J. Russell to R. Alcock, 26 Apr. 1861. As Yokoyama Toshio observes, the number of pieces in British periodicals advocating a moderate or ‘polite’ line with Japan fell away sharply in 1863: Yokoyama, Japan in the Victorian Mind, p. 85. Between Richardson’s death and the attack on the Wyoming at Shimonoseki, Fisher was at pains to differentiate himself from the more belligerent responses of the other foreign powers. When in November 1862 the Japanese authorities offered assistance to shipwrecked American mariners, Fisher interpreted this as ‘undeniable attestation of their intention to fulfil every Treaty obligation at least with us … [and] another evidence of their aim to become co-equal with the other civilized Powers and to be ranked as no longer exclusive or barbarian’. NACP: Kanagawa Despatches (M135, roll 1): G. Fisher to W.H. Seward, 13 Dec. 1862. JH, No. 41, 30 Aug. 1862, p. 161. Todd Munson has suggested that ‘Opening Wedge’ was, in all likelihood, the American Eugene Van Reed (d. 1873). An agent for the US firm Augustine, Heard and Company, an early trader with Echizen and Satsuma domains, and a consistent advocate of opening Edo to foreigners, Van Reed later founded the commercial newspaper Yokohama Shinpō Moshiogusa: Munson, Periodical Press. R. Cobden, letter of 7 November 1863; cited in Hobson, Richard Cobden, pp. 315–7. CM, No. 937, 29 Jan. 1863, p. 18.

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implementation of the commercial treaties was indeed a central part of the bakufu’s political strategy.46 In the absence of coherent political information on Japan, the importance of imagined geographies of the country grew. For those tasked with weighing the rights and wrongs of possible intervention, a number of sets of images and impressions seem to have really cut through, formed in the treaty port press and later echoed in British periodicals and official and private papers. One was of the high road, the Tōkaidō; not as an artery for greater Western commerce or influence (foreign residents really only used it for exercise) but as a gauntlet for national prestige. Studies of the origins of the first Opium War have stressed the importance of issues of dignity, honour and pride in understanding the escalation towards war; that for the Cabinet, for whom China was just one problem among many, the issues that stood out most were ‘honour, and the consequences of failing to maintain it; insult, and the consequences of failing to redress it’.47 In Japan in the early 1860s, these issues were intimately bound up with the idea of The Road; as an imagined space associated with questions of access, status and dignity, it fast assumed a talismanic quality. John Reddie Black, the influential editor of the Japan Herald from 1864, recalled the emotive power of ‘the far-famed Tokaido’ in the eyes of foreign residents. Exploring the high road ‘was something to talk about as a kind of feat of daring’, Black remembered, ‘deserving of being described to all one’s friends as something very heroic and wonderful’.48 Accounts of trips and of incidents on the road filled the pages of the settlement press and featured often in consular despatches. It was by making use of the road that the merchant community contrasted their position with that of the shameful confinement of the Dutch at Dejima (an association policy-makers in London always sought to avoid). To step out onto the high road was to do more than to exercise treaty rights. It was virtually a performance of the com46

47 48

M.R. Auslin, Negotiating with Imperialism: the unequal treaties and the culture of Japanese diplomacy (Cambridge, MA, 2004). Bickers, Scramble for China, p. 81; Melancon, Britain’s China Policy. Black, Young Japan, p. 240. A similar frisson accompanied excursions into the countryside around Shanghai before the Treaty of Tianjin: TNA: FO 228/90, R. Alcock to G. Bonham, No. 57, 23 May 1848.

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mercial treaties, with parties insisting on their right to roam freely within treaty limits, relating their near-misses with daimyō processions and samurai retainers, and loudly demanding an extension of the range of excursions permitted. It was unfortunate, then, that the use of the high road meant just as much to Japanese, for whom the movements of daimyō in particular were bound up with etiquette and custom, and practices of deference and power (pl. 10).49 By the time of the Namamugi incident, foreigners’ use of the Tōkaidō had become a portentous symbol of status, an activity so charged with potential for insult and slight that it was bound to generate conflict sooner or later. Foreign residents bristled at the authorities’ requests to avoid the high road whenever daimyō processions were passing: it would prove the thin end of the wedge, they said; ‘it is ever thus when yielding one foot to an Eastern Nation’.50 In the weeks and months following Richardson’s death they continued to defiantly set out along the high road to, in the Herald’s words, ‘exercise our liberty’.51 Officials despaired of this pattern of behaviour. ‘Neither the notifications from time to time issued…under my instructions’, wrote Neale, ‘nor the knowledge of passed or occurring incidents appear to deter them from frequenting [the high road] for their recreation’.52 At Nagasaki, British consul Charles Winchester was equally at pains to convince foreign residents that ‘the position of a place within the treaty limit does not justify private individuals in incurring unnecessary peril in resorting to it’.53 Yet throughout this period, country roads in the hinterland of the Japanese treaty ports continued to provide a near constant 49

50 51 52 53

Hashimoto, ‘Collision at Namamugi’. Satsuma’s justification of his actions that day, delivered to Neale at Kagoshima, reveal the symbolism of the Tōkaidō in Japanese eyes: ‘We have heard something about … a certain limit [being] assigned to foreigners to move about in; but we have not heard of any stipulation by which they are authorised to impede the passage of a road. Supposing this happened in your country… would you not chastise any one thus disregarding and breaking the existing laws of the country? If this were neglected, princes could no longer travel…’: Kawakami Tajima to E. Neale, 13 Aug. 1863, encl. in E. Neale to J. Russell, 26 Aug. 1863. JH, No. 44, 20 Sept. 1862, p. 173. JH, No. 55, 6 Dec. 1862, p. 219. TNA: FO 46/25, E. Neale to J. Russell, 3 Dec. 1862. TNA: FO 46/38, copy of notice by C. Winchester, 1 Aug, 1863. See also: TNA: FO 46/38, G. Morrison, notice to the British community at Nagasaki, 11 May 1863.

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source of trouble, including Mr A.H. Yule’s tense encounter outside Yokohama, the assault on midshipman Michaelson behind Nagasaki, and Mr P.B. Walsh’s run-in with Mito retainers.54 Neale’s repeated attempts to discourage these excursions, and his apparent willingness to work with the Japanese authorities on this matter were among the foremost complaints lodged against him. His warnings might have seemed prudent ‘to those of our readers at a distance’, wrote the Herald. But ‘persons on the spot’ saw things very differently, and they worked hard to convey their indignation to those outside Japan. To agree to stay off the road was ‘tacitly to justify the late murder’, and as such … it is not a question of yesterday which is involved … A feeling is abroad amongst the Community that we have our backs to the sea, and that, standing as we do on the brink, with any further concessions, with yielding another foot, we are driven over.55

Neale’s instructions to avoid the high road confirmed his weaknesses in merchant eyes; they brought scenes from the night of 14–15 September flashing back into their collective memory. Worse, they reopened the painful rift with his Yokohama consul, Howard Vyse. When Mr Yule, a Yokohama clerk, was obstructed on the Tōkaidō in October 1862, Vyse pressed Neale hard to treat this as ‘a serious aggression upon the right of a British subject’ and to take immediate and firm action. Neale refused, complaining to London of the ‘much unreasonable obloquy’ he again received from the mercantile community, and accusing Vyse of pursuing ‘a factious opposition’. He told Vyse in no uncertain terms that he considered his actions both a personal affront and ‘obstructive to the interests of the public service’.56 By the time London came to consider the Richardson affair, the high road had become an imagined space where merchants’ pri54

55 56

TNA: FO 46/25, E. Neale to J. Russell, 9 Nov. 1862; F. Hall, diary for 29 May 1863, in Notehelfer, Japan through American Eyes, p. 479; TNA: FO 46/37, F.G. Myburgh to E. Neale, 10 Oct. 1863. JH, No. 48, 18 Oct. 1862, p. 190. TNA: FO 46/25, F.H. Vyse to E. Neale, 22 Oct. 1862; E. Neale to F.H. Vyse, 3 Nov. 1862; both encl. in E. Neale to J. Russell, 9 Nov. 1862.

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vate activities and broader issues of national honour intertwined. To see this, officials need not have looked further than the reports of Britain’s most experienced diplomat in Japan, Rutherford Alcock. Informing the Foreign Secretary of a rare trip to Kyushu, Alcock had described a tense moment when his party were elbowed aside by an ‘insolent’ official on the road. ‘They who show any willingness to yield’, Alcock crowed, ‘must be content to be pushed into the gutter’ – was it not ever thus in the East? Yet it remained an open question ‘whether these same overbearing gentry…are as ready to fight on equal terms as they are to quarrel when they think they are the strongest…’.57 The lesson was not simply that a death like Charles Richardson’s was intimately connected to the state of British prestige. It was also that there might just be grounds to believe that behind the demonstrations of Japanese strength and power lay ‘so much pretension and bluster’. Perhaps the time had come to call that bluff. …

News of Richardson’s death reached England in late November 1862, and Lord John Russell sent off his instructions to Neale a month later, on Christmas Eve. They made it clear that Neale was to call on Admiral Kuper and the power of the Royal Navy if Britain’s demands for an apology, reparations, and the trial and execution of the ‘chief perpetrators’ were not promptly met. These instructions were the work of a very small group of individuals in the cabinet – particularly the Foreign Secretary, the Prime Minister, and Edward Seymour, First Lord of the Admiralty – and the surviving written record offers only a partial view of their deliberations and reasoning. Nonetheless, a critical reading of this material – alongside private correspondence and press reactions to the murder – offers an insight into how Richardson’s death was understood by the British government, and why the decision to approve the use of force was made. In part, those advocating armed intervention at Yokohama were lucky that Rutherford Alcock happened to be in London when the 57

Extract from a letter from R. Alcock to J. Russell, 10 July 1861, reproduced in JH, No. 32, 28 June 1862.

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news of Richardson’s death came in. He had stayed on for medical reasons, and throughout this period complained of ‘ill health, restless nights, want of appetite’ and a ‘general depression of the nervous system’ that sapped his ‘mental energy’ but not, it would seem, his belligerence.58 Through Alcock, the ‘tyranny of distance’ that had so often kept Japan out of mind in London was suddenly (if temporarily) bridged; and while he was normally no friend of the Yokohama merchants, on this occasion he was on hand to share their indignation, echo their views of the wider interests at stake, and to meet personally with Russell and make the case for a forceful response. Russell had sought Alcock’s counsel before, including earlier that year while negotiating the London Protocols.59 Now, his recommendations would be important in overturning the concerns others felt about risking an armed intervention in Japan. At this time, Alcock was also completing his influential account of Three Years’ Residence at the Capital of the Tycoon which, on its publication in February 1863, became the new ‘standard’ work in English on Japan. It painted a much darker picture of the country and of conditions there, dwelling in ‘graphic’ detail on assassinations, political factionalism, earthquakes and rural poverty. As Yokoyama Toshio has shown, this was a self-consciously revisionist work, offering ‘a contrast to the pleasant and amusing account’ furnished by the likes of Laurence Oliphant’s Narrative of the Earl of Elgin’s Mission to China and Japan (1860).60 Instead, it identified a ‘systematic and persistent policy of isolation and restriction in regard to all foreigners in the country’, and argued that until this cordon sanitaire was smashed ‘no permanent or sure progress can well be made’.61 Its tone is indicative of the way in which Britain’s first Consul-General to Japan would now interpret the events of 14–15 September to the Foreign Secretary. ‘Anyone reading [the book]’, thought John Reddie Black, ‘must admit that [Alcock] makes out a strong case for very much more vigorous action than he ever took’.62 58 59 60

61 62

TNA: FO 46/25, R. Alcock to J. Russell, 15 Dec. 1862. TNA: FO 46/20, Foreign Office to C. Winchester, No. 4, 9 June 1862. Yokoyama, Japan in the Victorian Mind, pp. 66–71; R. Alcock, The Capital of the Tycoon: a narrative of a three years’ residence in Japan (2 vols., London, 1863), i, p. xiv. Alcock, Capital of the Tycoon, i, pp. 327–8. Black, Young Japan, p. 96.

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Alcock was in the middle of preparing a long memorandum on the state of British relations with Japan ‘when the telegram arrived announcing another deed of blood perpetrated on the high road to Yeddo’. He offered Russell his thoughts immediately.63 Richardson’s murder was ‘of a character more openly defiant’ than any which had come before, and called ‘for a corresponding energy in the demand for justice and redress’. ‘There is a contagion in such examples’, he warned. Coming as it did so soon after the London Protocols, it would not fail to embolden those intent on ‘pen[ning] us up as the Dutch of old, in one or more [Dejimas]’. Voices of caution from the navy, including Admiral James Hope of the China station, would have to be made to see that circumstances had changed: Britain now faced nothing less than ‘a system of intimidation and assassination’. There was no time to wait for the other Treaty Powers to agree a concerted plan of action. Redress must be sought from the bakufu and from Satsuma alike, through violence and alone if necessary. Only this could prevent a slide towards a general war on the one hand, or the total withdrawal of the British presence on the other. Astonishingly, Alcock was adamant about this even as he admitted the incompleteness of his understanding. ‘I have one very strong conviction rising clear above all doubts and perplexities’, he concluded, ‘and that is the imperative necessity for decisive action’. He continued to press Russell for such a move throughout his remaining months in England, sometimes by sending in further notes to the Foreign Office, sometimes by calling on Russell in person.64 In the cold light of day, Britons could recognise their own capacity to be swayed by the force of emotion in these matters. Past episodes of tension and violence in East Asia had made plain how ‘the country…as a body, do not examine minutely the real facts of the case, and in forming a decision…are greatly influenced by the melancholy slaughter of our countrymen…’.65 In this case, too, the power of ‘outrage’ over public opinion would later come up for 63

64

65

The evidence in this paragraph is drawn from: TNA: FO 46/25, R. Alcock to J. Russell, 29 Nov. 1862. See, for example: TNA: FO 46/37, R. Alcock to J. Russell, 5 Nov. 1863; TNA: FO 46/37, R. Alcock to E. Hammond, 14 Nov. 1863. ‘The Peiho Echo’, The London and China Telegraph, 26 Mar. 1860.

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scrutiny, but for now the claims of honour, dignity and pride were given full rein. From Yokohama, Dr Willis lamented the ‘lost prestige’ that stemmed from Neale’s cautious response. The samurai ‘hold Foreigners cheap indeed’, he wrote, an attitude ‘doubtless’ fostered by their long contact with the Dutch, and which Britain had now been given a chance to set right.66 Such reactions to the Richardson affair were amply reflected in its treatment by the British press that winter. The Times reproduced much of the account from the Japan Herald verbatim, including its unflattering descriptions of Neale’s conduct. The London Review offered a precis of the Herald’s story that stressed Richardson’s innocence while repeating the allegation that Neale had been ‘remiss in enforcing the punishment of this outrage’. The liberal Huddersfield Chronicle struck a dissonant note, noting the indiscretions of many European merchants in Japan; it was thankful that Britain’s Chargé d’Affaires had averted their desire for instant vengeance. Even here, however, the author suspected that a state of war between Britain and Japan might not lie very far off.67 In London Alcock raised the twin spectres of Canton and Dejima – synonyms for the humiliation and degradation of European power – should the government fail to rise and meet the challenge of the hour.68 Likening Yokohama to ‘a second Dejima’ was a particularly powerful line, and a recurrent feature of columns and pamphlets urging ‘the despatch of a force sufficient to redeem our prestige and ensure our honor from future affront’.69 Even cooler heads, such as that of Admiral Kuper, were careful to assure their superiors that every step to avoid war had been taken ‘short of compromising the dignity and honor of our country’.70 The lesson for historians of Britain in Japan, as those of Britain in China know only too well, is that the motivating power of ideas of honor and 66

67

68 69 70

YAH: Willis corr., Vol. 44/2, No. 43, W. Willis to G. Willis, 21 Sept 1862; Vol 44/4, No. 76, W. Willis to G. Willis, 31 May 1863. ‘The Murder of Mr Richardson’, The Times, 28 Nov. 1862, p. 7; ‘The Past Week’, The London Review, 29 Nov. 1862, p. 474; ‘What are the Terms of Intercourse with the Japanese to be?’, Huddersfield Chronicle, 29 Nov. 1862. FO 46/25, Alcock to Russell, 29 Nov. 1862. Morrison, Our Position and Policy in Japan. TNA: ADM 1/5284, A. Kuper to Secretary to the Admiralty, 28 Apr. 1863.

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‘outrage’ deserve to be taken seriously. As scholars of mid-Victorian politics have long recognised, Lord Palmerston, John Russell and his under-secretary Henry Layard were all capable of bending policy to the task of upholding the British name. Nor were they above sounding out the public mood before formulating the government’s position on such matters.71 And so, while the Prime Minister may ordinarily have shown no particular interest in Japan, he recognised the contours of this crisis immediately. Richardson’s death presented such a neat image that it cut through the fug: abstract issues of national prestige and the course of free trade were embodied in the aborted progress of one man along a country road. Back in 1861 he had warned his Foreign Secretary of the possibility of some future ‘great outrage’ here ‘which would oblige us to inflict some severe retribution’. Again, in the weeks before word of Namamugi reached England, he had noted that with Japan ‘we should have some difficulty in justifying to Parliament and the Country our sitting with our arms folded and neither extracting atonement for past outrage nor security against similar outrage in future’.72 Richardson’s murder brought even greater clarity, and Russell’s final instructions bore the clear influence of the Prime Minister’s hand. Threats of and recourse to blockade and bombardment, he wrote to Russell that December, were ‘the true [method] for putting an end to these atrocities’. Daimyō residences ‘should share the fate of the Summer Palace in China’.73 Throughout his public career, which had begun at the Admiralty, Palmerston saw British naval power as ‘the key instrument in the national armoury, and never hesitated to use it to solve a problem’.74 Now, his influence was important in urging naval action early on in Russell’s deliberations, pushing a more reluctant Admiralty into consenting to armed intervention: 71

72

73 74

See, for example: E.D. Steele, Palmerston and Liberalism, 1855–65 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 356–366. TNA: PRO 30/22/21, Ld. Palmerston to J. Russell, 31 Mar. 1861; TNA: PRO 30/22/14D, Ld. Palmerston to J. Russell, 20 Oct. 1862. TNA: PRO 30/22/24, Ld. Palmerston, note of 5 Dec. 1862. A. Lambert, ‘Palmerston and Sea-Power’, in Brown and Taylor, Palmerston Studies, pp. 39–65.

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The central government is weak and unable to control or punish these Daimio Chiefs. If their Residences are accessible to Parties landed from our ships, or if they have an interest in Ports which can be blockaded or knocked about their Ears without disturbing our Ports of Commerce, an example or two of Just Retribution would go far to teach these Gentlemen better Conduct …75

For Palmerston, bombarding Kagoshima sat neatly within a general scheme of ‘the usual and unavoidable stages of the intercourse of strong and civilized nations with weaker and less civilized ones’ which, to his mind, had already played out in China: treaties were drawn up, faith was breached, and violence ensued until the ‘successful display of superior strength’.76 The decision made, ‘the only thing to be done at present’, Palmerston wrote late in 1863, was to ‘wait to hear the effect produced by our vigorous action…’.77 For those in government still troubled by the use of force, a further reassurance lay at hand. This, too, was a facet of British imagined geographies of Japan: the idea of the archipelagic nature of the country, and the supposedly peculiar vulnerability of its leading daimyō to even a limited application of naval force. This idea seems to have taken hold over the spring of 1863, temporarily overturning long-standing reservations about the difficulties of fighting in Japan. ‘No daimio is more accessible for redress than this prince’, wrote Francis Hall within days of the incident, noting his city by the bay, his shipping concerns, and his interests along the exposed Ryūkyū island chain.78 These views were shortly being echoed in official, naval and private correspondence: Satsuma’s territories ‘lie within our grasp’, urged Alcock, ‘and are peculiarly exposed to attack from the sea…’.79 Satsuma’s true relationship with the shogu75 76

77 78 79

PRO 30/22/24, Palmerston, note of 5 Dec. 1862. Ld. Palmerston to J. Russell, 5 Oct. 1864, cited in Steele, Palmerston and Liberalism, p. 359. TNA: PRO 30/22/22, Palmerston to J. Russell, 8 Nov. 1863. F. Hall, diary for 17 Sept. 1862, in Notehelfer, Japan through American Eyes, p. 450. TNA: FO 46/25, R. Alcock to J. Russell, 29 Nov. 1862. See also the conclusions of Admiral Hope at Wusong ‘that the position and conformation of [the Prince of Satsuma’s] principality…render him particularly open to attack’: TNA: ADM 1/5790, J. Hope to C.E. Paget, 18 Oct. 1862. In 1868, in marked contrast, British officialdom’s collective unfamiliarity with Northern Honshu contributed to their wariness towards intervening

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nate may have been a mystery; its attitude towards foreign trade was widely misunderstood; but a growing belief that a naval demonstration here would be both cheap and effective helped to favour that course of action regardless. On 5 December, in the midst of preparing Neale’s instructions, the First Lord of the Admiralty wrote to Lord John Russell with new information ‘of use in considering how we should act’. The bakufu had claimed Satsuma to be “a powerful Daimio who could not easily be coerced”’, and yet: it would, I am told, be easy to blockade his port, and probably to shell his capital … I have now a chart of the Japanese islands, on which the properties of several principal Daimios are marked. They can be attacked by ships and gun-boats. An example should be made of one and Satsuma is specially pointed out as deserving of this distinction.

‘I could send you the chart showing the ports of the Daimios’, Seymour added helpfully.80 This was music to Palmerston’s ears. For William Gladstone, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, it was enough to overcome his reluctance to see armed force used, for Britain could ‘confine’ its operations ‘to the territory, ports and property of the Daimio Satsuma … to make, above all, a short operation …’.81 In that sense, Japan’s political disunity before 1868 – the fact that Britain might clash with one of its daimyō without going to war with the country at large; perhaps even without disrupting British trade out of Yokohama – was the final piece of the puzzle.82 Ultimately, this reading of Satsuma’s acute maritime vulnerability led to overconfidence: the British were surprised by the damage they sustained at Kagoshima. This not only checked the momentum for further operations. It fuelled the debate on the appropriateness of this course of action in the first place. …

80 81 82

in the Japanese civil war. For more on this geographical dimension, see: G. Daniels, ‘The Japanese Civil War (1868) – a British view’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1967), pp. 241–263. TNA: PRO 30/22/24, E.A. Seymour to J. Russell, 5 Dec. 1862. PRO 30/22/24, W.E. Gladstone, note, 9 Dec. 1862. PRO 30/22/24, anon., ‘Extract of a letter from General Hanley’ [n.d. Dec. 1862],

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Throughout the eleven months that passed between the death of Charles Richardson and the bombardment of Kagoshima – while Neale awaited London’s instructions, and embarked on negotiations with the authorities – the Yokohama foreign merchants kept up the pressure for intervention. It was all very well for Kuper to report, five days after Richardson’s funeral, that ‘the feeling of alarm has considerably subsided’, and that he himself did not consider an attack on the settlement likely.83 Others were far less sanguine, and at significant moments over the following months a febrile atmosphere reigned at Yokohama. On the day after the murder, the foreign naval commanders had instituted new measures for the settlement’s defence. Legation guards were strengthened, boats patrolled the beach, and a system of signals was created for use in an emergency.84 Revealingly, Neale had requested these measures ‘to dispel the alarm … which prevails among the community’, rather than to meet any particular threat.85 It was not enough. On 24 September another public meeting was called at the house of Edward Clarke (of Dent & Co.) to consider forming a foreign Volunteer Corps ‘for the defence of our life and property’. Despite his wounds, William Clarke himself was named First Lieutenant; Gower, the Jardines agent, became the Captain; while James C. Fraser, who had known Richardson at Shanghai, was made its Ensign.86 ‘It may well be believed’, wrote John Reddie Black in retrospect, ‘that in the angry condition of the public mind, there were very few who did not join’. As drill began in mid-October there was a real anticipation that the Corps – and perhaps an additional mounted unit in the future – might any day be called upon ‘to prove themselves worthy brothers of the Shanghai Volunteers’ who (with Richardson among them) had once ‘faced the Taeping rebels’.87 Neale’s assurances to Russell that ‘no apprehensions are…entertained for the safety of this settlement’ were profoundly out of step with the feelings of its residents.88 83 84

85 86 87 88

TNA: ADM 1/5790, A. Kuper to J. Hope, 20 Sept. 1862. ADM 1/5790, ‘Record of a meeting of the naval commanders at Yokohama, 15 September 1862’, encl. in Kuper to Hope, 20 Sept. 1862. FO 410/6, Neale to Kuper, 15 Sept. 1862, encl. in Neale to Russell, 19 Sept. 1862. JH, No. 45, 27 Sept. 1862, p. 179; JH, No. 48, 18 Oct. 1862, p. 191. Black, Young Japan, pp. 145–146, 174. FO 410/6, Neale to Russell, 15 Sept. 1862.

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Over the months that followed, daily life in the settlement was punctuated by such moments of profound anxiety. ‘The agitation in the minds of the foreign residents in Yokohama’, Black recalled, was constantly kept up by the flying rumours, designedly and industriously circulated among them, of ronins in the neighbourhood; and further by the frequent requests of the Governor of Kanagawa that on certain days foreigners should avoid the Tokaido …89

Francis Hall was not prone to panic, but his diary for 1862–1863 nonetheless captured the feverish atmosphere. Until Richardson’s assassins were punished, he wrote in mid-October, ‘we can then only wait, asking each other whose turn comes next to be waylaid or openly murdered’.90 In December he described how ‘the visible signs of danger do not increase but the alarm manufacturers are busier than ever’: a rumour was abroad that 150 ronin were shortly to assault the foreign settlement. This seems to have affected the British residents in particular, who issued a circular stating that the Yokohama volunteers would stand guard at a particular merchant house that night, and that ‘all citizens and families who desire protection’ should collect there.91 Such nervous agitation continued into 1863. At the end of March Admiral Kuper had returned to Yokohama with a large naval force, triggering a week of speculation that military action was imminent. A new report was written on the preparedness of the settlement’s defences (pl. 7). On 8 April the British residents assembled to hear the terms that Her Majesty’s Government had demanded of the bakufu: these then became ‘the all absorbing theme’.92 Once negotiations began, the repeated cycle of deadlines set and missed worked to ramp up the agitation again and again. As the first of these deadlines approached there were many in the community ‘apprehensive that the Japanese, whose ancient cunning and treachery is in mind, may take the initiative before the twenty days are out, 89 90 91 92

Black, Young Japan, p. 161. F. Hall, diary for 14 Oct. 1862, in Notehelfer, Japan through American Eyes, p. 451. F. Hall, diary for 18 Dec. 1862, in Ibid., p. 456. F. Hall, diary for 9 Apr. 1863, in Ibid., p. 469.

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and attempt a surprise of the foreign settlement’.93 In May, as yet another deadline loomed, Hall described how ‘a regular panic has seized the town’, with Japanese merchants fearing war to be imminent and hastening ‘to escape from the vicinity of the sea’.94 The summer began with no end to the tension in sight. ‘We live over a smouldering volcano’, Hall wrote for the New York Tribune, ‘which any day may burst out, involving more or less of us in destruction’. Looking back on this eleven-month period, it is hard to overstate the tremendous personal pressure placed on Colonel Neale.95 The Japan Express had not hesitated to claim that ‘had Sir Rutherford Alcock been here on Sunday [the 14] we sincerely believe the result would have been very different …’. Neale might insist that he had done all he could, but, the paper went on: We regret to say that the entire community, official and unofficial, differ from that opinion … With the approval of Col. Neale the entire party of murderers could have been secured … Never had an officer such an opportunity to have shown his Pluck and his Humanity. The course favoured by the Colonel has endangered the life of every foreigner in the Settlement.96

The Herald, in reprinting criticisms from the Hong Kong and Shanghai papers, continued to suggest that Neale’s caution and timidity made him unfit for his post, and that he ought to be recalled.97 For eleven months this sustained tension, perpetually renewed by fresh incidents and ‘insults’ on the backroads of the settlement, had helped the advocates of military intervention to maintain pressure on the beleaguered Chargé d’Affaires. This mattered, for while London’s instructions had made provision for the use of force, doing so remained at Neale’s discretion. Periodicals in Britain and the treaty ports dared him to act with thinly-veiled accusations of cowardice; 93

94 95

96 97

‘From Japan’, New York Tribune, 26 June 1863, p.4. This article was drawn from Hall’s letter of 14 Apr. 1863 F. Hall, diary for 6 May 1863, in Notehelfer, Japan through American Eyes, pp. 474–475. ‘Our prospects of maintaining any sort of terms with this strange people’, wrote one observer of Japan, ‘depend greatly upon the mind and character of the man who officially represents us’: OCM, 15 Oct. 1861. The Late Murder’, The Japan Express, Vol. 1, No. 18, 20 Sept. 1862. Black, Young Japan, p. 141.

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there were calls for an enquiry into his conduct. ‘The never-ceasing fatigue, anxiety and overpowering responsibility to which I have [been] subjected from the day of my arrival in this country’, Neale later told Russell, ‘has weighed heavily on my health and spirit’.98 Cloistered away in this tightly-packed community, with little sense of support from London, it was perhaps inevitable that the pressure would begin to tell. Above all, Neale keenly felt the sting of the community’s embrace of his French counterpart. A year later, he was still bitterly complaining to Russell of the embarrassment it had caused him.99 Meanwhile, his estrangement from his own consular staff festered. Willis’ letters testify to ‘a good deal of bad feeling’ within the Legation; Neale was, he told his brother, ‘an ill tempered man’.100 He further believed his authority to have been badly undermined by the protracted uncertainty over just how long Alcock would remain on leave, and the ‘monthly expectation’ of his return.101 The strain even took its toll on officials much less exposed to the community’s ire, and did not lessen with time. As Charles Winchester wrote at the very moment Kuper’s squadron was headed for Kagoshima, ‘the unmitigated terror which the outrages and assassinations of the Japanese have inflicted upon the minds of nervous lads fresh from city offices is one of the great difficulties we have to deal with’.102 Any understanding of how the bombardment of Kagoshima came to pass, therefore, must take into account the fragile authority of Britain’s man-on-the-spot. The midnight meetings of 14–15 September, months of merchant pressure, and London’s concern about their official’s local legitimacy combined to greatly increase the odds of military action. When Russell’s instructions finally reached Yokohama in the spring of 1863, they were exactly what the community wanted to hear. They were ‘the most drastic 98

99 100

101 102

TNA: FO 46/37, E. Neale to J. Russell, 1 Dec. 1863. When asked to consider a return to Japan in 1864, Neale declined, citing ‘mental and physical fatigue’: TNA: PRO 30/22/50, E. Neale to G. Elliott, 11 Aug. 1864. Harry Parkes got the job instead. TNA: FO 46/37, E. Neale to J. Russell, 31 Oct. 1863. YAH: Willis corr., Vol 44/3, No. 45, W. Willis to G. Willis, 31 Oct. 1862; Vol 44/3, No. 60, W. Willis to G. Willis, 16 Jan. 1863. FO 46/37, Neale to Russell, 1 Dec. 1863. TNA: FO 46/38, C. Winchester, note, 8 Aug. 1863.

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ever sent to Japan’, and brought a temporary boost to Neale’s authority.103 They echoed the tone of the community’s ‘indignation’, painted the murder as an assault on treaty rights, accused the Japanese authorities of feigned ‘helplessness’ and evasion, and identified Shimazu Hisamitsu as having ‘permitted … this horrible crime’. Should Britain’s demands not be met, they gave Kuper’s naval squadron the freedom to take such measures ‘of reprisal or blockade, or of both’ as seemed fit, and explicitly drew attention to Satsuma’s maritime vulnerability.104 When they were read out to the entire community at the British consulate on 10 April, there remained ‘some desultory talk’. But the merchants’ plans to form their own committee to prepare for the settlement’s defence were put on hold: they instead resolved to leave the matter to Kuper and Neale – for now.105 Russell’s despatch also lent the government’s approval to Neale’s actions on 14–15 September. Indeed, the Foreign Secretary’s memorandum on this key aspect of the affair had been prepared almost a month before the wider instructions themselves. Russell found his Chargé d’Affaires to have been ‘severely but unjustly attacked’: while it was right to send out the escort to recover Richardson’s body (a gentle criticism, there) ‘it was for Colonel Neale, and not for Captain Vyse, to decide that point’. The idea of despatching the guard to confront the procession, meanwhile, was unquestionably reckless, and rightly resisted.106 Vyse, in contrast, was judged to have acted in a manner ‘incompatible … with the principle of subordination to superior authority, which is indispensable for the conduct of public affairs’.107 ‘I do not blame you for presiding over the meeting of British and Foreign Residents concerned on the occasion’, Russell wrote to Vyse in an electrifying letter of censure: 103

104 105 106

107

W.G. Beasley (ed.), Select Documents in Japanese Foreign Policy, 1853–1868  (Oxford, 1955), pp. 64–65. TNA: FO 46/20, J. Russell to E. Neale, No. 38, 24 Dec. 1862. F. Hall, diary for 10 Apr. 1863, in Notehelfer, Japan through American Eyes, p. 469. TNA: FO 410/6, J. Russell, memorandum, 28 Nov. 1862. Russell’s draft letter to Neale informed him that ‘Her Majesty’s Government entirely approves the forbearance and judgement you displayed…’. The final version excised the word ‘entirely’: TNA: FO 46/20, J. Russell to E. Neale (draft), 9 Dec. 1862. TNA: FO 262/38, J. Russell to E. Neale, 9 Dec. 1862.

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but when the spirit which pervaded that meeting proved to be opposed to the conduct of your official superior and the course which it was determined to adopt tended not only to set him, as it were, aside, but to make his action subordinate to that of others, it was your duty to have refrained from taking any further part … and above all from acting as the organ of it in communicating with the representatives of Foreign Powers …

‘Such conduct cannot be passed unnoticed’, the letter concluded. Vyse was transferred to Hakodate immediately.108 All this must have come as a great relief to Neale. But Russell’s despatch also contained an implicit warning: some form of resolute action, backed up by the threat of force, would now be required to keep on the front foot. Vyse’s conduct may have been wayward, but the government could ‘perfectly understand the feelings of indignation and alarm’ which had spread through the wider community. To re-establish Neale’s authority in their eyes, he was explicitly given ownership of the new policy, for ‘the mysteries of Japanese intrigue… cannot be fathomed at this distance’.109 He would need to act decisively to prevent the community’s fearful agitation from boiling over once again. In the tortuous negotiations over reparations that followed, Neale did grant a series of extensions in the hope of avoiding conflict with the bakufu. But his patience now was finite, and when the new British legation building in Edo was torched while still under construction, it was he – in the face of Kuper’s caution – who called for ‘a considerable demonstration … of our naval forces’ to check the movement for the expulsion of foreigners.110 Satsuma was given far less time – just six days – between the delivery of Britain’s demands and Neale’s order to commence reprisals. 108

109 110

FO 262/38, J. Russell to F.H. Vyse, 9 Dec. 1862, encl. in J. Russell to E. Neale, 9 Dec 1862. Vyse’s inclination toward insubordination did not diminish. In 1865 he was forced to resign from the consular service for his part in the excavation and removal to England of Ainu bones from Mori, Hokkaido: A. Lewallen, ‘Bones of Contention: negotiating anthropological ethics within fields of Ainu refusal’, Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 39, No. 4 (2007), p. 514; H. Cortazzi, Victorians in Japan: in and around the Treaty Ports (London, 1987), pp. 44–45. TNA: FO 262/54, J. Russell to E. Neale, 5 Sept. 1863. TNA: ADM 1/5284, E. Neale to A. Kuper, 2 Feb. 1863; A. Kuper to E. Neale, 28 Apr. 1863.

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The bombardment of Kagoshima in August 1863 completed Neale’s local rehabilitation. Shortly before his return to England in January 1864, even the Herald found it within itself to praise his actions that day: We have, from the commencement, from the hour at which Colonel Neale, to the surprise of some, started with the Admiral to Satsuma’s territory, expressed our belief that [Her Majesty’s Government’s approval of this course of action] would follow what he then did and what he would do. Colonel Neale is shortly to leave us … Some eighteen months ago, we confess we thought he carried his feeling of disregard for the local public esteem (in his own satisfaction at the propriety of the course he had taken and was taking) somewhat to an extreme. It will not be natural, however, if he do not feel some satisfaction in the knowledge that the public applause – in other words, popularity – go hand in hand with his Sovereign’s approval, and if he have not pleasure in receiving their congratulations that it has been so testified.

The paper wished him well in his future career.111 …

With the return of the British squadron from Kagoshima, a lull settled over the Yokohama foreign settlement. George Fisher informed Washington that, except for the memory of the bombardment, ‘we have been as quiet as if no important event had or were ever again likely to occur’.112 The arrival of envoys from Satsuma to discuss Britain’s demands took both the foreign officials and the wider community by surprise. Talks began on 1 November, and five weeks later Colonel Neale took delivery of Satsuma’s indemnity payment in full. The drama now shifted from Yokohama to London, where news of the bombardment arrived in late October. The outrage many felt about Charles Richardson’s death had been amplified through the fog of confusion that surrounded British readings of all things Japanese. 111 112

JH, No. 99, 16 Jan. 1864, p. 163. NACP: Kanagawa Despatches (M135, Roll 1): G. Fisher to W.H. Seward, 22 Sept. 1863.

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Now it was the turn of fresh misunderstandings – about the scale of destruction wrought upon Kagoshima – to engender feelings of ‘outrage’ from the other side of the aisle. In Parliament, in the press, and in meetings around the country, the bombardment of Kagoshima became the issue of the day. And as a sign of just how much the case for intervention had been predicated on a particular image of Charles Lenox Richardson, the critics of this policy would now put forward very different readings of his life, death and character. This debate seldom receives the attention it deserves. While much has been written on the impact of the bombardment on Satsuma and on Japanese politics of the era, historians have tended to merely allude to its place in the British political sphere. Perhaps because the Parliamentary vote of censure on the action failed, or perhaps because the Peace Society took a lead in the protest, there has been a tendency to pass over Britain’s Kagoshima controversy lightly, or to consider it solely as an aspect of the history of British radicalism.113 This is a mistake, for tracing its reverberations in all their complexity enriches our understanding of the real anxieties that surrounded Britain’s place in the world, even in the so-called ‘Age of Equipoise’. Still on leave in London, Alcock was quick to see how provocative Kagoshima would become. ‘Many questions will arise in the Public mind’, he advised Lord Russell, ‘…and be more or less anxiously discussed, as the certainty of another Eastern complication, and the possibility of a protracted war are realized’.114 He was right, for while Kagoshima did prompt letters and petitions from Congregationalists, Baptists, Richard Cobden and the Peace Society, the backlash went deeper and wider than these usual suspects.115 ‘The whole trans113

114

115

For example, a study of the bombardment written to mark the centenary made just a single reference to the debate in Britain, as follows: ‘The policy of “that for that” had much to recommend it, although for party purposes in Parliament there were those who deprecated it’: Rowbotham, ‘Bombardment of Kagoshima’, p. 273. Anthony Howe and Simon Morgan’s work on the letters of Richard Cobden is invaluable in tracing Cobden’s reactions to the bombardment, and in understanding why, seeing little prospect of toppling Palmerston on this occasion, he pulled his punches: Howe and Morgan, Letters, iv, p. li. Nonetheless, much more can be done to drawn out the depth and breadth of reaction to Kagoshima across the country. TNA: FO 46/47, R. Alcock to J. Russell, ‘Memorandum on Japanese Affairs’ [n.d.], encl. in R. Alcock to J. Russell, 5 Nov. 1863. See the various petitions encl. in: TNA: FO 46/41.

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action’, the Liberal MP Justin McCarthy remembered, ‘was severely condemned by many Englishmen who did not belong to the ranks of those professed philanthropists whom it is sometimes the fashion to denounce …’.116 Cobden’s public letter on Kagoshima received ‘a very wide response…from men of all parties in every part of the country’; he hoped it might mark ‘the turning point in our Eastern policy’.117 The Times reported the bombardment coming up ‘at most meetings between members of Parliament and their constituents’, and gave space to relate some of the most interesting exchanges.118 In that respect, and as a political debate that was simultaneously about British rights and ‘freedoms’ and the morality of policy, Kagoshima warrants consideration alongside some of the great debates of the age: a successor to the Don Pacifico Affair of 1850; a forerunner to Jamaica and the Governor Eyre controversy of 1865.119 It was the perceived ferocity of the bombardment itself that set the protest in motion.120 Critics read with horror Kuper’s own verdict on the engagement, promptly made available through the London Gazette, that ‘the entire town of Kagosima is now a mass of ruins’.121 And while there were, at first, no unofficial accounts from which to elaborate upon this, rumour and the imagination stepped into the void. ‘It requires quite an unusual effort of imagination to realise the effect of a conflagration such as this’, wrote Frederic Har-

116 117

118 119

120

121

McCarthy, History of Our Own Times, iii, p. 185. R. Cobden, letter of 19 Nov. 1863, cited in Hobson, Richard Cobden, p. 319. This letter, addressed to the Mayor of Rochdale, appeared as: ‘Mr Cobden on the Japanese Question’, The Times, 10 Nov. 1863. The Times, 12 Jan. 1864; The Times, 12 Dec. 1863. For an extended reflection on the moral dimensions of Britain’s Japan policy, see: J.F. Stephen, ‘Japan’, Fraser’s Magazine, Vol. 69, No. 409 (Jan., 1864), pp. 101–117. A number of contemporaries drew comparisons between the Government’s handling of the Namamugi Incident and the Don Pacifico affair, in which an assault on a British subject in Athens led Lord Palmerston, then Foreign Secretary, to order a naval blockade of the Greek coast. Palmerston’s conduct was approved by the Commons, but censured by the Lords, becoming a point of reference for diverse commentators on British imperial and foreign policy thereafter. Bee-Hive, 14 Nov. 1863, p. 4, cited in Claeys, British Sceptics, p. 86. ‘In Europe’, wrote Harrison, ‘towards white men, towards Christians, the tenth part of this ferocity is impossible’. TNA: FO 881/1183, A. Kuper to E. Neale, 17 Aug. 1863, reprinted in Extract from the London Gazette of Friday, the 30th October, 1863.

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rison in The National Review – and he was far from alone in taking up the challenge: Kagosima is reported to contain a population of 150,000, or, according to others, of 180,000 souls, densely packed in wooden houses with paper partitions … In a town like this there must have been, doubtless, something like 30,000 children, at least 5000 sick, and 2000 or 3000 helpless mothers. Let us, if it is not too horrible an effort, conceive for one moment the condition of such a people when, without an hour’s warning, it began to rain down upon them shot and shell … let us imagine the confusion and the agony of those two days of death, the shrieks of torture, the hideous sights of blood, the stench of burning flesh … and we have a scene before us which, in its appalling horror, can only be matched by the tales of ancient atrocity – the desolation of Jerusalem, or the capture of Babylon.122

Such descriptions helped an idea to take hold that thousands, even tens of thousands had perished in the bombardment. As Colonel Neale was later forced to explain in response, Kagoshima’s population was smaller than most supposed, and almost all its inhabitants had been ordered out of the city by the authorities before the first shot was fired; he later estimated Satsuma’s killed and wounded at fifteen hundred.123 There was some sleight of hand in these critiques, for they tended to gloss over the strength of Satsuma’s resistance. But the misunderstanding over the casualty figures was in all probability quite genuine, driven by a mix of ignorance, outrage and inference (the number of Japanese directly killed by British action may even have been in single figures). Either way, the notion that Neale and Kuper had ‘committed wholescale massacre in revenge for an attack on three British traders’ proved hard to shift. It was still to be found in some accounts from the early twentieth century.124 122

123

124

F. Harrison, ‘The Destruction of Kagosima’, The National Review, No. 35 (Jan., 1864), pp. 270–293. TNA: FO 46/43, E. Neale to J. Russell, 16 Jan. 1864; TNA: FO 262/56, E. Neale to J. Russell, 17 Nov. 1863. For example: F. Harrison, Autobiographic Memoirs (2 vols., London, 1911), i, pp. 292– 293. See also: E.H. House, The Kagosima Affair: a chapter of Japanese History (Tokyo, 1875), p. 32. A newly-reissued biography of Palmerston repeats the error (and a number of others besides): D. Judd, Palmerston (London, 2015), pp. 192–3.

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For some, the precise figure was by the by: it was the intentional nature of Kuper’s firing on the town that had demonstrated such inhumanity.125 Many simply refused to believe that Kuper had been ‘surprised’ when the Kagoshima batteries had opened fire on his squadron – he must have known that seizing Satsuma’s steamers would trigger this response. After all, had he not bragged to Satsuma’s officers the day before that ‘Kagoshima is at my mercy’, and would be destroyed unless they submitted?126 Kuper maintained that he had sailed to Kagoshima ‘with pacific intentions’; his defenders (including, naturally, the Japan Herald) denounced Cobden and his ilk for seeking ‘to excite the indignation of the British public against…gallant officers…for acting up to their unmistakeable duty’.127 But it was hard to overlook the fact that Kuper had continued the bombardment even after it became clear that his shells had fired the city. For some, this became the true ‘outrage’ of the Richardson affair: ‘an act of barbarity unworthy of the civilization of our era’; ‘the most wanton and shameless outrage which has stained the English name for years’.128 The New York Times thought Kuper’s conduct even more heinous than ‘the blowing of Hindoo rebels from British cannon’ during the Indian ‘Mutiny’ of 1857.129 For others, what was worse was that the bombardment exposed to the world the extent of Britain’s hypocrisy, for while the government ‘roar[s] like a lion in the Southern or Eastern seas’ against forces ‘utterly incommensurate with ours’, it had felt ‘all the tenderness of [its] lamb-like bleating’ against opponents of equal strength. In the context of recent humiliations in British foreign policy in Europe, backing down from collisions with Prussia (over Denmark) and Russia (over Poland), it seemed clear that ‘the arrogant patrons of the Civis Romanus will only defend him against safe antagonists’ – more echoes of the Don Pacifico affair. Thus had British policy 125 126

127

128

129

Gascoyne-Cecil, ‘Foreign Policy of England’, p. 504. ‘The Destruction of Kagosima, and Our Relations with Japan’, The Herald of Peace, No. 161 (N.S.), 1 Dec. 1863, pp. 279–280; The Times, 12 Dec. 1863. TNA: FO 46/38, G. Morrison, untitled pamphlet, 16 Nov. 1863, encl. in G. Morrison to R. Alcock, 4 Dec. 1863. TNA: FO 46/41, petition of the Liverpool Peace Society to Lord John Russell, 18 Dec. 1863; Harrison, Autobiographic Memoirs, i, p. 290. ‘British Barbarity’, The New York Times, 24 Nov. 1863, p. 4.

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been reduced to ‘bullying the weak and truckling to the strong … a portentous mixture of bounce and baseness’.130 The bombardment seemed particularly shocking because it jarred so strikingly with the generally positive images of Japan circulating over the previous decade. News of Lord Elgin’s commercial treaty had been ‘proclaimed with a loud flourish of trumpets’; Oliphant’s Narrative of the mission conveyed a delightfully romantic impression of the country.131 Even the Japan Herald recalled that, until recently, ‘we did look upon Japan as truly progressing’, the country ‘blessed with a richness in all the products of the earth’, the people showing ‘a capability of great and rapid progress’.132 Visitors had routinely praised its cleanliness and its climate, the chastity of its women and the ‘Englishness’ of the scenery. All this fed into the indignation against punitive action against such a place. Advocates of intervention found themselves colliding with ‘statements that Japan was like a garden of Eden…before Europeans entered the country…’.133 Indeed, the argument began to emerge that Japan had attained a sufficient level of civilization that it was simply not an eligible candidate for the methods of gunboat diplomacy. Kagoshima renewed discussions as to where, precisely, Japan sat in the spectrum of ‘civilized’ and ‘barbarous’ states, and what those indices of ‘civilization’ (racial, technological, political and economic) might be. The London Peace Society, for instance, thought the Japanese ‘in many respects as civilized as ourselves’; Cobden thought their bravery, ‘mechanical ingenuity’ and ‘progressive character’ to be ‘their best security against injustice’.134 Frederic Harrison went a step further, believing 130

131

132 133

134

Gascoyne-Cecil, ‘Foreign Policy of England’, pp. 481–529. ‘Parcere superbis et debellare subjectos’, Harrison quipped: an inversion of Virgil’s dictum, ‘spare the vanquished, subdue the arrogant’: Harrison, Autobiographic Memoirs, i, p. 285. Gascoyne-Cecil, ‘Foreign Policy of England’, p. 494; Yokoyama, Japan in the Victorian Mind; L. Oliphant, Narrative of the Earl of Elgin’s Mission to China and Japan in the Years 1857, ’58, ’59 (Edinburgh, 1859). JH, No. 42, 6 Sept. 1862. TNA: FO 46/40, J. Hughes to J. Russell, 11 July 1863. For a contemporary reflection on themes in the new literature on Japan, see: ‘Japan and the Japanese’, The Edinburgh Review, Vol. 113, No. 229 (1861), pp. 40–45. ‘Destruction of Kagosima’, Herald of Peace, p. 278; Cobden, letter of 19 Nov. 1863, cited in Hobson, Richard Cobden, p. 319. For more on this question in Victorian political

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both ‘Christian’ and ‘civilizational’ indices of human worth to have been forever tainted by the imperatives of empire: instead, from a humanitarian perspective, the Japanese were ‘relatively our equals, occasionally our superiors, and essentially our brothers’.135 This was a minority concern, but the Kagoshima controversy did lead others to question the justice of Britain’s position in the country. Some attacked the government for having forced the treaties on Japan in the first place ‘in the teeth of all their strongest prejudices, and in defiance of their traditional policy’.136 Others thought it unjust to demand reparations twice, both from the bakufu and from a ‘semiindependent prince’ beyond its control.137 Viewed this way, the bombardment of Kagoshima embodied the perversion of the cause of free trade. Commerce had debased a civilization, not promoted it. The merchant had not replaced the gunboat, but summoned it. By bombarding Kagoshima, then, Palmerston’s government had unwittingly touched a nerve. As yet another of Britain’s ‘semi-wars’, it compounded a wider feeling in the 1860s that international affairs were in crisis. Pacifists surveyed the globe with a sense of impending calamity: in the decade since the Great Exhibition of 1851, war in the Crimea, India, Italy and the United States had, in one estimation, ‘devoured’ the equivalent of two-thirds of the men aged twenty to forty in Britain at the time – to say nothing of the ruinous and dislocating effect of ‘warlike expenditure’ over the period.138 The scale of human suffering in China was even worse, allusion to which – and the fear of being sucked in to another Asian imbroglio – was readily voiced by critics of British bellicosity in

135

136

137

138

thought, see: J. Pitts, ‘Boundaries of Victorian International Law’, in Bell, Victorian Visions, pp. 67–88. Harrison, Autobiographic Memoirs, i, pp. 289–290 [emphasis in original]. For Harrison and the emerging humanitarian critique of British imperialism, Kagoshima was the ‘breaking-point’ that demanded a more forceful response than either Cobden’s economic internationalism, or Bright’s Christian cosmopolitanism: Claeys, British Sceptics, pp. 84–85. ‘The State of Our Relations with Japan’, The Herald of Peace, No. 157 (N.S.), 1 July 1863, p. 217. See also: TNA: FO 46/40, Memorial of the London Peace Society, encl. in H. Richard to J. Russell, 13 Aug. 1863. ‘Japanese Offences and British Retaliation’, The Economist, No. 1054, 7 Nov. 1863, pp. 1235–36. Lord Robert Cecil agreed that such a demand had neither precedent nor merit: Gascoyne-Cecil, ‘Foreign Policy of England’, p. 496. ‘Annual Report of the Peace Society’, The Herald of Peace, No. 156 (N.S.), 1 June 1863.

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Japan (‘the India of yesterday is the China of to-day, and the China of to-day the Japan of to-morrow’).139 Word of this debate got back to Japan, where Mitsukuri Teiichirō translated coverage in the Yokohama press for circulation among high-ranking figures in the bakufu.140 Ironically, the strength of the reaction to Kagoshima may have helped to temper British mercantile ambitions in China for the rest of the decade.141 The outcry was certainly sufficient to warn Britain’s government against launching further unilateral operations in Japan except in the most desperate of circumstances. Japan, unlike China, could not become the object of sustained military attention; late in 1863, Russell issued instructions that henceforth ‘no wanton injury should be inflicted upon the Japanese population’, nor even forts and batteries attacked if they be ‘surrounded by the dwellings and places of trade of the non-combatant inhabitants’.142 The whole experience, in fact, had been rather humbling. ‘However formidable as an engine of destruction’, Neale had reported of Kuper’s squadron, it could not ‘by such operations as are within the reach of ships of war, coerce the rulers of this country into the adoption of the measures and course of action we may desire and have a right to expect’.143 So much for the maritime vulnerability of the leading daimyō. In Japan, in more ways than one, gunboat diplomacy had met its match. …

What then was to be made of the man at the centre of all this – the man in whose name a city had been razed – and of the merchant community who had championed his cause?

139 140 141 142

143

E.H. Pember, ‘England and India’, in Congreve, International Policy, p. 228. Yokoyama, Japan in the Victorian Mind, p. 84. Howe and Morgan, Letters, iv, p. lvii. TNA: FO 262/54, J. Russell to Secretary to the Admiralty, 14 Nov. 1863. See also the new instructions to Alcock: TNA: FO 46/31, J. Russell to R. Alcock, 17 Dec. 1863. British ships did go into action once again, at Shimonoseki in September 1864, but they now did so as part of a coordinated, international squadron, with the specific charge of disabling Chōshū batteries to keep the Inland Sea open to Western shipping. TNA: FO 46/37, E. Neale to J. Russell, 14 Oct. 1863.

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Richardson came up often in the debates over Kagoshima. So much destruction, so many lives lost – British as well as Japanese – all ‘to avenge the death of one Englishman’. ‘The recent outrage at Kagosima’, wrote Henry Richard, ‘comparing the smallness of the provocation with the enormity of the vengeance taken, must be held to cap the climax of all our former achievements of the same nature’.144 It was not just the disproportionality of the response that caused such concern. Critics of the bombardment specifically targeted the feelings of ‘outrage’ that had surrounded Richardson’s death in the first place. Lord Robert Cecil made the Foreign Office’s despatches a focus of enquiry, noting how and when ‘moderate’ language gave way to Russell’s ‘furious missives’. In his eyes, the government’s talk about acting in defence of merchants’ rights and free trade was mere cant: the Richardson affair flattered its need to display its ‘warlike and heroic side’. This was … attractive to a Government like that of England at this moment, that is forced to shape all its foreign and all its domestic policy with a view of picking up stray votes in the House of Commons. The opportunity is most fascinating of coming forward at once as the champion of the British merchant and of the British flag – of uttering endless flourishes about Civis Romanus – and running all the while no risk of defeat nor even of embarrassing expenditure. Japan presents this union of advantages in a high degree…145

Outrages, Cecil appreciated, did not occur but were made. (When a British subject was maltreated by a stronger power then, sure enough, ‘the insult is patiently pocketed’.) His analysis of how Palmerston’s government constructed and manipulated ‘outrage’ was devastating – it was, to his mind, all a part of a political offering of moral indignation and careless belligerence, tailored to the tastes of the middle class – but he was not alone in seeing in the Richardson affair a prime example of how it was done. For Harrison, talk 144

145

H. Richard, ‘The Destruction of Kagosima and Our Intercourse with Japan’ (London, 1863), p. 2. See also: Stephen, ‘Japan’, p.101. Gascoyne-Cecil, ‘Foreign Policy of England’, pp. 492–493.

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of ‘some very dreadful and, of course, unprovoked outrage’ formed a thread running through all those ‘unintentional wars which we usually have on hand in the East’.146 ‘Outrage’ was a part of the toolkit of mid-Victorian expansionism. If free trade, evangelicalism, utilitarianism and anti-slavery formed the content of the Victorians’ interventionist ideology, ‘outrage’ provided the register in which it was often conducted. In the eyes of Palmerston’s radical opponents, it was also the means through which his government ‘hypnotised’ Parliament and the nation, distracting them from attending to the cause of reform at home.147 It was easy to blame this on the instability of public opinion, and many did. But particular ire was reserved for how the shifts and vagaries of the public mood – rising and falling ‘like a contest in some burlesque eclogue’ – were preyed upon by the treaty port merchants and their presses.148 Russell knew full well that some merchant communities were more capable of getting their voices heard in London than were Britain’s consular officials; ‘the grasping at mercantile advantages’ may have been ‘a fine part of the national character, but it is one which may get us into trouble, if not checked by government’.149 To critics, the Richardson affair reaffirmed how merchant lobbying could deflect the course of British policy. It brought back memories of the Second Opium War (1856–1860), and was read as proof of the need for governments ‘to turn a deaf ear to such sinister counsels’ again.150 Above all, it brought forth a 146 147

148

149

150

Harrison, Autobiographic Memoirs, i, p. 270. Ibid., pp. 286–287; Darwin, ‘Victorians’, p. 627; M. Taylor, ‘Imperium et libertas? Rethinking the radical critique of imperialism during the nineteenth century’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1991), pp. 1–23. McCarthy, History of Our Own Times, iii, p. 210. Fukuzawa Yukichi, who was in France when he learned of the Richardson murder, was also struck by the volatility of European reactions to Japan at this time: ‘[We] were about to sail for Portugal when news of the “Namamugi affair” reached us … Suddenly the entire attitude of Napoleon’s government changed. I do not know what may have been the general opinion of the people over the affair, but the official attitude was decidedly cool. When the host assumed that attitude, we, the guests, felt a peculiar embarrassment which was unpleasant at the least’: Y. Fukuzawa, The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa, trans. E. Kiyōka (New York, 1966), pp. 138–139. TNA: PRO 30/22/101, J. Russell to F. Bruce, 10 Feb. 1863; J. Russell to F. Bruce, 10 June 1863. For one example among many: The Herald of Peace, 153 (N.S.), 1 Mar. 1863, p. 170.

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new wave of criticism of the venality and immorality of British merchants themselves. ‘It is enough…to make one’s blood boil’, wrote Harrison of the Richardson affair, ‘to know that acts black enough to degrade England in history, to pervert and pollute the national sense, are being perpetrated to please a few of the most unscrupulous trading adventurers that the world contains’.151 They were the worst ‘representatives of our civilization’ imaginable. They behaved ‘with the grossest insolence to the native authorities’, thereby confirming prejudices against foreigners already in the country. To fight on their behalf was to degrade the moral character of the nation. It was an act of ‘preposterous arrogance’ to insist that the manners and customs of Japan – including conventions respecting the use of the high road – should be ‘changed for their pleasure’. If violence had ensued, they too must share the blame.152 And so, a second Charles Richardson emerged from the ashes of Kagoshima. Haughty, headstrong and disrespectful, he not only personified the myriad faults of British merchants in Asia, but confirmed the illegitimacy of levelling a city on their behalf. This was not, for the most part, a view based upon fresh evidence, but rather a different interpretation of those same initial reports, marked by a disinclination to take the Yokohama merchants at their word. For the sternest critics, Richardson had invited the attack by his actions. If he was indeed a victim, it was of ‘the enmity inspired by our insolence’.153 Merchants were well-known for holding native custom in contempt, and ‘it was owing, undoubtedly, to this dogged, defiant, unaccommodating obstinacy that the party to which the unfortunate Mr Richardson belonged brought their own lives into peril’. The tradition of reserving the road for a daimyō’s use ‘may appear strange to us’, wrote The Herald of Peace, but it was not Britain’s tradition to violate.154 It was a source of deep regret that the ruination of Kagoshima ‘should have originated in the arrogance and disregard for national customs of a party of our own countrymen, 151

152

153 154

F. Harrison, correspondence [n.d. 1863], cited in Harrison, Autobiographic Memoirs, i, p. 290. ‘State of Our Relations with Japan’; ‘Destruction of Kagosima’; Richard, ‘Destruction of Kagoshima’. ‘The Tidings from Japan’, The Herald of Peace, 161 (N.S.), 2 Nov. 1863, pp. 272–273. Richard, ‘Destruction of Kagosima’.

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who we may say deliberately rushed on their own destruction’.155 Richardson’s pride had trumped his common-sense. Lord Robert Cecil similarly found him guilty of ‘an act of incaution’ in failing to get off the road altogether: Richardson either ‘did not know the etiquette, or he determined to assert his rights as a true-born Briton, and to disregard it’. He further claimed that on encountering the procession Richardson ‘stood his ground, or at least only drew up upon one side’, and only began to turn his horse’s head once the retainers’ swords had been drawn. This was a stronger interpretation of the facts, but not necessarily inconsistent with what Margaret Borrodaile and William Clarke had reported.156 Interestingly, it was the China press that was most persistent in claiming that Richardson’s death had been brought on by his own insensitivity and incaution.157 This led to heated exchanges between the Japan Herald, the China Mail and the North China Herald, and between Yokohama, Hong Kong and Shanghai, in which the respectability and reputations of these maritime communities were pitted against one another. Yokohama, youngest of the ports, had already become notorious for the contemptuous manner in which its residents treated the natives; loftier minds had warned that something like this might happen.158 Its newspaper – still smarting from the Bishop of Victoria’s description of this Japanese port as ‘a deplorable scene of demoralization and profligate life’ – deeply resented ‘the insinuation against our suffering friends’. It accused its 155

156

157 158

‘Why Mr. Richardson Was Killed’, The London and China Telegraph, 29 Oct. 1863, p. 529. Gascoyne-Cecil, ‘Foreign Policy of England’, pp. 494–495. Harrison’s claim, however, that the party had ignored explicit warnings to dismount from Satsuma’s escort appears to have been an invention. For him, it furnished proof of how ‘we trample on their most inveterate habits, without caring how many scruples and prejudices we are wounding, and then we wonder that collisions occur’: Harrison, ‘Destruction of Kagoshima’, p. 292. For example: NCH, No. 637, 11 Oct. 1862, p. 162; CM, 11 Dec. 1862. ‘A conversation [I had] with Captain Boon [during the expedition to Peking in October, 1860] regarding the ill treatment which the natives of India too frequently receive at the hands of Englishmen, and the insults which the higher class natives are exposed to by hearing themselves called “niggers” and “suars” … led to our discussing our prospects in Japan. It is his opinion that, ere long, the insulting, unamiable, and overbearing conduct generally of the English in Japan will give rise to a general massacre of the European residents. This belief is strictly in accordance with what I have heard repeatedly expressed of late by those who have visited the Japanese ports …’: D.F. Rennie, The British Arms in North China and Japan (London, 1864), p. 155.

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rivals of ignorance and of indulging ‘Mandarin-worshipping feelings’. On at least three occasions, it dedicated much of its editorial space to narrating once again the encounter on the Tōkaidō, always insisting on Richardson’s ‘gentlemanly’ conduct. When the NorthChina Herald refused to publish a retraction, it continued to charge the paper with conducting ‘a bad defence of a brutal murder’.159 It remained a sore point for some time to come.160 One new piece of information did emerge from Shanghai, however. Britain’s ranking official there, Sir Frederick Bruce, was no stranger to locking horns with the merchant community.161 But the topic of Kagoshima brought forth such an extraordinarily vehement response as to warrant giving Bruce the last word: Our people entertain towards these so-called inferior races in the East, the feelings of the slave-holders of the Confederacy to the Negro. Unfortunately when slavery was abolished in England, the slave-holding tendency remained. That is, the notion, that because a race is apparently weaker than our own, their rights are to be ignored, and are to be trampled down, when it suits the cupidity, or gratifies the arrogance, of the stronger Race … It is the union of this slavery feeling with the pushing enterprise of Europeans that I chiefly dread. The moral power and influence of England can not be more worthily employed than in denouncing it ... People regret occurrences like the affair of Kagosima. Why are Ministers and Admirals driven to such acts? Mr. Richardson rides out for pleasure. He meets the procession of a Japanese Noble, accustomed from his childhood to certain marks of respect. If Mr. Richardson objected to paying them, why did he not do as he was urged by his more sensible companions, and turn back, or leave the road? I knew the unfortunate man, for I had to support the Consul at Shanghae in inflicting upon him a heavy fine for a most brutal and unprovoked assault on an unoffending coolie in his employ. He was 159

160 161

JH, No. 49, 25 Oct. 1862; JH, No. 54, 29 Nov. 1862, p. 217; G. Smith, Ten Weeks in Japan (London, 1861), p. 250. ‘We have had occasion before to remark that people may be too near an object as well as too far from it to see correctly’, sneered the Shanghai paper: NCH, No. 641, 8 Nov. 1862, p. 179. JH, No. 86, 17 Oct. 1863, p. 110; JH, No. 99, 16 Jan. 1864, p. 163. Just two days after despatching his Christmas Eve instructions to Colonel Neale, John Russell had thanked Bruce for rebuking the Shanghai merchants for their ‘overbearing manners’: TNA: PRO 30/22/101, J. Russell to F. Bruce, 26 Dec. 1862.

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one of the class who would have been Mohawks in Swift’s time, a type too often found among our middle class, with the brutal courage of a prize-fighter, unimpeded by a single chivalrous instinct. The instincts of these men are developed among the debasing incidents of a life in the East. They acquire a taste for inflicting suffering, by practicing it upon people who don’t resist … This is not an exaggerated picture. It is what is constantly seen at the Ports.162

When it came to the matter of Britain’s position in East Asia, no one held the monopoly on outrage.

162

TNA: PRO 30/22/50, F. Bruce to J. Russell, 15 Apr. 1864.

4

Namamugi Remembered Ž

[The Richardson affair] follows the substance of the original event like a sort of comet’s tail of confused and disconnected particles, stretching dimly and erratically across the distances of popular memory, and growing more and more vaporous and undefined toward the end.

E.H. House (1875) We have too soon forgotten the affair of Kagosima. Perhaps some day the Japanese will recall it to our attention.

F. Harrison (1911)

IN MID-DECEMBER, 1863, a line of wooden carts rattled up to the entrance of the British Legation at Yokohama. They were laden with gifts from Satsuma for Admiral Kuper, Colonel Neale and the British consular staff; ‘great boxes of oranges’ for the Royal Navy’s bluejackets; and an indemnity of 100,000 Mexican dollars for the death of Charles Lenox Richardson. While the carts were unloaded in the courtyard and the payment was counted out, Neale was handed a note from the Satsuma envoys – countersigned by the bakufu – pledging to continue the search for Richardson’s murderers. In light of what had transpired at Kagoshima, discussion turned to Satsuma’s request for British help in purchasing a modern warship of their own. In this cordial atmosphere, and with the indemnity received in full, Neale had the satisfaction of reporting to Russell ‘by this occasion the final accomplishment of my instruc-

89

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tions’ (pl. 21). For him, with evident relief, it marked the end of the Richardson affair.1 It was not, of course; history is seldom so straightforward. The emotions stirred up on all sides would ensure that memories of Richardson’s murder and of the course of British vengeance would echo down the years. Yet the Richardson affair – and Richardson himself – have been remembered in profoundly different ways by different constituencies. The outrage that had coursed through the debates of the day left a schizophrenic impression of events and of the man, with positive and negative impressions formed in the heat of the moment shaping our responses ever since. Nor would the affair be remembered equally. While a particular narrative of events became increasingly prominent in Japan, alternate and more local versions lost out. In Britain, the story soon lapsed from view, only to be rewritten in curious and unexpected ways later in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. …

British communities in China seemed forever to be operating in a historical mode. Memories of the transformations they had wrought, and defiance towards the ‘insults’ they had received ran through the discourse of treaty port life, so that the history of their trade with China ‘was constantly in British minds as they argued and pamphleted…’.2 In this way, the past was kept on standby, ready to be invoked in defence of treaty rights, to uphold foreigners’ privileges and to warn officials near and far against complacency. It was fitting, then, that Charles Lenox Richardson so quickly became the great martyr of the Yokohama foreign community. An innocent victim of Asian ‘cruelty’, he was, for a time, their Napier.3

1

2 3

TNA: FO 262/56, E. Neale to J. Russell, No. 183, 17 Dec. 1863; ‘Japan’, Illustrated London News, 20 Feb. 1864, p. 189. Bickers, Scramble for China, p. 111. Lord William John Napier (1786–1834), Britain’s first, confrontational, chief superintendent of trade in China. His bullish attempt to secure greater commercial access at Canton ended in defeat, detention and withdrawal; his death soon afterwards was widely attributed to Chinese malice. As with Richardson, it would later be felt that

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Of all the killings around Yokohama in the turbulent bakumatsu era, Richardson’s remained ‘[the] most prominent in the public recollection’.4 It was the most likely to be called to mind by subsequent ‘incidents’ on the settlement’s backroads. It bound the community together while the extent of government support yet remained uncertain. It was invoked again with righteous anger when they learned of the protests about Kagoshima back home.5 Even the settlement of the indemnity did not diminish calls for its commemoration: ‘may the lesson … be as long borne in mind by his cowardly assassins, as his memory will be cherished, and his fate remembered by all his countrymen’.6 That ‘lesson’ rapidly took on aspects of myth. John Reddie Black observed how the story became embellished with details that he had ‘never been able to trace… to any reliable source’, but which were still believed indisputably decades later.7 Thanks to the Japan Herald (and with apologies to Tennyson), it was even immortalised in verse: Buried he is – Not as the unknown, nor meanly – But with those obsequies we give To those our Country mourn With prayer and solemn music. And when they lay him in the grave All hearts spake! – Let his tomb Be the blazon of our wrath to come.

4 5

6

7

Napier’s truculence had contributed to his own demise: Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 46–47. House, Kagosima Affair, p. 1. ‘I wish some of the philanthropic folk were on the spot’, wrote Willis after reading the London papers. ‘They appear to forget that a barbarous murder was committed without a shadow of provocation … [H]ad I been the Minister I would not have left one house standing or one gun unresponded to …’: YAH: Willis corr., Vol. 44/5, No. 93, W. Willis to G. Willis, 16 Jan. 1864. JH, No. 54, 12 Dec. 1863, p. 143. Todd Munson’s study of the Yokohama press emphasises the conflict and controversy among its actors in this period, but at the risk of occluding the power of particular moments to bind this nascent, multinational and transient community together. When it came to Charles Lenox Richardson, coverage was characterised more by consensus than by conflict. See: Munson, Periodical Press, esp. pp. 67–69. Black, Young Japan, p. 125.

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The stern remembrancer of our just Revenge – not in golden letters Thereon inscribed – but slumb’ring only In our inmost hearts!8

Richardson’s funeral was political theatre; it marked his transformation into a treaty port martyr. At some point on the morning of 15 September – most likely during the inquest – the body was washed and photographed, probably by the talented British photographer William Saunders (pl. 11). It is a haunting image: the body wrapped in white sheets, arms resting on the stomach, torso exposed to reveal deep wounds across the chest, and the forehead catching the delicate, strange light bathing the room. That it exists at all was partly down to luck (Saunders had arrived from Shanghai just two weeks earlier), but it served to instantly fix Charles Lenox Richardson within the canon of treaty port victims. Henry Heusken had been photographed much the same way in 1861; a year later, a similar image would be produced of the body of Lt. Camus.9 At least two different versions of the photograph are known to exist, and prints, made locally, quickly found their way into the diplomatic bag: the French Minister Bellecourt took the unusual step of inserting a copy in his next despatch home, while his Dutch counterpart Dirk de Graeff van Polsbroeck kept another for his private photograph album.10 In the afternoon ‘a large concourse of soldiers and civilians’ processed down to the new foreign cemetery at Yamate. ‘Nearly every foreigner’ in the Yokohama settlement took part. The band of the French warship Le Monge led the way, followed by an escort and the Legation’s chaplain, Rev. Bailey – an active participant in the sensational meetings the night before. Then came the litter with its four pall-bearers: Howard Vyse, fresh from talks with the merchant delegation and from chairing the inquest; Samuel Gower, the Jardines 8 9

10

‘September 14th 1862’, JH, No. 44, 20 Sept. 1862. See my note, p. xiv. I am grateful to Mio Wakito and Terry Bennett for further information on the early history of photography in Yokohama. ADAE: CP 59 (Japon), Vol. 7: Bellecourt to MFA Paris, No. 193, 20 Sept. 1862; Het Scheepvaartmuseum, Amsterdam: s.3628(02), Album of Dirk de Graeff van Polsbroek, image SMA1.12B.

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agent who foresaw the need to get the foreign community’s statement into print; William Aspinall, Richardson’s onetime associate and in whose house the body had been prepared; and Frederick Bell, a fellow merchant who, around midnight on the 14th, had led the vote of thanks to Vyse for ‘the way in which he has gone hand in hand with the community’. An Anglo-French guard of honour then marched in front of Neale and Bellecourt, the British, French and Dutch naval commanders, and foreign residents of all nationalities, ‘the whole forming an imposing and solemn procession’. As Bailey read the service and consigned the body to the grave, ‘many a tearful eye followed it’.11 Thereafter, the grave became a powerful site where the community came to renew its anger toward such humiliations, its concern for its position, and its drive to attain ever greater access to Japan. When subsequent foreign victims were laid to rest in Yamate, their graves were often described in relation to Richardson’s ‘tomb’. At the funeral for the murdered Lieutenant Camus the following summer, the cortege stopped to acknowledge each of the foreigners killed before, especially the grave of Richardson ‘who fell thirteen months since, day for day, under the steel of hired assassins, whom massacre does satisfy, and who do not cease their brutality until their arms are fatigued with mutilating their victims’. The Herald picked out William Marshall in the crowd that day, too: a poignant reminder of the ‘rapid succession’ and ‘savageness’ with which these crimes were committed.12 That version of the Namamugi incident, and of its victim’s unblemished character, was insisted upon by British officials at every step of the negotiations across the spring and summer of 1863 – amplified, of course, through the assiduous attention of the press. To speak of Shimazu Hisamitsu without ‘some form of descriptive opprobrium’, wrote Boston journalist and relentless critic of British imperialism, Edward House, ‘has become as much an impossibil11

12

F. Hall, diary for 15 Sept. 1862, in Notehelfer, Japan through American Eyes, p. 449; MW: manuscript letter from Shanghai on the funeral of Charles Lenox Richardson [n.d.]; YAH: Willis corr., Vol. 44/2, No. 43, W. Willis to G. Willis, 21 Sept. 1862; E.M. Satow, diary for 17 Sept 1862, in Morton and Ruxton, Diaries, p. 66. JH, No. 86, 17 Oct. 1863, p. 111.

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ity as to represent Mr. Richardson in any other light than that of a guileless martyr ...’.13 Russell’s instructions took pains to insist on Richardson’s right to use the road, and that Hisamitsu ‘permitted, if he did not actually order his retainers’ to commence the attack (and had certainly not punished them for it).14 Neale hewed to that line throughout the negotiations: the outrage was ‘perpetrated…without the shadow of an extenuating circumstance’.15 It appeared, like an incantation, throughout the Foreign Office’s Japan despatches, and the bakufu’s failure to parrot such terms led Neale to reject their first two letters of apology.16 It was instantly recalled in the government’s first written response to the news of Kagoshima, and would resurface throughout the Parliamentary and press debates that ensued.17 Meanwhile, the unassuming spot where Richardson’s body had been found – at the base of a tree, not far from the village teahouse – was fast becoming an important site in the settlement’s collective memory. Shortly after the incident, Ernest Satow set out to visit the place with his fellow translator (and later Yokohama Consul) Russell Robertson. They rode right past it that day, but before long it was readily being visited by foreign residents and travellers alike.18 For some, no doubt, it held a merely morbid fascination. But for others this was a lieux de mémoire worth their reflection, worth revisiting. It seemed to communicate the struggles and ambition of the foreign community in the face of the obstinacy and cruelty of Japan’s noble class – and all set against the backdrop of the mysterious, alluring Tōkaidō. Charles Wirgman, the cartoonist and illustrator for the Illustrated London News, was out of the country when Richardson was killed, but nonetheless sought to imagine the scene in a sketch which was never used. One of the soldiers landed 13 14 15

16 17 18

House, Kagosima Affair, p. 1. TNA: FO 46/20, J. Russell to E. Neale, No. 38, 24 Dec. 1862. TNA: FO 46/25, E. Neale, ‘Memorandum communicated verbally to the Japanese Ministers for Foreign Affairs at Yedo, on the 4th of December 1862, by Her Britannic Majesty’s Chargé d’Affaires’ [n.d.]. TNA: FO 881/1183, E. Neale to J. Russell, 13 July 1863. TNA: FO 46/31, J. Russell to E. Neale, No. 97, 10 Nov. 1863. E.M. Satow, diary for 14 Oct. 1862, in Morton and Ruxton, Diaries, p. 67. In July, 1863 David Field Rennie, the senior medical officer accompanying British forces in northern China, also visited the site of the murder as part of a reconnaissance along the Tōkaidō in anticipation of likely military action: Rennie, British Arms, p. 295.

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at Yamate in response to the crisis, James Smyth, was also drawn to make his own sketch of the incident that had brought him to Japanese shores (pl. 16).19 Above all, the renowned photographer Felice Beato made the trip to Namamugi soon after his arrival in Japan in 1863. As historian of visual culture Mio Wakita has suggested, Beato’s two photographs of the site were a reflection of the intense emotional impact the killing still had on the foreign community, and were made in the context of the emerging souvenir photograph industry at the treaty port (pl. 18). In capturing the armed figures who seemingly block further progress along the road, they evoke that atmosphere of menace, still.20 By then the spot was already shrouded in its own grisly legend. A story had soon emerged (probably following Vyse’s return to Namamugi, two weeks after the murder, to investigate reports of Richardson’s ‘mutilation’) that a young woman, the mistress of the small teahouse in the village, had brought water to Richardson as he lay dying by a tree at the roadside, his bowels protruding from his stomach. John Reddie Black doubted this had ever happened; Vyse himself thought the woman would have been much too afraid to approach the wounded man. That hardly mattered: ‘this belief ’, wrote Black in 1879, ‘has always given that woman an interest in the minds of foreigners, who thenceforward rarely passed along that portion of the Tokaido without stopping at “Black-eyed Susan’s”, the name by which to this day she is familiarly known’.21 William Elliot Griffis, erstwhile missionary and prolific author on Japan, described one such encounter on his own ride along the Tōkaidō one crisp winter’s day in 1871. The error in the date is telling; as time went by, it was the story’s emotional resonance that stuck: This tea-house has a history. Its proprietress is familiarly known among all foreigners who ride on the Tokaido … Her eyes deserve their renown, and her face its fame … Near by Black-eyed Susan’s 19

20

21

See K. Nakatake, ‘Bakumatsu no igirisu chūtongun chūi no tegami’ (http://www.kaikou. city.yokohama.jp/journal/105/05.html). Accessed 1 Dec. 2017. This sketch closely follows that of Smyth’s friend, Charles Wirgman. M. Wakita, ‘Sites of “Disconnectedness”: the port city of Yokohama, souvenir photography, and its audience’, Transcultural Studies, Vol. 2 (2013), pp. 77–129. Black, Young Japan, pp. 136–137.

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stands a clump of trees. It was near this place that, in 1863 [sic], poor Richardson lost his life … It saddens us to think of it.22

…

The first Japanese narratives of the incident also emerged quickly, but were, initially, more cautious. On the night of the 14th, the Governor of Kanagawa appeared before senior bakufu officials in Edo to deliver a preliminary report on what had happened. He told them he had despatched officers to make further enquiries from Shimazu Hisamitsu, and that Hisamitsu had tried to blame the attack on masterless samurai. The Rōjū, doubtful of this explanation and sensing the gravity of the situation, undertook to conduct a more thorough examination.23 In the Sekiguchi nikki, the diaries of the hereditary headmen of Namamugi village, we can see this investigation getting underway, but also the great difficulty its authors faced in establishing exactly what had occurred.24 By 30 September, word of the attack had crossed the sea and reached Wusong, where the castaway, convert and interpreter Joseph Heco (Hamada Hikozō) was preparing his return to Japan. As he heard it the first time, the rumour was ‘that a rebellion had broken out in Japan and that three Englishmen had been cut down near Yokohama’. The rebellion part was quickly disproven, but for Heco further clarification had to wait until he reached Yokohama two weeks later. There, he found ‘both the foreign and the native communities in wild excitement’ over the murder, with ‘two versions of the occurrence’ doing the rounds – one foreign, one Japanese (though with plenty of subtle variations among them). Among Japanese narrators he observed ‘a common belief … that when [a daimyō] train is broken or scattered by others, as had just happened, it is a bad omen and a sure precursor of calamity to their clan’. 22 23

24

W.E. Griffis, The Mikado’s Empire (New York, 1876), pp. 358–359. ADAE: CP 59 (Japon), Vol. 7: Rōjū to Bellecourt, 23rd day of the 8th month (16 Sept. 1862). Yokohamashi Rekishi Hakubutsukan, Namamugi jiken to yokohama no muramura (Yokohama, 2012), p. 12.

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Many believed that Richardson’s party ‘either would not or could not’ get off the road in time. Heco’s informant also told him that Hisamitsu had left Edo furious at having been refused an official title, and had actively sought ‘to entangle the Shogun’s Government in difficulties with foreign nations’.25 For rural communities around Yokohama, word of the clash on the Tōkaidō was quickly subsumed within rumours of possible reprisal and, amidst escalating tensions following the arrival of London’s demands, the bakufu’s injunctions that they form defensive associations, submit to the requisitioning of their fishing boats, and evacuate their families from the coast. For the many who left no written account of the Richardson affair, it seems likely that all this disruption, even panic, would have loomed largest in their most immediate recollections.26 (Fukuzawa Yukichi, for his part, tied up all his belongings ‘and made ready to move to Aoyama’ to seek refuge. ‘Even yet’, recalled this foremost intellectual at the end of his life, ‘there is a chest of drawers in my household with marks of the roping on it’).27 Later in the Meiji period, however, the Richardson story was actively embraced as a part of the local history and civic identity of the young port city. In 1874 the head of Tsurumi shrine, Kurokawa Shōzo visited the site of the murder as part of a tax assessment in the village, and was surprised to find nothing there to mark its significance. He purchased the land, and in 1883 commissioned a local sculptor to create a stone tablet as a memorial (pl. 23). Today it stands near a flyover, with its back to a brewery. But it still bears the original poem composed by the scholar and educationist Nakamura Masanao, connecting this spot to that early Meiji spirit of ‘civilisa25

26

27

J. Heco, The Narrative of a Japanese: what he has seen and the people he has met in the course of the last forty years, (2 vols., Tokyo, 1895), i, pp. 306–309. Yoshimura Akira made Heco’s life the subject of his Storm Rider: a novel, trans. J.P. Gabriel (Orlando, FL, 2004), originally published as Amerika Hikozō (Tokyo, 2001). Heco started the Kaigai Shinbun (“Overseas News”) in 1865, Japan’s first true periodical: Munson, Periodical Press. Yokohamashi Rekishi Hakubutsukan, Namamugi jiken, p. 46. At Nagasaki, George Morrison was similarly troubled by the impact of ‘false rumours…regarding the intentions of English ships of war’, with families packing up and removing their property from the coast ‘in great numbers’: TNA: FO 46/38: G. Morrison, ‘Proclamation by the British Consul for the Quieting of Apprehension’, in G. Morrison to E. Neale, 14 May 1863. Fukuzawa, Autobiography, pp. 145–146.

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tion and enlightenment’ (bunmei kaika), and drawing a direct link from the death of Charles Richardson to the birth of a new, modern Japan: Shed by this sea-shore, the blood of a stranger Flowed in a fountain of national progress. Strong clans up-rising, the hands of the Emperor Swayed once again the sceptre of sovereignty And towards reform the mind of the nation Turning, awoke to the rights of the people. Who, in the homes of the dead or the living Knows not this brave man? His name shall be written Wherever the pages of history are open.28

Years later, Richardson’s niece carefully copied this inscription into her commonplace book. ‘The Japanese appear to consider my uncle the first victim in the cause of Japanese liberty’, she wrote.29 In the years that followed, the memorial became an early site for public remembrance of the bakumatsu and early Meiji periods at Yokohama, and a place for its residents to reflect on the extent of change within their city.30 At his own expense, Kurokawa held a commemorative event there in 1911, and new photographs were taken of the monument. Because it occurred at much the same time as the public anniversary of the opening of Yokohama port, Kurokawa’s event can be read as a further expression of this emergent civic identity. As such, it served a different audience to Richardson’s grave in the foreign cemetery; indeed, as late as 1917 ‘it was not generally known 28

29 30

This translation was made by Francis Brinkley, the proprietor of the state-sponsored Japan Mail and an advocate of treaty reform: H. Norman, The Real Japan: studies of contemporary Japanese manners, morals, administration and politics (London, 1892) pp. 319–320. For more on Nakamura and the intellectual society he helped to found, the Meirokusha, see: A. Ohta, ‘Nakamura Masanao (Keiu), 1832–1891: translator into Japanese of Samuel Smiles’ Self Help’, in H. Cortazzi (ed.), Britain and Japan: biographical portraits, volume IV (London, 2002), pp. 215–223; M. Hane, ‘Early Meiji Liberalism: an assessment’, Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 24, No. 4 (1969), pp. 353–371; E.H. Kinmonth, ‘Nakamura Keiu and Samuel Smiles: a Victorian Confucian and a Confucian Victorian’, The American Historical Review, Vol. 85, No. 3 (1980), pp. 535–556. MW: F.M. Heath, ‘My Pedigree Book’ [n.d., c. 1910], f. 57. I am indebted to Nakatake Kanami for her knowledge of the local commemorations discussed in this paragraph.

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[among foreigners] that such [a monument] had been erected’.31 In 1922, to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the incident, Kurokawa was joined by the village chief of nearby Ōtsunamura to organise a larger event, and the first to formally involve the British. Prince Shimazu Tadashige, then in England, sent a representative to Namamugi to perform a memorial rite for Richardson in the presence of Britain’s Consul-General and the Governor of Kanagawa. Afterwards, picture postcards (ehagaki) of the monument – that important visual medium of the period, often associated with the commemoration of key events and the sharing of communal memories – were printed and distributed.32 Three years later, following the Great Kantō Earthquake, a proposal was made to further develop the monument with a new inscription by Shimazu Tadashige or by Tōgō Heihachirō (whose baptism of fire had been on the batteries at Kagoshima) – though the idea was destined not to be realized.33 Nonetheless, Satsuma was increasingly involved in shaping wider public memories of the Richardson affair. As early as December 1863 – having agreed to pay the indemnity, but before delivery was completed – the Japan Commercial News was reporting Hisamitsu’s declared intention ‘[to] cause a grand mausoleum to be erected for Mr Richardson at the place where he was murdered’. The paper, which the Japan Herald routinely accused of sensationalism, was right to be sceptical: no such monument proved forthcoming.34 But figures from the domain henceforth actively engaged with the Richardson story, and for multiple purposes. In part, they did so 31

32

33

34

When Edward Jenner Hogg – silk merchant and Shanghai grandee, and who had known Richardson in the late 1850s – first wrote about it in the North China Herald, he did so in terms of its ‘discovery’: ‘The Richardson Memorial: a Story of Satsuma Days’, NCH, No. 2579, 11 Jan. 1917, p. 94. In a private letter about his ‘discovery’, Hogg described Richardson as ‘my old friend from those old times’. He arranged for the memorial tablet to be photographed, and for these images to be sent to Richardson’s relatives in England: MW: miscellaneous papers, E.J. Hogg to Cornfoot, 17 Oct. 1917. K. Satō, ‘Postcards in Japan: a historical sociology of a forgotten culture’, International Journal of Japanese Sociology, Vol. 11 (2002), pp. 35–55; JT, ‘Japanese Hold Memorial Rite for Richardson’, 21 Aug. 1922. JT, ‘Tsurumi Will Erect Monument to Briton Slain by Satsuma’, 30 Nov. 1925; Yokohamashi Rekishi Hakubutsukan, Namamugi jiken, p. 60. Extract from the Japan Commercial News, cited in: OCM, Supplementary, 1 Dec. 1863. For a valuable examination of the Commercial News from the three issues known to have survived, see: Munson, Periodical Press, pp. 81–90.

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to champion the moral courage and far-sightedness of Satsuma men, and to celebrate their successes in battle. In the aftermath of Kagoshima, painting the engagement as a Satsuma victory worked to secure commendations from the Imperial court; decades later, the action was still pointed to as proof of ‘that spirit of bravery which only the men of Kagoshima have…’.35 In Admiral Inoue Yoshika’s recollection, the fighting at Kagoshima revealed to him the power of naval arms to exhibit a nation’s glory on the world stage – a cause to which he and others present at the time then enthusiastically dedicated their lives.36 Nor was the settlement of indemnity to be equated in any way with capitulation. After all, as the British only discovered some time later, Satsuma had borrowed the money from the bakufu, and had never paid it back. At the same time, establishing a particular interpretation of the affair also aided Satsuma’s efforts to consolidate its new, emerging relationship with Britain – and its business relationships, in particular. In June 1863, for example, Hisamitsu attempted to relay through his commercial contact, the ambitious merchant Thomas Glover, his ‘regret’ for ‘the untoward murder of Mr Richardson, which was a spontaneous exhibition of Japanese feeling in accordance with Japanese custom’. George Morrison, who received this message, thought that interpretation ‘plausible’ if ‘open to question’; more importantly, he recognised that it was being offered now in the context of Satsuma’s apparent anxiety to open a direct trading relationship with the British.37 Similar allusions followed. In February, 1864 two commissioning agents arrived at Yokohama from Satsuma to push ahead the planned purchase of a warship from Britain. They toured Kuper’s flagship and HMS Barrosa, fraternizing with the officers ‘in the most frank and cordial manner’, and asked Neale to obtain for them ‘a ship of war in every respect like HMS Perseus’, which one of the agents had himself observed during the fight at Kagoshima. As they 35

36 37

T. Okuda, ‘The Bombardment of Kagoshima by the British Fleet, August, 1863’, trans. C.H.N. James, Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, No. 429 (1913), pp. 1485– 1498, originally published in Suikōsha Kiji. ‘Remarks of Admiral Inouye’, in Okuda, ‘Bombardment’, p. 1493. FO 46/38, Morrison to Hammond, 18 June 1863.

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set to leave, this principal agent addressed the Richardson affair. ‘What occurred’, Neale recorded of his speech, ‘has been a lesson to us and opened our eyes and will, perhaps, be the means of opening also our Country’.38 There are reasons to question this reportage (it served Neale’s purposes, above all). But as Satsuma’s role in the Meiji Restoration grew, the Richardson story would often be retold to explain the ‘closeness’ developing between Britain and the southwestern domain, to provide a narrative arc through the messy politics of the bakumatsu era, and to place Satsuma centre-stage of the unfolding drama. That, perhaps, was the central point of Hayakawa Shōzan’s iconic 1877 print of ‘The Killing at Namamugi’ (pl. 17). A vivid and imaginative engagement with its subject – more an evocation of changing times than a reconstruction of past events – this nishikie was one of a number issued by Hayakawa and his contemporaries in the context of the Satsuma Rebellion and the consolidation of the Meiji state. It may or may not have sought to valorize the conduct of Satsuma men (ambiguity on that point had much to recommend it). Either way, it underscored their central part in the country’s recent history.39 …

For the British, in contrast, as the 1860s surged on, there were soon as many reasons to forget the Richardson affair as to recall it. Histories of the Meiji Restoration often suggest that while France supported the revival of Shogunal authority, Britain increasingly backed the western domains and the Imperial camp. That might suggest that, in the name of the informal alliance developing with Satsuma domain, there were pressing political reasons to consign Richardson’s murder to the past. But such an interpretation affords a greater clarity of purpose to British policy than may have existed 38 39

TNA: FO 46/43, E. Neale to J. Russell, No. 15, 9 Feb. 1864. British Museum Collection Database, ‘1949,0514,0.11.1–3’, British Museum, www. britishmuseum.org/collection. Accessed 1 Sept. 2017. I am grateful to Alfred Haft of the British Museum for information on this work. For discussion of the nishikie of the Satsuma Rebellion, see: M.J. Ravina, ‘The Apocryphal Suicide of Saigō Takamori: samurai, “seppuku”, and the politics of legend’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 69, No. 3 (Aug., 2010), pp. 699–701.

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at the time, and has flowed, in part, from a tendency to pay too much attention to the views of two erudite but junior British officials: Ernest Satow and A.B. Mitford.40 Far from being anti-bakufu in nature, British policy for much of the 1860s was instead characterised by a dread of the complications that might arise from a Japanese civil war. To understand why it was that the Richardson affair came to be forgotten in Britain, therefore, we need to acknowledge the strong private and commercial incentives – quite as much as any public or political ones – to let sleeping dogs lie. Britain’s brief war with Satsuma had been waged in considerable ignorance of the domain, its daimyō and his attitudes – particularly Hisamitsu’s keenness to expand his commercial operations. As Robert Hellyer has shown, in the 1850s Hisamitsu went to great lengths to advance his inter-domain trade in indigo and Ryūkyū textiles, sending ships to deal directly with partners on the Chōshū coast. After 1859, he oversaw persistent attempts to nurture commercial ties with Western merchants (exploiting smuggling networks at Nagasaki and Yokohama), and throughout the 1860s continued to seek new markets for Ryūkyū and domain products.41 In this, Britain and Satsuma had more in common than either initially may have cared to admit. Both chafed against the bakufu’s monopoly on foreign trade. After Kagoshima, a growing recognition of this shared resentment paved the way for reconciliation. In his recommendations to Lord Russell for a punitive response to the Richardson murder, Rutherford Alcock had stressed the importance of ending the bakufu’s monopoly, apparently unaware that his proposed target would have welcomed such a move.42 A year later, Alcock was explicitly recommending to Russell that Britain seek to circumvent bakufu restrictions by trading directly with individual daimyō, not40

41

42

This case was forcefully made by Gordon Daniels. See: G. Daniels, ‘The British Role in the Meiji Restoration: a re-interpretive note’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 2, No. 4 (1968), pp. 291–313. R. Hellyer, ‘The Missing Pirate and the Pervasive Smuggler: regional agency in coastal defence, trade and foreign relations in nineteenth-century Japan’,  The International History Review, Vol. 27, No. 1 (2005), pp. 1–24. From Nagasaki, Charles Winchester’s consular correspondence furnished regular proof of how ‘the commercial agents of the Princes of Kiu Siu [sic] cultivate the best terms with the [western] merchants’: TNA: FO 46/38, C. Winchester to E. Neale, 11 Mar. 1863. FO 46/25, Alcock, ‘Memorandum on Admiral Hope’s despatch’.

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ing Satsuma’s willingness in particular. This was emphatically not a move aimed at weakening Tokugawa authority: instead, breaking their monopoly seemed to offer the best prospect for reducing tensions between Edo and resentful daimyō (while furthering the cause of British commerce, of course).43 Within days this became the basis for new instructions from the Foreign Office: should any of the daimyō ‘having separate sea ports under their control’ be willing to open them on the same basis as the existing treaty ports, Neale was to ‘listen to such overtures’ and seek to make them a reality.44 All this meant that by the time the Anglo-Satsuma negotiations were concluded, the prominence of the person of Charles Lenox Richardson was already waning within his own story. Back in September, 1862 the Japan Herald had insisted that punishing ‘the perpetrators of the outrage’ must be ‘the first object to be asked and obtained by the [British] Diplomatic representative’. When the Government duly presented its demands to Satsuma, the ‘immediate trial and capital execution…of the chief perpetrators of the murder of Mr. Richardson’ did indeed top the list.45 Yet this specific demand – that part of Russell’s instructions most associated with avenging the young British merchant – was quietly dropped once the indemnity was paid. On the second day of the negotiations, Neale recognised Satsuma’s readiness to pay the indemnity Britain demanded. He later reported their desire ‘to see the foreign trade of this country more generally distributed than at present, and especially in the direction of their Prince’s own territories’.46 On the issue of Richardson’s assailants, however, the delegates merely promised to continue their search. Rather than holding out for their capture and execution, Neale felt pressured to come to terms on that basis. The alternative, he warned, ‘would have amounted to an unceasing and indefinite protraction of hostile action’ – and given the Royal Navy’s questionable performance at Kagoshima, that was not a course of action to relish. Neale may 43 44 45

46

FO 46/37, Alcock, ‘Memorandum on Japanese Affairs’. TNA: FO 262/54, J. Russell to E. Neale, 15 Nov. 1863. JH, No. 45, 27 Sept. 1862, p. 179; TNA: FO 46/20, J. Russell to E. Neale, No. 38, 24 Dec. 1862. TNA: FO 46/43, E.Neale to J. Russell, No. 15, 9 Feb. 1864.

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have believed that Satsuma’s undertaking constituted ‘guarantees for the future’; he alluded to possible military action should it transpire that Satsuma’s search was not being prosecuted in earnest. But no such action would be taken, and the point was not lost on many of Neale’s contemporaries. ‘No one believes that this promise will ever be fulfilled’, wrote Francis Hall, ‘and so the case of England against Satsuma is closed’.47 If the negotiations marked (in Neale’s words) ‘the unexpectedly sudden and satisfactory termination of a most difficult transaction’, they came at the cost of securing vengeance for Richardson himself.48 For some, this amounted to an erasure of Charles Richardson that was difficult to swallow. Whatever promises Satsuma had made to hunt down Richardson’s murderers, wrote Dr Willis … I do not believe one word of the kind. It is only to throw dust in our eyes, and I confess I look upon the settlement as a mistake. It fails as a lesson to Japanese Daimios and people and mere blood money is useless … We are hated and despised in Japan and it only remains for us to be feared.49

For others, however, overlooking calls for vengeance – setting aside the man and the emotions his death had stirred – was essential to deepening British relationships in the country. Writing in 1921, Ernest Satow remembered the Richardson affair coolly. He claimed not to have shared in ‘the feelings of indignation that seemed to animate every one else’ – he was even ‘secretly ashamed of my want of sympathy’. But he also gave Neale credit for knowing that Satsuma would never surrender the murderers, and defended his decision to come to terms regardless. Given that Shimazu Hisamitsu himself was widely believed to have ordered the attack, insisting on this point would surely have meant a prolonged and bloody war with Satsuma ‘before we could get at their chief ’.50 Ultimately, as the relationship with the domain deepened 47 48 49 50

F. Hall, diary for 14 Dec. 1863, in Notehelfer, Japan through American Eyes, p. 520. FO 46/37, E. Neale to J. Russell, No. 176, 18 Nov. 1863. YAH: Willis corr., Vol. 44/5, No. 88, W. Willis to G. Willis, 17 Nov. 1863. Satow, Diplomat in Japan, pp. 54–55, 93–94. As Gordon Daniels has shown, by the time Satow sat down to revise his diaries into this memoir, he had every reason to play down

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in the years following the Meiji Restoration, other Britons in Japan came to feel equally awkward about the Richardson affair. In the preface to his Young Japan (1883), John Reddie Black confessed he ‘would have been glad if [he] could have avoided some of the more sombre tints which [he had] been obliged to use but too frequently’. His chapter on the Richardson affair was titled ‘The Sad Tale Must Be Told’. More than once in the narrative he appears reluctant in the telling, as if only harm could come from dwelling too deeply on the matter. ‘It is a sad, sad story’, Black concluded, ‘and every sincere well-wisher of Japan, of whom I emphatically am one, must regret it probably more deeply than any other event that has to be chronicled in this narrative’.51 It was with palpable relief that he left Richardson behind, and turned to consider lighter matters. …

Charles Lenox Richardson lived and died by the legal provisions of the treaty port world. The treaties enabled his trades in tea and silk, and allowed him to acquire and rent out property. They protected him from Chinese law when he assaulted his Chinese servant. And it was while exercising his right to roam within treaty limits that he ran into Hisamitsu’s procession and – perhaps refusing to give way – met his end. It was apt, therefore, that the advocates of overturning the ‘unequal treaties’ in Japan would alight on the Richardson story as a symbol of the frictions created by extraterritoriality. In the 1850s, when the treaties were being signed, the bakufu appeared unconcerned about extraterritoriality. In their eyes, it had seemed a workable mechanism to isolate and contain the disruption caused by foreign residence. Over the course of the 1870s

51

memories of Anglo-Japanese hostility. He worked hard to conceal his own ‘youthful’ prejudices against ‘Orientals’, and to talk up Britain’s early support for the south-western domains that ultimately drove forward the Restoration. His apparent ‘want of sympathy’ around the Richardson affair is best understood in that context. See: G. Daniels, ‘A Diplomat in Japan: an introduction’, in G. Daniels (ed.), The Collected Writings of Gordon Daniels (London, 2004), pp. 44–49. Black, Young Japan, pp. vii, 237–238.

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and 1880s, however, extraterritoriality came to be one of the most deeply resented facets of the treaties, ‘an infringement on Japan’s autonomy and an insult to national honor’. As a new generation of leaders moved to the fore, and as nationalism increasingly characterised the tone of Japanese journalism, public opinion lambasted the slow pace of treaty revision – a process in which Britain, of all nations, was seen to be dragging its heels the most.52 In this context, the ghost of Richardson proved hard to exorcise. In 1892 the journalist and politician Henry Norman pointedly contrasted the murder with the ‘marvellous achievements’ in administration, the arts and the law that had followed: it stood as proof of how far the country had come and ‘that the book of intolerance had been read aright…and closed for ever’.53 Later, the Kokumin shiumbun pointed to the Richardson affair as evidence of the importance of foreigners not merely respecting the laws of the land, but also its customs.54 The Jiji shinpō equally cited Richardson as an example of foreigners’ disregard for long-established customs – a disregard that cost Richardson his life – but also pointed to the destruction of Kagoshima as proof of the counter-productive nature of the ‘anti-foreign spirit’ of the 1860s. If the abolition of the treaties and the move to ‘mixed residence’ (naichi zakkyo) was to proceed smoothly, foreigners and Japanese would both have to strive to be more mindful of each other’s sensibilities: a sentiment the Japan Times enthusiastically shared.55 Above all, it was the maverick American journalist and Meiji publicist Edward House who channelled the ghost of Charles Lenox Richardson, making him a symbol of the brash, aggressive and insensitive behaviour that extraterritoriality encouraged. House arrived in Tokyo in 1869 as the first Japan correspondent for the New York Tribune and, in the words of his biographer, ‘the 52

53

54 55

Auslin, Negotiating with Imperialism, pp. 26–27, 198–199; J.L. Huffman, Creating a Public: people and press in Meiji Japan (Honolulu, 1997), pp. 154–159. Norman, Real Japan, pp. 319–320. Norman’s book also reproduced the Brinkley translation of Nakamura Masanou’s 1883 poem, an inscription ‘certainly inspired by a very lofty sentiment’ and which ‘forcibly presents the lesson of the crime as a noble message of international goodwill’. JT, ‘The Japanese Press’, 15 July 1899, p. 2. JT, ‘The Anti-Foreign Spirit’, 13 Mar. 1898, p. 2.

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blush of [his] first infatuation with the Japanese never faded’. From the pages of the Tokio Times, which he founded, House emerged as ‘an unswerving supporter of “things Japanese”’ and launched an ardent crusade for treaty reform, endlessly berating the arrogance and immorality of the Yokohama foreign community, and of British merchants in particular.56 In 1875, amidst the first stirrings of the movement to abolish extraterritoriality, House published a short book on The Kagosima Affair. It was an excoriating attack on Richardson’s character, and on British greed: ‘justice, integrity, humanity, the sacredness of life must all give way to the imperious march of British trade’. Richardson was ‘one of the most unfortunate embodiments of the spirit of Western disregard of Japanese customs and feelings that could have been found in the entire [foreign] community’.57 In some respects, House picked up where the critics of 1863– 1864 had left off. As an invective against the mercantile character, the book should also be read alongside Baba Tatsui’s fierce denunciations of extraterritoriality and the behaviour of British residents in the treaty ports.58 But House also went further, adding details the precise origins of which remain difficult to ascertain, but which suggest that – beneath the breathless commemoration of the martyr of Namamugi – doubts and criticisms about the man had never fully gone away. Richardson, wrote House, had ‘gained a certain notoriety for violence’ in his dealings with the Chinese at Shanghai. Mrs Borrodaile, allegedly, ‘repeatedly begged’ Richardson ‘to be more careful in his conduct’ on the road, but the young man had ‘continued to push his horse in and out of the groups forming the cortege, reckless of menacing glances and gestures’.59 Most damning of all, House reproduced a short passage from the despatches of the US Minister, Robert H. Pruyn, written four months after the murder: 56

57 58

59

J.L. Huffman, A Yankee in Meiji Japan: the crusading journalist Edward H. House (Lanham, 2003); J.L. Huffman, ‘Edward Howard House: in the service of Meiji Japan’,  Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 56, No. 2 (1997), pp. 231–258. House, Kagosima Affair, pp. 36, 13. T. Baba, The English in Japan and what a Japanese Thought and Thinks of Them (London, 1875); T. Baba, The Treaty between Japan and England (London, 1876). House, Kagosima Affair, pp. 14–15.

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It is known … that some time before the attack was made, Mr. Marshall exclaimed ‘For God’s sake, Richardson, do not let us have any trouble!’ To which Mr. Richardson replied, ‘Let me alone; I have lived in China fourteen [sic] years, and know how to manage this people’.60

It is not clear, from Pruyn’s original despatch, where this further information came from. Marshall’s testimony at the inquest made no mention of such a reply. The mistake about the length of Richardson’s stay in Shanghai is telling, and in passing this on to Washington Pruyn was careful to state he did so ‘without any disposition…to justify or even palliate the outrage’. In House’s hands, however, Richardson’s imperious incaution and disdain had not merely led to an unjust war of aggression. It exemplified peculiarly British traits – ‘the same arrogant assumptions of supremacy, the same menaces of disastrous consequences to Japan in the event of a resistance to the insatiate demands of foreign greed’ – that had by no means gone away.61 As the cause of treaty reform gathered pace, other foreign writers sympathetic to the Japanese position drew on House’s work, so that his damning interpretation of the Richardson affair began to gain wider currency. This included a passionate defence of Shimazu Hisamitsu: a man of resolute character – ‘the Warwick of the day’ – who, far from advocating violence towards foreigners, went to great lengths to prevent it.62 House elided all mention of Richardson’s ‘mutilation’; later writers disputed its occurrence altogether. The following year, William Elliot Griffis echoed House’s version of events in his influential book, The Mikado’s Empire – twelve editions by 1926 – which cast Richardson’s party as … arrogant people, who despised all Asiatics as an inferior order of beings, disregarded their rights, and were utterly ignorant of the misery their coming had wrought on Japan.63 60

61 62 63

R.H. Pruyn to W.H. Seward, No. 2, 14 January 1863, in United States Department of State, Message of the President of the United States, and Accompanying Documents, to the Two Houses of Congress, at the Commencement of the First Session of the Thirty-Eighth Congress (2 vols., Washington, DC, 1863), ii, pp. 1063–1064. House, Kagosima Affair, p. 35. Ibid., pp. 5–10. Griffis, Mikado’s Empire, p. 592. For a useful comparative study of Griffis’ career as an acclaimed expert on Japan, see: R.A. Rosenstone, Mirror in the Shrine: American

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In contrast, and alone of the foreign diplomats active in the Richardson affair, House praised Robert Pruyn for refraining from treating the Japanese authorities with contempt.64 In so distinguishing himself from the British and the French, House believed Pruyn had won valued respect for the United States, and the journalist’s emphasis on this point may provide the key to understanding why he had been drawn toward re-examining the Richardson affair in the first place. Throughout his writings of the 1870s and 1880s, House urged America’s representatives to take the lead in treaty reform, and to distance themselves from the ‘bullying’ of the British (he thought the current British Minister, Harry Parkes, exceptionally overbearing), thereby stealing a march in the race to win Japanese friendship and loyalty. As House told it, the Richardson affair had not marked the start of some special AngloJapanese relationship, but stood as proof that Britain’s record in Japan should be a source of abiding shame. ‘As it was then, so it is now, and so it will ever be’, House concluded, ‘until Japan shall have gained the strength and courage … for asserting her rights’. And so Richardson’s behaviour was as typical as it was indefensible; Britain’s ‘savage vengeance’ at Kagoshima an act of unflinching brutality; and the opportunities to the United States to advance ‘friendly feelings’ with Japan all the more clear for it.65 When, in 1914, Sakurajima erupted and Kagoshima again faced destruction, Griffis led the appeal to his fellow Americans to give generously. After all, he could not refrain from adding, it was not the United States that had levelled the city the first time.66 …

In the twentieth-century, the sea changes in the relationship between Britain and Japan furnished plenty of further reasons to revisit the Richardson story. The examples are legion, and space does not permit a consideration of them all. But three such moments are par-

64 65 66

encounters with Meiji Japan (Cambridge, MA, 1988). House, Kagosima Affair, pp. 10, 22. Ibid., p. 36. ‘Japan’s Calamity’, The New York Times, 17 Jan. 1914, p. 8.

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ticularly suggestive of the ways in which this story, its characters and its ‘lessons’ have been invoked by very different constituencies seeking certainty in turbulent times. At the turn of the century, the sheer diversity of opinions that had been ranged against the bombardment of Kagoshima offered fertile ground for new critiques of empire. For Frederic Harrison, as we have seen, the destruction of Kagoshima marked a personal ‘breaking point’. It compelled him to develop his first real critique of the conduct of British imperialism, a theme to which he returned across his career, from Jamaica (1865) and Afghanistan (1879) to the South African War (1899–1901).67 Towards the end of the First World War, the bombardment of Kagoshima also caught the eye of J.A. Hobson, whose Imperialism: a study (1902) captured widespread anxieties about the condition of Britain and the future peace of the world. In 1918, Hobson re-examined the life and career of Richard Cobden, looking for clues as to how the bad old politics of national rivalry and unilateral action might be made to yield to the ‘constructive internationalism’ and collective security of a future ‘Society of Nations’. In the final part of the book that resulted, Hobson, through Cobden, considered the Richardson affair as the climax of ‘the persistent brutality of our Far Eastern policy’; an example of ‘the parade of moral, religious and other laudable motives in which the secret lust of political and economic sway conceals itself ’; and as Cobden’s last, failed attempt to extend the principle of non-intervention to Asian seas. Thus it was that one of the greatest thinkers on the nature of imperialism – the man who did much to popularise the term itself – reflected on the death of Charles Lenox Richardson, the power of the press, and the road from Namamugi to Kagoshima.68 The decline of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and the slide towards war provided further occasions for students of this relationship, and those concerned for their own nation’s global standing, to reflect on past encounters. By the First World War it had become a commonplace for Japan’s elder statesmen to present the Richardson affair as a 67 68

Claeys, Imperial Sceptics, pp. 84–86. Hobson, Richard Cobden.

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stepping-stone towards the countries’ special and enduring relationship: ‘the first and … the last trouble which has taken place between Great Britain and Japan, and friendly relations … have fortunately grown closer and closer ever since’.69 Such sentiments continued into the 1920s. Indeed, the 1921 decision to let the formal alliance lapse set an even greater premium on statements of AngloJapanese ‘friendship’. As Anthony Best has shown, the end of the alliance was accompanied, in Britain, by nostalgic allusions to what the prime minister, Stanley Baldwin called the ‘special bond of an historic and valued partnership’.70 In the lead-up to the Washington Conference, the Japanese reciprocated in kind, even as scepticism toward the value of the alliance grew. For senior statesman Ōkuma Shigenobu, the Namamugi incident was the taproot of ‘the curious friendship’ between Britain and Japan: a connection that would outlast any formal agreement.71 Ōkuma may not have wished the alliance over, but nonetheless remained confident that – ‘if the past be any key to the future’ – even its end would not mark a break in Anglo-Japanese friendship. When the break did come, a very different reading of the Richardson affair offered a salve to British audiences whose recent experiences of Japan were formed by climb-downs, retreats and military defeats. In 1944, the popular Blackwood’s Magazine ran an article entitled ‘When a British Fleet attacked Japan’. ‘Undoubtedly’, its author reflected, this was a story ‘quite new to at least 95 per cent of [our] readers’, but ‘worth retelling especially as the day may not be so far distant when another British fleet will attack Japan’.72 This version of the Richardson affair pulled no punches. ‘Feudal’ Japan was painted in distinctly twentieth-century tones: a place of treachery, ‘iron despotism’ and ‘fiendish brutality’. Far from being figures of chivalry and romance, the samurai were ‘all too often nothing but 69

70

71 72

E. Shibusawa, ‘Japan’s Friendship for Great Britain: history of its growth’, The Times: Japanese Section, 14 Oct. 1916, p. 2. A. Best, ‘The “Ghost” of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance: an examination into historical mythmaking’, Historical Journal, Vol. 49, No. 3 (2006), pp. 811–831; Parliamentary debates, 5th series (Commons), vol. 180, c. 1590 (23 Feb. 1925), cited in Best, ‘Ghost of the Alliance’, p. 819. JT, ‘Marquis Okuma Praises Britain’, 15 July 1921, p. 2. MW: miscellaneous papers, H. Carew to F.M. Heath, 3 Nov. 1944.

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a swashbuckling bully’; they had killed poor Richardson because he refused ‘to dismount and prostrate [himself ] by the roadside’. As he lay dying he was ‘practically hacked to pieces’ before ‘a couple of dirty old mats were contemptuously thrown over his body as if he had been a dead dog’.73 The decision to meet force with force receives little hand-wringing, here; if anything, given the Japanese instinct ‘to temporise in the usual Eastern way’, Colonel Neale had erred in not resorting to ‘prompt action’ right away. In reproducing much of the ultimatum Neale delivered at Kagoshima, there is an unspoken yearning for such a confident show of strength towards Japan, ‘a refreshing forthrightness’ in British demands made eighty years ago – and ‘no question of appeasement’ whatsoever. When the firing had ceased, ‘Satsuma had received a salutary lesson’. British justice and British arms won out in the end; Charles Lenox Richardson had been avenged. …

There is something in the Manichaean nature of this encounter – of two discrete groups, travelling in opposite directions, colliding at a quiet spot on the road – that has lent it to being a shorthand for vastly more complex processes of modernisation and historical change. For the sociologist Hashimoto Mitsuru, the Namamugi incident was no mere affray between Richardson and Hisamitsu’s men but ‘a collision between two cultures’, each blind to the other’s sensibilities: one by the prejudices of Victorian England; the other by a narrowmindedness formed during two centuries of isolation.74 That may sit uncomfortably with some more recent historical work – Japan’s ‘isolation’ was a good deal more permeable than we long supposed – but the visual power of that idea is as arresting 73

74

H. Carew, ‘When a British Fleet attacked Japan’, Blackwood’s Magazine, No. 1547 (Sept. 1944), pp. 184–195. Hashimoto, ‘Collision at Namamugi’, p. 71. Put another way, the Namamugi Incident becomes an almost literal expression of what Najita Tetsuo identifies as that key ‘conflictual moment’ in Japan’s history, the 1860s: T. Najita, ‘A Synchronous Approach to the Study of Conflict in Modern Japanese History’, in T. Najita and J.V. Koschmann (eds.), Conflict in Modern Japanese History: the neglected tradition (Princeton, 1982), pp. 3–21.

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as it has been enduring. In many of the fictional works that have brought our subject to wider audiences, Namamugi takes on an almost totemic quality: it is a place where two worlds – two streams of time – collide. The incident has proven irresistible for filmmakers working on bakumatsu and Meiji-era subjects; it forms the dramatic cold open to the 2006 film Chōshū  Faibu, for example.75 Recent cinematic treatments have tended to hint at a mutual culpability for what happened, but this has not always been the case. A 1992 BBC dramatization of Satow’s memoir A Diplomat in Japan, for example, took considerable creative licence with its source material. ‘I think we’re supposed to kneel’, Richardson’s character is told as the procession approaches; ‘Never!’, comes his reply, before Richardson is cut down as he goes for his pistol. Back at the Legation, Willis’ character gives the young Satow, our narrator, the context: Willis: It’s understandable enough really. They hate us, you see? We British most of all. We were a set of tyrants from the moment we set foot on Eastern soil ... Satow: What did they do? Richardson and the others. Willis: Failed to show proper respect to some local chieftain … Satow: Would you? I mean, show the proper respect. Willis: Oh, in Richardson’s shoes I would have been grovelling in the dust. But he was an arrogant fellow, so he paid the price.76

Novelists, too, have long been drawn to the Richardson affair. In their hands, the intrigue surrounding what happened and the inherent drama of what followed are made to cut through the baffling politics of the bakumatsu period, so that the affair provides an aperture onto wider narratives and issues. Fifteen years after the fact, for example, William Henry Giles Kingston worked the bombardment of Kagoshima into the latest entry in his popular series of boys’ adventure novels, The Three Admirals, and the Adventures of their Young Followers (1878). An ardent advocate of emigration and colonization, Kingston recognised the bombardment as a ready vehicle 75 76

Chōshū Faibu. Dir. Igarashi Shō. 2006. DVD. ‘A Clash of Cultures’. A Diplomat in Japan. Dir. Christopher Railing. BBC2, 23 Sept. 1992. Television.

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for yet another tale of derring-do on the frontiers of Britain’s Asian empire. Shortly after arriving in Japan (and having cautioned one another against misbehaving on the high road), the young heroes set off for the castle town of the intransigent Prince of Satsuma ‘to teach the haughty daimio that Englishmen are not to be murdered with impunity’.77 In more recent times, James Clavell, Shiba Ryōtarō, Yoshimura Akira and others besides have all drawn on the Richardson affair in their historical novels (rekishi shōsetsu), engaging with the nature of history, and putting forward distinct interpretations of the course and significance of Richardson’s life and death. Clavell’s Gai-Jin (1993) is explicitly a work of fiction, but pointedly remarks that ‘books of history…do not necessarily always relate what truly happened’, and that in ‘play[ing] with history’ the novelist can ‘perhaps… tell the real history of what came to pass’.78 The resulting book leaves readers in no doubt as to what kind of man Charles Richardson was. John Canterbury, the Richardson character, is crass and sardonic – no gentleman. He exploits the exchange rate, frequents whorehouses, views ‘Jappers’ with contempt and revels in British power (‘the biggest and best [empire] that’s ever been on earth’, he boasts from horseback). His final moments are marked by confusion, but it is his obstinacy and belligerence that has placed him in such danger. For Shiba Ryōtarō, one of Japan’s best-loved authors and a master of this genre, it was the man on the other end of the procession that he sought to analyse and explain. ‘The Fox Horse’ is an exquisite character study of Shimazu Hisamitsu, and one of the four reflections on bakumatsu personalities that make up Yotte sōrō (1975). Emotional, irrational and unimaginative, yet ‘destined from birth to play a theatrical role in history’, here was a man of desperate ambition, but with nothing larger beyond it. Hisamitsu’s tendency toward ‘random bombast, not unlike a child waving a toy sword’ 77

78

W.H.G. Kingston, The Three Admirals, and the Adventures of their Young Followers (London, 1878). J. Clavell, Gai-Jin: a novel of Japan (London, 1993). For a critical reflection on fact and fiction in the work of James Clavell, see: H. Smith (ed.), Learning from Shōgun: Japanese history and western fantasy (Santa Barbara, CA, 1980).

Pl. 2. Charles Wirgman’s depiction of the bombardment of Kagoshima. Illustrated London News, No. 1230, 7 Nov. 1863, pp. 476–477.

Pl. 1. Richardson’s Shanghai. Illustrated London News, No. 702, 16 Sept. 1854, p. 261.

Pl. 3. TNA: FO 925/2299, F.B. Youel, ‘Ground Plan of the Foreign Settlement at Shanghai’, 1855 (detail).

Pl. 4. The only known photograph of Richardson alive. YAH: J.C. Fraser album.

Pl. 5. Richardson’s last letter home. Yokohama, 3 Sept. 1862.

Pl. 6. The Richardson estate, on the Nanjing Road, looking east. Shanghai, c. 1918. MW papers.

Pl. 7. Yokohama in the spring of 1863. Plan drawn up by Capt. Fred Brine in anticipation of an imminent attack on the settlement.

Pl. 8. Charles Wirgman’s “Opening Wedge” (Eugene Van Reed).

Pl. 9. Wirgman lampoons Yokohama’s foreign residents. Japan Punch.

Pl. 10. A daimyō procession at Namamugi, on the Tōkaidō. Utagawa Sadahide, 1863.

Pl. 11. The body of Charles Lenox Richardson, 15 Sept. 1862. Album Dirk de Graeff van Polsbroek, Het Scheepvaartmuseum.

Pl. 12. Col. Edward St. John Neale, British Chargé d’Affaires.

Pl. 13. Francis Howard Vyse, British Consul at Yokohama.

Pl. 14. Shimazu Hisamitsu, regent of Satsuma.

Pl. 15. Rear Admiral Augustus L. Kuper.

Pl. 16. James Smyth, ‘The Murder of Richardson on the Tokaido – Japan’. 1863. Yokohama Archives of History.

Pl. 17. Hayakawa Shōzan, ‘The Killing at Namamugi’ (Namamugi no hassatsu, 1877). 1949, 0514, 0.11.1–3, British Museum.

Pl. 18. Felice Beato, View on the Tokaido, 1863, 20 x 26 cm, albumen silver print, Yokohama Archives of History.

Pl. 19. The treaty powers. Sitting from the left: Gustave Duchesne de Bellecourt, French representative; Admiral Jaurès, commanding the French squadron; Edward St. John Neale, British Chargé d’Affaires. Standing from the left: Captain Dew, Royal Navy; Admiral Kuper, commanding the British squadron; General Pruyn, United States representative. 1864.

Pl. 20. Felice Beato, ‘Satsuma delegation to discuss reparations demands from the British’. Yokohama, 1863.

Pl. 21. Satsuma settles up. Illustrated London News, No. 1246, 20 Feb. 1864, p. 189.

Pl. 22. Richardson’s grave in the Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery, today. Author’s photograph.

Pl.23. The Namamugi incident monument of 1883. Michael Wace papers, unknown photographer, c.1922.

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would later lead him to be exploited by his more statesmanlike retainers. For now, however, it cost Charles Richardson his life.79 While preparing his novel, Namamugi jiken (1998), Yoshimura Akira met with Asaumi Takeo, a Tsurumi local and former owner of a liquor store who dedicated much of his retirement – and his savings – to developing a small private museum on the Richardson affair. In 2006, Asaumi organised the restoration of Richardson’s grave, installing a new inscription behind the headstone, and flanking it with two altogether new headstones, one for William Marshall, and one for Woodthorpe Clarke. In the process, the unique and fundamentally unknowable lives of these three men (longer, fuller lives in the case of Marshall and Clarke) were reduced once more to that single moment one late summer’s day on the Tōkaidō, ‘a turning point for Japan’ (the new inscription runs) ‘and its establishment as a modern national country’. This remains how Richardson is most commonly remembered in Japan today: not as an individual, per se, but as a stepping stone in a remarkable, but oversimplified story of the ‘opening’ of the country, and of the growth of Anglo-Satsuma – even Anglo-Japanese – affinity. Asaumi’s museum closed in 2014, but there is no prospect of this version of Richardson slipping from public view. A visitor to the new Satsuma Students Museum (Satsumahan igirisu ryūgakusei kinenkan) at Hashima, for example, would still be greeted by a giant photograph of his body, and a text explaining ‘the death of one Briton who changed the course of history’ by setting in motion both the country’s modernisation and those intrepid Satsuma Students themselves. Should you care to walk to the back of the museum (which is styled to resemble a ship) and step down to the water’s edge, you’ll find a single metal flagpole with the Union Jack and the Hinomaru attached: not as fabric fluttering from their halyards in the wind (sometimes in sync, sometimes apart), but bolted together, as sheets of metal, unyieldingly facing the sea. If that is the upshot of Richardson’s story, then it is a heavy burden for any one

79

R. Shiba, Drunk as a Lord, trans. E. Kato (Tokyo, 2001), originally published as Yotte sōrō (Tokyo, 1975).

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life to bear, and if Richardson has thus far seemed to do so uncomplainingly, it is only because he is yet to have the chance to speak. Writing at the time of the sesquicentennial of the Meiji Restoration, when politicians are advancing their own interpretations of the Meiji period (and of the Namamugi incident itself ), it is important that we recognise simplistic takes on this complex past for what they are. After all, the power of simplistic takes to shape behaviour has been a part of this story from the beginning – from renderings of Richardson as a villain, or as a saint, to the mistaken belief that tens of thousands perished at Kagoshima, to the myriad uses to which this story has been put from the 1860s down to the present. In that context, the Richardson letters offer a welcome check on our certainties. They raise as many questions as they answer, suggest new gaps in our knowledge, and remind us that the figure at the centre of it all was no archetype, but human.

PART II

The Letters of Charles Lenox Richardson, 1853–1862

Note on the Letters and Acknowledgements Ž

BETWEEN JANUARY 1853, when he departed Southampton on the steamer Indus, and September 1862, Charles Lenox Richardson kept up a correspondence with his family back in England. Eighty of these letters home survive, almost all of them intact. They were lovingly preserved in their envelopes and stored in a large metal box by Florence Marian Heath, Richardson’s niece, who had thrown herself into researching the family history and documenting her uncle’s properties in Shanghai. The box, embossed with her name, was passed down to her nephew Gordon Hine, who served in the Royal Navy in both world wars. When his widow died in the 1990s the box was found in the garage by Hine’s nephew, Michael Wace – along with Hine’s copy of a 1944 article on the bombardment of Kagoshima, taken from the wardroom of HMS Cormorant at Gibraltar. Most of the letters are addressed to Richardson’s parents at home in Brompton, London, and later in Croydon, Surrey, or to his father’s workplace on Gresham Street in the City. All things being equal, the mail took about six weeks to arrive. His father, Charles Richardson senior, was born in 1795 in Rotherhithe and had entered business at the age of fourteen. For many years he worked for the merchants Ellice, Kinnear & Co. at 145 Leadenhall Street, a stone’s throw from East India House, and among warehouses, instrumentmakers and outfitters ‘ready’, as Dickens put it, ‘to pack off anybody anywhere’. This well-connected company, under the merchantpolitician Edward Ellice, had interests in the fur and sugar trades in North America and the West Indies; upon the abolition of slavery in 1833, the firm received compensation money from the British taxpayer for its connections to Caribbean plantations. Richardson senior married Louisa Anne Lenox (b. 1797) at All Saints Church in Poplar in December 1825; together they would 119

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have five children, four girls and Charles. Shortly after their son’s arrival in Asia, Ellice, Kinnear & Co. dissolved and Richardson senior became the Secretary to the Berlin Waterworks Company, a private venture based in London to raise capital and attract engineers to supply the Prussian city with water free from cholera. This ought to have been a lucrative position: the family moved from Hackney to Brompton, and in 1855 to a house in Duppas Hill, Croydon. Yet concerns over money persisted throughout the Richardson correspondence, as we shall see. A smaller number of Richardson’s surviving letters were sent to his mother, about whom little is known, and to his sister Grace. In a couple of instances alone have copies of their outbound letters to Shanghai been kept – these are also reproduced here, in chronological sequence. In all cases, the letters are given in full, throwing up all manner of allusions and asides that we can never fully understand, but which intrigue us all the more. Here is Richardson, following the course of world events, and worrying about the impact of turmoil near and far on the prospects and profitability of the next season’s trades. Here he is digesting the news from home, and sending silk to his sisters, remittances to his parents, payment to his tailor, and ‘curios’ from Japan and the plundered Summer Palace. Here he is in quieter moments, shooting game, at the races, kicking his heels; complaining that in Shanghai ‘there is never any news worth telling’, even as his own letters offer a window into the life and mind-set of a young man of the treaty ports. Here, too, is a more junior voice from the trading houses of empire – not for some time yet a ‘name’ in Shanghai society. His life and death alike bear witness to the insecurities of the treaty port world, and to the latent conflict between its merchants and diplomats. I have used my notes to explore the themes in the letters that struck me the most, but there is so much more for Richardson’s new readers to draw out for themselves. The letters have their limitations, of course. We know that Richardson corresponded with a number of other relations and with friends outside the family, but none of these letters have, as yet, been found. This is frustrating: such letters may have been more frank concerning some aspects of Richardson’s life in China, for he likely held back much from his parents. His relationships with

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women, in particular, form a conspicuous silence. Western women are mentioned but a handful of times. On hearing of his sisters becoming engaged, he poignantly confessed his hope ‘that when my time comes… I may be equally fortunate’. Of Chinese women, and the settlement’s many brothels, there is no more than we have any right to expect in any young man’s correspondence home. On one occasion he refers to receiving a long letter from his mother who had read, in the British China press, of some of his more objectionable behaviour – forcing the son into coming clean and giving his version of events. It seems sure that other incidents and exploits would have been omitted or suppressed for this particular audience. Just as beguiling are the passing references to Richardson’s business dealings in China, for the bulk of his commercial correspondence is not here. As a clerk for Lenox, Nephew & Co., for Mackenzie Bros. & Co., for William Gregson Aspinall and for James Bowman & Co., Richardson would have maintained an extensive business correspondence – to say nothing of his dealings on his own account. Yet again, these letters are yet to surface, if they have indeed survived. Concerns over his father’s way with money may also have led Richardson to downplay his mercantile achievements in writing – or, at least, to spare his father the details. All this makes it a challenge to reconstruct the young man’s business dealings, but some conclusions remain possible. I have drawn on the letters alongside his detailed will, and the explanatory notes left by assessors and agents in Britain and Shanghai, in forming my assessment of Charles Lenox Richardson’s business record. Visiting Michael Wace’s London home to work on the letters, I’ve come to appreciate their place amidst an assortment of other objects that connects this family to Asia. From Florence came the letters in their glorious box, of course, but also her notebooks, letter books and ledgers in which she transcribed Richardson’s will, collected descriptions of the attack, and kept up the family’s correspondence with Shanghai lawyers and agents. From Michael’s mother’s side came a collection of photographs of unknown provenance – of the memorial tablet at Namamugi, of the Yokohama grave and of the caretakers who tended it, of title deeds and Shanghai streets and Richardson’s body before the funeral. None of the

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Japanese or Chinese ‘curios’ of which Richardson was so fond, and sent home, remain with the family today. But there is a single oil painting, by Michael’s grandmother, of a view of the inside of Florence’s home. Through a doorway in the hall, past a taciturn white cat, you can just about make out blue vases and other treasures collected in China, shipped home, and now decorating a sitting room in Kent. Michael remembers the house still. The everyday nature of these China connections, and their transmission down the generations, is most brought home by the photographs of what became of Richardson’s Shanghai estate. Around the end of the First World War, as Florence sought to sell off the last plots of land, she commissioned a Shanghai solicitor to photograph them and to tell her how they were currently being used. Rickshaws, trams and shoppers blur as they move through the streets – the buildings alone stand out crisply and in focus. Look carefully at these large, silvery prints and you can just make out the pencil annotations in Florence’s hand. ‘The go-down’, ‘the post office’ and ‘Mafel & Co.’, she writes, identifying landmarks on the Nanjing and Fujian Roads. And alongside these, written in the Shanghai sky, pencil claims to ownership – ‘ours’, ‘not ours’, ‘these belong to us’ – so that an elderly spinster who never went to China might hold her piece of it in her hands. Seventy years later, Michael’s niece visited Shanghai and stood again at the corner of Nanjing and Fujian. Her own photos, recreating those passed down from Florence Heath, are the most contemporary layer of this intimate archive, and of a family’s links to the treaty port world. …

Of the many debts I have accrued in writing this book, special thanks are due to Michael and Marigold Wace for permission to work on the Richardson letters, and for the warm welcome on numerous visits to their home. Michael has given the letters much care and attention over the years, and I hope he will recognise many of his observations, and our conversations, in what follows. Some of the ideas in this book had their first airing at a symposium on Documenting Westerners in Nineteenth-Century China

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& Japan: new sources and perspectives held at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures in Norwich, and with generous support from the Institute, the University of East Anglia, the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, the Global History and Culture Centre at the University of Warwick, and Wake Forest University. I am grateful to my co-organiser, Robert Hellyer, and to our participants Harald Fuess, Fukuoka Mariko, Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere, Ranald Noel-Paton, Nakatake Kanami, Annette Bainbridge, Sano Mayuko, Victoria Manthorpe, Shenfang Chou, Hans van de Ven, Angus Lockyer, Simon Kaner, Janet Hunter and Lars Laamann for their comments and advice. The book has been greatly enriched by conversations with Kudo Akihito, Ozaki Yoma, Nadine Willems, Darren Aoki, John Darwin, Rob Upton, Simon Barton, and my Warwick colleagues Song-Chuan Chen, Anne Gerritsen and Mark Philp. Richard Sims, Terry Bennett and Mio Wakita gave freely of their expertise. Any errors are my own. I have drawn on a number of other collections in preparing this book, and would like to thank staff at the UK National Archives, the Bodleian Library, Nuffield College, the British Library, the Jardine Matheson Archives at Cambridge University Library, the National Archives at College Park, the Library of Congress, the Centre des archives diplomatiques at La Courneuve, and Alice de Jong of Leiden University Library for their assistance. During my research in Japan, I was especially grateful to Nakatake Kanami of the Yokohama Archives of History for sharing her encyclopaedic knowledge of the collections, and to Matsuo Chitoshi and Alexander Bradshaw of the Shoko Shuseikan, Machida Takeshi of the Reimeikan, and Higo Hideaki of the Ishin Furusatokan. From Susan Meehan at the Daiwa Foundation and Paul Norbury at Renaissance Books came an enthusiasm for this project which has helped it see the light of day. My deepest thanks go to my wife, Christine Boyle, who has come to know this story as well as I, and who walked the road to Namamugi with me. Oxford August 2018

Str Indus 25 Jany/53 th

My dearest Mother, I have no doubt you will be agreeably surprized hearing so soon, because when I started it was expected that a letter would not be able to be conveyed to London from any place nearer than Malta but I am happy to find that we shall be able to send letters from Gibraltar where we expect to arrive tomorrow morning the first thing.1 We have now the most magnificent weather you can possibly imagine, a splendid sky above without a single cloud & the sun so warm that at noon it is scarcely bearable. In regard to sea sickness there has been a good deal on board, nearly everybody laid upon their backs, but strange to say it has not affected me at all, so that I am looked upon as a species of amphibious animal. On Tuesday all day & night it blew a most terrific gale. The waves were washing over the bows in a most awful manner & when we were at supper she gave a tremendous lurch, cleared the tables of everything upon them & smashed them into a thousand pieces & what with one of the guns breaking from the lashing & running about the deck, women screaming, I can assure you it was something perfectly awful. I went on deck about three o’clock in the morning & the sea was running mountains high. You could not walk a step without clinging on to a rope or the first thing you came across so that the tout ensemble was as magnificent as terrible. You often hear people talk of a storm at sea but no kind of idea of it is to be formed unless you are an eye witness. We have the jollyest lot of passengers on board imaginable & what with two bands, polkas on deck of an evening, splendid 1

Richardson set sail from Southampton on 20 January aboard the Indus (1847), an iron paddle steamer on the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Navigation Company (P&O) line to Alexandria, carrying ‘the outward East India, China and Mediterranean mails, a full cargo, and 130 passengers’: The Hampshire Advertiser, Vol. 30, No. 1535, 22 Jan. 1853, p. 6. From Alexandria, he crossed overland to Suez, before continuing his journey through the Red Sea. He reached Hong Kong aboard P&O’s Ganges (1850) on 11 March, via Ceylon, Calcutta, Penang and Singapore. 125

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feeding, no end of Claret, Champagne &c we manage to lead a very tolerable existence, although we cannot help occasionally & I may say always thinking of dear ones left in England. You must excuse a very long note this time as to begin with it is almost impossible to write at all in consequence of the motion of the engines & sea combined which keep the ship in a kind of tremble. So hoping to hear from some of you at Malta & with best love &c to all. Believe me ever, your very aff. Son Chs Lenox Richardson …

Str Indus 29 Jany / 53 My dear Mother, Since I last wrote we have all been on shore at Gibraltar where we explored the Galleries which fortify the Town & undermine the rock in all directions. Outside it seems just like an enormous rabbit warren from being perforated all over with holes, but when you get inside the rock behind each of these orifices you see an enormous Gun & enough shot & shell to blow a fleet out of the water. We also visited the market which is an extraordinary mixture, I may say, of everything from figs to Moors who are curious looking creatures with shaven heads, no stockings, loose slippers & a species of garment which looks more like a very dirty discoloured night gown than anything else. After we had seen as much as time would permit of, we adjourned to the Club House Hotel & had breakfast which consisted of everything from eggs to soles inclusive of stout ale, oranges &c (which you can buy at 12 a penny). We past Cape Bonne [Bon] this afternoon & expect to be at Malta first thing tomorrow morning where this is dated from. I think in my last note I mentioned the gale as being on the Tuesday

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after we started, instead of which it ought to have been Friday, the day after we sailed from Southampton. I am writing this in the third & fourth officer’s berth, who are very nice fellows & old friends of Dickson’s.2 With best love to all & hoping we shall soon meet again DV Believe me ever, my dear Mother, your very aff. Son Chs Lenox Richardson …

Shanghae 19th March 1853 My dear Mother, You will see when you open this that I have at last arrived at my destination for which I must say I am by no means sorry as one gets considerably tired of travelling, particularly in such broiling weather as we had for the last month of the passage, for between Hong Kong & Singapore we seldom had the Thermometer under 92 or 93 degrees in the shade & sometimes as high as 96. When I arrived at Hong Kong Mr Mackenzie3 was staying there & he kindly proposed to take me to Canton if I felt disposed to go, & feeling a desire to see as much as possible while I was on the move I of course accepted his offer, but there was not much to be seen when we got there as it is a miserably confined place as the Europeans have only a sort of Garden they can go into to take exercise. 2 3

James Dickson: see next letter. A China contact, shortly to return to England. Charles Douglas Mackenzie, partner in Mackenzie Brothers and Company, had been active in China for at least a decade. One of the first British merchants to start trading at Ningbo, he arrived there shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Nanking, and ahead of the British Consul, Robert Thom. Business was slow, however, and in 1845 he moved to join his brother, Kenneth Ross Mackenzie at Shanghai, where ‘better sales and better purchases were to be made’: Parliamentary papers 1847, xl (7), p. 45, R. Thom to J.F. Davis, 10 Jan. 1846. Richardson appears to have begun working as an assistant to the firm upon arrival in China: an introduction may have come through his father’s work at Leadenhall street, or though his uncle, John Lenox. See further n10, 11 and 17 below.

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Only two streets (Old China St & New China St) which are such beastly holes that nobody ever goes into them unless actually obliged & if you should happen to get outside the wall of the City it is a great chance if you never get back again. But here thank goodness it is quite a different story. You can go where ever you choose without the slightest molestation & what with having a particularly nice set of fellows in our house I have no doubt that I shall be able to lead a very tolerable existence.4 I hope to have a few letters from you by next mail as it seems an age since I last heard from England. I often wonder how you are all getting on. I suppose you have left Brompton by this time & I trust my dear Father’s affairs are in a more settled & satisfactory state & you [are] all living snugly together in some nice little house. I am sorry I cannot give you a very long letter this time as the mail leaves at 4 o’clock tomorrow afternoon, which is rather sharp practice considering that we did not come in until 12 o’clock last night. I will however be able to give you a longer screed next mail as by that time I shall have got settled down here & have time to look about me. I had a letter from James Dickson when I got to Ceylon & he says that he is going home about May or June this year. I must now say good bye & with best love to all the dear ones & to your own dear self. Believe me ever, my dear Mother, your very aff. Son Chs Lenox Richardson … 4

By the 1840s Canton was synonymous with humiliating Western confinement: spatially, symbolically and commercially. See further: CLR, 24 Sept. 1854. The garden mentioned here is probably the American Garden, a space for foreign exercise built after the first Opium War and surrounded by a tall fence to keep out the Chinese. Relations at Shanghai, by comparison, seemed much less overlaid ‘with the heavy arrears of past injustice, and bad policy on both sides’, so that the two treaty ports were made to represent ‘two different epochs and systems’: TNA: FO 228/104, R. Alcock, ‘Our Present Position and the State of Our Relations in China’, 18 Jan. 1849. Nonetheless, Shanghai residents fretted over the potential growth of ‘Canton-like’ symptoms there too.

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Shanghai 1st June /53 [To his mother. The opening page of this letter is missing] … but we must hope for the best and that in 2 or 3 mails you will have the pleasure of announcing the fact as fulfilled. I will write a good quantum next mail but have now only about 5 mins to write the note which accounts for the way in which it is written; the only way is to write private letters before the St[eamer] arrives with the mail from England as then every thing is rush & hurry to get business letters done. I have written to Wm. Lyon and sent him a bill for £30 which is the best half of what I owe him, and I have no doubt that before the end of the next year I shall be about square with every body at home. With best love to all & same to your dear self Believe me ever, my dear Mother, Your very aff son C. Lenox Richardson …

Shanghai Tuesday, 21 June 1853 My dear Mother, Your kind & interesting note reached me on Sunday the 19th Inst. I see what you say about my dear Father’s proceedings & heartily do I pray that he may succeed & that peace & comfort may once more be restored to those that I love better than my own existence. I am rejoiced to find that friends are again beginning to cluster round & show some degree of sincerity & zeal. There was never a truer saying than a friend in need is a friend in deed & I am quite sure that my dear Father is just the one to appreciate their kindness, & may God now be pleased in his mercy to shower down every kind of blessing upon you all, & when I get regularly settled here & have a tolerably firm footing I shall only be too happy to add my mite towards your comforts.5 5

Richardson does not expatiate on the cause of his father’s financial difficulties here (see further n14, below). Nonetheless, they seem to have shaped the young man’s decision to go to China.

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I am still on the look out for sundry boxes of Tea, fur Hats &c & directly they can be obtained for love or money I will not forget to send them to you on the first opportunity, but unfortunately, I arrived here at the wrong part of the Season for both these article[s], viz. too soon for the Tea, it being just the end of the Season & too late for the Hats as it was just the termination of the cold weather when, of course, the importation of these kinds of things ceases.6 However, a Chinaman has promised to make me a present of 1 or 2 boxes of Tea which cost 10/- a lb even here & directly they come into my hands I will send them to England to the care of L.N. & Co who I will request to pay the expenses & deliver them to you.7 I note what you say with regard to Unwin & will, if possible, write him this mail if not next for a certainty. You will see by reasons given in my letter to my Father why my notes are rather concise.8 You may rest assured that I know how to appreciate Uncle John’s kindness to me, altho’ at the same time I think he might have acted with more consideration towards my Father, a subject which I am still rather sore upon altho’ I say nothing.9 6

7

8 9

The tea trade would shortly become an important line of business for Richardson at Shanghai. Most of the tea for export was grown in the hills that made up the Yangtze river divide, and of the four crops a year, only the first two were considered suitable. The first picking began in April, and between late April and early May teas were brought to key collecting centres in the hinterland of Shanghai, including Jiujiang, Hankou, and Hangzhou. Time was of the essence in bringing these teas to market – the first of the season often commanded a higher price – and it was a growing demand of British firms during the 1850s that their own tea inspectors be permitted to visit these collection centres without let or hindrance. At this time, tea was shipped from Huzhou in earlyto-mid June, and from Canton or Shanghai about five weeks later: D.R. MacGregor, The Tea Clippers: their history and development, 1833–1875 (London, 1952). Most of the principal tea districts had good connections with Shanghai by water. This quickly proved a key advantage over Shanghai’s rival port, Canton. In 1851, tea exports from Shanghai overtook those from Canton for the first time: TNA: FO 228/90, R. Alcock to J.F. Davis, No. 27, 20 Mar. 1848; FO 228/146, R. Alcock to G. Bonham, ‘Shanghai Trade Report for 1851’, No. 11, 13 Jan. 1852. Lenox, Nephew & Co., the trading firm of which Richardson’s uncle, John Lenox, was the senior partner. Its address in London was 37 Old Broad Street. The reference to a Chinese intermediary here serves as a reminder of just how much Shanghai’s foreign merchants depended on compradors, often from Canton, to conduct their business. This letter is not in the collection. John Lenox (Richardson’s mother’s brother) helped the young Richardson get established at Shanghai, apparently out of a sense of obligation to improve the family’s financial prospects which, it would seem, had its limits.

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I sincerely hope you may enjoy yourself at Chantlers & Hangers Lane & have no doubt that you will see Mr MacKenzie at the first mentioned place.10 Mr C.D. MacKenzie has not been in Shanghai since I arrived here. He met me down at Hong Kong and has remained there ever since. He is expected up here in about a fortnight. Mr Aspinall, however, who is in charge here, is one of the most pleasant men you would wish to come across in a day’s march & too much cannot be said of his kindness and affability.11 As far as my health goes at present I have never felt better in my life, altho’ the heat is inclined to be rather excessive. For instance, in our office at the present minute it is about 93° & I trust that with ordinary care I shall be able to keep my health almost as well here as in dear old England.12 With best love my dearest Mother to yourself & all Believe me ever, Your very aff son Charlie Tell Min [I] write her next mail. …

10 11

12

This is Kenneth Ross Mackenzie, who was shortly to leave Shanghai: see n27 below. Richard Aspinall had considerable experience in trading tea on the China coast: in 1847 he was working at Canton for Boustead & Co., one of the great firms in east and southeast Asia. From 1851 he was also an authorised agent for Mackenzie Brothers and Company. Richard was the elder brother of William Gregson Aspinall, who between 1853 and 1854 became the largest partner in the Mackenzie brothers’ firm. William was at the helm during the acrimonious bankruptcy of 1855; in 1860, he moved to Yokohama to begin again, before co-founding the more successful Aspinall, Cornes and Co. Richardson’s inquest was later to be held in Aspinall’s Yokohama house. Richard and William were of the Gregson and Aspinall families, ‘the latest in a long line of Liverpool-based merchants engaged in various aspects of commerce for generations’, including banking, insurance and the slave trade: P. N. Davies, ‘Frederick Cornes, 1837–1927: founder and senior partner of Cornes and Company (1873–1911)’, in H. Cortazzi (ed.), Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume IV (London, 2002), pp. 118–129. Together with the Mackenzies, they were valuable contacts for the young Richardson to have. Despite the heat, foreign residents tended to consider Shanghai to be among the healthier treaty ports: the northernmost ice-free port on the China coast, and a vast improvement on Canton, in particular: R. Murphey, Shanghai: key to modern China (Cambridge, MA, 1953), p. 43.

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Shanghai 9th July / 53 My dear Mother I have now to answer your kind note of the 3d March, which I recd last Sunday (it seems strange but the Mail twice out of 3 times comes in here on that day13) for which accept my warmest thanks, which should be rather hot seeing that the thermometer is at the present moment at 94°. I have already written my Father congratulating him upon obtaining the Secyship of the Water Coy.14 I hope some day it will turn out a second London [Waterworks] Coy. It was without exception the most pleasing piece of news that I have heard this long time; but some how one that I seemed fully to expect, & must say should have been wofully disappointed if it had turned out otherwise. I fancy now that something like old times “seem looming in the distance” (Punch?) & that you will not now be bothered out of every moment of your precious life, but will have an individual in the shape of happiness amongst you again, rather a welcome stranger; but all the more so from being sometimes absent. You will 13

14

Mail arrangements changed considerably throughout Richardson’s stay in Shanghai; the Shanghai Local Post Office did not open until 1863. Since 1845, mail from London had been carried aboard the P&O service to Hong Kong. Clipper ships then carried the mail to their anchorage at Wusong, from whence it was rushed to Shanghai by pony express. In 1853, P&O instituted a monthly steamer service between Hong Kong and Shanghai. During the Second Opium War the company received a subsidy from the Admiralty to run a second monthly service between Ceylon and Shanghai; thereafter, the service continued with grants from the General Post Office. Until 1861, all mail to Shanghai was sorted by a junior clerk at the British consulate. It was the strain placed on this system by the growing volume of communications that prompted the creation of the Local Post Office. See: L.J. Harris, ‘Stumbling Towards Empire: the Shanghai Local Post Office, the transnational British community and informal empire in China, 1863–1897’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol 46, No. 3 (2018), pp. 418–445. The Berlin Water Company was created in 1852 when the state government of Prussia awarded two leading British engineers the contract to supply clean, flowing water to the city of Berlin. For Charles Richardson senior, the opportunity could not have come along soon enough: Ellice, Kinnear and Company – the trading firm for whom he had long worked – would shortly be dissolved. It may well have been that change in circumstances which marked the beginning of the family’s financial difficulties and Richardson’s decision to go to Shanghai.

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perfectly understand that he was only an absentee upon pecuniary matters as I am quite sure there never was a happier party than we were among our selves. I still continue to like this place tolerably; I am afraid that I have used up my stock of news about it upon previous occasions & unfortunately it is not a very abundant commodity in this part of the world.15 I am still on the look out for sundry fur Hats, Chests of Tea &c, the latter I have no doubt I shall pounce upon very soon (I mean the Tea not the &c) & directly it comes into my hands I will send it to you & when we once get the pot boiling we will be able to keep you constantly supplied. Mr C.D. MacKenzie has come back to Shanghai & really the more I see of him the more I like. You can hardly imagine a more pleasant man. I see what my Father says about writing to friends of whom he enumerates about half a dozen. He surely never expects me to write the whole round of them every mail & I hope they don’t or I am afraid a disappointment will be the result. At the present instant I am wet through, merely with the exertion of writing this, & I am sure that if I had to send a dozen such by each mail by the end of the hot weather a spoon of grease would be all that would be left of my 6 foot carcase [sic].16 I think that if I send M.S.S. to 2 or 3 of you at home besides one or 2 to friends that that is a very fair quantum, because you must bear in mind there is such a thing as business to be attended to, altho’ I am in the uncivilized part of the Globe, commonly called China. 15

16

Richardson was being coy here. Early in April it became known in the settlement that Nanjing had fallen to the forces of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and a series of meetings were quickly called to make preparations for the settlement’s defence, including the formation of a British volunteer force. Britain’s Consul, Rutherford Alcock, informed Hong Kong of ‘the strong sense of alarm and anxiety felt by the British Community’: TNA: FO 228/161, R. Alcock to G. Bonham, confidential, 11 Apr. 1853. See further: NCH, No. 142, 16 Apr. 1853, p. 146. ‘What a constant exercise of ingenuity it is’, wrote Capt. Sherard Osborn of the Furious, ‘to procure a draught of fresh air – or, more correctly speaking, a draught of air only – during the July heat of a Shanghai summer! There is nothing fresh or pure at that unhappy period; all Nature stinks aloud …’: S. Osborn, A Cruise in Japanese Waters (Edinburgh, 1859), p. 2.

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I wrote old Unwin last mail which I fancy will fix him for 2 or 3 months. This hot weather is making me look quite genteel. I have just been weighed & find that I have just lost a stone being now exactly 12 instead of 13, the weight I was when I first came out here. I am rather glad of it as I was much too stout. Please thank Pater for his note enclosed in L[enox] N[ephew] & Co’s letter. The first 6 months of my agreement with M[ackenzie] B[rothers] & Co seems to have come to a rather speedy conclusion, & I wonder what the next two years & a half will bring forth if I should be spared my health & life.17 It seems curious that this day 6 months [ago] I was in Thurloe Place, Brompton & that now I should be in Ming Lee, Shanghai. Ming Lee is the name of our house but there is never any occasion to put it on the letters, as this being a small place every body knows every body & I really consider myself not a little fortunate in having dropped into such a berth.18 I must now say good bye & with best & kindest love to all & your dear self. Believe me ever, my dearest Mother, Your truly aff son C. Lenox Richardson Has James Dickson made his appearance at home yet? … 17

18

Mackenzie Brothers & Co., exporters of tea and silk: see n27 below. Three-year contracts were common among Western assistants to the major trading firms in China, and the practice spread with them as they expanded operations to Japan: J. McMaster, Jardines in Japan, 1859–1867 (Groningen, 1966), p. 80. Richardson’s arrangement may well have included the understanding that he begin working off the substantial costs incurred in his passage out to China: A. Michie, The Englishman in China During the Victorian Era (Edinburgh, 1900, 2 vols,), i, p. 258. Nonetheless, Richardson remained heavily indebted to the Mackenzie brothers at the time of his death: part of his estate in Shanghai was quickly sold off to settle these claims. There were more than fifty foreign mercantile establishments trading at Shanghai at this time. Mackenzie Brothers & Co. operated out of the Ming-Le godown with three assistants, who probably lived together: William Mackenzie, T.J. Birdseye and Charles Lenox Richardson.

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Shanghai 6 August 1853 My dear Father, Your two kind notes of 18 May & 8 June came to hand on the 1 Inst per Str “Lady Mary Wood”19 and [I] am truly rejoiced to see the cheerful spirit in which they are written and that you are so comfortable in your new position. At the same time I cannot help expressing my surprise at your complaints about my not writing. Now the truth of this matter is that I have written generally 2 of you & sometimes 3 every mail & really if you do not receive them it is no fault of mine, & I can assure you that it is one of the greatest pleasures I have writing you by every opportunity, but we won’t say any more about it but hope that you have received the rest of my letters all in order. Since last mail left here I have been buying a little Silk. I have brought it entirely by myself. Mr Kay, who used to inspect MB & Co’s Silk, having told Mr C.D. M[ackenzie] that he thought I was perfectly competent so to do & that there was not the slightest use his looking at it as well as me which I thought rather flattering, seeing that he was engaged to look at all the Silk bought by the firm for the first 12 months that I was in China.20 I have bought a lot for L[enox] N[ephew] & Co which I fancy will be one of the cheapest 19

20

A well-known P&O paddle steamer (1842) running between Shanghai and Hong Kong from 1849. These were Richardson’s first steps as a silk inspector, a role into which he now began to move, with evident pride. William Kay, of the firm Blenkin, Rawson and Co., is recorded as residing at Shanghai as early as 1847. He had been aboard the Ganges with Richardson from Hong Kong on the last leg of the latter’s passage out east: NCH, No. 138, 19 Mar. 1853, p. 130. The contact proved important in the young merchant’s career, just as the profitability of this first transaction mattered to establishing a mercantile reputation. Silk from the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions was considered by many to be the finest in the world; again, their proximity to navigable waterways worked to Shanghai’s advantage as a commercial centre: TNA: FO 228/90, R. Alcock to J.F. Davis, No. 28, 21 Mar. 1848. Silk initially formed Britain’s main export from Shanghai. Each foreign trading firm had a silk inspector, usually a foreigner. As silk was predominantly purchased in hinterland collection centres such as Suzhou, Wuxi, Huzhou and Hangzhou, and brought to Shanghai by Chinese merchants, foreign silk inspectors did most of their appraising in Shanghai itself. (Tea inspectors, by contrast, tended to visit these hinterland distribution centres in person in late April and early May, especially after the 1858 Treaty of Tianjin

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that has left Shanghai this season. I have also shipped a small lot of 10 Bales on my own account which, if things keep quiet on the Continent, I expect to do well with seeing that it only cost about 10/- per lb & by last mail was worth about 13/6 or 14/-.21 The 10/included 15% charges so that if you deduct that from 10/- you will see the prime cost of the Silk. I most sincerely hope that LN & Co will make a good profit off theirs, as it is my first purchase & upon it I fancy hangs a good deal of my future prosperity. Mr Aspinall and Mr C.D.M. go home in the October when Mr A’s brother comes out here as a partner.22 Mr Aspinall often tells me that he considers that I am all right & I have reasons to believe that he has prepossessed his brother in my favor [sic], so that I have only to keep quiet & stick to the main chance like wax & I trust I shall not turn out quite so bad as Uncle J[ohn] made out a little ago. I had a very kind note from him this mail saying that he had received a very welcome letter from me & seems much pleased with the business news contained therein. I will, if possible, enclose a bill for £20 in this note with which if you will be kind enough you can retire your acceptance which W. Lyon holds on my account. I have already sent him £30 so that you will only have to give him £10 more & the other £10 you can either hand over to my Mother or to James the Tailor. The latter has most claim on it, but if my Mother actually wants it you can let her have it. She wrote me asking if I could let her have £100 quarterly, say £25 every 3 mos. I am almost afraid that I shall not be able to comply with her wishes to that amount until my own debts are cleared off, as I really think that that is the most honest mode of proceeding & would not like to be under obligations to people longer than

21

22

lifted many of the restrictions on foreigners’ movements). Nonetheless, calls for greater foreign access to the silk-growing regions grew across the 1850s. Silk manufacture was traditionally based in northern Italy and in France, and European conditions were crucial to the profitability of the Chinese silk trade. Expanding production from the early nineteenth-century onwards, combined with the outbreak of pebrine silkworm disease in the Mediterranean in the 1850s, worked to drive up demand for China’s raw silk. Shanghai’s merchants would fret, however, about the impact of the Crimean War on European demand. William Gregson Aspinall came out to Shanghai that summer and became a partner in MacKenzie Brothers & Co. He took the place of Charles Mackenzie who, with Richard Aspinall, returned to England. See: NCH, No. 170, 29 Oct. 1853, p. 49.

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actually necessary, but she may depend that I will do my best for her and if you could possibly manage to live upon your present income for a little I will assist you in every possible way in my power. But I am sure that you will look at it in the same light as I do. I have had lots of work the last day or two but as the weather has been very pleasant & not over warm – say about 86° – I must say I have rather enjoyed it than otherwise. I was at work at 6 o’clock this morning and I shall be I dare say till 6 or 7 tonight but it is a great satisfaction to know you are working for something which makes all the difference.23 I am almost afraid that I shall not be able to write anyone at home but yourself this mail but will do it if possible, as I fancy I shall have to buy a small lot of Silk today. What do you think of an Ex[change] of 7/-. I can buy bills on England at that rate at 6 mos sight and sight bills at 6/10d. My salary was fixed by 4/9d so that in buying bills now I make about 35%. In fact, a £50 bill would only cost me £34. Now would be the time to pay off old scores but I have nearly all my spare funds invested and I have but about $300 at my credit & I do not wish to draw up too close. My 10 bales of Silk is worth at present rate about £800 and it is all paid for, but then out of it has to come a bill drawn against it for about £400 to help pay for it. If I make from £10 to 20 a bale I shall be tolerably well satisfied. I am off to breakfast now & will finish this afternoon. Having had a tolerably fair meal here goes again. You must not be too hard upon me about the writing of this note as it is written as fast as possible. I fancy now that we may consider the warm, or rather unpleasantly hot weather almost at an end, and if we only jog on till the 21st the Monsoon is then generally fairly broken up. About a week ago we had a very severe gale for about 9 or 10 days & the two Schooners that brought the mail up from Hong Kong (the 18 May) had 23

The silk-buying season lasted from late May to July. During this period merchants might work twelve- to fifteen-hour days as they arranged purchase, packaging and transshipment. At other times of the year, however, ‘they kept leisurely hours, seldom opening their offices before ten or closing them after four, and taking two hours or more for a heavy lunch in the mess’: Murphey, Shanghai, p. 71.

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their rigging literally torn to pieces and came in here without a spare rope on board – every sail split. Directly this mail is gone I will begin and answer all other kind notes, but now I have not a moment to spare. I was never better in my life. Enclosed bill £20 at sight on O.B. Walbrook. Your truly aff. Son C. Lenox Richardson Kindest & best love to all. …

Shanghai 29 Augt 1853 My dear Mother, Last mail I only had time to send a few lines home consequently I am still one note in your debt as last mail, which arrived about a week ago, was rather uninteresting as far as I was personally concerned as I did not get a single note from anyone, but seeing that there is not much fear of England being taken by Rebels I consoled myself with better luck next time.24 24

This is Richardson’s first allusion to the civil strife wracking China in the 1850s and 1860s, and which would shortly become such a recurrent feature of his Shanghai correspondence. It was in 1851 that Hong Xiuquan (1814–1864), prophet and founder of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, began his rebellion against the Qing empire – though it took time for Shanghai’s foreign merchants to pay it due attention. In March, 1853, Taiping forces took Nanjing, and were soon pushing eastwards down the Yangtze towards Suzhou and Shanghai. By the summer, following the conclusion of the Second Burma War, British warships in Indian waters were being transferred to China in anticipation of the need to protect British subjects at the treaty ports. Shortly after writing this letter, on 7 September, hundreds of members of the Small Sword Society – an uneasy alliance of factions hostile to Qing authority, but only tenuously linked to the Taiping movement – rushed Shanghai’s walled Chinese city, captured the local Chinese administrator (the daotai, or Intendant), and ejected Imperialist forces into the surrounding countryside. Thus began an eighteen-month long siege of the Chinese city at Shanghai. This was a disquieting period for residents of the neighbouring foreign settlement, but not unprofitable. While consular staff professed

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The hot weather thank goodness is going away by degrees and I fancy in another month or so we shall have none left. I have not suffered from it myself save a few boils which have gone quietly away, & with the exception that I am somewhat thinner I flatter myself am as well as when I left home. Of late we have been having very severe gales as well as a few days of heavy rain. The rain in England is indeed a trifle to what it is out here when it does come. One day last week it began about 11 o’clock and before half past one all Shanghai was 2 feet at least under water, but then it retires generally as quick as it comes, for the same afternoon by six the roads were so dry that you could walk about with comfort.25 Last night we had a very severe blow almost approaching to a Typhoon. We had a fine large willow tree literally torn out by the roots & several panes of glass blown from the top of the greenhouse, so that you may fancy we had a pleasant night of it – the glass cracking sounded like so many pistol shots. One house here had the wall surrounding the Garden taken away & in fact there is hardly a single place that has not suffered more or less. I suppose you have completed your intended visit to Chantlers & have, of course seen Mr MacKenzie. What do you think of him? I am sure if you know him your opinion must coincide with mine, & his brother here is just the same sort of man. How did the Wedding go off – was it a very swell affair?26 By this time I fancy they are nearly halfway on the voyage.

25

26

neutrality, merchants embraced the opportunity to smuggle in arms and supplies, helping to prolong the rebels’ occupation. The lower portions of the foreign settlement were prone to flood in summer, and questions of flood protection and drainage featured regularly in the deliberations of the young Shanghai Municipal Council. The river, too, required frequent work to preserve channels liable to erosion, spillage and silt accumulation. But there was a seductive ideological component to this work, too, for it formed part of a heroic narrative of foreign labour, land reclamation, terraforming and the spread of commerce and civilisation to a supposedly stagnant Orient. ‘Some of the silt upon which our Bund is built’, wrote the settlement’s official historian, George Lanning, would have ‘fill[ed] up the shallows of a useless lagoon’ had it not been made to provide ‘a basis for a lever that was to aid in the uplift of a race’: G. Lanning, The History of Shanghai (2 vols., Shanghai, 1921), i, p. 255. The wedding of his sister Georgie and Frederick Searle: they were married in November. Searle listed his profession as a ‘West Indian Planter’ and the newlyweds moved to Trinidad. The Richardson family had a number of connections with the West Indies: one of Charles senior’s brothers was a planter in Demerara, and Ellice, Kinnear and Company had had considerable interests in plantations there, as well as in Trinidad.

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I see you say you think it was very kind of C.D. MacKenzie going to Hong Kong to meet me, but you must have misunderstood my letter as I ought to have said that he was staying there for some time previous to my arrival & stopped there 3 or 4 months after I came up here. You must remember that going from Shanghai to Hong Kong is rather an undertaking & they are not quite so close as Brompton is to the Parthenon. He is, however, kindness itself. I must now say goodbye & with best love to all Believe me ever, my dear Mother, Your truly aff son C. Lenox Richardson …

21 Sept / 53 My dear Father, I enclose an order for £20 on K.R. MacKenzie Esqre.27 Will you kindly get the money and dispose of it as follows Ripley Brown & Co Dobell 5: 27

£ 7: 7/-

Kenneth Ross Mackenzie’s career spanned the treaty ports of China and Japan. He was already trading at Shanghai when in 1847 he became deputy chair of the new British Chamber of Commerce. With his brother Charles he ran Mackenzie, Brothers. & Co., working the tea, silk and opium trades. In 1854 he left Shanghai (his interest in the firm also being taken on by W.G. Aspinall, to create Aspinall, Mackenzie & Co.) and set out for Hankou, where he entrenched a reputation for smuggling and for aggression in his business dealings. Five years later he was send by Jardines to open operations in Nagasaki. It was here (where he had started trading even before the Ansei treaties had technically come into effect) that he introduced the young Thomas Blake Glover to the worlds of illicit trade. Ironically, selling steamships to Satsuma became an important line of business; one was scuttled during the bombardment of Kagoshima. When Kobe opened in 1868 ‘he was again among the first on the ground in the service of his firm’: P. Ennals, Opening a Window to the West: the foreign concession at Kobe, Japan, 1868–1899 (Toronto, 2014), p. 167. He died in Nagasaki in 1873. See further: M. Gardiner, At the Edge of Empire: the life of Thomas Blake Glover (Edinburgh, 2007), pp. 37–44.

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Minnie – a watch for her birthday 7: 13 £20: Yours affy C. Lenox Richardson Please advise H. James of having paid Dobell as he kindly promised so to do at the end of the year. CLR I send a newspaper via Southampton. …

Shanghai Novr 19th 1853 My dear Father, A few days ago I had the pleasure of receiving your long & kind letter of 3rd Septr in reply to my scratch of 21 June and am glad to see that anything coming from me seems to give you pleasure. I had also a very satisfactory note from my uncle as well as a very kind message from Mr K. R. M.28 sent in a letter to Mr Aspinall explaining his approbation. All these circumstances combined make me feel not a little comfortable and you may rest assured that I shall strive my utmost to continue to deserve them. Aspinall29 appears to be quite as agreeable a man as his brother and altho’ we shall miss Rd [Richard] Aspinall30 & Mr [Charles] Mackenzie greatly for some time to come yet I have little doubt but that we shall be quite as comfortable as we were before when we are again settled down, for at the present moment we are all about to turn out 28 29

30

Kenneth Ross Mackenzie: see previous letter. William Gregson Aspinall (see n11), who became a partner in MacKenzie Bros. & Co. on 30 June. Richard Aspinall, authorised agent of Mackenzie Bros. at Shanghai from August 1851.

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of the house we have been living in to let Mr A. and his wife in and there is not a house in the place to let. [I] shall have to live amongst our friends pro-tem. But after the Winter is over and when dollars get somewhat cheaper M.B. & Co are going to build a house for us so that the inconvenience of living all over the place won’t last long. I have been to see Mrs A. two or three times and she appears to be an exceedingly nice person. For the female community in general there is not much to say altho’ there are two or three very pleasant women in the place, but I may safely say there is not a single pretty one or that any of them are too ladylike. However, it is a shame to scandalize them; the thing I most wonder at is any of them making up their minds to come to this corner of the world. They have no earthly amusement and nothing to do. I should fancy that an English woman’s life in China must be one continual round of dull monotony.31 Many thanks for the papers which came safely to hand. As you remarked The Times contains a very good account of the state of things in this Country; I dare say you will see some thing in The Times after this mail arrives that will astonish you, but perhaps I had better tell you and then there will be no cause of alarm. On last Monday night we heard a great noise outside as we were sitting quietly by the fire after dinner and, at first, thinking that it was merely a squabble among the Coolies, took no notice, but a short time after we heard a regular yell which there is no mistaking, so we jumped up from the table, took our fire arms and rushed out and there, sure enough, were a lot of Imperial Soldiers, and the Guard at them. After a little firing we drove them off the Foreign ground.32 They are 31

32

As late as 1860, of the 294 Britons residing in the foreign settlement at Shanghai, only 41 were women: ‘Foreign Population of Shanghai’, NCH, No. 495, 21 Jan. 1860, p. 11. On the night of the 14th a party of Qing soldiers crossed into the foreign settlement to seize arms which a British firm was suspected of smuggling to rebels inside the Chinese city. A second party landed by boat at the Ming-Le jetty – that is to say, at Richardson’s firm’s address. They had got as far as the former Customs House on the Bund when they were engaged by men of HMS Spartan, assisted by the Volunteers. The casualty figure given here is disputed. The Daotai Wu Jianzhang – who was later dismissed for his loss of control over the collection of customs during this period (see n47 below) – accused the British firms Gilman, Bowman & Co. and Richards & Co. of gun running. Alcock informed Hong Kong, with regret, that ‘although without legal evidence to enable me for the moment to prosecute and convict, there seems no doubt whatever as to the truth of the allegation’: TNA: FO 228/162, R. Alcock to G. Bonham, No. 91, 19 Nov 1853.

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a most confounded set of Cowards. There was upwards of 200 of them and not 30 of us, taking Volunteers and Sailors together; however, they got it pretty smartly – 7 killed and 11 wounded.33 Only one Foreigner was hurt & he had his hand slightly cut; we have not been able to come at the right of the case yet, but their story is that they came down to intercept some cannon going away from one of the Foreign Hongs, but it is very queer that 200 armed men, with Stinkpots,34 should come down on Foreign ground to stop two guns, after they had been forbidden to come near the place by the Consul, & if they did it would be at their own risk. However, I fancy we shall not see many more of these gentry about out houses in a hurry. I have no doubt but that in the course of a month or two I shall be able to give you a leg up with some dollars as at present all my funds are wrapped up in Silk and until I get remittances from England have no cash on hand. We must hope that Silk will turn out favourably this year. If it does I ought to double my salary, but at present it is hard to say what will be the probable result, particularly if your money market continues to tighten and the Russian question is not soon finished.35 All these circumstances militate more or less against any very golden outturn, but let us hope for the best. You are at the same time aware that I have not a few liabilities of my own to clear up and shall not be thoroughly easy until they are all paid off as I consider they ought to be provided for before anything else. I am quite sure you will understand my ideas upon the subject.36 What about that scamp Raggett – have you heard anything about him? 33

34

35

36

The Shanghai Local Volunteer Corps had been formed back in April. Following this skirmish, some in the community criticised the Senior Naval Officer for failing to detect the approach of such a large band of soldiers sooner. As such, the whole incident helped to fuel the idea that Shanghai’s foreign residents had to be prepared to take up arms themselves to defend their property: NCH, letter to the editor, No. 173, 19 Nov. 1853, p. 62. A projectile weapon used by Qing forces, particularly against junks and warships; ‘an earthenware vessel filled with powder, sulphur, &c.’: W.R. Kennedy, Hurrah for the Life of a Sailor! Fifty years in the Royal Navy (Edinburgh, 1900), p. 47. Richardson’s first allusion to the looming Crimean War (1853–56). Russia had delivered its ultimatum to the Ottoman Empire in May, and British warships approached the Dardanelles in June. Unfortunately for Richardson, the conflict dampened demand for Chinese silk in Europe. Alas, his father’s financial difficulties persisted across Richardson’s time in Shanghai.

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I have recommended Rd Aspinall to James so perhaps you will tell him so there is no fear of upset in that quarter and if he goes

to him I hope it will be a salve for the wound inflicted. Our Garden this year has been beautiful to look at – full of Roses and all sorts of flowers but now its Glory has departed and it begins to put on its Winter garb. It is a strange fact that scarcely any flowers in China have a smell. I think our show of Camelias was about as fair as any I have ever seen; they flower out in the open air. This is a most extraordinarily mild Season from all accounts as we never have a fire except in the evening and have the windows generally open all day in the office, but I suppose we shall catch it by and bye. So Wm. Lyon is going to fix himself. I am afraid he will find the Money Market rather tight unless the wife has got some of her own. I most sincerely wish him every happiness & hope he will find married life a smooth pond and that he will not have many, or any, troubles to battle with. I believe his brother has made a mess of it, has he not. I am afraid poor Tom is a ne’er do well. We expect the Steamer daily with the mail of 24 Sept. Give my very best love to all, Believe me ever, my dear Father, Your very aff son C. Lenox Richardson Give my best love to my dear Mother & say I shall answer her kind note of 1st Sept p. Str. …

Via Southampton Shanghai 17 Decr 1853 My dear Father, I am ashamed to say that I have not yet answered your kind letters of 19th & 24th Septr received some time ago, but last mail I had

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a good deal to do in the way of business just as it was leaving and which I know you will accept as a plausible excuse. The letters of the 8 October are hourly expected but am afraid they will not come in time to be acknowledged by this opportunity. I see that you give me another dig in the ribs about writing to friends. I have written Mr. Eaton 3 or 4 times but have had no reply. I, however, wrote him again last mail and shall continue so to do about once a month as I am fully aware of the importance of keeping up so valuable a connection. Many thanks for the papers duly received. So Agnes37 has made herself an authoress. I hope it will prove more profitable than those things generally do: that is to say if that is the object. How is the Establishment getting on? Flourishingly I trust. On the 7 Instant the Imperialists attacked the City again and burnt down a large portion of the suburbs. They however came off second best as they lost 2 Junks each containing about 50 or 60 men.38 These Junks had run in quite close to the battery with the intention of throwing Stinkpots into it so as to drive the Insurgents from their guns, but not being aware of a side battery that had been thrown up a day or two previous to the Engagement, they caught it rather unexpectedly and, at the same time, the besieged threw fire balls &c into them which found their way into the magazines, and they both blew up, sending men and guns 37

38

Agnes Mary Heath (1826–1912), Richardson’s eldest sister, and the mother of Florence Marian Heath (1858–1936) who so carefully preserved Richardson’s letters. Born in Hackney in 1826 and married in 1857, Agnes Heath was suddenly widowed on Boxing Day, 1863, making her entitled to the entirety of Charles Lenox Richardson’s estate by the terms of his will. This led to an acrimonious dispute with the fiancée of another of the Richardson sisters, Mary, and the first partition of the estate. Other claims followed. Agnes died in 1912 in Tonbridge, Kent. Throughout November and December, Qing forces had their headquarters just beyond the Sinza bridge on the Wusong River, and were regularly skirmishing with rebel groups. On 7 December Daotai Wu, who had purchased a vessel called the Sir Henry Compton and fitted her for war, sent a fleet upriver to engage a rebel battery. The fleet succeeded in firing the eastern suburb – ‘the sky was like a thunder-cloud and beneath the flame roared and crackled with a noise like the sea’ – but was forced into a humiliating defeat when two of the junks were destroyed. For the British, Wu’s setback did much to confirm their derisory assessments of the Qing forces: TNA: FO 228/162, R. Alcock to G. Bonham, No. 99, 12 Dec. 1853; ‘The Fight on Wednesday’, NCH, No. 176, 10 Dec. 1853, p. 74.

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&c in all directions. It was quite close to the Foreign residences so that we had a fine view of the Engagement throughout.39 The fire lasted for 14 or 16 hours and at night time was a magnificent sight. There was at least a mile of houses in a blaze at one time, and so near that you could feel the heat while standing on English ground. The report is that the Imperialists are getting short of Ammunition and Money, if such is the case I fancy we shall soon see them leave the place; of which the country people about here will be not a little glad as they are committing all sorts of Ravages and depravations. They think nothing of turning these poor people out of their houses and taking the doors and shutters for fire wood as well as cutting down the trees for the same purpose40 and opening Graves forcing open the coffin lids and stealing the 1 or 200 cash (abt.6d) that it is the custom of the Country to place inside with the body as they have an idea that some time they come to life again and then they take the money and buy Rice. The other morning a friend of mine was out walking and he met a poor man deploring the loss of some cotton which he said an Imperialist soldier had taken from him. They walked on a little further and saw this said soldier, or rather thief, coolly sitting down inspecting his plunder, so my friend walked up to him, clapt a pistol to his ear and made him surrender. I believe the fellow was in an awful funk and as soon as they let him go he took to his heels and ran until he was out of sight – he was heavily armed and might, if he had got any pluck in him, have made a resistance but I believe they are a set of cowards from beginning to end. I sincerely regret not being able to assist Mr Collins in the way you mention as there is no market at all for any thing of that sort here. Chinamen have the greatest antipathy to any thing of this 39

40

In April the community would have to be cautioned against ‘ascending in large numbers on to the Church Tower, in order to watch the attack of the Imperialists against the City. The upper portion of the Tower is very slightly built, and if it be crowded … a catastrophe too painful to contemplate may be the result’: NCH, No. 192, 1 Apr. 1854, p. 138. Over the coming years, the demands of both Taiping and Qing forces stripped countryside around Shanghai of wood. The resulting lack of timber delayed both the reconstruction of the Chinese city after its evacuation by the rebels, and the relocation of the thousands of refugees sheltering in the foreign settlement: TNA: FO 228/195, D.B. Robertson to J. Bowring, No. 7, 3 May 1855.

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kind except what is purely Chinese.41 If I could possibly have done any thing for him it would have given me infinite pleasure, particularly after all the kindness and friendship he has evinced towards your dear self. I must now say adieu as I must write my Mother and one or two Sisters. Believe me ever, my dear Father, Your very aff. Son, C. Lenox Richardson …

Via Southampton Shanghai 30 Decr 1853 My dear Father, I find that I have two of your kind letters to reply to viz: 19 and 24 Octr and have but one half hour to do it in. You may imagine that I was not a little astonished at the tenor of the Home News and sincerely do I hope that it may be (that is to say the state of matrimony) conducive to both my dear Sisters’ happiness & welfare.42 I see that you have obtained the £40 Bill from Willm Lyon which is not a small load off my mind and only wish that James’ claim was cleared off as well; however, if the Silk turns out well I shall not have much difficulty about that, but I do not exactly see how I am to recover the Legacy after the letter that I wrote to Blake when I was at home, and I am afraid he will have to stick to his bargain, altho’ if Blake won’t acknowledge his claim to it and deliver up my letter, I will try and provide for it in the way James suggests. I see what you say about that poor fellow Raggett. One cannot help pitying him altho’ there is no doubt it was evidently a try to do. 41

42

It is not clear what Richardson is referring to, but the difficulties merchants faced in finding a market for British manufactures in China persisted across the 1850s. Probably a reference to his sister Agnes’ engagement to Albert Health. They were not married until 1857.

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As regards the Insurance of my life it has only got 6 months more to run so that the doctors’ fees for Certificates would be pretty much the same sum as the extra premium. Political matters here still remain in status quo and there is no knowing when any change will take place. I long for next mail to know what course they have taken in Europe. If there is War I fear it will be peccavi with Silk pro tem. Many thanks for the Observers which were duly recd & prove very interesting. The Weather here now is the most lovely I ever experienced: a bright, clear air, lots of sunshine and a beautiful temperature. I fancy it is just the contrary with you. Remember me kindly to Mr Lyon and thank him for his kind note duly recd & I won’t forget the items contained therein. I am sorry I must now say good bye & with very best love to all Believe me ever, my dear Father, Your very aff son C. Lenox Richardson …

Via Southampton Shanghae 14 Feby 1854 My dear Father, I find I am indebted to you for no less than 3 of your usual kind letters, two of which would have been answered by the last oppy, but unfortunately I was sick in bed having caught a violent cold which gave me quinzey43 and kept me indoors for 3 or 4 days, but now I am happy to say I am as well and strong as ever. This has been a damp, unhealthy winter with scarcely any frost and what we are to do for ice next summer becomes a serious consideration.44 43 44

Inflamed tonsils. In extremis, Shanghai’s foreign residents shipped in ice from the north: Lanning, Shanghai, p. 434.

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There is no change in politics here. The Rebels still stick to the City and seem likely to do so for an infinite period; one of the Rebel chiefs was shot through the shoulder the other day. I happened to be inside the City a day or two after and went to see him – he did not seem to care much about it.45 The Imperialists sprang a mine under the wall a short time ago and made a breach of about 50 feet. When the mine exploded it shook the whole of S’hai like an earthquake, but the Impls could not make any use of the advantage gained and lost a large number of their soldiers for their pains.46 The Toutai [daotai] has established a Custom House here and now all Exports will have to pay duty again.47 45

46

47

Once in control of the Chinese city, and under siege from the Qing army, the Small Swords Society courted the co-operation of the foreign settlement. From Hong Kong, Sir John Bowring instructed Alcock to do nothing to facilitate foreign sales of arms and supplies to the rebels, but these sales clearly persisted for some time yet. See: TNA: FO 228/176, R. Alcock to G. Bonham, No. 38, 1 May 1854. The Small Swords were divided into a number of groups and factions, notably from Fujian and Guangdong, and the ‘chief ’ Richardson refers to was Chen Alin, a Fujianese leader. It seems that Richardson paid this visit in the company of Thomas Wade, an interpreter at the British consulate. ‘I was in the City on Satr the 12th’, Wade informed Alcock, ‘and saw Lew [Liu Lichuan of the Guangdong faction] whose lieutenant, Chin [Chen] Alin, had been seriously wounded on the morning of the 6th, though Lew affected to make light of his hurt’: TNA: FO 226/176. On the morning of 6 February Qing troops detonated a mine which created ‘a large and practicable breach’ in the city wall, only for the rebels themselves to burst through it, driving back the Qing troops. Alcock lamented this latest example of ‘the incapacity of the Imperialist forces to take the city’: TNA: FO 228/176, R. Alcock to G. Bonham, No. 18, 14 Feb. 1854. The collapse of Qing authority at Shanghai had not been without its advantages for the foreign merchants. On 8 September 1853, the day after the city fell, the Small Sword Society raided the Qing Customs House on the Bund, seizing papers and destroying its contents. Foreign trade immediately came to a standstill: ships could not clear the harbour if no one was on hand to receive their duties. To restart trade, Alcock was forced to improvise a set of provisional customs regulations, and to accept promissory notes rather than cash. By October, exports of silk and tea had begun to recover, but imported goods piled up in the warehouses, unable to find distribution inland. The establishment of a new Customs House on the Wusong River (‘Soochow Creek’) by Daotai Wu, to which Richardson refers here, seemed to mark the end of this provisional system, but it quickly proved ineffective. Ships regularly came and went in defiance of this new Customs House, and smuggling proliferated, so that Richardson’s exports may not have been as affected as he at first feared. Between May and July the provisional regulations had to be brought back, but the majority of the bonds made at this time were never paid off. It was in response to these shortcomings that a revised Inspectorate of Customs was established later in 1854 and its premises relocated back within the settlement, while the former site on the Bund was repaired.

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I was very glad to see that dear Georgie went away in such good spirits and sincerely trust that it will prove a happy marriage and that some day we shall all see one another again in dear old England. What about the Turkish question? It appears that they are letting the Russians have it pretty warmly. I wish they would settle it at once, for in the meantime it is depressing your Silk Market fearfully; I should think it could not be of long duration.48 I got the receipt for £7.4/- from Ripley Brown & Co which, at your recommendation, I will preserve. I hope in a mail or two to be able to remit some money to James but you need not say anything about it to him until I send it, which I shall do through you. I must now say good bye and wish best love to all at home & every kind wish for your prosperity. Believe me ever, my dear Father, Your very aff son C. Lenox Richardson My correspondence on my own a/c is getting something awful so excuse this miserable lot. …

Shanghae 3d Mch 1854 My dear Mother, I am ashamed to say that I have two of your very kind notes unanswered, both of which give full accounts of the affairs uppermost in your mind, namely dear Georgie’s marriage, and I am truly glad that it went off wh such éclat. A more lovely bride I could not imagine than 48

The Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia on 4 October, 1853, and launched a campaign against the Russian forces occupying the Danubian principalities. To defend Ottoman shipping, British and French fleets entered the Black Sea on 3 January 1854, and declared war on Russia on 28 March. There was a further consideration fuelling Richardson’s impatience: until the war with Russia was resolved, there was little prospect of Britain bringing sufficient force to bear against China, thereby securing the improved commercial treaty for which merchants had long hoped.

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my own dear Sister and Searle may consider himself not a little fortunate in having such a wife, and only hope that when my time comes that I may be equally fortunate. I also rejoice to hear that they had such agreeable passengers in Mr & Mrs Hume & that in every particular were so comfortable on board the vessel; I suppose ere long you will receive tidings of their arrival in Trinidad when you must give me a full, true and particular acct of them and their proceedings.49 I see from your last note that you were in in all probability in for a severe Winter. I wish we had the same luck out here; we have had a miserable season, a great deal of Rain & very little frost & I sadly fear that next Summer we shall suffer much from want of Ice which is out here the greatest of all luxuries. From your acct Bedford Square must be fine, but at the same time I should not like to live there as I always thought it miserably Smokey and City like. I am sorry to hear of Uncle Joe’s illness and if it should prove fatal what will become of his Children?50 It must indeed be a sad reflection for poor Aunt Catherine, but we shall hope for the best. I must say adieu & with best love, Believe me ever, my dear Mother, Your aff son C. Lenox Richardson …

Via Marseilles Shanghae 13th April 1854 My dear Mother, I am truly ashamed of myself for not having written you the last mail or two, but you must not think that it is from any unwilling49

50

Georgie’s marriage to the planter Frederick Searle formed the latest West Indian connection to the Richardson family: see n26. Joseph Richardson (b.1800), Charles Richardson senior’s younger brother, was a sugar planter in Demerara, a British colony (British Guiana) from 1815. The plantation struggled following the 1833 abolition of slavery.

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ness upon my part. In this part of the world there are not constant novelties occurring as in dear old England and consequently it is rather a tax upon a fellow’s brain to have to coin sundry private chits twice a month and I am quite sure that some of my latest effusions must have been uncommonly seedy. You say you would like me to write to Chas. Ferguson. I will see if I can possibly screw out something to send him by next mail, but this I had already sent no less than 8 private notes and it is hard work, but nevertheless a pleasure. I am glad to hear of dear Georgie’s safe arrival and that she likes her new abode so well; also that Mackenzie Bros. have been to call. I am rejoiced to see that you concur with me they are without exception the two nicest men I ever came across. It is indeed kind of Chas. Ellis as regards furniture and am glad to hear you have such nice accommodation. I have sent my Father a paper which gives a full account of the event of the last week and hope we shall not see such again in a hurry as it was hot work & no mistake; I was at the Bridge from which we had to retreat.51 51

This was the so-called ‘Battle of Muddy Flat’ on 4 April, a two-hour skirmish beyond the western limits of the foreign settlement in which the Shanghai Volunteers, and British and American troops and sailors, sought to drive off Qing military camps in the vicinity of the foreigners’ race course (that is, technically beyond the settlement’s western limits). The following extract from the North China Herald of the 8th – the paper Richardson mentions sending to his father – gives a suitably grandiose sense of the ‘action’, including Richardson’s position on the bridge: ‘Shells were thrown into the [Qing] camps from the field piece, under Lieut. Montgomery of the [Royal Navy steamer] Encounter, with great precision and effect, while the main body of the British Naval forces, in conjunction with the Volunteers, moved on to occupy them … The Creek was crossed at the wooden bridge to the westward of Paddy Bird Grove. Six Marines and Six Volunteers were stationed at this point to protect the rear of the attacking party. On crossing the bridge, the regular forces under Captains O’Callaghan [of the Encounter] and Keane [of the Grecian] advanced to the south-eastward, while the Volunteers under Mr. [Thomas] Wade advanced to the south so as to cover the flank of the main attack … The men went bravely forward and the Volunteers advanced upon the right. A volley of musketry was fired by the Imperialist soldiers, on which they had evidently relied, but the ditch was crossed and the camp taken. At this time one of the Volunteers was dangerously wounded by a musket shot through the head. The Imperialists now retreated rapidly towards their camps on the Soochow Creek. The Camps were soon set on fire, and as there was a fresh breeze blowing the flames spread rapidly. The order to retire was now given … The return was accomplished without further incident, the advancing bodies of [Qing] soldiers having been effectually checked by the fire of field pieces. The rear-guard left at the wooden

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I must now say adieu & with best love to all and very best to yourself. Believe me ever, my dear Mother, Your very aff son C. Lenox Richardson [written on the same letter] My dear Father, I have merely time to send you a Paper which will give you a full account of the goings on here this last week and a plan of the fight. It is now all settled, and we will hope it will continue so. I have sent James £100 and will send him the Legacy receipt and Power of Attorney next mail. Believe me, Your aff son C. Lenox Richardson …

Via Southampton Shanghai 8th May 1854 My dear Father,

bridge was compelled to retire upon the guns, as the numbers of the enemy approaching were too large and the fire too hot’. The lawfulness of this attack was open to question, but it was all the more embraced as a foundational moment for the Shanghai Volunteers Corps, held up a symbol of the foreign community’s plucky self-reliance. Richardson signed a public letter thanking O’Callaghan and Keane and insisting upon the necessity of the whole action. Alcock added his own robust defence of this ‘vigorous and unhesitating demonstration of both the will and the power to resist … In China, there is less to be risked and lost by a firm and unrelenting resistance … than must inevitably be incurred by any more temporizing or timid policy’: NCH, No. 193, 8 Apr. 1854, pp. 142–3. For the British Consul’s report, see: TNA: FO 228/176, R. Alcock to G. Bonham, No. 30, 5 Apr. 1854.

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I have to own receipt of your two kind letters duly recd, one of the 18th & one 24th Feby, and was glad to learn from the former that you were in possession of sundry notes from me. I cannot make out, however, what my dear Mother is driving at by writing me such a doleful epistle and she never acknowledges the note you mention her being in receipt of. I think now that we have perhaps less to fear from the Chinese than ever, but it has certainly come across me several times since the last engagement that it was a great mercy and, from the way the shot was flying, a perfect miracle that more of us did not lose the chance of seeing England again. The two poor volunteers who were wounded have both since expired, and have had all the honour of military funerals.52 I notice what you say about G.L.’s insinuation about my informing Mr M[ackenzie] about your misfortunes.53 I have most flatly to contradict the assertion and even if I had done so what business is it of his and the best way is if these people do not feel disposed to be friendly to let them go their way and you yours, & the less you see of each other the better; at least that would be my mode of proceeding. I am truly glad to hear that you are beginning to get things square at Chelsea and if you are once well settled & happy I think you need care very little for outsiders. I took great interest in the Report of your Co54 which I fully perused and which seemed highly satisfactory. Do the shares appear to be tolerably saleable & have you any of them? I enclose an order to James which please hand over to him. I was sorry I could not comply with his request about forwarding a bill for the Legacy and the £50 he paid you. I have sent him the Legacy 52

53

54

W. Blackman, carpenter aboard the steamer Encounter, and G. McCorkle, seaman of the United States sloop Plymouth, died during the engagement. Later, Captain R.H. Pearson of the merchant ship Rose Standish and J.A. Brine, a Shanghai resident and Volunteer also died from their wounds. All were commemorated on a stone tablet in Trinity Church, thus transcending into treaty port memory. By 18 April, the Qing military encampment that had been the foreigners’ objective during the fight on the 4th had been relocated away from the racecourse to the southern side of the Chinese city. This greatly reduced the chance of fresh clashes with the foreign residents, who were further reassured by the arrival of HMS Styx and the French steamer Colbert. George Lenox, Richardson’s mother’s brother, who seems to have discussed the family’s circumstances with one of the Mackenzie brothers. The Berlin Waterworks Company.

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receipt, signed, and an order on the Executors so that I hope he will have no trouble in getting it. As far as the £50 I must wait and see what turns up within the next 6 months. We have all aimlessly looked for the March mail expected every day when we fully look for a declaration of war with Russia. I fear the peace treaty won’t have much effect; they go to the wrong shop when they go to see old Nick55 for pacific intentions just now. I don’t see how he can back out now he has shown the cloven hoof to such an extent. It will be a sad time for Europe while it lasts. I see what you say about the Chess men and I will take care that you have some stunners. Anything that I can get you, you have only to mention what it is & thou shall have it if it is in my power to procure. You will by this time have made a good hole in the Tea and I expect next mail to have a full description of it as well as the Dog if alive. I am afraid my loving Sisters would have been disappointed when they came to learn from R.A. [Richard Aspinall] that I was whisker-less, but to console them you must say that I have not yet given up the hope of one day having a supply but I am afraid nothing very grand. With kindest and best love to all and yourself. Believe me ever, Your very aff son C. Lenox Richardson …

Via Southampton Shanghai 31 May 1854 My dear Father Since I last had this pleasure I have recd no less than 3 of your long and kind letters, viz. 7th, 18th & 24th March each containing one or two enclosures from other dear ones. In the first you seem to think 55

Tsar Nicholas I of Russia (1796–1855), but also, of course, a jocular name for the Devil. News of Britain and France’s entry into the war had not yet reached Shanghai.

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that I did not take sufficient notice of dear Georgie’s marriage, but I am no great hand at expatiating upon these sort of things, but at the same time there is not a soul on the face of the Earth who rejoices more than I do in dear Georgie’s good fortune & bright prospects. You must accept my best thanks for the kind sentiments expressed in yours of the 18th. It certainly astonished me not a little to hear that G.L. [George Lenox] had told Uncle J [John Lenox] that I was only 20 this year, but I suppose the fact of the matter is he neither knew nor cared. It may certainly have some effect upon the other little business, but I shall be greatly surprised if it comes off this year. At present I have heard nothing with regard to it & I am not at all sanguine. I fancy by next mail we shall hear of the commencement of hostilities with Russia. Every body here fully anticipates it. At all events I should hardly think it would be of long duration. Folks in Hong Kong are quaking as the Russians are said to have a very powerful fleet in the China Seas.56 I don’t suppose it could have any prejudicial effect upon this place, not being an English Colony they could not take possession of it if they had the chance. The Admiral, Sir Jas. Stirling, is expected up daily in the Winchester 50 Gun Frigate with the Barracouta & one or two more, so that the British flag will be in pretty strong force up here.57 I sincerely hope the Herefordshire will arrive safely and give the Bears the slip. 56

57

News that Britain and France had joined the war reached Hong Kong in May, but had evidently not made it to Shanghai in time for this letter home. Once it did, the foreign community avidly followed events, throwing a banquet when Sebastopol finally fell. For his part, Richardson contributed a modest $30 towards the local Patriotic Fund (T.C. Beale, a partner at Dent & Co., in contrast, threw in $500): NCH, No. 239, 24 Feb. 1855, p. 120; NCH, No. 286, 19 Jan. 1856, p. 98. In part, this was a way for a distant British community to connect themselves to the grand drama in the Crimea, the talk of Europe. But the conflict had an East Asian dimension, too, so that Richardson and his father could both share news from their respective ends of the conflict. In 1854 rumours swirled of a phantom Russian Far East Fleet lurking at De Castries Bay to the northeast, and some in Hong Kong feared imminent attack. More broadly, across the 1850s Whitehall continued to fret over the prospect of Russian dominance in the Sea of Japan, and the projection of Russian influence overland, through Manchuria, towards the heart of the Qing Empire. In reality, the merchants of Shanghai had more to fear from the upsurge in piracy attending the Taiping rebellion than from Russian armies or cruisers. Rear-Admiral Sir James Stirling (1791–1865) served as Commander-in-Chief of the East Indies and China Squadron between January 1854 and February 1856, towards the end

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How natural it will seem having Aunt Catharine among you again. Give both her and Uncle Joe my very best love when they arrive. With reference to yours [of ] 24 Mar, I see that you recd that wretched letter of mine [of ] 19 Jany. I would not here refer to it but to express my sorrow that I ever wrote such a thing and after I had sent it would have given anything to have got it back. I trust that you have committed it to the flames or some such worthy place, and that you will wipe it from your memory and forget you every recd it.58 A friend of mine goes to Canton in a month or so59 and will invest $20 or 30 in a set of Chess men as you wish and as he will proceed to England will kindly convey them with him. If there is anything else that you desire please let me know. What an indefatigable correspondent Georgie must be – she beats me hollow. But this place is just what I expected after the first tinsel wore off: it would be miserably slow. I’d like to drop down in England just now and have a look at you, but it is no good thinking of that after only being away 18 months. No letter has come to hand from Georgie. It is rather an extraordinary circumstance that they should have fallen in with one of my old school fellows. I remember him well: he was a short, dark, stumpy boy, very much freckled. Freights here would have suited G.R.:60 £8.8 Tea and £9.9 Silk, but now they are expected to decline as several large ships are close at hand. Give my very best love to all at home and accept the same, my dear Father

58 59

60

of a career that had included acting as the first Governor of Western Australia. In August, Stirling took Encounter, Barracouta, Styx and Winchester to Nagasaki to make sure that Japanese ports were not serving as havens for the rumoured Russian squadron. There, in October, he concluded Britain’s first treaty with Japan, affording British vessels access to Japanese ports to take shelter and to refit. He was recalled, however, for his failure to locate and destroy the Russian squadron. This intriguing letter has not survived in the collection. This may have been K.R. Mackenzie, who had ended his partnership in what now became Aspinall, Mackenzie & Co. on 30 June: NCH, No. 206, 8 July 1854, p. 193. George Richardson (b. 1797): Charles Richardson senior’s brother, and a merchant captain.

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Your very aff Son, C. Lenox Richardson …

Canton61 24 Septr 1854 My dear Mother, I am afraid I shall be getting into your black books for not having written you personally for such a long time, and really your last letter is a perfect volume, and I hardly know how to thank you for the kind wishes therein expressed. I am glad you give such a glowing account of my dear Father for he writes me in rather a doubtful strain and does not mention any thing about the grand dinner at which he had been present. I sincerely trust that the next accounts of dear Georgie will be of a more cheering character and that she will have quite recovered. Many thanks for your kind wish to send me some preserves, but James Dickson was quite right in his surmise, there are always lots of these things out here and in fact anything and everything if you only like to pay for it. And so Miss Delilia is going to follow Georgie’s example. How did the wedding go of[f ] and did she make a nice bride? I wish I could just find my way home as the gaieties are going on and get back by the next morning. I am sorry you give such a bad account of Uncle Joe, but we must hope that the run home will restore him to health and strength. It must seem quite like old times having them living with you again. How long do they propose staying in England? I have been staying at Macao for a week, and if the weather had been fine I should have enjoyed myself but unfortunately it rained nearly the whole time. What I saw of the place I liked very much. 61

Richardson set out from Shanghai aboard the Lady Mary Wood, bound first for Hong Kong, on 24 August, and returned aboard the Shanghae, again via Hong Kong, on 27 October. Silk was the cargo on the outbound Lady Mary Wood; opium on the Shanghae.

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The scenery is very good indeed; if it was not for Macao I don’t know how the people would live here. It is so awfully confined, in fact they call it the safety valve of Canton. Has Uncle G.R. arrived home yet? Is there any addition to his family? Remember me kindly to him and Mary if at home. I have asked a friend of mine here to see if he can get a half chest of Tea, but I thought I had sent you about a 2 years stock. Give me best love to Grace & Minnie & accept the same yourself. My dear Mother from your aff Son, C. Lenox Richardson …

Via Southampton Shanghai 4 Decr 1854 My dear Father, I am ashamed to say that I have not written to you since I left Canton altho’ I have recd many of your kind notes; I have been up here about a month and I fancy that the trip to the south has done me a deal of good.62 I am afraid that the present is not going to be a very prosperous year for China; in fact, from what I can see at present, the result looks quite in the opposite direction.63 62

63

The previous letter is the only one to survive from this trip south, but immediately upon Richardson’s return the North China Herald notified its readers that he was authorised to act as an agent for the newly-constituted Aspinall, Mackenzie & Co.: NCH, No. 223, 4 Nov. 1854, p. 53. In the Autumn of 1854 Shanghai merchants feared the Taiping were on the verge of capturing Suzhou, a vital node in their commercial operations. Should that happen ‘no foreign trade could be carried on, for a time at least’: TNA: FO 228/177, R. Alcock to J. Bowring, 5 Sept. 1854. In the event, the Taiping did not come; it was not until June 1860 that they took the city, unopposed. For now, even as British imports struggled to find markets inland, exports of silk and tea from Shanghai continued without serious interruption. Meanwhile, the profitable local line running arms and supplies into the walled rebel city was being challenged as never before. On 22 November the Western representatives undertook to redouble their efforts against this trade, and began building a wall around the foreign settlement to disrupt the flow of supplies. This was not welcomed by the foreign

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Will you tell James64 that the box he writes as having sent per Steamer on the 3 Sept has never made its appearance, which is a great nuisance as I am rather hard up for clothes. By last mail I had two very cheery notes, one from William Lyon & the other for Unwin. The latter, however, was rather down for tin, but gives me my own time. I am afraid he will have to wait a little for the £75 that you owe him, but I will pay him as soon as I can. For the last two months we have had the most magnificent climate that man could wish. In fact I have only seen two unpleasant days the whole time. We are in expectation of a very severe winter and I trust that England will have the same, as I fancy, it would be one of the finest antidotes for the cholera. You would see the account of the affair between the Allies and Russia at Petropaulski. I am of opinion, however, that it requires confirmation from your side.65 The English have completed a treaty with Japan upon more advantageous terms than the Americans. It is reported that it is a country out of which great things will come before many years are over. From all accounts it appears rich in everything connected with the East, from Gold to Camphor, and I doubt not but that it will become a Country of large commerce.66

64 65

66

merchants who gathered for ‘the most numerously attended’ public meeting the British Consul had yet seen at Shanghai. There, they listened to Rutherford Alcock hold forth on how their incorrigible smuggling over the past 16 months had converted the settlement ‘into an open market for the sale of pillaged goods from the city, and for the purchase of Provisions and munitions of war’ – a violation of neutrality that risked bringing destruction down upon their heads – before unanimously voting that any measures to disrupt the trade were the foreign officials’ business, not their own. Richardson was present at this meeting. TNA: FO 228/177, ‘Minutes of a Public Meeting of the Foreign Community held at H.B.M.’s Consulate on Saturday the 10th of December, 1854’. Richardson’s long-suffering tailor in London. See further: CLR, 1 May 1856, below. That August and September a combined British and French naval force attempted the capture of Petropavlosk, a Russian port on the southern tip of the Kamchatka peninsula. They were repulsed with heavy losses; Rear Admiral David Price committed suicide under the pressure of command. It was disturbing news, and the North China Herald hoped it might yet prove a mistake. Russia saw off the Allied attack, but decided to evacuate the remote port the following April. The account to which Richardson refers is: NCH, No. 224, 11 Nov. 1854, p. 58. See n57 above. Stirling’s squadron reached Nagasaki on 7 September. On 14 October Stirling and the Nagasaki commissioner Mizuno Tadanori concluded the Anglo-Japanese

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Whatever could have been the cause of Dalley’s leaving Prior’s? I always put him down as a safe card there, that is as far as his stopping in their employ went. I, however, bless the day that I left Mincing Lane.67 I suppose he left for better pay. What is Agnes doing? Has she gone to Dr. McCormack as was supposed she would? We must hope for better luck next time. Give my very best love to all Sisters, Mother &c and accept the same yourself, my dear Father. From your ever aff Son C. Lenox Richardson …

Shanghai 1 Jany 1855 My dear Mother, By last Steamer I recd your kind note of 8 Octr; to begin with I must wish you a happy new year and thank you for the sundry little love tokens received with the box of clothes which I appreciate much. The next mail I have a friend going home and propose sending 2 or 3 pieces of Mandarin satins for dresses which perhaps may prove acceptable. I hope before this the chess men have come to hand. We are here just in the same state of siege as a month ago. The French have, however, taken the side of the Imperialists and are

67

Convention: in essence, an abbreviated form of the Treaty of Peace and Amity previously signed by the United States and Japan. Richardson’s optimism here exceeded the terms of the Convention itself: back in London, the Board of Trade publicly expressed its regret that it had focused on military and naval concerns, and not more clearly established trading relations. Stirling returned to Nagasaki to ratify the convention on 9 October 1855: H. Mitani, Escape from Impasse: the decision to open Japan (Tokyo, 2006), pp. 221–234. Nonetheless, Richardson’s remarks on the mineral wealth and supposed natural abundance of Japan were a commonplace of the time. See, for instance: NCH, No. 186, 18 Feb. 1854, p. 114. Home to the London Commercial Sale Rooms, and a centre for the tea and opium trades. A younger Richardson seems to have worked here, probably in connection with his father’s trading at nearby Leadenhall Street.

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constantly throwing shell into the city; although without any apparent effect. The Rebel Chief said the other day they ought to get the English to shew them the way to take the City. I think they are creating a very bad impression here. The English and Americans preserve a strict neutrality.68 I had a very jolly Christmas day dining with a friend of mine who has a very nice lady like wife. I have also been to one or two parties so have had a jovial week altogether. I am out to dinner again tonight. The weather here still continues magnificent – fine, bracing, frosty, clear weather. We have only had one fall of snow, that was on Christmas Eve. Give my best love to dear Father and tell him I will answer him next time as I have had a very hard mail of it this time and this is the last I can write. I have however sent him a n’paper in return for his which was very interesting and acceptable. Excuse this short lot and with best and kindest to all, particularly your dear self. Believe me ever, Your truly aff son C. Lenox Richardson …

Via Marseilles Shanghai 4 April 1855 68

The small French settlement at Shanghai lay under the lee of the city walls. It had long felt more threatened by the rebels (and by the spring of 1854 had received most of the thousands of refugees pouring into the foreign settlement), and was thus inclined to be more supportive of Qing forces. On 9 December, French marines attacked a rebel battery that had been established within their limits. From 14 December they began an intermittent bombardment of the Chinese city which continued for several weeks. A few days after this letter was written, on 6 January, Admiral La Guerre led an attack on the city, holding the walls for three hours, but was repulsed with heavy losses. Alcock blamed this on ‘foreign desperadoes’ – many of them deserters – sheltering within the Chinese city. Either way, he warned Hong Kong, ‘the failure of this attack is fraught with danger…to all foreign interests’. With foreign prestige thus compromised, ‘new causes of insecurity and anxiety’ were ‘of almost daily occurrence’: TNA, FO 228/195, R. Alcock to J. Bowring, No. 2, 11 Jan. 1855; and No. 24, 15 Feb. 1855.

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My dear Father, The last mail brought in your two kind letters dated 23d Decr & 9 Jany expressing regrets at not hearing from me for a mail or two which if I may be allowed to say it I think rather unreasonable. I missed two coming from Canton being 12 days in the passage and being shorthanded at the time of my arrival had to work pretty hard for the dispatch of the other which left 3 days after the Steamer arrived. The next mail from England is hourly looked for and I trust it may convey tidings of a more peaceable nature. If it does not, I don’t know where we shall pick ourselves up, as the markets for China produce on your side are suffering frightfully and everything appears to be in a state of stagnation. The Styx has just arrived with our new consul. His name is Robertson. He has been in Canton for some years and is not at all liked. People who know him say he’s a regular muff.69 If such be the case and we get into another mess with these wretches around us, ours won’t be an enviable situation. All the soldiery, however, have left this since the fall of the City which is much in our favor.70 The people have not begun to rebuild it yet and there is some talk of an edict from Pekin prohibiting them so to do. Whether there is any truth in this report I cannot say, but it would be much to the benefit of foreigners should such be the case in the event of any future disturbance. 69

70

An awkward person; a dullard. Daniel Brooke Robertson deserved better. He had served under both Balfour and Alcock at Shanghai, and as Consul until July 1859 worked hard to maintain British trade despite the violence of the Taiping civil war. Robertson and Richardson were destined to clash over the latter’s assault on a Chinese servant. After the failed French attack on 6 January, Britain committed more forces to the settlement’s defence and tightened measures against smuggling. Qing forces completed their cordon around the city on 15 February, mined the wall on the 16th, and by the 17th had retaken the city. Nonetheless, the speed of the rebels’ collapse took the foreign community by surprise. Much of the city was torched during the rebels’ evacuation. The effect of the long siege had been a drastic reduction in the city’s population and a surge in the numbers of Chinese seeking refuge within the international settlement – and a concomitant boom in rents and land prices. The pattern was to be repeated, on a much larger scale, in 1860; by then, Richardson was better placed to seize the opportunities of the moment.

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I am sorry to hear bad accounts of poor Minnie but trust that she has recovered without any serious results. Much do I regret my inability to assist you materially and am sorry to see that you almost upbraid me for not doing so. You may rest assured had it laid in my power you should not have had to have asked for it, but the end of last season sadly crippled me. However, it is no use dwelling upon these things always painful to everybody. I enclose two notes – one for Agnes & one for my Mother which kindly hand over – and sympathising with you most fully and a speedy restoration to a more happy & cheerful state of affairs. Believe me ever, my dear Father, Your truly aff son C. Lenox Richardson …

Shanghai 1 Augt 1855 My dear Father, I have to thank you for your kind and long letter [of ] 3 May and am sorry to see that you take such a lugubrious view of things, business & politics included. Since I got your letter we have by chance been put in possession of news from London to the 25 May which is decidedly more cheering and shews what a very little is wanted to turn the scale of the Commercial World. You would by a subsequent letter perceive that Piccope was not possessed of the Silk; doubtless by this time you have seen the one & got the other. HM brig Bittern came in here the other day and reported having seen the Russians.71 A frigate, sloop and the Brig were cruising about 71

‘H.M. Brig of war Bittern, we hear, has announced sighting a section of the Russian Navy by the British Squadron in the north of the Pacific, but a fog coming on, the opportunity

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the north when they fell in with them in some bay, but for some cause the English could not cut them out. They, however, anchored outside, hoisted their colours and threw shell at the Russians who although three times the force were afraid to come out. The Bittern was sent away for one or two large Steamers laying at Japan but when they returned the Russians had disappeared. Very heavy fog had intervened, so heavy that the English could not see each other altho’ at speaking distance. The mail from England is 4 days overdue and it is much feared that she has got into a Typhoon that has been severely felt down in the South. In Hong Kong it has carried away all the Jetties, 2 Steamers went down close to.72 Up here we have had none of the violence, altho’ we have experienced disagreeable weather lately. I regret much to hear of poor Tom Marsh’s death, the last man you would imagine from outward appearance to be carried off suddenly. There is actually no news of interest here – this is the dullest season as far as business goes. I have yet seen very few operations having taken place either in Tea or Silk.73 Give my best & kindest love to all & Believe me ever, Your very aff son C. Lenox Richardson

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of giving a good account of them was lost’: NCH, No. 261, 28 July 1855, p. 208. The British cruisers Bittern and Hornet searched for this phantom enemy, but ‘discovered little but stale rumours’: G.S. Graham, The China Station: war and diplomacy, 1830–1860 (Oxford, 1978), pp. 292–3. The English mail had been due into Hong Kong on 22 July, and was suspected of being aboard a steamer that had either been wrecked or driven into a port of shelter by the typhoon. It eventually reached Shanghai aboard the Erin on 5 August: NCH, No. 262, 4 Aug. 1855, p. 2. The lack of export goods making their way down to Shanghai that summer troubled the new British consul, Robertson, and fuelled merchants’ wider resentment of the conditions under which they traded in China. ‘Teas and produce arrive but slowly’, Robertson informed Hong Kong, ‘and there is a large amount of tonnage in the port, waiting for freight, [and] several vessels have gone on demurrage. I cannot learn the cause of the detention of the produce … from the Chinese, however, I hear the crops will prove short, but the ignorance of Europeans with respect to the interior is complete. Our merchants are dependent entirely upon Cantonese whom they send up to forestall the silk and teas, and upon such reports as they make … [U]ntil we can reach the producing districts of China ourselves, its foreign trade must be conducted upon an insecure basis, and its capabilities never known’: TNA: FO 228/196, D.B. Robertson to J. Bowring, No. 54, 1 Sept. 1855.

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Thank my dear Mother much for her kind note as well as for the things sent for Mr Mackenzie (in anticipation). …

Via Southampton Shanghai 7th Sept 1855 My dear Father, The day before yesterday I recd your kind letter of 9 July & by last mail was put in possession of yours of 8 June and sundry others from Mother & Sisters as well as a box containing certain kind presents for which you must give them my kindest & best thanks. I am in the same fix as you were when you wrote your last letter and ever since the mail arrived have been writing from 8 of the mg. until 6 P.M. which has given me about enough of it. There was no occasion for James acting as he did with regard to W.M.74 However, it is all right, I sent him the money last mail. I got William Lyon’s marriage cards. I sincerely hope that he may be prosperous in his new undertaking, as he was always a kind friend to me. The news from the Crimea is truly disastrous and so appears every other news that come from the West in our days, both commercial and political.75 However, when things come to the worst the[y] will mend I trust. We are no better off in this part of the world, the China market appears to have gone up a tree as the Yankees say entirely.76 74 75

76

Probably William Mackenzie. The first, unsuccessful, Allied attempt to storm Sebastopol, under siege since October 1854, began on 7 June. In London, the public were mortified to learn of the high casualties. The following month, the radical MP John Arthur Roebuck (1801–1879) delivered the damning verdict of his Sebastopol Committee on the mishandling of the British Army in Crimea. Sebastopol finally fell in September, in the days after Richardson wrote this letter. In addition to ongoing uncertainties in the export trade, the new Daotai, Lan Weiwen, was threatening to take much more vigorous action against the importation of opium. That could ruin many a firm, warned the British Consul, Robertson: TNA: FO 228/196, D.B. Robertson to J. Bowring, No. 56, 2 Sept. 1855.

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I am glad to see that you are all comfortably settled at Croydon and sincerely trust that it will benefit you all. I have managed to send a line to Uncle C.A.F.77 by this oppy but have been too busy to write any other private notes. I know the Mother and Sisters will forgive me & see the case in its right light. Give my very best & kindest love to them all as well as to dear Georgie when you write & Believe me ever, my dear Father, Your very aff son C. Lenox Richardson …

Via Southampton Shanghai, 7th Octr 1855 My dear Father, I have now the pleasure to answer your long and kind letter 8th Augt and was glad to see that you had such a satisfactory meeting. I may mention that the Water Times has never made its appearance. Since they changed the postmaster at Hong Kong things connected with that department have been very irregularly conducted. I am glad that you are so well pleased with your quarters in Croydon and that the change has been so highly beneficial to the general health. It is strange that you should find so many old friends. I wish you would see if there is not another Miss Hodges as that sort of wife would just suit out here. In this quarter the only news is a very gallant affair with the pirates on the coast in which HM Brig (12 guns) Bittern sank no less than 18 or 19 large junks and captured one. I think that I have a paper in my desk with a full a/c, if so I will send it you.78 77 78

Charles Ferguson, husband of Richardson’s aunt Sophy. Piracy, much exacerbated by the ongoing collapse of Qing authority, had become a growing concern to foreign merchants over the course of the year. (At least two foreign schooners were taken, and many others were chased or fired upon.) On 18 September

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The Barracouta Steamer the other day fell in with a Bremen Brig called the Greta, hove her to and boarded her. Every thing appeared in order, and the officer was just going over the side into his boat, when one of his men who had been talking to some China sailors on board told the officer that the Chinaman said “have got too muchee that Russian man down side”. Of course the hatches were immediately knocked off and there, sure enough, were no less than 267 Russians who it appears were part of the crew of the Diana, frigate, lost in Japan last year. The Brig has been taken to Hong Kong to be sold as a prize. I don’t know what they will do with the Russians. I have sent you 4 n’papers. Give my best and kindest love to you all. Thank them all kindly for their delightful notes which I will answer next mail. I am glad Mother liked the dresses – I have a piece or two of Silk Hanks to send you. It will go next Steamer. I have been very busy last 3 or 4 days.79 Believe me ever, Your truly aff son C. Lenox Richardson …

Shanghai 7 Dec /55

79

the Bittern under Captain Vansittart destroyed a large fleet in Shipu Bay to the south. Shanghai’s foreign residents celebrated this ‘act of humanity’ and presented Vansittart with a congratulatory address and a collection of £500 as a sign of their ‘more than ordinary gratification’. Richardson was among the 119 who subscribed: NCH, No. 277, 17 Nov. 1855, p. 62. As per Vansittart’s request, the funds went towards a stained glass window commemorating the Bittern’s actions in the church at Bisham, near Maidenhead. The Shanghai residents’ address served to focus Hong Kong’s attentions on the problem, and a system of coastal convoys to protect foreign vessels was instituted in coming months (see n86 below). Against expectations, shipments of tea and silk had picked up, although so late in the season ‘as to cause serious apprehensions’. For as long as the Taipings’ operations were confined to Nanjing and the Yangtze river foreign merchants expected to be able to continue their export trade. Should they overrun the tea and silk districts and threaten Suzhou, however, nothing was guaranteed. ‘On this contingency…hang the prospects of the ensuing year; and, I believe, no man can tell what the result will be’: TNA: FO 228/220, ‘Report by Mr. Consul Robertson on the Trade of the Port of Shanghae’, encl. in D.B. Robertson to J. Bowring, No. 52, 27 March 1856.

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My dear Father, Last mail brought me your short note of 8 Sept. There is very little in it that requires an answer. I regret that just at present I am not in a position to comply with your request of pecuniary assistance and I fancy from the tone of my last you would expect to hear that affairs here are any thing but satisfactory. The fact is Aspinall & Co have smashed for $300,000 & I am in no better position than when I first arrived at S’hai.80 However, it does not matter much as I have 80

The collapse of Aspinall, Mackenzie & Co. caused a sensation on the China coast, and acute embarrassment at Shanghai. It was Hong Kong’s China Mail that first printed on the story (accusing Shanghai’s North China Herald of wilfully neglecting to do so), highlighting structural risks within the China trade: ‘While the Rebels continue quiescent, and Admiral Stirling is resting on his laurels, the Commercial Community has been sufficiently excited by the failure of the firm Aspinall, Mackenzie and Co. of Shanghae, extensive speculators in Tea, who, by a process peculiar to the China trade, contrived to make the increase of their obligations the means of increasing their credit, until they are compelled to stop, owing between $350,000 and $400,000 to the Chinese who supplied them with the means of speculating. The system of clearing off former scores by new purchases on credit which are shipped and drawn against, is one which has grown out of the unlimited confidence that Chinese traders have been wont to repose in foreigners, and which mere speculators have taken advantage of … [N]ow the Teamen, considering their interest trifled with, are holding meetings in the city, and threatening to stop the trade’. Aspinall’s recklessness injured many hundreds of creditors and their families. He owed the Chinese customs alone £30,000 in duties. His assignees later alleged debts to Chinese merchants of upwards of £100,000, and that although he had shipped teas to England worth around £250,000 in the six months preceding the firm’s collapse ‘not a farthing’ had been remitted back. Yet Aspinall’s own stake in the firm was safe enough: his brother, Richard, was found to have audaciously acted to recover it. Worse still, William Apsinall had attempted to abscond with what remained of the firm’s funds. In March, 1856, he fled Shanghai without the knowledge of his creditors, seeking to return to Europe aboard the overland mail. His assignees were furious, and hurriedly hired the steamer Confucius to intercept him at Hong Kong. There, they convinced the Governor, Sir John Bowring, to order Aspinall back to Shanghai under heavy bail. On his return – and to the shock of the merchant community – Aspinall was held in the settlement gaol (normally the preserve of ‘the refuse of the foreign shipping population’), until a number of the foreign residents, descrying this slur upon gentility itself, pressured Robertson into granting his release. This act seems to have caused Shanghai’s foreign merchants to close ranks: thereafter, even while the investigation of Aspinall’s liabilities wrangled on, there were some in the community prepared to declare themselves sympathetic to Aspinall’s predicament. Not so the assignees; nor, one suspects, his Chinese creditors. ‘While [Aspinall’s] demands and acts betoken that his mind is entirely occupied with his own misfortunes, if not under an idea that he is the injured party’, the assignees wrote, ‘the unfortunate truth is, that more than 200 Tea Merchants are involved by his failure, of whom about 100

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lots of friends in this part of the world who, I fancy, will give me a leg up if necessary. You may be sure if affairs had been going on right you would not have had to remind me of my promise. I trust however that I shall be able to push my way; it is rather a hard case one’s first start in life & such a brilliant one as mine appeared, but I intend to keep my pluck up & never say die. I sincerely wish I could hear of your getting on but I suppose it will all come round in time. Kindly forward the enclosed to Laura Benfield & hand the other note to my Mother. Believe me ever, Your very aff son C. Lenox Richardson …

Shanghai Friday 7 Decr 55 My dear Mother, I am perfectly ashamed of myself for not having sent you a note for such a long time & you so good as to write one every mail. However, I know you will forgive me. I have to thank you much for the beautiful quilt you sent me thro’ James. It must have taken you an infinite time to make and you may be sure that it will be highly prized. are totally ruined, and dare not return to the interior to face their families, even if charity afforded them the means. It is a fact that many of the poorer of the Green Tea men have been reduced to pawn their own wearing apparel’. For the Overland China Mail’s detailed coverage of this, the first major case of British bankruptcy in the treaty ports, see: No. 121, 15 Dec. 1855; No. 122, 15 Jan. 1856; No. 124, 15 Mar. 1856; No. 125, 15 Apr. 1856; No. 132, 15 Nov. 1856. By the time of its collapse, Aspinall was the firm’s only partner, but Robertson’s final calculation of liabilities indicates that Richardson owed the firm some $2,215. It is not clear whether this was ever called in: TNA: FO228/242, D.M. Robertson, ‘Estate of Aspinall Mackenzie & Co.’, 29 June 1857. In general, while the collapse must have been a blow to the young merchant, it also seems to have been softened by the wave of sympathy that some now afforded Aspinall. As Richardson suggests in this very letter home, he would indeed get ‘a leg up’ into another position at Shanghai.

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I had such a nice long letter from Laura last mail, it really did my heart good. There is little of interest in this place; after the mail has gone I think I shall go off on a shooting excursion for 5 or 6 days as I want some slight change, not as far as my health goes but I have been bothered of late.81 We have the most lovely winter, hardly cold enough but a cloudless sky & have had it so for 3 weeks together. I hope it will last all the winter through. I am glad you like the dresses: I will send you some more next year, D.V., as well as some Tea, but lately I hardly know whether I have been on my head or heels. God bless you my dearest Mother & with kindest love to all Sisters. Believe me ever, Your very aff son C. Lenox Richardson …

Via Southampton Shanghai st 1 May 1856 My dear Father, I have now to thank you for your kind note of the 9th Feby. I regret much that you had not recd my letter [in the] following mail, altho’ mind you I am not sure that I wrote as I do not keep copies of all 81

‘The level country round Shanghai was … very favourable for excursions by land and water, affording tourists and sportsmen congenial recreation. The district was in those days remarkably well stocked with game. Pheasants of the ring-necked variety, now so predominant in English preserves, abounded close up to the city wall, and were sometimes found in the gardens of the foreign residents. Snipe, quail, and wildfowl were plentiful in their season, the last named in great variety’: Michie, Englishman in China, i, p. 126. Foreign consuls and Chinese officials alike worried about incidents arising from such excursions. Before the 1858 Treaty of Tianjin foreign trips into the countryside had to occur within proscribed limits. These were, however, routinely ignored: TNA: FO 228/90: R. Alcock to G. Bonham, No. 57, 23 May 1848.

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the letters I write home, in fact if I did I should have enough to do. My Uncle is the only exception and they may be looked upon in a business point of view. I see that you have heard of the failures of AM & Co. [Aspinall, Mackenzie & Co.]. It is truly a painful circumstance, since they have gone another smash has taken place in the south for at least 10 times the amount.82 These failures will, however, eventually prove beneficial to the China trade as it will make the natives more careful with whom they do business and weed out the houses that have been doing purely speculative business. Nevertheless, it is disturbing for all concerned. You will in future please address my letters to the care of Messrs Jas. [James] Bowman & Co. as I have taken up my quarters with these gentlemen.83 By last mail I recd a queer sort of a letter from James the tailor. A species of dunning epistle not exactly the sort of affair I admire, and from what Mackenzie says he behaved in anything but like a decent manner to him. I shall endeavour to pay him my bill and yours as soon as possible and he has an item of £200 and odd, what for I do not know, but this he will have to wait for if he expects to get it, after having paid the bill referred to I shall decline further acquaintance. I should have written him this mail but have not time & might only say something he might not like, so that I shall leave you to communicate with him. It’s a regular old hand dodge, hard times and bad debts. 82

83

This was the American firm Nye Brothers & Co., which had operated as such since 1853, though Gideon Nye had traded in China since 1831. As with the Aspinall case, the firm had over-extended until its 1855–56 shipments – the largest the firm had ever handled – met a falling market. Its failure was ‘upon a far greater scale than was at first supposed, and in amount [which] has rarely been equalled’, with liabilities in excess of $3.5 million: NCH, No. 300, 26 Apr. 1856, p. 154. Meanwhile, details of the ‘painful circumstances’ attending the collapse of Aspinall, Mackenzie & Co. continued to play out, as W.G. Aspinall sought to come to some arrangement with his Chinese creditors. Writing to Shanghai’s British Chamber of Commerce, the assignees did not hold back. In the dire straits in which he had left hundreds of Chinese merchants, and in attempting to flee Shanghai with what remained of the Company’s funds, Aspinall had ‘materially injured our reputation for honour and good faith in the estimation of the Chinese’: OCM, No. 132, 15. Nov. 1856. In April Ming-Le, the godown lately occupied by Aspinall, Mackenzie & Co., was put up for rent. Richardson now found work as a clerk with James Bowman & Co. (partners James Bowman and F.B. Johnson), which had previously taken over the Hong Kong firm of W.H. Yardley & Co., and took up residence at their Po-mun premises.

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I am rejoiced to hear such good news anent Georgie & Searle & hope that they will continue to prosper, it is more than [here a section of the letter is missing] part of the World has been doing [part missing] … Believe me ever, my dear Father Your aff son C. Lenox Richardson Remember me to Mr Lyon. I ought to write him by this mail but it is already past 10 p.m. and I have been at work the last 3 nights so that he must excuse me. I am much obliged to him for his last note and kind wishes, tell him to remember me to his kith and kin. …

Shanghai 3rd June 1856 My dear Father, I feel it impossible to let another mail leave this without sending you an acknowledgement of your last two or three kind notes, your last announcing peace having been proclaimed: I am almost afraid that the folks at home were too far sighted in this case and in consequence our markets will not experience the benefit they should, and I fully expect to see the price of China Silk lower by the next mail or the following one.84 As for Tea I don’t think that it is possible for it to be duller and more unsaleable than it is with you at the present. This peace movement, as you justly observe, will touch up some of 84

The Congress of Paris between February and March, 1856 brought the Crimean War to an end. Anticipating a recovery of the European market, Shanghai’s merchants responded to the news by rushing to export silk. The advices from England remained strong until November, and silk proved to be Shanghai’s main commercial success that year. Russia’s defeat in the West contrasted with its expansion in the East: by the Treaty of Aigun (May 1858), Russia acquired from China a vast area north of the Amur River. By the 1860s, with new port facilities on the shores of the North Pacific, she had secured greater leverage over China than ever before.

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our Calcutta friends by the vengeance and doubtless the incoming mail will apprize us of more suspensions. I take it that, unless peace is settled upon a very firm basis and the Allies have got very firm hold of Russia, that it is one of the worst affairs that ever happened to England, and that 10 years will bring round the same disastrous state of things. There is but little doubt that the present is the time to humble her and I fancy that a good deal of discontent will shew itself in the army, which was just getting into fighting order. What good can accrue to England from this campaign I cannot see, her best blood left in the Crimea and enormous expenses to pay into the bargain, for which they will never receive a penny. People at home will no doubt hail peace as a blessing, chiefly because it will reduce taxation and make money more plentiful eventually, but this will take a long time to bring about and, while they were at it, they ought to have carried things to extremes. Never was England in a better position to do it, and when the next turn comes, which I almost look upon as a certainty, there will just be the same state of things over again. In this part of the world the Rebels are again making headway and ruining our trade. In consequence of their near proximity to Soochow [Suzhou], the principal mart in this part of China, the Opium Market is literally smashed and Drug unsaleable. This state of affairs some people at home will say is beneficial but never were they more mistaken, for what interferes with foreigners must naturally interfere with Native interests. There is a very good article on the subject in the Herald. I have sent it to Broad Street & doubt not but you will be able to get it.85 85

This is the sole reference to opium in Richardson’s correspondence home, though it seems implausible that it was not part of his business dealings – it formed ‘the chief means of laying down funds at the port’ (see pp. 20–21 above). The main Taiping army had been camped at Nanjing since its capture in March 1853, but in the spring of 1856 it received reinforcements from a number of columns operating in its hinterland. Families were reported to be fleeing Suzhou for Shanghai, expecting its imminent fall to the Taiping. A feverish atmosphere reigned by the summer, and rumours of rebel advances caused considerable disruption to foreign trade. ‘There is a feeling of insecurity pervading the people which affects trade at this Port, and any forward movement of the Rebels would cause an immediate panic. Business is very slow, and matters look far from satisfactory. Large stocks have accumulated at Soo-Chow [Suzhou] from the fear of the holders to send them on; indeed, one or two native firms are in consequence seriously embarrassed

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No Tea has yet come here, the merchants preferring to take it to the Southern ports, than to run the risk of being interfered with by these brutes who, under the semblance of being religious patriots, lay the Country waste & murder their fellows without the slightest mercy. There is now a fine oppy for England to step in. Let her send some of her superfluous troops & vessels out here and terminate this warfare one way or the other. The popular prejudice here is in favor of the present dynasty, and it would not take many ships of war or regiments of soldiers to exterminate these Rebels and reduce China once more to a state of tranquillity.86 I have been very busy this month or else I would have sent that man James some money. However, I will do so next oppy, say about £50 or £60 if I can scrape it together. As soon as ever the New Teas come down I will forward you another supply. At present there is not a chest in the place worth drinking. I believe they are looked for in another month. Exchange in London has reached fabulous rates. Just fancy, dollars once in a time carried at 4/6 to be commanding 7/3d. It is principally this that interferes so much with our export trade and how this state of things is to [be] remedyed remains to be discovered, as the Chinese are so completely wedded to this one peculiar

86

to meet their engagements here … Deliveries go on to some extent, but they are on old Contracts; new ones are not listened to’: TNA: FO 228/220, D.B. Robertson to J. Bowring, No. 83, 30 Apr. 1856. By June, when Richardson sent this letter, trade had ‘entirely ceased; money has become scarce, a proof its being hoarded, even Opium finds no Purchasers, no Teas are down yet, and no certain prospects of any coming are apparent’: TNA: FO 228/220, D.B. Robertson to J. Bowring, No. 103, 28 June 1856. Once again, however, the Taiping did not come to Suzhou, and the merchants’ darkest fears went unrealised. Tea exports from Shanghai fell sharply between 1855 and 1856, from 76,714,659 lbs to 42,871,433 lbs. The British Consul attributed this to the Taipings’ occupation of the key tea-growing regions that had hitherto supplied Shanghai, as well as their command of key canal routes, drought, and growing competition from Fuzhou (which benefitted both from its proximity to the Black Tea growing districts and from the relative quiet in its hinterland). Richardson’s calls for military intervention to restore the prospects of Shanghai’s foreign merchants were very much in line with the general mood that summer (see: TNA: FO 228/220, D.B. Robertson to J. Bowring, No. 103, 28 June 1856). For now, in response to a surge in maritime piracy, the China squadron instituted a convoy system to protect merchant shipping. Between November and April, monthly convoys left Shanghai/Wusong with the northeast monsoon, calling at Ningbo, Fuzhou, Xiamen and Hong Kong. Monthly escorts made the journey in reverse between April and October.

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dollar, altho’ there are plenty of other dollars of equal weight and intrinsic value, nothing will satisfy them but this one peculiar sort, viz. Carolus the 4th pillar Dollar. The weather is beginning to become warm and I suppose we are in for a regular broiler for the next three or four months. Give my very best love to all at home and thank them much for their several kind letters. I must also not forget to thank you for the Book to hand p. Watts the Bootmaker. Believe me, my dear Father, Your very aff son C. Lenox Richardson …

Via Southampton Shanghai 6th Novr 1856 My dear Father, The last mail brought me your kind note of the 2d August and I see therefrom that you had seen James on the subject about which I wrote you. I must say that at the time I was not a little disgusted, but the fuller explanation you give of the matter will set all to rights. I will endeavour to get the balance of his account settled and hope to be able to send him an order for some things to be here in time for next winter. If I do so, I must ask you to be so kind as to see the different patterns that he selects and to request him to make all my coats at least an inch to 1½ longer in the waist as since I left England I have grown that at the very least and am something over 6 feet now. I much rejoice that we have again now a turn of cold weather and sincerely hope it will last for the next 5 or 6 months, as our Summers tell more or less on all. The whole of the first purchases of Silk this year will yield enormous profits but what that bought lately will do is hard to foretell,

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the prices paid being enormously high and the quantity sent to date double that of last Season to the same time. However, we must hope for the best. I am thoroughly settled down in my new quarters with Bowman & Co and like them very well, and sincerely trust the result of the connection will be of a more profitable nature than that with the old house of MB & Co, as I am not so much in love with S’hai as to like to stop here all my life. I regret much to see that your anticipation of your coming meeting was not agreeable, but trust that it passed off better than you anticipated and that the Company will finally be able to do some good. We shall have some little excitement in the course of a week or so in the shape of our own Spring Races.87 I expect they will be miserably slow, however not being interested, ie having no horses in them, I am not much concerned if they are better than usual. I will send you the N.C. Herald with the account, altho’ I hardly fancy you will find much interest therein. Could you manage to send me a dozen of Ross toothbrushes. I think T.P.N. No.7 was the mark we used to use when I was last at home. What do you think of 7/6d for 3 – that is the rate they charge here and everything else in proportion. Kindly send them Overland and let me have a memo of cost as well as of &cs asked for last mail and I will send the needful. Thank my Mother for her long note which I have read most carefully and feel I ought to answer, but this is such a stupid place for news, and Chin Chin Gracey for her envelope. Tell them I hope to answer the whole crowd, as the Yankees say, in person some day, & kindly give them all my best love and as many kisses as they will take and accept the same, My dearest Father, from 87

By the 1850s, horse racing – a feature of settlement life since the 1840s – had become ‘the grand festival of Shanghai’. The races Richardson refers to here would have been held on the new course, opened in 1852 and occupying much of the western part of the settlement. In 1861 this was replaced with a third race course, further west again, on land beyond the settlement limits. The first cup was presented in 1856 by T.C. Beale of Dent, Beale & Co.

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Your very aff son C. Lenox Richardson Ask them all if they want anything in my way, only let me know if ever you do, don’t be bashful. …

Shanghai 6 March 1857 My dear Father, The Steamer yesterday put me in possession of your note of 8 Jany and I see therefrom that you have heard of the bombardment of Canton and next mail will tell you of sterner doing and ere this you have heard that Canton is no more.88 There have been some queer doings in the South. The Chinamen have taken 2 Steamers, small affairs that were chartered to run between Macao and Hong Kong and they appear to have commenced a war of extermination, for such a thing as quarter is never known. If a European falls into their hands his doom is sealed. However, I hope there will be a settling day ere long and that they will get their deserts. In this part of the Empire we are all quiet and likely to remain so unless Europeans first create the disturbance. I am glad to see that the affairs of your Company are assuming a more brilliant aspect and I sincerely hope that as they flourish you will be materially benefitted. I always regret that I cannot assist you to any extent but to tell the truth I have not been over fortunate since I have been in this part of the world. However we must hope our turn will come some day. 88

In October, the Arrow affair – the seizure of this British-registered vessel by Qing authorities on suspicion of piracy – led to a British bombardment of Canton, and the start of the Second Opium War. Canton’s forts were seized in November, but British forces, unable to secure reinforcements from Calcutta, failed to take the city. By early December foreign trade at the port had ceased and most foreign residents had left. On the 14th, Chinese forces fired the Factory area, reducing its dwellings, consulates, godowns and banks to ruins. For now, the British were forced to withdraw.

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I see what you say about James, there is no doubt but it comes hard on him to lose his money but it won’t do him much good going to No. 15. I sincerely hope I shall be able to square your accounts with him some day if I stop here five years longer for it. Enclosed is a Bill for forty pounds which kindly send to him and an order on L.N. & Co for £25 for you. Thank my dear Mother & Min for their kind note and I must see if I can find time to answer them by the bimonthly to leave on the 20th Inst. We have lots to do here and sometimes I have scarcely time to look round. With kindest love to all Believe me ever, my dear Father, Your very aff son C. Lenox Richardson …

Via Marseilles Shanghai 29th May 1857 My dear Father, I ought properly to have replied to your last kind note by the bimonthly mail seeing that it related to money matters, but one way and another I have my hands full just now. Between you and I we must not let poor Herbert pay anything on Agnes’ account.89 I admire him much for his liberality, but I fancy – that is to say unless his circumstances are much changed since I was at home – that every £10 note is an object I think you ought to have refused the acceptance of it, save as a loan. At all events that is the light I take it in and I shall request him to receive the payment of it from me. My Uncle wrote me that he was about to advance £50 on my account to furnish my Sister with an outfit. This payment I will confirm by this mail. I almost wish something had been said to me upon the 89

Montague Bertie Herbert, a London solicitor: the payments referred to probably concerned Agnes’ upcoming wedding, which took place in December.

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subject as I fancy her departure has been meditated for some time back. However it’s no matter, she is perfectly welcome to it, altho’ I think you will admit £70 at a haul is rather stiff. We had a gay day here not long ago. The proceedings commenced by a tiffin given by the Capt. and Officers of H.M.S. Pique in return for the hospitality they have recd from us S’hai people since their stay.90 It was the best affair of the sort I have seen for some time. One enormous table from one end to the other of the Gun Deck, about 180 persons sat down. After tiffin there were any amount of boat races, some tolerably good, but the boats were mostly too heavy. In the evening I went out to dinner and wound up at a ball at the Consulate. A tolerably sharp day for this slow place. I think you said dresses would be acceptable to folks at Croydon so by this Steamer I have sent them a few and enclose receipt for the box. I have addressed it to you at Gresham Street. They ought to last them a good while. Tell them to hold on to them for if we have a general war with China there will be no more dresses or Tea for a while.91 Tell Minnie I have sent her back that Rosary if she recollects even having entrusted it to me to be mended before I left England. You will find it in a small Foochow mail box, wrapt up in a skein of white Silk at the end of the large box. Do excuse me writing you any more as I have been at it all day and now it is past 11 p.m.92 The mail goes tomorrow, if I have time I will write Herbert a note but, if I don’t, say some thing to him for me and give him my best Chin Chin.

90

91

92

A 40-gun frigate, and part of the force with which Lord Elgin successfully assaulted the Taku forts in May 1858, leading to the Treaty of Tianjin. There had been a lull in operations since the British withdrawal from Canton at the start of the year, while the Governor of Hong Kong, John Bowring, awaited reinforcements. To date, the fighting had been confined to the south, and Richardson shared the widespread hope that it not develop into a wider war with the country at large. As he wrote, a flotilla of British boats were preparing to engage between 70 and 80 junks at Fatshan Creek: their victory prepared the way for a renewed British attack on Canton that December. Robertson reported that trade was brisk that spring. Demand for both tea and silk had been strong in England, and both commanded high prices: TNA: FO 228/241, D.B. Robertson to J. Bowring, No. 34, 7 March 1857. In the summer Taiping forces fell back on Nanjing, which had the effect of both increasing supplies of export goods to the foreign settlement allowing a modest improvement in British imports.

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Tell my Mother she will find another thick Silk dress and two or 3 light ones – these I think will suit her capitally. I must now really say good night, so with general love and kindest wishes Believe me ever, my dear Father. Your affn son C. Lenox Richardson …

Shanghai 19 Nov 57 My dear Gracie, I am afraid you will by this time think that my promises of writing to you are never to be fulfilled, & I am indebted to you for one or two kind little chits that have never been replied to. You can have no idea how welcome these nice little notes are & with what pleasure I look forward to the arrival of every mail, as I generally receive one or more. Here we are still in a state of fight and within half a mile or so there is generally a slight skirmish once or twice a week. But Chinese fighting is totally different to European. They never think of taking any aim with either cannon or matchlock but generally shut their eyes or look in the opposite direction to the mark they are firing at and consequently seldom or never hit.93 The day before yesterday there was a naval engagement. I saw it from the top of the Custom House that was, and could hear the shot whistle 93

For all that, it had been a busy and – one assumes – relatively successful year for Richardson. In his end of year review, Consul Robertson explained that 1857 had been ‘politically and commercially ... one of unexampled note in the history of our relations’. The fighting around Canton that opened the Second Opium War had not adversely affected Shanghai, where relations with Qing officials remained good. Tea and silk exports were considerable, although ‘the most marked feature’ of life in the settlement was ‘the high value building ground has reached’ – lots sold a couple of years previously for $800 an acre were now being turned down for several thousand. TNA: FO: 228/257, D.B. Robertson to J. Bowring, No. 8, 6 Jan. 1858.

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as plainly as possible. We shall quite miss the cannonade if either party clear out. One very soon gets accustomed to these sort of things. The worst part of it is the sights you see. The other night when we were called out I saw 3 men laying on the ground shot right through the head and it is a common sight to see heads stuck up on poles if you go in the neighbourhood of either the City or Camp, and headless bodies floating down the river; but enough of the horrors. It [is] horrible to think how soon the mind & eye gets callous to spectacles that would harrow up any person’s soul for months after in England. It is now past the middle of Novr and yet the weather here continues summery and it is hardly cold enough for fires. I fancy it is rather different on your side of the water, but I have no doubt it will be quite cold enough before the Winter is over. I suppose you enjoyed yourself not a little at Newbridge. I shall expect quite a detailed account of the place and of your goings on there. How is dear Georgie? Better I trust. I had a very kind note from her & Min by last mail & will answer them either by this or next. When is Sophy going to be married? & have you heard what sort of a “coon” the hubby is.94 I suppose I shall hear some of these fine days that I am honoured with a brother in law. I must now say Chin Chin & with best love to your dear self and all Believe me ever, Your very aff Brother Charlie …

Monday 24 May 185895 My dear Father, I got a note from you at St. James’ Place upon my return home from the Derby but had not an oppy of answering it. I regret that I could 94 95

A sly fellow. Richardson returned to England in the winter of 1857–58, perhaps in connection with his sister Agnes’ wedding. He left Southampton on 20 May. This letter was written at sea on the outward voyage back to Shanghai, which he reached in July.

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not stay in England long enough to see Georgy, but you will give her my kind love and remembrances. Thank Minnie for the locket; also tell her please that I think the hair most exquisitely put in. We have got to within a few hours sail of Gibraltar, but it is doubtful whether we shall arrive in time to get to the anchorage tonight. We have comparatively but few passengers on board which makes the ship tolerably comfortable, but the living after London is abominable. The weather was somewhat heavy in the Bay, but has since taken up and altho’ it is getting warm is most lovely. I have no doubt you have seen Layton who will have told you that he left me well & in tolerable spirits considering. Kindly thank Mother for her note which was most grateful, but say that I cannot quite agree with all her views as I fully expect to see you all well & flourishing upon my next visit to England which I hope will not be so long deferred as the first was. It’s no use looking at the gloomy side of affairs, but we must endeavour to keep our spirits up. Hoping soon to hear from you and with kindest love to yourself, my Mother & Sisters Believe me ever, Your most aff son, C. Lenox Richardson …

Shanghai 14th July 1858 My dear Father, Not having sent you a line for some time I cannot let this chance slip to tell you that I arrived here yesterday afternoon after a splendid passage of about 3 days and a half from Hong Kong and you may imagine heartily glad to get to the end of a very tedious passage. It seems really 12 months since I left England.

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The treaty is at last signed between China and our country, as the Yankees say, so that we shall have a chance of peace and a good trade, I hope in the North at all events.96 Folks here are very much down on their luck owing to bad times.97 It is said that the Allies will have to settle their differences in the South themselves and the only way I can see will be the total destruction of Canton and suburbs. We have the weather here most fearfully hot and I fancy will remain so for the next 6 weeks or so. I am down to my 12 stone again and I fancy before it’s over shall be a good deal lighter.98 Give my best love to all at home & Believe me ever, Your truly aff son, C. Lenox Richardson …

Via Marseilles Shanghai 22nd Oct 1858 96

97

98

While Richardson was at sea on the voyage back to China, the war had turned north. In May 1858, Lord Elgin’s force overwhelmed the Taku Forts guarding the mouth of the Peiho river – the first of three engagements at this key location that would occur before Richardson’s time in Shanghai was up. The following month at Tianjin, the gateway to Peking, Elgin secured a new Treaty which seemed to finally prise open the Chinese Empire to British commerce. Among its 56 clauses were provisions respecting the right of Britain’s representative to reside at Peking, greater freedom of movement in the interior, freedom of navigation on the Yangtze, and the opening of five new treaty ports. It was a giddying prospect. Britain was now ‘at liberty to penetrate [China’s] farthest borders, by means of that noble stream, the Yang-tse-Kiang, which flows by and through her richest, and hitherto most secluded, provinces’: S. Osborn, A Cruise in Japanese Waters (Edinburgh, 1859), p. 2. Richardson was soon planning his own excursions into the interior. The movements of the Qing and Taiping armies, uncertainty over Britain’s campaign in the north and unfavourable intelligence from Europe had combined to create this pessimistic mood in the first half of 1858. In the spring the resumption of foreign trade at Canton and rumoured rebel movements checked the export of tea from Shanghai: a number of brokers who had leveraged their stock against exports were compelled to sell at a loss, and some failed. The silk trade fared better, but British imports made no headway before word of the Treaty of Tianjin reached the port: Parliamentary papers 1861, lxiii, pp. 517–525, ‘Shanghai Trade Report and Returns for 1858’. That July the temperature ranged between 86–98°F; a foreign resident died from sun stroke. ‘At this season’, wrote Captain Osborn, ‘all the residents of Shanghai look painfully unhealthy, sallow and listless’: Osborn, Cruise, p. 2.

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My dear Mother, I am going to make you the medium through which to thank sundry kind Sisters, & Father included, for the variety of kind notes and at the same time I want you to understand that I by no means underrate your many warm & kind letters altho’ I am ashamed to say they never get replied to, but you must remember that a concentrated battery upon a single Gun is rather long odds. Since I last sent a note homewards I have become the possessor of a variety of Japanese ware; trays, Boxes, porcelain, &c and all of which I meditate sending your way and with which I know you will be delighted. The only caution I have to give you is not to give them away as many things cannot be replaced save at a much larger expense. I got these through a friend of mine Captn Bythesea99 of H.M.S. Cruiser; next mail overland I have a small box to send home containing one cup, saucer and cover made of china inside and lacquer ware out which is a great curio and I fancy worth a lot of money in England. It cannot be replaced; in the same box is a bracelet for Gracey. Min had a ring of mine and I think t’other Sister ought to have this. It is one I picked up at Malta and said to be very good. As soon as this mail leaves I am going away for a week’s shooting and as the weather bids fair, hope we shall have good sport. Next month we have the races and I think my friend Mackenzie stands a chance to win all the Good things as usual. I must now say Good bye & best love to all Believe me ever, my dear Mother, Your most aff son, C. Lenox Richardson No good Tea arrived yet – I would send you some bye & by. … 99

Captain John Bythesea (1827–1906) had won the Victoria Cross as a Lieutenant serving in the Baltic during the Crimean War. He made commander in 1856, and took command of the screw sloop Cruiser (18 guns) in 1858. Cruiser and Bythesea were present during several of the key actions of the Second Opium War, including the disastrous second battle at the Taku forts (1859) and Lord Elgin’s expedition up the Yangtze (1860).

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Shanghai 4th Nov 1858 My dear Father, Last mail brought me no letter from you, altho’ I recd a newspaper with a full account of the doings of your Company which I suppose, taking all things into consideration, might be supposed to be a tolerably favourable report. As I wrote to my Mother last mail that I was going into the Country directly it left, I carried out my intention and took a trip to Hoochow [Huzhou], a place about 170 miles from this and as fine a Country as anybody could ever wish to see.100 The hills & lake scenery being a delicious relief after this mud flat. The highest of the range of mountains is about 4000 feet above the level of the sea and from its summit you have as fine a view as I expect can be got in any part of the world; one of the lakes seen from Taiho is said to be as large, if not larger than, the lake of Geneva. The weather was too warm and the cover on the hills too thick for much sport, but in cold weather, say a month or two later, there is splendid shooting up there. As it was we only got a few snipe; I had a shot at a deer but was not close enough to bring her down or damage her as I had only No. 6 shot in my gun. We were away about eight days but the greater part of the time was taken up in travelling, as the means of locomotion being boats of course the progress is slow, but I enjoyed the trip much. Next Saturday, Lord Elgin and most of the fleet in this station go up the Yang tze Kiang about 600 miles above Nan Kin [Nanjing], to a place called Hankow [Hankou], one of the new ports mentioned in the Treaty which is to be opened to foreign commerce. The Captn of H.M.S.S. Cruiser asked me to go with him but there were so many civilians anxious to go in the different ships of war that Lord Elgin put a veto up there taking anybody unattached. However, I fear under any circumstances I could not have gone as the expedition will be away too long, I believe about 6 weeks, which time I 100

Huzhou, on the southern shore of Lake Tai, was one of the foremost sericulture regions in China.

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could not well spare. It is supposed that there may be a brush with the Rebels, if there is I hope they will clear them out as it would be a great benefit to our trade which at present is woefully bad.101 Enclosed is the receipt for the Box containing the curiosities I mentioned as being about to be sent; I have a lot more odds and ends which I will send along some day p. ship as they would take up too much room and expense to send the O’land; Minnie being fond of small boxes had better have the little black one; the lacquer on the old Saki cups, as they are called, is said to be very fine and the cup & saucer are rarities. With kindest love to all at home and from home Believe me ever, Your truly aff son, C. Lenox Richardson …

Shanghai 6 Jan 1859 My dear Father, Just one word to say that I read a kind note from you last mail for which I am much obliged. I fear you will blame me much for not having written more regularly of late & this will be but a ragged effusion.

101

On 9 November, Lord Elgin set out on this expedition up the Yangtze, a river never before navigated by a European force above Nanjing – its commercial prospects tantalised Shanghai’s foreign merchants. The expedition made slow and cautious progress, skirting sand banks and rebel groups alike, but turned about after Hankou with the dry season approaching and amid fears that the larger vessels would become hopelessly stranded. Rumours of the expedition’s capture and demise reached Shanghai long before Elgin’s first gunboat did, on New Year’s Day, 1859; other vessels, including Cruiser under Bythesea, made it back on 10 January: L. Oliphant, Narrative of the Earl of Elgin’s Mission to China and Japan in the Years 1857, ’58, ’59 (Edinburgh, 1859, 2 vols.), ii, pp. 289–468. While the expedition seemed to confirm the merchants’ hopes for the future exploitation of the Yangtze basin, Qing reluctance to allow British trade to take root (resulting in a renewed British military campaign in 1860) and the dislocation caused by the Taiping rebellion meant that the dramatic growth in Shanghai’s trade attendant on the opening of these ‘great trunk lines of inland commerce’ did not occur until after Richardson’s death.

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Lord Elgin returned from the North on the 1st I think. I enclose you an account of his trip which may, perhaps, prove interesting. We are getting a magnificent winter this year – fine, clear, frosty days quite remind one of the Old Country. I got my Mother’s kind note and ought to have answered it, but it is now long past Post time and I merely must trust to the goodness of a friend to get this on board. However, kindly tell her, with my best love, that the dresses or equivalent will be forthcoming in time for the wedding. Congratulate Agnes for me. I shall have quite a regiment of nephews & nieces in time, I suppose.102 I hope Fred Searle will manage to get his farm & prosper. If at any time you want any Port or Sherry go to Walter Searle and tell him I will stand some. I’ll write to him about it next mail, I have not time now. With best & kindest love to all Believe me ever, Most affectionately yours, C. Lenox Richardson …

Shanghai 20th Jan 1859 My dear Father, Up to this time we are without the 25th Nov mail from your side, but I think it very likely that she will be in before the mail leaves this on the 23rd Inst. So I began my private correspondence before anything connected with business in the hope that we shall be in receipt of our letters either today or tomorrow. I believe I sent you last mail an account of the proceedings of the fleet at Nankin & Hankow. Since then, the 2 Steamers that were stuck up the Yangtze Kiang have found their way down, they having discovered a passage about 2 days after the other vessels left them. I am told that the 102

On 10 October 1858, Agnes gave birth to her first child, Florence, future custodian of the Richardson letters.

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whole credit of their coming down so soon is due to the Comr of the “Cruiser”, Bythesea, who is a particular friend of mine & he will in all probability get made a Post Captain which I shall be very glad of, altho’ it will deprive us of his society as on promotion they have to proceed to England. There has been another bit of a row down near Canton. It appears that a force of Marines &c were out practising when the braves, as they are called, had the temerity to attack them. It was a fortunate thing for the Natives that the Marines had fired all their ammunition away before they came on, otherwise they would have got a worse milling than they did, as our fellows had nothing but their bayonets, but I believe they used them well and took the village where these brutes came from, & utterly destroyed it.103 I do not think anything serious is likely to result from this brush, but until the ninety six villages about Canton are entirely done away with, there will never be any safety for Foreign Inhabitants about there. The other day, a complimentary address was presented to Lord Elgin and he made a very good reply, altho’ from what I see but little information is given in it, there is but little doubt that he is a good diplomatist and has the great secret of saying a great deal when he likes but never giving an opinion and always leaving people to form their own conclusions. He also knows how to keep things quiet, nobody has an idea of his movements from one day to another. The address he recd in the drawing room at the Consulate. I was too late to see it presented but heard his answer; and as the whole affair has been printed I enclose you a copy which may be interesting.104 I promised some time ago to send home a lot of things that came from Japan, but up to the present time have always forgotten to do so. However, I’ll get them packed & send them along. I fancy you must be getting stumped for Tea so I shall look out for another Chest, but I don’t think that anything good is to be picked up yet. 103

104

Lord Elgin set out for Canton soon after learning of this incident: Oliphant, Narrative, ii, pp. 474–5. The address, which Richardson signed, keenly anticipated ‘the advantages likely to arise from the Treaties recently concluded with this [Qing] Government, and with the long and jealously guarded country of Japan’: NCH, No. 443, 22 Jan. 1859. Henceforward – and perhaps encouraged by tales from his friend, Captain Bythesea – Richardson’s letters reveal a growing interest in Japanese wares.

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I must now say good bye & with best love to all Believe me ever, Yours most affectly C. Lenox Richardson Thanks for your kind note of the 28th Nov. which I recd last night. I really have no time or would not send such a shabby reply. Love to all. Ever there. CLR. 22 Jan /59. …

Shanghai Feby 19 1859 My dear Mother, I return you many thanks for your kind note of the 17th Dec and please thank Gracy for hers which was enclosed in the same envelope. With the exception of a ball given by Lord Elgin before his departure to Hong Kong I don’t think there is any novelty to send you on paper from this dead & alive part of the Globe.105 I was at the Ball and it went off tolerably well, but it wanted the people and the style of those I used to see when last at home. I am ashamed to say that I have never sent you the Japanese curios, always promising myself to do so but always forgetting. The other day I picked up something else in the shape of a Tiger Skin. It is one of the finest I ever saw. When you get it you had better have the head stuffed, and eyes, & it will make a splendid mat or carriage rug. By the way, you asked for a newspaper: mine has just come in so I send it as it is. I don’t know whether it is worth the 3d that you’ll have to pay for it. 105

The ball was held at the British consulate on 25 January. From Hong Kong, Elgin returned to England. His brother, Frederick Bruce became the new Envoy-Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Chinese Empire and (from March) the new superintendent of British trade, and was charged with overseeing the ratification of the Treaty of Tianjin.

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I wish I could spin out a long note but I can’t so you must take the will for the deed & with best & fondest love to yourself & all Believe me ever, Your very aff Son C. Lenox Richardson …

6 March /59 My dear Mother, I send you a line just to let you know that I am alive & kicking, altho’ I really think that it is not worth the postage for in this abominably dull hole there is never any news worth telling.106 I am ashamed to say that those precious things still remain unshipped. I had intended to send them by this mail, but it slipped my memory until too late. However, I must see and get them off by next Str. I have got an addition to them by way of ½ a doz. scarfs, the queerest things you ever saw. They will do well enough to put over your heads to go in to the Garden with, and I dare say some people will be smitten with them if they like novelties. I was at a dance the other night. It went off very well for here, but was after all mighty slow. However, I suppose we must put up with things as they come until we are able to get better. What did you think of the newspaper I sent you? There was not much of interest in it. If it comes in time today, I’ll have it posted to you. It is a queer coincidence but our mails generally leave here on a Sunday. How are Georgy & Searle getting along? Have they found a place yet? I fancy the West Indies are quite given up – a good thing for her I should think. 106

‘There is a lack of amusement in this dull little settlement of ours, were it not for dinner parties finishing with whist, brag or muggins we might die of ennui. Pianos are out of tune, singers have colds and intellectual evening diversion is much wanted’: NCH, No. 493, 7 Jan. 1860, p. 3.

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Is Agnes’ Partner scratching along pretty well? What’s the progeny like, Ma or Pa? Receive & give to all my best love & Believe me ever, Your most aff son, C. Lenox Richardson …

S’hai 16 April /59 My dear Father, I did not send you a line last mail for which I offer my sincere repentance. I received your note & one from my Mother yesterday, so it would never do to let this Steamer go without a line. I see that the purse strings are loose & if I get some tin that I expect from the South by next mail I’ll see if I can’t send you a pound or two, only it must not get the length of Broad Street as I am still in their debt.107 It is the old story here, nothing new. We had a rather entertaining theatrical performance last week. Amateurs of course. It went off much better than those things generally do. I have got one or two more things from Japan and they are now all packed and will, if I remember it, be shipped early. Amongst the lot there are 4 swords that have cost an awful lot of money. It will be as well to sell the two worst if you can. They are most difficult to get and if a man in Japan is known to sell them they chop off his head without delay, so you may fancy they are valuable. In fact 1 sword ought to be valued at the price of 1 Japanese. There is also a dressing gown for you if you like it. Tell Mother that the tea shall be attended to as soon as possible. Ever your aff son, 107

Lenox, Nephew & Co. had kept an office on Broad Street.

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C. Lenox Richardson Love to all …

Via Marseilles Shanghai 25th April 1859 My dear Father, I wrote you last mail promising to send a Box of Japanese stuff & something more tangible. For the Box I enclose a receipt and for the other a Bill which I hope will be useful. The Japan crockery I have not got away yet. There appears a strange fatality attending the package, as if it was never destined to reach you. However, I must compel it to move towards Croydon ere long. Don’t forget to keep the dft [word unclear] quiet or I shall hear of it again. I have been tolerably lucky at the Races which came off here on the 20 & 21. I picked up some 4 or 500 dollars, our stable behaving as it ought. Should those two swords I spoke to you about selling fetch anything worth having, as I expect they ought, kindly hand the money over to Grace and Min to be divided between them. Sell the two commonest looking. They cost £20 the pair and I fancy ought to realise considerably more than that for curios. I would write you more but I am busy for this mail and this precious place is wofully dull, the old tale of nothing to say. I am half home sick and I should much like to be back in the Old Country but I suppose all of us have to put up with certain inconveniences in the course of life so I must not growl but hope for a quick ticket of leave. With kindest love to all Ever believe me Your affte son, C. Lenox Richardson …

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Shanghai 26 May 1859 My dear Father, Last mail brought me your note of the 24 March, which is not the easiest I have ever had to answer. I sent you £50 the other day which will go against your friend’s first £50 but as to becoming security it is a thing I cannot & will not do. In my short experience I have seen too often the fatal effects of this system and if it is once commenced I should never like to say no again; don’t think these hard words. I am quite sure you have felt the inconvenience during your life time, vide H. Cornfoot for one instance.108 Consider for one instant my present position. I have little or no money of my own. I owe Lenox & Co. a heavy balance and unless I look sharp may rot out the rest of my existence in this infernal hole. I would do anything on earth to make my Mother and Sisters comfortable and if I may choose to advance you the other £50 I will, if possible, remit it to you in the course of three or 4 months from this time, but I do not bind myself in any way. The Hon. Bruce is expected here any day and we have a large fleet waiting his arrival when they will proceed North.109 With best love, Believe me ever, Yours affectly, C. Lenox Richardson … 108

109

Richardson senior’s younger brother Henry (b. 1799) was adopted by one David Cornfoot, a landowner in the West Indies, and took his name. Henry clearly came to his older brother for money, to which Richardson senior attributed his own financial predicament. See below: CLR: 10 July 1860. Frederick Bruce and the new Commander-in-Chief of the China Station, Rear-Admiral Sir James Hope, would shortly depart Shanghai for Tianjin with an Anglo-French squadron to ratify the treaty from the previous year. On finding the river route inland blocked, they attempted to force a passage past the Taku forts, as they had the year before. This time, the Qing batteries were ready. The result was an ignominious Anglo-French defeat that shocked foreign communities in China, and the British public. For a vivid account of this desperate contest, see: S. Osborn, ‘The Fight on the Peiho’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 86 (Dec. 1859), pp. 647–667.

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Shanghai 25 June 1859 My dear Mother, I did not send you a line last mail & so feel kinder bound, as the Yankees say, to do so this, altho’ save the hot weather which we have been upset into all of a sudden I really don’t know what to write you about, but if the paper comes in time I’ll send it which will make up for my short note. I am ashamed to say that the Japan curios have never left this, but I have something to send to John Lenox & will ship the lot at one time, together with Tea, if procurable. No news from the Fleet at present. I fancy we shall hear before the next mail leaves. How did the Wedding go off?110 I fear my lot of dresses were not quite the thing, but were the best I could get. Goodbye & with best love to all Believe me ever, Most aff Son, C. Lenox Richardson …

Shanghai 15 July 1859 My dear Mother, Yesterday I sent you a newspaper since when I have recd a note from you for which I give you my best thanks. You will perceive that we have stirring times out here as well as in Europe and what the upshot will be it is hard to say. I am inclined to think myself that it will not make a shadow of a difference to us 110

See: CLR: 19 Nov. 1857.

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here. It is a peculiar property of this Country that you can fight one portion without being at war, in fact in perfect good friendship, with another.111 I really forget when I sent the dresses &c and it will be most annoying if they should not arrive in time. I have pictured to myself my two Sisters’ dresses – I think there was one plain blue silk & one plain pink. These were intended especially for the occasion and should have been to my idea covered with some gauzey stuff – net, Tarlatane, or something of that sort and would be near the mark. I heard from Walter Searle this mail. He tells me he saw Georgy at Brighton the other day & that she had an addition to her family & was looking uncommonly well. I shall be thinking that I am getting a venerable swell with these abridged editions springing up. I fancy by the time I am likely to get home they will be as big as their Mas & Pas. Up to the present time we have had a wonderfully cool Summer, saving a hot week last month. I hope it will keep so, but at this time of the year the weather can never be depended upon for a single day – one cool (85 or 86º), the other blazing hot. Give my best love to all and to you I give the same Believe me ever, my dear Mother, Your affte son, C. Lenox Richardson …

Shanghai 5th Octr 1859 My dear Father, 111

Richardson refers to both the Second Italian War of Independence, which worked to dampen demand for raw silk in the first six months of the year, and the disaster on the Peiho in June, news of which reached London in September. For this reverse at the Taku forts, Bruce and Hope were widely censured in the press, and there were passionate calls for action to restore the reputation of British arms. But Richardson was quite right to be sanguine about the local commercial impact of the affair. Trade not only went on much as before at Shanghai, but even developed to a limited extent at some of the new treaty ports opened by the treaty of 1858.

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I have your note of the 6th Augt and am sorry to see that anything I said in mine of the 26th May should have caused you annoyance as such was far from my intention. I merely wanted to convey to you that at that time I was not in a position to comply with what you wanted, being myself under heavy liabilities to other people, which to this day are not wiped off. You must surely be quite aware that I am, whenever able, only too willing to assist you all that lies in my power & shall, I trust, always be so. I am afraid you are too soft hearted and do not like to see the iron of human nature in other people, but it is a very necessary ingredient out here, I can assure you. We are all anxiously looking for the arrival of the mail after next as I fancy by it we are likely to hear what is likely to be done out here upon the Peiho arrangement. I hope they won’t recall Admiral Hope as he appears to be a man well suited for the position he holds and is much liked by all his officers here. From what I hear I expect that you will have to put up with the 100 taels instead of the Box from the P&O. It is a sell for me as the contents were worth £100. I see my Mother writes for some more dresses. I’ll see after some and send them along. In the mean time I enclose Bills for 2 chests Tea p. Assyrian which will, I hope prove acceptable. I’ll send some money for duty before the ship arrives & with kind love, Believe me, Your affte son, C. Lenox Richardson …

Shanghai 23d Nov 1859 My dear Father,

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A Private Steamer brought up the mail of the 27th Sept and I recd your kind note this morning date 26th, also one from my Mother, for both of which I return my thanks. I see you have news of the slight disturbance that took place here some few months back and a short time afterwards you would hear of another little affair which went off in [word unclear].112 I don’t think there is any great amount of danger in these little fracas and now that we are I hear to have at least 1000 men here we shall be as safe as the Bank. I don’t exactly know what effect these warlike movements will have upon our trade here, but I am almost afraid that it will be considerably curtailed when there are some 40,000 troops cruising about the Country, as I fear that it will frighten the monied part of the nation into withdrawing their Coin from trade. If such be the case we shall have a stoppage for a time. 112

In the sweltering summer of 1859, Shanghai’s foreign residents faced an alarming upsurge in violence within settlement limits. That July, rumours had begun to circulate of Chinese labourers being kidnapped and detained aboard foreign vessels at Wusong. On the afternoon of the 29th, as the new British consul, Thomas Taylor Meadows recorded, ‘the Chinese population within the settlement began attacking all foreign seamen whom they found in or near their quarter’. The Municipal police were called out, and various British residents came to the sailors’ aid. The atmosphere seemed to have cooled when at dusk (‘the time at which, in this our hottest weather, the permanent residents usually take their walks and rides on the race course’) Meadows learned of an even more serious affray. While passing through the Malu – a busy street in the Chinese quarter between the foreign residences and the race course – two Britons stumbled upon a Chinese crowd attacking a foreigner, and were themselves attacked. One was stabbed in the stomach; another, a Mr Barlow, died. Meadows immediately had the Senior Naval Officer land his marines and deploy his artillery, and a curfew was imposed on foreign seamen to prevent ‘opportunities for a repetition of outrages’. The following evening, the British troops rushed into the small French settlement in response to rumours of its imminent attack (the French ship Gertrude stood accused of a particularly egregious case of kidnapping and maltreatment) before Meadows ordered them back to their posts. Tensions eased, and foreign residents had begun to resume their country walks when on 21 August another fight involving seamen escalated into a wider anti-foreign disturbance. Richardson here plays down these ‘little fracas’, but it is clear the foreign community were deeply concerned. ‘Certain retaliatory and repressive proceedings’ against the Chinese were urged on the British Consul; some residents demanded the Municipal police fire volleys into the Malu. Meadows despaired of those ‘who mistake violence and ferocity for “vigor” and “firmness”’, but was nonetheless determined to tighten control over the Malu and to do all he could to ensure local Chinese were not so provoked again. In that sense, these ‘little fracas’ came back to affect Richardson personally. In a tense climate, in which British representatives feared acts of petulance and violence setting off broader demonstrations, they surely informed the punishment that Richardson received for his own assault on a servant a few months later. For Meadows’ reports, see: TNA: FO 228/274, T.T. Meadows to F. Bruce, No. 12, 9 Aug. 1859; and No. 21, 31 Aug. 1859.

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I see my Mother wants to know what was in the ill fated box. As near as I can recollect: 4 swords, 9 dresses, 1 tiger skin, 1 dressing gown. She also asks me who Macfarlane is & have I wedding cards; has he been & gone and married one of the Lee Terrace folks? I wrote all I knew about him to Min some weeks back, which account I trust was satisfactory. With regard to the house at the corner of the Garden I will see what I can do, but I fear it will not be compassed for a month or two, if then.113 However, I will do my best altho’ “times is hard”. I see young Charlie is going to make a fool of himself. Whatever does he want to go and tie himself up for at his age – he is only some 22, I think. My idea is that if a man gets married by the time he is 30 it is quite soon enough, and besides that he knows his own mind at that period of life. I must say goodbye, with best love to all Believe me ever, Your aff Son, C. Lenox Richardson …

21 Jan /60 My dear Father, The mail of the 26th Nov arrived last Evg. when I recd my usual bundle of letters from the Home Office for which I return my best thanks. I was prevented writing last mail as I had met with an accident and broke the 3d bone in the back of my right hand. It is, however, getting well, although I still have my hand in a splint & bandages which makes it very awkward to write. I dare say you can guess 113

The family had moved to Duppas Hill in Croydon; the house referred to here is a separate cottage, which Richardson was later able to purchase for the family.

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how it was done, but I may as well tell you altho’ perhaps it does not redound to my credit I could not help it. The truth is a man was insolent & I knocked him down. I expect in another week to be quite right again.114 I have just seen Crockett who has brought out Jardine’s Steamer.115 He tells me that he was at Croydon when at home. The China New Year holidays commence tomorrow and we shall have nothing to do for a fortnight. If I had not had this hand I should have been off on a shooting excursion as I fancy ½ Shanghai will be. By the way it has always slipped my memory to send you the money to pay the duty upon that Tea. However, you could dispose of one chest to pay for the other and I’ll fill its place when due. With kindest love & Believe me ever, Your affte Son, C. Lenox Richardson …

Shanghai 21 Mar /60 My dear Father, By the mail that came in a day or two back I recd a kind note from yourself and one from my Mother, for both of which I thank you. The regular mail Str has not yet come in so I have not the paper you allude to as having sent, but they will come in all safe in a day or two. I have been some what poorly of late from a kind of low fever, but never so bad as to lay up. In fact, I could not have done so as I have 114

115

Richardson’s ‘accident’ – his assault on a Chinese servant – went unreported in the North China Herald, but was described in Hong Kong’s China Mail (which again lambasted the Shanghai paper for its silence). Richardson himself only offered his parents further information once the China Mail’s version of events had reached London. See pp. 24–26 above. The Chevy Chase, bound for Hong Kong: NCH, No. 496, 28 Jan. 1860, p. 16.

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been very busy one way or the other. I am today much more myself and by keeping at the quinine hope to be soon quite myself. It has dropped me down to 11 stone. I intend to get away for a run either to Japan or South as soon as I can which will set me all square and I hope, with moderate luck, to see the Old Country in the next two or 3 years. I must now say good bye as it is getting close on post time, so with kindest love to all. Believe me Ever, Your affte Son C. Lenox Richardson Please give the enclosed to Min …

[n.d., postmarked Hong Kong, March 1860] My dear Father, The mail is just closing, but I can’t let it leave without just sending you a line to thank you for your kind note of the 26 Jan which I recd on the 17 Inst and I will endeavour to comply with what you want in a short time. I fear the Sisters will be down upon me as I have not yet forwarded the long promised dresses, but to tell the truth I have been too busy to find time to go and choose them. The Japan curios are also unshipped but will go in the Constantia to sail shortly. The Rebels have got into the centre of the Silk producing country and are going to damage our trade very much I fear. However, we shall be able to know more about it by next mail. If they enter any of the large cities thereabouts it will be good bye to Tea, Silk & all.116 116

The tumult of the Chinese civil war was shortly to return to Richardson’s Shanghai for the first time since the panic of 1856. Rebel armies fought a number of battles around Nanjing in an attempt to draw off the besieging Qing forces: Hangzhou, for example, was attacked on 19 March. In May, the main Taiping army of Li Xiucheng successfully broke out of Nanjing and pushed toward the sea, taking city after city in Jiangsu province. On 2 June, Suzhou fell without a fight. ‘In the spring of 1860, the end of imperial civilisation

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I am sorry to hear such bad accounts of Gracie, but hope your over anxiousness has exaggerated her complaint, and that as the weather gets warmer she will come round.117 We have had a horrid time here of late, almost incessant rain for a month and I fear it has not taken up yet.118 I must say good bye & with kindest love, Believe me ever, Your affte son, C. Lenox Richardson …

6 April 1860 My dear Father, A note of yours not long ago was written to me upon Christmas Day so I’ll send you one upon Good Friday to make us square. Since I last wrote you I have achieved great things, namely got the Japan curios shipped p. Constantia and the Silk dresses by the present steamer. I enclose bill of lading for the boxes and receipt for the parcel overland. I think if I remember rightly there are 8 dresses, 2 for my Mother & 3 apiece for Min and Gracey. Please advise the children that they must not be bestowing them upon other people in the liberality of their hearts, as the other two girls have husbands to look after their interests.

117 118

rolled towards Shanghai like a tidal wave’: S. Platt, Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West and the epic story of the Taiping Civil War (London, 2012), p. 69. Richardson’s sister Grace remained in poor health. She died in 1867, aged 37. Heavy rain could make conditions on the Huangpu treacherous, for the anchorage was overcrowded at the best of times. On the night of 31 March the steam-tug Meteor (1849), in which Richardson had some stake, collided with another tug, the Ta Yung. Richardson accused the Ta Yung’s crew of ‘carelessness and mismanagement’ and in the Consular Court sought damages of 2,448 taels to make good for lost earnings while Meteor underwent repairs. Meadows found both vessels at fault, and ordered the damages shared: NCH, No. 507, 14 Apr. 1860, pp. 58–59. Later that month, the British Chamber of Commerce began to pressure the foreign representatives to appoint a Harbour Master: TNA: FO 228/291, T.T. Meadows to F. Bruce, No. 14, 1 Mar. 1860.

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Amongst the Japanese curios you will find some very nice things which please hold fast on to as I hope I shall want some of them myself some day; I have a particular love for a large plate there with, and have sent to Canton to have a stand made of black wood carving after the style of the large chair. When complete I will send it along. I don’t know exactly what to make of things politic. I am still inclined to think there must be some hand organising up North, altho’ a cry has lately been got up that affairs will be amicably settled after all. In these rumours I am inclined to place but little faith, altho’ as I first said I do not think that any fight that may occur will drift into lengthened warfare. I fully expect to see a tussle at Taku, but after that it will be your obedient Servt from the Chinaman. They, for a long time, have not known what it is to come into serious collision with Europeans, and are naturally forgetting their good manners. But I shall be much surprized if the first issued thrashing does not put them straight. I have no fear that this place will in any way be interfered with as far as our comfort goes, but I fancy we shall see an entire cessation of trade for a few months.119 With kindest love to all Believe me ever, You affte Son, C. Lenox Richardson …

[n.d., postmarked Hong Kong, May 1860] My dear Father, 119

Richardson refers here to the renewed campaigns of the Second Opium War, and the opportunity to restore the reputation of British arms following their defeat at Taku in June 1859. Lord Elgin left England for China this month to demand the enforcement of the Treaty of Tianjin, but it was not until the summer that sufficient troops were available to permit the Anglo-French campaign to resume. More than half of the 13,000 strong British expeditionary force was transferred from India, where the Rebellion of 1857–58 had only lately been suppressed. Richardson took a keen interest in Elgin’s campaign, although, as things turned out, the events of the Taiping civil war had an even greater impact on his prospects.

204

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Last mail brought me your note of the 25 Feb. and I am sorry to see therefrom that there is trouble in the camp again. I object strongly to either of my Sisters attempting to earn their own living in any way and to prevent their being inconvenienced by your misfortunes I am willing to allow them £50 p. annum each so that will relieve you from any expense you may be at on their account. It is also my intention to send the money for the Cottage in the Garden in a month or two, but I wish you clearly to understand that the money to be sent must be applied for the purposes stated and not to go to assist Mr Cornfoot from any of his difficulties as I am determined he shall never have a farthing of my money if I can help it.120 Next mail I will send the first £50 for my Sisters, 25 [each], and with this it will make up your entire incomes to £500 a year upon which I should think 2 servants could easily be kept. I regret you don’t state more fully what is the nature of the liability you are under. I am sorry to see that Searle has gone to the wall. I can’t make out how he should have been such an ass as to trust a wretched nigger with such unlimited credit. Here they are trusted as far as they can be seen and no farther. I fear this is not a pleasant note, never are on money matters. However, you know what I mean & I am in a violent hurry, so good bye with best love Believe me, Your affte Son, C. Lenox Richardson …

Shanghai 12 May /60 My dear Father, 120

For more on the family’s financial situation, see: CLR: 26 May 1859 and 23 Nov. 1859 above, and the revealing letter from Charles Richardson senior of 10 July 1860 below.

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Last mail brought me a note from you, also sundry others from other members of the family. I am sorry to see that you should have thought so much about my trifling accident; the hand is as good & sound as ever now. It was a little painful at first, but not so very much after all. I was quite surprized to find that a broken bone was not a worse thing.121 I am sorry to see you still on the old theme, want of Coin, but we must see what can be done. To commence, I enclose £50 as I promised last mail. £25 for both Grace and Min and this I will send every 6 months. With regard to the other arrangement that must wait a bit, but I think we’ll get through it all in time, never say die? Our Races came off last week and our Stable behaved most creditably and had it not been that our first favourite broke down just as he was winning we should have made a pot of money.122 I should have had enough out of him to have paid for Cottage & everything. As it was I did not do so badly. Active preparations are still going on here for War and I hope Lord Elgin’s arrival won’t lead to any pacific measures, as these animals must be thrashed or else in a year or two we shall have all the bother over again. Much better let them have their grief and have done with it.123 We have a most peculiarly late season this year, still carpets down and fires going of a night, the weather being quite chilly. I suppose, however, we shall be into the furnace before long. Give my love to all & Believe me ever, my dear Father. Your aff son, C. Lenox Richardson 121 122

123

Again, this refers to the assault of December 1859. This was Mackenzie’s horse ‘Sydney’, running in the Alliance Cup. His accident ‘must be regarded as a public calamity by the sporting community’: NCH, ‘The Races’, No. 511, 12 May 1860, p. 75. A sentiment shared by the Foreign Secretary, Lord John Russell. ‘The Chinese’, he wrote later that year, ‘seem to require a great deal of beating before you get the falsehood and treachery out of them’: TNA: PRO 30/20/101, J. Russell to Elgin, 27 Nov. 1860. During this period of military build-up, Shanghai was used by the British as a centre for relaying messages to the Chinese government, including demands for an apology for obstructing the mouth of the Peiho in June 1859.

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…

S’hai 14 May /60 My dear Mother, I have today received your long note of the 22d March written evidently just after hearing of the little affair with the coolie.124 The Hong Kong paper hatched up a tissue of lies for the occasion and when I tell you that the editor has been twice prosecuted for libel you may have some idea of the people we come in contact with. I was the only person to blame for striking the animal – the other men had nothing to do with it in any way, but were fined because they were present. However, it is all over now and less said soonest mended. We were going to prosecute the Hong Kong swell, but it would have cost money and given but little satisfaction. Please thank Min for her note. The dresses will have been received long before this note and I hope have given satisfaction. We are just creeping into the Summer, but as yet have had no hot weather. I fancy it will be warm enough in the course of another month or so. I long for it to be over. There are no end of warlike preparations going on and I fancy about July we shall be looking out for news from the Peiho, I hope and trust of a different character than that which arrived last year. I must say good bye as it is nearly post time. With best love to all Believe me ever, Your affte son, C. Lenox Richardson …

124

See further pp. 24–26 above.

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Shanghai 14th June 1860 My dear Father, As I don’t think I wrote you last mail I must send you a line by this opportunity, what with Rebels and one thing and another they have brought us to a regular standstill as far as business is concerned here & it is hard to say how long it will last.125 I fear we shall not be much better off until after the Peiho affair has been settled, and even then it will take a long time before things settle down in their regular channels again. We have as yet no late April mail but by telegraph learn that the Str was at Aden on the 11th May with Ld Elgin and Baron Gros on board.126 I hope their coming will not tend towards any pacific measures, as if the Chinese are let off this time the same game will have to be played over again some two or three years hence. It will be far better to put them thro’ now the means are at hand. The Allied forces are moving up North rapidly & I fancy the ensuing month will see the Taku forts of last year revenged. Up to the present time we have had a most wonderfully cool season. Today is the first day I have had a pair of White Trousers and

125

126

The capture of Suzhou on 2 June brought the Taiping armies to within a couple of days’ march of Shanghai. Although asked by the Daotai to assist in the defence of the settlement’s hinterland, Thomas Meadows, Frederick Bruce and the senior naval officer, Capt. Jones agreed that the force at their disposal was simply too small for the task. Instead, they resolved ‘that the stand on the foreign race-course, and the Soochow Creek stone bridge, two commanding points in advance of this settlement and the chief trade route between it and Soochow, should be occupied…’: TNA: FO 228/291, T.T. Meadows to F. Bruce, No. 37, 4 June 1860. Ten days after Richardson sent this letter home, Meadows reported the news of further Taiping successes on the fringes of the Shanghai district, ‘so that the rebel force is now nearly under our eyes’: TNA: FO 228/291, T. Meadows to F. Bruce, No. 41, 24 June 1860. Speculation as to how they would treat the foreigners and their trade was rife. Baron Jean-Baptiste Louis Gros (1793–1870), France’s envoy and military commander during the Second Opium War. Like Elgin, Gros had returned to Europe after concluding the Treaty of Tianjin in 1858, only to be sent back to China in the summer of 1860 with the resumption of hostilities. Once again, it took a long time for the two men to marshal their forces. On 22 May, both were passengers aboard the P&O steamer Malabar when it struck a rock and sank at Ceylon. The expedition finally set out from Shanghai in July.

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almost feel them a trifle too cool. I am afraid we shall have to pay for it later on as our hottest summers generally commence the latest on. Give my kindest love to all & Believe me ever, Your affte son, C. Lenox Richardson …

[The following letter, from Charles Richardson senior, is the only such letter in the collection] 26 Gresham Street London 10 July 1860 My Dearest Charlie, The postponement of the sailing of the last [packet] enabled me to acknowledge your dear letter of the 26th Feb. To say I thanked you for it wd. hardly be the fact, as I feel I cannot adequately do so, tho’ I trust you will give me credit for every sentiment that a fond & proud Father shd. entertain towards so good & kind a Son. As regards my liabilities I thought I had already been sufficiently explicit, and have feared to weary you by too frequently reverting to my own troubles. Doubtless my folly, in regard to H. Cornfoot’s affairs, has been the fruitful cause of all the difficulties I have had to encounter during the years that I have been here.127 The first operation under those heavy liabilities (first & last £600) was, thro’ the strong arm of the law, to extract from me, for nearly 12 mos. together, all the ready money I could possibly spare, compelling me to leave house bills &c, on wh. credit wd. be willingly accorded, for future payment. This state of things, howr, soon became very irksome, espy. the constant attacks of the lawyers – and, happening to mention my condition to Mr Burnley (who providentially called one day) that Gentm. most kindly requested me to send him a list 127

At the Berlin Water Company, presumably; he started there in 1854. For Cornfoot, see n108 above.

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of the whole, that he might see what he could do. My obligations, on acct. of H. Cornfoot, including some of the heavier private bills, then amounted to £400.4.9, which I told Mr By. I thought could be settled for 10/- in the £, without any exposure of my affairs to any one (this, by the bye, was his own kind suggestion). Mr Burnley then, in the noblest manner, sent me £200 to effect that object, merely requiring me to send him my promissory note at 12 m/d for the amount with Int. at 5 p.cm per ann. and the Receipts of the several parties. I have now paid Interest 3 times, and on the last occasion Mr. B. most kindly told me not to distress myself about it, as, in his then frame of mind, he had no desire to incommode me. Such a state of things, however, added to Fred & Georgie’s [the Searles] visit in 1858, the alterations & repairs of the Cottage, and the oft recurring and increasing Income Tax,128 will I think, sufficiently account for my having since been compelled to seek the friendly aid of Mr. Bancroft and Mr Hy. Thompson, which they most kindly accorded, & for which they will patiently wait till I can repay them either the whole or in part. I should however like to shew my inclination by making ever so small a partial payment to each of these three Christian friends. Excuse haste & bustle to save the post – and with kindest love and heartfelt gratitude, believe me ever, my Dearest Charlie, Your most affectionate Pater C. Richardson …

Shanghai 16th Augt 1860 My dear Father,

128

In 1853 W.E. Gladstone, then Chancellor, had proposed reducing the income tax to the point where it might be withdrawn altogether, but the exigencies of the Crimean War put paid to that aspiration.

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I do not think I have yet sent an answer to your note of the 9th June & my Mother’s of the 1st June. I am glad the dresses arrived, but regret to hear of the damage some of them received. I left the packing of them to the man I bought them of and he doubtless omitted the tin for cheapness sake as the packing was included in cost price. However, I am glad it was nothing serious. In this place we again have our trade stopped. Rumours of Rebels being about to come down upon us has caused a panic here and the natives are clearing out right and left. I hope they won’t shew here as it will put a stop to every thing and the weather is too hot for fighting, which we should have to do to a moral certainty.129 I wonder if this unfortunate Country is ever going to see peace again. The whole 7 years I have been out here there has always been some infernal row going to take place somewhere. We have not very reliable news from the North. An American Gun Boat came down the other day and reported that the Allies had occupied 3 forts with but little resistance, but the Tartar troops were going to make a fight further up the Peiho river. I fancy we shall have better information in a day or two as an English vessel was to leave on the 11th for this and she is now due and had it not been that a severe gale has been blowing for the last day or two I fancy she would have arrived before this. The 26 June mail is reported but the letters will not be delivered in time for reply by this oppy.130 With best love to all 129

130

And fight they did: on the 14th the foreign community had been startled to find Taiping proclamations posted within the foreign Settlement. On the 18th the battle for the Chinese city began in earnest, with much destruction around the southern and western gates. British and French troops were posted to defend the outer lines of the settlement, a party of naval artillerymen took up position near the race course, and ‘strong wooden barriers, with loop-holed defences’ were erected at key junctions within the settlement itself. These barricades were manned by the 150 or so Volunteers, Richardson among them. On a number of occasions, the troops fired their artillery, rockets and rifles to drive Taiping groups away from the western limits of the settlement. By the 23rd, the Taiping had begun to withdraw. ‘This week has proved a most eventful one for Shanghai’, wrote the North China Herald; ‘never was the model settlement in a greater state of excitement’: NCH, No. 526, 25 Aug. 1860, pp. 134–5. Elgin had left Shanghai for the Peiho on 5 July. Rather than attempt another frontal assault, British and French troops landed north east of the Taku forts in August. This, the third battle at the mouth of the Peiho, was an Anglo-French success: their forces took the forts with light casualties. The way was now open to proceed to Tianjin, and thence to Peking.

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Believe me ever, Your affte son, C. Lenox Richardson …

Shanghai 4th Octr 1860 My dear Father, The last mail brought me your note of the 10th Augt, also one from my Mother & Gracie for which please thank them. I see that you all mention the death of Uncle Joe, and I condole with you sincerely upon the subject, altho’ from what you say it must have been a happy release.131 This mail will take home some startling news from the Peiho and fully give the English Public an idea of the treachery of Chinese, if they need more proofs than they have already had. I send you the last accounts that have reached this. Rather a sell for The Times losing their writer. I expect, however, that they will be eventually given up. If they are not, it will be good bye to Pekin as it will be stormed and looted to a certainty.132 What an abominable year for weather you appear to have had in England. I hope that your autumn will give you some compensation and that there will be no great deficiency in Harvest, otherwise trade will suffer and we want all the good we can get to fetch us thro’ our produce this year.

131 132

See n50 above. In September, the Anglo-French force had begun its march on Peking when an allied mission and escort, including the envoy Harry Parkes, were captured and imprisoned by Qing troops. Many were tortured and died in captivity – The Times’ special correspondent, Thomas William Bowlby, among them. Richardson’s reaction was in line with that of many of his countrymen. After battling for control of Peking in September and October, the Summer Palace – already looted by British and French soldiers – was destroyed on Elgin’s orders in retaliation for this incident. Richardson would take a keen interest in what happened to its contents.

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In this part of the world we have had a great deal of Rain for the past 12 months and the coolest summer I ever experienced in China. I hope we shan’t have an uncomfortably sloppy winter on the top of it. With kindest love Believe me ever, Your affte Son C. Lenox Richardson …

S’hai 6 Decr /60 My dear Gracie, The last mail brought me a note from you and one from the Govr, for both of which I return you my best thanks. I am glad to see that you have been moving about the Country as it will doubtless do you good. I always am of opinion that the whole of you are rather too much on the home bird principle, although I must confess that I shall be glad when it comes to my turn again. We have got a first rate photographer here. I am going to have a pet horse I have taken and will send you a picture. She is a perfect beauty. I have two very nice racing horses, lots of pluck and spirit but no vice which is a very rare occurrence out here. I have a black wood carved stand for the large plate. I am going to sent it home by a friend who commands HMS Cruiser who will leave here in about a month. He is at present living with me.133 It is a very handsome piece of carving, but will require a cabinet maker to put it to rights at home. If you won’t tell anyone I’ll let you into a secret. I have sent some money, £2 or 300, up North to see if I can’t get hold of some of the 133

Capt. John Bythesea. See n99 above.

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Emperor’s loot. I don’t expect any, but should anything by chance turn up, and it is worth keeping, I shall transfer it homewards for the drawing room in perspective. I see the account you give of young John. He wants sending out here, it would soon take the nervousness out of him. I can’t imagine what a boy wants with nerves. With kindest love to all the family Believe me ever, Your affte Brother, C. Lenox Richardson The place is crowded with swells from the North. I fancy they will all be homeward bound ere’ long.134 …

Shanghai Jany 5th 1861 My dear Father, The last mail brought me your letter date 10th Nov, also one from my Mother for both of which I send many thanks. This place, now all war is over, is settling down into the same mouldy no news condition as ever.135 My friend Capt Bythesea, H.M.S. Cruiser, has left for England and by him I have sent a carved black wood stand for the large Japan plate. I think it will make a handsome ornament for a hall. I have got hold of some beautiful jade stone ornaments that were taken out of the Emperor’s palace. One 134

135

The rapid Taiping advance drove tens of thousands of refugees towards Shanghai. For the foreign renters controlling land within the settlement, fortunes were to be made from the wildly inflated rents they could charge. ‘To meet the demand’, reported the new Consul Walter Medhurst in June, 1861, ‘land owners have run up in spite of the prohibition in the Regulations whole streets of houses fitted for native use, and the west of the settlement is now fast merging into a Chinese city …’: TNA: FO 228/311, W.H. Medhurst to F. Bruce, No. 92, 26 June 1861. Compared with his predecessor, Meadows, Medhurst was less inclined to view the advancing Taiping favourably. Having secured ratification of the Treaty of Tianjin, and with the Old Summer Palace in ruins, Elgin’s force departed Peking on 9 November.

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large desk has his grandfather’s name cut upon it. They are, I believe, valuable. I shall try to sell a portion of them so as to keep 3 or 4 for nothing. Chinamen value them at 1000 taels, but up here they won’t buy. I shall send them down South. They cost me 300 Mex $. If you can manage to find Bythesea upon his arrival you will find him one of the pleasantest men you have met for some time, lots of information and experience. He carries V.C. after his name. There is a young fellow of the name of Sam Harrison goes home by this mail. He has been staying with me for the last 6 weeks; he is a nephew of Harrison & Crossfield [sic], tea dealers.136 If you want to look him up he can tell you of all my doings. Don’t pitch the pulpit into him too strong or he’ll get frightened. I regret much to hear of poor Georgie, but I hope she is recovered long before this. Give my kindest love to all & Believe me ever, Your affte son, C. Lenox Richardson You ask about Eliott. I have known him slightly for some time – he is a decent young fellow – Dent & Co’s Tea taster.137 What is his Brother? CLR …

24 Jan /61 My dear Father, 136

137

Founded in Liverpool in 1844 by Daniel and Smith Harrison and by Joseph Crosfield, Harrisons and Crosfield had become one of the largest tea merchants in Britain by the early 1860s. Dent & Co. (before 1857, Dent, Beale & Co.) was one of the great trading houses of the China coast, active since the 1820s. The firm was quick to establish a reputation in shipping and in the opium, tea and silk trades at the new treaty port of Shanghai; Title Deed No. 1 in the British Consular Register was held by Lancelot Dent. A great rival of Jardines, the company played an important role in the establishment of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, but was hit hard by the London banking crash of May 1866, and failed in 1867.

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I have to thank you for your note of the 26th Novr. I much regret to see therefrom that my Mother was not in her usual health, but I trust that ere this she has quite recovered. I hope you duly impressed upon her the necessity of first rate medical advice, and that promptly. I may say we could find the coin wherewith to pay the leech, and in this case it should be get well first & think of payment afterwards. I fancy next mail will bring us some fine thunderers from [The] Times & other papers with regard to those unfortunates butchered at Pekin.138 I hope to be able to send along some things out of Yuen Min Yuen.139 I am trying to sell a portion to get mine for nothing, & when that is done I want to get Black wood carved stands for them. I have also a few photographs I intend sending at some time and if you can get Heath to colour them they will be curiosities. I see what you say about young Adolphus Ferguson.140 I should be happy to do anything I could for him, but I fear he is not the sort of man to suit here exactly. Besides, I do not anticipate wanting anybody for the next year or two at shortest. However, I’ll bear him in mind, should any thing turn up. With kindest love to all Believe me ever, Your affte son, C. Lenox Richardson …

138

139

140

Here, Richardson anticipates the press’ reaction to those of the Anglo-French mission imprisoned and killed in the advance on Peking. Of the fifty or so captured in midSeptember, only 19 were alive when the city surrendered. Yuanming Yuan – that is, the Old Summer Palace, Peking, sacked by Anglo-French forces in October. Elgin’s order to go through with this had been given in the face of the opposition of British and French commanders at Peking, and prompted much condemnation in Parliament and in the British press. Palmerston approved the decision, but many in the Cabinet deplored it. Richardson’s aunt, Sophy, married Charles Ferguson; Adolphus was one of their children. The family had fallen on hard times and Richardson, with some reluctance, attempted to find the young Adolphus work in Shanghai.

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6 Mch /61 My dear Father, The last mail brought me a family envelope from you enclosing a note from yourself, one from my Mother & one from Grace, for all of which I send you my best thanks. I see that the Old Country has got back a Winter that used to show itself in Olden items and which were becoming traditionary; it must have been a treat to have again seen a real old English Christmas. Here we have been badly off deluged with wet. Continuation of fine weather seems to have left this part of the world. The Jade Stones I told you about I am going to send to Canton to get mounted and then I think I shall send them to your care, but they will be a long time before they are ready. From the turn affairs are taking in England many a heavy loss will be made in produce from this Country. I am happy to say mine is nearly all sold so that [if ] the worst comes I don’t stand to lose much. I send you our last paper which will give you the last news that we have from the North, as also from the expedition to Hankow. With kindest love to all Believe me ever, my dear Father, You affte Son, C. Lenox Richardson …

Shanghai 21st March 1861 My dearest Mother, Your loving note of the 26th January reached me the day before yesterday, in fact, the day after my birthday, and it appears to me that the appeal contained therein could not have come at a more appropriate time. You are aware that at present I do not hold those deep views

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with regard to religion that are held by most of my immediate family. But nevertheless I have never forgotten “Honour thy Father & Mother” &c; and I should consider myself little worthy even of the small share of fortune which has fallen to my lot, if I did not respond to the fullest extent of my ability when my Parents seek my aid. Now what I propose in the present case is, that my Father lays a full statement of his affairs, flinching nothing, before a friend. I would suggest Montague Herbert, he being versed in these arrangements, and get him to draw up a regular schedule and then we shall be able to see exactly the state of things and what will be the requisite amount of money to set him entirely free and, if it is in my power, I’ll pull him through; but with this proviso, that he never stands security or lends a sovereign that would be useful to himself or family, to another, no matter who, and that you manage to live within your aggregate incomes, which, with what I allow my Sisters, should amount to some £500 or £600 a year. I feel that I have spoken very plainly, but I think that considering the nature of the case that I am justified in so doing & affairs of money must necessarily be looked at in a business point of view no matter with whom they are transacted. I would advise that this matter be kept quiet. There will be no occasion for any body having a knowledge of it save ourselves. I see that my Uncle G. Lenox made it his business to tell you what he could not do; he has annoyed me very much upon that subject. I wrote him a letter pointing out how you might be materially benefitted; this he has never condescended to reply to, and if I ever meet him again he shall know my views upon the subject pretty broadly. No riches are any excuse for discourtecy to anybody. We are as dull of news in this place as ever. We have however been getting some most breezy weather of late to cheer us after all the wet that we have had during the past 12 months. Our sporting Season has commenced and horses are in hard training for the coming Spring Meeting. I send you a programme of the events that are to come. It is the best that has ever been published in China. It is very pleasant work in the morning now, I generally turn out about ½ past six and see the horses at their work. With kindest love to all

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Believe me ever, my dearest Mother, Your affte son, C. Lenox Richardson …

S’hai, Apl 23/61 My dear Mother, The last mail brought me your two kind notes of the 6th & 19th Feby; their contents, being chiefly monetary, were replied to some 2 or 3 mails ago and until I get your reply I can do nothing further in the matter. I have sent you a newspaper giving you an account of the Races that came off here on the 18 & 19th. Two more lovely days you never saw and the success that attended our stable was most satisfactory. Everything that was worth having but one, the Tsatlee Cup, came our way. Some English racers were sent up from Hong Kong to beat us, but it was no go – Mackenzie had a little horse that ran away from them. I ran a horse of mine that won and now costs me nothing.141 I enclose an envelope for Gracie which please give her with my love. Our weather is just giving signs of warmth altho’ I don’t expect to get anything very severe before June. I am going to have a look at some more Japan curios tomorrow. If there are any worth having I’ll send them along. The Cottage will soon look like an old curiosity shop. I have still the Jade Stones, photographs &c & will likely send all at one time. The Shawl you spoke about I shall have to send to India for, but will see you get it before the next Winter comes on. 141

Mackenzie’s horse may well have been ‘Pons Asinorum’ which won both of the meet’s biggest events; Richardson’s may have been ‘Chevy Chase’, which won the Peking Cup. A visitor to Shanghai described the scene on race day: ‘I found the grand stand crowded, and was rejoiced to see the very perceptible symptoms of the entente cordiale that exists between the allied defenders of this haughty emporium of northern trade’: NCH, No. 561, 27 Apr. 1861, p. 67.

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With kindest love to all. Believe me ever, my dearest Mother, Your affte son, C. Lenox Richardson. Please send me 2 doz. tooth brushes I.P.N.Y. …

Shanghai 18th May 1861 My dear Father, The last mail that arrived here on the 12th Inst. brought me your note of the 26th March, also one from my Mother of the 22d, for both of which I am obliged. I regret to see that you are still singing the same old tune, but I trust soon that it will be changed to a more lively air. As soon as ever I get from Herbert what I have written for I will do my best to set you straight, either at once or by degrees. Of course, the amount will be every consideration. I am glad to see Sam Harrison had called upon you; if you see any more of him you will find he is a nice lad. I am glad to hear improved accounts of my Mother’s health. It ought not to be a very difficult affair for her to get a run of a month to the sea side when it is considered so desirable she should have it. We are creeping on to the hot weather again. At present we have not had any thing to complain of but I fancy it will begin next month. I shall be glad when it is over, it will be my eighth in China. I shall be glad when I can see my way to return as I am tired of transportation. I don’t anticipate being able to get away for the next 2 or 3 years but if I keep my health I shall not growl if I can then get away for good. With kindest love to all Believe me ever, Your aff son,

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C. Lenox Richardson …

18 June 1861 My dear Father, I know well that the folks at home do not like a mail to pass over without a line from me, other wise I almost think that I should let the present chance slip, as the full heat of summer has opened upon us quite suddenly and I have had a particularly long mail to write – altho’ I am sorry to say I fear not a profitable one, it being at present which article loses least, not which pays most. However, I have kept pretty clear at present so must merely look on and wait for a more prosperous time. I see what you say regarding the Ferguson family. It is indeed a most deplorable state of affairs altogether. I have some few months ago written to my Uncle J.L. [John Lenox] about Adolphus but I fear from what I saw of him at home he had more of the acrobatic than mercantile style in his composition. I have however written strongly about him to L. N. & Co. so perhaps they may be able to take him in hand and put him straight. In his present condition he would be worse than useless, and I can’t afford to burthen myself with a man who is no use altho’ a relation. I just enclose for you a letter I received from him, which please destroy without mention to anybody. It merely shews he wants a deal of drilling before he can be fit for an office; the sentiment expressed is good; but [word unclear] out here are very expensive. However [word unclear] and errors I’ll do what I can. With kindest love to all Believe me ever, Your affte son, C. Lenox Richardson [Charles Richardson senior did not destroy Adolphus’ letter. It reads:] 9 Lee Terrace

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Dear Charles, No doubt you will be surprised to hear that the Gov. having become bankrupt or rather stopped payment, I – as a son – feel it my duty to get off his hands as soon as possible. Therefore I have made up my mind to come out to Shanghae and I shall feel extremely obliged to you if you can interest yourself in any way (as I shall come out on speck if I do not hear of anything here) to help me. I am willing to do anything. I know the difference of Isablees from Jaysam,142 having had a few months practice at the warehouses. You may expect to see me within six months. I remain, your affect. Cousin Adolphus Ferguson Do not take this as a specimen of my writing as it is done in a hurry. Adieu. Short but sweet. …

3 July /61 S’hai My dear Mother, I received your kind note of the 3d May on the 28th Ult. for which many thanks. I would willingly give you fuller details of my proceedings in general but one day’s existence in this out of the way place is so like another that the account would be uninteresting to read and tiresome to give. Where there are not acquaintances in common correspondence must soon flag for the sheer want of something to talk about.

142

Unclear, but perhaps varieties of tea.

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Since I last sent you a line I have caught hold of a few Japanese things which I have placed in a box, together with the Sofa Cushion covers & two small paintings on porcelain from Yuen Ming Yuen [Yuanming Yuan, the Summer Palace] and sundry photographs. I send a receipt for them so that when the ship arrives you may gain possession. The much talked of Jade Stones go down to Canton to be mounted in Black Wood by next mail. I expect they will reach England about 12 months hence. When the Shawl arrives that I have sent to Bombay for I’ll send it along with a couple of dresses. I should much like to accompany them as I am sick of this place. It’s all losing money and no making in our days. I am most awfully grumbly just now. I hope things will soon change for the better or I may as well shut up shop entirely. We are now well into the summer and I shall be rejoiced when we are out of it as it is too hot for my liking, I prefer 60º to 90º. With kindest love to all Believe me ever, Your affte son, C. Lenox Richardson …

Shanghai 3d August 1861 My dear Father, The last mail brought me yours of the 10th June from which I was sorry to see what you say in reference to mine of 6th April. All I can say is I never intended you to draw any such conclusion. My great wish is to see you clear and get a fair start again and by next mail I hope to be able to send Herbert some coin to make a commencement. As bad luck will have it I never saw affairs in our trade look blacker, however I trust we will be able to scratch through all the little troubles.143 One 143

By the summer, Qing authority had been reduced to a sixty-mile arc around Shanghai, and the future looked bleak for foreign trade. ‘The Imperialists cannot protect our goods

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thing I told Herbert that was that I would do my best, but I declined to become personally responsible – it is against my creed. I cannot understand what the Fergusons will do. I sincerely trust that something can be done for their benefit. I never was more sorry to hear of mishap. I always looked upon my Uncle CAF [Charles Ferguson] as such an excellent worthy man. If another of our friends had snapped his neck instead of his legs he would have had precious little pity from me. I am … [The remainder of this letter is missing] …

Shanghai 17 Augt 1861 th

My dear Father, Your kind note of the 25th June, with one from my Mother & Gracie was only received by last mail. It was my intention to have made the first remittance on your account by the present opportunity, but our Exchange has in the most unaccountable way fallen to a very low rate. I do not think this can last any length of time and upon the first chance I shall open fire upon friend Montague and I have no doubt that by patience and perseverance we shall overcome the difficulties. I see that you have perused the accounts of our Races. We achieved a great success. I wish I could see the chance of a like result in Nov next when our Autumn Meeting comes on, the Shanghai Community would then have the pleasure of providing funds for your accommodation. I have got a fair horse, but he is an uncertain-tempered one so I expect no great things out of him.

beyond the 60 mile line’, wrote Medhurst in July, ‘and no one can venture into the rebel limits without great risk both of life and property’: TNA: FO 228/312, W.H. Medhurst to F. Bruce, No. 108, 28 July 1861.

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What a blaze all those warehouses must have made. It is a pity all the Silk and Tea was not collected there, it might have done some of us good in these bad times.144 … [The remainder of this letter is missing] …

Shanghai 5th Octr 1861 My dear Father, The last mail that arrived brought letters of the 26th July and 10th Augt. and I had the pleasure of receiving yours of the latter date. I am truly sorry that up to the present time I have not been able to fulfil my promises regarding the remittance, but this is the worst year that the China Trade has experienced for many a long day and it behoves one to look sharply around and harbour any stray Coin on the chance of a pinch. However, I trust matters will soon look brighter and then it will be my first consideration. I could not well send the money now without mortgaging some property which I am most anxious to keep clear and I think in the next 3 or 4 years it will have proved a good investment. I believe now I could get 100 p. cent on purchase, but if this place lasts I think I’ll see 400 p. cent – this is the sort of thing I wanted my Mother’s money for. Keep it quiet.145 Kindly tell her that I expect the Shawl in by the next mail from India, when I will send it along. I have also some beautiful Rice paper paintings that will go [too]. What a frightful business that American affair is growing into. I fear it stands the chance of becoming very protracted. Dr. Rus144

145

The Tooley Street fire of 22 June 1861 was described by contemporaries as London’s worst since the Great Fire of 1666. It began at Cotton Wharf among warehouses holding jute, spices, cotton and tea and spread over a quarter of a mile along the south bank of the Thames. The fire attracted tens of thousands of spectators, Richardson senior, perhaps, among them. Richardson was right about the investment. That very month, a Taiping force approached within 10 miles of the settlement, driving large numbers of distressed refugees before them, contributing to the ever-growing value of the land.

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sell of The Times gives very graphic descriptions. It is a pity he does not drop the letter “I” a little more. He appears to give more, or as much, in his description to himself as to what is going on around him.146 Tell Min & Gracie they’ll get their shot next mail without fail. Thank heaven another summer is past. I sincerely hope I shall have but one more in this part of the World before again seeing England. I wish I could think it would be for good and all, but as things look at present I can hardly expect such good luck. Give my kindest love to all and hoping soon to be able to relieve you and accomplish my dearest wish. Believe me ever, You affte son, C. Lenox Richardson …

Shanghai 6th Novr 1861 My dear Father, I have just a quarter of an hour to reply to your kind notes received by last mail and the one previous. We have certainly had rough times of it as far as business is concerned for some times past, but we must hope that ere long we shall see a more prosperous state of things. It has annoyed me more from having prevented me sending you such speedy relief as it was my hope to do, but I trust before many months are over to be able to send the necessary assistance. 146

William Howard Russell’s vivid descriptions of war in the Crimea and during the Indian Rebellion would have already been familiar to Richardson. The Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter (April) and the First Battle of Bull Run (July) were critical moments in the escalation of the American Civil War. Russell reached America in March and was too late to witness either event, but his accounts of them were unflattering to the Union, and made him progressively more unwelcome in Washington. He returned to England in April 1862.

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We have of late had the Rebels knocking about here, but they have never ventured within range of guns. They are also advancing upon a place called Ningpo. I do not know whether our authorities mean to defend it or not; if not, I suppose we shall have a further addition to our already over whelming Chinese population. However, all this will tend to enhance the value of property within the limits of this settlement, so it is an ill wind that blows nobody good.147 I had a letter from my Mother. She appears to be enjoying herself in Wales. I sincerely trust that the change & trip will be of the greatest benefit to both herself and Min. I shall, if possible, endeavour to take a look at you about next winter or the following spring. I should much like, tho’, to get a good season in trade to come home upon. We are getting an abominable Autumn. We have had rain off and on for the last 12 months and the place is like [a] ploughed field. Our Races come off 14th & 15th Inst. It will be awful work for the horses if the weather does not mend. I have one going, but I don’t think he can do any good. With very kindest love Believe me ever, You vy aff son, C. Lenox Richardson …

147

Ningbo, a smaller treaty port about 100 miles due south of Shanghai, lay across Hangzhou Bay. Qing officials here requested British assistance against the Taiping, and that summer Captain Dew of the Royal Navy came to inspect the preparedness of the city. On the basis of his report, Admiral Hope declined to help, judging that any attempted defence would be hopeless. Ningbo fell on the 9th of December. Meanwhile at Shanghai, in response to a series of raids in the hinterland, Medhurst issued a public notice containing plans for the maintenance of order. In the event of alarm, the Church bell would ring, marines and seamen would muster at the British consulate and church, while ‘all Gentlemen Volunteers who wish to assist will make the Racket Court their rendezvous, and there await the Artillery, with whom they will be requested to act’: TNA: FO 228/312, W.H. Medhurst, Notification, 15 Oct. 1861, encl. in W.H. Medhurst to F. Bruce, No. 161, 15 Oct. 1861. While Britain’s position on the Taiping civil war remained one of neutrality, official attitudes towards the Taiping were hardening. ‘We wish to be neutral in regard to the rebels,’ wrote the Foreign Secretary, ‘and that object at Shanghae might be difficult of attainment’: TNA: PRO 30/22/101, J. Russell to F. Bruce, 26 Apr. 1861.

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S’hai Decr 7th 1861 My dear Father, I omitted to send you a line last mail and strange to say that I have received none to reply to for the last month.This is partly owing to the non-appearance of the 10 Octr mail which I fancy must have broken down somewhere as she is long overdue. There is, however, but little to write about and as far as business is concerned this will be the worst year for this trade that has been since the panic. As luck will have it I am pretty clear of trouble but it is all outgoing and no incoming. The latest news from America that we have received via San Francisco holds out no hope of a speedy termination to the war, and as long as it lasts I fear business in England must remain very depressed. However, it may eventually have the effect of giving us cheap produce here which may, in some way, compensate us for the long blank that we have had this Season. Smiling in bad times is but unsatisfactory work, both to the sender & recipient. We are getting a lovely winter. I sincerely hope it will last as it is the only thing that is at all cheering in this part of the Globe at present. If the N. C. Herald is published in time I’ll send it along. There may be some little news in it that you might like to see. I expect shortly to be able to do some good with the property I mentioned before. If I succeed, your affairs shall have my first attention. I cannot draw money out of the business in these bad items or else it should not have stood over so long. Hoping for the best and with kind love Believe me ever, You aff son, C. Lenox Richardson …

24 Decr /61

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My dear Father, The last mail brought me your kind note of the 26th Octr and I was very sorry to see from it that you had been ailing. I sincerely hope however that you have quite recovered ere’ this and that in the course of a year or so I shall meet you in Old England quite hearty. It is, however, a long time to look forward to, so that I do not set my mind too much upon getting away in the case of my being disappointed. I shall nevertheless hope for the chance. We are getting an unpleasant winter, tolerably cold but with considerable accompaniments of wet unpleasant weather. The Volunteer fever has extended this far and there is a very respectable muster roll of Infantry. There is a troop of Cavalry in perspective to which I belong, should it be formed. I don’t think, however, that there will ever be much occasion for our services.148 I see by the papers that that American affair is as far off being settled as ever and until they come to some arrangement I hardly think that we can look for much improvement in trade. However, I suppose it will come sooner or later, we want it badly enough. Wish Min many happy returns of tomorrow. I wish I could do so in propria persona and hoping that you have all had a merry Christmas & will have a happy New Year. Believe me ever, Your aff son, C. Lenox Richardson 148

Richardson’s sanguinity here may well have been for his parents’ benefit. On the night of the 10th, Taiping forces approached the settlement from the north, and the Volunteers were called out to patrol until daylight. The following day, with refugees continuing to arrive, the British artillery took up position on the racecourse. Throughout the morning ‘the rush of men, women and children from the north side of Soochow Creek could be counted by thousands, while the crowds of Chinese from the City and Settlement to witness the preparations of the foreign authorities was immense, making the suburbs look like a great fair’. The Shanghai Volunteers regularly patrolled the streets, and drilled in the grounds of Dent & Co.’s godown. The light horse troop to which Richardson refers here was enrolled the following month, thirty sabres strong; the Volunteers later formed a half battery of artillery, too. TNA: FO: 228/327, ‘The Taiping Rebels Near Shanghai’, encl. in W.H. Medhurst to F. Bruce, No. 11, 4. Jan 1862.

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…

Shanghai 23rd Jany 1862 My dear Mother, The last mail we received was the 10th Novr and by it I got a note from your dear self and one from Min, both of which I was delighted to get. I have written to Herbert about my Father’s affairs. It has been a matter of much regret to me that I have not been able to send the promised coin, but as I have explained to Montague I have had a hard time of it. However, I never say die and doubt not that all will come round eventually.149 We have been having quite a little bit of excitement of late, the Rebels having thought it proper to appear in this neighbourhood and give us notice that they intend to take the place. I expect if they come on they will have a tighter time of it than they think. We are all soldiers here now. I am a sergeant in a Cavalry Troop; what with Batteries and entrenchments they are turning this place into a second Sebastopol.150 I don’t anticipate the same style of warfare and I should not

149 150

See: CLR: 21 Mar. 1860. On 3 January, a public meeting of the land renters was called to address the ‘state of excitement and alarm’ in the settlement caused by another sighting of Taiping scouts. Interestingly, the assembled foreign residents felt they had ‘more to apprehend from those who are within the lines of our defence’ – the same refugees by whom they profited so handsomely – than from the Taiping themselves, and appointed a Defence Committee to make recommendations. It devised a scheme to divide the settlement by inner lines into three equal sections, ‘the residents in each…confined within their own section, and the fearful rush of an immense body of panic-stricken people [thereby] effectually prevented’. Sixty Volunteers a night would man the lines in blockhouses and on barricades ‘of 8 inch Singapore timber, squared and fitted together, set 5 feet in the earth, and seven feet high above…’. Meanwhile, foreign troops – about 600 British and 900 French – would concentrate on the settlement’s outer defences. Richardson was there for both meetings. TNA: FO 228/327, ‘Minutes of a Public Meeting of Land Renters held at the British Consulate on 3January 1862’, encl. in W.H. Medhurst to F. Bruce, No. 11, 4. Jan 1862; TNA: FO 228/327, ‘Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Land Renters held at the British Consulate, Shanghai, on Wednesday 15th January, 1862’, encl. in W.H. Medhurst to F. Bruce, No. 14, 21 Jan. 1862

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be surprised if they do not come on at all. They have been hovering about here for the past ten days and some few have been very close.151 We have, with very few breaks, been having a splendid winter. Today is unpleasant and drizzly, something like a wet Feby day in England. I don’t think it will last long. In a fine winter we don’t often get more than 3 wet days together. I must now wish you good bye as it is within ten minutes of post closing, so with kindest love to all Believe me ever, Your very aff son, C. Lenox Richardson …

Shanghai 6th Feby 1862 My dear Mother, The last mail brought me your note of the 30th Novr, also one from my Father dated 10th Decr, both of which were welcome. I regret to see that my Father had been suffering from a severe attack of illness, but was glad to see by his note that he was getting round again. I can assure you that it has annoyed me not a little not having been able up to the present time to make the necessary remittance for the liquidation of my Father’s liabilities. I wrote Herbert last mail and made him fully acquainted with the reason of delay. I do not yet despair of being able to send relief ere’ long, but what with the loss of £2000 a year and a bad year for trade besides, I am somewhat crippled. What kind friend has been putting it into your head 151

A week earlier Ernest Satow, who had just arrived in Shanghai to begin his language training, wrote in his diary: ‘After dinner an alarm was given of the approach of the Rebels, [we] turned out & found all the people in a great state of excitement, marines and fieldpiece on the bridge, [I] went for my pistol and stick and waited on [the] bridge…’: E.M. Satow, diary for 16 Jan. 1862, in R. Morton and I.C. Ruxton (eds.), The Diaries of Sir Ernest Mason Satow, 1861–1869 (Kyoto, 2013), p. 2.

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that I am a millionaire? If such was the case – or a portion of one – I should not stop in this abominable country long. It is just possible that if things keep straight here and we are not scragged by Rebels I may have a moderate income 3 or 4 years hence, as I have some fairish property here, but with this exception, I have no more money than I know what to do with. There have been very bad years in the Silk trade ever since I came out here the last time.152 We have been getting a tremendous winter of it – at one time there were 3 feet of snow on the ground on a level and drifts of from 6 to 15 feet deep about the Country. This has effectually put a stop to the Rebels’ proceedings and they have pro tem retired, but report says only to start with greater force. However, if they do come I think they’ll get it hot and strong. I forgot if I told you that we are all soldiers here now and what with day drills & night patrols it is rather more than pleasant. There is a night guard of about 20 men. My turn comes once every 4 or 5 days. It just gives me an insight into what a soldier’s life must be like on foreign service.153 The thermo goes sometimes as low as 8º of a night, but we always have a jolly fire in the guard room so that those inside manage to keep pretty comfortable. I had my photo taken the other day, but the artist has not been very successful as it does not come out at all clear. However I send a copy. It is likely that I shall go South before long and will see if I can get it better done there.154 152

153

154

By the early 1860s, property had clearly become the most lucrative part of Richardson’s activities at Shanghai (see n157 below). As for the silk trade, since the start of 1862 the Daotai had imposed an additional tariff on silk entering the foreign settlement to compensate ‘for the loss of transit duty en route through country [now] held by the Rebels’. This so exasperated some foreign merchants that they began to wonder if it might not be preferable for the Taiping armies to come down after all, and to smash the remnants of Qing authority: TNA: FO 228/327, W.H. Medhurst to F. Bruce, No. 20, 28 Jan. 1862. The North China Herald was less upbeat about all this. ‘Around this small spot on the vast territory of China, the war-clouds that have been looming in the distance for some time are gathering heavily, and may burst with overwhelming force upon our devoted heads. The barometer of Peace is falling fast, and the lurid gloom of internecine War is darkening our social and political atmosphere …’: NCH, No. 600, 25 Jan. 1862, p. 14. The only known photograph of Richardson alive, reproduced as pl. 4, may be that referred to in this letter. It was discovered in 2013 by Kanami Nakatake of the Yokohama Archives of History in an album belonging to the British merchant James Campbell Fraser. Fraser, who knew Richardson from Shanghai, also came to Yokohama in 1862;

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With kindest love to all Believe me ever, Your truly aff Son, C. Lenox Richardson …

Shanghai 19th April 1862 My dear Father, The last mail brought me your note of the 26th Feby. I am sorry that I have been obliged to disappoint you with regard to funds, but I wrote to Herbert and explained the reason why and I don’t see how he can be indignant. Times have been anything but flourishing in this trade for the past 12 months and it has been hard work to make both ends meet. However, from the tone of your note I suppose it is absolutely necessary that you should have some money, so I will endeavour to scrape together £3 or 400 and send it to Herbert by the next mail without fail. I trust that you won’t think it unkind if I mention that when once these debts have been cleared off and it is all straight sailing it must be so managed that the joint incomes suffice for the maintenance of the family without incoming liabilities to be wiped off hereafter; you will please keep the fact of my assisting you as close as possible as I am myself indebted to Lenox Nephew & Co to a considerable amount and they could be very naturally annoyed if they knew my money was not moving towards their pockets. Our Races come off on Tuesday, Wedy & Thursday and if we have fine weather we shall see some good sport.

following Richardson’s murder, he became the Ensign of the Yokohama Volunteers Corps. See: ‘Namamugi jiken no gisei-sha, richādoson no shashin, hakken!’, Kikenshi Yokohama, No. 42 (Oct. 2013), pp. 72–75.

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The troops are every now and again slapping away at the Rebels & I hope before long that they will succeed in driving them out of this province.155 Please give the enclosed to either Grace or Min. & Believe me, Your affte son, C. Lenox Richardson …

Shanghai 2d May 1862 My dear Father, The last mail brought me your note of the 12th March. I regret much to see the annoyance that you are still suffering but trust it will not be of long duration. I have written Herbert and sent him a Bank Bill for £400, which will go some way towards satisfying the noisy ones. The Bill isn’t [word unclear] but it can easily be discounted. The Bank’s put the screw on so confoundedly for sight drafts that it does better to take long winded ones and pay discount at home. I have written Herbert full particulars & hope to have you all clear 3 months from this time. When you pay Mr Danson please tell him I hope to have the honor of his acquaintance some day when I’ll let him know what I think of him. All our races are over and the luck has regularly gone against us. Our Flyer met with an accident about a fortnight before the meeting and had to be laid by, so he did not come out as fit as he should have done; however, the S’hai community don’t owe us much, so we must not growl at a turn in the luck. 155

Throughout the spring, parties from British gunboats were sent to drive back Taiping forces in Shanghai’s hinterland. On 14 February, for example, Capt. George Willes of the Coromandel led a force to Plover Point on the Yangtze to recover cargoes and crews belonging to Dent & Co. and Fletcher & Co., and to give these Taiping bands ‘a wholesome lesson on the danger of interfering with European trade’: ‘The Taiping Rebels at Plover Point’, encl. in TNA: FO 228/327, W.H. Medhurst to F. Bruce, No. 38, 21 Feb 1862. Some of these expeditions were conducted alongside the fitful raiding activities of the American Frederick Townsend Ward, the commander of an infamous mercenary militia around Shanghai.

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The Rebels are catching it pretty briskly just now. A town called Kading was taken by the Allies yesterday, and next week they move on Tsinpoo [Qingpu] & Soochow [Suzhou] I believe: I was not at Kading but I shall be at the other two places if possible; after them I visit Japan, say about the middle of June, stop there during the summer & it is just possible that I may leave this for England in the first mail of October, but I shall not make sure of it until I start.156 Mackenzie goes home first mail in June or thereabouts. With kindest love … Believe me, te Your aff son, C. Lenox Richardson I enclose 2d of draft for £50 sent last mail. Yrs CLR. If Geo. Lenox had let my Mother’s money come out here when I wanted him to, it would have been worth £40 or £50000 now. Don’t I love him for it.157 156

157

In May and June, British and French forces were involved in a series of operations designed to establish a chain of defences around Shanghai. Qingpu was ‘cleared’ of rebels in June, and in July Medhurst reported a general falling back of the Taiping armies ‘leaving this place [Shanghai] and the neighbouring villages in a state of quiet they have not enjoyed for months’: TNA: FO: 228/328, W.H. Medhurst to F. Bruce, No. 133, 18 July 1862. It proved a false hope: within a month the Taiping had returned to within a few miles of the foreign settlement, and the battle for Shanghai went on until September. But by then, Richardson’s attentions had shifted to a new horizon. Whatever profit Richardson had realised through his properties, he was convinced he could have made more – and sooner – had he earlier had access to the capital alluded to here. That summer, foreigners’ habits of treating settlement land as a commercial asset were criticised by Frederick Bruce, but defended by the Consul, Walter Medhurst: ‘The foreign residents have no doubt benefited largely by the influx of Chinese into the settlement, and they have found it worth their while to encourage that influx by laying out considerable sums in purchasing land and erecting houses for Chinese use. In doing this however they have simply availed themselves of a fortuitous opportunity to meet demand by supply in a class of business in no way prohibited … It is true that the legitimate and treaty object of acquiring land is for the accommodation of foreigners, and the first Consul at this port [George Balfour] thought it his duty in conjunction with the Chinese Authorities to prohibit land from being sublet or resold to Chinese; but when this interdict was issued the applicants for land were numerous and the Chinese proprietors slow to sell so that it was absolutely necessary in the interest of all that individual speculation should be restrained.’ Medhurst, for one, was happy to defend the foreign landholders, whose practices ‘[have] been the means of collecting hither numbers of respectable wealthy native traders who have brought their capital with them, and throwing a vast amount of money into circulation amongst the poorer classes’: TNA:

THE LETTERS OF CHARLES LENOX RICHARDSON, 1853–1862 235

Shanghai 18th June 1862 My dear Father, Your note of the 26th April reached me by last mail and regret to see that you still continue to be bothered. However, that will be at an end before this reaches, so the less said the better. I notice what you say about dear Min’s future prospects. I hope he’s a decent sort of bird. £400 is rather a meagre sum to live upon, however it is far better for a girl to be married than remain single all her life, and if the husband is anyway sharp there may be a chance of his doing better. I hope for her sake it will come off.158 You must not be surprized if you do not hear from me for a month or two, as I am en route for Japan by the first oppy and the mail communication from there is very uncertain.159 After I return I will send you the other £500. I expect it will be some time in Sept. China trade does not open well this year so I shall keep clear of produce. Everything is a deal too high. I send the last 2 China Heralds & call your attention to Rennie’s discovery regarding cure for smallpox. It bids fair to make him one of the greatest medical men of the age. He is here now but I have

158 159

FO 228/329, W.H. Medhurst to F. Bruce, No. 173, 25 Sept. 1862. The landholders themselves, in contrast, inclined towards less fulsome praise of their tenants. Mary Harris (‘Minnie’) married in August 1864. On 7 June the North China Herald printed a glowing editorial on the ‘new tree of commerce’ taking root in Japan, even intimating that its hitherto reclusive government had lately become ‘imbued with [the] cosmopolitan spirit of free trade’. This would have been one of the last descriptions of Japan Richardson could have read before embarking for Yokohama: NCH, No. 619, 7 June 1862, p. 90. By chance, as Richardson wrote this letter home, an influential bakufu mission under Takasugi Shinsaku, Hibino Teruhiro and Nōtomi Kajirō was then visiting Shanghai. The impressions they formed there – of Chinese poverty, weakness and servility towards foreigners – stiffened their resolve to set the terms of any future engagement with Western powers: B.T. Wakabayashi, ‘From Peril to Profit: opium in Late-Edo to Meiji eyes’, in T. Brook and B.T. Wakabayashi, Opium Regimes: China, Britain and Japan, 1839–1952 (Berkeley, CA, 2000), pp. 55–75. Two days prior to writing this letter, and no doubt in preparation for the trip, Richardson made out a new will. Significantly, he left his estate to his mother and his sisters; his father was explicitly written out: TNA: FO 46/41, H.R. Reynolds to Secretary of the Treasury, 18 Dec. 1863.

236

THE GHOST OF NAMAMUGI

not yet had an oppy of making his acquaintance. I shall do so on the first chance. His cures have been most successful.160 With kind love Believe me, Your affte son, C. Lenox Richardson I hope Herbert has come round all right. Please keep these China Heralds. CLR …

Shanghai 29th June 1862 My dear Father, I have now before me yours of the 10 May which came in by the last mail. I am replying to it at this early date because I am off to Japan in the morning of the 2d and may not have much time between this and then. As I said in my [last] you must not be surprized if you do not hear from me for the next 2 or 3 months as the communication with Japan is very uncertain & irregular. However I shall of course write if the chance presents itself and let you know what sort of a place “Tong Yau”, as the Chinese call Japan, is like. I am fully prepared to be disappointed as everybody has said so much in its favor. I am going over in the Fiery Cross, a Str belonging to Jardine’s and commanded by a friend of mine née [sic] Crockett.161 By the way 160

161

Dr Rennie, surgeon of the 31st Regiment on campaign in the north, experimented with a new mode of treatment among the British troops while at Tianjin. His method involved applying an ‘irritating ointment’ to draw the disease from the face to other parts of the body, so that ‘the disfiguration of the countenance is greatly, if not entirely averted’. See: NCH, ‘New Method of Treating Small-Pox’, No. 615, 10 May 1862, p. 75. In his final weeks, the life of Charles Lenox Richardson became curiously intertwined with this vessel. Fiery Cross – not to be confused with the famous tea clippers of the same name – was an iron screw steamer, built on the Clyde in 1855 for Jardines. By 1862 she was shuttling freight between Hong Kong, Shanghai and Yokohama. On 20 September 1862, the same day it provided its comprehensive coverage of Richardson’s murder, the Japan Herald reported the sale of Fiery Cross, two weeks previously, to none other than

THE LETTERS OF CHARLES LENOX RICHARDSON, 1853–1862 237

he called on my Mother when he was in England, in company with little Macfarlane. Crockett is just married & the wife accompanies him. I am rejoiced you succeeded in getting what money you wanted from Mr Thompson & it won’t be long before you can repay him. Upon my return from Japan I send Herbert the balance, if not before, and then I hope that there will be an end to the persecutions you have been lately undergoing. I object in toto to your retrenchment scheme, and I beg that you will do nothing in the matter until my arrival in England when we will endeavour to get matters put up on a satisfactory footing, some how I dare say. I have no doubt you’ll think I am writing an awful scrawl but to tell the truth I have sold up my establishment and am writing on a rickety table that keeps bobbing up and down every time I take my hand off it. I have also let my home to H.M.s Govt. for Taels 500 a month. Keep this quiet – it is a good price but one can never tell how long they keep a place for. I should much rather have taken a lower rate & have got the unexpired portion of my lease taken off my hands. We are in for a sweet lot of weather here. We have scarcely had a fine day for the last fortnight. I hope to be better off in Japan. I hear there has been an immense deal of sickness amongst the troops here. Shimazu Hisamitsu. Satsuma had purchased its first British-built steamship, the England, in 1861, thereby breaking the bakufu’s monopoly on steam vessels. England herself would be captured and scuttled on Admiral Kuper’s orders at the outset of the bombardment of Kagoshima; the merchant who had brokered the sale was Richardson’s erstwhile employer, Kenneth Ross Mackenzie. Further ironies followed. In one contemporary interpretation of the collision at Namamugi, Hisamitsu’s black mood that day actually stemmed from the bakufu’s refusal to permit him to deviate from tradition and to return from Edo aboard Fiery Cross instead of making the arduous journey overland along the Tōkaidō. (Indeed, by the same account, the bakufu had actively tried to block Satsuma’s purchase of the vessel, wary of his growing maritime and mercantile independence.): TNA: FO 46/41, J.B. White to the editor of The Times, 5 Nov. 1863, encl. in Borradaile to J. Russell, 6 Nov. 1863. Later still, Augustus Kuper’s squadron, desperate for information on the waters around Kagoshima, took with them as a pilot ‘a Japanese boatman who had been once at that place in the steamer Fiery Cross’: TNA: FO 46/41, A.L. Kuper to Secretary to the Admiralty, 22 Aug. 1863. By then, the ill-starred vessel – renamed Eihei Maru – lay at the bottom of the Inland Sea, where she had been wrecked in the spring of 1863: ADM 1/5284, A.L. Kuper to Secretary to the Admiralty, 31 Mar. 1863. Had she not, she could very well have shared England’s fate at the outset of the bombardment. For more on Satsuma’s purchases of vessels, an important line of business for Jardines, see: J. McMaster, Jardines in Japan, 1859–1867 (Groningen, 1966), pp. 85–96.

238

THE GHOST OF NAMAMUGI

At one time they were going off 5 & 6 a day with cholera that took about 2 hours to dispose of them. I send you the paper in which you will see that there has been a pretty thing in the shape of a steamboat explosion. Some of the people who were on board have never been heard of from that day to this. I fancy they must have been regularly shivered. We shall have an enormous quantity of American steamers here shortly as there is going to be a new line open between San Francisco & this via Kanagawa, and when those Yankees get into competition with those high pressure boats, I fancy blows up won’t be the rarity they have been hitherto in these waters. However, it is an ill wind &c and these things put money in the Engineers’ and Boiler Makers’ pockets. Please thank my Mother & Min for their kind notes. I would answer but a rickety table is no joke, so they must … [here the letter ends, the last page is missing]. …

Yokohama 3d Septr 1862 My dear Father, When I was on the eve of leaving China I wrote to tell you that it was more than likely you would not hear of or from me for 2 or 3 months. Since then I have recd. your note of the 10th June and have now a chance of sending a line via Shanghai. I have been over here for about 2 months and intend to stop another so as to be well quit of the hot weather of China before returning there. I trust to be able to leave S’hai for England about the end of Octr and I hope I never have occasion to visit it again. I hope before you receive this that you will have got all your affairs straight and that you will in future be comfortable and happy. When I hear that it will be the proudest day in my life. I sent over word to Shanghai to my agent there to make the remce of £500 to Montague H. so I fancy all will be right. The only thing will be that

THE LETTERS OF CHARLES LENOX RICHARDSON, 1853–1862 239

we must keep out of the mud in future & I think we shall be able to manage that. Don’t be surprized if you don’t hear much of me for a time as I may not be able to write from here again before I leave & when I do that I shall be on my way home. I hope to see you about the beginning of the year. I’ll let you know if I can when I am likely to be in Paris or I’ll telegraph from there and if you like you can come over. The trip might do you good. This is the finest country I have been in out of England, most magnificent hill and sea scenery. I have seen a good deal of the country since I have been here. I brought a horse over with me so have been comparatively independent & have ridden about a good deal. I was lucky enough to get up to Yeddo, and certainly it is a most wonderful city when we consider that these people have kept themselves isolated from the rest of the world. The official quarter of Yeddo would do credit to any Western power. It is one mass of streets as broad nearly as Regent Street & on either side are the houses & places of the Damios here who occupy much the same position as the Barons of England did in olden time, and they all own large quantities of retainers. The Tycoon’s or principal ruler’s place is an enormous park surrounded by 3 stone walls of great height & thickness & they are again encircled by 3 moats, each about 20 or 30 feet wide. The gates of their city are perfect wonders, more massive than any I ever saw. However, I’ll tell you all about these things when we meet. I have been going in for a few curios as I suppose it will be necessary to have some things to distribute when one reaches home. I shall send them direct p. sailing ship. Give my kindest love to all and if you don’t hear from me until I am in Paris don’t be surprized. Until then, believe me ever, Your affte son C. Lenox Richardson By the way, Min & Grace may not get their coin by the end of the year unless I get away from here sooner than I expect. However, I’ll make it up when I see them. Yrs CLR.

Index Ž

Admiralty, 43, 44, 66–67, 132n13 Alcock, Rutherford (diplomat), 24, 35, 44, 49, 62–64, 65, 67, 76, 133n15, 142n32, 149n47, 162n68; criticism of foreign merchant communities, 24, 32, 50n7, 159–160n63; frustration with Chinese and Japanese officialdom, 13n6, 26n54, 62, 102–103 American Civil War, 19, 81, 224–225, 227 Anglo-Japanese alliance, 110–111 Applin, Lieutenant (Yokohama Legation escort), 36, 37 Argus, HMS, 41 Asaumi, Takeo, 115 Aspinall, Mackenzie and Company (formerly Mackenzie Brothers and Company), 19–20, 131n11, 134, 135, 140n27, 141, 142, 159n62; bankruptcy of, 20, 169–170, 172 Aspinall, Richard (merchant), 131, 136, 141, 144, 169–170n80 Aspinall, William Gregson (merchant), xiv, 19, 26, 27, 93, 131n11, 136n22, 141, 169–170n80

Barrosa, HMS, 100 Beato, Felice (photographer), 95 Bell, Frederick (merchant), 37, 55, 93 Bellecourt, Gustave Duschene de (diplomat), 31n9, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 43n58, 92, 93 Berlin Waterworks Company, 120, 132, 154, 178 Bittern, HMS, 164–165, 167–168 Black, John Reddie (newspaper proprietor and author), 5, 31n8, 53n18, 59, 63, 69, 70, 91, 95, 105 ‘Black-eyed Susan’, 95–96 Borrodaile, Margaret, 4, 35, 40–41, 51, 86, 107 Brinkley, Francis, 98, 106n53 British critics: of China policy, 17, 110; of foreign merchant communities, 25n51; and ‘outrage’, 83–84 Bruce, Frederick 87–88, 190n105, 194, 196n111, 207n125 Bruce, James (Earl Elgin), 80, 184n96, 186–187, 188, 189, 190, 203n119, 205 Bythesea, Capt. John (Royal Navy), 185, 186, 188–189, 212, 213–214

Bailey, Rev. Michael Buckworth, 37, 55, 92–93 bakufu (Tokugawa shogunate) 4, 28–29, 31, 49, 58–59, 82, 94, 96, 97, 102, 105 bakumatsu period, politics of, 4, 30n5, 48, 58–59, 102–103, 112n74 Barracouta, HMS, 156–157n57, 168

Camus, Lieutenant J.J. Henri, death of, 92, 93 Canton, conditions of western commerce at, 11, 12n3, 17, 19, 90n3, 127–128, 130n6, 178, 184n97, 189 cavalry troop. See Shanghai Volunteer Corps

241

242

China Mail (newspaper), 20n30, 25, 34, 86, 169n80, 200n114 Clarke, Edward (merchant), 37, 69 Clarke, Woodthorpe (merchant), 4, 36, 51, 86, 69, 115 Clavell, James (novelist), 7n3, 114 Cobden, Richard (parliamentarian), 8, 42–43, 45, 46, 76n113, 77, 79, 80, 110 cotton, 11 Crimean War (1853–56), 19, 21, 81, 136n21, 143, 148, 150, 155, 156, 160, 164–165, 166, 173–174, 185n99, 225n146 Cruiser, HMS, 185, 186, 188–189, 212, 213 Dejima (Nagasaki), 59, 64, 65 Dent and Company, 37, 69, 156n56, 177n87, 214, 233n155, 228n148 Don Pacifico Affair (1850), 29, 77, 79 Edo, 31n8, 38, 39, 74, 96, 239 Elgin. See Bruce, James Ellice, Kinnear and Company, 119, 120, 132n14 Encounter, HMS, 152–153n51, 154n52, 156n57 Euryalus, HMS 28, 29, 41, 44 Fatshan Creek, 35n25, 180n91 Fiery Cross (Eihei Maru), steamship, 54, 236–237 Fisher, George (US Consul, Kanagawa), 42, 52, 58n42, 75 Foreign Inspectorate of Customs (Imperial Maritime Customs Service), 16 Fraser, James C., 69, 231n154 Fukuzawa, Yukichi, 84n148, 97 Gascoyne-Cecil, Robert, 8, 45, 79–80, 83, 86 Gladstone, William, 8, 68, 209n128

INDEX

Glover, Thomas Blake (merchant), 100, 140n27 Gower, Samuel (Yokohama agent, Jardine, Matheson and Company), 33, 37, 54, 55, 69, 92–93 grave of Charles Lenox Richardson, 5, 93, 98, 115, 121 Great Kantō Earthquake (1923), 99 Griffis, William Elliot, 95–96, 108–109 Gros, Baron Jean-Baptiste Louis, 207 Hall, Francis (merchant and diarist), 30, 33n17, 49, 56, 70–71, 104 Hangzhou, 130n6, 135n20, 201n116 Hankou, 140n27, 186–187 Hansard, Alfred W. (newspaper proprietor), 32, 54 Harrison and Crosfield (merchants), 214 Harrison, Frederick (politician and critic), 8, 43, 46, 77–78, 80–81, 83–84, 85, 86n156, 110 Hayakawa, Shōzan, 101 Heath, Agnes Mary (1826–1912), 13, 145, 147, 179, 180 Heath, Florence Marian (1858–1936), 98, 119, 121–122, 145 Heco, Joseph (Hamada Hikozō), 96–97 Heusken, Henry (interpreter), 92 Hobson, John Atkinson (economist), 110 Hogg, Edward Jenner (merchant), 99 Hong Kong, 11, 17, 44, 86, 127, 131, 132n13, 156, 165, 169n80 Hope, Admiral James (Royal Navy), 64, 194n109, 196n111, 197, 226n147 House, Edward H. (journalist), 89, 93–94, 106–109 Huangpu river, 11, 12, 139n25, 202n118 Huzhou, 130n6, 135n20, 186

INDEX

India, 11, 21, 86n158, 138n24, 218, 224 Indian ‘Mutiny’ (1857–58), 19, 41, 79, 81–82, 86n158, 203n119, 225n146 Inoue, Yoshika, 100 James Bowman and Company, 20, 142n32, 172, 177 Japan: British understandings of, 49, 58n42, 59, 63–64, 67, 80–81; as foreign commercial prospect, 26–27, 31, 32, 33, 34, 42, 57–58, 160–161n66, 189n104, 236; as potential belligerent, 30, 42–44, 67–68, 76, 82; commercial treaties with, 31n8, 59, 80, 105–107, 108–109, 160 Japan Express (newspaper), 55, 71 Japan Herald (newspaper), 31n8, 32n13, 57, 58, 80, 99; and Charles Lenox Richardson, 6, 26, 50–51, 86–87, 91–92; and the Namamugi Incident, 43, 53, 54–55, 56, 61, 65, 71, 75, 79, 103, 236–237n161 Japan Times (newspaper), 106 Jardine, Matheson and Company, 33, 140n27, 200, 236–237n161 Jiangsu province, 135n20, 201n116 Jiji shinpō (newspaper), 106 Kagoshima, destruction of by naval bombardment, 5, 8, 28–29, 41, 44–46, 99, 100, 236–237n161; Armstrong guns, performance of at, 41, 46, 77–78; reaction in Britain, 8, 45–46, 52, 68, 75–82, 110 Kanagawa, 4, 36; Governor of, 96, 99 Kawasaki, 3, 4 Kay, William (merchant), 135 Kingston, W.H.G. (novelist), 113–114 Kobe, 27, 31n8, 140n27 Kuper, Admiral Augustus (Royal Navy), 28–29, 37–38, 43, 49n3,

243

65, 69, 70, 73, 77, 79, 89, 100, 236–237n161 Kurokawa, Shōzo, 97–99 Lady Mary Wood (P&O), 135, 158n61 Lenox, John (merchant), 13, 19, 130, 135, 136, 156, 194, 195, 220 Lenox, Louisa Anne, 23, 119–120 London Peace Society, 42, 76, 80, 81 London Protocol (1862), 31, 32, 58, 63, 64 Macao, 158–159, 178 Mackenzie Brothers and Company. See Aspinall, Mackenzie and Company Mackenzie, Charles Douglas (merchant), 127n3, 131, 133, 136, 140, 141 Mackenzie, Kenneth Ross (merchant), 26, 127n3, 131, 140n27, 141, 236–237n161 Marshall, William (merchant), 4, 36, 51, 93, 108, 115 Meadows, Thomas Taylor (Consul, Shanghai), 198n112, 202n118, 207n125 Medhurst, Walter (Consul, Shanghai), 213n134, 222n143, 234n157 Meiji Ishin, 5, 101–102, 116 Meteor (steam-tug), 19, 202n118 Mizuno, Tadanori, 40n43, 160n66 Morrison, George, 97n26, 100 Muddy Flat, ‘Battle’ of (1854), 16, 152–153n51, 154 Mutilation. See Richardson, Charles Lenox (merchant), death at Namamugi of Nagasaki, 44, 60, 61, 97n26, 102, 140n27, 157n57, 160–161n66 Nakamura, Masanao, 97–98 Namamugi Incident (Namamugi jiken): contemporary reaction to, 28, 40–41, 46, 50, 56, 62, 64–66,

244

83–84, 96–97; memorial (1883), 97–99, 121; memory of, 5, 9, 30, 90–116; negotiations and payment of indemnity, 28–29, 70–71, 74, 75, 80, 89, 93, 100, 103–105 Namamugi rail disaster, 3 Namamugi, village of, 4, 94–96, 97–99 Nanjing, 138n24, 168n79, 174, 180n92, 201n116; Treaty of, 11, 13 Napier, Lord William John, 90 naval power, threatened use of, 18, 64, 66–68, 77n119, 104, 175 Neale, Col. Edward St.John (diplomat), 31, 32, 35, 74, 89–90, 94, 103–104; criticism of, 35–36, 37, 39, 55, 61, 71–73, 75; at Kagoshima, 28–29, 82, 112; and reaction to Richardson murder, 35, 36, 38 Ningbo, 127n3, 226n147 North China Herald (newspaper), 13, 16n15, 20n30, 27, 56, 169n80; and the Taiping Rebellion, 14, 16 Ōkuma, Shigenobu (statesman), 111 opium, 20–21, 174 Opium War, First (1839–42), 11, 17, 59 Opium War, Second (1856–60), 13, 18, 35n25, 82, 132n13, 178, 180, 181, 184n96, 203, 206, 207, 210, 211, 213n135 Osaka, 31, 58 Palmerston, Lord (Henry John Temple, Prime Minister 1859–65), 7, 29, 46, 66–68, 77n119, 83 Parkes, Sir Harry (diplomat), 35n25, 72n98, 109, 211n132 Pearl, HMS, 29 pebrine (disease), 22, 26, 136n21 Peninsula and Oriental Steamship Navigation Company (P&O), 125n1, 132n13, 197

INDEX

Perseus, HMS, 44, 100 Pique, HMS, 180 piracy, 21–22, 156n56, 167, 175n86, 178 Polsbroeck, Dirk de Graeff van (diplomat), 92 Pruyn, Robert H. (US Minister to Japan 1861–65), 107–109 Racehorse, HMS, 44 Reed, Eugene Van (merchant), 58n43 refugees. See Shanghai foreign settlement Rennie, David Field, 86n158, 94n18 Richardson, Charles Lenox (merchant): assault on Chinese servant, 24–26, 87–88, 107, 199–200, 205, 206; attitudes towards the Chinese of, 17, 18, 24, 87–88, 203, 205; birth and youth, 13, 161n67; body, laid out and photographed, xiv, 92, 115; character of, 6, 50–52, 65, 82–88, 93–94, 107–108, 114, 116; and commercial activity, 22, 121, 135–136, 137, 143, 164, 169–170n80, 178, 222, 224, 230–231; and ‘curios’, 27, 121–122, 185, 187, 192, 193, 203, 212, 213–214, 215, 216, 218, 222, 239; death at Namamugi of, and inquest concerning, 4–5, 36–37, 51–53, 54, 86, 87, 97, 107–108, 112, 113; funeral of, 54, 92–93; and ideas about Japan, 26–27, 236, 238–239; lodgings, 134, 139, 141–142, 144, 172, 212, 237; private correspondence of, 6–7, 19, 119–121, 133, 135, 185; and property, 22–23, 121, 122, 224, 226, 227, 231, 234 Richardson, Charles senior (merchant), 13–14, 119, 132n14; and debts, 13–14, 20, 22, 120,

INDEX

121, 129–130, 136–137, 143, 164, 194, 197, 203–204, 208–209, 216–217, 229, 230, 232, 237 Robertson, Daniel Brooke (Consul, Shanghai), 163, 165n73, 169– 170n80, 175n86, 181n93 Royal Navy. See Admiralty; Kagoshima; Kuper; entries for individual warships Russell, Lord John (Foreign Secretary 1859–65), 7–8, 30, 62, 63, 64, 66, 72–73, 103 Ryūkyū Kingdom, 43–44, 67, 102 Sailors, 12, 25n52 Satow, Ernest (interpreter and diplomat), 23n45, 41, 45, 94, 102, 104, 113, 230n151 Satsuma Students Museum (Satsumahan igirisu ryūgakusei kinenkan, Hashima, Kagoshimaken), 115–116 Satsuma-han, 4, 5, 29, 43–44, 53, 58n43, 67–68, 89, 99–101, 102–103, 104–105, 115, 140n27 Saunders, William (photographer), xiv, 92 Sebastopol: comparisons with siege of, 28, 229 Second Italian War of Independence (1859), 81, 196n111 Seymour, Edward (First Lord of the Admiralty, 1859–66), 62, 68 Seymour, Read Admiral Sir Michael, 35n25 Shanghai: climate of, 19, 131, 133n16; connections to Yokohama, 26–27; Customs House, 18, 142n32, 149, 181; daotai (Intendant) of, 138– 139n24, 142n32, 145n38, 166n76, 207n125, 231n152; French forces at, 162n68, 210n129, 229n150; location of, 11; Qing authorities at, 13; race course, 12, 152n51,

245

207n125, 210n129, 228n148; siege of (1853–55), 15, 17–18, 138–139n24, 142–143, 145–146, 148, 149, 152–153n51, 154, 161–162, 163; walled Chinese city at, 11, 145–146 Shanghai foreign settlement, 11–12; anchorage of, 12; arrangements for defence of, 15, 16, 17, 18, 133n15, 229; and boredom, 17–18, 23, 142, 171, 191; British Consulate, 23, 190, 226n147; and Chinese refugees, 15, 23, 163n70, 213, 224n145, 226; Chinese residents of, 12, 15; commercial conditions at, 11, 12, 15, 128n4, 130n6, 163, 166, 173n84, 175, 180n92, 184n97, 222, 227; foreign mercantile community of, 12, 19, 86, 134n18, 142, 169n80; horse racing, 177, 185, 193, 205, 212, 217, 218, 223, 226, 233; unrest within (1859), 198 Shanghai Municipal Council, 16, 139n25 Shanghai Volunteer Corps, 15, 16, 17, 18, 69, 142–143, 152–153n51, 210n129, 226n147, 228, 229, 231 Shiba, Ryōtarō (novelist), 3, 114–115 Shimazu clan, 5; and steamships, 29, 54, 100–101, 140n27, 236–237n161 Shimazu, Hisamitsu (regent of Satsuma), 4, 5, 52–4, 93–94, 96, 97, 99, 100, 102–103, 108, 114–115, 236–237n161 Shimazu, Prince Tadashige, 99 Shimonoseki, 58n142, 82 Shogun, 4, 34, 53 silk, trade in, 19–20, 21, 22, 26n56, 135–136, 137n23, 150, 165, 176–177, 201, 231 Small Sword Society. See Shanghai, siege of smuggling, 34, 102, 138–139n24, 140n27, 149, 159n63, 163n70

246

Smyth, James (soldier), 95 Soochow Creek. See Wusong river Stirling, Rear-Admiral Sir James, 156–157n57, 160–161n66 Styx, HMS, 154n52, 163 Summer Palace (Yuanming Yuan), destruction and looting of, 19, 211n132, 212, 213, 215, 221 Suzhou, 135n20, 138n24, 159n63, 174, 201n116, 207n125 Taiping Rebellion (civil war), 14, 16, 21, 133n15, 138–139n24, 180n92, 181–182, 226, 229–230, 231, 233, 234; British opinion regarding, 14– 15, 18, 146, 163, 175, 226n147; effect on trade at Shanghai, 14, 21–22, 27, 159, 168n79, 174–175, 184n97, 187, 201, 207, 210, 222–223n143; and rumour, 18 Taku forts, 18, 35n25, 180n90, 184n96, 185n99, 194n109, 195–197, 203, 210 tea, trade in, 20, 21, 22, 130n6, 165, 169n80, 173, 175 Tianjin, Treaty of (1858), 135n20, 171n81, 184 Tōgō, Heihachirō, 99 Tōkaidō, 4, 35, 46, 59–62, 70, 94–96 treaty ports, 11, 14, 120; and ‘confinement’, 17, 32, 58, 59, 65, 127–128, 159; and currency exchange rates, 32–33, 137, 175–176; and excursions, 17, 59–60, 171, 186, 238–239; and photography, xiv, 95, 212, 215, 231

INDEX

treaty revision. See Japan, commercial treaties with Vyse, Francis Howard (British Consul, Yokohama), 33, 36, 37, 38–40, 52, 53, 61, 73–74, 92 West Indies, 119, 139n26, 151, 194n108 Willis, Dr. William, 33, 34, 36, 41, 45, 54, 65, 72, 91n5, 104, 113 Winchester, Charles (Consul, Nagasaki), 44, 49n6, 60, 72, 102n41 Wirgman, Charles (illustrator), 52n16, 94–95 Wusong river, 11, 149n35, 207n125, 228n148 Yangtze river, 11, 22, 184n96, 185n99, 186–187, 188–189 Yokohama foreign settlement, 3–4, 13, 71, 97–99; arrangements for defence of, 38, 69, 70, 226n147; cemetery (Yamate), 5, 30, 92–93; communications with London, 34; foreign mercantile community of, 31, 48, 55, 84; and merchant-official friction, 32–33, 39, 60, 61; reaction to Richardson murder within, 35, 36–40, 50–51, 55, 56–57, 69–73, 84–85; reputation of, 33, 50, 52, 85, 86–87, 107 Yoshimura, Akira, 97n25, 114, 115 Yule, A.H., 61