The President said that Chiang had con.rmed in a letter his
willingness to make a free port of Hong Kong. Stanley��s only
comment on the Hong Kong narrative was, ��It will be a long three
days [of of.cial visit], Mr President.��32
American double standards were nothing new to the British, but as the trusteeship issue came alive British attacks upon American policy became less guarded. Roosevelt himself also became a target. Richard Law, parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Foreign Of.ce, had had a similar encounter to Oliver Stanley with the President the previous December. He advised that ��the President tends to be somewhat irresponsible in his table talk, and it would be unwise to base too much on any points of detail��.33
The hardening approach in the presentation of British colonial policy was also evident in London��s preparations for the Ninth Institute of Paci.c Relations conference, to be held at Hot Springs, Virginia in January 1945. At the 1942 Mount Tremblant conference in Quebec, the British had attached considerable importance to this unof.cial gathering of academics, diplomats and politicians, despite attempting to cancel it. After the resounding Far Eastern defeats of early 1942 there was a feeling in Whitehall that Britain had to justify her colonies, if not the British Empire itself, to the assembled Allied delegations. With the forthcoming 1945 conference, however, the British had downgraded the conference��s importance though a strong delegation was neverthe-less .elded. Ashley Clarke��s more hard-line replacement as head of the Far Eastern section of the Foreign Of.ce, Sterndale Bennett, explained:
These conferences of the IPR must arouse mixed feelings in our minds here. But there can be no doubt, I think, that as long as the Americans attach so much importance to them and send such a strong delegation . . . it is to our advantage to give every support and assistance to the British delegation, and to see it is also as strong as possible.34
At the conference itself the usual American criticisms of British imperi-alism were by now ritually aired, and once again met colourful resist-ance from the British socialist, Creech Jones. When the Americans droned on about colonies under the guise of ��dependent areas��, Creech Jones struck a raw nerve, asking whether this included the ��.fteen million dependent peoples in the United States proper��; in other words, the American Negro! The British cross-party consensus was also dis-played again when Creech Jones congratulated his usual foe Oliver Stanley on doing ��a reasonably good job��. He added that Labour and Conservative were ��now walking together�� in colonial matters.35 The importance of this meeting, however, should not be exaggerated; for the British it was only a talking shop which they reluctantly attended. The conference��s real signi.cance is, perhaps, indicated by the absence of British Foreign Of.ce .les in the archives: they were destroyed when the documents were ��weeded�� for worthless material. Symbolically, the only remaining records are American.
Never ending: Anglo-American con.ict in China
While it was true that Roosevelt increasingly overlooked Chiang Kai-shek��s importance (for example, telexes became far less frequent between the two), it was certainly not the case that the British position in China became any easier. This was principally because American personnel within China remained exceedingly ill-disposed towards the British. At the end of November 1944, China��s situation was on the edge. Carton de Wiart wrote to General Ismay from Chungking that ��the situation here is far worse than I have ever known it, and if the Japanese get Kweiyang, they can go for Kunming or Chungking, and I would not be surprised at anything happening then��. Even the new American commander remained extremely apprehensive in private at the gravity of the situation. When Japan��s radio propagandist Tokyo Rose broadcast that ��General Wedemeyer will eat his thanksgiving dinner in India, if he eats any at all��, she was being uncharacteristically truthful.36
Wedemeyer, however, like many other American service men in China, preferred to blame the British for the impending catastrophe. Super.cially he improved Allied relations with his attempt to woo the media, although this was not dif.cult following General Stilwell. On the other hand, however, Wedemeyer promoted military plans which were partially designed to disadvantage the British position in the Far East. Despite his protestations to the contrary, he consistently sided with the Chinese against the British for political reasons masquerading as military necessity. The central tenet of this ��plan�� was a joint Sino-American campaign, codenamed Carbonado, to seize the area of Canton and Hong Kong, on the pretext of opening up a supply route into China. This was to get underway in the summer of 1945. Carbonado, it should be added, could not have happened without American support and advisers. Before that operation became feasible, however, Wedemeyer attempted to coordinate all covert operations in the China theatre with obvious implications for Britain and Hong Kong.37
In October 1944, Oliver Stanley authorised Gerard Gent to discuss the possibility of forming an emergency civil affairs unit to in.ltrate Hong Kong in the event of a Japanese withdrawal from the colony. This was an expansion on the earlier idea of utilising the British Army Aid Group had the Hong Kong Planning Unit not been ready in a crisis. There was a latent fear within the Colonial Of.ce that Chinese irregular troops or bandits would seize the colony should the Japanese evacuate. In these circumstances, it was anticipated that the Chinese Government would attempt to control Chinese forces and reclaim the colony.38 After receiv-ing the approval of the Secretary of State for War, however, further con-sultations with Mountbatten and de Wiart were terminated by General Wedemeyer��s insistence that all special operations in the China theatre be approved by himself.
Wedemeyer��s reassertion of his authority over all the intelligence units was not without reasonable foundation. As far as he was con-cerned there were too many competing intelligence and commando units in his theatre (including 11 American ones), causing duplica-tion and unnecessary bureaucracy. He even had to chastise one US Navy intelligence group for its independent attitude.39 Nonetheless, Wedemeyer��s new policy to clear all paramilitary operations through the Generalissimo meant British approaches to approve her emergency Hong Kong unit were now ��quite useless��. It was clear to the Colonial Of.ce that neither Chiang nor Wedemeyer would ever sanction a British operation to retake their colony, and the Americans had now estab-lished the perfect bureaucratic alibi to disguise their anti-imperialism. Revealingly, General Hurley, still in China, had earlier telexed the President (after presumably consulting Wedemeyer) that the British Army Aid Group was unnecessary and served only imperial interests. Typically, he found it hard to resist an adventitious side-swipe at the colonial powers:
All the British, Dutch, French diplomatic and other organisations in China are de.nitely opposing the American policy in China. The [British] Ambassador has said to General Wedemeyer and also to me that the American policy to unify China is detrimental, if not destructive, to the position of the White Man in Asia.40
Laying aside the implausibility of Sir Horace Seymour��s remark to Wede-meyer, it was clear that the American high command in China wanted the British out of China, full stop. Wedemeyer��s attempt to coordinate special operations should therefore be seen as the culmination of this resentment. There was also the question of the chicken and the egg: if there was British subterfuge and secrecy it was largely motivated by America��s almost evangelical persecution of British imperial beliefs and policy. The Americans could hardly expect the British to be completely honest with them (even though they often were) if respect for each other��s point of view was so clearly lacking on either side.
The American attempt to coerce British intelligence efforts sparked an internecine dispute between the BAAG and SOE, threatening Britain��s only remaining toe-hold in Hong Kong. SOE pleaded with London to roll the BAAG into SOE, which was resisted by the BAAG causing endless (and futile) arguments within the British bureaucracy. SOE, furthermore, thought that they could circumvent Wedemeyer��s order by proposing that the British retain jurisdiction for general intelligence duties around Kwangtung province, which of course included the area of Hong Kong. Such blatantly transparent manoeuvres tended to be a feature of SOE��s planning and did not bode well for future operations.41
The stress of the period began to take its toll on tempers, particularly Colonel Ride��s, the commander of the BAAG, who remained adamantly opposed to using his troops in south China to participate in the Colonial Of.ce/SOE operation to retake the colony. Despite the fact that the BAAG consisted of many SOE personnel who had escaped Hong Kong on its capitulation in 1941, he was in no mood to compromise:
If the BAAG is used in the operation on Hong Kong for any other purposes outside its of.cial role (escape and evasion of landing parties and airmen, rescuing of POWs, and security) we shall be damned in the eyes of both Chinese and Americans for a long time afterwards. The comment will be, ��There you are; we knew all along the per.dious British were up to their old games.��
Ride��s outburst was regarded as hysterical at the Foreign Of.ce and the Colonial Of.ce, particularly in light of Chinese and American treatment of British interests in the theatre. The British were already damned in their Allies�� eyes which undercut any further logic to appease them, especially when it concerned such an important issue as Hong Kong. A.L. Scott thought Ride��s position ��remarkable��.42 The report certainly put the cat among the pigeons; an impromptu interde-partmental meeting was convened on 5 July to discuss the next step. Gerard Gent, as usual, took the lead and did not restrain his opinions; Ride was wrong, and his .rst duty must be to the colony. ��He did not suppose the Foreign Of.ce would wish to be faced with the embar-rassing situation that would arise if Hong Kong were occupied by Chinese claiming to assert and retain authority in the colony.�� Indeed they did not.43
When the British Embassy in Chungking was informed of the decision to use the BAAG in retaking Hong Kong, the story took a further twist. Churchill��s personal representative to Chiang Kai-shek, Carton de Wiart, and the ambassador, .rmly believed that the opera-tion would be impractical due to expected opposition from the Ameri-cans, particularly General Wedemeyer.44 The seriousness of the situation meant that the controversy and the danger it represented to Hong Kong permeated to the top of Whitehall. Oliver Stanley��s private secretary, however, informed the Far Eastern department of the Colonial Of.ce that there was no urgency to resolve affairs. SOE��s head, Lord Selborne, backed by Stanley, was discussing the matter with Churchill, while David MacDougall, head of the Hong Kong Planning Unit, was visiting China for a month:
If it involves (as of course it does) the risk of a .rst-class row between General Wedemeyer and ourselves which could endanger the whole existence of our clandestine organisation in China (and no doubt in other American controlled areas), we should wait.45
American hypocrisy was on the agenda again: Selborne pointedly observed that although he was not ��desirous of intruding where we are not wanted . . . it is germane to remember that we invited OSS into the Balkans when it was a purely British theatre and shared our close inte-gration��. Oliver Stanley was fully supportive of SOE��s position believing that it was crucial to tackle the Americans head on at this juncture; failure to do so would see what little British in.uence had in China eradicated. If British covert operations were abandoned, the key mech-anism for Britain��s recapture of the colony would be lost. Stanley wrote to the Prime Minister arguing that, ��There are no British operational forces of the ordinary sort in either theatre and we have therefore to rely on paramilitary forces to show the .ag in connection with the liberation of Borneo and Hong Kong.��46 At the same time, Louis Mount-batten was arguing with Wedemeyer until he was blue in the face.
The American commander��s proposals to coordinate all China opera-tions extended to Indo-China where Louis Mountbatten thought he had a verbal agreement with Chiang Kai-shek that SEAC forces would predominate. Now, he was told this agreement no longer held (and since it was not written down, SEAC��s claims were hard to prove). Churchill wrote to Roosevelt advising that Wedemeyer be overruled in favour of Mountbatten. Even though the President would not agree to this, the message sent by the British could not be ignored: they would defend their interests in the Far East at the highest level if need be.47 And although Oliver Stanley��s letter had arrived too late for a speci.c refer-ence to Hong Kong in the Prime Minister��s telex, the principle of mutual cooperation in Anglo-American relations raised by Churchill (in deed as well as word) held true for the colony. At a time when both the President and Churchill were increasingly preoccupied with deteriorat-ing relations with the Soviets post-Yalta, the fact that Wedemeyer��s actions could cause such consternation illustrated the continued importance of the Far East within British circles.
Ultimately, Britain��s mobilisation against Wedemeyer��s heavy-handed actions limited the damage to British capabilities in the China theatre. Although the general had his way, the British retained their hold on Kwangtung province using the BAAG and SOE. The price exacted, however, was extremely high. Sir Horace Seymour had to promise that he was ��completely committed to keeping General Wedemeyer informed of all British plans and activities in the military .eld��. In other words, no more secret plans to recapture Hong Kong from within China. Any emergency unit would now have to come from outside the China theatre, probably from India.48 Carton de Wiart also took over the co-ordination of British covert operations in the theatre. While he was on relatively good terms with the Americans and Chinese in Chungking, believing Wedemeyer to be ��the right man for the job��, de Wiart did not manifest the same determination to retain Hong Kong as many people within Whitehall did.49
General Wedemeyer��s .rst months in command had realised a major set-back for independent British efforts to recapture Hong Kong. As Sir Horace Seymour explained, this was the American aim: both he and de Wiart had ��gained the impression that Wedemeyer [was] opposed to any action by the British in China directed to the reoccupation of Hong Kong��.50 Instead, the British were now faced with the uphill task of secur-ing Sino-American agreement for the attachment of an emergency civil affairs unit to advancing Chinese troops heading for Hong Kong.
David MacDougall��s trip to China
When David MacDougall visited China in March 1945 in order to prepare the way for the Hong Kong Planning Unit��s return to the colony, he encountered considerable doubts among British personnel that Britain would return there. These enquiries came ��from such widely dif-fering sources as a Russian-born ex-employee of the Hong Kong Dairy Farm now working in Calcutta and a senior member of the Ambassador��s staff in Chungking��. Major General Hayes, the British military repre-sentative in Chungking was also less than enthusiastic at MacDougall��s visit. He was particularly keen to play down the Hong Kong issue so as not to complicate relations with Wedemeyer and the Americans even further. It was apparent that constant Sino-American intimidation of British personnel in China had drained some of their imperial spirit and pushed them into a defensive frame of mind. There were, however, more encouraging aspects to MacDougall��s visit.
MacDougall learnt that the wooden-legged Admiral Chan Chuk, who had escaped from the colony with him in December 1941, was desig-nated as the next mayor of Canton. While Chan was not particularly ��pro�� anything, he had ��a soft spot for the British administration of Hong Kong��. If this appointment was con.rmed, MacDougall saw it of the .rst importance: ��That should give us a good start. It is not dif.cult to imagine post-war conditions in which what Canton thinks is more important to Hong Kong than policies originating in Nanking (or wher-ever the capital of China is .nally located).��51 He observed, furthermore, that China��s anticipation of the colony��s retrocession was subsiding.
If I interpreted correctly the nods and becks of those of my Chung-king friends whom I managed to see in Chungking, the Chinese seem a good deal more reconciled to not getting possession of Hong Kong the day after tomorrow than they were in 1942: curiously enough, they show on the whole somewhat more faith in British tenacity . . . than our own Far Eastern communities.
MacDougall��s presence amongst the embattled British personnel in the Far East, moreover, had its own salutary effect. After years of having to work in an American-dominated theatre, and no doubt make constant excuses for being British, people were grati.ed to discover that London had not forgotten them.52
Sir Horace Seymour, the British Ambassador in Chungking, was one of many people David MacDougall met in China who expressed scepticism at Britain��s renewed imperial aspirations. Seymour��s prefer-ence was to return Hong Kong. He warned that after the war the Chinese would ��do everything they can to get rid of the remaining foreign colonies on the coast [and] to make Hong Kong��s position very dif.-cult��.53 This view, though, was increasingly out of step with the Foreign Of.ce back in London. Yes, there would be problems reimposing British rule the way it was in 1941, but A.L. Scott disagreed ��with the thesis that the possession of the territory constitutes ��imperialism����. The Colonial Of.ce, furthermore, ��attached considerable importance�� to retaining Hong Kong as an anchor for British interests in the Far East.54 An impor-tant consideration in the Foreign Of.ce��s hardening stance was the discrediting of any compromise solution. With China in confusion there was little realistic possibility of a halfway house where the Chinese would guarantee British interests in the colony. This, anyway, would not have removed Chinese grievances completely. The Hong Kong ques-tion had reached a point where a compromise could never satisfy both sides. T.H. Brewis of the Far Eastern department wrote, ��The fact is, I suppose, that Hong Kong is to remain as exactly as before, and that there is nothing which needs discussion with the Chinese ...My impression is that this attitude has worked rather well so far.��55
General Hurley visited London in early April 1945 as Roosevelt��s personal representative. It was sharp reminder of the Foreign Of.ce��s growing resistance towards American anti-colonialism. On hearing in late March that the general might not, after all, be coming, Anthony Eden noted, ��Thank God!��56 Field Marshal Wilson at the British Embassy in Washington alerted General Ismay that Hurley��s likely mission was trouble. Hurley had, apparently, already warned Wilson that both the State Department and the President were threatening Britain with a rough time over Hong Kong. As if this was not enough, Hurley raised the prospect of prohibiting Britain from using lend-lease materiel to regain her colonial Empire.57 A.L. Scott was not impressed. He reacted to such threats in the same way that Oliver Stanley had when he visited America in January, casting aspersions upon the integrity of American policy. Scott argued that it was highly hypocritical for the Americans to maintain the ��pose of self-determination�� when they had kicked the Mexicans out of south-west America, and forced the southern Con-federacy to stay in the Union!58
The Foreign Of.ce brief for Eden and Churchill prior to meeting Hurley was equally robust. Since much of its contents was already implicitly agreed upon among Whitehall .gures, the brief was, in many respects, predictable. It stated that the future of Hong Kong was a problem between Britain and China, which did not include the USA. What is more, ��having lost Hong Kong to the enemy, it [was] a point of national honour to recover it��, just as General MacArthur claimed he would return to the Philippines. The British were also not convinced that they were acting from purely sel.sh reasons; the brief spoke of the ��heavy responsibility in respect of Hong Kong towards all nations interested in the stability and welfare of the Far East��.59
When Hurley did arrive, he did not disappoint. Sterndale Bennett described how Hurley ��passed so rapidly and so imperceptibly from subject to subject that there was not opportunity for taking him up on any one point��. Anthony Eden��s meeting with the general no doubt took a similar course, although unfortunately he did not have time to make a record. As expected, though, we do know that Hurley raised the ques-tion of Hong Kong with Eden.60 If the Foreign Secretary failed to com-municate to the troublesome American general Britain��s resolve over the colony, he was left in no doubt by Churchill. Hurley made the mistake of baiting the Prime Minister on this very subject. From Churchill��s own words we know that
General Hurley seemed to wish to con.ne the conversation to civil banalities. I took him up with violence about Hong Kong and said that never would we yield an inch of the territory that was under the British .ag. As for the leased territory, in connection with the water supply, that did not come up until 1998 or thereabouts. In the mean-
while we would set up distilling machinery which would give us all
the water we wanted and more. The General-Ambassador accepted
this without further demur.
I do not think any harm could have been done by my talk with
him. We shall see.61
If it was too much to hope that the Americans would accept Britain��s attitude towards her ��colonies [as] one of responsibility and not privilege��, which Sterndale Bennett thought it might be, American anti-imperialism was about to be dealt a tragic blow.62 On the 12 April, one day after Hurley had seen the Prime Minister, President Roosevelt suffered a fatal brain haemorrhage. If his experience would be sorely missed by the British as peace approached, his obsessive arguments for the dissolution of the Empire would not.
The death of President Roosevelt and San Francisco
The death of Roosevelt should not have been unexpected but as Churchill��s doctor wrote at Yalta, ��men shut their eyes when they do not want to see, and the Americans cannot bring themselves to believe that he is .nished��.63 The President��s passing was deeply mourned by Churchill, who described him as ��the greatest champion of freedom who has ever brought help and comfort from the new world to the old��.64 The cold fact remained, however, that Roosevelt��s removal from of.ce helped British foreign policy in many respects, including her attempt to reoccupy Hong Kong.
It was understandable why Churchill felt so grieved: as far as he was concerned the Anglo-American relationship was a personal (and special) relationship, jealously guarded between himself and Roosevelt. Roosevelt��s death, therefore, broke up this comfortable twosome and restrained Churchill��s wilder inclinations to trust in God and America. For the Americans themselves, the implications went far deeper.
Few people in American political history had concentrated so much power in their hands as Franklin Roosevelt. In many respects, he was the creator of the ��imperial presidency��, but for all that he did not leave a coherent foreign policy behind. General Wedemeyer described how when he was assigned to the China theatre in November 1944 he was reminded of Stephen Leacock��s remark: ��He mounted his horse and rode off in all directions.��65 Perplexingly, even though he must have known he was dying, the President refused to leave a political will or testament, or anoint a successor. Harry Truman, Roosevelt��s successor and deputy, was an experienced politician but had been kept in ignorance, like everyone else, of FDR��s inner thoughts. He had no foreign policy experience and had to grapple with complex diplomatic problems from a cold start. It was, therefore, little surprise that the new President felt less strongly on colonial issues and Hong Kong��s future. This was a man, moreover, who recognised the hypocritical aspects of American foreign policy. During a dinner for Oliver Stanley in January 1945, Truman asked what the American reaction would be if Puerto Rico were a British colony, and were treated the way the Americans treated it. The impli-cation was that American anti-colonial criticism was reserved for other countries when America��s treatment of her own dependent areas was not beyond reproach.66
Besides having to pick up the wreckage of Roosevelt��s foreign policy idealism, Truman was faced with more pressing issues than Hong Kong��s retrocession to China (on which he had never previously expressed a single opinion). Relations with the Soviet Union, in particular, were critical at this juncture, especially as Stalin was behaving more like his old thuggish self. Arguably, through his weakness with Stalin, Roosevelt had fanned the .ames of Soviet expansionism himself. In such cir-cumstances, the British found a new President who increasingly favoured a solid Anglo-American front with which to confront Stalin. Disputes which could weaken the Anglo-American alliance were there-fore downplayed, including the issues of trusteeship and colonialism.
San Francisco
Despite President Truman��s more conciliatory approach to Anglo-American relations, the effects did not immediately .lter through to British policymakers. While Truman picked up the reins of American foreign policy, the State Department continued to pursue President Roosevelt��s anti-imperialistic agenda. The British could thus be forgiven for thinking that Roosevelt��s death had made little impact on American anti-colonialism.
At the San Francisco conference, which marked the inauguration of the United Nations Organisation, the American delegation led the way in establishing a trusteeship commission to visit colonies and report on them. The Commonwealth even showed signs of splitting, with the Australian delegation siding with the Americans.67 The conference itself, however, was somewhat surreal; in many respects it resembled the British experience at the Institute of Paci.c Relations conferences where the delegates had harangued British colonial policy until blue in the face, irrespective of practical considerations. Similarly, the proceedings at San Francisco, for all the importance the British attached to them, were largely irrelevant. Stalin would never have joined the United Nations or sent his Foreign Minister, Molotov, to the conference if there was any possibility of national sovereignty being undermined. The same principles applied to the British Empire. Even Winston Churchill had grudgingly come to this conclusion: he advised that the Americans be allowed to exempt any Japanese islands they required (for security purposes) from United Nations supervision, without exacting a quid pro quo.68
The Chinese, uncharacteristically, kept a low pro.le at the conference, even though they would receive one of the coveted .ve seats on the Security Council committee due to American sponsorship. Sir Horace Seymour noted that they resisted the temptation to stir up the Hong Kong issue, proclaiming with palpable sincerity that ��China has never taken advantage of the dif.culties of others to absorb their terri-tory��.69 At a time when China��s own weakness was more likely to be exploited by others, however, the Nationalists could stand accused of trading in empty gestures. Indeed, the city of San Francisco appeared a more absorbing distraction for the Chinese delegation than the tedium of diplomacy. One of their number passed out during mid-debate in the conference room, and had to be carried from the room. Reportedly, he had spent an entire afternoon with ��a most charming lady�� in San Francisco!70
The Colonial Of.ce, however, were not now in a frame of mind in which they could readily decipher a real threat to the Empire from a harmless one. Churchill had frequently exhibited these characteristics as we have already seen, snapping at his ministers for seemingly inno-cuous proposals which touched upon the keyword, ��Empire��. Oliver Stanley now reacted similarly. After working himself up over British colonial concessions at San Francisco, the Colonial Secretary was in no mood for perceived divisions within the British ranks, least of all from the Foreign Of.ce. Unfortunately for the latter, however, Hall-Patch of the Foreign Of.ce��s Far Eastern department made the mistake of emphasising the dif.culties involved in Britain��s return to Hong Kong at a Cabinet committee meeting.
During a Far Eastern economic meeting on 10 May, Hall-Patch (in the Chair) noted that unless the Chinese acquiesced with Britain��s con-tinued rule of the colony it would not be much use economically. ��He expressed doubts as to whether the future of Hong Kong as a British possession was clear enough to encourage British interests to assist in its rehabilitation.��71 Oliver Stanley was furious. He wrote to Anthony Eden on 25 May:
Every now and then I come across expressions of doubt in un-expected quarters as to our intention or capacity to resume the administration of Hong Kong, and one of the latest is the proceed-ings of one of the sub-committees of the Far Eastern committee (FE(E)(45) 5th meeting, paragraph 4). It is important that there should be no doubt about our resolution in the matter and none is justi.ed least of all in of.cial circles.
Sterndale Bennett at the Foreign Of.ce thought Stanley��s letter an over-reaction. Few disagreed that the colony was British but he felt that ��no good purpose will be served by blinking [at] the dif.culties which we are likely to meet in regard to Hong Kong��. On Eden��s behalf, Richard Law was left to mollify the Colonial Of.ce. He told Stanley that Churchill��s minute of his conversation with General Hurley would be circulated within the Far Eastern department, but added that Hall-Patch was ��not throwing doubt�� on British resolve, but ��merely referring to dif-.culties��.72 It would appear that Foreign and Colonial Of.ce mutual distrust remained an inescapable feature of the Whitehall landscape.
The British general election
The defeat of Germany on 7 May 1945 brought one half of the Second World War to an end, and with it came the demise of Churchill��s coali-tion government. The Labour Party had insisted on a speedy general election (to be held in July) against the advice of Attlee and Churchill who wanted to keep the coalition together until the defeat of Japan. The fatigue, though, which had been stalking Churchill and Eden for the past few years resurfaced with a vengeance; Eden was taken ill with a duodenal ulcer and spent the entire month of June convalescing, missing the whole election campaign.73 Churchill, too, needed a rest from government; he seemed ��too weary to think out a policy for the restoration of the country after the havoc of the war��. At his doctor��s insistence he took a ten-day holiday in the south of France in early July, before the Potsdam conference.74 It all seemed like the end of a long and arduous journey which no one had the .ght left in them to carry on. Churchill��s performance in the election campaign was lacklustre, while Eden��s heart was not in it. He wrote just before the result in July at Potsdam: ��Depressed and cannot help an unworthy hope that we may lose, or rather have lost, this election. If it were not for the immediate European situation I am sure it would be better thus, that is a big ��if��, I admit.��75 Compounding his misery was the news that his son, Simon, was missing on active service in the Far East. For Eden the Burma war could not be a ��forgotten war��.
If it looked as if the government had reached its .nal destination, they could at least list a long line of achievements to match the defeats. Many of the pieces necessary for Britain��s return to Hong Kong were already in place despite the increasingly pressing problem of Soviet imperialism. A foreign policy consensus, if not already existing, had been forged across political boundaries throughout the war years. This fact was exposed as the general election campaign unfolded; foreign affairs was reduced to a paragraph in Labour��s election manifesto, the decisive issue being social reform. The legacy of the Churchill govern-ment, furthermore, was also relatively secure when compared to the American system of government. Whereas the death of Roosevelt had broken American foreign policy into splinters, the permanence of civil service staff and cross-party inclusiveness in London enabled continu-ity as well as change.
With their patron departed the Chinese were also given pause for thought. Li Shu Fan, who had visited the Colonial Of.ce in early 1944 to discuss Hong Kong, was now acting as personal adviser to the Chinese Prime Minister, T.V. Soong in San Francisco. In discussions with a British representative, Li stated that the Chinese were increasingly concerned, not with Hong Kong, but with Soviet and American policies:
There was no disposition to make an issue of the rendition of Hong Kong, in view of . . . misgivings engendered in of.cial circles in Chungking as to the future attitude of Russia and the support accorded to the Communist Party of China. [Li] went further and stated that the attitude adopted by the United States in its sponsor-ship of a ��get together�� policy between Chungking and the commu-nist party in China had created grave concern in of.cial quarters in Chungking.76
With the collapse of the Japanese war effort only months away, the British were about to discover whether this was one more Chinese deception. Either way, London knew like Stalin that ownership was nine-tenths possession.
10
Return of the Empire: the Defeat of Japan, July�VSeptember 1945
Perhaps the greatest problem . . . will be the destruction by three years of Japanese occupation of the British ��Legend��. Whatever else happens the deep feeling that British rule was inevitable has been shattered for ever. There is, however, another side to this picture; if the divine right of Britain to rule has been proved a myth, ��independence�� at least under the dominance of any major Asiatic power, has proved a nightmare.1
SOE report, April 1945
The end of the war in the Paci.c
Despite the exertions and scheming of the Allies to plot the course ahead, the situation remained as clear as the deep green sea which surrounded the colony. For all the momentum behind British foreign policy her return to Hong Kong was not inevitable, not least because there were factors over which London had no control. Most problem-atic was the continuing legacy of poor Anglo-American relations in the Far East. Besides Operation Carbonado, Anglo-American relations remained fraught in the China theatre generally, and it seemed obvious to British personnel that any reclamation of the colony would necessi-tate a British-led seizure. Sir Horace Seymour believed that ��If it could only be British forces which recapture Hong Kong, some at least of our troubles would be largely solved . . . But if we are merely given it back very reluctantly by our Allies, it will be a very long time before we hear the last of it.��2
Overshadowing Allied relations was the threat of a Japanese with-drawal from Hong Kong, up the China coast, leaving the colony wide open to Chinese irregular forces or loyal Nationalist armies. The British
186
Chiefs of Staff, who held a very low estimation of Chinese military prowess, expected this to be the only way the Chinese could recapture the colony. Political changes within the British Government, however, offered one last straw of hope for the Americans and Chinese. The theory was that a Labour government, with its more internationalist approach to diplomatic relations, would take a more conciliatory stance over Hong Kong. The acrimonious general election campaign of June and July seemed to point to major differences of opinion between the socialists and Conservatives. All of this was true of course, but Conser-vative�VLabour schisms were principally concerned with domestic affairs. It was a misreading of the situation to link social radicalism with a progressive foreign policy. Churchill��s defeat, on 26 July did not, there-fore, mark a watershed in British diplomatic policy. In the end, it was Britain��s foreign policy consensus which would triumph over the divisions of her two Allies, China and America.
Towards judgement day
The .icker of the war��s end encouraged the Colonial and Foreign Of.ces to concentrate on the practicalities of returning British rule to the Far East. After an incredible .ve-month delay, Sir Horace Seymour received a reply to his telex which requested information on the future of Hong Kong. Apologising for the Ambassador��s letter having been ��over-looked�� by the Colonial Of.ce, Sterndale Bennett informed him that ��nothing has been said on a ministerial level either privately or publicly to suggest that any change in the status of Hong Kong is contemplated��. For Seymour��s information a China Association letter defending Britain��s rights to the colony and the Colonial Of.ce guidelines for the San Francisco conference were sent to Chungking.3 The Foreign Of.ce was now even prepared to blame Anglo-American dif.culties on Britain��s own lack of faith in the Empire! The liberal A.L. Scott was moved to write:
I feel the root of the matter is that our people abroad are themselves half convinced that by retaining our Far Eastern territories under our control until they are .t for self-government, we are activated by purely sel.sh and reactionary motives. ��Refresher courses�� may help to correct this.
Gladwyn Jebb thought this was ��very true��.4 The colonial lethargy which had epitomised Britain��s defence of the colony in 1941 had been
replaced by a hard-bitten, do-it-yourself philosophy which attempted to wipe out the shameful defeats of earlier years. There was little illusion about the importance of recapturing the colony using British troops.5 The problems of cooperating with her Allies in the China theatre provided, if it were needed, a continuing reminder of the dangers of trusting British policy to others.
The ever present David MacDougall was one of many people who encountered complications. Attempting to recruit British Chinese personnel for the Hong Kong Planning Unit, he faced the obstacle that many of the people on his ��hit list�� remained working in China. To extricate them would require a Chinese Government visa, which would be hard to obtain if the Chinese knew why they were returning to England.6 The situation was little better for British forces in China itself. Sir Horace Seymour reported that the Americans were still extremely suspicious of the BAAG and the British military situation in China ��is now so dif.cult and precarious�� that any special operations plan to recapture Hong Kong would have to be cleared with the Americans and Chinese at the highest level.7
The .nal wartime conference of the Big Three, codenamed Terminal, which met at Potsdam in the middle of July, marked a further ebbing of Britain��s world power. The commitment to restore her sovereignty over Hong Kong was, however, successfully passed from Churchill��s administration to Attlee��s.
Potsdam
When Churchill arrived in Berlin on 15 July after his convalescence, he brought in tow his shadow from the Labour Party, Clement Attlee. Anthony Eden also joined the delegation after recovering from his duodenal ulcer. The reason for Attlee��s presence was that Churchill��s government was in limbo. Polling day had been on 5 July, but to enable the services to vote, the result was staggered until 26 July, towards the end of the Potsdam conference. Such a situation was not ideal. Indeed, in one melancholic moment Churchill thought that ��nothing will be decided at the conference at Potsdam. I shall be only half the man until the result of the poll. I shall keep in the background of the conference.��8 It was true that Potsdam was not a decisive conference simply because many decisions had been taken long before; its function from the British and American point of view was largely to stem the deterioration of relations with Stalin. On the other hand, Churchill had the oppor-tunity to assess the new American President and his Secretary of State, James Byrnes. With ��terrible deeds . . . being done�� in Eastern Europe, however, Allied relations with the Soviet Union could not but overshadow the conference.9
All the same, the Far Eastern war was discussed at Potsdam and the issue of Hong Kong was an item the Foreign and Colonial Of.ce hoped to raise with President Truman. The Far Eastern department of the Foreign Of.ce suggested that Britain��s defence of the colony should rest on three points: Britain had built the colony from nothing; with the abolition of extraterritoriality, British traders needed a secure trading base; and ��Having lost Hong Kong to the enemy, it is a point of national honour for us to recover it, and restore it to its national state of order and prosperity.��10
Chinese of.cials were conspicuous by their absence at Terminal, symbolising the status to which China had descended in inter-Allied diplomacy. T.V. Soong had held exceedingly gloomy talks with the British Ambassador to Moscow, Clark Kerr, in late July. Soong explained how President Truman had only informed the Chinese of the secret Yalta agreement in June, which came as a nasty shock to Chiang Kai-shek. ��He was sore about the terms of the Yalta agreement on the Far East and about China��s not having been consulted.�� Now the Russians were insisting on even more favourable agreement with the Chinese. Having few cards left to play, the Chinese had to give.11 Internal events in China also made for reliably pessimistic reading. At the time of Potsdam there had been a recent gold scandal in the .nance ministry which stripped the Chinese of any remaining .nancial credibility. More worrying, perhaps, was America��s willingness openly to dictate China��s foreign policy.
As if the Yalta agreement were not enough, the Americans had forced the Chinese to drive on the right-hand side of the road. This concealed signi.cant economic implications for US exports into what had been a traditionally (British) left-hand sided country. SOE reported that while most senior Chinese government .gures were appreciative of American aid, others were coming to the conclusion that even this was not enough; they hoped that America would openly intervene on behalf of the increasingly desperate Nationalist side. It was a common National-ist belief ��that Washington would not . . . stand by and see the KMT Government overwhelmed by the [communist] Yenan, or any other regime��.12 While this view may have been representative of most Americans within China itself, opinion in Washington was undergoing a sea change. The decisive voices in the American capital had wearied of China��s begging hand, and there was certainly no stomach for large-scale intervention on the Chinese mainland.
While the Great Powers met at Potsdam, the British were frantically trying to balance any diplomatic agreement over Hong Kong with the threat of physical force.
��Great urgency��: the Colonial Of.ce and the reoccupation of Hong Kong
With the news from the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the upcoming Sino-American offensive towards Hong Kong, the Colonial Of.ce attempted to reinstate their emergency commando unit. Even though the War Of.ce believed that it remained highly unlikely that Chinese forces would recapture the Hong Kong�VCanton area in the near future, the possibility remained. It was at this juncture, therefore, that the Colonial Of.ce embarked on a two-track policy. In the event of a sudden Japanese capitulation or withdrawal from Hong Kong, a secret emer-gency commando unit would be prepared and waiting. On the other hand, Operation Carbonado necessitated an approach to Chiang Kai-shek to gain the attachment of British civil affairs personnel to advancing Chinese armies. These plans provided the .nal framework for British policy to recapture Hong Kong. Before such an approach could occur, however, Oliver Stanley felt that American approval at the highest possible level should be secured, preferably at Potsdam.13
Stanley��s thinking indicated that from the British point of view, it was the American hand that rocked the Chinese cradle. Moreover, the British had learnt from the Wedemeyer debacle over intelligence coordination in the China theatre. If there was any hope of securing American approval for this sensitive project a direct approach to Washington was held out as the best available option. With an Ameri-can general who was antipathetic to British claims to Hong Kong, and who also commanded the Chinese armies and advised Chiang Kai-shek, it was clear that Wedemeyer would have to be overruled by the Presi-dent or his Secretary of State.14 The issue had reached such a critical state for Oliver Stanley that he wrote one of his .nal letters as Colonial Secretary to Anthony Eden on the future of Hong Kong. It was the cul-mination of years of uncertainty, inter-of.ce rivalry and personal involvement. On the 25 July, Stanley wrote to Eden, beginning ��My dear Anthony,��
I should very much have liked to have a talk with you tomorrow about the matter connected with Hong Kong. It is of great urgency as it may be that the only way for it to be dealt with is that it should be raised in personal conversation with the Americans, either between you and Byrnes or between the PM and the President. But unfortunately I cannot get back from Bristol until the Friday morning and I hear that you are planning, if all goes well, to leave then for Potsdam. I do hope you can spare a few minutes tomorrow to let George Gater explain the position to you. Orme Sargent is, I think, already aware of it and it has been discussed with your of.ce. Of course you could not give a decision at such short notice, but you might be able to advise me as to the best course to pursue.15
Time was against Stanley and the Colonial Of.ce, however. The next day Eden, Stanley and all the other Conservative ministers were swept out of of.ce by a Labour landslide as the general election result was announced. The Colonial Of.ce��s position, furthermore, was handicapped by Stanley��s absence from Potsdam in the .rst place. Traditionally, the Colonial Secretary had never gone to any inter-Allied conference (and did not expect to go), but once again it illustrated the Colonial Of.ce��s inherent inferiority within the Whitehall structure; it was forever having to rely on the Foreign Of.ce to put its point of view across even if the time had come when both of.ces agreed over the colony.
Pushed to one side: Hong Kong at Potsdam
For all the concern of the Colonial and Foreign Of.ces to raise the Hong Kong question at Potsdam, circumstances were not conducive. When the conference of.cially started on 17 July, European matters dominated proceedings and it quickly became apparent that Churchill��s increasing age was beginning to show. Eden noted how
W[inston] was very bad. He had read no brief and was confused and woolly and verbose especially about new council of foreign minis-ters. We had an anti-Chinese tirade from him. Americans not a little exasperated . . . In fact Alec and I and Bob have never seen W[inston] worse. I tried alone with him and again urged him not to give up our few cards without return. But W[inston] is again under Stalin��s spell. He kept repeating ��I like that man�� and ��I am full of admiration of Stalin��.16
The Foreign Secretary was himself troubled by personal tragedy, even if he did not let it show. On the 20 July he heard that his son, Simon, had
been killed in a plane crash in Burma. His diary entry simply recorded that ��life seems so desperately empty��.17
The interruption of the conference timetable also created problems for the British delegation. The opportunity to discuss Hong Kong was circumscribed by the timing of Terminal. With the bulk of the work sealed, the conference adjourned on 25 July for a few days to allow Eden, Churchill and Attlee to return home to receive the election result the following day. Few of the Allied delegates expected a socialist victory. Even the Soviet Foreign Secretary (and Stalin��s little echo), Molotov, gave his best wishes for Eden��s return much to his amusement: ��I must be a very bad Foreign Secretary and give way too often if they want me back!��18 Churchill��s doctor was so con.dent of a Conservative victory, despite an uneven campaign, that he had left his luggage behind at Potsdam.19 The verdict of the British people, however, was a resounding endorsement of the Labour Party programme for domestic reform, electing Clement Attlee as the new Prime Minister. Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden would not return to Potsdam for the .nal part of the conference.
Oliver Stanley��s letter to Eden asking him to raise the Hong Kong issue with Truman or Byrnes, therefore, remained an impossibility. With the bulk of the conference questions settled and discussed before the break in the conference, the prime opportunity to broach the subject had been lost. Irrespective of this, however, and more impor-tant, was the continuity of British foreign policy despite the change of Prime Ministers.
Changing ship but not course: Clement Attlee as Prime Minister
The announcement of Churchill��s dismissal allowed people around the world to speculate that British policy would become more accommo-dating over colonial issues. The London correspondent of the Chinese paper, Ta Kung Pao, now anticipated ��a happy solution of such questions as Hong Kong��.20 This, though, was a super.cial reading of British politics, often from people who had much to gain from such a change. British foreign policy was more than the sum of one man, being deeply ingrained across party lines. Clement Attlee wrote to Churchill in the closing hours of the resumed Potsdam conference:
We have, of course, been building on the foundation laid by you, and there has been no change of policy . . . My having been present [at Potsdam] from the start was a great advantage, but Bevin picked up all the points extremely quickly and showed his quality as an experienced negotiator.21
Attlee had .own with his Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, for the .nal stage of Terminal on 28 July. And when the new Prime Minister stated that there had been ��no change of policy��, he was, of course, sincere. The new Foreign Secretary had not only been favoured by Eden as his successor, but had actively sought out Eden��s advice before he left for Germany to ensure the continuity of Britain��s negotiating stance. There had even been the possibility of Anthony Eden accompanying the Labour Party delegation back to Potsdam!22 Churchill, similarly, remained con.dent that Attlee and Bevin would not upset the British diplomatic applecart, even if the Americans reacted unfavourably towards a socialist Britain. He characterised them as ��strong men��, unwilling to ��allow chaos if they can help it��.23
The Foreign Of.ce undoubtedly favoured Bevin as their next Foreign Secretary for reasons which Sir Alexander Cadogan soon made appar-ent. He thought that Bevin ��was the heavyweight of the Cabinet, so if he can be put on the right line, that may be all right��.24 In other words, if handled the right way, the Foreign Of.ce bureaucrats had the potential to manage their own foreign policy, rather than letting Bevin do it. There was nothing new in this, but it demonstrated once again the capacity of Whitehall to set its own agendas and ensure the conti-nuity of policy from one incumbent to the next. The King, hitherto unmentioned in the narrative, also intervened at this point to dissuade Attlee from appointing the unpopular Hugh Dalton as Foreign Secre-tary. Dalton made no bones about his dislike for the way the Foreign Of.ce was run, suggesting that there would have been blood on the carpet in King Charles Street had he been appointed. King George VI, however, wrote to Churchill that he had been ��astonished�� when Attlee had told him of his inclination to put Dalton at the Foreign Of.ce. He told the new Prime Minister that ��Foreign Affairs could be the most important subject for a very long time and I told him to think again and put Bevin there��.25
Despite a successful change of government, it was not completely seamless. The Colonial Of.ce��s attempt to raise the issue of Hong Kong at Potsdam with the Americans was one obvious casualty. Although Bob Dixon, Eden��s and now Bevin��s private secretary, had been sent a brief on Hong Kong for Attlee at Terminal, the issue was not discussed at the conference.26 Paskin at the Colonial Of.ce found out from the Foreign Of.ce that the matter ��was put to the PM at Terminal, and that he intended to raise it with President Truman. There was, however, no opportunity�� to do so. Instead, Bevin had approved the Foreign Of.ce��s suggestion that the Americans be approached through the usual diplo-matic channels.27
While the War Of.ce continued to believe that the Japanese in the Hong Kong vicinity would .ght to the last as they did in Okinawa, the Colonial Of.ce remained fearful that the Japanese could still withdraw. British weakness in the Far Eastern war was, in many ways, responsible for bequeathing this drawn out and convoluted predicament. If the Chinese lacked the ability openly to seize the colony from the Japanese, the same could be said of British efforts. Indeed, London was having dif.culty mustering a token invasion force never mind a battle group to overwhelm an opposed Japanese defence. The future of Hong Kong was therefore being held in limbo by the inadequacies of the Allied powers in the Far East, and the uncertainties of Japanese strategy.28
At an important interdepartmental meeting on 29 July in Whitehall, it was recognised that if the Japanese should evacuate the colony, the most probable outcome was that Chinese communist guerrillas would attempt to enter it. The communist domination of the area surround-ing Hong Kong has frequently been overlooked as a factor limiting Chiang Kai-shek��s intentions to recapture Hong Kong. With the Chinese civil war re-emerging, there was little chance of communist troops sur-rendering Hong Kong to their hated enemies, the Nationalist govern-ment. For once, the Colonial Of.ce recognised the fractured nature of the Chinese body politic and planned accordingly since Chiang Kai-shek ��would not recognise Chinese communist troops or their ability to take Hong Kong��. Restrained by Sir Horace Seymour��s agree-ment to keep General Wedemeyer informed of any British operations within the China theatre, the Colonial Of.ce looked outside China for an emergency commando unit. On the 3 August Paskin and his col-league, Miss Ruston, saw Brigadier J.M. Calvert of the Special Air Service (SAS) in connection with forming a Hong Kong volunteer company in India. The meeting certainly enthused the Colonial Of.ce, who no doubt thought themselves lucky to obtain the assistance of such highly-trained commandos short of alternative missions now the war in Europe was over. Miss Ruston elaborated, ��this proposal seems to be exactly what we are looking for in connection with our plans�� for Hong Kong.29 If in the meantime, however, a civil affairs agreement with the Ameri-cans and Chinese could obtain an attachment of British administrators to Operation Carbonado, ��so much the better��.30
Bearing the unbearable: the Japanese surrender
British planning for the recapture of Hong Kong, based on Operation Carbonado was rendered super.uous by the sudden Japanese surrender on 14 August. The unexpected capitulation of Japan was the best news the British could have received; Sino-American operations were left in disarray, leaving the colony wide open for the British .eet.
The Japanese had, over a long period of time, come to realise that their task was fruitless: the Americans had begun systematically to destroy one Japanese city after another using waves of B-29 bombers, decimating remaining fuel reserves. There was not even enough to eat; Japan was isolated from the outside world by the American naval blockade and was slowly starving to death. Her only hope was based on a compromise peace, and the Allies had rejected this out of hand in the Potsdam Declaration, while the supposedly neutral Soviet Union had rebuffed Japanese peace feelers. To the British and Americans it had seemed a question of how long Japanese resistance could continue and what price in blood they would make Allied troops pay. The fanatical Japanese defence of Iwo Jima and Okinawa indicated that the cost would be high. It was this fear, the dread of having to invade Japan itself with enormous casualties, that had encouraged the Americans to seek Stalin��s commitment to the Far Eastern war. The com-bination of Allied forces aligned against them, coupled with the devastation wrought on Japan itself through carpet bombing and the atomic bomb brought Japan to its knees. There remained, however, a strong military faction within the Japanese Government which pre-ferred a .ght to the end. The deadlock was broken in the early hours of 10 August by the intervention of the Emperor when he sanctioned the acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration. Japan offered to surrender unconditionally, subject to a guarantee retaining the Imperial House, on that same day.
Although the American State Department was opposed to any condi-tions imposed by the Japanese, Admiral Leahy and President Truman accepted the Japanese offer to surrender as it stood in conjunction with Britain, Russia and China on 11 August.31 The Emperor, crushing the military faction��s continued opposition to peace, again accepted the Allied peace terms after a lengthy Imperial conference on 14 August. The following day Hirohito broadcast to the Japanese people for the .rst time, urging them to ��bear the unbearable�� in accepting a peace settle-ment. The Second World War was over, a month short of six whole years. The problems of the peace were just beginning.32
The surrender of Hong Kong
The suddenness of the Japanese capitulation on 14 August brought to the surface with a vengeance the fears and recriminations which had plagued Hong Kong during wartime. Although British plans to attach civil affairs planners to Chinese Nationalist forces were defunct as Operation Carbonado was cancelled, London moved swiftly to reassert its sovereignty over the colony. On 11 August the joint Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff were informed that Britain considered ��it of paramount political importance that we should, at the earliest possible moment, send a British Commonwealth force to accept the surrender of the Japanese at Hong Kong��.33 In response, the American Chiefs of Staff agreed to release the British Paci.c Fleet back into British jurisdiction, considering that the future of Hong Kong should be arranged between the Chinese and British. The evidence for America��s real sympathies, however, remained in the small print. The American Chiefs of Staff, attempting to distance themselves from London��s reoccupation of Hong Kong, pointed out that the release of the British Paci.c Fleet should ��not . . . be construed as assistance to or arrangement for their intended pur-poses��.34 The British, however, were not interested in the quali.cations of American policy, only in the task at hand. The Colonial Of.ce in col-laboration with the Admiralty and War Of.ce readied a task force (code-named Shield) from the British Paci.c Fleet to steam forthwith to Hong Kong. Rear Admiral Cecil Harcourt was nominated for this mission, gath-ering a .eet of some 24 vessels at Subic Bay in the Philippines, includ-ing two aircraft carriers, HMS Indomitable and HMS Venerable. Also assigned to the force were 3000 personnel from an RAF construction unit. Preparations, however, took time and it was not until the 27 August that Admiral Harcourt actually set sail for Hong Kong.35
The Hong Kong Planning Unit was also ��militarised�� to command British forces and .own out to India from London and Australia in preparation for entry into the colony.36 Despite their isolation from diplomatic events, the Colonial Of.ce and Foreign Of.ce did not over-look the importance of British POWs in the colony itself. The Foreign Of.ce told the British Embassy in Chungking that it was ��a matter of the greatest importance�� that the interned Franklin Gimson, Colonial Secretary of Hong Kong pre-war, be given a message authorising him to administer the colony until Admiral Harcourt arrived.37 The sense of urgency within Whitehall was contagious. Trepidation at Chinese designs on Hong Kong would only be exorcised when the Union Jack was .rmly planted in the colony once again.
The British expectation that the Chinese would attempt to manipu-late the surrender of the colony to their own advantage was the sum of all fears. After the problems that the Chinese had caused the British during the war, little trust in Chiang Kai-shek��s ��honour�� remained. Indeed, in June 1942 Chinese troops had advanced into northern Burma, pulled down boundary markers and announced that the British had left and they were taking over the country. When the Japanese eventually advanced into this isolated region in late 1943, the Chinese simply retreated and made no attempt to engage the enemy. The suspicion was indelibly left on British minds that China had advanced into Burma simply to acquire British territory.38 The same course of events, it was speculated, threatened to occur with Hong Kong.
Chinese threats, however, would remain only that. When Japan sur-rendered, the of.cial British history noted that the 39 Chinese divisions Wedemeyer required to take Hong Kong were still in training:
Only sixteen divisions . . . had had American training and were fully equipped; of the remaining twenty-three, none were fully equipped . . . No of.cers or NCO��s had yet passed through the training school opened by Wedemeyer in the summer of 1945, and the administra-tive arrangements for supplying the thirty-nine divisions were far from complete.
The Chinese army in general, moreover, despite the tireless efforts of Generals Stilwell and Wedemeyer, was still an empty shell:
Most of the other 250 to 290 Chinese Nationalist divisions were under strength, untrained, under-nourished and ill-equipped. Apart from the sixteen divisions from Burma and Yunnan, the .ghting value of Chiang Kai-shek��s armies at the end of the war with Japan were thus negligible.
The reality of Chiang Kai-shek��s military weakness was now completely revealed. Even General Wedemeyer��s optimism wavered when he was faced with the curtailment of lend-lease supplies at the end of the war. He urgently telexed Washington that America could not turn her back on Chiang at this critical stage of the war. The general admitted that American-trained Chinese forces were still woefully unprepared to maintain order across China; he wanted large amounts of US aid and the commitment of American troops to key Chinese ports. It was the usual request to be expected from Chiang Kai-shek: more aid, more money, more troops; everything but his own commitment to their useful application. The replies Wedemeyer received from Washington were telling: while America would help Chiang��s attempts to reoccupy the country, he was instructed on 10 August that the United States would not support Chiang in any civil war. Furthermore, on 22 August Wedemeyer was ordered to suspend all training of Chinese troops, including the elaborate training organisations built up by the Ameri-cans in China. Washington was effectively pulling the plug on the Nationalist regime.39
Chiang Kai-shek and the surrender of the colony
With the end of the Paci.c war, the Generalissimo lost his main argu-ment for sustained American support. Even the State Department, the pre-eminent lobbyer of Chinese interests in Washington, turned its back on China, distracted with the occupation of Japan. Dunn of the State Department, told General Lincoln in a telephone conversation that as far as he was concerned America was ��not a party to�� the problem of Hong Kong any longer, regardless of the British ��charging about the place raising the .ag��.40 With so much bad news .owing in the Nation-alists�� direction it was clear to British diplomats in Chungking that all the ingredients for an unholy row with Chiang were brewing. Wallinger at the embassy remained deeply concerned that Britain should tread gently on the surrender of Hong Kong, making sure that nothing under-hand was done which could in.ame American and Chinese opinion at this sensitive time. He informed London that the ��American staff here have been frank with us and it would be good policy to reciprocate��.41 Nonetheless, on that same day, the embassy received a British ultima-tum for Chiang Kai-shek which informed him that the London author-ities were going to reoccupy and restore their administration to Hong Kong. This was the beginning of two weeks of protracted and emotional wrangling over the surrender of the colony.
In response to the British ultimatum, the Chinese acting Minister of Foreign Affairs told Sir Horace Seymour that the Chinese Government was deeply unhappy with such a unilateral move. He explained that while the Chinese had no territorial ambitions towards Hong Kong, they regarded the British announcement as ��rather high-handed��. The Chinese argued that it was they who should accept the surrender as the colony was in the China theatre, and therefore technically under the jurisdiction of the Generalissimo. Once again Ambassador Seymour was placed in a delicate situation, and attempted to explain Chiang��s actions by reference to loss of ��face��, a term frequently synonymous with allowing the Chinese to get whatever they wanted.
Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary, however, rejected out of hand any attempt to conciliate the Chinese, with full Cabinet approval. He held that Hong Kong was British territory and had nothing to do with the Chinese. If Chungking was so concerned with the question of face, then they could have a representative present at the surrender, but nothing else.42 While Bevin was patently subscribing to the established Foreign Of.ce view on the colony, the more independently-minded Clement Attlee was kept in line by the new Colonial Secretary, George Hall, who reminded him of his own personal commitment in parliament to resume British authority.43 Alan Brooke, the British Chief of Staff, also resisted the idea of taking the surrender on behalf of the Chinese because it ��would weaken our position in any subsequent negotiations [over Hong Kong] which might take place��.44 The strong British reaction to the surrender issue was precipitated by the perception that the Chinese (with American support) remained untrustworthy.
It was into this atmosphere that Colonel Ride in China telexed London detailing American plans for a ��Humanitarian Reconnaissance Mission�� to Hong Kong. He had been informed by the Americans that they intended to .y two planes into Hong Kong prior to the of.cial sur-render, ostensibly to help POWs interned in the colony.45 Considering that the majority of prisoners in the Hong Kong camp were British, however, Ride ascribed sinister motives to the American plan, especially after they declined his offer to obtain a RAF Halifax plane from India. He warned London that ��we have reason to believe that Americans may .y in Chinese of.cials to accept formal surrender��. To forestall them, Ride advocated implementing the Colonial Of.ce�VSOE emer-gency operation to seize the colony using the BAAG, codenamed Oper-ation Tidings. With this news, pandemonium broke out in London.46
Ride��s previous respect for decorum with Chinese and American forces during July quickly dissipated as he became increasingly convinced that neither would help Britain reoccupy Hong Kong. Instead, Ride now swung to the opposite extreme and wanted to disregard Allied opinion altogether. He openly advocated that the British pursue the (potentially explosive) option of .ghting their way into the colony before the Chinese and Americans arrived. The Foreign Of.ce, however, shrank from such a provocative action. With a British task force on the way they were not prepared to countenance such a dangerous gamble. From their point of view Britain��s disagreement with Chiang was diplomatic and not military because the Nationalists lacked the resources to capture the colony. As a precaution, however, Ride had already been ordered on 13 August to accompany any Chinese or American force that went into Hong Kong before the .eet arrived.47 Faced with the BAAG��s increasing tendency to act like a loose cannon, Colonel Ride was ordered by Carton de Wiart not to enter Hong Kong ��with a show of force�� under any circumstances.48 De Wiart��s liaison of.cer reiterated this warning, threatening the BAAG that if they did not join the American mission into Hong Kong, other British service-men would be found who would go.49 At the last Ride backed down and agreed to participate in the American mission, securing a commitment that prior approval from the Japanese in the colony would be obtained for any landings there. The decision in London, however, to pursue a strong diplomatic line without escalating the military side infuriated SOE troops in China.
An SOE agent at the important Chinese supply base of Kunming characterised Wedemeyer��s ��humanitarian mission�� to the colony as ��presumably [inspired] to make headlines in the American papers, as there seems no other purpose to their crazy scheme��. Moreover,
This still leaves [a] British full colonel under [the] direction of [an] American captain on British soil. [The] effect on POWs will be disastrous as they have been pinning all hopes on [the] BAAG for years and will not take kindly to wearing American uniforms. Meanwhile we vomit. Repeat, vomit with disgust and pray for further details.50
The incident seemed an appropriate .nale to all the backbiting and jeal-ousies which had riven the Far Eastern theatre. But it should be remem-bered that while there were disagreements between British forces in China, partly exacerbated by their distance from London, Whitehall��s united front towards Hong Kong was far removed from the schisms of previous years. The Cabinet had unanimously agreed that only Britain would take the surrender and that Chiang Kai-shek would be excluded. His only concession would be a Chinese observer at the signing cere-mony. London had also promptly dispatched a signi.cant task force for the colony as a sign of her commitment to retake Hong Kong. H.V. Kitson, a councillor at the Chungking Embassy, now transferred to the Foreign Of.ce, believed that the arrival of these British forces in the colony would be pivotal, and present the Chinese leader with a ��fait accompli��. It would put Britain ��in a stronger position to resist Chiang Kai-shek��s desire to send a representative to accept the surrender��.51 Unfortunately, however, Admiral Harcourt��s task force was delayed in Subic Bay by logistical problems, pushing back the estimated date for their arrival in Hong Kong. While this lag gave Chiang time to elabo-rate on his argument as to why the surrender should be made to him, the British fretted and assertively counter-argued, destroying the last remnants of trust in Sino-British relations.
The growing estrangement between China and Britain was increas-ingly hard to disguise to the outside world. As stories began to circulate of a race to recover Hong Kong, the Dominions Of.ce was forced to issue a message playing down the issue. On 18 August, the gravity of the situation left the British Prime Minister no choice but to write to President Truman and ask for his cooperation. The Supreme Allied Commander of the Paci.c Theatre was an American, General MacArthur, and his interpretation of surrender directives remained critical. ��Order no. 1��, the Japanese surrender order, was far from clear. If Chiang was not prepared to listen to the British, then perhaps he would listen to his erstwhile ally, America. Clement Attlee told Truman, that ��we cannot accept any interpretation of General Order no. 1 as meaning that Hong Kong, which is British territory, is included in the expression ��within China����. Therefore, he asked that MacArthur be told to order the Japanese in Hong Kong to surrender only to the British in case there was any confusion over the matter.52 Anxious not to delay the surrender any further and well aware of British feelings, President Truman replied on 19 August agreeing to Attlee��s position; the colony was to be removed from the China theatre for surrender purposes. MacArthur would arrange the surrender of Hong Kong to the British, ��providing full military co-ordination is effected beforehand by the British with the Generalissimo��.53 This last caveat caused the British endless problems because MacArthur and other American commanders were unsympathetic to British claims, and would not therefore pres-surise Chiang Kai-shek. British assurances to General Wedemeyer that they would cooperate with Chiang were greeted with scepticism in Washington. The American Chiefs of Staff argued that before Wede-meyer could ��give the all-clear to MacArthur he must have it .rst hand from the Generalissimo that the latter is satis.ed�� with arrangements.54
American policy increasingly found itself captive to its own unrealis-tic and contradictory aims. While they were acutely aware of their own failure to continue propping up the Nationalist regime, the Americans had also sanctioned the release of British naval vessels which had made up the British Hong Kong task force. There was a certain amount of guilt motivating American actions for having let Chiang down. In an effort to exonerate themselves in American and Chinese eyes, Washington attempted to extract guarantees of British assistance to Chiang when the Americans would offer none. They advocated that the Generalis-simo be given full access to Hong Kong��s facilities to secure his reoccu-pation of southern China, including the port itself. Such a policy offered to save Chinese face (and American), without the employment of any American troops.55 Whichever way one looked at it, though, the British were back to square one as regarded effecting the of.cial surrender of the colony. With America��s tacit acquiescence the Generalissimo was even less willing to compromise his perceived authority to settle the question. An impasse had been reached, with the villain clearly de.ned from London��s point of view. A.L. Scott, back at the Foreign Of.ce, felt ��sure we have the Americans to thank for Chiang Kai-shek��s obstinacy��.56
Retrospectively, however, the British held a relatively strong hand on the Hong Kong issue compared to the war years, irrespective of the local situation in the colony. Importantly, American diplomatic interference was contained. Although Ambassador Hurley tried to lobby President Truman on Chiang��s behalf, the President pursued a much more cir-cumspect policy than Roosevelt had. With the British acting so vigor-ously, Truman could only attempt to broker a compromise without the threat of arms. He wrote: ��Much as I deplored this friction between two of our Allies, there seemed little else that could be done by us.��57 The prevarication behind American policy was recognised by British diplomats in America as ��a growing willingness to acquiesce in our return to Hong Kong��. In its weekly political summary, the Washington Embassy reported that the death of FDR had tempered American anti-colonialism, believing that ��the present administration feels less strongly about changing the status of Hong Kong and other Imperial possessions than President Roosevelt is alleged to have done��. Moreover, ��America��s acquisitive mood towards the Paci.c in any case undercuts much of their earlier criticism��.58 While the Americans sympathised with the Chinese, Washington was forced to recognise the established rights of the matter which underpinned American foreign policy. The Ameri-can Joint Chiefs of Staff had also agreed to treat the issue pragmatically, as a military concern only. In a June 1945 paper, they stated that ��Hong Kong is legally a British Crown Colony�� which the ��United States should avoid involving itself in��.59
Soviet actions in Manchuria, furthermore, provided a useful justi.ca-tion for Britain��s retention of the colony. On the day of Japan��s decision to end the Paci.c war, Kitson at the Foreign Of.ce bluntly stated that ��the future Russian position in Manchuria will . . . initially affect our policy in regard to Hong Kong��.60 When General Wedemeyer suggested to the British that their high-handedness over the colony set ��a bad example to the Russians��,61 the Foreign Of.ce reacted indifferently.
For all the heartache over the surrender, however, London need not have worried itself unduly. Overlooked and underrated, the bedraggled and starved POWs in the colony took it upon themselves, under the leadership of Franklin Gimson, to seize the colony and resurrect British rule. Through their own courage, the survivors of three and a half years of Japanese deprivation and hardship had solved the immediate Hong Kong question.
The man of the hour: Franklin Gimson
Franklin Gimson had an unfortunate sense of timing. In 1941 he arrived in Hong Kong from Ceylon just in time to be captured by the Japanese and spent the next few years as a Japanese POW. Unperturbed by his incarceration, however, Gimson insisted on continuing the job he had been sent to the colony to do in the .rst place: administering British interests. In this respect he was faced with several dif.culties, some of his own making. Initially he had been separated from the other prisoners, and the other internees had done what all Englishmen do in adversity; they had formed a committee. When he was released back into the main British civilian prisoner camp at Stanley in mid-1942, he therefore had to reassert his authority among disillusioned internees. In pursuit of this goal he was also hampered by an overbearing manner which many found hard to stomach; understandably, perhaps, when such arrogance and con.dence had been Britain��s undoing in the defence of the colony. Nevertheless, always willing to follow some-one who gave the impression that they knew where they were going, the other prisoners soon allowed Gimson control of the prisoners�� committee.
Once established as the leading POW representative in the camp, Gimson committed one act which made him very unpopular in the camp but would have lasting repercussions for British authority in Hong Kong: he denied a demand for civilian repatriation inside the camp. As far as he was concerned, ��A colony was to me British territory as much as Britain itself. Rightly or wrongly, I agreed that internees as British subjects resident in British territory would not be entitled to repatria-tion.�� This action meant that when the Japanese surrendered, senior British administrators would be in situ to take control of the colony. Meanwhile, Gimson��s committee planned for a British takeover in the event of a Japanese evacuation. As it happened, however, the nature of the surrender was not foreseen by the prisoners and they did not have to .ll a power vacuum left by their captors. Instead, with Hirohito��s sur-render order the Japanese soldiers remained in Hong Kong and were reluctant to let their prisoners become their new masters.62
Ignorant of the diplomatic .restorm developing over the small colony, and of London��s instructions for him to resume control (which were being delivered by hand),63 Gimson��s sense of imperial mission remained indomitable. He took it upon himself to confront the Japan-ese with the changed situation and asked for the control of Hong Kong to be handed over to the British. The Japanese, however, were initially uncooperative. They
stated that the future of Hong Kong was not decided. There was no certainty it would continue to be British. I replied that the view was merely an expression of opinion which I was not concerned [sic]. I intended to carry out those duties to which I had been appointed by HM��s Government. I required accommodation for myself and for my of.cers, and also the use of the wireless station.
Faced with such logic, the Japanese agreed. Ignoring American lea.ets which told the prisoners to remain in the camp, a nucleus under Gimson left for the centre of Hong Kong to resuscitate British rule. The journey there was a memorable one for the prisoners who had suffered years of starvation and humiliation.
This journey more than any other incident of this momentous period .lled our hearts with more emotion than we had previously experi-enced and made us appreciate to the full the truly providential sur-vival after enduring the privations of the Japanese regime. Our route took us through the .shing village of Aberdeen and my most vivid memory of it is the sight of the faces of the Chinese there, who at the noise of the approach of the bus, cast their eyes down to avoid possibly meeting the glances of its Japanese occupants. The faces were slowly raised and beaming smiles appeared in answer to ours as our identity was recognised.
Their part in the retention of Hong Kong, however, was not yet over. While many internees left to reconstruct the shattered remnants of their businesses, Gimson broadcast to London and the colony, informing them of Britain��s resumed administration. He also had to contend with returning Japanese morale as the British awaited Admiral Harcourt��s arrival. In this respect, Colonel Ride��s insistence that the American mission from China should .rst receive Japanese authorisation appears well founded. Initially, the Japanese refused any landing of Allied planes on the grounds that Kai Tak airport was ��under water��. After Gimson pointed out that there had been no rain for three weeks, the Japanese withdrew this argument. Eventually, he had to threaten the Japanese in order to allow the planes to land and the situation remained tense.64 Ride, who accompanied the Americans into the colony, reported how the younger Japanese of.cers were ��arrogant and menacing��, forcing the Allies to return post-haste to Kunming.65 Until Admiral Harcourt arrived, no further attempts were made to enter the colony by the Americans. Franklin Gimson had presented Chiang Kai-shek with the Foreign Of.ce��s much hoped for fait accompli.
��Never have I seen him so moved as he was today��: Chiang is forced to compromise
With events in the colony concealed from the outside world, the British authorities continued in their attempt to force Chiang Kai-shek to accede to the surrender of Hong Kong on their terms. On 20 August, Ernest Bevin made his .rst major foreign policy speech in the House of Commons to the general approval of the British press. In his broad analysis of the diplomatic problems facing Britain he restated that there would be no change in the status of Hong Kong. The consensus driving British policy was reinforced by Anthony Eden��s parliamentary reply for the Conservative Party which ��endorsed what Mr Bevin said about Hong Kong. The position he had taken up was just and fair and was one which everybody in the country would wish to uphold.��66 Winston Churchill��s near obsessive interest in the colony, moreover, remained. In a parlia-mentary question he asked Clement Attlee whether or not he was committed to retaining Britain��s position in the colony. The new Prime Minister replied,
Yes, Sir. As stated by the Foreign Secretary on Monday, arrangements are being made for the Japanese surrender of Hong Kong to be accepted by the British Force Commander. Plans for re-establishing British administration in the colony are fully prepared.
Churchill, expressing his contentment at this answer, continued, reminding Attlee of Churchill��s numerous wartime commitments to the integrity of British colonies in the Far East. The Prime Minister answered that he had a very ��full recollection of those statements and I will bear them in mind��.67 The unanimity underlying British policy, however, remained irrelevant to Chiang Kai-shek. He acted as if Britain��s attitude over the surrender of the colony was anything but fair and was based on opportunism rather than ideological commitment. Believing that he had nothing to lose from continuing obstinacy, the Generalissimo held out for British concessions.
The symbolic importance of the colony was clear to Chiang but he attempted to dampen speculation that China was casting a covetous eye in its direction. He told his Nationalist Party on 24 August that he would not send Chinese troops into Hong Kong because it would ��cause mis-understanding�� between Allies. He continued:
I now declare to the nation and the world at large that the status of Hong Kong which is based on treaties, will not be changed without going through negotiations with Britain. China will only resort to diplomatic means to restore concessions and leased territories including Kowloon from other powers.68
Considering the state of the Chinese army, these were empty words as Chiang well knew. The main dif.culty for Chiang, though, was that he appeared to show no comprehension of British policymaking. The British interpreted Chiang Kai-shek��s speech to mean that he was attempting to obtain Hong Kong through manipulation of the sur-render negotiations. With the Americans he always stalled for time, and usually secured a favourable compromise for himself. (That he frequently squandered these advantages was neither here nor there.) Now dealing with the British, Chiang transferred these tactics without modi.cation. What he seemed incapable of understanding was that the British felt very strongly about the Hong Kong issue as a matter of principle, something he was not used to seeing in the Americans. The American Ambassador to London talked to Sterndale Bennett of the Foreign Of.ce and reported to Washington, ��that for prestige reasons, if for no other, there could be no question of [the] British not returning and resuming sovereignty��.69
With newspaper reports from Chungking stating that the Chinese military were actually negotiating the surrender of Hong Kong, includ-ing a provision for its occupation by Chinese forces, Chiang��s protesta-tions were unlikely to be believed.70 Indeed, the more he protested the innocence of Chinese claims, the more the British worried. The Foreign Of.ce telexed Seymour in Chungking: ��We feel that Chiang Kai-shek��s present attitude is unreasonable and out of keeping with his recent statesmanlike pronouncement about Hong Kong in his statement of August 24��.71
The continuing uncertainty over the surrender highlighted the dynamics of British policy and the strains within the Whitehall bureau-cracy. As negotiations dragged on, certain sections on the British side came to see their differences with Chiang as semantic and thus unim-portant. Sir Horace Seymour, true to past experiences, attempted to temper the hard-line approach coming from the Colonial and Foreign Of.ces. Under the guidance of Sterndale Bennett and Gerard Gent, British policy held .rmly to the belief that under no circumstances could London accept the surrender of Hong Kong under delegation from Chiang Kai-shek. Instead, the surrender would remain wholly British with a Chinese and an American witness if they so wished.
It was apparent that Seymour was uncomfortable in having to justify a policy with which he did not wholeheartedly agree, especially since he had to communicate the bad news directly to the Chinese author-ities. He argued that London should compromise and accept the sur-render from Chiang for what the ambassador saw as only a question of saving Chiang��s face: ��I cannot believe that the Chinese will accept a solution under which their representative is to sign any surrender document merely as a witness, and so far as I can judge here, they would have American support in resisting this proposal.��72 General Ismay, the Prime Minister��s representative to the Chiefs of Staff, also suggested that such a compromise, ��although not entirely satisfactory, was from the military point of view, acceptable��, enabling Britain ��to tidy up once and for all a situation which had become extremely involved��.73 No doubt in.uenced by his experienced colleague Sir Horace Seymour, Carton de Wiart, now Attlee��s personal representative to Chiang Kai-shek, also expressed disquiet with British diplomacy. He attempted a further compromise, suggesting two surrenders: a territorial one for Britain, and a military one for Chiang as commander of the China theatre. This, however, was quickly struck down by London as unreal-istic.74 During the entire surrender period, Whitehall dominated policy decisions and refused to allow itself to be distracted by British diplo-mats on the ground. They resisted the temptation for the dog to be wagged by its tail.
The British diplomats in Chungking were .nding it increasingly dif-.cult to empathise with British policy because they did not consider that Chiang Kai-shek posed any threat to the sovereignty of Hong Kong. They saw the argument as one of procedure, and not importance.
During an interview with the Generalissimo, Carton de Wiart noted that Chiang was ��most insistent that I study the text of his speech made on 24th August��, and he never once pretended that Hong Kong was part of China. Moreover, de Wiart argued that: ��Had we been able to con-tribute to the capture of Hong Kong I feel we might have had some reason to object, but unfortunately we have done nothing and had the war lasted a few weeks longer the colony would undoubtedly have been liberated by Chinese forces.�� This, of course, was nonsense as we have already seen. It should be remembered that de Wiart also had another agenda. As a bitter anti-communist, he believed that Britain��s intransi-gent attitude would humiliate the Nationalists so much that it would score a major propaganda victory for the communists.75 Regardless, the Foreign Of.ce, with strong Colonial Of.ce support, remained unmoved.76
When Carton de Wiart saw Chiang again on 27 August, there was no disguising the seriousness of the situation. It must have been clear to the Chinese leader that events were moving against him. In an emo-tional meeting, the Generalissimo deplored British actions which he said threatened to undermine Sino-British relations. De Wiart described how during the many meetings he had had with Chiang, ��he has always been entirely frank and ingenuous but never have I seen him so moved as he was today��. Seymour corroborated this opinion, arguing that the controversy would hamper the re-establishment of British interests in China itself.77
The solution to the dilemma, when it came at last, was a unilateral decision by the British to sign the surrender equally on behalf of Chiang Kai-shek as commander in chief of the China theatre. London instructed Harcourt to sign for Britain and Chiang. Given little alternative, Chiang Kai-shek agreed to nominate an American and a Chinese witness to attend the ceremony. Previously, the Chinese Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, had con.ded to Seymour that Chiang would not compromise, and so if Britain would not either, then she ought to leave the matter be and go ahead with the surrender arrangements as planned.78 Unable to allow the negotiations to collapse without one more try, however, the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary argued that Britain must be prepared for one last concession to save Chiang��s face. After consider-able discussion late into the night at the Foreign Of.ce, Gerard Gent persuaded Attlee and Bevin to split the surrender, with Harcourt signing for the British, and a British military representative in China signing for Chiang.79 When this was telexed to the Chinese leader, however, he once again refused. Fed up with the impasse, the British decided to sign on behalf of Chiang Kai-shek, approval or no approval. At the barrel of a gun, the Generalissimo agreed.80 The date was 31 August, two weeks after the initial Japanese capitulation.
Admiral Harcourt arrives in Hong Kong
While London and Chungking locked horns over the terms of Hong Kong��s surrender, Admiral Harcourt��s task force had arrived off the colony on 29 August. Harcourt sent a message to the Japanese inform-ing them that a British aircraft would land at Kai Tak at a speci.c time and .y a Japanese envoy back to HMS Indomitable to arrange for Britain��s entry into the harbour. True to form, however, events did not go smoothly. Once again it was the intervention of Franklin Gimson which came at the crucial moment. Gimson��s colleagues had spotted the British .eet on the horizon and so Gimson asked the Japanese if any messages had been received from the boats. The Japanese replied that they had but they were unable to negotiate since they had no orders to that effect. It was at this point that Gimson insisted that the Japanese should reply af.rmatively to the British radio message, allowing the British plane to land. The Japanese eventually agreed and a plane was landed and departed back to the .eet with a Japanese envoy and British naval Commander D.H.S. Craven. After having received detailed information from the Japanese envoy as to the location of the (American) magnetic mine.elds in the harbour, he was .own back to Kai Tak with instructions for the entry of the British .eet the next day. Unfortunately, this scheme also went awry. As the weather closed in, the plane got lost and crashed in the New Territories, being captured by Chinese communist guerrillas who wanted to slit the Japanese of.cer��s throat. After talking the guerrillas out of this course of action, the British pilot with his Japanese prisoner had to wait until the next day to be rescued.
Unable to delay, Harcourt sent Craven back to Kai Tak the following day with instructions for the Japanese on his entry into Hong Kong later that day. After moving all the Japanese into the dockyard area, the British dispatched naval ratings and Marine landing parties into the centre of the colony around midday. Although the situation remained tense, most of the Japanese remained calm.81 As Harcourt��s new .ag-ship, Swiftsure, entered the harbour, Gimson
could not suppress fears that some Japanese fanatics might react to the landing of British forces. In fact, amidst the intense explosion of Chinese .recrackers, I thought I detected an ominous crackle which seemed to describe machine gun .re. However, the noise was merely that of precautionary bursts .red into cavities at the naval base which might have harboured Japanese intent on a .nal display of opposi-tion before acknowledging defeat.82
The only drama, however, came when Hell.re planes from Indomitable spotted Japanese suicide speedboats leaving Picnic Bay on Lamma island in the direction of the British .eet. With the bombing of the leading vessels, the remaining hundred-odd boats scattered and were beached or returned to harbour.83
Once established on the mainland, Harcourt quickly restored order to the war damaged and looted colony although many Chinese civilians took the opportunity to exact revenge on Japanese war crimi-nals. Japanese using public transport were repeatedly attacked, some with hammers, while the Japanese executioner, caught in disguise, ��came to an untimely end��.84 His name was Takiyawa and he was a notorious sadist. His fate was, perhaps, appropriate: ��After the Japanese surrender he was seized, half-drowned, then lynched by a Chinese mob before being hanged, still alive, from the Star Ferry terminal and left to rot.��85 Harcourt also had the delicate task of managing Gimson��s admin-istration. Although tired and ill, Gimson wanted to continue the admin-istration, subject to reinforcements from the Hong Kong Planning Unit. Perhaps he saw it as his golden opportunity to become governor of the colony. Whatever the truth of the matter, London was insistent that the POWs should be relieved for a well-deserved rest. With the arrival of David MacDougall and his staff on 7 September, a British military administration was set up with the unenviable task of tackling the post-war problems of the colony.86 There remained one last episode to com-plete Britain��s return to Hong Kong: the local surrender of the colony.
Securing the surrender of the colony on their terms, the British decided they could act with a degree of magnanimity towards the Chinese over the date for the signing of the surrender document. Sterndale Bennett suggested that ��on general grounds and for the par-ticular reasons connected with our commercial interests in China itself��, it was desirable to sign the Japanese surrender of Hong Kong after the surrender in China, which was planned to take place at Nanking. Even so, the Foreign Of.ce remained suspicious in victory of Chinese aims. Sterndale Bennett thought that:
It is possible that Chiang Kai-shek��s attitude over the surrender in Hong Kong is not merely a question of immediate prestige, but is
designed to give the Generalissimo a basis for maintaining after the
surrender in Hong Kong, that he must continue to direct and super-
vise the implementation of that surrender.
It is conceivable that the surrender document at Nanking may
contain provisions relating to Hong Kong.87
On this basis, the British military commander in China, General Hayes, who was attending the Nanking surrender, was warned to check for any surreptitious claim to Hong Kong inserted by the Chinese before he signed! Similar fears also lay behind Britain��s de.ant refusal to sign a written agreement with the Chinese for the transhipment of their troops through the colony. While London was happy to help with the transport of Chinese soldiers to northern China to .ght the commu-nists, Britain would stipulate the conditions as she saw .t.88
Agreeing to delay the Hong Kong surrender until after the Nanking ceremony, however, proved once again a frustrating experience for the British. The Chinese surrender was continually postponed by what Harcourt characterised as ��Chinese incompetence��. Fed up with this state of affairs, he pressed London to sign at will but was asked not to sign without approval. After keeping his American and Chinese repre-sentatives as guests for a whole week, Admiral Harcourt at long last signed the surrender of Hong Kong on 16 September: ��In the evening there was a searchlight and .reworks display by the Fleet which was excellent and greatly delighted the local population.��89 Hong Kong was again a British colony.
Conclusion
The Colonial Empire is our .fth, and will be our last. This is
the last chance that the British will ever have of doing some-
thing for which, with all their blunders and even crimes, they
have shown a peculiar genius.1
Sir George Moss, 1944
Winston Churchill was once overheard to have said that ��there is only one thing worse than .ghting with Allies, and that is .ghting without them��.2 This sentiment could easily be applied to Britain��s attempt to recover her colony of Hong Kong during the Second World War. At times it seemed as if Japan��s occupation of Hong Kong was incidental to Britain recapturing it at all. Opposition to London��s continued sovereignty over Hong Kong from her Allies, China and America, was vociferous and constant. While China had a strong claim to the colony, however, she lacked the strength to extinguish Britain��s legal rights to return. Instead, what little in.uence Chiang Kai-shek��s government had over London was derived from her dependency on American sponsorship.
The British understood that China was unlikely to act independently of America. Anthony Eden told Lord Halifax in August 1944, that ��China would be so dependent on the other Great Powers that she would not be likely to pursue any very independent policy . . . in matters affecting international peace and security.��3 The Sino-American alliance never lived up to the expectations of either the Chinese or Americans. Washington��s dreams and Chiang Kai-shek��s grabbing hand ensured that it was a temporary marriage of misconceptions. Its strength lay in its propaganda value not in its reality.
In the end, however, British interests in Hong Kong were best defended by Chiang Kai-shek��s own incompetence rather than the
212
relentless imperial dogmatism of Winston Churchill. Always preferring to do more of the ��issimoing�� than the ��generalling��, Chiang Kai-shek failed to deliver the China that Washington expected. With American despondency in the China theatre came the momentum to shift the centre of gravity of the Far Eastern war into the Paci.c. As American support ebbed away, China��s opportunity to reconquer the colony dis-appeared; it was patently obvious that Chiang could not recapture Nanking, never mind Hong Kong, without US troops. Chiang��s reckless behaviour, however, was not uncharacteristic of the corrupt Nationalist dictatorship which would do little to help itself. While T.V. Soong was having Kansas steaks .own into Chungking, Chinese soldiers were dying in their bedrolls from neglect, only a mile away.4
America��s shift from a regional to a global strategy towards the end of the war also greatly undermined Washington��s pressure on Britain to retrocede Hong Kong. By 1944 American efforts to exclude Britain from the Far East and elevate China to a regional power had faltered while Soviet power grew inexorably. It was in such circumstances that Presi-dent Roosevelt attempted to conciliate Stalin��s appetite for Soviet expan-sion, even at the expense of facilitating Britain��s return to Hong Kong. As he told Admiral Leahy when he accepted Russian control of the Chinese port, Dairen: ��Well, Bill, I can��t help it.��5 Porter and Stockwell have described the tempering of America��s anti-colonial ambitions as a reaction to the complexities of world problems:
It is true that US anti-imperialism grew more muted as the war proceeded but British resistance and Colonial Of.ce polemic were less in.uential in curbing the enthusiasm of Americans for Afro-Asian independence than the Americans�� own exercise of world power and their anticipation of the pro.ts of free-trade imperialism after the war.6
Roosevelt��s attempt to demolish the British Empire was at best confused, and at worst, breathtakingly hypocritical. At Tehran he had talked of a post-war world without the French and British empires. Stalin��s empire was consciously excluded by the President, and thus unthreatened by any scheme which America and Russia could agree.7 Nor should we forget America��s own colonial empire which in 1941 stretched from the Caribbean, through Latin America and across the Paci.c. Republican President William McKinley told a Boston audience in 1899 that control of the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico was a ��great trust�� that America carried ��under the providence of God and in the name of human progress and civilisation��. The parallels with British imperial sentiment were striking, but something that few Americans would admit to during the Second World War. Seemingly unable to look at themselves in the mirror, Americans often found it easier to reprove the British for what they denied in themselves.8
Britain��s defence of her colony, however, rested on much more than the divisions and contradictions of her Allies. Without the determina-tion of British personnel to rebuild her lost Empire, there would never have been a question mark hanging over Hong Kong during the war. Driven by a consensus which saw Empire inextricably linked to Britain��s position as a Great Power, British policymakers remained unrepentant imperialists. Criticism of Britain��s position in the Far East by America and China was counter-productive and only served to reinforce Britain��s belief in Empire. Led by Winston Churchill, the London government set its face against any peace settlement which would prejudice their Far Eastern interests.
It is misleading, though, to maintain that Churchill was instrumen-tal in forcing Britain��s return to Hong Kong; this is the interpretation that he himself would like us to accept and something the legacy of his written records makes hard to escape. Churchill said of one of his books: ��This is not history, this is my case.��9 Even a revisionist interpretation of the Churchill myth by Clive Ponting puts the Prime Minister centre stage in resisting colonial change. Ponting claims that: ��In order to strengthen opposition to change he insisted on appointing men of similar views to his own as Colonial Secretary �V for example Lord Lloyd in 1940 and Oliver Stanley, who held the post from November 1942 until the end of the war.��10 This is to overestimate the importance of Winston Churchill to British foreign policy. Oliver Stanley��s appoint-ment was more of a carefully crafted political appeasement than a delib-erate attempt to prevent imperial reform. The truth was that the vast majority of British servicemen, civil servants and politicians believed in the sanctity of the Empire, and opposed the abandonment of British territory overseas. Foreign policy could not be set by one man, and had personnel in SOE, the Colonial Of.ce or the Foreign Of.ce not believed in Britain��s right to return to Hong Kong, Churchill��s sentiments would have been shown to be empty. These were the people who turned British thought into action. Even a man like Clement Attlee, behind the posturing of international socialism, .rmly believed in the British Empire; it was only over its purpose that he dissented.
It could also be argued that Churchill��s vituperative outpourings actu-ally retarded London��s attempt to defend British interests. Roosevelt��s tendency to see the world in idealistic (and simplistic) terms was exacerbated by Churchill��s reactionary stance and disguised the Prime Minister��s own ambivalence towards Anglo-American cooperation. In a black moment, Anthony Eden��s private secretary wrote: ��If allowed to, [Churchill] will win the war and lose us the peace as certain as certain.��11 That Churchill could not interfere with British colonial policy any more than he did, due to other policy commitments, was perhaps a blessing in disguise.
The fact that Hong Kong��s future became such a burning issue during wartime can partly be blamed on the Prime Minister��s emotional han-dling of the situation. It need not have been: a calmer and more meas-ured approach to this tiny island colony would not have endangered British sovereignty, as the more subdued determination of the Foreign Of.ce and Colonial Of.ce showed. G.V. Kitson at the Foreign Of.ce thought ��that as regards such politically explosive issues as Hong Kong, the Burma frontier and Tibet, it is much better to let sleeping dogs lie. ��Qu��on excuse, n��accuse��!�� [If we excuse them, they won��t blame us.]12 A sensible person does not pick arguments that endanger what is most important to him. Fighting over Hong Kong hurt Anglo-American co-operation while doing little to secure the integrity of the British Empire, the two cornerstones of British policy. Churchill should have admitted that the Americans could not have dismantled the Empire without British acquiescence. To have done so, however, would have been to de.ate his own importance within the British Government and popular imagination; something he was never keen to do. Lady Churchill told Churchill��s doctor:
Winston has always seen things in blinkers . . . He sees nothing outside that beam. You probably don��t realise . . . that he knows nothing of the life of ordinary people. He��s never been in a bus, and only once on the Underground. [She smiled.] That was during the General Strike, when I deposited him at South Kensington. He went round and round, not knowing where to get out, and had to be rescued eventually. Winston is sel.sh; he doesn��t mean to be, he��s just built that way. He��s an egoist, I suppose, like Napoleon. You see, he has always had the ability and force to live his life exactly as he wanted to.13
This dangerous self-centredness could be seen in the Prime Minister��s attempt to monopolise the London end of the Anglo-American relations with President Roosevelt. It is ironic, therefore, that to depreciate Churchill��s signi.cance we have to focus upon it in the .rst place. Nonetheless, this needs to be done because he himself has left volumi-nous records of his own actions for historians to follow. It is worth con-sidering whether Oliver Stanley would have been so widely ignored had he left a ready prepared archive of his own. Instead, we are forced to rely upon others�� interpretations of the Colonial Secretary and his own scant annotations scribbled on of.cial papers. We should, perhaps, be wary of over-emphasising the individual over the general, particularly in such complex circumstances as diplomacy.
Britain��s return to Hong Kong .nds its true signi.cance in the context of the imperial mentality which permeated British society. Imbued by a narrow educational curriculum which focused on Britain��s past military endeavours, there was little doubt in most people��s minds that Britain would return to Hong Kong. Sir Ralph Furse, an old Etonian and Oxbridge graduate, was representative of the single-mindedness of Britain��s governing elite. In charge of Colonial Of.ce recruitment between 1910 and 1948, he was a leading proponent of Britain��s imperial destiny and followed the teaching of an old Jesuit: ��It is won-derful how much good a man can do for the world if he does not want to take credit for it.��14 Without the many hundreds of similar ��quiet crusaders�� who were used to thinking imperially, there would have been no Hong Kong question during the Second World War. Lord Rosebery stated in 1899 that ��Imperialism, sane imperialism, as distinguished from what I may call wild-cat imperialism, is nothing but this �V a larger patriotism.��15
Epilogue
If consistency often eludes practitioners of diplomacy, the reversal of Washington��s Hong Kong strategy in the aftermath of the Paci.c war was ironic to say the least. In 1957, National Security Council (NSC) paper 5717 stated that ��It is in the interest of the United States that the British maintain their position in Hong Kong.��1 In fact, America��s switch to support Britain��s hold on the colony was highly embarrassing after the strident anti-colonialism of the war years. The onset of the cold war forced Washington to reassess her attitude towards colonialism. As the CIA noted in 1948, ��the loss of their dependencies weakens the colonial powers, which are the chief prospective US allies�� while depriving America ��of an assured access to bases and raw materials��. It was ��a serious dilemma�� for a country which had set itself up as a champion of anti-colonialism. With the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, Britain had convinced America that Hong Kong was no longer a colo-nial issue but one of national defence.2
Prior to the Korean War, America��s attitude remained highly ambiva-lent towards the colony as Washington was mesmerised by the implo-sion of its China policy. Hong Kong could not escape the ructions on the Chinese mainland. Suppressed while the Japanese burned their way through the country, the revolutionary battle between the Nationalists and communists quickly resurfaced once the invaders had surrendered. Unfortunately for the Nationalists, and some might say for China, they were led by Chiang Kai-shek��s clique, who had more than proved their incompetence during the Paci.c war. Their armies had rarely engaged the Japanese and little would change against Mao��s communists. With the Nationalist armies melting away, a despondent T.V. Soong pinned his hopes on a third world war breaking out.3 As the Americans argued over who was to blame for the Nationalists�� defeat, the People��s
217
Republic of China was declared in October 1949. The troublesome Hong Kong question had just become even more complicated: now Hong Kong was claimed by two rival governments, the Nationalist remnants on Taiwan and the communists in Peking!
The anachronism that was Hong Kong, however, remained. The colony was a pitiful sight in 1945. It had the dubious honour of being called the most looted city in the world. It had been looted immedi-ately after the British defeat, looted constantly during the occupation, and looted again after the Japanese surrender. Few of the city��s clubs were recognisable; the golf course had allotments dug all over it, the Jockey Club was literally a shell of its former self. Even the .oorboards had been stolen! No one had escaped the ravages of war. And yet, George Hopper, American consul general, was soon telling Lieutenant General Wedemeyer on his China mission that the British had quickly and miraculously restored the life of the colony, so much so that the popu-lation had doubled from 1 million to 2 million by August 1947. British success was even encouraging some Chinese to leave China. It was also interesting to juxtapose the colony with its mother country: the vibrant entrepreneurialism which was let loose across the colony once more stood in stark contrast to regulations back in socialist Britain.
All the same, after the war the colony declined in importance. With the mother country��s economy in ruins and decolonisation accelerat-ing, Hong Kong was low down on London��s list of priorities. In reality, the colony had returned to its pre-war status. Sir Alexander Grantham, Governor of Hong Kong from 1947 to 1958, knew perfectly well that ��the electorate of Britain didn��t care a brass farthing about Hong Kong��.4 The Hong Kong Chinese were hardly more concerned. They remained apathetic towards British rule in any positive sense and only wished to be free to pursue the creation of wealth as they always had. A news-paper noted that, ��In the cinemas ��God save the King�� is a sign that the doors are open.�� Most of the refugee population .eeing mainland China ��regarded the island as little more than a reasonable hotel��.5
With Mao��s triumphant communists reaching the China�VHong Kong border, the colony was gripped by the fear that it was about to be invaded for the second time in a decade. Once again Hong Kong pitted the Foreign Of.ce against the Colonial Of.ce. The Colonial Of.ce, bol-stered by the hard-line governor of the colony, Sir Alexander Grantham, pressed for an unequivocal statement that Britain would hold on to Hong Kong at all costs.6 This was familiar ground for the Colonial Of.ce��s Paskin who lamented that, ��The attempt on the part of the C[olonial]O[f.ce] to get some positive decision on policy as regards the retention of Hong Kong . . . has been going on interminably, at any rate since 1943.��7 And with Creech Jones as Colonial Secretary this was not about to change. Like his predecessor Oliver Stanley, Creech Jones knew that a Colonial Secretary ��cannot break the adamant view of the Foreign Secretary��.8 Behind the seemingly endless Colonial Of.ce�VForeign Of.ce con.ict, however, stood a determination to resist any renewed Chinese claim to Hong Kong.
The Foreign Of.ce��s public reticence over the colony was driven by its usual pragmatism. It was appreciated that without American support ��our only hope of hanging on to Hong Kong is to keep quiet about it��.9 Even so, under the pressures of the cold war, the British chose to send 30000 military reinforcements, including armour and air cover, to strengthen the colony��s defence. This time they were not Canadian. Before American policy recovered its interventionist nerve in Asia with the Korean War, it was the British who were left to develop and imple-ment the ��domino theory��. It was believed that ��If we surrender Hong Kong to the communists, there will be nothing to prevent the .ood from pouring into South East Asia. It is necessary to call a halt some-where, and we consider that Hong Kong will therefore become the symbol of the resistance of the rest of Asia to the communist advance.��10 This idea presupposed that Hong Kong actually led somewhere and defended something.11 Ultimately, however, the government could not afford its bluff being called by the Chinese. In preparation for such a humiliation, British rhetoric was toned down and contingencies pre-pared for a retreat.12
But for some reason, Mao chose not to move. As the cold war engulfed the Far East, Hong Kong remained a crossroads for east and west. Hong Kong was useful to everyone, including the Americans who used the colony to collect intelligence on the Chinese mainland. There were parallels with West Berlin. Hong Kong projected a shop window of Western prosperity and freedom in contrast to the austere totalitarian blandness of communism. Mao��s reasoning for leaving the colony alone, though, was harder to interpret and more consequential. It is possible that he believed an invasion of Hong Kong would have involved the communists in a war with Britain and America for which he was not ready. The .nancial importance of the colony to China was clear, with half her foreign income being channelled through Hong Kong. Some Chinese of.cials even admitted that Hong Kong had been China��s ��lifeline�� during the Korean War, providing petroleum, chemicals and other strategic products denied them by the UN embargo. Mao even obtained his Hollywood movies and medical drugs through the port.13
These reasons alone probably do not provide the whole answer. It is likely that Taiwan held the key. Hong Kong, like Chiang Kai-shek��s last refuge, was more useful to Mao ��outside the house��, rather than in it. He told his personal doctor that he preferred to keep Taiwan in his grip as a baton to ��keep Khruschev and Eisenhower dancing��.14 In other words, it was a foreign policy tap which he could turn on or off at will. Considering the anguish which the communist threat posed to Hong Kong for the British and the Americans, it worked. Mao informed Stalin during his December 1949 trip to Moscow that he wanted to bring about order and stability in China before talking to ��foreign imperialists��.15 Whatever the merits of these arguments, an informal modus vivendi had been reached within China that Britain would retain control.
By 1960 the colony had become the eyes and ears of America��s cold war containment strategy in the Far East. From Hong Kong, the Ameri-cans ran their spy networks into China and retained an intelligence-gathering position on the Chinese mainland. The United States Consulate General in Hong Kong was ��the most important American source of hard economic, political and military information on Com-munist China��.16 America��s new found support for Hong Kong, though, was received with equivocation by Hong Kong��s Governor, Sir Alexan-der Grantham. The swollen consulate staff, obviously including many CIA operatives, were ��extremely ham-handed�� in their operations and had to be told to stop ��being so stupid��!17 The potential extraction of the 2500 Americans living in the colony in 1957 was, therefore, a critical in.uence on Washington��s policy. With associated foreign nationals ��of interest to the United States�� this rose to 3300.
Like British strategists before them, Washington realised that Hong Kong was indefensible against a determined attack. It was calculated that a successful defence of the colony could only be undertaken in depth, which meant securing a defensive perimeter on mainland China. Technology had not made the defence of Hong Kong any easier or more practicable. As such, ��US intervention would probably not be opera-tionally feasible in case of direct communist attack on Hong Kong.��18 The consequences of armed intervention in defence of Hong Kong was likely escalation with no stopping point. An earlier assessment had made this chilling observation: ��It would be unwise for the United States to contribute forces for the defence of Hong Kong or Macao unless we are willing to risk major military involvement in China and possibly global war.��19
America��s China policy had been destroyed by Mao��s victory. All that was left to do was apportion the blame. In an attempt to pre-empt any criticism, the State Department published its 1949 China White Paper which vili.ed the Generalissimo. A report by the Joint Munitions Allocation Committee to the JCS con.rmed this was 99 per cent correct. ��However, the United States failed to warn the Chinese Nationalists what the United States would do if they would not accept her advice. Anticipating the United States�� endless aid, Chiang and his clique let the corruption go on.��20 For all that, the ��loss of China�� or more point-edly, the rejection of American friendship was never readily accepted in American policymaking circles.
It is interesting to note that while China at the beginning of the twenty-.rst century is an acknowledged world power it lacks many of the traditional trappings. Gerald Segal suggests that China today is not a world apart from Chiang Kai-shek��s time, retaining many of the period��s characteristics, being skilled in the manipulation of foreign powers but militarily weak, economically backward, and politically corrupt:
At best, China is a second-rank middle power that has mastered the art of diplomatic theatre . . . In 1997 China[��s] . . . per capita GDP ranking was 81st, just ahead of Georgia and behind Papua New Guinea [while remaining] a second-rate military power [with no international allies of signi.cance] . . . Once prominent on the map of aid suppliers, [it] has become the largest recipient of foreign aid.21
Whatever the attributes of China, past and present, in 1949 the British were no closer to scuttling and running from the colony than they had been in wartime. The new plain-speaking British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, told Dean Acheson, Secretary of State, that while Britain would be prepared to discuss the future of Hong Kong ��with a friendly and stable Government of a uni.ed China��, those conditions did not currently exist. The word ��democratic�� had been deleted from Bevin��s draft.22 These conditions would not exist for another .fty years. In 1997, a uni.ed and stable Chinese government received the colony of Hong Kong back into Chinese rule. If the communists had decided to walk unarmed and en masse into the colony prior to this date, it is unlikely that the British could have responded. But these remain other voices, other rooms.
Notes
Introduction
1 Daily Telegraph, 20 February 1997, obituary. 2 Winston Churchill, speech at Harvard, 6 September 1943, in Onwards to
Victory (London, 1944). 3 Raymond Seitz, Over Here (London, 1998), p. 341. 4 John Harvey (ed.), The War Diaries of Oliver Harvey 1941�V1945 (London,
1978), p. 194, 1 December 1942. 5 For example see Louis, Imperialism at Bay and Christopher Thorne��s Allies of a Kind, the United States, Britain and the War against Japan (London, 1978).
1 Return and departure
1 John King Fairbank, The United States and China (Cambridge, MA, 1971),
p. 138. 2 Ibid., pp. 137�V49. 3 Norman Miners, Hong Kong under Imperial Rule, 1912�V1941 (Oxford, 1987),
p. 43.
4 Mr T. Reid, Labour Party Advisory Committee on Imperial Questions, Memo no.244, ��Of.cial appointments in dependencies�� 1942, Labour Party Archive at the National Museum of Labour History, Manchester.
5 Major General Woodburn Kirby, The War against Japan vol. I: Of.cial History (HMSO, 1957), p. 19. 6 Prem 3/90/5A, COS memo to Churchill on HMS Duke of York, 21 December 1941. 7 ��The valour and the horror: Canada and the fall of Hong Kong��, CBC TV programme, 1991. 8 CO 968/13/2, COS (41) 28, Churchill in Annex 1 to Maj. Gen. Ismay, 7 January 1941.
9 Kirby, p. 108.
10 Prem 3/157/1, Eden to Churchill, 8 February 1941.
11 CO 968/13/2, Maj. Grasett to Air Ministry, 6 January 1941.
12 Galen Perras, ����Our position in the Far East would be stronger without this unsatisfactory commitment��: Britain and the reinforcement of Hong Kong, 1941��, Canadian Journal of History, 30 (August 1995), p. 246.
13 Winston Churchill, The Second World War, vol. III (London, 1950), p. 157. Churchill to Maj. Gen. Ismay, 7 January 1941.
14 CO 968/13/2, COS (41) 28, 10 January 1941. Telex to C in C FE.
15 Perras.
16 CO 968/13/2, COS to PM, 8 September 1941.
17 For an expansion of this idea see Correlli Barnett, Lost Victory (London, 1995), e.g. pp. 14�V15.
222
18 CO 967/69, 1941, personal correspondence of Sir Mark Young, Governor Hong Kong. Letters 14 October and 2 December 1941.
19 Kirby, p. 112.
20 CO 968/13/2, Hong Kong Defence policy 1941.
21 G. Wright-Nooth with Mark Adkins, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads (Cassell Edition, London, 1999), p. 40.
22 ��The valour and the horror��.
23 FO 371/63392/f564, General Maltby��s Hong Kong reassessment, 1947.
24 ��The valour and the horror��. The programme emphasises the bitterness felt by Canadians towards Mackenzie King and the British, and the general military ineptitude that resulted.
25 MacDougall papers, Rhodes House, Oxford. MSS Ind.Ocn. 73. Item 1, note-book on the fall of Hong Kong.
26 Wright-Nooth, pp. 48�V9.
27 PREM 3/157/2, 21 December 1941.
28 Kirby, p. 145.
29 FO 371/31671/f4000, 1942 situation in Hong Kong. This .le contains a wealth of material relating to Japanese atrocities perpetrated against the defenders and inhabitants of the colony. The FO pushed for publicity to be given to these crimes, although the Colonial Secretary and India Of.ce were afraid for the ��sensibilities of Canadian and Indian troops��. See also F6407.
30 James Bertram, The Shadow of a War (London, 1947), p. 120. Bertram was a Marxist.
31 Ibid. p. 150.
32 Kirby, p. 469.
33 PREM 3/90/5A, 12 March 1942, C in C India to War Of.ce.
2 The meaning of Empire
1 Quoted in L.C.B. Seaman, Victorian England (London, 1973), p. 331. 2 Speeches of Churchill, vol. VII, pp. 6918�V24. ��The future of the Empire��, House
of Commons, 21 April 1944. 3 See Lawrence James, The British Empire (London, 1994). 4 Frank Welsh, A History of Hong Kong (London, 1994), pp. 124�V5. 5 FO 371/31777/f6440, Sir Maurice Peterson minute, 1 September 1942. 6 Sir Reginald Stubbs, 16 September 1922 to CO while on leave in London.
Quoted in Welsh, Hong Kong, p. 386. 7 FO 371/35679/f23, memorandum by Mr Ewer of the Daily Herald submitted to the Foreign Of.ce, December 1942. 8 Christopher M. Bell, ��Our most exposed outpost��, Journal of Military History, 60 ( January 1996).
9 Ibid., p. 65.
10 Welsh, p. 30.
11 Ibid. For example see pp. 133�V4.
12 The politics and history of the opium trade in Hong Kong are beyond the limits of this book. However, it is instructive to note that in 1918 revenue from opium sales reached the not untypical .gure of 46.5 per cent of all Hong Kong Government revenue. Ibid., p. 364.
13 CAB 96/FE(E)(45)10, 3 February 1945, War Cabinet Far Eastern committee, BOT paper on ��Certain aspects of commercial policy in China��.
14 CO 133/111, Blue Book 1940.
15 FO 371/46232/f1331, Cavendish-Bentinck minute, 13 March 1945.
16 CAB 134/280, Cabinet Far Eastern committee, ��British foreign policy in the Far East��, 31 December 1945. The paper went on to state: ��The UK trade with the area under consideration [Far East] was not quantitatively of the .rst importance. It accounted for about 4.5% of UK imports and 5.25% of UK exports (1937�V39 average).��
17 FO 371/46251/f2382, Eden on FO brief prepared for visit of General Hurley, 4 April 1945.
18 FO 371/35680/ f412/G, Brenan and Ashley Clarke, January 1943.
19 Seaman, p. 339. Adam Smith��s The Wealth of Nations systematically demol-ished the economic case for empire in 1776.
20 WP(44) 643, CAB 66/57, Stanley memo to Cabinet, ref. CDWA, on 15 November 1944. Quoted in Louis, p. 103.
21 J. Gardiner and N. Wenborn (eds), The History Today Companion to British History (London, 1995), p. 100.
22 Quoted in Seaman, p. 301.
23 Correlli Barnett, The Audit of War (London, 1986), p. 221.
24 Franklin Gimson diary, Rhodes House Library, Oxford, MSS Ind.Ocn. 222, 13 September 1943.
25 Later on in life Clement Attlee reminisced nostalgically about his time at Oxford University, wishing to recapture ��the magic of those days and of that city��. See Trevor Burridge, Clement Attlee, a Political Biography (London, 1985), p. 16.
26 See Correlli Barnett��s trilogy; The Collapse of British Power; The Audit of War, and Lost Victory.
27 Gladwyn Jebb, The Memoirs of Lord Gladwyn (London, 1972), p. 106.
28 Barnett, Audit, p. 221. Quotation from Sir Ralph Furse in Robert Heussler, Yesterday��s Rulers (NY, 1963), pp. 82�V3.
29 CAB 66/57, WP(44) 643, Stanley memo to Cabinet on colonial development loans, 15 November 1944.
30 ADM 116/4271, memo by Deputy Chief of Naval Staff, 3 January 1940. Quoted in Bell.
31 Harvey diary, p. 191, 23 November 1942.
32 A.N. Porter and A.J. Stockwell, British Imperial Policy and Decolonization, 1938�V64 (London, 1987), pp. 8�V11.
33 FO 371/31715/f5553, China post-war settlement, minute by Ashley Clarke, 7 August 1942. Sir Maurice Peterson agreed but argued American ��interven-tion will not necessarily be a grounds for altering our attitudes�� on Hong Kong.
34 Charles Cruishank, SOE in the Far East (Oxford, 1983), p. 154.
35 Jebb, pp. 101�V7.
36 FO 954/24/f123, Eden to Churchill on the role of SOE, 5 April 1942.
37 FO 371/41657/f5341, Churchill��s Mansion House speech, 10 November 1942.
38 Martin Gilbert, Road to Victory, Winston S. Churchill, 1941�V1945, vol. VII (London, 1986), p. 780. PM personal minute, 25 May 1944.
39 Anthony Eden, The Reckoning (London, 1965), p. 513.
40 PREM 3/157/4, Eden, 20 October 1942.
41 Hugh Dalton, Memoirs, 1931�V1945: the Fateful Years (London, 1957), p. 630, 2 September 1943.
42 Dilks, D. (ed.), The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan (London, 1982), p. 697, 22 January 1945.
43 Harvey diary, p. 191, 23 November 1942. Eden��s supporters found much to criticise in Stanley. Not only was he a loyal Chamberlainite but he was also a poor public speaker, overly dif.dent and was tainted by the disastrous Norwegian campaign in 1940. See entry in forthcoming New Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press).
44 Ben Pimlott (ed.), The Second World War Diary of Hugh Dalton, 1940�V45 (London, 1986), pp. 189�V92, 28 April 1941.
45 Churchill papers, Churchill College, Cambridge. Char 20/11/62�V64, Oliver Stanley to Churchill, 13 May 1940.
46 John Colville, The Fringes of Power: the Downing Street Diaries, 1939�V55 (London, 1985), p. 444, 26 September 1941.
47 PREM 4/43A/5, Oliver Stanley speech: ��No outside control of colonies��, 5 March 1943.
48 After the war, Gent was appointed Governor of the Malayan Union and was tragically killed in a plane crash following his recall to London in 1948. See
A.J. Stockwell (ed.), Documents on the end of Empire: Malaya, II, (London, 1994), p. 34.
49 CAB 129/1, CP (45)144, Attlee memo on defence, 1 September 1945. In an essay written in 1937, he had also postulated ��rejecting altogether the con-cepts of imperialism, and by establishing through the League of Nations international control of raw materials��. See George Bennett (ed.), The Concept of Empire, Burke to Attlee 1774�V1947 (London, 1953), p. 407.
50 Kenneth Harris, Attlee (London, 1982), pp. 205�V7.
51 Ibid., p. 216.
52 FO 954/22/62�V96, Attlee��s copy of post-war Far East settlement, October
1942. 53 Porter and Stockwell, p. 48.
3 The Anglo-American relationship at war
1 FO 371/41657/f2172, Moss memo to Sir Alexander Blackburn FO, May 1944. 2 Elliott Roosevelt, As He Saw It (NY, 1946), p. 71. 3 CO 967/18, report by Richard Law on Washington DC talks, September,
1942. 4 Wedemeyer, A.C., Wedemeyer Reports! (NY, 1958), pp. 252�V3. 5 Harvey, p. 197, 7 December 1942. 6 David Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, 1937�V41
(London, 1981), p. 58. 7 FO 954/22/f168, Eden in Washington DC to Churchill, 29 March 1943. He
met Hull, Winant, Welles, Hopkins and FDR. 8 CO 825/35/55104, minute by Lord Cranborne, 14 July 1942. 9 Quoted in Thorne, p. 394.
FO 371/31777/f2947, Richard Law, April 1942.
11 HS 1/349, Madame Chiang Kai-shek article in New York Times magazine, 19 April 1942.
12 HS 1/349, John Keswick report on failure of British commando unit in Chungking, 13 April 1942.
13 Sterling Seagrave, The Soong Dynasty (NY, 1985), p. 10.
14 Ibid., p. 285. FO 371/31704/f3187, reaction to Madame Chiang Kai-shek article. Appar-ently Chiang Kai-shek himself did not approve of his wife��s article.
16 FO 954/6/f580�V2, Eden to Madame Chiang Kai-shek, 1 June 1942.
17 FO 371/31616/f2918, Seymour telex no. 500, 13 April 1942.
18 The in.uence of British missionaries in China and their effect on British foreign policy is largely unexplored. The London Missionary Society (LMS), with its links to non-conformism and the Liberal Party, were, however, known to be active in China.
19 FO 371/31616/f2918, Seymour telex no. 500, 13 April 1942. FO 371/31616/f3588, May 1942.
21 FO 371/31617/f4276, June 1942.
22 AP 20/19/572, Churchill to Eden, 22 July 1943. Refers to publication of Gallup opinion poll in News Chronicle. (Avon papers)
23 Gilbert, Churchill VI, pp. 1162�V3.
24 Thorne, p. 161 and Rhodes James, Churchill Speeches, vol. VI, p. 6481, 9 Sep-tember 1941. FO 371/31777/f2947, Eden, 2 May 1942. (All quotes in this paragraph.)
26 FO 371/31627/f5964, Leo Amery to Eden, 13 August 1942.
27 Speeches of Churchill, vol. VII, pp. 6918�V24. ��The future of the Empire��, House of Commons, 21 April 1944.
28 FO 371/54073, Churchill minute to COS, 23 October 1944.
29 Avon papers, Birmingham University. AP 20/12/768, Churchill to Eden, 31 December 1944. Harvey diary, pp. 160�V2, 22�V5 September 1942 for dislike of Stanley amongst Eden��s supporters.
31 Leo Amery diary, p. 942, 21 September 1943. Also, Harvey diary, p. 297, 21 September 1943.
32 Irwin Gellman, Secret Affairs, Franklin Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, and Sumner Welles (Baltimore, 1995), pp. ix�V2.
33 Ibid., p. 315. Hull conversation with Morgenthau, 9 July 1943.
34 Ibid., p. xi. Reynolds, p. 25.
36 Leahy, W.D., I Was There (London, 1950), p. 187.
37 Reynolds, pp. 26�V7.
38 FO 371/41750/f1418, Sir George Sansom in Washington DC to FO, March 1944. Hornbeck was appointed Ambassador to Holland in late 1944.
39 Wedemeyer, p. 180.
4 An Empire brought into question
1 FO 371/4072/f8170, G.P. Young minute, 9 December 1942. 2 FO 371/31662/f7822.
3 FO 371/31777/f2063, dinner discussion in NYC, 19 January 1942.
4 National Archive and Records Administration, College Park, USA. RG59, Box 5098, letter dated 12 September 1944 inquiring whether Hong Kong was returning to China.
5 Eden diary, 27 February 1942. 6 Lord Moran, Winston Churchill, the Struggle for Survival, 1940�V65 (London, 1966), p. 27. 7 MacDougall papers, Steve Tsang interview with MacDougall, 26 February 1987.
8 Winston Churchill, The Hinge of Fate (London, 1964), p. 61 and Robert Rhodes James (ed.), Winston S. Churchill, his Complete Speeches, vol. VI, 1935�V42 (London, 1974), p. 6464, 27 January 1942.
9 CO 825/35/4, minute by Gent, 30 June 1942.
10 FO 371/31777/f5965, Gladwyn Jebb minute, 7 September 1942.
11 Eden diary, 30 May 1942.
12 FO 371/31633/f3962, A.L. Scott responding to a parliamentary question on Chinese troops in Malaya, 27 May 1942. ��No offer of Chinese troops for the defence of Malaya was ever made. In May 1939, however, General Chiang Kai-shek offered 200000 troops to assist in the defence of Hong Kong, an offer which was not accepted and was subsequently withdrawn.��
13 MacDougall papers, notebook on the fall of Hong Kong. Undated.
14 PREM 4/28/5, parliamentary mission to China report issued February 1943, undertaken November 1942.
15 FO 371/31633/f2775, A.L. Scott minute on future of Hong Kong, 8 April 1942.
16 FO 371/31715/f5087, Ashley Clarke minute, 19 July 1942.
17 CO 825/35/4, Gent minute, June 1942.
18 FO 371/31801/f4369, Miss McGeachy minute, 13 June 1942.
19 FO 371/31801/f3814, Sir Maurice Peterson on IPR conference, 13 May 1942.
20 FO 371/31801/f4369, Sir John Brenan, 13 June 1942.
21 CO 825/42/53104, Stanley, minute, 23 August 1943. He was referring to the French defence of their colonies and the general future of the Far East.
22 The Value of a Pound: Prices and Incomes in Britain, 1900�V1993 (London, 1995).
23 FO 954/6/f585, Eden to Seymour, 9 July 1942.
24 FO 371/31619/f3043, Treasury meeting, April 1942.
25 Foreign Relations of the United States series (FRUS), 1942 China, p. 421. Sir Frederick Phillips to Morgenthau, Washington DC, 3 January.
26 FO 954/6/f497, Niemeyer to Eden, 8 January 1942.
27 FRUS, 1942 China, pp. 419�V20. A.M. Fox to Morgenthau, Washington DC, 3 January.
28 Ibid., p. 425. Gauss to Cordell Hull, 8 January.
29 CAB 65/25, 2 February 1942.
30 FRUS, 1942 China, p. 438. Meeting in Washington DC, 26 January.
31 Ibid., p. 423. Meeting in Washington DC, 8 January.
32 Ibid., p. 438. Meeting in Washington DC, 13 January.
33 Ibid., p. 446. Meeting in Washington DC, 26 January.
34 Ibid., pp. 486�V8. Memo by Hornbeck, 19 March. He belatedly came to see that Chiang was treating the loan as a ��poker game��, manoeuvring the US Government into a ��without strings�� only position. Which would ��score for them a .rst-class diplomatic victory the consequences of which in the long run will be good neither for this country or China��.
35 FO 954/6/f572, Eden interview with Koo, 20 April 1942.
36 FRUS, China 1942, pp. 509�V15. Luthringer memo on amelioration of China��s .nancial dif.culties, 24 April.
37 FO 371/31619/f5341, Hall Patch in Chunking to Treasury, 25 July 1942.
38 FRUS, 1942 China, p. 454. Hull to FDR, 31 January.
39 Ibid., p. 519. Luthringer to Hamilton, 21 May.
40 Ibid., pp. 521�V3. 22, 23 and 25 May.
41 FO 371/31619/f3468, Eden minute on Chinese blackmail, 10 May 1942.
42 FO 371/31619/f4252, Wood and Eden discussion, 8 June 1942.
43 FO 371/31715/f5553, Peterson minute, 7 August 1942 and FO telex to Chungking, 9 August 1942.
44 FO 371/31715/f5087, Eden on Far Eastern post-war settlement, 21 July 1942.
45 FO 371/31715/f5553, Peterson minute, 7 August 1942 and FO telex to Chungking, 9 August 1942.
46 FO 371/31704/f4297, Ashley Clarke minute, 16 June 1942.
47 FO 371/31704/f4297, Eden minute, 17 June 1942.
48 CO 825/35/55104, Cranborne minute, 14 July 1942.
49 CO 825/35/55104, Cranborne minute, 14 July 1942.
50 FO 371/31773/f5506, ��Britain��s post-war prospects in the Far East��, G.F. Hudson, 5 August 1942.
51 FO 371/31773/f5506, Sir John Brenan minute, 8 August 1942.
52 In 1920 Hong Kong engineers demanded increased wages and, with the employers failing to agree, withdrew their labour to Canton, quickly bring-ing the colony to a standstill. The same occurred in 1921�V22, when the exploited Chinese seamen gathered more widespread support (almost all the colony��s workforce of 120000) and marched off to Canton. The colonial government��s repressive measures only met with further agitation, forcing the government to concede a famous victory to the seamen. Matters went a stage further in the 1925�V26 blockade of Hong Kong when anti-foreign feeling swept the colony. It was caused by the deaths of Chinese civilians in the Shanghai international settlement and Canton at the hands of foreign troops (mostly British, one might add), and the agitation of a left-wing regime in Canton. Once more Hong Kong��s workforce departed for Canton, the strikers demanding a huge $20 million payment. The Hong Kong Gov-ernment, left in a perilous situation, considered what to do. At the time, Sir John Brenan was British consul in Canton. He adamantly opposed the idea of coercion which was being put forward by the new Hong Kong Governor, Sir Cecil Clementi, with the support of the Colonial Of.ce (Welsh, pp. 369�V76). A further coincidence was the fact that Leo Amery was the Colonial Secretary supporting Clementi in his use of force. Amery later wrote of his concern that ��the growth of an aggressive anti-European nation-alism in China . . . led to much controversy between the Foreign Of.ce, out of appeasement, and those of us who were more concerned to defend the interests built up by British enterprise in a prosperous colony like Hong Kong�� (Leo Amery, Life, vol. II (London, 1953), p. 305). It would appear that Foreign�VColonial Of.ce con.ict over the colony was nothing new.
In October 1926 the boycott ended without a penny being paid to the strikers. Ironically, the reason was the intervention of Chiang Kai-shek who had succeeded Sun Yat-sen as leader of the Kuomintang. In an attempt to reassert central authority throughout China, a pro-Chiang coup took place in Canton during March 1926. Chiang moved quickly to end the boycott because it was distracting from his military campaign against dissident war-lords (Welsh, pp. 376�V7). This assistance is, unsurprisingly however, rarely acknowledged in British history at a time when the colony��s future was in great jeopardy. Retrospectively, the convergence of Chiang Kai-shek, Brenan and Amery almost twenty years later over the same issue remains one of the quirks of history. In preparation for a northern expedition to re-establish central authority in Shanghai and Nanking, he needed to secure his posi-tion in Canton.
53 FO 371/31773/f5506, Sir Maurice Peterson minute, 17 August 1942.
54 FO 954/6/f592, Seymour talks to Chiang Kai-shek about India, 12 August 1942.
55 FO 371/31633/f5964, Amery letter to Eden, 13 August 1942.
56 FO 371/31777/f5965, of.cial minutes of Foreign Of.ce�VColonial Of.ce meeting by Gent, 20 August 1942.
57 FO 371/31777/f5965, of.cial minutes of Foreign Of.ce�VColonial Of.ce meeting by Gent, 20 August 1942.
58 FO 371/31777/f5965, Ashley Clarke minute, 27 August 1942.
59 FO 371/31777/f5965, Eden, 24 August 1942.
60 FO 371/31777/f5965, Sir Maurice Peterson minute, 28 August 1942.
61 FO 371/31777/f6440, Sir Maurice Peterson minute, 1 September 1942.
62 FO 371/31777/f6440, Ashley Clarke minute, 31 August 1942.
63 FO 954/22/post-war plans and reconstruction, October 1942.
64 HS 1/176, SOE, November 1942 paper, ��Present political and military aspects of the regime in China��.
65 FO 954/22/post-war plans and reconstruction. Attlee��s copy of the revised Eden�VCranborne Far Eastern paper presented to Cabinet. Dated 9 September 1942.
66 Quoted in Welsh, p. 424.
67 FO 371/31777/f6425, interdepartmental meeting, 10 September 1942.
68 Cranborne, however, conscious of the need for consensus with the Labour Party, did not wish a split at Cabinet level. Paul Emrys-Evans (Dominions Parliamentary under-secretary) and Richard Law of the Foreign Of.ce, on behalf of Cranborne, helped persuade Attlee to see the merits of the Colonial Of.ce position. (Louis, p. 196)
69 FO 371/31777/f6425, F.G. Coultas minute, 21 September.
70 FO 371/31777/f6441, amended Foreign Of.ce�VColonial Of.ce paper, 9 September 1942.
71 CO 967/18, report by Richard Law on Washington talks, September 1942.
72 FO 954/29/f513�V5, conversation between British journalist David Ewer and William Bullitt, former ambassador to Paris and Moscow, 11 August 1942.
73 CO 967/18, report by Richard Law on Washington talks, September 1942.
5 China claims Hong Kong
1 FO 371/31662/f7822, Cadogan minute on impending breakdown of extra-
territoriality negotiations, 21 November 1942. 2 FO 371/31662/f7822, Ashley Clarke minute, 20 November 1942. 3 CAB 23/88, Cabinet conclusion 24 (37), March 1931. 4 FO 371/31633, Eden minute, 2 March 1942. 5 Joseph W. Ballentine, director of the Of.ce of Far Eastern Affairs in the State
Department, quoted in Kit-ching, ��The US and the question of Hong Kong 1941�V45��, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 19 (1979).
6 FO 371/31620/f5489, Eden minute, undated August 1942. 7 FRUS, 1942 China, pp. 277�V8. Letter Hull to Halifax in Washington DC, 6 May.
8 FRUS, 1942 China, pp. 269�V71. Memo by Walter Adams of FE section, Washington DC, 19 March. He re.ected that American help to China ��may spill over the level of appropriateness and good taste to the detriment both of the interest of China and of the US��.
9 Quoted in Thorne, p. 489 and p. 533. 10 FO 954/Political/f520, Churchill to Eden on Four Power Plan, 18 October 1942. 11 FO 954/Political/f520, Eden reply to Churchill, 19 October 1942.
PM/42/228.
12 FRUS, 1942 China, p. 287. Cordell Hull to Gauss, 5 September.
13 FO 371/f8539/54/10, British and American policy towards China, 28 December 1942.
14 FO 371/ 31627/f6518, 17 September 1942.
15 The Times, 14 October 1942.
16 FRUS, 1942, p. 289. Ambassador Gauss to Cordell Hull, September 8.
17 FO 371/31664/f8036, Ashley Clarke minute, December 1942.
18 Sir John Brenan, though, later pointed out when the China Association was still adamantly pushing for equality of trade, that Britain also had similar problems to the American states: London was negotiating on behalf of India, Burma and her other colonies which possessed more open trade policies than the motherland. FO 371/31664/f8109, Brenan minute, 10 December 1942.
19 FO 371/31662/f7845, meeting of the China Association and the Federation of British Industry with Eden, 19 November 1942.
20 FO 371/31664/f8081, Brenan minute, 3 December 1942. Also Cadogan letter to Winant, 7 December.
21 FO 371/31662/f7822, Ashley Clarke minute, 20 November 1942.
22 Hansard, 14 October 1942. Mr Sorenson parliamentary question to Richard Law under-secretary state of FO. Ibid., 20 October 1942.
23 PREM 3/157/4, Seymour to FO, 16 October 1942. Ibid., Eden reply, 20 October.
24 FO 371/31662/f7742, Seymour to FO, 14 November 1942.
25 Wendell Wilkie was the Republican Party��s Presidential candidate in 1940.
26 FO 371/31664/f8287, Time article, ��Bitter tea��, 9 November 1942.
27 FO 371/31663/f7822, Ashley Clarke minute, 20 November 1942, quoting governor of Hong Kong, 20 June 1931.
28 FO 371/31663/f7822, Ashley Clarke minute, 20 November 1942.
29 FO 371/31663/f7822, Eden minute, 22 November 1942. FO 371/31663/f7950, Chinese pushing for American agreement, 25 Novem-ber 1942.
31 FO 371/31663/f7822, Ashley Clarke to Monson, CO, 25 November 1942. 32 FO 371/31662/f7973, Halifax telex to Eden, 26 November 1942. Ibid., Eden reply, 4 December. 33 FO 371/31664/f8188, Seymour telex, 7 December 1942. Ibid., Eden 11 December.
34 FO 371/35679/f123, Seymour and Teichman talk with T.V. Soong and K.C. Wu, 14 December 1942. FO 371/31664/f8287, Seymour telex, 15 December 1942. Ibid., Ashley Clarke, Cadogan and Eden, 17 December. Eden added an aside that it was ��Interesting this time we did not give everything at the start.��
36 CAB 65/28, WM173(42), extraterritoriality, 28 December 1942. 37 Cadogan diary, pp. 500�V1, 28 December 1942. 38 FRUS, China 1942, pp. 414�V5. Eden to US Charge in London, 29 December. 39 FO 371/35679/f23, David Ewer memorandum, 29 December 1942. Also Sir
Maurice Peterson minute, 31 December. FO 371/35679/f23, Cordell Hull press conference, 30 December 1942. Ibid., f1, Halifax to Eden, 31 December.
41 Thorne, p. 179. 42 FO 371/35679/f1, Foulds minute, 1 January 1943. Ibid., Ashley Clarke, 2
January, and Cadogan, 3 January. 43 Eden diary, 31 December 1942. 44 FO 371/3569/f1, Ashley Clarke to Hornbeck, 13 January 1943.
William L. Tung, Wellington Koo and China��s Wartime Diplomacy (NY, 1978), p. 53. 46 Shian Li, ��The extraterritoriality negotiations of 1943 and the New Territo-
ries��, Modern Asian Studies, 30, 3 (1996). 47 FO 371/35680/f285, Seymour to FO, 12 January 1943. 48 FO 371/35679/f1, Ashley Clarke to Hornbeck, 13 January 1943. 49 Tung, Wellington Koo, p. 93. Apparent comments of Soong to Koo after the
signing ceremony. FO 371/35739/f2529, May 1943. The Western edition, delayed by Chiang, had many of the ��fascistic�� anti-Western references removed.
51 ��Nations and their past��, The Economist, 21 December 1996. 52 FO 371/41657/f5341, Churchill��s Mansion House speech, 10 November 1944. 53 Eden diary, 11 November 1942: ��Talk with Winston on telephone. His speech has gone very well.��
54 FO 371/35824/f2913, the future of Hong Kong 1943. China Association document, circa December 1942, forwarded by CO. Quoted in Thorne, p. 65.
56 Arthur Creech Jones papers, Rhodes House, Oxford University, 17/12, ff. 40�V2. ��Report of the Weekend Conference��, New Fabian Research Bureau, 19�V20 March 1938.
57 FO 371/31620/f5628, Bromley minute, 10 August, and Ashley Clarke, 12 August 1942.
58 FO 371/31620/f7866, Brenan minute on loan and extraterritoriality, 25 November 1942.
59 BT 11/1995, Harcourt Johnstone, 15 December 1942, and Kingsley Wood, 7 January 1943.
60 MacDougall papers, MacDougall to Noel Sabine, CO, 22 December 1942.
61 Ibid., 30 December 1942.
62 FO 371/31803/f7609, IPR conference and the future of Hong Kong, 9 November 1942. Sir John Pratt wrote to Ashley Clarke in October to con.de: ��For many years I have felt that if we could not hold Hong Kong with the goodwill of the Chinese it was not worth holding at all.�� He wanted to return the colony ��now��, although he realised that was unlikely to be the FO�VCO consensus. A point made by an illegible scribe in the FO: ��I agree . . . with most of Pratt��s views. The line he takes about Hong Kong, however, would not be unanimously endorsed by the Cabinet to say the least.��
63 FO 371/35905, Pratt to Ashley Clarke, private, 26 December 1942.
64 FO 371/35905, Sir Maurice Peterson to Ashley Clarke on Pratt, 21 January 1943.
65 FO 371/34087/A1914, Pratt debrief to Committee on American Opinion and the British Empire, 22 February 1943.
66 FO 371/35680/ f412/G, Seymour to Eden, 13 January 1943.
67 FO 371/35680/ f412/G, Brenan and Ashley Clarke, January 1943.
68 FO 371/35680/f412/G, Butler, January 1943.
69 Ibid., Law, 1 February 1943.
70 FO 371/35680/ f412/G, Eden, 4 February 1943.
71 Hansard, 28 January 1943, vol. 386, p. 634.
72 FO 371/35683/f1090, reply to Halifax telex, February 1943. Ibid., Thornely, CO, to Oliver Harvey, FO, 11 February 1943.
73 Cadogan diary, p. 501, 31 December 1942.
6 London��s Hong Kong planning
1 HS 1/349, 1942�V45 future of Hong Kong, 27 February 1943: ��Sino-British relations��, prepared by AD/O to Minister for Economic Warfare, Lord Selborne (SO). Selborne added, ��This is a very valuable paper.��
2 Lord Ismay, The Memoirs of Lord Ismay (London, 1960), p. 309. 3 HS 1/349, 1942�V45 future of Hong Kong, 27 February 1943: ��Sino-British
relations��. 4 Ibid. 5 HS 1/349, SOE paper on Sino-British relations prepared by AD/O, 23
February 1943. 6 FO 954/6/f686, Mountbatten to Eden on raising pro.le of Far Eastern war, 23 September 1943. 7 CO 825/35/25, CO arrangements for military administration of Hong Kong,
19 June 1943. 8 FO 825/42/15, Gent to Thornely, 16 February 1943. 9 CO 825/42/15, Monson minute, 30 June 1943.
10 CO 825/42/15, Gent minute, 1 July 1943.
11 CO 852, 375/5, commercial relations with China: Hong Kong interests in post-war policy. FO to Seymour, 22 July 1943, and Gent minute, 4 August 1943.
12 CO 825/42/15, Paskin minute, 2 July 1943.
13 Norman Miners, Hong Kong under Imperial Rule, 1912�V1941 (Oxford, 1987), p. 37.
14 CO 825/42/15, Gater to Stanley, 21 August 1943.
15 CO 825/42/15, Stanley minute, 23 August 1943.
16 CO 825/42/15, Gent minute, 1 July 1943.
17 CO 825/42/15, Paskin to Ashley Clarke, 27 August 1943.
18 CO 825/42/15, 10 August 1943. FO refusal to attend CO conference.
19 CO 825/42/15, Monson, 10 August, and Gent, 15 August 1943.
20 CO 825/42/15, Monson minute, 10 August 1943.
21 FO 371/35824/f4541, A.L. Scott minute on Paskin��s letter, 1 September 1943.
22 Cadogan diary, 19 June 1945. Quoted in Thorne, p. 118.
23 FO 371/35824/f4541, Ashley Clarke minute, 2 September 1943.
24 CO 825/42/15, Paskin minute, 12 November 1943.
25 Steve Tsang, Democracy Shelved: Great Britain, China, and Attempts at Consti-tutional Reform in Hong Kong, 1945�V1952 (Oxford, 1988), p. 13.
26 CO 825/42/15, Gent minute, 29 December 1943.
27 CO 825/35/25, appointment of N.L. Smith, 18 August 1943.
28 CO 129/592/8.
29 F.S.V. Donnison, British Military Administration in the Far East, 1943�V46 (London, 1956), pp. 149�V50.
30 Miners, pp. 41�V2.
31 The Economist, 17 February 1945, p. 210.
32 Leo Amery diary, 16 February 1945, p. 1030.
33 FO 371/41657/f5341, for details of Stanley��s, Attlee��s and Churchill��s statements on Hong Kong, November 1944.
34 CO 825/42/15, Gent minute, 29 December 1943.
35 CO 825/42/15, Monson minute, 8 May 1944. Also, Gent letter to Moss, 29 May 1944.
36 FO 371/41657/f2172, Moss memo to Sir Alexander Blackburn FO, May 1944.
37 Speeches of Churchill, vol. VII, pp. 6918�V24. ��The future of the Empire��, House of Commons, 21 April 1944. Churchill quoted Kipling in his own speech.
38 FO 371/41657/f2172, Moss memo to Sir Alexander Blackburn FO, May 1944.
39 HS 1/349, Selborne meets Sir George Moss, 24 June 1944.
40 FO 371/41657/f2172, Moss memo to Sir Alexander Blackburn FO, May 1944.
41 FO 371/41746/f2968, L.H. Foulds minute, June 1944.
42 FO 371/41657/f2172, Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury (US edition), 31 March 1944.
43 FO 371/41746/f2968, Sir Maurice Peterson minute, 28 June 1944.
44 Louis, p. 366. In 1944 Roosevelt encouraged the State Department to proceed with trusteeship plans while at the same time telling the military to plan for permanent bases throughout the Paci.c. Also p. 426 for Hopkins��s comments on FDR ��not being caught�� by WSC��s encouragement to annex islands.
45 HS 1/171, CO meeting with SOE, 13 June 1944.
46 HS 1/171, CO meeting with SOE, 10 August 1944.
47 HS 1/171, CO meeting with SOE, MI2 and MI9, 19 August 1944.
48 CO 825/42/15, CO guidance to Poynton for UN negotiations, 3 August 1944.
49 CO 968/156/Pt.1, minutes by Poynton of meeting, 27 July 1944. Also Gater to Cadogan, 28 July 1944. Quoted in Louis, pp. 382�V3.
50 Louis, p. 377.
51 FO 371/41657/f3681, 12 June 1944. ICI��s Chungking rep argued to Paskin of the CO that Hong Kong should not be returned to China, and this would not damage Sino-British relations. Forwarded to the FO where A.L. Scott commented, 14 August 1944.
52 NARA, JCS, RG 218, Box 342, civil affairs policy for British territory of Hong Kong and Borneo.
53 Hansard, vol. 402, pp. 407�V10, 6 June 1944, parliamentary question by William Astor MP for Fulham East. With classic imperial irony, Astor denied the rights of the Chinese to claim any British territory while at the same time proclaiming that the Colonial Of.ce administration would need people ��who can love and sympathise with the Chinese��!
54 Speeches of Churchill, vol. VII, pp. 6918�V24. ��The future of the Empire��, House of Commons, 21 April 1944.
55 CO 825/42/15, Miss Ruskin��s draft Hong Kong announcement for Stanley, 6 November 1944. Also FO 371/41657/f5341, parliamentary question by William Astor MP, 8 November 1944.
56 FO 371/41657/f5341, Daily Express, 9 November 1944. Also CO 825/42/15, Gent minute, 18 November 1944.
57 FO 371/41746/f3665, inter-departmental meeting under chair of Sir Maurice Peterson, 3 August 1944. Also f3896 for encouragement of Washington Embassy.
58 CAB 96/5, Far East(44)1, 15 November 1944.
59 CO 825/39/7, Far Eastern committee memos and meetings 1944. Gent, 13 November 1944.
60 CAB 96/8, (45)4, British commercial interests in China �V position of Hong Kong, 11 January 1945.
61 FO 371/41695/f5195, Stilwell��s recall, 6 November 1944.
62 FO 371/41695/f5265, appointment of Wedemeyer, November 1944.
63 FO 371/41746/f5800, Dening to FO, 9 December 1944.
64 FO 371/41746/f5802, Dening to FO, 9 December 1944. Also Eden minute undated.
65 FO 371/41746/f5802, Dening to FO, 9 December 1944. Minute by M. Butler undated.
7 Military strategy in the Far East
1 Pownall, Louis Mountbatten��s Chief of Staff at SEAC, 29 April 1944. Quoted
in Thorne, p. 450. 2 Quoted in Thorne, p. 294. 3 Levine, p. 137. 4 Seagrave, p. 10.
5 Theodore H. White, In Search of History (NY, 1978), pp. 180�V4. 6 Seagrave, pp. 419�V20. 7 FO 371/35814, US authorities suppressing Chiang��s book, May 1943. 8 White, p. 157. 9 FDR, Hopkins papers, Sherwood Collection, Box 331. Chiang Kai-shek to
FDR, 19 April 1943.
10 FDR, FDR Of.cial .le, China 150, Box 2. T.V. Soong to Harry Hopkins, 13 May 1943. This was a curt note informing the Americans of Chinese displeasure over their ignorance of the Casablanca conference.
11 FDR, President��s Secretary, Box 27, Diplomatic Correspondence, China. Gauss, 9 December 1943.
12 FDR, Hopkins papers, Box 334, book 9. John Davies to Harry Hopkins, 31 December 1943.
13 Admiral William Leahy, I Was There (London, 1950), p. 186.
14 NARA, RG59, Geographical .les 1940�V44, China Box 2237. Conversation Hornbeck and T.V. Soong, 19 August 1943.
15 FO 371/35739/f2584, Ashley Clarke minute, 19 May 1943.
16 The Chinese communists remained relatively unimportant to the British until later in the war when the Americans began to pressure Chiang to settle his differences with Mao. The Americans believed that Chiang should be .ghting the Japanese, not the communists. Prior to this time, the commu-nists were geographically isolated in Yenan and closer contacts would also have irked Chiang. Sir Horace Seymour .nally met Mao on 28 August 1945 in Chungking, observing that Mao was a genuine communist but, at the same time, different from the Soviet model. The ambassador advocated that Britain continue its policy of non-intervention regarding KMT�VCCP con.ict, which was accepted by London. See Shian Li, ��Britain��s China policy and the communists, 1942 to 1946: the role of Ambassador Sir Horace Seymour��, Modern Asian Studies, 26, 1 (1992).
17 White, p. 108.
18 FRUS, China 1943, II, p. 845. Memo by Welles, 29 March 1943.
19 NARA, RG59, Hong Kong 1940�V44, Box 5098. 7 June 1943.
20 Ibid., dated Chungking, 2 April 1943.
21 FO 371/35834/ f1591, account of dinner with Dr Currie by Col. MacHugh, 24 March 1943.
22 Seagrave, pp. 411 and 416.
23 FO 371/35824/f4382, future of Hong Kong: US attitude, August 1943.
24 Chan Kit-ching, ��The United States and the question of Hong Kong��, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 19 (1979). Hornbeck memo, November 1943.
25 Seagrave, pp. 397 and 405�V6.
26 FO 371/35834/f1591, Col. MacHugh on meeting with Currie, 24 March 1943.
27 FO 954/7/f31, FO memo on Paci.c Strategy, 1 March 1944.
28 FDR, Presidential Secretary, Box 27, China 1943. John Davies letter, 9 March 1943.
29 FDR, Map Room, Box 165/F2. Chief of Staff summary of Stilwell messages, 18 February 1943.
30 FRUS, China 1944, p. 188. John Davies memo, 31 December 1943.
31 Wedemeyer, p. 267. British policy meeting, 8 August 1944. Wedemeyer, as Louis Mountbatten��s American deputy, was present at the meeting to put forward SEAC��s claim for additional resources for operations. After this incident Churchill excluded him from all further meetings.
32 Keith Sainsbury, Churchill and Roosevelt at War (London, 1994), pp. 160�V3.
33 Gilbert, Churchill, VII, p. 470.
34 Thorne, p. 299. See also pp. 297�V302.
35 FO 954/7/f20, Dening on political implications of Far Eastern strategy, 17 February 1944.
36 AP 20/11/91, Eden to Churchill on latter��s COS (44) 168 (0), 21 February 1944.
37 PREM 3, 160/6, Churchill to COS, 12 September 1944. Quoted in Thorne, p. 412.
38 Ismay papers, IV/Pow/4/2, Ismay to Pownall, 27 May 1944. Quoted in Thorne, p. 415.
39 Char 20/188, COS(44)207, COS to Churchill, 1 March 1944.
40 Char 20/188, Churchill note to COS, 20 March 1944.
41 PREM 3, 160/7, Churchill memo, 29 February 1944.
42 FDR, PSF, Box 74, State Departmental .le: Cordell Hull, January�VAugust 1944. Roosevelt to Hull on Indo-China, 24 January 1944.
43 FO 954/6/f618, Churchill on recovery of Burma, 10 January 1943.
44 Eden diary, 25 February 1944.
45 FO 954/7/f66, Halifax to Eden, 2 May 1944.
46 Claire Chennault was the founder of the American volunteer airforce in China that became known as the Flying Tigers, see Seagrave, pp. 369�V72.
47 FO 954/7/f145/f146/f154, Eden 10 and 12 July 1944.
48 FO 954/7/f132, Ashley Clarke minute, 15 June 1944. Eden underlined the Hong Kong section.
49 FO 954/7/f81, FO paper on ��Political considerations affecting Far Eastern strategy��, 22 May 1944.
50 Eden diary, 6 and 14 July 1944.
51 Ismay, p. 337.
52 Levine, p. 145.
53 Levine, p. 154.
54 FO 954/22/f229, Churchill to Smuts, 25 September 1944.
55 FDR, Map Room, Box 117. FDR to Chiang Kai-shek, 6 July 1944.
56 FDR, PSF, OSS April 1944�V45, Box 4. Donovan to FDR, 24 June 1944. The President requested he show the memo to Hull and Stimson.
57 FDR, PSF, OSS April 1944�V45, Box 4. Donovan to FDR, 24 June 1944.
58 Hopkins Papers, 334, Book 9. John Davies to Hopkins, 30 August 1944.
59 FDR, Map Room, Box 11. Roosevelt to Chiang Kai-shek, 16 September 1944.
60 Stilwell Papers, p. 333, 19 September 1944. See also FDR, Map Room, Box 11, Hull memo to Roosevelt, 28 April 1944, for American sus-picions against Madame Chiang Kai-shek��s withholding US messages. Ambassador Gauss also reported on ��marital intranquillity between the Chiangs��.
61 FDR, PSF, Box 27, Diplomatic Correspondence, China: January�VJuly 1944, 26 May 1944. Stimson, Secretary for War, also urged Roosevelt to rectify the hugely in.ated rate of exchange which the Chinese kept for American expenditure. Through this mechanism the Chinese accumulated millions of
extra dollars. Roosevelt passed the issue over to Morgenthau.
62 Stilwell Papers, p. 332, 17 September 1944.
63 FO 371/41607/f3308. Views of K.C. Wu, Chinese vice-minister for foreign affairs, 10 June 1944. Also A.L. Scott minute, 19 July 1944.
64 FDR, Map Room, Box 11, Chiang Kai-shek to Roosevelt, 29 March 1944.
65 FO 954/7/f63, de Wiart to Ismay, 24 April 1944.
66 FDR, Map Room, Box 11, Roosevelt to Chiang Kai-shek, 8 April 1944.
67 FDR, Map Room, Box 11, Cordell Hull to Roosevelt, 7 April 1944.
68 Wedemeyer, p. 295.
69 For example see Stilwell papers, p. 304, 14 June 1944.
70 FDR, PSF, Box 4, Safe .le: OSS, April 1944�V45. Donovan to Roosevelt, 4 May 1944.
71 FO 954/7/f229, Sterndale Bennett, 7 November 1944.
72 AP 20/10/344a, Cadogan to Churchill, 16 October 1943.
73 Hong Kong PRO, HKRS 163, MacDougall to Gent, 18 April 1945.
74 CO 852/42/15, Gent minute, 29 December 1943. Sir George Sansom in Washington DC embassy also held a similar view to Seymour on Hong Kong.
75 FDR, Map Room, Box 11. John Davies, New Delhi, 15 January 1944.
76 NARA, RG 59, Box 2237 China. Notes on Wallace��s conversation with Chiang, 21 June 1944.
77 Eden diary, 11 April 1944.
8 The Cairo conference
1 Stilwell papers, pp. 251�V4. Meeting in Cairo after Tehran Conference, 6
December 1943. 2 Winston Churchill, The Second World War, vol. V (London, 1952), p. 289. 3 AP 20/3/5, notebook of war trip October�VDecember 1943. Entry, 25
November 1943. 4 Ibid. 5 Ismay, p. 334. 6 Gilbert, Churchill VII, p. 561. 7 Eden, The Reckoning, p. 426. 8 AP 20/3/5, 25 November 1943. 9 AP 20/11/121, Eden to Churchill, attached minute by Dening, 1 March
1944.
10 Moran, p. 132, 25 November 1943.
11 Leahy, p. 185.
12 Louis, pp. 281�V2.
13 Dalton diary, p. 685, 21 December 1943.
14 Leo Amery diary, p. 955, 13 December 1943.
15 Stilwell papers, pp. 236�V40. See also pp. 224�V5 for attempt by Soong sisters to woo Stilwell once they saw that Stilwell was their link to American aid.
16 Ch��i, Hsi-sheng, Nationalist China at War, Military Defeats and Political Col-lapse, 1937�V45 (Michigan, 1982), pp. 113�V17. Ch��i states that during the war, the KMT ��gave up any attempt to wage revolutionary struggles [with the result that] the national party became an empty shell and its leaders reduced
to soldierless generals��, inciting factional intrigues. p. 236.
17 Moran, p. 130, 23 November 1943.
18 Seagrave, p. 379. John Service minute to State Department.
19 Ibid., p. 410. John Service minute to State Department.
20 The Sian incident occurred against the backdrop of the KMT��s fourth anni-hilation campaign against the communists. Several KMT generals wanted to stop the encroachment of the Japanese before the communists, and took Chiang hostage in an attempt to persuade him to switch priorities.
21 Ibid., p. 415.
22 Elliott Roosevelt, p. 142. He added, ��I can��t think what would be happening in China, if it weren��t for [Stilwell].��
23 Stilwell papers, p. 251�V4. Meeting in Cairo after Tehran, 6 December 1943.
24 Seagrave, p. 378.
25 Ismay, p. 335.
26 FDR, Map Room, Box 165 (2), Hurley to Roosevelt, Cairo 20 November 1943.
27 Elliott Roosevelt, p. 193.
28 Quoted in Leahy, p. 185.
29 Quoted in Seagrave, p. 386.
30 Elliott Roosevelt, pp. 162�V5.
31 Stilwell papers, pp. 251�V4. Meeting in Cairo after Tehran Conference, 6 December 1943.
32 Stilwell diary, 6 December 1943. Quoted in Thorne, p. 308. Cut from published version.
33 Martin Gilbert, Churchill VII, pp. 595�V9. Roosevelt conceded to Churchill after the fourth plenary session of the Third Cairo Conference that ��Bucca-neer is off��. The Prime Minister had also spoken disparagingly about Mount-batten��s plans and his apparently extravagant demands for troops and materiel. Mountbatten��s deputy, the American General Wedemeyer, however, implies that Churchill��s displeasure was born from his enthusiasm for Cul-verin, not his opposition. He felt that if the operational demands could be reduced the operation could still go ahead. When the Prime Minister told Wedemeyer, the American thought privately, ��Don��t forget Gallipoli!�� See General Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports! (NY, 1958), pp. 258�V60.
34 FDR, PS, Box 27, Diplomatic Correspondence, China 1943, Gauss memo, 9 December 1943. With attached Morgenthau memo for President, 18 Decem-ber 1943. The President was also convinced of his own powers of economic thought, and advised Morgenthau what should be done. He suggested a course of action that was still hugely bene.cial to the Chinese (and not America) while doing nothing to tackle the fundamental causes of Chinese in.ation. The Treasury Secretary expressed ��complete sympathy�� with the President��s aim of aiding China and resisting remedial action.
35 John Morton Blum, Years of War, 1941�V45, from the Morgenthau Diaries (Boston, 1967), p. 114. Morgenthau to White, 18 January 1944.
36 Ibid., p. 107.
37 FDR, Map Room, Box 165 (2), Hurley to Roosevelt, Cairo, 20 November 1943.
38 FRUS, Cairo and Tehran 1943 (Washington, 1961), p. 554.
39 Moran, pp. 133�V4.
40 FRUS, Cairo and Tehran 1943, p. 554. Tripartite dinner meeting, 29 November.
41 FO 371/35874/f6714, Sir Prideaux-Brune to Ashley Clarke, 7 December 1943.
42 Thorne, p. 312.
43 HS 1/154: ��Remorse�� .nancial dealings. FO paper by Eric Teichman of FO Information Service, 27 October 1943. ��Remorse�� was the British operational codename for playing the Chinese .nancial black market in an effort to subsidise their meagre .nances, and avoid China��s .xed exchange controls.
9 Hard choices
1 Leahy, p. 338. 2 Lord Halifax, The Fullness of Days (London, 1957), p. 250. 3 FO 371/46251/f1147, A.L. Scott, 8 February 1945. 4 HS 1/208, AD minute, 29 March 1945. 5 CO 825/39/7, FE(44)8, 25 November 1944. Seymour letter to Eden on post-
war trade, 19 September 1944. 6 CAB 96/5, FE(44)1, 15 November 1944. Hall would later become Labour��s Colonial Secretary in July 1945. 7 CAB 96/8, FE(E)(44)1, note by the CO on Hong Kong��s economic impor-tance, 12 December 1944. 8 CAB 96/8, FE(E)(45)18, British shipping interests in China, 26 February 1945. 9 CAB 96/8, FE(45)9, Dr Sun Fo��s comments, 27 January 1945. 10 CO 825/39/7, FE(44)10, Sir Prideaux-Brune on Anglo-American cooperation in China, 30 November 1944. 11 FO 954/7/f338, Chiang Kai-shek thanks Britain for surplus naval craft, 22
April 1945.
12 FDR, Map Room, Box 165 (2), Wedemeyer to Roosevelt, 20 December 1944.
13 FDR, Map Room, Box 11 (8), Roosevelt to Hurley, 17 November 1944.
14 Eden diary, 4 January 1945.
15 Eden diary, 2 February 1945.
16 Herbert Feis, The China Tangle (Princeton, 1953), p. 249. This is the of.cial State Department history of the period. See also Robert Conquest, pp. 264�V8.
17 Wedemeyer, p. 327.
18 Eden, The Reckoning, pp. 513�V14.
19 FO 371/54073/f9836, Churchill minute on Soviet claims in the Far East, 23 October 1944.
20 Leahy, p. 368, 9 February 1945.
21 Moran, p. 223, 4 February 1945.
22 Ibid., p. 226, 8 February 1945.
23 FDR, Map Room, Box 165(9), State Department recommendations for Far Eastern policy at Yalta, January 1945.
24 Ibid.
25 Wedemeyer, pp. 317�V19.
26 Moran, pp. 227�V8, 9 February 1945.
27 AP 20/12/768, Churchill to Eden, 31 December 1944.
28 Moran, p. 228, 9 February 1945.
29 FO 954/22/f276, Eden to Churchill, 8 January 1945, replying to Churchill��s personal letter of 31 December 1944. The Prime Minister grudgingly approved Eden��s position.
30 Gilbert, Churchill VII, pp. 1155�V6.
31 Harvey, p. 348, 15 July 1944.
32 Taussig papers, Box 49. Memo of Roosevelt�VStanley conversation by Taussig, 16 January 1945. Quoted in Louis, pp. 437�V8. In 1949 the State Department was compiling a handbook on Far Eastern conference discussions between heads of state and foreign ministers for the period 1943�V47. In pursuit of this aim, the State Department attempted to .nd the letter from Chiang Kai-shek that Roosevelt referred to in his meeting with Stanley. Robert Dennison, Naval Aide to President Truman, reported on 14 May 1949 that ��a careful search has been made of all known .les of President Roosevelt without result. The letter itself was not found, nor any record of the receipt of such a letter discovered.�� In all probability it never existed. See NARA, RG 59, Hong Kong 1945�V49, Box 5099, April 1949.
33 FO 371/44595/AN154, conversation Law and Roosevelt, 22 December 1944.
34 FO 371/41769/f5392, Sterndale Bennett minute, 18 November 1944.
35 Quoted in Louis, pp. 428�V30, IPR conference, January 1945.
36 FO 954/7/f253, Carton de Wiart to Ismay, 21 November 1944. Also, Wedemeyer, p. 293.
37 Wedemeyer, p. 298.
38 CO 129/591/11, various minutes on Emergency Unit, 20 January and 20 February 1945.
39 Wedemeyer, p. 341.
40 FDR, Map Room, Box 11/8, Hurley to Roosevelt, 2 January 1945. See also PSF/Box 27, Hurley, 1 January 1945.
41 CO 129/591/11, Gent to Gater, 20 February 1945. See also HS 1/169, SOE Force 136 to London, 1 March 1945 for planned Sino-British guerrilla operation in Kwangtung whose ultimate aim was the liberation of Hong Kong. A London member of SOE called these plans ��entirely nebulous�� considering the situation.
42 FO 371/46251/f4153, Colonel Ride��s report, 4 July 1945.
43 CO 129/591/11, emergency planning unit, inter-departmental meeting, 5 July 1945.
44 CO 129/591/11, Seymour reply to above, 9 July 1945.
45 CO 129/591/11, Thornely minute, 23 February 1945.
46 HS 1/331, Lord Selborne��s paper, 15 March 1945. Also Stanley to Churchill, 21 March 1945.
47 Roosevelt and Churchill, their Secret Wartime Correspondence, p. 677, Churchill to Roosevelt, 17 March 1945. Roosevelt to Churchill, pp. 682�V3, 22 March 1945. See also FO 954/7/f283,f325 and f327 February�VMarch 1945.
48 HS 1/171, inter-departmental meeting at CO summarising Hong Kong situation, 23 July 1945.
49 Carton de Wiart, Happy Odyssey (London, 1950), pp. 258�V9.
50 HS 1/171, inter-departmental meeting at CO summarising Hong Kong situation, 23 July 1945.
51 HKRS 211/2/37, MacDougall report on visit to Chungking, March 1945.
52 HKRS 211/2/37, MacDougall to Gent on visit to Chungking, 18 April 1945.
53 FO 371/46151/f1543, Seymour to Sterndale Bennett, 21 February 1945.
54 FO 371/46251/f1147, A.L. Scott, 23 February 1945. Scott, however, was dis-dainful of the CO��s suggestion that the lease of the New Territories could be extended. See, ibid., f1375, 8 March 1945.
55 FO 371/46251/f1543, T.H. Brewis, 14 May 1945.
56 FO 371/46325/f2663, Eden, 30 March 1945.
57 HS 1/208, Field Marshal Wilson, Washington DC, to Ismay, 27 March 1945.
58 FO 371/46325/f2144, A.L. Scott, 5 April 1945.
59 FO 371/46251/f2382, FO brief for Hurley visit, 3 April 1945. Eden added on 4 April: ��I had not known that Hong Kong was a free port. I suppose there is no quali.cation about this��, illustrating his ignorance of Hong Kong��s business role.
60 WO 203/5621, Sterndale Bennett to Seymour on Hurley��s visit, 24 April 1945. The FO avoided mentioning the CO��s predisposition to take into account the opinions of the inhabitants of Hong Kong, should Hurley ��exag-gerate it into a possibly awkward commitment��. See FO 371/46251/f2382, CO brief, 31 March 1945.
61 FO 371/46325/f2577, Churchill minute, 11 April 1945.
62 WO 203/5621, Sterndale Bennett to Seymour on Hurley��s visit, 24 April 1945.
63 Moran, p. 226, 7 February 1945.
64 Gilbert, Churchill VII, p. 1301, Churchill speech, House of Commons, 17 April 1945.
65 Wedemeyer, p. 272.
66 Louis, p. 441.
67 Ibid., see pp. 512�V47. Truman approved the State Department��s military compromise prior to the conference to enable the military to retain full control of the Paci.c islands for security purposes, p. 496.
68 CAB 65/60, WM(45)61, 14 May 1945.
69 CO 968/1571/5, Seymour to Eden, 16 May 1945.
70 Charles E. Bohlen, Witness to History (NY, 1973), p. 223.
71 CO 129/592/8, extract from FE(E), 10 May 1945.
72 FO 371/46325/f2577, Stanley letter to Eden, 25 May 1945. Also Sterndale Bennett minute, 28 May 1945.
73 Eden, The Reckoning, pp. 540�V1.
74 Moran, p. 251, 20 May 1945. Also, p. 255.
75 Eden diary, 17 July 1945.
76 HKRS 211/2/6, letter to MacDougall, 5 July 1945.
10 Return of the Empire
1 HS 1/210, SOE paper on scheme for British publicity in Far East, 19 April
1945. 2 FO 371/46232/f3603, Seymour to Sterndale Bennett, 16 June 1945. 3 FO 371/46251/f4008, Sterndale Bennett to Seymour, 18 July 1945. 4 FO 371/46171/f4917, A.L. Scott, 5 July 1945. 5 HS 1/331, AD4 reviews British political warfare plans for the Far East, 12
May 1945.
6 FO 371/46251/f2456, MacDougall, April 1945. 7 HS 1/171, Seymour to London, 20 July 1945. 8 Moran, p. 257, 8 July 1945. 9 Eden diary, 10 August 1945. 10 Documents on British Policy Overseas, series 1, vol. 1 (London, 1988). The Conference at Potsdam, no. 550, I (6), Far Eastern department FO, 7 July 1945. 11 FO 371/54073/45, Clark Kerr to Eden, 18 July 1945. Also Major General Woodburn Kirby, The War against Japan, vol. V, The Surrender of Japan (London, 1969), pp. 202�V3. Stalin demanded concessions far beyond the Yalta agreement from the Chinese in his discussions with T.V. Soong: inde-pendence for Outer Mongolia, a military zone in Manchuria, and a Russian controlling interest in Chinese Eastern and South Manchurian railways. In return Stalin offered not to support the Chinese communists. 12 HS 1/157, SOE general intelligence report China, 10 July 1945. 13 FO 371/46251/f4449, Sterndale Bennett minute, 25 July 1945. 14 CO 129/591/13, civil affairs agreement, Gater to Cadogan, 28 July 1945. 15 FO 371/46251/f4588, Stanley to Eden, 25 July 1945. 16 Eden diary, 17 July 1945. 17 Eden diary, 20 July 1945. Moran dined with the Edens and Churchill that night: ��They talked until nearly midnight as if nothing had happened. I wondered if I could have behaved with the same quiet dignity immediately after hearing that my [son] John had been killed.�� Moran, p. 277, 20 July 1945. 18 Eden diary, 25 July 1945. 19 Moran, p. 287, 26 July 1945. 20 FO 371/46232/f4649, Ta Kung Pao, 30 July 1945. 21 Gilbert, Churchill VIII, p. 116, Attlee to Churchill, 1 August 1945. 22 Eden diary, 28 July 1945. 23 Moran, p. 288, 2 August 1945. 24 Cadogan diary, p. 776, 28 July 1945. 25 Gilbert, Churchill VIII, p. 114, King George VI to Churchill, 31 July 1945. 26 FO 371/46251/f4588, CO enquiries about Terminal, 31 July 1945. 27 CO 129/591/13, Paskin minute, 9 August 1945. 28 CO 129/591/11, inter-departmental meeting, 29 July 1945. 29 CO 129/591/11, meeting of Calvert, SAS, with CO, 3 August 1945. 30 CO 129/591/11, inter-departmental meeting, 29 July 1945. 31 Cadogan diary, p. 781, 11 August 1945. Australia and China shared the State Department��s opposition but were persuaded that Japan would only sur-render in an orderly manner subject to Emperor Hirohito��s orders. 32 Kirby, The War against Japan, vol. V, pp. 205�V220 passim. 33 NARA, RG 165, Box 505, CCS 901/1, 11 August 1945. 34 NARA, RG 165, Box 505, CCS 901/3, 12 August 1945. 35 Kirby, War against Japan, vol. V, pp. 283�V8. 36 CO 129/591/16, Gent to Gater, 4 August 1945. 37 CO 129/591/16, FO to Chungking, 11 August 1945. 38 F.S.V. Donnison, British Military Administration in the Far East, 1943�V46 (London, 1956), pp. 77�V9. 39 Kirby, War against Japan, vol. V, pp. 145�V6.
40 NARA, RG 165, Box 505, Telephone conversation Dunn and Lincoln, 15 August 1945.
41 CO 129/591/16, Wallinger, Chungking, to FO, 14 August. The Chinese were given British plans for the Hong Kong surrender the same day.
42 CO 129/591/16, Cabinet Far Eastern committee meeting, 17 August 1945.
43 CO 129/591/16, Hall to Attlee, 10 August 1945.
44 CO 129/591/18, COS(45)200, Alan Brooke, 17 August 1945.
45 Edwin Ride, BAAG, Hong Kong Resistance, 1942�V1945 (Hong Kong, 1981), p. 287.
46 CO 129/591/16, Ride to Cartwright, HQ British troops China, 15 August 1945.
47 CO 129/591/16, FO to Chungking, 13 August 1945.
48 CO 129/591/16, de Wiart to Cartwright HQ British troops China, 17 August 1945.
49 Ride, BAAG, p. 288.
50 HS 1/329, B/B 131, Kunming to ADI, 17 August 1945.
51 FO 371/46251/f5166, Kitson minute, 16 August 1945.
52 CO 129/591/18, Attlee to Truman, 18 August 1945.
53 FO 800/461, Truman to Attlee, 19 August 1945. The second paragraph of Truman��s message stated that Secretary of State, Byrnes, had informed T.V. Soong of the President��s decision, adding that ��it did not in any way repre-sent US views regarding the future status of Hong Kong��. The CO and FO agreed that this section should be ignored, just as they had disregarded an earlier American Chiefs of Staff��s attempt to distance themselves from British Hong Kong policy.
54 CO 129/591/18, 203, Joint Service Mission, Washington DC, to London, 22 August 1945.
55 CO 129/591/18, 203, Joint Service Mission, Washington DC, to London, 22 August 1945.
56 FO 371/46212/f6055, A.L. Scott minute, 31 August 1945.
57 Harry Truman, Year of Decisions, 1945 (London, 1955), p. 383.
58 FO 371/44538/AN2597, political summary Washington DC to London, 27 August 1945.
59 NARA, RG 218, Box 87, Hong Kong geographical 1942�V45, JCAC 30, 18 June 1945.
60 FO 371/46251/f4876, Kitson minute, 14 August 1945. Kitson reiterated this point in 46171/f6104, 30 September 1945.
61 CO 129/591/18, 155, Seymour to FO, 24 August 1945.
62 Franklin Gimson diary, introduction. Japan��s sudden capitulation, however, saved the lives of thousands of Allied POWs who were to be shot on the orders of Tokyo.
63 London��s message to Gimson dated 13 August, reached him on 23 August. See George Wright-Nooth with Mark Adkin, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads (London, 1994) for details of British internment in Stanley camp.
64 Gimson diary, introduction.
65 CO 129/591/16, Ride to C in C India, 21 August 1945.
66 The Times, 21 August 1945.
67 FO 371/46251/f5066, Churchill parliamentary question, 23 August 1945.
68 CO 129/591/18, Seymour to FO, 26 August 1945.
69 NARA, RG 59, Hong Kong 1945�V49, Winant to Washington DC, 23 August 1945.
70 CO 129/591/18, Sterndale Bennett on Daily Telegraph report to C.R. Price, COS Secretariat, 23 August 1945.
71 CO 129/591/18, FO to Seymour, 28 August 1945.
72 CO 129/591/18, Seymour to FO, 26 August 1945.
73 CO 129/591/18, Ismay to Gater, CO, 24 August 1945.
74 CO 129/591/18, FO to Seymour, 28 August 1945.
75 CO 129/591/18, de Wiart to Ismay, on meeting with Chiang Kai-shek on 25�V26 August 1945.
76 See CO 129/591/18, Gent to Gater, 17 August, and Gent minute, 18 August 1945.
77 CO 129/591/18, de Wiart to Ismay, 27 August. Also Seymour to FO, 30 August 1945.
78 CO 129/591/18, Seymour to FO after meeting Dr K.C. Wu, 29 August 1945.
79 CO 129/591/18, Sterndale Bennett to Seymour, 30 August 1945. Sent fol-lowing day, and accepted by Chiang Kai-shek. For Cabinet discussion see Gent minute 28 August 1945.
80 CO 129/591/18, Sterndale Bennett to Seymour, and reply, 30�V31 August 1945.
81 Kirby, The War against Japan, vol. V, pp. 283�V8.
82 Gimson diary, introduction.
83 The Japanese deny that the boats which left Lamma island were hostile to the British .eet and maintain that their warheads had already been dumped at sea. See Lo Tim Keung and Jason Wordie, Ruins of War, a Guide to Hong Kong��s Battle.elds and Wartime Sites (Hong Kong, 1996), p. 182. The devel-opment of the suicide boats was initiated by the Imperial Japanese Navy in April 1944. The boats sent to Hong Kong were intended for use against Allied shipping, should any attempt be made to enter the western harbour of Hong Kong. There were 127 boats called Shinyo (shaking the ocean) with 559 personnel from Japan sent in February 1945.
84 CO 129/591/18, Harcourt to Paci.c Fleet, 4 September 1945.
85 Wright-Nooth, p. 187.
86 Kirby, The War against Japan, vol. V, pp. 286�V7.
87 CO 129/591/18, Sterndale Bennett to Chiefs of Staff, 1 September 1945.
88 CO 129/591/20, various correspondence between General Hayes and COS, 30 August�V9 September 1945.
89 CO 129/591/18, 27, Harcourt��s war diary (for period 29 August to 16 Sep-tember 1945) to Secretary of the Admiralty, 6 October 1945.
Conclusion
1 Sir Ralph Furse, Acuparius, Recollections of a Recruiting Of.cer (London, 1962), pp. 298�V9. 2 Denis Judd, British Imperial Experience from 1765 to the Present (London,
1997), p. 321. 3 Dutton, pp. 156�V7. 4 Seagrave, pp. 419�V20.
5 Leahy, p. 368, 9 February 1945. 6 Porter and Stockwell, pp. 30�V31. 7 Robert Conquest, Stalin, Breaker of Nations (London, 1991), p. 262. 8 Michael H. Hunt, Ideology in US Foreign Policy (London, 1987), p. 38. 9 The Economist, 9 October 1999, p. 41.
10 Clive Ponting, Churchill (London, 1994), p. 690.
11 Harvey, p. 176, 3 November 1942.
12 FO 371/46171/f4917, G.V. Kitson, 5 July 1945.
13 Moran, p. 247.
14 Sir Ralph Furse, p. 131.
15 Lord Rosebery speech, City of London Liberal Club, 5 May 1899, in Daily News, 6 May 1899.
Epilogue
1 NSC 5717, 9 August 1957. Access limited on a strict need-to-know basis.
2 ��The break-up of the Colonial Empires and its implications for US security��, 3 September 1948. Michael Warner (ed.), The CIA under Truman (Washington DC, 1994).
3 FO 371/75788, CBB Heathcote-Smith political summaries, April 1949. 4 Welsh, p. 440. 5 Liverpool Post, 2 December 1948, article: ��War threat to helpless Hong Kong��,
by Patrick O��Donovan. 6 FO371/75839 UK government policy towards Hong Kong 1949. 7 CO 537/3702, Paskin minute, 16 June 1948. 8 CO 537/3702, Creech Jones minute, 27 June 1948. 9 FO371/75872/f6909, Sir N. Brook, Cabinet Of.ce to Dening, referring to
Cabinet Paper FE(O)(49)25, 12 May 1949.
10 FO371/75871/f6019, F.S. Tomlinson minute to Bevin, 4 May 1949.
11 Welsh, p. 438.
12 FO371/75872/f7787, Noel Baker, Commonwealth Relations Of.ce to PM, 12 May 1949.
13 See Mark Roberti, The Fall of Hong Kong (Chichester, 1994).
14 Dr Zhisui Li, The Private Life of Chairman Mao (London, 1995), p. 270.
15 ��The cold war in Asia��, Cold War International History Project, Winter 1995/6, No. 6�V7, Washington DC.
16 NSC 6007, 11 June 1960.
17 Welsh, p. 446.
18 NSC 5717, 9 August 1957. Access limited on a strict need-to-know basis.
19 NSC 44, 26 July 1948.
20 Joint Munitions Allocation Committee to JCS, Aid to China. RG218, Geo-graphic .le 1948�V50, 7 October 1949.
21 Gerald Segal, ��Does China matter?��, Foreign Affairs (September/October 1999).
22 FO 371/75839/f13408, Cabinet conclusion CM(49)54, 29 August 1949.
Bibliography
Unpublished material
Public Records Of.ce, London
Board of Trade, BT 11 Cabinet conclusions, CAB 23, 65, 128 Cabinet Committee of Imperial Defence, CAB 16 Cabinet memoranda, CAB 66, 129 Chiefs of Staff Committee, CAB 79 Colonial Of.ce, CO 98, 129, 133, 547, 825, 852, 967, 968 series Far Eastern Committee, CAB 69, 96, 134 Far Eastern Economic Sub-Committee, CAB 96 Foreign Of.ce, general political, FO 371 series Foreign Secretary, of.cial papers, FO 800, 954 Prime Minister��s Of.ce .les, PREM 1, 3, 4 Special Operations Executive, Far Eastern, HS 1 series War Of.ce, WO 203 series
Birmingham University
Anthony Eden, private papers
Oxford University, Bodleian Library
Clement Attlee papers Conservative Party papers
Oxford University, Rhodes House Library
Arthur Creech Jones papers Fabian Society papers Franklin Gimson diary David MacDougall papers
Cambridge, Churchill College, Churchill Library
Alexander Cadogan diaries Winston Churchill papers William Slim papers
Labour Party Archive, Manchester
Labour Party Committee on Colonial Affairs
Franklin Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, USA
Franklin Roosevelt papers Harry Hopkins papers
246
Henry Morgenthau papers Sumner Welles papers Taussig papers
National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, USA
Of.ce of Strategic Services, research and analysis reports Joint Chiefs of Staff, minutes, RG 165, 218 series National Security Council papers State Department papers, RG 59, 84 series
Public Record Of.ce, Hong Kong
HKRS, 163, 211, 231 series Cecil Harcourt papers
Published material
Articles
Christopher M. Bell, ����Our most exposed outpost��: Hong Kong and British Far Eastern strategy, 1921�V1941��, Journal of Military History, 60 ( January 1996).
Chan Lau Kit-ching, ��The Hong Kong question during the Paci.c war��, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 2, 1 (1973).
�X�X, ��The abrogation of British extraterritoriality in China 1942�V43: a study of Anglo-American-Chinese relations��, Modern Asian Studies, 2, 2 (1977).
�X�X, ��The United States and the question of Hong Kong��, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 19 (1979).
Paul Dickson, ��Crerar and the decision to garrison Hong Kong��, Journal of Canadian Military History, 3, 1 (Spring 1994).
Kent Fedorowich, ��Doomed from the outset? Internment and civilian ex-change in the Far East �V the British failure over Hong Kong, 1941�V45�� (Unpublished).
W.J. Hinton, ��Hong Kong��s place in the British Empire��, Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society, 38 (1941).
Johannes R. Lombardo, ��A mission of espionage, intelligence and psychological operations: the American Consulate in Hong Kong, 1949�V64��, Intelligence and National Security, 14, 4 (Winter 1999).
Galen Perras, ����Our position in the Far East would be stronger without this unsatisfactory commitment��: Britain and the reinforcement of Hong Kong, 1941��, Canadian Journal of History, 30 (August 1995).
Shian Li, ��Britain��s China policy and the communists, 1942 to 1946: the role of Ambassador Sir Horace Seymour��, Modern Asian Studies, 26, 1 (1992).
�X�X, ��The extraterritoriality negotiations of 1943 and the New Territories��, Modern Asian Studies, 30, 3 (1996).
James Tang, ��From Empire defence to imperial retreat: Britain��s post-war China policy and the decolonization of Hong Kong��, Modern Asian Studies, 4, 2 (1994).
Newspapers
China Morning Post, 1939�V1941 and 1945 Hong Kong News, 1941�V1944 The Daily Telegraph The Economist The Times
Secondary literature
Acheson, D., Present at the Creation (London, 1948). Amery, L., My Political Life, vol. III (London, 1955). Attlee, C.R., As it Happened (London, 1954). Avon, Lord, The Reckoning (London, 1965). Barnett, C., The Collapse of British Power (London, 1972). �X�X, The Audit of War (London, 1986). �X�X, Lost Victory (London, 1995). Barnes, J. and D. Nicholson (eds), The Empire at Bay: the Leo Amery Diaries,
1929�V45 (London, 1988). Bennett, G. (ed.), The Concept of Empire, Burke to Attlee 1774�V1947 (London,
1953).
Blum, J.M., Roosevelt and Morgenthau (Boston, 1970).
�X�X, Years of War, 1941�V1945, from the Morgenthau Diaries (Boston, 1967).
Bohlen, C.E., Witness to History (London, 1973).
Bosanquet, D., Escape from China (London, 1983).
Bullock, A., The Life and Times of Ernest Bevin, vol. II (London, 1967); vol. III (London, 1983).
Burridge, T., Clement Attlee, a Political Biography (London, 1985).
Butler, R.A., The Art of the Possible (London, 1971).
Byrnes, J.F., Speaking Frankly (London, 1948).
Cain, P.J. and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, Innovation and Expansion, 1688�V1914 (London, 1993).
�X�X, British Imperialism: Crisis and Deconstruction, 1914�V1990 (London, 1993).
Cantril, H. and M. Strunk, Public Opinion, 1935�V1946 (Princeton, 1951).
Ch��i, Hsi-sheng, Nationalist China at War, Military Defeats and Political Collapse, 1937�V45 (Michigan, 1982).
Chan Lau Kit-ching, China, Britain and Hong Kong, 1895�V1945 (Hong Kong, 1992).
Chennault, C.L., Way of the Fighter (NY, 1949).
Chiang Kai-shek, China��s Destiny and Chinese Economic Theory (ed. P. Jaffe, NY, 1947).
Churchill, W.S., History of the Second World War, vol. I (London, 1948); vol. II (London, 1949); vol. III (London, 1950); vol. IV (London, 1951); vol. V (London, 1952); vol. VI (London, 1954).
�X�X, The Hinge of Fate (London, 1964). Colville, J., The Fringes of Power: the Downing Street Diaries, 1939�V55 (London,
1985).
Conquest, R., Stalin: Breaker of Nations (London, 1991).
Cruishank, C., SOE in the Far East (Oxford, 1983).
Cottrell, R., The End of Hong Kong (London, 1994).
Dalton, H., Memoirs, 1931�V1945: the Fateful Years (London, 1957). Davies, J.P., Dragon by the Tail (NY, 1972). Dilks, D. (ed.), The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan (London, 1982). Documents on British Policy Overseas, Series I, Volume I, The Conference at
Potsdam (London, 1988). Donnison, F.S.V., British Military Administration in the Far East, 1943�V46 (London,
1956).
Dreyer, E.L., China at War, 1900�V1949 (London, 1995).
Dutton, D., Anthony Eden, a Life and Reputation (London, 1997).
Eiler, Keith E. (ed.), Wedemeyer on Peace (Stanford, 1987).
Fairbank, J.K., The United States and China (Cambridge, MA, 1971).
Feis, H., The China Tangle (Princeton, 1953).
Foreign Relations of the United States series (Washington DC, 1940�V1945).
Furse, Sir R., Acuparius, Recollections of a Recruiting Of.cer (London, 1962).
Gardiner, J. and N. Wenborn (eds), The History Today Companion to British History (London, 1995).
Gardner, L.C., Economic Aspects of New Deal Diplomacy (Madison, 1964).
Gellman, I.F., Secret Affairs: Franklin Roosevelt, Cordell Hull and Sumner Welles (Baltimore, 1995).
Gilbert, M., Winston S. Churchill, vol. VI (London, 1983); vol. VII (London, 1986); vol. VIII (London, 1988).
Gittings, J., China and the World, 1922�V1972 (London, 1974).
Gladwyn, Lord, Memoirs (London, 1972).
Grantham, A., Via Ports (Hong Kong, 1965).
Gull, E.M., British Economic Interests in the Far East (London, 1943).
Halifax, Lord, The Fullness of Days (London, 1957).
Hansard, House of Commons Debates, 5th series, vols 374�V411 (London,
1942�V45). Harriman, W.A. and E. Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941�V1946
(London, 1976).
Harris, K., Attlee (London, 1982).
Harvey, J. (ed.), The Diplomatic Diaries of Oliver Harvey, 1937�V1940 (London, 1978).
Heussler, R., Yesterday��s Rulers (NY, 1963).
Holland, R.F., ��The imperial factor in British strategies from Attlee to Macmillan, 1945�V63��, in R.F. Holland and G. Rizvi (eds), Perspectives on Imperialism and Decolonization: Essays in Honour of A.F. Madden (London, 1984).
Hull, C., Memoirs, vol. II (London, 1948).
Hunt, Michael H., Ideology and US Foreign Policy (London, 1987).
Ismay, Lord, Memoirs (London, 1960).
James, L., The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (London, 1994).
Jeffries, Sir C., The Colonial Empire and its Civil Service (Cambridge, 1938).
Judd, D., British Imperial Experience from 1765 to the Present (London, 1997).
Kennan, G., Memoirs, 1925�V1950 (London, 1968).
Kimball, W.F., The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman (Princeton, NJ, 1991).
Kirby, S.W., The War against Japan, vol. I (London, 1957); vol. II (London, 1958); vol. III (London, 1961); vol. IV (London, 1965); vol. V (London, 1969).
Lanxin Xiang, Recasting the Imperial Far East: Britain and America in China, 1945�V1950 (London, 1995).
Leahy, W.D., I Was There (London, 1950). Levine, A.J., The Paci.c War (London, 1995). Lippmann, W., United States War Aims (NY, 1944). Loewenheim F.L., H.D. Langley and M. Jonas (eds), Roosevelt and Churchill, their
Secret Wartime Correspondence (NY, 1990).
Louis, W.R., Imperialism at Bay (Oxford, 1977).
Macmillan, H., The Blast of War, 1939�V1945 (London, 1967).
Millis, W. (ed.), The Forrestal Diaries, (London, 1952).
Miners, N., Hong Kong under Imperial Rule, 1912�V1941 (Oxford, 1987).
Moran, Lord, Winston Churchill: the Struggle for Survival, 1940�V1965 (London, 1966).
Lord Louis Mountbatten, Report to the Combined Chiefs of Staff by the Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia (London, 1951).
Parker, R.A.C., Chamberlain and Appeasement (London, 1993).
Peterson, M., Both Sides of the Curtain (London, 1950).
Pimlott, B. (ed.), The Second World War Diary of Hugh Dalton, 1940�V45 (London, 1986).
Ponting, C., Churchill (London, 1994).
Porter, A.N. and A.J. Stockwell, British Imperial Policy and Decolonization, 1938�V64 (London, 1987).
Reynolds, D., The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, 1937�V41 (London, 1981).
�X�X, Rich Relations, the American Occupation of Britain 1942�V1945 (London, 1995).
Rhodes James, R. (ed.), Winston S. Churchill, his Complete Speeches, vol. VI 1935�V42 (London, 1974); vol. VII, 1942�V49 (London, 1974).
�X�X, Anthony Eden (London, 1986).
Ride, E., BAAG, Hong Kong Resistance, 1942�V1945 (Hong Kong, 1981).
Roberti, M., The Fall of Hong Kong (Chichester, 1994).
Roberts, A., The Holy Fox, a Biography of Lord Halifax (London, 1991).
Romanus, C. and R. Sutherland, Stilwell��s Mission to China (Washington DC, 1953).
Roosevelt, E., As He Saw It (NY, 1946).
Sainsbury, K., Churchill and Roosevelt at War (London, 1994).
Sbrega, J.J., Anglo-American Relations and Colonialism in East Asia (NY, 1983).
Seagrave, S., The Soong Dynasty (NY, 1985).
Seaman, L.C.B., Victorian England (London, 1973).
Shai, A., Britain and China, 1941�V47 (London, 1984).
Slim, W., Defeat into Victory (London, 1960).
Snow, E., Red Star over China (London, 1968).
Spector, R., ��American seizure of Japan��s strategic points, summer 1942�V1944��, in
S. Dockrill (ed.), From Pearl Harbour to Hiroshima (London, 1994). Stettinius, Edward R., The Diaries of Edward R. Stettinius Jnr, 1943�V46 (NY, 1975). Stockwell, A.J. (ed.), Documents on the End of Empire: Malaya, II (London, 1994). Tedder, Lord, With Prejudice (London, 1966). Truman, H.S., Year of Decisions, 1945 (London, 1955). Tsang, S., Democracy Shelved: Great Britain, China, and Attempts at Constitutional
Reform in Hong Kong, 1945�V1952 (Oxford, 1988). Tuchman, B., Sand against the Wind: Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911�V1945 (London, 1971).
Tung, W.L., Wellington Koo and China��s Wartime Diplomacy (NY, 1978).
Wedemeyer, A.C., Wedemeyer Reports! (NY, 1958).
Wellington Koo, Wellington Koo Memoirs, translated by the Institute of Modern History, Chinese Academy of Social Science (Peking, 1987).
Welsh, F., A History of Hong Kong (London, 1994).
White, T.H. (ed.), The Stilwell Papers (NY, 1948).
�X�X, In Search of History: a Personal Adventure (NY, 1978).
Wiart, C. de, Happy Odyssey (London, 1950).
Winant, J.G., A Letter from Grosvenor Square (London, 1947).
Wordie, J. and Lo Tim Keung, Ruins of War, a Guide to Hong Kong Battle.elds and
Wartime Sites (Hong Kong, 1996). Wright-Nooth, G. with M. Adkin, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads (London, 1994).
Index
Admiralty see Royal Navy
Allied military strategy in Far East, 135, 139�V42
Amery, Leo (Secretary of State for India), 79 dislike of Eden, 35, 76�V7 on 1945 Colonial Development Bill, 115 strong views on China and Hong Kong, 52�V3, 76�V7 (see note 52), 81, 154
Anglo-American relationship 4, 40�V60 passim, 66�V72 passim, 79�V84 passim, 134, 154, 172, 182, 214�V15 Britain, importance to, 67, 212: not incompatible with Empire, 3, 77; US partnership in Far East, crucial, 81, 98, 120, 125, 219 Britain, in.uenced by: China, danger to, 50�V1, 61; to acknowledge China��s claim to Hong Kong, 45, 62; forced to take China seriously, 49�V50, 150�V62 passim; misinterpret US foreign policy consensus, 58 many facets of, 41�V3, 164: regional context, 3, 60; personalised nature, 43, 181, 215�V16; ultimately a means to an end, 60 military strategy in Far East, 125�V49, 153: British in.uence on, 160; US attempts to ��contain�� Britain to old colonies, 134�V5 Soviet threat reinforces necessity for, 182, 188�V9 stereotypes, 42�V3 strains, 40, 46, 52, 82�V4, 162, 172:
over surrender of Hong Kong (1945), 199�V211 passim see also British Empire; USA Anglo-Sino loan (1942�V44), 47, 68�V72
Chinese blackmail, 72 signed, 72 see also Sino-Anglo-American
relations; Sino-American relations
Anglo-Sino relations, 134�V7 poor state, 47�V8, 49�V50, 79, 95�V6, 205�V8: Britain: relations with Chinese communists, 130 (note 16); exaggeration of Chinese nationalism, 79; contemplates breakdown of, 96�V7; donates military equipment, 166; press encourages in.ated view of China, 50; ��realistic China policy��, 129: China: Chiang Kai-shek meddles in Indian affairs, 76; attempt to improve relations 145�V6, 161�V2, 173�V4; dispute over surrender of Hong Kong (1945), 201; promise of military offensive to relieve Hong Kong ( January 1942), 15, 65
Ashley Clarke (Foreign Of.ce), 23, 36, 52 on Hong Kong, 30�V1, 79, 93, 111�V13; return to China, 78; Eden disagrees with, 96
Astor, William MP Hong Kong: links to China Association, 121; pushes in Parliament (November 1944), 121�V2
Atlantic Charter (1941), 51�V2, 56
Attlee, Clement and America, 135 as Labour Party leader: compromise candidate, 38; pre-occupied with domestic social reform, 38; 1945 general election held against his advice, 184
252
Attlee, Clement �V continued as Prime Minister, 187, 192, 199: and Hong Kong: not excluded from Mansion House speech, 115, 122; reminded of his commitment to by Colonial Secretary, 199; negotiations with Truman, 201; replies to Churchill��s parliamentary question on, 205�V6 questioning of Empire, 38�V9, 81�V2 relations with Churchill, 171, 188, 192�V3, 205�V6: forces changes to Atlantic Charter, 56
Australia, 140, 182
Barnett, Correlli, 26
Bevin, Ernest (Foreign Secretary to PM Attlee), 22, 205 asks for Eden��s advice, 193 Hong Kong: refuses to negotiate with Chinese, 199; prepared to discuss with friendly and stable China, 221
Blackburn, Sir Alexander (Foreign Of.ce), 59
Board of Trade (BOT), 31, 112 promotes British Far Eastern trade, 22
Borneo, 32, 80
Boxer rebellion, 49, 114
Britain and Hong Kong see Hong Kong imperialism see British Empire loss of colonies and world power, 107�V9 military strategy in Far East, 125�V49 passim: lack of coordination, 108; indecision over, 123, 138, 141�V2, 148; ��punching above her weight��, 136�V7; creation of South East Asia Command (SEAC) (mid-1943), 108, 135�V6: decided at Quebec conference (1944), 141�V2
Brenan, Sir John (Foreign Of.ce), 23, 36, 64 Hong Kong, 74�V6, 90: not representative of senior opinion, 74
Brendan Bracken, 33, 171 British Army Aid Group (BAAG), 118�V19, 175 dispute with SOE over, 175�V8, 188
involvement in plan to recapture Hong Kong, operation TIDINGS, 174�V6, 199, 200 see also Ride, Colonel Lindsay
British Empire and America: reliance on American help, 2�V3, 44, 120, 125, 194; resentment of American hypocrisy, 46, 170, 172, 180; treatment of American Negro, 173; USA responsible for Far Eastern war, 46; dif.culty in presenting British policy to, 84, 122 complacency: shattered by Japanese invasion, 7, 12, 14; of Hong Kong Governor Sir Mark Young, 11 contradictions of, 80 decline, 44, 82�V4, 150, 188 imperial consensus, 16�V39 passim, 24�V7, 52�V3, 154, 164�V5, 214; between Labour and Conservative parties, 55, 103 118, 173, 192�V3, 205; denied by Churchill see Churchill, Empire; education, 25�V8, 216; perceived by Americans, 57 imperial mentality: anti-business bias, 23, 26, 120; paternalism, 76; resilience of, 20, 24�V5, 117, 203�V4, 214, 216; sense of duty, 28, 116�V17 justi.cation for, 44: not fundamentally driven by tangible economic or strategic interest, 18, 23�V4, 75, 81�V2 170�V3; an assumed asset, 2 origins of, 24�V5 reticence in justifying, 52, 61�V84 passim, 107, 117, 121, 122, 178�V9 self-doubt, 62�V4, 65�V84 passim, 111, 148�V9
British Empire �V continued see also Anglo-American
relationship; Hong Kong British general election (1945), 184, 188 Brooke-Popham, Air Chief Marshal Sir
Robert, 10�V11 Buck, Pearl, 50 Bullitt, William, 83 Burma, 4
campaign ��a tragic waste��, 142 Chinese attempt to claim (1942),
197 road, 73, 86 see also Culverin, operation
Butler, Sir Neville (Foreign Of.ce), 105
Cabinet, 31�V2
War Cabinet, 29, 33: Cabinet Far Eastern Committee, 122�V4, 165, 183�V4: used by CO to promote Hong Kong, 123
Cadogan, Sir Alexander (Foreign Of.ce), 27, 36, 61, 85, 106, 125, 154, 193
Ambassador to China in 1930s, 64 dislike of post-war planning, 87 in.uence on Eden over
extraterritoriality, 87, 94
Cairo conference (1943), 150�V62 British eclipsed, 152 in.uence on, 160 Cairo communique, 153�V4 Churchill describes as ��lengthy,
complicated and minor��, 150
only meeting between Churchill, Roosevelt and Chiang Kai-shek, 151