THE DIPLOMACY OF IMPERIAL RETREAT INTRODUCTION 0 lined the important issues in modern China's external relations.The control or annexation of territories,as J.A.Hobson would have argued, anti-British movement,unfolding in the wake of the May Thirtieth but the exercise of economic_power for the benefit of the metropolis incident and culminating in a 16-month boycott of Hong Kong in 1925- through informaLempire.'For Gallagher and Robinson,'comments H.L. 3 6,was a major event in the history of Anglo-Chinese relations.Thirdly, Wesseling,'informal empire was not so much another type of expansion and most important of all for the present study,the latter half of the as a certain stage in imperialism.It was imperialism before empire."7 decade saw the first phase of Britain's imperial retreat from south China Informal empire meant also imperialism without the desire to assume -an important but largely neglected subject.It is the purpose of this the responsibilities-administrative,financial,and military-of direct book to fill this lacuna in the literature on Britain's Far Eastern policy. formal rule as in the case of a Crown colony for fear that such re- The history of modern China's external relations from the Opium sponsibilities could be a burden'to the mother country or because War (1839-42)to the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1945 circumstances did not permit colonization in the formal,imperial way. is often regarded as one of national defeats and humiliations at the In an informal empire,writes J.Osterhammel,'the metropolitan country hands of foreign imperialism.Sun Yat-sen insisted that China was a exerts power and influence within an asymmetrical relationship,but 'sub-colony',and Mao Zedong characterized it as a semi-colonial society does not assume outright domination and formal sovereignty over the dominated for a century by a host of imperialist powers.Equally,in peripheral country.The theory of informal empire goes beyond the the words of one sympathetic Western writer,China was 'the victim imperialism of free trade.It also postulates that Britain aimed at in- of imperialism without annexation'.+Until the outbreak of the First World formal control of an indigenous government in order to advance her War the chief of these powers was Great Britain.Not only did Britain own trading and other interests.The control could be political,economic, acquire Hong Kong and later Kowloon in perpetuity (plus the 99-year financial,or military,exercised either by Britain alone or in conjunction lease of the New Territories),but she had the entire Yangzi valley as with other powers where common interests were at stake.In any event, a sphere of influence,where she enjoyed priority treatment in shipping, informal imperialism entailed informal control without involving 're- railway construction,mining,and other industrial enterprises,owned sponsible government'to achieve the same end. concessions at Shameen (a small island opposite Canton),Chinkiang, The main objective of British expansion was,again to invoke Kiukiang,Hankow,and Tientsin,and dominated the International Gallagher and Robinson,to integrate new regions into the expanding Settlement in Shanghai.Almost every question involving China's economy of the_metropolis.?This was not,however,for the mutual sovereign rights-tariff autonomy,extraterritoriality,the maritime benefit or 'co-prosperity'of the metropolis and the periphery,but for customs and salt administrations,the International Settlement and the the maintenance of Britain's dominant position in the world economic Mixed Court in Shanghai-was primarily an issue between China and order.The acquisition of territories,naval-bases,and-spheres-of influence. Britain.'It was the penalty [Britain]had to pay for greatness,'wrote was the means,not the end.Hence the principal objective of British one former Foreign Office adviser.with national pride.5 policy in China was always stated in terms of the expansion of trade, Britain's policy towards China in the second half of the 1920s is and Whitehall was apt to disclaim any territorial designs on that country. studied in this book in terms of a strategic retreat from informal There could be no dispute that Britain's primary interest in China was imperialism.The nature of imperialism is a controversial subject open commercial,but as Edmund Wehrle opines: to different interpretations.One of the theories of imperialism which [Britain]wanted the Manchu regime to keep an open door for the trade of all provides a useful framework for the study of the Western powers' -which meant,in practice,continuing economic dominance by Britain.There relations with modern China is the concept of informal empire,which was no desire on Britain's-part to-undertake the expense or risk the danger owes much to the Gallagher-Robinson theory of the imperialism of free involved in the creation of an 'Indian Empire'in the Valley of Yang[zil.The trade.5 J.Gallagher and R.Robinson have exploded the myth of the result was that China provided a classic example of that type of 'informal anti-imperialist mid-Victorian free trade era and argued that the real imperialism'which characterized nineteenth-century British economic expan- heyday of British imperialism was the mid-Victorian period of economic sion from South America to Asia.0 and commercial hegemony and not the 'new imperialism'of the late Britain had the greatest single economic stake in China and was its nineteenth century.What mattered was not the struggle for political leading creditor,both in business investments and in loans to the Chinese