The Ambiguities of an Imperial Institution: Crisis and Transition in the Chinese Maritime Customs, 1899–1911

In the tumultuous years after the Sino-Japanese war the Maritime Customs Service reeled from one crisis to another, threatened by growing competition among the foreign powers to extract concessions and by the brutal Boxer war. Chinese political elites increasingly viewed the Customs with suspicion and sought to limit its influence. Meanwhile, the service suffered from deep internal dissention. Ageing Inspector General Sir Robert Hart – much celebrated in public – was criticised privately for his autocratic style and unwillingness to make reforms. Frustrated senior Customs officers lobbied for support in London. The Foreign Office viewed maintaining British predominance in the service as an important priority, only to see Hart undermine its efforts to establish a widely acceptable successor. While Hart always insisted that the Customs was a servant of the Chinese government, over the last decade of his career the service was increasingly alienated from its Chinese master, and became ever more an expression of imperial – particularly British – interests in China.     

The Wireless World at War, 1939–1945

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CARL BOYD. Hitler's Japanese Confidant: General ōshima Hiroshi and Magic Intelligence, 1941–1945. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993. Pp. xviii, 271. $25.00 (US);

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The Inspector General's Last Prize: The Chinese Native Customs Service, 1901–31

The roles of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service (CMCS), particularly the role of the inspector general (IG) have most frequently been discussed in the context of Sino-foreign relations. The relationship between the CMCS and the Chinese Native Customs establishment has seldom been studied. It is worth noting how, after the Boxer Uprising, the CMCS, dominated by the British, successfully, and much more quietly, extended its power to the Chinese domestic arena through its assumption of control over the Native Customs Service. The thirty-year period during which the CMCS controlled the Native Customs before the latter was abolished in 1931 actually tells us a great deal about the nature of the CMCS and the limits it faced to the exercise of its power. This paper's case study of the Native Customs provides a wider opportunity to re-examine the structure of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service on the ground, in localities away from Shanghai and the more visible world of the treaty ports.