Through turbulent waters: foreign administration of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, 1923-1937.
Date
2000
Authors
Brunero, Donna Maree
Editors
Advisors
Fisher, Carney T.
Ching-hwang, Yen
Ching-hwang, Yen
Journal Title
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Thesis
Citation
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Abstract
In modern times customs services are the institutions entrusted with monitoring trade through collecting duties on imports and exports, preventing smuggling and patrolling national boundaries. The Chinese Maritime Customs Service of the Republic was imbued with many of these modern ideas. The Service maintained an extensive network of Customs houses both along China's coastline and inland. It maintained harbours and lighthouses and also established a preventive service to counteract smuggling. The comparisons, however, end here. The Chinese Maritime Customs Service was a uniquely cosmopolitan institution that emerged as a product of the Opium Wars and the Unequal Treaties. Headed by successive British Inspectors General, Sir Robert Hart (1863-1911), Sir Francis Aglen (1911-1927) and Sir Frederick Maze (1929-1943), the Service recruited foreigners to administer the Customs establishments. This dissertation examines the fate of the Customs foreign Inspectorate during the 1923-1937 period. By examining episodes such as the Canton Customs controversy of 1923; the Canton-Hong Kong Boycott 1925-1926; the Customs succession crisis; negotiations surrounding the proposed Hong Kong-China Trade and Customs Agreement 1929-30; the seizure of the Tientsin Customs 1930; and the loss of Customs houses in the northeast to Manchukuo authorities in 1923-1933, the themes of resistance and change are brought to the fore. The foreign administration of the Service encountered growing resistance on the part of the
Chinese nationalists and it also faced resistance from the British establishment in China who no longer perceived the Service as an ongoing concern. To ensure its survival the Service had to change and in doing so embrace the Nationalist regime. Although during this period the significance of Customs revenue to the Chinese government and. to foreign investors was unsurpassed, the Service itself was undergoing a steady decline as it was pulled deeper into the machinations of China's political sphere without a British anchor for security.
School/Discipline
Centre for Asian Studies and the Dept. of History
Dissertation Note
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, Centre for Asian Studies and the Dept. of History, 2000
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