RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g
THE TAIPINGS AT NINGPO

29

Ningpo, for a long time had been a difficult city to administer, but the Taiping occupation seems in retrospect to have been an exceptional period. To better appreciate this it is worth considering Ningpo in a somewhat broader perspective. For example, a year and a half before the Taipings took the city, a Jardine Matheson Company agent reported that the Ch'ing officials were unable to control the pirate-infested countryside.41 Three months after the Taipings left Ningpo, the Jardine agent gloomily reported that trade was bad and would remain so until "a stop was put to the squeezing on the part of the Imperial Authorities."42 Six months after the departure of the Taipings, the agent revealed that Ningpo was in the throes of civil chaos. The unpopular tao-t'ai had been forced into hiding following a dispute with men from Frederick Townsend Ward's so-called Ever Victorious Army. The situation was resolved by Captain Dew who actually had to reoccupy the city. Dew and Harvey ignominiously had to search long and hard to find the affrighted Ch'ing official.43 Small wonder then, that the Jardine agent's report of January 1863, speaks of how the country people of Ningpo are now fondly recalling that the Taipings had always paid for what they took.44

Judgment on the victorious expulsion of the Taipings from Ningpo has been varied. Consul Harvey congratulated himself:

For my part, let me state that it will be a source of great satisfaction and I may add, of pride, in after time to think that I have been placed in a position to use my feeble pen, and to have exercised my humble powers (always within the limits of my official duties) in weakening and undermining, as perseveringly and indefatigably as I have been able, the most gigantic imposture and the most blasphemous structure that ever disgraced ancient or modern pages.45

Foreign Secretary Russell, from London, also congratulated Harvey for the "judgment, courage, and temper, which he displayed on all occasions...."46 Another influential writer on these events termed Dew's accomplishment "a brilliant feat of arms."47 But the Hong Kong Daily Press, for one, expressed the view of many contemporaries: "There never was a falser, more unprovoked, or more unjustifiable act than the taking of Ningpo by the allies from the Taipings. It should, in fairness, be recorded to the eternal disgrace of Captain Roderick Dew, of HMS En-
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d
EMPLOYMENT OF FOREIGN MILITARY TALENT

121

allies, for example, occasionally directed their military efforts against, rather than for, the dynasty; and even the Uighurs sometimes became overbearing and troublesome.42 There were, moreover, tensions between barbarian and Chinese officers, as well as conflicts between various competing barbarian commanders. But perhaps the most vivid illustration of the dangers involved in utilizing foreigners was the famous rebellion of the "mixed-breed" barbarian, An Lu-shan, which the Uighur heir apparent had helped combat in its early stages. Contemporary observers saw this uprising not as a civil war between the central government and a local "warlord," but rather as a conflict between the Chinese and a barbarian. Chinese historians went so far, in fact, as to maintain that the rebellion occurred "because An Lu-shan and other barbarians were given important military and political offices."43 Whatever the merits of this view, we may safely assume that An did not rate a biography in Li Te-yü's I-yü kuei-chung chuan; and although foreign troops and individual barbarian commanders assisted in the restoration of imperial rule, and helped sustain the Tang dynasty for nearly a century and a half after the revolt, resentment and distrust of barbarians became increasingly evident as neo-Confucianism rose to prominence.

The Use of Foreigners in Post-T'ang Times

Chinese anti-foreignism, already on the rise in the later years of T'ang, received reinforcement from neo-Confucianism, with its emphasis on the superiority of Chinese culture and the closer identification of Confucianism with that culture. At the same time, the stress on civil virtues and the growing importance of the vaunted examination system as a channel for upward mobility led to a general decline in martial spirit.44 Yet even as China turned inward, her ever-present need for foreign military and administrative expertise assured that outsiders would continue to find their way into the Chinese service. This proved true in the Sung, when specially trained "barbarian troops" (fan-ping) operated against internal and external enemies, and barbarian commanders (fan-chiang) such as Kuo Yao-shih (a surrendered Liao officer) rendered similar service. Kuo is particularly noteworthy for having led a military force known as the Ever-Victorious Army (Ch'ang-sheng chün) which, in some respects, resembled the contingent with the same designation raised by Frederick Townsend Ward in the latter stages of the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864).45
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d
EMPLOYMENT OF FOREIGN MILITARY TALENT

125

material superiority, and intent not on conforming to Chinese ways, but on changing them. Enjoying the privilege of extraterritoriality and other unequal treaty “rights,” they were closely linked to the policies and practices of their respective home governments, who, after 1860, maintained a diplomatic (and at times military) presence on Chinese soil. These foreign employees were at best unwitting agents of cultural change, and at worst, potential tools of the aggressive Western powers. Their use by the Chinese, therefore, introduced special new problems of responsibility and restraint.

This was particularly true in light of China’s all-too-obvious military weakness and the new role Western technology was beginning to play in Chinese military affairs. The Manchus, obsessed with internal security, were fearful enough of modern Western weapons in the hands of Chinese (as opposed to Manchu) soldiers. To allow foreigners to train and command Western-armed Chinese troops introduced an additional element of risk. Yet under the exigencies of the massive Taiping Rebellion, the dynasty sanctioned the rise of foreign-trained and foreign-officered Chinese contingents in a desperate effort to stem the threatening rebel tide.63 And despite the changed circumstances of China’s internal and external situation after 1860, Ch’ing policymakers instinctively looked to the past for policy guidelines.

Page 04

As the first Westerner to hold high military rank in the new situation, the career of Frederick Townsend Ward is worthy of special attention. Like many other barbarian employees in China’s past, this outlaw-adventurer from Salem, Massachusetts owed his position in the Chinese military service to singular circumstances. At a crucial juncture in the Taiping Rebellion, Ward raised a unique, foreign-officered Chinese military force, the Ever-Victorious Army, which proved useful not only as a weapon against the Taipings, but also as a means to limit Western intervention in the Chinese civil war.65 In the course of his brief career, Ward attained the rank of colonel (fu-chiang), and upon his death in 1862 he received high posthumous honors and abundant praise for his loyal service to the dynasty. But during his lifetime, Ward’s behavior was under close and constant scrutiny. So innovative was his position that Chinese officials were reluctant to suggest historical parallels, and it was not until well after his death that the “Yankee adventurer” began to be compared with such noteworthy barbarian employees in the past as Yu Yu and Chin Mi-ti.66
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794
Sheilah Hamilton - The District Watch Force ... 199

NOTES AND QUERIES

Hong Kong (From the Notes of a Russian Traveller), translation of an article written by Iosif Antonovich Goshkevich in 1871.... 229

Hong Kong, translation from a book chapter written by Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov in 1853 237

...... 247

R.G. Horsnell - The Story of Stanley Fort 257

R.G. Horsnell - The Story of Gun Club Hill Barracks ..... 265

B.C. Fawcett - First World War Labour Corps Cemeteries in Flanders 281

Keith Stevens - The American Soldier of Fortune Frederick Townsend Ward: Honoured and Revered by the Chinese with a Memorial Temple 285

Ronald Bishop Smith - Sir Ralph Moor and the 'Benin' Cannon of the British Museum and the Royal Armouries 293

Photographs from the Hong Kong 1906 Typhoon contributed by Victoria Brown 297

Dan Waters - Arnold Graham, 1905 - 1996. 305

Translated letter from the Bishop of the Philippines to the King of Spain dated 1584 contributed by Robin M. Bridge.............. 315

Geoffrey W. Roper - The Drunken Dragon Dance and the Tam Kong (Tam Kung) Festival: Notes on the RAS HK Visit to Macau, May 1997 .. 323

Robert Nield - Bits of Broken China: The RAS Visit to North-east China in Search of Colonial Remnants, 1999 329

viii
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794
285

THE AMERICAN SOLDIER OF FORTUNE FREDERICK TOWNSEND WARD HONOURED AND REVERED BY THE CHINESE WITH A

MEMORIAL TEMPLE

KEITH STEVENS

Frederick Townsend Ward was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1831 and though he is said to have attended a private college in the United States, which included a military element in its curriculum, he failed to graduate. He left home and as a young ship's officer sailed on several trading voyages to China.

In his twenties, having sought excitement and a career as a free-booter during which time he claimed that he had fought in the Crimea with the French and in Central America where he met Garibaldi, he sailed yet as an officer on a US registered ship to China where, at the time, the Taiping rebellion, a major rebellion against the Ch'ing [Manchu] dynasty, was at its height and he finally sought employment ashore. Basically, he was a mercenary who saw his chance and took employment first sponsored by local Chinese officials and supported by a Chinese official in the defence of the Shanghai area from the rebels, then later by Ch'ing officials in his campaign against the same rebels, either for gain or excitement, possibly both.

Ward raised a force of some hundred Western mercenaries, on behalf of the Chinese in Shanghai, together with scores of Filipinos, as well as soldiers and sailors discharged or deserters from the Anglo-French expedition, for the protection of the city against what seemed like an impending attack by the Taiping Rebel forces. This proved a failure and a year or so later he raised a highly competent and disciplined force of Chinese soldiers officered by Westerners to fight the rebels. Ward became a Chinese citizen with an official rank. He claimed Chinese nationality when arrested by the captain of a British warship for violating neutrality but in the event was handed over to the Chinese because of his "non-nationality."

At first the force of about a thousand was known as the Foreign-
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