Twentieth Century Colonialism and China

Localities, the everyday, and the world

Bryna Goodman, David Goodman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136450396
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Chinese History
• Index: History

Colonialism in China was a piecemeal agglomeration that achieved its greatest extent in the first half of the twentieth century, the last edifices falling at the close of the century. The diversity of these colonial arrangements across China's landscape defies systematic characterization.

This book investigates the complexities and subtleties of colonialism in China during the first half of the twentieth century. In particular, the contributors examine the interaction between localities and forces of globalization that shaped the particular colonial experiences characterizing much of China's experience at this time. In the process it is clear that an emphasis on interaction, synergy and hybridity can add much to an understanding of colonialism in Twentieth Century China based on the simple binaries of colonizer and colonized, of aggressor and victim, and of a one-way transfer of knowledge and social understanding. To provide some kind of order to the analysis, the chapters in this volume deal in separate sections with colonial institutions of hybridity, colonialism in specific settings, the social biopolitics of colonialism, colonial governance, and Chinese networks in colonial environments.

Bringing together an international team of experts, Twentieth Century Colonialism and China is an essential resource for students and scholars of modern Chinese history and colonialism and imperialism.

PART I

Colonial governance and questions of identity

1

‘GOOD WORK FOR CHINA IN EVERY POSSIBLE DIRECTION’

The Foreign Inspectorate of the Chinese Maritime Customs, 1854–1950

Robert Bickers

In the background of the iconic photographs of foreign residents departing Shanghai in 1949 – Henri Cartier-Bresson’s shots in May that year, or those of Jack Birns in September – can be spotted various Chinese members of the Maritime Customs Service, which regulated the arrival and the departure of ship’s passengers (Cartier-Bresson 1956: 136; Wakeman and Light 2003: 121). Standing at the bottom of the gangplank in one of Birns’s shots, dressed in a uniform modelled on the naval attire of the Anglophone world, is one figure whose presence speaks volumes about the world that is coming to a close. It seems fitting to draw attention away from the too-obvious symbolism of the departing passengers towards this representative of an institution that was pivotal to China’s interaction with the world overseas in the century up to the victory of the Chinese Communist Party. A foreign national still led the service that this man worked for, as his predecessors had since 1854, and at least 11,000 foreign nationals had worked for the service at some point in the preceding 96 years. Those departure procedures undergone by foreign nationals leaving in 1949 mirrored those to be faced at the end of their journey, just as the uniforms mirrored those worn overseas. At its points of entry and departure, China seemed disorientatingly familiar. This was the operational achievement of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service (CMCS), the single most important institutional innovation of the treaty era.

Foreign residents left, but the establishment and staff, and in many cases the procedures and norms, of the CMCS remained, both on the mainland and in the rump republic. This states the obvious, but in fact such institutional continuities have generally been occluded by notions that 1949 marked a definitive break with the past, and in the case of the Customs, by an absence of work (in English in particular) on the service after 1937, let alone after 1945 (for recent work see Lyons 2003; Brunero 2006; van de Ven 2006; Bickers 2008a). They are also clouded by misunderstandings of the place of the CMCS within the Chinese state. The Imperial (later simply Chinese) Maritime Customs Service built up or oversaw much of the infrastructure of that century-long phase of Sino–foreign trade and interaction which was drawing to a close in 1949, reconciling it to overseas norms as they developed (and tracking changes in those). It was also vital to the finances of the Qing and the Republican states until 1941, both in terms of the revenues collected from across the country, whose delivery to the central state it guaranteed, and through its role as security for foreign loans. Although often viewed by observers as a tool of foreign (mainly British) imperialist control, it was always an agency of the Chinese state, and formally responsible to it. Successive Inspectors-General (IG) had wielded great power and a considerable degree of autonomy, but they had each, in their own way, affirmed their fundamental loyalty to the interests of the state that employed them.

The CMCS was always much more even than a simple excise service. Partly as a result of Sir Robert Hart’s own vision for modernising China (Hart was the second IG, 1863–1911) – and because of the alliances he established with key figures in self-strengthening circles (Horowitz 2006), but also because there was no other agency which could initially organise the work and that had international goodwill and connections, the Customs extended its range across a wide range of internationalising, self-strengthening or self-consciously ‘modernising’ activities. As Hart put it in 1885, it did ‘good work for China in every possible direction’ (China Maritime Customs 1938b: 544). It built up coastal and riverine lights infrastructures; represented China at international exhibitions and in some diplomatic negotiations (and directly funded the early Chinese diplomatic service); and oversaw the development of a key educational institution (the Beijing Tongwenguan). It surveyed China’s coasts and rivers; established a national meteorological network and the Chinese Post Office; and built up a significant and lasting body of publications about China, ranging from topographical surveys, medical reports and reams of statistical data through to less obvious monographs such as J. A. Van Aalst’s Chinese Music (1884). ‘The West does not understand China’, Hart noted in 1869, ‘nor does China understand the West’ (Hart, ‘Note on Chinese Matters’, 30 June 1869, in China Maritime Customs 1938b: 303). Much of the work of the CMCS was deliberately aimed at bridging that gulf. Other branches of the state came in time to contest its roles and to supersede it, but successive local and central administrations had called on the CMCS to undertake a wide range of work, and even at its lowest point – after it was shattered during the Pacific war, and lost much of its raison d’être (and many staff) – the National Government used it to help extend the reach of the state into Xinjiang (Bickers 2008b). The service proved itself a useful asset right up to the end of the Foreign Inspectorate.

But the Customs was also clearly a part of British informal empire, that evolving repertoire of practices that secured the levels of advantage, control or influence deemed necessary for implementation of the British state’s strategic or economic aims. The latter might at times seem definable as extending free trade by force. Informal influence and presences were prone to ossify into a more formal hold; it was in fact clearly often the first stage in the establishment of a more formal colonial presence, but more often than not the agents of that British power on the ground, or the opportunists who followed the flag (the colonial government in Hong Kong, or the Shanghailander British; Bickers 1998) pursued their own self-interested agendas, pushing to expand, entrench or defend their positions. As long as these coincided with wider British state interests they could be tolerated, even supported, but they were dropped when the necessary moment had passed (Bickers 1999). The CMCS was from the 1850s to 1930s a British asset, but this must be tempered by the fact that firstly it was always a Chinese state agency, and secondly it was always staffed by a multi-national cadre of officials, and if imperial and other rivalries were clearly sometimes in evidence within its ranks, its carefully nurtured ethos of cosmopolitan service usually won through. Looking at the Customs allows us to explore some of the meanings, nature and limits to informal empire in China. This chapter does so through a survey of some issues around the composition and structure of the CMCS, and then looks at its operations in Nanning in south-west China’s Guangxi Province, a locality far away from the chattering centre of its operations.

‘Our Hart’: whose customs?

What could provide a better example of a hybrid institution than the Maritime Customs? The term has its critics, but an institution that deliberately melded together elements of Qing and British administrative practice – literally so in the detailed form of its internal types of communication, which took Chinese official forms as their models (Circular No. 2/1873) – can reasonably and sensibly be so described. The CMCS worked in at least two worlds. Its most influential IG, Ulsterman Sir Robert Hart, who held the post substantively from 1863 to 1908, was routinely lauded as an agent of British influence, if not power, in China, by British observers as well as (less positively) their rivals (Bickers 2006). Hart even accepted the post of British Minister in 1885, although he withdrew, not least of the reasons being that he would prove more useful a British asset as IG (China Maritime Customs 1938b: 544). But Hart was always at pains to impress upon his employees, at all levels, that they served only the Chinese state, and should be loyal to their employers. ‘Our Hart’, Prince Gong called him in 1861 (Rennie 1865: 264). Hart’s important Circular No. 8/1864 is very clear: ‘In the first place’, it begins, ‘It is to be distinctly and constantly kept in mind, that the Inspectorate of Customs is a Chinese not a Foreign Service’ (China Maritime Customs 1879: 54). Commissioners were appointed to ‘assist the Chinese Superintendent[s] of Customs’ (China Maritime Customs 1878: 1). Foreign traders initially entertained ‘deep-rooted dislike’ of a service that applied British norms and enforced honest practice on traders who routinely criticised what they represented as an ingrained Chinese propensity for corruption, but who preferred nonetheless to deal with Chinese officialdom where they had to, and no officialdom at all if they possibly could (China Maritime Customs 1879: 56; 1938b: 176–77, 183–87). This was also a transfer of resource from the provinces to the modernising central state – ‘to an extent never dreamt of before’, claimed Hart in 1864 (China Maritime Customs 1938b: 192) – and it was a feature of the effective function of the Customs that was to long outlast its early years, and that, after the post-Qing breakdown of central power, was to provoke a number of political crises as regional power holders or foreign occupiers sought to seize back local revenues.

The outsourcing, enforced or otherwise, of responsibilities such as those taken on by Hart’s service was hardly restricted to China. The interpolation of Europeans, whether as technical or other experts and advisors, into the administrative machineries of independent states, or as traders into existing networks of trade, was a central feature of European colonial history and the developing world of globalised trade in the nineteenth century. In particular, the Ottoman empire’s sovereignty was impaired in ways that echo China’s, and Egypt was subject to what some critics termed ‘an administrative army of occupation’ (The Times, 31 March 1894: 15). Japan, Siam and many other states also took on (or had forced on them) foreign experts and advisors. From the vantage point of those who actually staffed the service, it was also hardly unusual. Catherine Ladds (2008b) has recently demonstrated how tightly intertwined the world of Chinese Customs employment for foreigners was with wider imperial and international career networks. For individuals, landing a post was a somewhat random happenstance. A better examination result might have sent a man to India; a different family connection might have sent him to Argentina. The Customs was just one part of the ‘British world’ of work and opportunity (Bridge and Fedorowich 2003). But even so, only around half of all those who served in the Customs were British. German, French, Russian, American and, in the twentieth century, Japanese nationals were strongly represented amongst those who served. This had always been Hart’s policy, and the composition of the service in any one year was widely publicised. Foreign recruitment of administrative employees (the Indoor Staff of ‘Assistants’ and Commissioners) was increasingly politicised in the later nineteenth century as intra-imperialist rivalries were heightened in the aftermath of Japanese victory in the 1894–95 war with China, and Hart shaped his hiring patterns with a view to forestalling criticism and pressure which might follow from diplomats to recruit more of their own nationals (Ladds 2008a). Certainly, this cosmopolitan face of the Customs to an extent masked the hold of the British, or at least Britons, but as successive IGs deflected attempts by diplomats to assert the privileging of specific nationalities, it can reasonably be concluded that the Customs usually kept all interested parties sweet.

Foreign men who staffed the service had different calls on their loyalties, and these sometimes conflicted sharply. ‘The personal sympathies of Mr Mansfield are more those of a Foreign Consul as of a Customs Employé’, noted a Commissioner of his Assistant in 1907, recommending the transfer of the man away from the sensitive newly opened treaty-port of Nanning.¹ Others were certainly capable of acting with violence or racism towards Chinese colleagues or subordinates, although the CMCS aimed to prevent this. But an analysis which assumes that a foreign national in Chinese employ faced a simple binary choice, and put his homeland first every time, is inadequate even with this and other examples to hand. Firstly – insidiously in some lights – most of the administrative staff saw a fairly clear congruence of interests between their loyalties to the work of the Customs and its contribution to China’s development, and their own national interests. Moreover, from the 1890s, the Customs revenue provided the security on which successive and multiplying foreign loans to China were pledged, and protecting the interests of foreign bondholders became for some individuals the rationale underpinning their work. Secondly, Hart buffered them by fostering a cult around his own person, which was perpetuated by his successors (Bickers 2006). As sometime Commissioner and historian H. B. Morse wrote, it was impossible to impugn ‘the absolute loyalty’ of the Customs administrative cadre ‘to their chief and the government they serve’ (Morse 1920: 408). The ordering is revealing. But we must also take into account, at face value, the likelihood of a clear identification of many staff with the disinterested ethos of the service. We need not always be cynical about the loyalty to the service and its Chinese masters of those who ate its salt.

The treaty-port communities across which the Customs operated were marked by such apparent contradictions, unusual solidarities and tangled loyalties. The communities of interest which developed were often out of step with the global tensions of empires. Frenchman and Briton worked side by side as their empires came close to war over the Fashoda incident in 1898. The clearest case is the Anglo–German entente that long outlasted the declaration of war in 1914. German and British business had developed strong ties in the treaty-ports. Their joint enterprises were often based on the pragmatic alliance of German capital and expertise, and English company law and its China regulations. Sundering such ties was the task of British diplomats and activist journalists, worried by the seeming indifference of many in their communities to national interests. But for others, this civil strife amongst the Europeans would spoil things for all in China. As Hart’s successor, IG Sir Francis Aglen, wrote to one of his German commissioners in August 1914, ‘It is a thousand pities [the war] … must invade the Far East where our countries have so many mutual interests and where we English have so many German personal friends’.² This is part pleasantry, and many of Aglen’s staff rushed to join up and fight for their homelands, but the underlying sense, exhibited here and elsewhere, of a transnational community of interests rooted in the particularities and opportunities opened up by the treaty system, is palpable.

There are of course caveats to add. Firstly, the CMCS was structurally a less homogeneous service than it pretended. Hart’s first task on succeeding formally to Horatio Nelson Lay in 1863 was to weld together a service that was working fairly autonomously and in a different fashion in each of the existing Customs districts. The Commissioners were new, often – like Hart – recruited from consular services, and independent in approach and sensitivities. Hart worked to fashion an integrated administrative machine in which he exercised sole and undisputed authority. In time, he came to be criticised for autocracy, and for damaging the service overall as a result (Bickers 2006; Horowitz 2008). But even so, the CMCS reflected in some of its own arrangements not only China’s wider impaired sovereignty, but also the diffuse nature of authority within the late Qing state. With the Russian and then Japanese administration of Dalian (Darien), and the German and then Japanese seizure of Jiaozhou (in Shandong), the Customs had to negotiate separate agreements with the colonial authorities which sharply limited its autonomy of action. The service agreed to appoint nationals of the colonial power to the staff at all levels, but then again, their status as Chinese state officials still raised suspicions in the eyes of colonial authorities at the same time as their nationality could raise suspicions in Chinese eyes. In other ways, the Customs itself was less fully coherent than it claimed, not least in the north, where Gustav Detring, with Li Hongzhang’s patronage, held sway in Tianjin for over 25 years after 1877 as Commissioner and in other roles (van de Ven 2006). Moreover, local political realities during the Republic mean...

Table of contents

• COVER
• TITLE
• COPYRIGHT
• CONTENTS
• CONTRIBUTORS
• LIST OF MAPS
• LIST OF FIGURES
• ABBREVIATIONS
• PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION: Colonialism and China
• PART I. Colonial governance and questions of identity
• PART II. Colonial spaces and everyday social interactions
• PART III. Late colonialism and local consequences
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX