by Carl Crow
The diplomats even though they had no concessions, had a lot more power, prestige, and authority in China than they would have had if accredited to any other country. Every foreign treaty contained a clause giving the foreigner extraterritorial rights. Under its provisions a foreigner could be sued for debt or tried for a crime only by officials of his own country and under the provisions of his own laws. Special courts were maintained by America and Great Britain, but in the case of some of the countries with smaller interests and fewer nationals, ministers and consuls also acted as judges, giving the ministers and the consuls an authority over their nationals not dreamed of in other countries.
Under these circumstances every foreign nation with a group of citizens living in the country had a kind of colonial stake in China, and the ministers in Peking were not only diplomats but also took on some of the airs and dignities and comported themselves like colonial governors. A minister to China might not receive as large a salary or rank as high as an ambassador to the Court of St. James, but in his own particular puddle he was a much noisier duck. China was not a military power and Chinese officials could be bullied. If they didn’t do as he wanted done, he was very likely to get angry and pound the table. If he was very angry, he might talk about sending for gunboats. The proportion of gunboats sent to those threatened was very small - not one in a hundred, but one could never tell when a diplomat might make his threat good. Generations of suave Manchu and Chinese diplomats devoted most of their time trying to keep the barbarian diplomats in good humor. One of the most effective devices was to play one off against the other but sometimes that didn’t work. Very frequently the diplomats took “joint action,” which meant that all of them pounded the table in unison - a proceeding calculated to terrify the officials and make the corpses turn over in the Ming Tombs.
There was a sound precedent for this table pounding which had started with a good deal of reason and justification. The Chinese formerly divided all nations into two classes. First there was China. Then there was a second class consisting of the smaller surrounding states such as Korea, Cambodia, Annam, and a host of others, which were “tribute bearing” states. Their principal function was to submit to the rule of the Son of Heaven and manifest their gratitude by annual missions bringing tribute consisting of their most valuable products - tribute being a realistic term for taxes. When the Chinese came in contact with other nations such as England, France, Spain, Holland, and Italy, they automatically placed them in the second category. But they rated as lesser barbarian states because they produced nothing the Chinese wanted and were therefore of no value as tribute bearers and in fact refused to bring any tribute. They were also unreasonably stubborn about refusing to acknowledge their inferior position and made absurd claims as to their own greatness. The maps they brought with them showed them up as deceitful braggarts. A single province of China was larger in area than any of these little states.
The Chinese were ready to concede that these queer-looking barbarians from across the sea had bigger ships and bigger guns and were better in a rough and tumble fight, but in nothing else. Barbarian superiority of bone and muscle! The Chinese had been that way too in the uncouth centuries before Confucius, but they weren’t proud of it.
That these countries were very poor and peopled by inferior races was apparent. Their poverty was shown by the great distances they would travel and the great hardships they would endure in order to secure tea and rhubarb* from China. Their entire lack of the ordinary decent feelings was shown by the fact that so many of them would voluntarily live so far away from the tombs of their ancestors and that their compatriots would allow them to be buried on foreign soil. In a way the Chinese took a very charitable view of the matter and assumed that the foreigners were driven by necessity to make this long voyage and that they were really on a lifesaving mission.
As there is little water in China which is not polluted, the only safe way in which it can be consumed is by boiling it. Hence the universal habit of drinking tea and also the ancient and universal belief that tea is a beverage without which life cannot be sustained. Rhubarb, the principal laxative of the country, was also looked on as necessary for the maintenance of health. Hence the great sacrifices these barbarians would make and the questionable methods they would sometimes follow in order to get these Chinese products. Without them the barbarian races would perish. So while the Chinese allowed themselves to be forced to trade with the foreigners, they credited themselves with humanitarian motives. At the same time they felt that the exclusive possession of tea and rhubarb placed them in the position of being universal benefactors and resented the fact that these foreign devils showed absolutely no gratitude. In 1838 Commissioner Lin, exasperated by the continued importation of opium, issued a threat which he thought would thoroughly terrify them.
“Let our ports once be closed against you,” he declared, “and for what profit can your several nations any longer look? And consider this: our tea and rhubarb are necessary for the preservation of your lives. They are granted to you without stint year after year for transportation beyond the seas. What favor could be greater than this!”
From the Chinese point of view this logic was unanswerable. The lives of the foreign devils depended on a supply of tea and rhubarb which they could get only in China. The unfortunate foreigners lived in such poor countries that they could not grow their own tea or raise their own rhubarb - just like the Thibetans on their isolated Himalayan plateau. Cut off these supplies and they would sicken and die.
Under such circumstances it may have been impossible to find a basis of reason on which West and East could meet. The Chinese were overburdened with the conceit which had thrived during the five thousand years they had ruled the world that they knew. They had come in contact with no people who were not of a much inferior culture. Something had to be done to take it out of them, and the diplomats used table pounding and gunboats. It was so effective that they continued to use it even after peaceful but much less troublesome methods might have answered. It was a particularly useful device on occasions when the Chinese had all of the arguments on their side. The best thing to do was to settle matters and then argue about it afterwards.
That method always resulted in making the Chinese much more reasonable from the foreign point of view.
An illuminating example of the arbitrary manner in which the diplomats of those days settled matters to suit themselves without regard to facts or Chinese opinion, is found in the circumstances surrounding the opening of Chefoo as a port. The treaty provided that this town on the Shantung peninsula was to be opened for foreign trade and residence. As it was a small fishing village where no foreigners would want to live and where no one could conceivably carry on any trade, the Chinese made no particular objections. This unusual attitude should have aroused the suspicions of the diplomats, but they trustingly assumed that the Chinese were finally beginning to appreciate the value of foreign trade. But when foreign officials visited the place, they found that a mistake had been made. It was not Chefoo that they wanted as a port but Yentai, a neighboring village in a better location. The foreigners’ maps were wrong as the names of the two villages had been transposed. Of course the treaty could have been changed, but that would have meant new negotiations and more delay, so the diplomats solved the problem by the simple expedient of changing the name of the town. Yentai became Chefoo and the foreigners moved in. It was always Chefoo to the foreigners and Yentai to the Chinese.
Most of the early British diplomats were superb table pounders; and while the Americans didn’t pound tables quite so hard or so often, they were usually present to applaud the British efforts and to take their share of anything the British might be able to get. Among the Americans Peter Parker, one of several missionaries who from time to time filled gaps in his country’s diplomatic service, was the champion when it came to shouting and pounding. As a protégé of Daniel Webster he probably felt that he spoke with well supplemented authority. He was also one of
the few, if not the only diplomat of his time, who could argue with the Chinese officials directly without the aid of an interpreter. He had come to China as a missionary and founded the first medical school in the country. As he was one of the very few Americans who could speak Chinese, he was pressed into service as an interpreter for the American diplomats and during the many periods that the office was vacant served as American minister at a salary so small that he had to support himself by practicing medicine. If he had had his way about things, the United States would have annexed Formosa many years ago, not for any reason which would stand in a court of law, but because the Chinese had been unreasonable; and to take this island away from them would teach them a good lesson. Besides that, he brought up the old argument that predatory nations still find useful. If we didn’t take it, someone else might.
This fear that some other nation might get something in China which was exclusive to them added to the gray hairs of the early diplomats until someone thought of the “most favored nation clause,” which became the golden rule of diplomacy in China. It might have been expressed: “Do not give unto others that which thou art not also prepared to give unto me.” Once a diplomat got China to sign a treaty containing a clause to the effect that his country would be given the same treatment as that accorded to the most favored nation, all he had to do was to sit down and keep a wary eye on treaties signed with other nations and then see if there was anything he could claim. A great many of the rights and privileges which Americans enjoy in China were secured in this way, and most of them from the British who took the lead in treaty making. Our British cousins have not been. backward about reminding us of this but sometimes forget that we did the same thing for them in Japan.
Under the terms of the “most favored nation clause,” all powers having the treaties were examined with microscopic care and avaricious zeal to see that none of their benefits was overlooked, especially by the smaller powers which had no large stake in China. For example Italy demanded a concession in Tientsin, not because she had any conceivable use for one but because other nations had them. The Chinese acceded to the demand but the concession was never of any value to Italy. Some of the powers interpreted the clause as meaning that their nationals should be given jobs in such government services as the Maritime Customs, which was organized by Sir Thomas Hart and administered by a succession of British commissioners. The necessary requirement that custom employees speak Chinese and the fact that the customs records were kept in English made it possible to keep these demands within reasonable limits.
So far as the records go, no diplomat in China ever went to the lengths of the German minister to Korea in demands for equal rights. The Korean government had bought a little river gunboat from a Russian concern, much to the disappointment of a German agent who thought he had the order in the bag. He complained to his minister and the latter stormed at the frightened Korean officials, pointing out the plain terms of the treaty which gave the Germans the same rights as any other nation. The Koreans protested that they needed only one gunboat and would have no need for a second one, but the German refused to be put off by such flimsy excuses as that. He pounded the table and insisted on his treaty rights and eventually the Koreans bought another gunboat.
There were orators among the diplomats, as well as table pounders, and among them the Americans were easily the leaders. Many of the British who could make a roomful of Chinese officials tremble were positively shy about making speeches and there is no record that any of them ever shone as orators. With the Americans it was just the other way about. Most of them had been successful politicians at home and had served a term or two in Congress and were used to the flamboyant speeches of the political campaign. A Chinese wag said they often forgot that there were no voters in China for their speeches were always keyed to the pitch of an election campaign. The American diplomats who were not politicians were missionaries who were used to preaching sermons. All could speak and had no hesitation about addressing audiences on any and all occasions. I should say that more speeches have been made by American diplomats in China than by all others put together.
Anson Burlingame, who was the first American Minister to live in Peking, was one of the earliest and most brilliant orators. He had served three terms in Congress where he was a leader of hopeless causes and had been challenged to a duel. When he accepted the challenge and named rifles as the weapons, the challenger decided to postpone the duel indefinitely. While the other diplomats shouted at the Manchu officials, Burlingame lulled them with his oratory. In contrast to the restrained and dignified public speaking of the Chinese, his oratory was an emotional flood which swept everything before it and left the survivors gasping. Even those who did not understand a word that he said fell under the spell of his magnetic personality and the melodious peroration.
The Chinese officials decided they needed some one of his talents themselves, so they hired him from America and started him on a trip around the world to negotiate treaties for the Chinese government. So great was their trust in him that he carried extraordinary powers and was practically the Chinese Foreign Office in himself. In a series of addresses from one end of America to the other he told his audiences of a China waiting to buy the merchandise of the world and ready to build a Christian church on every hill-top. The reports of his speeches made curious reading when they got back to the China Coast where he was universally referred to as “that man Burlingame.” One of the strangest incidents in diplomatic history occurred in Washington in June, 1868, when he negotiated with his former chief, Secretary of State W. H. Seward, for the revision of the American treaty with China. His brilliant and interesting career was cut short by death before he had an opportunity to try his talents on the diplomats of Europe. Perhaps it was just as well for he would have been a strange figure in the European chancelleries.
Among the more recent American diplomats who were looked on as champion speechmakers was Jacob Gould Schurman, who always spoke in the didactic manner of the schoolroom. The general opinion among foreigners in Peking was that he spoke at too great length. That was a little unfair to Dr. Schurman, for he was in great demand by student bodies and educational organizations and he usually spoke on subjects which were of no particular interest to the Peking diplomatic set. They were always afraid they were going to be bored and this fear was usually confirmed in the first five minutes. But local Americans, and especially members of the legation staff, always had to attend these functions and the question of how long they would have to stick it out was a serious one.
One of the legation secretaries is credited with having relieved the tedium by the invention of a game which became known as the “Schurman Oratorical Sweepstakes.” Its operation was very simple and made every speech an exciting sporting event. Those who wanted to participate in the sweepstakes paid a dollar for a ticket and then drew chances on which one of the twenty-four ten-minute periods of a hypothetical four-hour speech would mark the period when Dr. Schurman would finish. He had never been known to speak that long but the promoters provided for every contingency and they even sold a twenty-fifth ticket which was known as “the field,” and covered all time after the four-hour period. That made a total prize of $25.
After the numbers were drawn, those who held tickets providing for the speech to be completed in the first hour knew that nothing short of an unforeseen accident gave them any chance to win. As the two-hour period approached the fun began. If the speaker appeared to be tiring, those who had drawn tickets for a longer speech were enthusiastic in their applause. If he could be induced to pass that ten-minute period, there was still hope that he might continue longer and there were always many ticket holders who wanted him to continue and only one who wanted him to stop. If there was any chance for a laugh it was not only hearty but long continued. I lost the prize myself in this way by a margin of one minute, through the tactics employed by a third secretary. Dr. Schurman is said to have remarked to a friend that in his long career as a public spe
aker he had never addressed any audiences as appreciative as those of Peking.
Daniel Webster never visited China but during the time that he was Secretary of State he wrote some official letters and instructions which fit very well with the fervid oratory of that period. In Webster’s communications with people of the Orient he could never disassociate himself from the idea that he was dealing with some Indian tribe and his language was that of the great white chief. The letter he wrote and President Tyler signed for Caleb Cushing to present to the Emperor of China was a curious diplomatic document:*
John Tyler, President of the United States of America - which states are: Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas, and Michigan - send you this letter of peace and friendship signed by my own hand.
I hope your health is good …
Now, my words are, that the governments of two such great countries should be at peace … Therefore I send to your court Caleb Cushing, one of the wise and learned men of this country. On his first arrival in China he will enquire after your health.
