[ { "id": 205966, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1970", "page_number": 46, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG CADETS, 1862 - 1941\n\n41\n\nsioners was introduced for the Straits Settlements, Hong Kong and Ceylon Civil Services; and in 1882, a combined examination was instituted, successful candidates being given a choice of colonies, so that the members of these three civil services were now to some extent regarded as interchangeable. In 1896 the examination was joined to that for the Home and Indian Civil Services; and the Federated Malay States, which had retained the nomination system, was also included. This arrangement lasted until 1932, when Sir Ralph Furse, who believed in the policy of selection by interview, finally succeeded in obtaining for his office control over the selection of candidates for Ceylon, Hong Kong and Malaya. However, university men continued to supply the vast majority of the eastern cadetships even after that date; and the Dominions Office and Colonial Office List for 1939 informs us that 'whilst a university degree is not an absolutely indispensable qualification the candidates selected for Administrative appointments in the last few years have nearly all been in possession of a University Degree, usually with honours. The few exceptions have been in cases where a candidate has had some special qualification'.23\n\nThe Hong Kong cadet scheme underwent several internal changes over time, although the principle of recruitment from England by competitive examination remained unchanged until 1932. The first three recruits, who pioneered the scheme, were given quarters in the Central School House during their probationary period and learned their Chinese, which was Cantonese, from teachers recruited locally by Government. In 1872, Sir Arthur Kennedy established a Board of Examiners, charged with the duty of examining Government officers drawing a Chinese teacher's allowance, and with issuing certificates of proficiency in colloquial Chinese to European and Indian police constables; but before that date cadets had been examined by an ad hoc committee. To save expense, Sir Arthur Kennedy, Governor 1872 - 1877, stopped the recruitment of cadets from England, and in 1875 even suggested dropping the scheme altogether; but this was not accepted by the Colonial Office. The Secretary of State arranged in 1875 for Eastern cadets to remain in England usually for a year and study Chinese at Oxford under Dr. James Legge though, as we have seen above, there were no candidates for Hong Kong at this particular time. This arrangement proved", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205978, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1970", "page_number": 58, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG CADETS, 1862 - 1941\n\n53\n\n19 Sir Francis Henry May (1860-1922), Educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Dublin. Hong Kong Civil Service 1881; Captain Superintendent of Police, 1893-1902; Colonial Secretary, 1902-1910; Governor of Fiji and High Commissioner of Western Pacific, 1910-12; Governor of Hong Kong, 1912-1919. First cadet to become Governor. Altogether May spent 38 years in Hong Kong.\n\n20 Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston (1874-1938), Educated at Edinburgh University (Gray Prize; prox. accessit., Lord Rector's Essay); Magdalen College, Oxford (mentioned hon, causa Stanhope Essay). Hong Kong Civil Service 1898; Assistant Colonial Secretary, 1899-1904, Transferred to Weihaiwai 1904; Senior District Officer and Magistrate, Weihaiwai, 1906-17. Tutor to the Ex-Emperor of China, 1919-1925. Commissioner of Weihaiwai, 1927-30. Professor of Chinese and Head of Department of Languages and Cultures of the Far East, School of Oriental Languages, London University, 1931-1937.\n\n21 Sir Cecil Clementi (1875-1947). Educated at St. Paul's School and Magdalen College, Oxford, Hong Kong Civil Service 1899. Clementi, following his uncle and godfather, Sir Cecil Clementi Smith, preferred an Eastern Cadetship, and was posted to Hong Kong. Land Officer and Police Magistrate in the New Territories, 1903-6, Clementi had the task of recognizing the land titles of over 300,000 claims. Appointed Colonial Secretary of British Guiana 1913-1921; Colonial Secretary, Ceylon, 1922-1925; Governor of Hong Kong, 1925-30; Governor of the Straits Settlements and High Commissioner for the Malay States 1930. In 1934 Clementi retired on account of ill-health.\n\n22 James Legge \"The Colony of Hong Kong\", China Review, Vol. I, 1872-3, p. 173.\n\n23 Dominions Office and Colonial Office List 1939, p. 624, states: \"The average number of cadets appointed to Malaya and Hongkong during the period of 1919-31 inclusive was between 9 and 10. Since 1931 the average has been 5-8, 6 generally. In 1937, 7 cadets were appointed, and 9 in 1938. There were none appointed to Hong Kong 1937, and only 2 in 1938. The demand for cadets in Hong Kong was always small”.\n\n24 For example, Thomas Sercombe Smith (1854-1937) was appointed a Hong Kong Cadet in 1882. In 1883 he was attached to the Colonial Office for a year; and in 1884, after a brief spell attached to the Colonial Secretary's Office, Hong Kong, proceeded to Peking where he studied Chinese, 1884-6. On the other hand, Arthur Winbolt Brewin (1867-1946), proceeded to Canton in 1888. Brewin, who was educated at Winchester, succeeded Eitel as Inspector of Schools in 1897; became Registrar General in 1901 and retired in 1912.\n\n25 Victor Purcell The Memoirs of a Malayan Official, London, 1965, pp. 108-109. The Index to Correspondence (of the Colonial Secretariat), compiled in 1902 by R. H. Kotewall, has a cryptic entry: \"Cadets studying Chinese in China must reside at a place removed from European social surroundings\".\n\n26 Alexander Grantham Via Ports, Hong Kong, 1965, p. 5.\n\n27 I have been able to discover the schools attended by 64 of the cadets: 52 went to schools listed in the Public Schools Yearbook; the other 12 to small private schools. Two cadets (H. E. Wodehouse and A. W. Brewin), it seems, did not go to a university; five I have been unable to trace; and of the rest - 78 in all — 55 went to English universities (Cambridge 25; Oxford 23; London 4; and one each at Leicester University College, Liverpool University, and Manchester University); 10 to universities in Ireland (Trinity College 8); and 11 to Scottish universities (Edinburgh 6,\n\n-55", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215277, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 54, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "2\n\nThere is one exception to these generalisations, a deviant case which has never been analysed by the economists who deplore the underdevelopment of the colonial empire. The amazing economic growth of Hong Kong since its liberation from the Japanese occupation in 1945 is well known, but it is widely assumed that before the war the Hong Kong economy was almost entirely based upon the entrepôt trade transporting goods to and from China and that its transformation from a trading mart to a manufacturing centre began with the post-war arrival of industrialists from Shanghai fleeing from the chaos of China's civil war. In fact, the development of industry had begun in the nineteenth century and by 1939 Hong Kong had built up a flourishing export trade in manufactured goods to China and neighbouring Asian countries and was even successfully competing with British firms in a few items in the British home market.\n\nThe growth of Hong Kong industry was accelerated in the 1930s by decisions taken at the Imperial Economic Conference which met at Ottawa in August 1932. The conference was called to find ways of combating the worldwide economic depression by stimulating trade between the countries of the empire after the British government had decided to abandon its long-standing commitment to free trade and to impose a ten per cent tariff on foreign imports. The conference was mainly occupied with bargaining between Britain and the dominions over the terms on which agricultural products from the dominions would enter the British market and the access of British manufactured goods to the dominions.\n\nThe ministers meeting at Ottawa also decided to impose stringent restrictions by tariffs and specific duties on imports of textiles and other goods from Japan which were beginning to penetrate empire markets, displacing British and Canadian manufactures. Chinese businessmen in Hong Kong took advantage of this attempt to exclude Japanese goods from dominion and colonial markets to export large quantities of cheap footwear and textiles to the empire. This provoked indignant complaints from industrialists in Britain and Canada who demanded that restrictions should be placed on the supercompetitive Hong Kong manufactures.\n\nHong Kong's successful penetration of empire markets forced the British government for the first time to consider what its policy should be towards the industrial development of the colonial empire. Two interdepartmental committees of civil servants were set up in 1933 and 1937, but no authoritative decision was reached by the cabinet before the outbreak of war in 1939. Officials at the Colonial Office defended the right of the colonies to diversify their economies by moving into manufacturing, but the Board of Trade and the Treasury were generally unenthusiastic about such schemes where they might result in a reduction of British exports.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215281, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 58, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "6\n\nStraits Settlements, but not to Hong Kong. The governor protested to the Colonial Office at Hong Kong's exclusion in 1907, 1910 and 1912 but the Canadian government refused to include Hong Kong within its preferential tariff on the grounds that goods from China might be shipped through Hong Kong's open port and fraudulently obtain the benefit of Canada's preferential tariff.\" So Hong Kong's exports of cement and refined sugar were taxed at the highest rate and soon lost their market in Canada. In 1912 a trade agreement was negotiated between Canada and the West Indian colonies whereby Canadian exports were granted preferential tariffs in return for Canadian preferences on Caribbean cane sugar, cocoa beans and lime juice. The West Indian colonies negotiated this trade agreement directly with Canada and the secretary of state for the colonies raised no objection. These preferences were increased by a new trade agreement in 1920 and were generalised to benefit goods from all empire sources.20 The Colonial Office invited all colonies and protectorates to consider the practicability of introducing preferential rates of duty for goods of imperial origin. But most of the colonial empire was prevented by international treaties from imposing discriminatory tariffs. Northern Rhodesia, Kenya and Uganda, being part of the Congo Basin, were forbidden to discriminate by the Convention of St. Germain (1919); Nigeria and the Gold Coast by the Anglo-French treaty of 1898; and Tanganyika, Togoland, Cameroons and Palestine were mandated territories of the League of Nations which prohibited discrimination. By 1932 the only colonies which were free to adopt imperial preference but had not done so were Somaliland, Ceylon, the Straits Settlements, Hong Kong and certain islands in the Pacific.\" Canada and New Zealand were the only dominions which granted any preferences to the colonial empire before 1932. Australia, South Africa, Newfoundland, Southern Rhodesia and India granted none.\n\nThe world trade depression which began in 1929 convinced British politicians that the liberal principles of free trade which had been followed for the past 70 years must be abandoned. The National government elected in 1931 quickly passed the Import Duties Act which imposed a general duty of 10 per cent ad valorem on all imports. Section 5 of the act granted an entire exemption from the general duty to imports from all colonies, protectorates and mandated territories, provided that at least 25 per cent of the value was derived from materials grown or produced or from work done within a part of the empire.\" Imports from the dominions and India were exempted from duty only until November pending the outcome of an Imperial Economic Conference.\" A circular despatch was sent by the Colonial Office to all colonies and protectorates drawing attention to the great advantages extended to the colonies by the Import Duties Act and inviting them to give similar preferences to United Kingdom manufactures", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215282, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 59, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "where the territory was not debarred from doing so by treaty. In preparation for the negotiations at Ottawa the colonies were also asked to consider what preferences might be accorded them by the dominions and what preferences they might give to the dominions in return on the lines of the Canada-West Indies agreement.”\n\n34\n\nThe governor, Sir William Peel, discussed Hong Kong's position while visiting the Colonial Office in June 1932. Officials agreed with him that Hong Kong's status as a free port made it impossible to impose anything like a general tariff. Any such tariff would ruin the entrepôt trade which was vital to Hong Kong's existence and no practicable means could be devised of landing goods in bond for re-export without involving so much inconvenience as to drive the entrepôt trade to other neighbouring ports. Peel was prepared as a gesture to give a preference to empire products on articles such as spirits and tobacco which were subject to excise duty and to impose a higher rate of first registration tax on foreign motor cars than on cars imported from Britain and Canada. He did not ask for any preference from the dominions in return since in his view the bulk of Hong Kong exports consists of foreign goods the proportion of the cost of which, due to treatment in Hong Kong, was not large enough to secure a preference...” This showed a surprising ignorance of Hong Kong's growing trade in domestic manufactures which were largely exported to neighbouring Asian countries.\n\nThe Ottawa conference convened in July 1932. The British delegation was led by Stanley Baldwin, the former prime minister, and four other cabinet ministers. Canada, Southern Rhodesia and Newfoundland were represented by their prime ministers; Australia and New Zealand by former prime ministers; South Africa and the Irish Free State by their finance and trade ministers. India, which had been given the freedom to establish protective duties in 1923, was represented by Sir Atul Chatterjee and other members of the Viceroy's Council. The interests of the colonial empire were safeguarded by the secretary of state for the colonies, Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister and one civil servant from the Colonial Office, G.L.M. Clauson.\n\nThe conclusions of the conference were embodied in agreements between the United Kingdom government and the governments of the dominions and India. Britain consented to continue the free entry of goods grown, produced or manufactured in any part of the empire, and to impose additional duties on specified foreign goods which would give empire produce a preferential margin higher than the 10 per cent tariff already imposed by the Import Duties Act. Britain also agreed to 'invite' the non-self-governing colonies and protectorates to extend to all the dominions any preference at present extended to any part of the empire, and to increase the margin of preference or impose specific duties on a long list of items requested by the dominions. In return the dominions confirmed the existing", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215283, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 60, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "preferences granted to British goods, to increase the margin of preference on a few specific items and to review the level of existing tariffs which protected dominion manufactures against British goods. The dominions approved tariff preferences on specified colonial goods, mostly tropical agricultural products, asphalt, rum and cigars. Each dominion offered a different list of concessions to the colonies and not all were equally generous. South Africa granted preferences only on raw coffee and asphalt. Canada gave little more than the preferences already embodied in the 1920 trade agreement with the West Indian colonies.\" New Zealand was the only dominion which agreed to grant preferences at the same rates as were accorded to Britain to all the colonies and protectorates. The agreements with the dominions provided that the preferences accorded to British goods might be extended to the colonies, protectorates and mandated territories ‘if His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom so request'. All these preferences were for British manufactured goods. The development of manufacturing industry in the colonies was not anticipated by the governments represented at Ottawa. If it had been foreseen it is probable that the dominion governments would have raised strong objections to admitting goods manufactured under oriental conditions to their markets under a tariff designed to benefit British manufacturers.28\n\nAfter the Ottawa conference a circular despatch was sent to all colonies and dependent territories setting out the tariff preferences which would be granted by the dominions to colonial exports of foodstuffs and raw materials.\" These preferences would give the dependencies a reasonable prospect of replacing foreign imports by imports from empire sources in the dominion markets concerned. In return the dependent territories were 'invited' to grant to the dominions the preferences which the colonial secretary had negotiated at Ottawa. Cunliffe-Lister made clear that it was a matter of the highest importance that the Ottawa settlement should be put into effect as an integral whole.\n\nI should feel that I had been guilty of a breach of faith if the legislature concerned refused to grant the preference in question, unless I could put to the dominion government concerned clear evidence that there were really substantial reasons for not granting the proposed preference. It would not be an adequate ground of objection to say that the desired preference might increase the local cost of living, so long as the increase was only moderate and did not cause hardship to a particularly poor class of the community.\n\nGovernors prepared the necessary legislation for introduction into the colonial legislatures, but a number warned the Colonial Office that they\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215284, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "faced serious opposition from the unofficial members. Except in the case of Ceylon, where the elected unofficials had a majority in the legislature, governors were able to ensure the enactment of the new customs schedules by the votes of the officials and the nominated unofficial members, but they were reluctant to do so against popular opposition. The Colonial Office warned the recalcitrant colonies that if legislation were to be delayed or amended the dominions might refuse to implement the new preferences agreed at Ottawa or withdraw existing preferences; the British parliament might also withdraw the preferences granted to the colony under the 1932 Import Duties Act.\" So the legislation was eventually passed in all the colonies in spite of great popular opposition. In the Leeward Islands there were shouts of 'What happened to Judas?\" at the end of the meeting, and the residence of a nominated unofficial member who voted for the bill was destroyed by fire.\" \n\n... \n\nIn the West Indian colonies opposition focused on the clause in the United Kingdom-Canada agreement which obliged the colonies to impose a duty of one shilling per pair on rubber boots and shoes and rubber-soled canvas boots and shoes in addition to the general preferential ad valorem rate. Hosiery of cotton or artificial silk (rayon) was to be charged an additional duty of sixpence a pair and silk hosiery an additional duty of ninepence a pair. These massive tariff increases were designed to exclude Japanese competition from a market which had been a Canadian monopoly until 1929. The governor of Barbados protested that Japanese shoes were sold at one shilling and eightpence a pair with the result that many were now shod who had previously gone barefooted, reducing the incidence of ankylostomiasis (hookworm infestation); if a specific duty of one shilling were imposed the resultant price would be beyond the reach of the poor, while being still much below the price at which Canada could supply footwear.\" The governor of the Windward Islands protested that stockings from Japan cost only fourpence a pair and would rise threefold to 13 pence a pair if the new tariffs were imposed.\" Other governors of the West Indian colonies made similar complaints, but the Colonial Office was obdurate that the preferences granted to the colonies by the dominions on their exports of primary products were conditional on the full implementation of the Ottawa agreements by the colonies. \n\n13% \n\nIII \n\nThe swingeing increases in duty on Japanese canvas and rubber footwear did not achieve their intended effect of restricting the market to Canadian manufacturers. Within months of the implementation of the Ottawa agreements, canvas shoes with rubber soles produced by a factory in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215286, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 63, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "II\n\nasked that Britain should approach Australia to secure for Hong Kong the same tariff preference as Britain enjoyed, in accordance with article 15 of the Ottawa agreement. He pointed out that Hong Kong had granted Australian brandy a preference in the excise duty of three dollars a gallon and had received nothing in return. Cunliffe-Lister refused to take any action minuting that he was not prepared to press for equal treatment in the dominions for British and colonial industries like shipbuilding in which owing to different standards of living the levels of cost were necessarily different. This attitude shocked the civil servants in the Colonial Office. One senior official minuted, 'I have always assumed that the Secretary of State would be the advocate of colonial interests.' The matter was not allowed to rest there in spite of the views expressed by Cunliffe-Lister. Officials consulted the Board of Trade and when that department raised no objection a letter was sent to the Australian High Commission asking for the grant of preference. The Australian government was most unwilling to extend preference to a territory with oriental wages even though it was part of the empire, but eventually granted all the colonies preference at the same rate as Britain in respect of vessels over 500 tons only.\n\nIn 1933 Hong Kong manufacturers followed the lead of the Singapore factory in vigorously expanding their exports. Sales to Britain grew from HK$16,190 in 1930 to HK$454,252 in 1933 and to HK$1,823,874 in 1934. British manufacturers protested to the Board of Trade about this competition in their home market and the Board of Trade passed on their complaints to the Colonial Office. Cunliffe-Lister suggested that Britain should confine its preference to primary products and that entry free of duty should be refused to colonial manufactured goods which could compete with an efficient British industry. This proposal did not find favour with the civil service. Instead officials proposed that an interdepartmental committee should be set up to consider the whole question of the industrial development of the colonial empire. The committee was composed of officials from the Board of Trade, the Department of Overseas Trade, the Dominions Office and the Colonial Office. The first meeting was held in January 1934. R.V. Vernon of the Colonial Office was the chairman and was said to have been largely instrumental in drafting the committee's report.\n\nThe committee concluded that industrial development in the colonial empire was an inevitable contingency which could not be prohibited or indefinitely retarded; but the committee saw no reason why a conscious policy of the artificial encouragement of industry should be undertaken by the institution of a tariff high enough to protect the products of local industry from imports from Britain or elsewhere. The interests of British manufacturers and of colonial consumers who would have to pay a higher price for products previously imported should also be considered. So the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215287, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 64, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "creation of protected local industries could be justified only where the colony had natural advantages for the development of an industry and where it was likely eventually to be profitable without protection. However, regard should also be paid to the principle of trusteeship and where the commercial interests of Britain and the general economic well-being of the colony were in conflict, colonial interests should prevail. These ambiguous recommendations gave the Colonial Office a considerable area of discretion to determine whether or not a colony should be allowed to institute a protective tariff or provide other assistance to a proposed new industry.\n\nThese recommendations did not affect the situation in Hong Kong and Singapore, where Chinese entrepreneurs were successfully exporting shoes and other goods manufactured from imported raw materials without the assistance of any protective tariff. Their home market was small compared to their export markets and they could easily undercut any foreign competitors. The committee regarded the invasion of the British and dominion markets by cheap rubber shoes produced by oriental labour as an evil, but it opposed the imposition of import duties on colonial manufactures since the Ottawa agreements had granted entry free of tariffs to all imports from the dominions and India; discrimination against colonial products would undermine the principle of free trade within the empire and call into question the preferences and privileges which the colonies had extended to imports from Britain. Instead of tariffs on colonial manufactures the committee recommended that efforts should be pursued to assimilate conditions of employment and factory and workshop regulations to those in force in Britain by the adoption of the International Labour Conventions by the colonies. The committee also suggested the encouragement of negotiations between manufacturers in Britain and in the colonies to divide the market by the assignment of quotas between them.\n\nCunliffe-Lister welcomed the report in spite of the rejection of his idea of protection for British manufactures against colonial competition. The report was circulated to the cabinet for the information of ministers but objections were unexpectedly raised by the secretary of state for India and the chancellor of the exchequer. The main doubt was whether the report went far enough in recommending the discouragement of new industries in the colonies. So the report was remitted for further consideration by another committee, but nothing was done for three years. In the meantime the Colonial Office proceeded to act on the principles recommended in the report. Instructions were sent to all colonies that any proposal to protect a local industry must be referred to London at the earliest possible stage and no bill to impose or increase a protective tariff should be introduced into the legislative council without prior authorisation by the colonial secretary. Telegrams were sent to the governors of Singapore and Hong Kong asking\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215292, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 69, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "quota system which kept out their Japanese competitors they must pay the same price as British textile manufacturers and use British-made rayon yarn.\" So from June 1937 the 'spun, woven and finished within the empire' requirement was enforced for all cotton and artificial silk garments if they wished to qualify for preference as empire products.\"\n\nApart from boots and shoes, forches, cotton and artificial silk clothing and hosiery there were many other Hong Kong manufactured products exported to the colonial empire which were able to claim the benefits of the imperial preferential tariff. They included hats, umbrellas, leather bags and purses, suitcases, furniture, mats, lamps, rope, firecrackers, paper, books, cigarettes, perfumes, medicines, condiments, sauces, biscuits, preserved foods and refined sugar.\" Complaints of the abuse of this privilege continued. In June 1938 the Colonial Office issued instructions that Hong Kong goods should be admitted to preference only if the suppliers' declaration that the article had a 50 per cent empire content was supported by a detailed statement of costings certified by a chartered accountant and countersigned by an officer of the Hong Kong government.\" It cannot have been easy for a workshop in the back streets of Kowloon to afford the fees of a chartered accountant and get all the paperwork in order. Many justifiable claims to imperial preference must have gone by default. The Colonial Office was under pressure from the Board of Trade active on behalf of British manufacturers who found their trade threatened by Hong Kong's success. It sought to defend the principle that all parts of the empire should be treated equally. It could not stop the self-governing dominions from discriminating against Hong Kong, but it prevented the colonial territories from doing the same. The price it had to pay was the elaborate documentation required to prove that Hong Kong goods were genuinely made in the colony and were not products transhipped from China or Japan.\n\nIn 1937 manufacturing industry in Hong Kong received an unexpected stimulus from the Japanese invasion of China. Industrialists transferred production from Shanghai to Hong Kong when their factories were attacked by the Japanese. When Japan blockaded the Yangtse river and seized all the coastal ports in East China, Hong Kong became a vital entry point for military supplies. Factories were quickly established to provide clothing and equipment to the Nationalist forces. Factories were set up to produce steel helmets, gas masks, mess tins, webbing and military uniforms. Parts for lorries, trucks and even aircraft were imported and assembled in Hong Kong. The Commercial Press moved from Shanghai and began printing currency notes for the Chinese government. The number of factories employing more than 20 workers went up from 642 in 1936 to 864 in 1938, 925 in 1939 and 1,143 in 1940. Domestic exports of manufactured goods in 1938 totalled at least HK$91,610,000 (about £6,000,000).**", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215294, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 71, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "19\n\nvery useful in the depression, and the factory would provide employment for 100 Africans.\" Hong Kong was also seen as a special case where the decline of the entrepôt trade with China justified the policy of fostering industrial development. After much discussion the only specific recommendation made by the committee was that when a protective tariff was granted an excise duty equivalent to the import duty should always be imposed. The final report of the committee was never published and apparently was never considered by the cabinet.\n\nSo the Colonial Office continued to vet proposals for new industries according to the guidelines laid down in the 1934 Report, that manufacturing should not be 'artificially encouraged'. Officials were concerned to safeguard colonial revenues at a time when most colonies were in financial difficulties as a result of the world depression. The Colonial Office insisted that budgets must be balanced, to avoid the need for a grant from the British government and the consequent Treasury control of the colony's finances. The Colonial Office had no money available in its own account to subsidise ingenious schemes, such as a project put forward by an entrepreneur from Trinidad to produce newsprint paper from bagasse and to power the factory with anhydrous alcohol distilled from sugar cane juice.70 Governors could apply for funds from the Colonial Development Advisory Committee which provided £36,500,000 for development assistance from 1929 to 1939. But this fund was originally set up to alleviate unemployment in Britain and no application for industrial development would be entertained which would be likely to compete with British industry.? Officials believed that by discouraging uneconomic industrial development they were acting in the best interests of the native inhabitants. An assistant secretary minuted, 'Manufacturing industry, which can be established in a colony only at the price of a monopoly protected by a high tariff, ends in producing a locally manufactured article which is too expensive for the primary agricultural producers to buy.' Governors were more suspicious of the motives of Colonial Office officials. The governor of Sierra Leone complained that any industrial project was approached from the standpoint that British trade interests must rank first, dominions' interests second and those of the colonies last. Perhaps the fairest summary of Colonial Office policy was made by a junior official: 'Generally speaking we do not want to encourage industrial development in the colonial empire, but we are reluctant to go so far as actually to prohibit it.'\"\n\nWhy then was it that Hong Kong was able to develop a flourishing export-oriented industry without any subsidy or assistance from the colonial government whatsoever when in all the other dependent territories the development of manufacturing industry was derisory, and the few factories that were established were heavily dependent on protective tariffs, special", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215295, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 72, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "20\n\ntax incentives and other government assistance? Apart from its superb harbour Hong Kong had no natural advantages. Almost all the raw materials for industry had to be imported. The population (840,000 at the 1931 census) was wretchedly poor and could not provide the purchasing power to support large-scale industry. But Hong Kong was well-placed to export cheap manufactured goods to the vast market of China and the neighbouring countries of Asia where until the 1930s tariffs on imports were low. The world depression led China and other Asian countries to erect high tariff barriers which threatened to cripple Hong Kong's burgeoning industry. The colony was saved by the decisions taken at the Ottawa conference to adopt the policy of imperial preference. This handicapped its main competitor, Japan, by imposing high tariffs and later quotas designed to exclude Japanese manufactures from markets in the British empire. This created a vast imperial free trade area embracing Britain, its colonial territories and New Zealand. Traders and businessmen in the African or Caribbean colonies could have seized the opportunity to exploit it, but it was only the energetic and adaptable Chinese entrepreneurs of Hong Kong who did so. The decisions taken at Ottawa which were designed to help industry in the dominions gave an unintended boost to Chinese factory owners in the back streets of Kowloon.\n\nUniversity of Hong Kong\n\nNOTES\n\n1. M. Havinden and D. Meredith, Colonialism and Development: Britain and its tropical colonies, 1850-1960 (London, 1993), 1. D.K. Fieldhouse, Colonialism 1870-1945: An Introduction (London, 1981), 51–108. David Meredith, \"The British Government and Colonial Economic Policy 1919-1939', Economic History Review, 28 (1975), 484-99. Louis Nthenda, 'From Trade to Manufacture: Britain's Dilemma in the Face of Colonial Industrialization 1931-1938', Journal of Social Sciences, 1 (1972, University of Malawi), 95-112.\n\n2. Leo Amery in 1926, quoted by Meredith, 495.\n\n3. Meredith, 494. The only supporting evidence for this theory in the Colonial Office files is a letter from the governor of Uganda, 22 Dec. 1934, who warned that any large-scale industrial development which caused rural depopulation would result in a serious increase in sleeping sickness. CO323/1298/10, Public Record Office, London (PRO).\n\n4. See for example J. Riedel, The Industrialization of Hong Kong (Tubingen, 1974), 5-6; F. Welsh, A History of Hong Kong (London, 1993), 451; D. Lethbridge, The Business Environment in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 1980), 1–2. A contrary view is given by Frank Leeming, \"The Earlier Industrialization of Hong Kong', Modern Asian Studies, 9 (1956), 337-42, who cites evidence from Hong Kong and Macao Business Classified Directory (1940, in Chinese).\n\n5. Minute by G.L.M. Clauson, 7 Nov. 1933, CO323/1232/8. Memoranda and Draft Report of Interdepartmental Committee 1937, CO852/164/6 and T160/763/F14811/1 and 2, PRO.\n\n6. According to D.J. Morgan, The Origins of British Aid Policy 1924-1945 (New Jersey, 1979), 9, the proportion of general revenue in the colonies derived from customs duties in 1933 was:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]