Ghosts of Empire

by Kwasi Kwarteng

  Kitty married Walter Fane in a panic, because she was then twenty-five and her younger sister, Doris, aged eighteen, was about to marry the son of a ‘prosperous surgeon who had been given a baronetcy during the war’. Geoffrey (Doris’s fiancé) would inherit the title: ‘it is not very grand to be a medical baronet, but a title, thank God, is still a title–and a very considerable fortune’. Against this background of finely observed social distinctions, Kitty is appalled to discover that Hong Kong has its own rules. Status in London counted for very little in Hong Kong, while colonial grandeur did not necessarily translate into eminence in London. Dorothy Townsend, who, as Charles Townsend’s hapless wife, was Kitty’s rival, was an excellent example of a woman whose status was entirely defined by the empire. Her father ‘had been a Colonial Governor and of course it was very grand while it lasted–everyone stood up when you entered a room and men took off their hats to you as you passed in your car–but what could be more insignificant than a Colonial Governor when he had retired?’ Answering her own rhetorical question, Kitty observed that Dorothy Townsend’s father lived in a ‘small house at Earl’s Court’, whereas Kitty’s father, Bernard Gastin, was ‘a K.C. and there was no reason why he should not be made a judge one of these days. Anyhow they lived in South Kensington.’ In Hong Kong, Kitty’s status in London counted for nothing: ‘It’s too absurd,’ she told her husband. ‘Why, there’s hardly anyone here that one would bother about for five minutes at home. Mother wouldn’t dream of asking any of them to dine at our house.’

  Hong Kong followed its own, highly developed rules. Despite the snobbery, life was jolly: ‘there were clubs and tennis and racing and polo and golf ’.33 The 1920s and 1930s perhaps represented the high point of hierarchy and social snobbery. Labour was cheap. At the Peak, every family had a large staff of servants who each had a special uniform according to their role: houseboys wore black trousers and white jackets, while drivers wore white suits, socks and shoes. A fundamental part of Peak life was card-calling, which was perhaps unique to the British Empire at its short-lived apogee between the wars. The first duty of a new arrival in Hong Kong was to acquire cards printed with his name and his government department or business, and then drop the cards round the sumptuous residences of the Peak, in a circuit undertaken on foot. It was said that you would be lucky to get two dinner invitations for every hundred cards you dropped off, but at least that was a start.34

  The 1920s also saw the only incident that, until the 1960s, seriously challenged the imperial regime. On 30 May 1925, Sikh police under British command opened fire on a crowd of Chinese demonstrators in Shanghai. This action precipitated a number of strikes in Hong Kong; on 18 June, most of the students at Queen’s College were on strike. Then waiters and bellboys at the Peak Hotel and the Peak Club went on strike, and then labourers, shopkeepers and the workers on the trams joined them. By late June, most Chinese staff in restaurants, government agencies and newspapers were also on strike. Food prices soared, prompting a run on the banks, as people emptied their accounts and bought everything they could. Hong Kong’s economy had faltered badly. On 22 June, the colonial government declared a state of emergency and, by early July, Hong Kong had become a ghost town. The strike lasted for more than a year, and the British government had to provide £3 million to keep the colony’s economy afloat.35

  There was the suspicion that the strikes of 1925–6 had much to do with the rigid social exclusiveness of the colony. There was an air of revolution. The coolies, people felt, had had enough, and their life in those inter-war years was not particularly enviable: they worked long hours for wages which ‘barely kept them alive’; their homes were ‘bedspaces in overcrowded, filthy tenement buildings’. Their clothing was minimal and ‘they usually went without shoes’ to the extent that, even in the late 1930s, Bob Yates, a British soldier stationed in Hong Kong, remembered, ‘if you saw a Chinaman in a pair of shoes you wondered where he’d pinched them from’.36 As we can gather from the reminiscences of soldiers and others, life in 1930s Hong Kong was not so different from what it had been in the 1920s, although some of the edge of arrogance had gone. The Peak Hotel, which was home for a number of elderly residents, shut its doors for the last time on 1 September 1936.37

  The old world in Hong Kong survived the 1930s in attenuated form. One of the marks of social distinction in Hong Kong had been the ‘possession of a pew close to the altar in St. John’s Cathedral’. In addition to a place on the Peak, an overdraft at the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank and being considered for membership of the Hong Kong Club, the pew was an important step on the ‘inland hierarchy’, but the renting of pews was brought to an end in 1928. Clementi, the Balliol Classicist, fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese, was a progressive on matters of race and class and, in May 1926, partly as a consequence of the strike, he appointed the first ethnic Chinese member to the Executive Council. The less exclusive Legislative Council, which, in very loose terms, played the part of a parliament to the Executive Council’s cabinet, had admitted its first Chinese member in 1880. All these positions were, of course, appointed solely by the governor. Clementi further aroused the suspicions of the British community as being generally pro-Chinese because he was often sharply critical of the racial exclusiveness of many of Hong Kong’s clubs, and even suggested replacing the Hong Kong Club with one which both British and Chinese members could join.38

  The paternalism and bureaucracy which characterized the Hong Kong government were very much alive in the 1930s. Colonial Office records from the time cover such themes as the admission of ‘Asiatics’ to the Royal Hong Kong Golf Club, after an incident in Mombasa, Kenya, where a Japanese diplomat had been barred from playing golf at the club merely because of his race. At the beginning of January 1936, an official in Government House in Hong Kong was assuring the Colonial Office back in London that ‘there is very little likelihood of any unpleasantness such as occurred at Mombasa happening in Hong Kong’. The rules at the Royal Hong Kong were simple: ‘there is no rule against a person of any race being put up for full membership . . . but it would be disingenuous to pretend that a Chinese or a Japanese resident would have much chance of election to full membership, for the Club already has as many members as it requires without bringing in Asiatics’. And besides, the Japanese had ‘a Golf course of their own in the New Territories’. The ostensible reason for keeping ‘Asiatic residents’ out was simply that the members ‘would be liable to be swamped in course of time if they did otherwise’. The position in relation to visitors, of course, was entirely different. The Captain of the club had ‘full discretion to admit visitors of any race, and in point of fact I understand Mr Shudo [the Japanese diplomat] actually played at Fanling with the Captain, Mr S. H. Dodwell, on his recent visit to Hong Kong’.39

  The 1930s saw grave tensions on the international scene, but in Hong Kong life went on in much the same way. Segregation between the Chinese and the Europeans was rigid. Even brothels were under different jurisdictions, depending on whether the prostitutes were Asian or European. In 1931, the position on this delicate subject needed to be clarified, as the Chief Justice Sir Joseph Kemp observed: ‘the Secretary for Chinese affairs deals with the Chinese and Japanese brothels, and the Inspector General of Police deals with the few European brothels’. The white prostitutes on the China Coast (on mainland China opposite Hong Kong Island) were mainly Russian, and, although Shanghai was the great destination for them, white prostitutes were ‘still permitted in Hong Kong’.40 The incident shows how sensitive issues of race were in Hong Kong before the Second World War, but ideas about race need to be understood within the wider context of class and status.

  That Hong Kong was intensely status-conscious is illustrated by the concern that was shown about the appointment of a trade commissioner in 1935. This was a new position in the imperial hierarchy in Hong Kong and it caused difficulty because people were asking ‘where would he be placed in the table of precedence?’ The Trade Commissioner would be placed, the new G
overnor decided, after the ‘Manager of the Railway, No. 16, in the Table of Precedence’ (see below).41 The Trade Commissioner, although placed at number 17, after the Manager of the Railway, would not be included in the official Table, as he was not an officer of the colonial government. Strictly speaking hierarchy applied only to the imperial servants, but the culture of hierarchy, of deference and status, was so deeply embedded in Hong Kong life that everyone knew his or, in Kitty Fane’s case, her place.

  HONG KONG Precedence Table, approved by H[is] M[ajesty], September, 1931

  1. The Governor or the Officer Administering the Government.

  2. The Officer-in-Command of His Majesty’s Naval Forces on the China Station, if of the rank of Flag Officer (Rear-Admiral or above); the Senior Officer-in-Command of the Troops, if of the rank of General Officer (Major General or above) and the Senior Officer of the Royal Air Force on the Station if of the rank of Air Officer, above the rank of Air Commodore, their own relative rank and precedence being determined by the King’s Regulations on that Subject.

  3. The Chief Justice.

  4. a) The Commodore, His Majesty’s Dockyard; b) The Officer-in-Command of His Majesty’s Naval Forces on the China Station, if of the rank of Commodore, Captain or Commander; c) The Officer-in-Command of the Troops, if of the rank of Brigadier, Colonel, or Lieutenant Colonel; d) The Senior Officer of the Royal Air Force if of the rank of Air Commodore, Group Captain or Wing Commander, their own relative rank and precedence being determined by the King’s Regulations on that Subject.

  5. Members of Executive Council in their order.

  6. The Puisne Judge.

  7. Members of Legislative Council in their order.

  8. Cadet Officers of the First Class.

  9. The Director of Public Works, if not included in the foregoing classes.

  10. The Director of Medical and Sanitary Services, if not included in the foregoing classes.

  11. The Inspector General of Police, if not included in the foregoing classes.

  12. Commandant of the Volunteer Defence Corps (if of the rank of Colonel).

  13. Cadet Officers of not less than 21 years’ service.

  14. The Director of Education, if not included in the foregoing classes.

  15. The Harbour Master, if not included in the foregoing classes.

  16. The Manager of the Railway.

  17. The Crown Solicitor.

  18. The Registrar, Supreme Court.

  19. The Auditor.

  20. Commandant of the Volunteer Defence (if below the rank of Colonel).

  21. Cadet Officers of from 14 to 21 years’ service.

  22. The Land Officer.

  23. The Superintendent of Prisons.

  24. The Director of the Royal Observatory.

  25. The Official Receiver.

  26. The Superintendent of the Botanical and Forestry Department.42

  17

  Democracy Postponed

  Towards the end of the Second World War, F. D. Roosevelt, the ailing American President, was conversing with Oliver Stanley, the younger son of the seventeenth Earl of Derby, who, in the Churchill-led coalition government, served as secretary of state for the colonies. Roosevelt, perhaps in a moment of light-hearted banter, indicated that he thought it would be a good idea for Britain to give up Hong Kong and make it an international free port. ‘I do not wish to be unkind to the British,’ he said, ‘but in 1841 when you acquired Hong Kong, you did not acquire it by purchase.’ Stanley seemed puzzled: ‘Let me see, Mr President, that was about the time of the Mexican War, wasn’t it?’1 The Mexican War had been caused by the direct annexation of Texas by the United States.

  Stanley, an assured member of the Conservative elite, was elegant and deft in his reply, gently reminding the President that international diplomacy in the nineteenth century had been a rough affair. The President, however, reflected common American opinion at the time. After the defeat of the Axis powers, colonialism had become unfashionable. The war, after all, had been a war against dictatorship in favour of democracy; President Roosevelt himself had pledged that the United States would be an ‘arsenal for democracy’. Imperialism seemed to have had its day, and American sentiment was reflected in the press from New York to Chicago and Los Angeles. In August 1945, just after the war against Japan had concluded, the British Embassy in Washington was expressing concern to London about popular American feeling on the subject of Hong Kong: ‘The future of Hong Kong has sprung dramatically into the headlines.’ This was partly as a result of the current American infatuation with Chiang Kai-shek, the Generalissimo, whose American-educated wife was hugely influential and popular in the United States. The Embassy in Washington reported with dismay the opinion of the Chicago Daily News, and believed it spoke for ‘a considerable segment of opinion’ when it observed that ‘the advantages of Hong Kong to the Empire seem to most Americans slight compared with the goodwill which the British could win from the Chinese and other Asiatics by relinquishing control of that great Chinese city to the Chinese people’. There was no desire in America for an ‘unqualified and permanent return to the status quo’.2 The problem, of course, was that there was an equally strong lobby in Britain which did not wish to give Hong Kong back. Like the Conservative leader, Winston Churchill, they had no desire to witness the ‘liquidation of the British Empire’. The China Association, a group of businessmen with extensive dealings in China but based in London’s Strand, were keen to stress to the Colonial Office ‘the importance which is attached by the China Association to the retention of Hong Kong as part of the British Empire’.3

  The China Association represented the hard-nosed businessmen who had always been an active lobby in British imperial politics, while the then Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Mark Young, was perhaps a quintessentially bureaucratic figure. He had become governor in the inauspicious year of 1941, when the Japanese overran the island and the territories and then proceeded to imprison Sir Mark with about 1,500 other British inmates. His experience at the hands of the Japanese in the Woosung Camp had, in his understated report of the experience, been ‘most unsatisfactory’, although, as governor, he had not experienced the worst of it. The prisoners were asked to sign an undertaking that they would not ‘attempt to escape from the control of the Japanese Military Authorities’. Young and twelve other men, alone of the 1,500 prisoners, refused to sign. For the twelve men, conditions became harsh: they ‘suffered very considerable hardship as a result of their refusal’, in Young’s assessment. He personally was ‘not subjected to any ill treatment in consequence of my refusal to sign this certificate’. Yet he believed that his treatment at the hands of the Japanese had been ‘almost invariably inconsiderate . . . very frequently objectionable, and . . . on occasions positively barbarous’.4 In this formulation Sir Mark fulfilled William Johnson Cory’s claim that a decent education should teach a man to express himself in ‘graduated terms’. Cory, of course, had been a master at Eton College, the school at which Sir Mark Young had been a King’s Scholar, like his father and three brothers. More unusually, all four Young brothers had become imperial civil servants; the Youngs were the archetypal imperial family.

  The Roman stoicism and stubbornness Sir Mark Young displayed in his blunt refusal to sign the Japanese certificate were a typical response from a man who, so to speak, had been born in the imperial purple. The Classical allusion would not have been lost on Young either, as he had graduated with a first in Classics from King’s College, Cambridge in 1908. Yet after the war he could see that the world had changed. American pressure and new political forces led many observers to believe that the empire would have to change, and it was in this spirit that he ventured into the unknown, by trying to make Hong Kong more democratic. The Young proposals were tentative and, to later observers, hardly controversial. Yet in the context of Hong Kong’s history they marked a radical departure from the benign authoritarianism which had been a characteristic feature of the colony’s political life for more than a hund
red years.

  Hong Kong was ruled by a governor, chosen by Whitehall but enjoying considerable latitude once he arrived in Hong Kong. The governor was solely responsible for choosing members of both the Executive Council and the Legislative Council. By 1945 this arrangement had lasted more than a hundred years, and allowed for absolutely no democratic involvement at any stage of the process. Until the 1940s, the only appeals for democracy had come not from the Chinese masses, who constituted more than 98 per cent of the population, but from the British merchants, who for a time resented the power and authority of the bureaucrats, but who ultimately were content to confine themselves to commercial activities. The last significant movement to promote democracy in Hong Kong had occurred in 1894, more than fifty years before the end of the Second World War.

  Young’s proposals were simple. The main reform would be focused on the Urban Council (responsible for basic services and sanitation on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon), which would be turned into a Municipal Council of thirty members, twenty of whom would be elected and, unusually for Hong Kong, only ten appointed. The Municipal Council, Young envisaged, would be responsible for the day-to-day running of the colony. The most controversial aspect of his ideas, published in the second half of 1946, was the proposal that the seats on the council should be split 50–50 between the European and Chinese populations. Given that the Chinese community made up over 98 per cent of the population, it was clear that any proposal to split the representation evenly would deny them their fair share. By modern standards, there were many provisions that would fail to meet the requirements of pure democratic principles. Young not only proposed a franchise for those who had reached the age of twenty-five, he advocated a literacy qualification in English or Chinese and a property qualification. This was justified on the grounds that there was in Hong Kong ‘a very large floating population (both literally and figuratively)’ which made keeping an accurate electoral roll very difficult.5 Young was a typical liberal mandarin of the period after the Second World War; now nearly sixty, he had never been a particularly fierce or trenchant imperialist. More relevantly, for Hong Kong’s experience, he was not a Sinologist or, in the jargon of the day, a ‘China hand’. He had served as a colonial civil servant in Ceylon, and as governor in Tanganyika and Barbados.6 He knew very little of conditions in Hong Kong before he was appointed governor in 1941.