Breaking with the Past

The Maritime Customs Service and the Global Origins of Modernity in China

Hans van de Ven

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9780231510523
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

Between its founding in 1854 and its collapse in 1952, the Chinese Maritime Customs Service delivered one-third to one-half of all revenue collected by China's central authorities. Much more than a tax collector, the institution managed China's harbors, erected lighthouses, and surveyed the Chinese coast. It funded and oversaw the Translator's College, which trained Chinese diplomats while its staff translated Chinese classics, novels, and poetry and wrote important studies on the Chinese economy, its financial system, its trade, its history, and its government. It organized contributions to international exhibitions, developed its own shadow diplomacy, pioneered China's modern postal system, and even maintained its own armed force. After the 1911 Revolution, the agency became deeply involved in the management of China's international loans and domestic bond issues.

In other words, the Customs Service was pivotal to China's post-Taiping integration into the world of modern nation-states and twentieth-century trade and finance. If the Customs Service introduced the modern governance of trade to China, it also made Chinese legible to foreign audiences. Following the activities of the Inspectors General, who were virtual autocrats within the service and communicated regularly with senior Chinese officials and foreign diplomats, this history tracks the Customs Service as it transformed China and its relationship to the world. The Customs Service often kept China together when little else did. This book reveals the role of the agency in influencing the outcomes of the Sino-French War, the Boxer Rebellion, and the 1911 Revolution, as well as the rise of the Nationalists in the 1920s, and concludes with the Customs Service purges of the early 1950s, when the relentless logic of revolution dismantled the agency for good.

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1. It was at this time that Paul Cohen published the first edition of Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).

2. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (London: Continuum, 2004), 6–20.

3. James Williams, “Corruption Within the Chinese Maritime Customs with Special Reference to the Level of Integrity Maintained by the Expatriate Staff” (M.Phil. diss., Bristol University, 2008).

4. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi (History of China’s modern Maritime Customs Service) (Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 2002).

5. Wang Zhaoming, Haiguan Duibian Niandai: Renzhi Haiguan Sishier Dai Jingli (A transformative age in the Customs Service), foreword by Lu Haiming (Taipei: Yuli, 1993).

6. Ren Zhiyong, “Wan Qing Haiguan yu Caizheng: Yi Haiguan Jiandu wei Zhongxin” (The late Qing Customs Service and finance: the role of the superintendents) (Ph.D. diss., Peking University, 2007).

7. Zhan Qinghua, Quanqiuhua Shiye: Zhongguo Haiguan Yangyuan yu Zhong-Xi Wenhua Chuanbo (A globalizational perspective of foreign staffs in the Chinese Maritime Customs Service and transcultural communication between East and West, 1854–1950 [sic]) (Beijing: Zhongguo Haiguan Chubanshe, 2008), 2.

8. Chen Shiqi, Zhongguo Jindai Haiguan Shi; James Hevia, English Lessons: The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century China (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004); and Robert Bickers, The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire (London: Allan Lane, 2011).

9. James Fichter, “Imperial Conflict and Cooperation: Anglo-French Relations in Asia and the Middle East in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” Cambridge University World History Seminar, November 10, 2011.

10. John Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), 465.

11. Joseph Esherick, “Harvard on China: The Apologetics of Imperialism,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 4, no. 4 (December 1972); James Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995).

12. Bristol University hosts a website dedicated to the study of the Customs Service at https://www.bris.ac.uk/history/customs. For the catalogue of the Service’s archives, see https://www.bris.ac.uk/history/customs/resources/archive.html. For an extensive bibliography, see https://www.bris.ac.uk/history/customs/customsbibliographies.

13. See the bibliography mentioned in note 12. Examples are Paul King, In the Chinese Customs Service: A Personal Record of Forty-Seven Years (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1924); John Pal, Shanghai Saga (London: Jarrolds, 1963); W. F. Tyler, Pulling Strings in China (London: Constable, 1929); C. A. S. Williams, Chinese Tribute (London: Literary Services and Production, 1969); G. R. G. Worcester, The Junkman Smiles (London: Chatto and Windus, 1959); C. S. Archer, China Servant (London: Collis, 1946); C. S. Archer, Hankow Return (London: Collins, 1941); Hwang Ching-hsun, Haiguan Suiyue: Wode Zhongshen Shiye (Life in the Customs Service: my lifelong career) (unpublished typescript available at the library of the Institute of Modern History, Academica Sinica, Taiwan); Lam Lok Ming, Haiguan Fuwu Sawu Nian Huiyilu (Recollecting thirty-five years of service in the Customs Service); Lu Haiming, Haiguan Duibian Niandai: Renzhi Haiguan Sishier Dai Jingli (A transformative age in the Customs Service: experiences during forty-two years of employment in the Customs Service) (Taipei: Yuli, 1993); L. C. Arlington, Through the Dragon’s Eyes: Fifty Years’ Experiences as a Foreigner in the Chinese Government Service (London: Constable, 1931).

14. Besides the bibliography of Service publications mentioned in note 12, see, for example, Stanley Wright, Robert Hart and the Chinese Customs Service (Belfast: Queen’s University Press, 1952); Stanley Wright, The Collection and Disposal of the Maritime and Native Customs Revenue (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General, 1927); Luo Guanzhong, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, trans. C. H. Brewitt-Taylor (N.p.: Silk Pagoda, 2008); G. R. G. Worcester, The Junks and Sampans of the Yangtse (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1972); Thomas Wade, Wen-chien Tsu-erh chi (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1905); J. A. van Aalst, Chinese Music (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General, 1884); W. A. P. Martin, Cycle of Cathay (Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson, and Ferrier, 1900); H. B. Morse, The International Relations of the Chinese Empire (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1910–1918); Friedrich Hirth, China and the Roman Orient (Shanghai: Kelly and Welsh, 1885); A. T. Piry, Le Saint Edit (Shanghai, 1879); Joseph Edkins, Chinese Currency (Shanghai: Presbyterian Mission Press, 1901); T. T. H. Ferguson, De Ziel van het Moderne China: De Drie Volksbeginselen van Soen Jat-sen (The soul of modern China: the three people’s principles of Sun Yatsen) (Amsterdam: van Kampen, 1929).

15. Chen Xiafei and Han Rongfang, eds., Archives of China’s Imperial Maritime Customs: Confidential Correspondence Between Robert Hart and James Duncan Campbell, 1874–1907 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1990–1993).

16. For example, descendents of Customs Service officials left messages on the Customs Project website. http://www.bristol.ac.uk/history/customs/discussionboard.htm. Perry Anderson regaled me with stories about his father’s life in China; Felicity Somers Eve showed me the papers of her grandfather, D. M. Henderson, who built most of China’s lighthouses; Yee Wah Foo told me stories about the connections of her grandfather, Ambassador Fu Bingchang, with the Customs Service; and Philip Bowring shared with me his thoughts and his biography about his great-grandfather John Bowring.

17. But see Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680, 2 vols. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988–1993); Wang Gungwu and Ng Chinkeong, eds., Maritime Chin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Graphs and Tables
• Conventions
• Introduction
• One. The Birth of a Chameleon
• Two. Robert Hart’s Panopticon
• Three. The Customs Service During the Self-Strengthening Movement, 1870–1895
• Four. The Rise of the Bond Markets: The Customs Service Becomes a Debt Collector, 1895–1914
• Five. Imperium in Imperio, 1914–1929
• Six. Tariff Nation, Smugglers’ Nation: The Customs Service in the Nanjing Decade, 1929–1937
• Seven. Maintaining Integrity, 1937–1949
• Epilogue: Echoes and Shadows
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Photo Section