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ELIZABETH SINN
the answers necessarily involve conjecture, but it is hoped that, with care, we can get near the truth.
The first question is, what caused the initial strike against the French? Marsh insisted that it was Chang Chih-tung's proclamation, though it was not published in Hong Kong until 17th September while the strike against the La Galissonière had actually begun on the 11th. In fact Marsh was not far wrong because the proclamation once issued in Canton on the 5th could easily have reached Hong Kong by channels other than formal publication in the local newspapers. Neither, for that matter, did the Canton Authorities have to make known their wishes only by way of proclamations.
However, Chang Chih-tung, answering the Tsungli Yamen's queries about his part in the strike and riot in Hong Kong, protested his innocence. He had not published proclamations in Hong Kong as the Hong Kong Government had charged, he claimed, and since going on strike meant loss of income for the workers, he reasoned, no official could have induced them to do so. They had gone on strike voluntarily, out of patriotism.47 He did not however say what he had hoped to achieve by the proclamations he admitted publishing in Canton.
In another despatch to the Tsungli Yamen after the strike in Hong Kong ended, he wrote that he had secretly telegraphed Chinese merchants in Hong Kong to try to end the strike. The phrase he used in instructing the merchants was "shih-k'o chi-chih" 可即止 to stop immediately when the time was appropriate.49 The implication of this phrase is that some disturbance was permissible as long as it did not get out of hand, and a further, more incriminating, implication was that the situation had been started by the Chinese merchants and was in their control so that there was no question they would be able to reverse the situation when and if they so wished.
Chang Chih-tung thus contradicted himself. He was clearly not as innocent as he so vehemently claimed to the Tsungli Yamen. He had issued a provocative proclamation, had relied on local leaders to appeal for an anti-French strike, and had relied on the anti-French feelings of the Chinese to rally to his call.