[
    {
        "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": 215288,
        "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": 65,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "them to call a meeting of the manufacturers and seek a voluntary agreement to limit their exports to Britain as the committee had recommended.\" This was not an easy matter. If the industry in Hong Kong had been established by Jardine Matheson, Swire or one of the other leading British trading firms, the governor could have spoken personally to the directors and appealed for restraint; but the rubber shoe manufacturers were small Chinese firms which were most reluctant to co-operate.\" Before they would agree to limit their exports they demanded guarantees that the quota would be large enough to keep their factories operating at a profit; that no new footwear firms should be allowed to open in Hong Kong; and that there should be a comprehensive agreement between Canadian, British, Singapore and Hong Kong manufacturers to divide up the British market and exclude any new entrants from India or elsewhere. The British manufacturers suggested a quota for Hong Kong of 1,500,000 pairs. Hong Kong said this was far below the current rate of exports to Britain, and asked for at least 2,500,000 pairs. Negotiations between the British and Canadian manufacturers to divide up the British and Canadian markets between them broke down when one of the largest firms, Bata, refused to join the cartel.\n\nThis failure left Hong Kong manufacturers free to expand their exports to Britain without a limit. The largest manufacturer in Singapore went bankrupt in 1935, enabling Hong Kong firms to penetrate further the British market. They exported 2,403,900 pairs of canvas and rubber shoes to Britain in 1935, 3,309,088 pairs in 1936, 4,849,324 pairs in 1937 and 7,007,604 pairs in 1938. These figures do not include exports to British colonies, which were also substantial. In 1939 a representative of the British manufacturers went out to Hong Kong to negotiate directly with the Chinese firms before going on to Canada. Agreement was reached for Hong Kong to have a quota of 6,600,000 pairs in the British market provided that the colony agreed to raise its prices to British levels. The Hong Kong government foresaw considerable administrative difficulties in implementing such an agreement. Legislation would need to be enacted to licence factories and to regulate exports, which would be extremely unpopular. The outbreak of war in September 1939 caused the agreement to be suspended indefinitely.\n\nPage 50\n\nIV\n\nThe imperial preferences agreed at Ottawa and the additional specific duties on footwear, hosiery and textiles failed to achieve their intended objective of excluding Japanese competition and leaving the colonial markets free for British and Canadian textile manufacturers. The Japanese had little difficulty in absorbing these additional costs and undercutting British and",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    }
]