an-illustrated-history-of-hong-kong-nigel-cameron — Page 2

recounts the event in his two-volume Voyage Around the World which appeared two years later in r843.



The only important point to which we became officially partners was the cession of the island of Hong Kong, situated off the peninsula of Cow Loon [Kowloon] within the island of Lama . . . We landed on Monday the 26th January [actually 25 January] at

The Treaty of Nanjing 2 7

fifteen minutes past eight, and being 'bona fide' possessors, her majesty's health was drank [sic] with three cheers on Possession Mount.



More formal possession was taken on the following day, 26 January 1841, by Commodore Bremer at the same site to the accompaniment of the first Royal Salute to be fired from all the ships in Hong Kong harbour.

The exact location was a minor eminence on the scrub-covered slopes rising to what was to be called Victoria Peak, from which much of the northern shore of the island could be seen. Here the flag was raised some two and a half years before the new colony was recognized by the British government. The notion of Hong Kong island as a suitable site for a British possession had perhaps first been mooted in the pages of The Canton Register of 2 5 April 18 3 6 - the newspaper founded by Matheson with a circulation among the foreign community of Guangzhou and Macau.



If the lion's paw is to be put down on any part of the south side of China, let it be Hong Kong: let the lion declare it to be under his guarantee a free port, and in ten years it will be the most considerable mart east of the Cape. The Portuguese made a mistake; they adopted shallow water and exclusive rules. Hong Kong, deep water, and a free port forever! 1



Eitel avers that the seizure of Hong Kong took the merchants by surprise, 'unexpected as the birth of a child into a family generally is to the rest of the children'. And he quotes a memorial written by them some years later: 'Such a settlement as Hong Kong was never actually required by the British merchants.' Endacott is of the opinion that Elliot chose the island because he envisaged trade continuing to be concentrated in the Guangzhou area, and he points out that for just this reason Elliot did not press for the opening of other treaty ports. The sole difference between Guangzhou and Hong Kong was that at the latter the traders would be 9n their own soil. It would seem at least likely that if Qishan suggested Hong Kong as a British base, it was to get rid of the foreign merchants from Guangzhou while at the same time keeping them in almost visible distance, and thus more susceptible of surveillance.

At first sight the island was scarcely an ideal place on which to establish a trading post and a community. A narrow strip of sloping land on the northern shore lay at the hem of the steep skirts of hills, an improbable site for a settlement of any size. At few other places round the coasts where deep water could be found were there any more hospitable areas on which to build. Most of the island consisted of scrub-covered hills enclosing sharp valleys.

In London, Palmerston had repudiated both the Convention of Chuanbi and the annexation of the island. He was in any case sceptical about Hong Kong as a possible ' mart of trade' and disinclined to believe the merchants

28 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

would desert Guangzhou for it. To Elliot, dismissing him from his post, he wrote in scathing terms of Hong Kong as 'a barren island with hardly a house upon it'. This was essentially true, but also irrelevant to those traders who wanted to found a trading port on the shores of a deep-water harbour offering a certain amount of shelter from the elements as well as propinquity to the Zhu Jiang and Guangzhou, still the sole port of access to China. Some merchants preferred to wait and see how the settlement might develop.

Unlike Chishan who was sent to Beijing in chains, Elliot was merely recalled and Sir Henry Pottinger appointed in his place. Pottinger arrived with Admiral Sir William Parker in Macau on 10 August 18 41, and less than ten days later departed up the coast in HMS Nemesis for Xiamen and Ningbo which he captured - an action that affords an immediate clue to his character. There was no absolute need for speed. But even his journey outward from England had been accomplished in record time via what was termed the 'overland route' - by sea to Alexandria, then overland to the Red Sea to connect with a ship sailing eastward. He had arrived in Macau in only 67 days.



Sir Henry Pottinger, Bt. (1789-1 856) by Sir Francis Grant, PRA. The fashionable portraitist alludes to Pottinger's activities in the Far East by including beyond the window a scene with a pagoda. Pottinger's strong Irish accent greatly amused the Foreign Secretary, Lord Aberdeen.

The Treaty of Nanjing 29

Parker came out as the new Commander-in-Chief Far East, while Pottinger held the position of British Plenipotentiary and Superintendent of Trade. Palmerston, having sacked Elliot, had chosen as replacement a man of quick decisions to pursue the war against China. The British and other foreigners were delighted to welcome him.

Pottinger was born in Ireland in 1789, and had left school in Belfast at the age of 1 2, and gone to sea. His education was therefore sketchy. He served in several demanding positions in India with the East India Company, learned languages rather easily, went on a derring-do spying expedition from Sind to Persia, played a prominent role in the first Afghan War, and returned to England in 1 840 after 27 years continuous service abroad. He was then rewarded with a baronetcy.

His first official act at Macau was to refuse to receive any Chinese who was not empowered by the emperor to negotiate. Finding none, he sailed away north to best the Chinese on their home ground. In six days he reached Xiamen. Ningbo fell to his forces and was lucky not to be razed. Returning to Hong Kong in December 1 841, he was off again in June 1 842, accomplish­ ing the fall of Shanghai and arriving in Nanjing in early August where the Imperial Commissioners Qiying and Yilibu doggedly attempted to open negotiations. Pottinger, intractable, simply stated his terms for settlement, willing only to deal with those who held ·absolute power to agree. A letter from one of the Commissioners describes the attitude: 'The barbarian Pottinger just knits his brows and says no. ' Pottinger himself wrote: 'The basis on which peace between the two countries can be negotiated, has been



The signing of the Treaty of Nanjing aboard HMS Cornwallis on 29 August 1842. It seems likely that Pottinger is the' figure seated immediately behind the table and to the left, with Qiying (wearing a mandarin hat) on his left.

30 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

too frequently notified . . . to be misunderstood, and it remains unchanged.' Entire ly at variance with his latest instructions from London, Pottinger held out for the opening of several ports to British trade besides Hong Kong. Against this stone wall of demands, backed by what the Chinese by now knew to be a military and naval force not lightly to be ignored (and threatening Nanjing), the Commissioners gave in. The signing of the Treaty of Nanjing took place on 29 August 1 842 aboard one of the expedition's ships, HMS Cornwallis.

Pottinger had gained for his Queen and country a resounding victory - the second round in what was to be a succession of victories by gunboat diplomacy. The provisions of the Treaty were harsh:

The ports of Xiamen, Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai to be opened to foreign trade and residence.

) Consuls to be appointed to these ports and to be able to communicate freely and in conditions of respect with the Chinese authorities.

Hong Kong island to be ceded to Britain.

) China to pay six million dollars in compensation for opium 'surrendered as ransom for the lives of British subjects' ( despite the fact that everyone knew this was not the reason for its surrender).

The Co-hong monopoly to be abolished and foreigners to be permitted to trade free ly. Three million dollars to be paid by Chinese merchants in settlement of debts to British merchants.

$ 12 million to be paid to offset the costs of the war (which had not been of Chinese making).

Treaties imposed by victors in settlement of their wars are seldom free from a retributive or punitive element, but the Treaty of Nanjing remains one of the most harsh and unfair. It was to be followed by others of a like kind, later to be collectively termed by the Chinese the Unequal Treatie s.

The home government was delighted to have achieved its objectives in China. Pottinger received a decoration - Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath. On arrival in the East, Pottinger had not made up his mind about the desirability of Hong Kong as a colony. But by the time the Treaty was signed he was enthusiastic. After all, it was he who had won it for the Crown. In a letter to London he wrote:



The retention of Hong Kong, is the only single point in which I intentionally exceeded my . . . instructions, but every single hour I passed in this superb country convinced me of the necessity and desirability of possessing such a settlement as an emporium for our trade, and a place from which our subjects in China may be alike protected and controlled.



A Supplementary Treaty of the Bogue, signed in 1 843 , heaped further humiliations on the Chinese. A 5 per cent tariff was to be charged on all

The Treaty of Nanjing 3 r

goods, British subjects committing offences in China were to be tried under British law, and the 'most favoured nation' provision was introduced whereby any privileges subsequently granted to other nations by China would be automatically enjoyed by Britain.

What Pottinger, the conquering hero, did not understand, and what a trained diplomat would have realized, was that such conditions virtually ensured that the Chinese would soon disregard them. And this was precisely what occurred. Easy victory had tended to father precipitate decisions. The treaty was ratified by both governments, the instruments exchanged in Hong Kong on 26 June r843. A new British colony came into being.

· After the signing of the Treaty Pottinger entertained the Imperial Com­ missioner Qiying, who had been described with marked disdain by The Friend of China as resembling a 'boiled turnip . . . considerably obese . . . dressed j ust like one of the nodding figures in teashop windows at home'. No Government House existed, and Pottinger used accommodation in the Record Office standing a little way uphill from the bay. Two bungalows had been added to it, and it was here on the evening of the signing that Qiying was received. The dinner, described by The Friend of China as having been attended by the ' Chinese Commissioner, who with his suite enjoyed themselves merrily', seems to have been a success. It was said that Qiying went so far (it was very far indeed for a Chinese plenipotentiary) as to sing Manzhu songs, to which Pottinger responded with some of his own. If Pottinger's reactions on signing the Treaty were hearty, those of Queen Victoria were jocular. She wrote to her uncle Leopold, King of the Belgians, 'Albert is so much amused at my having got the island of Hong Kong, and we think Victoria [their eldest daughter] should be called Princess of Hong Kong

in addition to Princess Royal.'

The Treaty of Nanjing contained one notable omission - there is no mention of the illicit opium trade, the fundamental issue over which the two signatories had come into collision. In Britain, vacillating public and parlia­ mentary sentiment inclined on the whole to turn a blind eye to the trade. The sophistical government view that it was up to the Chinese to eradicate it by controlling the acts of their own nationals adroitly side-stepped the whole question. The British flag had been raised, as Gladstone later remarked, 'to protect an infamous contraband traffic'. When Pottinger warned the merchants against trading in opium in the new Treaty Ports before the Treaty was ratified, Matheson, of Jardine, Matheson and Company, wrote that 'the plenipotentiary has published a most fiery proclamation against smuggling, but I believe it is like the Chinese edicts . . . only intended for the gratifica­ tion of the Saints in England'. He promptly bought three American vessels in case Pottinger tried to force his will on British ones. In a climate of overt buccaneering the merchants generally got their own way, governors notwith­ standing.

4. Early Hong Kong



r

Ju sT three days after Elliot annexed Hong Kong in January 1841, he issued a proclamation vesting the government of the island in the Chief Super­ intendent of Trade. All Chinese who lived there were to be governed by the laws of China, and this applied equally to Chinese from other places who might resort to the island. There was only one proviso, that 'every description of torture' be excepted. British and other non-Chinese were to be under the protection of British law. The Chinese were promised 'free exercise of their religious rites, ceremonies, and social customs', to be governed according to the laws, customs, and usages of China, subject to British control. In the same month foreign merchants began to arrive in Hong Kong and size up its possibilities, keeping their bases at Guangzhou and Macau for the moment. And by June when Elliot declared Hong Kong a free port, a rash of un­ controlled construction had already begun to spatter the northern shore of the island with buildingu

One month after the annexation Matheson put up a matshed godown right

in the middle of the shoreline below present-day Flagstaff House (now the Museum of Tea Ware), and quite soon after converted that to the first stone structure on the island. There were existing stone quarries to the east at what was to be called Quarry Bay, the source of the foundations laid to support the matshed or wooden buildings that sprang up to form the beginnings of a little township. Construction followed the existing bridle-path which ran along the north shore a few yards from the water's edge, all the way from East Point (in today's Causeway Bay) to West Point (where Western Street now runs). The first Chinese settlements were at Wong Nai Chung (now Happy Valley), and to the west of the central district, later to develop into Taipingshan, an area of dense occupation below Possession Point in today's Possession Street.

\Soon, Elliot had to consider the validity of this mushroom development. Before matters got more out of hand he decided to demarcate plots of land and define their boundaries._J

Captain Belcher, who had raised the flag, had made a quick survey of the coasts and principal hills, and soon after the annexation a start had been made on a road along the line of the bridle-path, which was to be named





In 1839, j ust before Hong Kong was annexed, the French painter Auguste Borger briefly visited the area, and later made this engraving of a pastoral scene with a bamboo aqueduct.



A view by an unknown Western painter in the early 1840s looking north from Wong Nai Chung Gap over Happy Valley and across the harbour.

34 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

Queen's Road. But plots were taken over in what was virtually a free-for-all and land was being sold by Chinese who had no apparent title. A chaotic situation was aggravated by all parties attempting to seize the main chance, and by the more shrewd who wanted to stake claims to land which, in the event of the island's becoming legally British, would dramatically increase in value.

Elliot had the best intentions when he conducted the first sales of land on 14 June 1841. He intended to offer 200 lots of measured land, half of them on the harbour side of the new road - the marine lots - and half on the inland side - the suburban lots. Because of difficulties in completing the surveys only 50 lots were offered, each with a 100-foot frontage to the water and a varying amount of land between it and the road due to the irregularity of the coastline. Some were not worth bidding for and remained unsold, while others went for between £ 20 and £26 5. The provisions of sale were that a structure costing at least $1,000 must be built on the land within a limited time (the rate being 4s. 4d. to the dollar). The title to the land was to go to the purchaser outright after a couple of years, a proposal later countermanded by the home government and to be the cause of future problems.

The action took place against a background of uncertainty due to the unresolved situation in regard to China. But Elliot pressed ahead with measures to form the skeleton of an administration, appointing first Captain William Caine, 26th Regiment of Infantry, as Magistrate with wide judicial powers but narrow powers of punishment, the aim being largely to preserve the peace. Serious crime was to be reported to Elliot who would decide the penalty according to British law, while Caine could only levy fines of up to

J.

$400, and mete out terms of three months' imprisonment, or 100 lashes. Also appointed at this time were Lieutenant W. Pedder, RN, as Harbourmaster and Marine Magistrate, and R. Bird as Clerk of W..o rks responsible for public works. His burdens included the problems posed by the army having established itself at three places - Sai Ying Pun, West Point, and on the east side of a nullah by what is now Garden Road - all sites at which no intelli­ gent planner would have permitted them. There were to be similar prob­ lems with both the army and navy retaining sites in the urban area, thus making nonsense of rational city planning throughout the history of Victoria town.

In a settlement of flimsy shelters - a shanty town - weather was an important factor. Being in the subtropical belt, between a vast land mass and the Pacific Ocean, Hong Kong's summer months bring the hazards of nature's more violent whims (see Appendix 2). In the 1840s there was little means of predicting the weather other than Chinese nostrums about cloud colour and clarity or the lack of it. Those indicators and the rapid fall of the barometer were in fact to prove poor predictors of approaching typhoons. On 21 July 1841 a typhoon struck and the seedy lines of matshed and wooden structures

Early Hong Kong 3 5

that constituted the town were for the most part flattened, some of them even vanishing, never to be seen again. Elliot's deputy A. R. Johnston's own house suffered with the rest, and shipping in the harbour was seriously damaged. A second typhoon four days later completed the destruction, upon which the second of Hong Kong's perennial scourges struck, as fire consumed the huts of the settlement inhabited by the community of Chinese artisans and labourers. Elliot himself, together with Commodore Bremer, was lucky to escape alive when the typhoon struck the cutter in which they were travelling from Macau to Hong Kong. It was time for the settlers to start again.

Pottinger, when he arrived on 10 August 18 41 to take over from the dis­

graced Elliot, at once made it known that nothing should be altered until the decisions of the home government were known. In the brief time he spent in Hong Kong (24 hours) he forbade any further allotment of land, agreed to the building of a barracks and a road to Tai Tam on the eastern tip of the island, and ordered the evacuation of the Kowloon shore where artillery had been placed - the weapons to be resited on Kellett island for harbour defence. He then set out for Xiamen and Ningbo, leaving Johnston in sole charge.

In one respect this proved to be a mistake. An element of self-importance is discernible in Johnston's character and this perhaps prompted him to initiate a correspondence with the Governor-General of India in Pottinger's absence. Almost incredibly, against Pottinger's express order, he recommenced the sale of land. In October he announced: 'It is now found desirable that persons applying for lots of land for the purpose of building upon, should be at once accommodated.' This presumed the sovereignty of Britain despite the repudiation of the Convention of Chuanbi, and defied Pottinger's order which can hardly have been so vague (as Johnston afterwards pleaded) as to mean the reverse of what was intended. It has been suggested that Johnston capitulated at the urgent demands of the importunate merchants. But in fact both Johnston and Caine were speculating in land and the strong suspicion remains that the former used his temporary position to further his own ends. The October announcement set out a new method of classification for lots into marine, town, and suburban. Marine lots were defined as those not further than 200 feet from the high-w�ter mark, and town lots those in specified other sites on the island - Wong Nai Chung (Happy Valley;, Chek Chu (Stanley), and Shek Pai Wan (Aberdeen). All the rest were suburban lots.

Specified areas were to be reserved for Chinese habitation.

Pottinger's reactions were predictably disapproving when he heard of Jll this in November' 1 8 41, and he accused Johnston of entirely exceeding his brief. Undeterred, having apparently got the bit between his administrative teeth, Johnston played the great man. In November, Pottinger still away, he sent an account of his actions. A goodly section of Queen's Road had been completed, as had the prison; the Magistracy was being built and so was the Record Office for the use of the Land Officer. A wooden barracks was rising

3 6 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

at Stanley and a bridle-path was being cut towards Shek Pai Wan up the steep hills. The Chinese were frenziedly building houses for themselves and it had become essential to lay down building regulations - streets were to be at least 20 feet broad, houses to be set back five feet from the road and to have verandahs. Each Chinese occupant of the area was to have a vote in order to elect three headmen who would make rules for discipline in the bazaar - as Westerners were accustomed to call any native area.

Such had been the fever of construction that Pottinger, returning in December r84 r, must have found a very different place from the ragged line of structures he had left a mere five months previously. The population had risen to about r2, 000 Chinese residents. 'This settlement', Pottinger gave it as his opinion, 'has already advanced too far to admit of its ever being restored to the authority of the Emperor.'

It was indeed growing fast. The snide Canton Register, reacting to Matheson's construction of a house for himself, took the opportunity of remarking that 'on entering the harbour, you perceive the most commanding site, disfigured by a hybrid erection, half New South Wales, half native pro­ duction'. Matheson did not keep the structure for long. The army, already occupying the surrounding terrain, offered cash for the house, and other sites in exchange. Jardine, Matheson and Company selected two sites at West Point but their principal depot remained at East Point where it was to remain well into the twentieth century. Pottinger relates how on a spot where in mid­ r842 he had seen only a 'chaos of immense masses of granite . . . [so] that it was hardly accessible' either on the land or the water side, Jardine's 'by the application of science and extraordinary labour and by an expenditure of about £1 00,000, have not only made it available for their vast mercantile concerns, but have rendered it a credit and an ornament to the Colony'. r By r843 the godowns were accompanied by two large houses about which one of the Jardine family was later to write with all the smugness of colonial social status:



As you are aware the Governor and the General have generally the finest [houses], here it is not so, 'who then?' - Jardine's - their house . . . is situated on a Point which overlooks the greater part of the Town, the rooms here are much larger than most houses.2



There are few descriptions of Hong Kong at this early stage of its growth. Lord Saltoun, Commander of British Forces in China, who took over the Jardine bungalow, gives an English gentleman's account of his life there, formed as it was in the best imitation of life at home.



I am to pay rooo dollars for furniture and pictures and forty dollars a month for rent. The plan . . . is to engage a comprador, a major domo in fact. He finds cook

Early Hong Kong 3 7

and helper, wine coolies, table decker . . . We breakfast at eight, lunch at one and dine at half past six, and . . . we generally sit down eight or ten to dinner . . . Among other things we have a sheep club . . . a certain number of us subscribed and sheep are bought from Bengal and also from Sydney . . . We graze them here on the hill and feed them with grain . . . and at one killing you get a hindquarter, and the next a forequarter . . . 3



The rapidity with which an urban milieu - if a small one - had been created may be inferred in part from a sentence in Eitel:



The spirits of the community [which had flagged under the onslaught of recent outbreaks of fever and other tropical diseases] were considerably cheered by the appearance, on the new Queen's Road, of the first carriage and pair imported from Manila, as a sign of the coming comforts of civilization.



Further signs can be gleaned from newspaper advertisements of the time. By the middle of r84 5, the colony a mere four years old ( only two from its official recognition), The Friend of China carried the following:



A substantial house consisting of two sitting rooms, each 30 by 20 feet and in height 17 feet, separated by folding doors, five good size bedrooms, with dressing and bathroom to each; a front and back verandah, closed with venetians, each 100 feet long and 12 feet wide, flat roof convenient for exercise and affording a fine view of the harbour . . . Commodious outbuildings for servants, store room, and offices : a large compound, garden, etc . . . surrounded by a good fence . . .



Yet, appearances and accommodation apart, the colony was only slightly removed from lawlessness. Caine, now Major Caine, Chief Magistrate, assumed the title of Sheriff and Provost Marshal in r844, and was also Justice of the Peace. Eitel comments on this issue:



As pirates ruled the sea all round Hong Kong, so highway robbers and burglars seem to have things their own way all over the Island. Government House even was entered by robbers (April 26, 1843), three mercantile houses (Dent's, Jardine's, Gillespie's) were attacked in one and the same night (April 28, 1843), The Morrison Institution was plundered by robbers who carried off the Chief Superintendent's Great Seal (May 19, 1 843) . . . No European ventured abroad without a revolver . . . The principal merc.hants kept armed constables . . . for the protection of their prop- erty, having no confidence whatever in the Colonial constables . . . Every private house inhabited by Europeans had its watchman going the round . . . all night and striking a hollow bamboo from time to time in proof of his watchfulness. The scum of the criminal classes of the neighbouring districts looked upon Hong Kong as their Eldorado and upon English law as a mere farce . . . Imprisonment in the Gaol appeared to the half-starved gaol-birds of Canton a coveted boon.4

3 8 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

Caine met with severe criticism of his methods of administering justice. One newspaper commented that he and other magistrates 'mete out justice according to the judgement which God has been pleased to grant them; equitably in their own opinion no doubt . . . law, there is none'.

Doubtless, as Endacott says in his brief biography,5 Caine was 'as ignorant of British law as he was of Chinese laws, customs, and usages'. But in a mushrooming colony for which the British government had refused to recruit a police force (except for three officers) he was forced to rely on untrained troops and his own policies of deterrence. Caine treated the problem with 'ruthless application of flogging with the rattan, with or without imprison­ ment; indeed flogging was so prevalent that questions were asked in the House of Commons'. He was a hard worker and could be found out on patrol at nights, doing what the home government was too penny-pinching to send officers to perform. 'He remained dignified, and his efficiency was always gentlemanly . . . The result was that though he was feared he was respected; he was never actively disliked.' Caine himself commented on 'the unpleasantness of my duties' in Hong Kong. 'Nine-tenths of our Chinese subjects and about half of our low European inhabitants have been in the most depraved condition.' Such a sentence from an official, in a report written for Whitehall to read, must constrain the reader to credit it. And in fact Johnston in the previous year had said he 'lacked the means of visiting adequate punishment'. Johnston's prison was full and his powers of sentencing quite inadequate for the nature of the crimes he had to deal with.

The picture of a haphazard, scarcely planned or plannable settlement

growing raggedly along a miserably inadequate strip of shelving shore, and administered by a set of amateurs stumbling in the wake of problems they were too few and too inexperienced to solve, is all but inescapable. The dilatory functioning of the home government hampered -Pottinger too. In the absence of appointed officials from Britain he was forced to appoint local stopgaps, and in the heated commercial and monetary climate many of the best men for the jobs preferred to make a quick fortune in commerce than a competence in government service. Pottinger's cross was his requirement to serve two masters: the Colonial Office as Governor, and the Foreign Office in his capacity as Plenipotentiary. A further misfortune was that, more than competent in military affairs, he was less than comfortable as an adminis­ trator, too impatient for the deliberations and accommodations of bureau­ cracy with its snail's-pace action.

Pottinger tended to quarrel rather than to coax. Thus he fell out with the navy which had been allowed to unload stores right in the centre of the town during the hostilities, and which now wanted to change its mind about moving to the West Point location. The navy insisted on retaining this central position despite the inconvenience to the community. Pottinger described the depot as a 'perpetual and irreparable detriment to the Colony'.

Early Hong Kong 3 9

Not only the navy, but the army too hatched schemes inimical to town planning. The Aldrich plan of 1843 , which envisaged a fortified cantonment housing a suggested force of 4, 5 00 men right in the centre of the town, was one. Pottinger rightly felt it certain to arrest all future development. It would, he said, 'turn this face of the island [into] a mere military position . . . in lieu of . . . a vast emporium of commerce and wealth'. He pointed out the absurd­ ity of the p lan in the light of the fact that Hong Kong was indefensible against an enemy with a superior naval force.

Pottinger was to fall foul of the army again on the subject of Hong Kong's climate. During the fever epidemic of 1842 the troops were removed to ships in the harbour in an effort to reduce the ravages of the disease, and the commanding officer put all the blame for fatalities on the weather. Pottinger replied with hauteur that he had been 'in some small degree the instrument of [Hong Kong's] becoming a possession of the Crown of England', and 'I am forced to record my total dissent to the insalubrity of the climate'. Sickness among the troops was due in Pottinger's opinion to poor supervision, which permitted them to be out without regard to heat or rain, allowed them to bathe for extended periods, and to drink large quantities of sam shui (Chinese spirits). Pottinger was doubtless largely right, but he had omitted to do much about the main culprit in public health matters - sanitation. And in this he set the pattern for many a future administration which cut corners in that fundamental branch of government, with dire consequences, until the very end of the nineteenth century.

Pottinger's troubles were not confined to disputes with the armed forces. He came up against the exacerbated tempers of the merchant community who, under Elliot and abetted later by Johnston's high-handed sale of land, were convinced that purchase conferred perpetual ownership, or at least that it ought to do so under the legal structure in the colony. The home govern­ ment had other ideas. Pottinger took the brunt of the ensuing wrath, writing ruefully that he had been held up 'not only as the immediate cause of all private dissatisfaction . . . but as the originator . . . of all the public mistakes and oversights'. In a situation in which what Eitel calls 'land-jobbing' was rife, Pottinger was the natural butt when owners discovered their tenure was for 75 years for land to be built on, and for less if not. No grants of land made prior to 26 June 1843 , the date of legal cession, were to be recognized as of right. This ignored the fact that grants of land had had to be made in order that administrators (for example) could have sites for houses in place of matsheds. Pottinger, rashly, before the contents of the Colonial Office order were known, had made tampering attempts to dear up anomalies, thereby compounding the confusion. Not surprisingly he was unable to do much other than complain to Lord Stanley in London, while in the meantime the 'land-jobbers� made a killing.

Until this time the little town on the northern shore of the island had been

40 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

called Queenstown. Pottinger now asked London for approval of the name Victoria, and a proclamation of 29 June 1843 affirmed the name along with the appellation 'the Colony of Hongkong', not 'Hong Kong' as formerly. This style is perpetuated to the present in the names of early institutions such as The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and The Hongkong Land Company Limited. The official name has now reverted to 'Hong Kong'.

The nineteenth century witnessed a vast expansion of earnest Christian missionary endeavour and the new colony was not forgotten. Funds had been raised in 1842 to build a colonial church, a union church 'for both Church­ men and Fundamentalists'. A chaplain had been appointe d in England but the authorities did not approve of the proposed union church, and services continued to be conducted as before by naval chaplains in the interim matshed church, the first se rmon being preached the re on Christmas Eve, 1843 . The construction of St John's Cathe dral was ordered at government expense , actual building being put off for several years as London withheld approval. Meanwhile the Roman Catholic prefect apostolic, Antonio Fe liciani, conse crate d the Church of the Conception on 18 June 1843, situated at the corner of Wellington and Pottinger Streets, and a seminary for Chinese clergy was opened. Shortly after, the Muslim community set up their mosque on the hill called thereafter Mosque Gardens (now Mosque Street) - Moloshan, Moorish Hill, in Cantonese.

Four existing temples served the Chinese, all already between 75 and 1oo years old, at Ap Lei Chau, Stanley, Spring Gardens (at present-day Spring Garden Lane), and Causeway Bay (Tung Lo Wan). And now a fifth was

begun on the site of present-day Queen's College. In 1843 the American Baptist Mission started a Chinese church at Sheung Wan market, and the Morrison Education Society school was opene d, having been transferred from Macau. Dr Legge of the London Missionary Society transferred the Society's college from Malacca to Hong Kong and opened a seminary and school for training Chinese ministers, naming it the Anglo-Chinese College. The Colonial Chaplain made similar provision for the Church of England at St Paul's College, still in existence. Not the least of all this godly activity was the beginning, in autumn 1843 by the Protestant missionaries of the colony, of the translation of the Bible into Chinese. Known as the Delegates Version, this work was said by Eitel to be 'the best in style though not in literal accuracy' that had appeared until his own day.

Pursuing what must have at times seemed to him an elusive goal - order in

J.

the administration - Pottinger attempted to set up councils in mid-1843. The Legislative Council consisted of thre e membe rs: Caine, R. Morrison, formerly a secretary in the Guangzhou Superintendent of Trade's office, and Johnston, with R. Burgass (the Governor's legal advise r) as Cle rk of the Council. Pottinger was greatly hampered in the setting up of both Executive and Legislative Councils by the acute scarcity of men willing to serve who

Early Hong Kong 41

were reliable and capable of such civic duties as service implied. The necessity of these bodies had been laid down in a proclamation of 5 April r843 in the so-called Hong Kong Charter. The Governor was to be allowed, on the advice of the Legislative Council, to make laws for peace, order, and good government subject to these not being disallowed by the home government. Among other matters he was entrusted with the seal of the colony, and empowered to make temporary appointments and suspend public officers pending Her Majesty's pleasure. And his was the prerogative of pardon for convicted criminals as well as power to suspend or remit fines. Also laid down was a rule which in due course brought trouble: in the Governor's absence or incapacity, authority was to be vested in the Lieutenant-Governor or, failing him, in the Colonial Secretary. Guidance also came from Whitehall on the Governor's duties and powers in the working of the administration, and stated that:



in the very peculiar circumstances of Hong Kong, H. M. Government have thought it right to confer upon you the extra-ordinary power of passing laws independently [of the Legislative Council] should the necessity for such a proceeding arise.



If it did, the Council had the right to dissent and send their reasons to London.

Pottinger was firmly given to understand that Hong Kong was an anomaly of a colony in that its purpose was not to be colonized so much as to be used for diplomatic, military, and commercial purposes. The Governor had three functions: negotiation with the Chinese emperor; superintending the trade of British subjects with China; and regulation of the colony's economy. These functions and other matters made it necessary that 'methods of proceeding unknown in other British colonies must be followed at Hong Kong'.

The powers of the legislature were to include the administration of civil law, police and prisons, lands and their transfer, and the authority to levy taxes. In due time the legislature would have to set up other elements of government such as a Supreme Court. The numbers in the two councils were to be kept small so that the Governor could exert his personal influence, and there was no elective element. Members would be chosen by the Governor although confirmation of appointments lay with the home government.

The thorny topic of legal repugnancy, by which the laws of colonies were required to conform to those of Britain, was not to be strictly applied in Hong Kong where the Chinese were so numerous and had their own traditional ideas and usages. 'It will be necessary that for the government of the Chinese

. . . the laws and customs of China should supersede those of England', except where Chinese law was in conflict with the 'immutable principles of morality which Christians must regard as binding on themselves at all times and in all places'.

42 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

The four-man Legislative Council consisting of Johnston, Morrison, Caine, and Burgass began its duties with gusto in January I 844, 'grappling boldly rather than wisely' (as Eitel has it), before the sudden death of Morrison and the loss of Johnston on sick leave, with problems of Chinese custom. The Council attempted to pass anti-slavery legislation but the ordinance was disallowed by London on the grounds that Britain already had anti-slavery laws which should apply to Hong Kong. The fact that they did so only partially meant that the Chinese custom of bond-servitude was to continue legally for many a decade. Successfully passed ordinances included those dealing with the possession and use of printing presses and the publication of books and papers, which remained on the statute book for over four decades. Legal interest rates were limited to I 2 per cent, unlicensed distillation of spirits was prohibited, and rules on the licensing of public houses and for the sale of spirits were laid down.

Whatever regulatory laws were passed to lend a veneer of legality to the

opium trade, the fact remained that before Pottinger left the scene Hong Kong had become a much larger version of Lingding island round which the opium ships of the British merchants clustered and from which the drug was stealthily distributed for sale up and down the coast of China. The situation was both fluid and hazardous, potentially inflammable. Legal trade had fallen sharply for a variety of reasons. The Foreign Office had decided that to forbid opium ships the use of the harbour would merely drive the trade elsewhere. But the canny merchants voluntarily removed their ships to neighbouring anchorages and continued with their lucrative trade away from direct sight of the town. Pottinger himself seems to have pinned his hopes on some sort of agreement on legalization of the drug by China, and his popularity with the trading community waned. The root cause of this was a resume he published of parts of the Supplementary Treaty of the Bogue, signed on 8 October I 843. This partial translation omitted certain important clauses, under which permits to trade in Hong Kong were required by Chinese vessels prior to leaving their home ports; and all Chinese vessels entering Hong Kong waters to trade required a similar permit signed by a British official. The information on these movements was to be conveyed to the authorities at Guangzhou. It was at the time, and is now, unclear why Pottinger omitted translation of those clauses in his version. He did so at his peril, as he rapidly discovered. When the merchant community, through its Chinese compradors, learned the truth it seemed to them either that Pottinger had had the wool pulled over his eyes by Imperial Commissioner Qiying, or that he had deliberately con­ cealed the clauses since they contravened the colony's free port status. In a surge of public obloquy Pottinger's stock hit zero overnight. He was accused of applying a tourniquet to the principal artery of the colony's trade.

No British official was appointed to register Chinese vessels and the offend­ ing clauses were simply abandoned. But trade got off to a very poor start, traders beginning to fear that it might turn out to be an 'egregious failure'.

Early Hong Kong 43

Pottinger was guilty of one other mistake. However unlikeable his subjects may appear to him, no governor can afford to let them see it. Pottinger made it obvious that he regarded the merchant community as little better than a bunch of insalubrious opium purveyors. Such, by and large, they were, but the first Hong Kong Governor succeeded in polarizing society, something which in a still tiny community was unhelpful. The trading community made common social cause with the army and navy against the government.

This in itself would be unimportant were it not for the fact that it set a pattern of social division and antagonism which was to plague Hong Kong society for much of the nineteenth century with unfortunate results.

Despite these antagonisms life in the colony had its more pleasing aspects. The Military Commander, Major-General Lord Saltoun, was the popular president of the Madrigal Society, and other officers of the army and navy vied among themselves

in reciprocating the social entente cordiale which reigned everywhere in the colony outside of Government House and Government Offices . . . The annual races and regatta . . . were still held in Macao, for which purposes a general pilgrimage [there] occupied the latter half of the month of February . . . 6

A public subscription was raised for the victims of the Afghan War, and there was public· grief when one of the heroes of Kabul, Pottinger's brother (and his expected successor) died in Hong Kong. 'The birth of the first British subject ushered into the world in Hong Kong (January 20, 1 843 ) was the occasion of much social humour.'7

Pottinger became a somewhat isolated figure. To accord him his due, he was grossly overworked. 'I have stood alone', he wrote in complaint to Lord Stanley. He had had to act on his 'unassisted judgement' while being unfairly blamed for everything that went wrong. He resigned in July 1 843 but had to stay until the following May when his replacement arrived. He had had some of the worst conditions to deal with, and for staff a motley group of amateurs. 'His secretary', a legal historian wrote, 'was an assistant surgeon in the Bombay army; his financial secretary the mate of a ship; his judge an Indian soldier; his assistant judge the second mate of a country ship.'8

But Eitel's harsh judgement of Pottinger is not quite merited in any sober view. He was no administrator: he was a successful soldier. It was he, much more than his vociferous critics among residents, who upheld with tenacity the interests of the colony as a whole among a citizenry whose dedicated self­ seeking has left ih its own record much that is less than pleasing to con­ template. The verdict of a contemporary, the Revd James Legge, the early nineteenth-century sinologue, is perhaps fairer: 'Sir Henry Pottinger was governor of the colony when I came to it, and I was surprised to find that he was not by any means popular. He was a good man, people said, to conquer China, and a bad man to rule Hong Kong. '

5 . Governor Davis - One against All



IN Anglo-Chinese relations during the period between the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing and the spring of 1848, the principal figures were Qiying, the new Viceroy of Guangdong-Guangxi, who acted as Imperial Com­ missioner, and Sir John Davis, Governor of Hong Kong, whose term there ended in May of that year. Of the two the more important and influential in the evolving situation was Qiying. The lengthy correspondence carried on between them over the whole period, following on from Qiying's numerous dispatches to Pottinger, makes interesting reading. 1 Innumerable matters large and small are introduced - many potentially explosive in the delicate state of the relationship between the two countries. These are then discussed and opinions exchanged on their resolution - on Qiying's part almost invariably with aplomb and diplomatic finesse. The picture that emerges is of a patient and practised negotiator coping with a son1ewhat irascible governor possessing much less skill in his task.

Mr John F. Davis, as he was on arrival in Hong Kong on 7 May 1844, was knighted in July the following year for his services in reorganizing its govern­ ment. The home government evidently thought highly of him, but that was an opinion totally at variance with the estimation of his character and governor­ ship held by the majority of Hong Kong residents.

Taken at face value, Davis's qualifications for appointment as Governor of the colony were compelling. Born in 1795, Davis was the son of an East India Company official, and at the age of 18 he joined that company and was posted to Guangzhou. The youth was of a scholarly disposition and immediately began to learn Chinese there. Within two years he published his first translation from that language and continued throughout his long life to publish further volumes including poetry, a novel, and other Chinese works. He eventually wrote (in 183 6) The Chinese: a general description of China and its inhabitants, which for long remained the standard work on the subject.

Davis worked his way up to the chairmanship of the Company's Select Committee at Guangzhou, later acting as second Superintendent of Trade under Napier, and succeeding him in October 1834. He resigned after three



A portrait of Sir John Davis by a Chinese painter, I845.



months, alleging his powers to control 'the ill-conduct of British subjects in China' were too slight and that he left 'in despair'. In fact these words were written ro years later, just before he became Governor of Hong Kong. They perhaps indicate his feelings on the appointment. Davis was a conservative, regretting the end of the Company's monopoly and the free-for-all which ensued - of which Hong Kong merchants appeared to him a later incarna­ tion. Like Pottinger, he was to serve two masters in London, while living in a community of disaffected merchants who felt cheated over land ownership and also over the missing clauses in the English version of the Supplementary Treaty. Trade was in the doldrums and there was little that any governor could have done about it.

With him Davis brought a team of professionals to replace some of Pottinger's amateurs. Socially, the most distinguished of them was Frederick Bruce, son of the Earl of Elgin. He was appointed Colonial Secretary, but served only r 5 months before leaving. His successor was William Caine, formerly the first Magistrate and destined to be a hardy perennial in Hong Kong. The new Colonial Treasurer was Robert Montgomery Martin, given the post as a reward for serving as a doctor in other colonies and for con­ tributing to the ro-volume History of British Colonies. In a matter of two months after his arrival he tendered two lengthy reports, one on the colony's finances and another on everything else he thought was wrong - with con­ sequences which will appear later.

Also amon,g Davis's suite was William T. Mercer, his nephew, acting as private secretary. Twenty-two on arrival, Mercer had studied law without

46 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

J.

taking the Bar examinations and although, as Endacott says, 'nepotism gave him his chance', his subsequent successful career of 20 years in Hong Kong was due entirely to his own brilliance.

R. D. Cay came out as Registrar of the Supreme Court, and Pope, the Civil Engineer, who is thought to have been the author of an early design for St John's Cathedral, Government House, and government offices. A month after their arrival, J. W. Hulme arrived to fill the post of Chief Justice

- a man of 'excitable temperament [who] may be led on convivial occasions to transgress the limits of . . . decorum'.2 He was to be constantly at logger­ heads with Davis, and their relationship was to lead to one of the colony's most appalling scandals.

A. F. Shelley arrived soon after Hulme and was made Auditor-General, while the post of Attorney-General was given to Paul Ivy Sterling after seven other barristers had refused it because of the colony's evil reputation in matters of health. And he only accepted when the salary of £1,5 00 was raised to £2, 5 00 with the right to engage in private practice. He stayed for a decade, becoming an Executive Councillor.

With this mixed but generally competent team Davis settled in, his first substantial step being to enlarge both Executive and Legislative Councils in spite of the Colonial Office ruling that they were to have only three members each. On orders from Lord Stanley in London, he had to undo this action. The Commanding Officer, Major-General D'Aguilar, the Chief Justice, and the Attorney-General were appointed to the Legislative Council, while the Commanding Officer, the Colonial Secretary, and the Chief Magistrate, Major Caine, formed the Executive Council - the Governor chairing both. There was a firm British policy, which Davis was charged to carry out, that no colony should be dependent on the British taxpayer for support. Quite correctly Davis instituted the processes through which this might be achieved. When he arrived, the home government was acting as financial parent to a dubiously legitimate colonial child. Sir James Stephen, Permanent Under­ Secretary in the Colonial Office, in London voiced the warning: 'This promises to be a very expensive colony.' Expenditure in the first Davis year in Hong Kong was £72, 841 against the sum of £22,242 that he had managed to squeeze out of the reluctant community which until then had never paid a cent in tax while expecting as of right the utmost freedom from official interference and demanding government help as soon as trouble arose. 'It is much easier', ,•Davis was to write to Lord Stanley in November 1 844, 'to govern the twenty thousand Chinese inhabitants of this Colony, than the few hundreds of English.' Given the unpopularity of the measures he had to take it was hardly surprising that he came in for heavy criticism; but his disdain of

the merchant fraternity did nothing to improve his image.

Raising revenue in those early days posed a problem. Davis could not impose customs duties because Hong Kong was a free port. His answer was

Governor Davis - One against All 47

to levy land rents as his main source of revenue, and to supplement these by farming out to the highest bidder various monopolies, and by the sale of licences. The monopolies were for the sale of opium, generally called the 'opium farm', quarrying stone, and handling salt. Wine and spirit merchants, pawnbrokers, and billiard-room operators had to pay for their licences. A percentage tax was levied on goods sold at auction. A proposed duty on the consumption of wine and spirits had to be dropped (at the unanimous request of the Legislative Council). A tax on all property was introduced to pay for the police force.

With the imposition of 75 -year leases on all land already in force, the demand for rates and taxes on property sparked off a furore. The home government held that residents should assess themselves through some form of municipal organization, the assessment to yield $3 25, 840, but Davis thought it prudent to reduce this by 40 per cent. His ingenuity in fabricating schemes to raise money was considerable. He tried developing the roads so as to open up new sites for building, and allocated land for the Chinese in an attempt to stop them squatting. He even invited Australian colonists to come and settle the south of the island and graze sheep and cattle there, a scheme vetoed by London. He made a valiant effort to end land speculation by finding out what land was held by those who appeared to have no intention of building on it; and by charging a 10 per cent deposit on all land sales. The figures achieved in those ways were quite impressive: the colonial revenue of £22, 242 in 1845 rose by 1 847 to £31,078 against expenditures of, respectively, £72, 841 and £ 50,599. The deficit made up by Britain fell from

£49,000 in 1845 to £3 6,900 in 1846, £31,000 in 1847, and £25 ,000 in 1848.

To his credit also, Davis was energetic in his efforts to put the policing of the colony on a sounder basis. As Pottinger's requests for manpower had been refused, Davis turned to the Indians in the army, and in November 1844 one havildar, two sergeants, and 20 rank and file were taken on, and more were to join them later. Urgent requests to London in spring 184 5 produced Charles May, a London police officer, as Superintendent of Police, accom­ panied by two inspectors. May faced a situation in which only 47 of an original force of 90 European recruited seamen and soldiers remained. Selecting 41 of those and adding 30 more from the army, his total force was 71 Europeans, 46 Indians, and 51 local Chinese - 168 in all. For them he asked for more generous pay and pensions, together with better housing for the Indians. He then put together a small unit of marine police to patrol the lawless waters of the harbour.

For years the home government complained about the expense of the police force, urging economy and objecting to the cost of pensions. When the police were offered pensions on half pay after 15 years service or a 20 per cent pay rise, they all elected for the latter. Rapid turnover of personnel meant low efficiency and morale, and drunkenness and corruption were common, so

48 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

that an announcement in 1 848 warned that it was unsafe to wander out of town after dark. It should perhaps be recalled that a police force was still a novelty in Britain at this time and Hong Kong was possibly better off than some places there. In the face of continued immigration of every criminal Tom, Dick, and Harry from Guangzhou, the task of any police force would have been hard. During Davis's temporary absence up the China coast in September 1 844, the Lieutenant-Governor, D 'Aguilar, cancelled what was termed the 'Bamboo Ordinance' under which householders' watchmen beat bamboo poles at intervals in the night. The ensuing silence permitted all to sleep again, including the watchmen. Government House was burgled once more. Flogging appeared to have little effect and, after questions in the Commons, was stopped. For four months criminals had an easier time, before it was reintroduced.

Piracy round the coasts was rampant and endemic. Charles May's heavily

armed police boat did good work until wrecked in late 1 848, and then the pirates preyed on every junk they could catch, and were even joined in their exploits by European sailors. One police headache was the difficulty of telling a pirate junk from a peaceful trader, both being heavily armed. Deportation was tried and, irony of ironies, one convict ship conveying prisoners to Penang in January 1 848 was taken over by the convicts on board.

Pottinger had suggested that one way to reduce crime might be to register all citizens. Now Davis took this up, displaying his egalitarianism and his equal lack of understanding of those he governed. He proposed to register not only the Chinese but Westerners as well. The Chinese opted for passive resistance : indignant Europeans held the first public meeting to take place in the colony and condemned the idea as 'iniquitous, unconstitutional, and un-English in principle'. Davis responded to their written protest by calling them 'this ill-conducted opposition'. Worse still, the translation of the ordinance into faulty Chinese convinced the rest of the population that the payment levied for registration ($1 for them, $5 for Europeans) was a monthly due and not an annual one. Westerners saw in the proposal the sole difference between them and the Chinese being couched in humiliating monetary terms. The whole idea was a century ahead of popular thinking and the Western community 'rose up . . . in wrathful indignation, feeling their personal respect, their national honour, the liberty of the subject trampled under foot . . . ' according to Eitel who must have known some of them. 3

Hong Kong came to a standstill as all Chinese clerks and servants walked out. The Chinese population prepared to leave in a body, The Friend of China reporting them liable to 'bear squeezing to any ordinary extent' but not to that of extracting from them half their monthly wages, as in the 'blundering translation'. Davis then informed the Europeans that the measure would not be enforced for another two months, and tardily began a process of con­ sultation. The brilliant but entirely scholarly intelligence of the Governor was

Governor Davis - One against A ll 49

quite unsuited to the evaluation of public opinion, and therefore of forming judicious policies where it was involved. On 13 November 1844 the Legis­ lative Council passed an amending ordinance requiring registration only for those whom Eitel calls 'the lowest classes'. Eventually, only those earning less than $ 500 were registered - virtually only Chinese. The Chinese doubt­ less assessed the dubious quality of the Governor and government responsible for the episode.

Another area of dispute insufficiently clarified by the Colonial Office was the question of whether the Chinese in Hong Kong should be judged (and if guilty punished) under Chinese or British law. Davis thought that since the Chinese came voluntarily to the colony to work they should be subject to British law. But the ordinance of 1844 setting up the Supreme Court gave it powers to punish them under Chinese law, as did that governing the magistrates. Davis pleaded that Chinese punishments such as amputating the queue, wearing the cangue, and flogging, had all been tried without much effect. The Chinese had no money to pay fines and seemed undeterred by imprisonment. The Colonial Office was wary. 'The dilemma is between ruling Chinese people by English law and requiring judges to administer in

H. M.'s name the law of China.' Sir James Stephen thought that 'effective restraint . . . and a government not to be trifled with' were fundamentally important and ought to be attained 'even at the expense of adopting a policy the most opposed to our feelings and prepossessions'. A large grey area remained. In practice the Chinese were at liberty to conduct their lives according to their own customs and laws. Only when they came into conflict with law and order and the British criminal code did British legal processes apply. An ordinance of 1 January 1845 prescribed for second-offender triad society members the barbaric punishment of branding on the cheek (unaccountably termed 'painless' by Endacott) and expulsion to China. The Colonial Office rejected this. Qiying, Imperial Commissioner and Viceroy of Guangdong-Guangxi, objected to criminals being sent into his domains, urging that they should be judged by Hong Kong Chinese officials. Davis parried by stating that no one had compelled the Chinese to come to the colony and that if they wanted to live in Hong Kong they must expect the treatment meted out to other citizens - and the same protection. In rejecting cheek branding, the Colonial Office suggested (amendment 12, 1845) branding under the arm instead. Such were the common opinions held by otherwise quite reasonable men, and such the status of those who had the misfortune not to 'be born British, in early colonial Hong Kong.

The whole question was much too knotty and disputatious to be success­

fully tackled at the time. An ordinance of 6 May 1846 laid down that all the laws of England when the colony first obtained its legislature (on 5 April 1843) should be deemed in force 'when applicable'. And it was probably wise enough to leave the matter like that for the time being.

50 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

The Chinese government, however, continued to claim control over the Chinese living in Hong Kong. All unknown to the British administration (it would appear) a Chinese official regularly sold fishing licences at Stanley.4 Davis took the matter up with Qiying in several dispatches, and the latter eventually disclaimed such rights. 5

The old problem, opium, still festered. China had almost given up attempting to stop its importation. Davis had written to the Colonial Secretary before he left England that opium could not be tolerated in the colony. The opinion in British government circles was that China should make up its mind to control, or (possibly) legalize imports, and that the British government had no obligation to assist in the execution of Chinese law. Soon after his arrival in Hong Kong Davis wrote home that 'opium is now tacitly tolerated by the Chinese government', adding that Qiying admitted the Chinese policy on opium could be disregarded. 'Under the circumstances,' wrote Davis, 'any scruples on our part . . : .appear to me to be more than superfluous.' He sold the monopoly for sales of opium in the colony on a yearly basis. Lurking behind all the considerations on the British side of the opium question lay the fact that the government of India

depende. d .substan. tia.lly for its revenues on sales of opium which was mostly

grown In Its terntones.

There were isolated protests from the Legislative Council about 'taxing vice for revenue'. But Davis reported to London in 1 844 that 'almost every person possessed of capital who is not connected with government . . . is employed in the opium trade'. By 1 845 , some 80 Hong Kong vessels were carrying opium, 19 of them belonging to Jardine, Matheson and Company. Clearly if Davis wished for legalization in China he could hardly press for abolition in Hong Kong.

The man who made the remark about taxing vice for revenue was Martin, the Colonial Treasurer, who now vigorously opposed government policy on opium. The Governor, supported as he was by the Colonial Office, must have wished he had never brought him to Hong Kong. Davis sold the 1 845 -6 opium monopoly to a notorious land speculator, George Duddell. But this, like numbers of Davis's actions, proved financially a failure, covering only local sales of the drug. Chinese dealers at once circumvented the regulations ­ by buying opium which they swore to export, and then selling it locally. Davis then amended the ordinance and raised £4, 275 by selling the monopoly to a group of Chinese business men. They, more realistic than the Governor, employed their own enforcement squads and an armed vessel to maintain their monopoly intact. Even so, profits declined and Davis replaced the monopoly in 1 847 with a system of licensing.

Martin continued to be a thorn in his flesh. His estimate of the colony's financial viability was one of extreme pessimism. Annual expenses in 1 844, Martin calculated, were £5 0,000, excluding defence and public works, and

Governor Davis - One against All 5 r

income was below £6,000. 6 He foresaw a permanent deficit budget - trade increasingly favouring other ports. Hong Kong, he said, was a 'small barren unhealthy and valueless island'. The two men quarrelled over China policy, and when Martin announced his intention to go to London to put his point of view Davis refused him leave. Martin went of his own volition, causing Davis to say he had in effect resigned. Martin's crusade in London against Hong Kong had only one effect - it was a factor in the setting up of a Parlia­ mentary Select Committee of Enquiry into the China Trade in 1 847.

There had been no way for Davis to dissuade Martin from his headlong rush into criticism and disparagement of the government. But in another incident in which judgement was required, Davis can be squarely faulted. Admittedly his opponent this time had the wholehearted backing of the mercantile community, a fact that_ should have forewarned the Governor.

J. W. Hulme had come out to Hong Kong to enjoy the benefits of a

generous salary which allowed him to provide for his large family, and to indulge his strongly convivial nature. Hulme and Davis were early set on a collision course when the former realized that the Police Magistrates Caine, in his second capacity, and C. B. Hillier, appointed by Davis, considered themselves as executive officers reporting directly to the Governor. Hulme remonstrated with Davis, holding the view that it was unethical for agents of the law to report directly to a political figure. Soon, in Eitel's words, 'the community began to take sides' - in fact to come down on Hulme's side of the dispute. An incident in the summer of r846 brought matters to a head. An obstreperous Englishman in Guangzhou pushed over a hawker's stall allegedly causing a riot, and was fined by Davis (in his capacity as Super­ intendent of Trade) $ 200 for damage estimated at $46,000. The offender, Charles Compton, took his case to the Supreme Court and Hulme, as Chief Justice, gave judgement in favour of the plaintiff, pronouncing Davis's sentence 'unjust, excessive, and illegal . . . evincing a total disregard for all forms of law . . . The whole proceedings were so irregular as to render all that occurred perfect nullity'. The two Magistrates, perhaps with Davis's con­ nivance, then began systematically to refer to the Supreme Court even the most trivial offences.

The ensuing public and unsavoury squabble, one of the more scandalous of

that series of atrabilious disputes which were periodically to rock Hong Kong's administration and society, remains perhaps unequalled in its vitu­ peration in colonial records. Davis wrote to the Colonial Office in indig­ nation: 'It will never do to have two plenipotentiaries in China, one doing justice to our ally [China] , and the other immediately undoing it.' As long as Hulme was in his post, the English in Guangzhou 'would feel they can shoot the Chinese with impunity'. In his mind there was no turning back. He had to get rid of the �hie£ Justice. A letter to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in London put his point of view officially; another, to Lord Palmerston,

5 2 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

privately alleged that Hulme was a habitual drunkard. Palmerston sent this letter to Lord Grey (the Colonial Secretary), despite its private nature. Grey, although the letter was private and not addressed to him, insisted that the charges were too serious to pass without public notice. He ordered Davis to allow Hulme the chance to refute them. Davis, who had never intended to bring Hulme's bibulous proclivities into the open, merely to use their existence privately to back up his case for getting rid of him, was completely nonplussed. He resigned in August r847 but had to stay on as Governor.

On Hulme's side of the affair there was a background animosity of an equally personal and petty kind. He and his family had taken passage to Hong Kong in the same ship as Davis, and when the whole party had to change vessels at Bombay, the Spiteful which was to take them onward was found to be too small to accommodate the Judge and his family as well as the Governor and his suite. Hulme had to follow in another ship which he said cost him an extra £25 0. Doubtless that rankled alongside the_later encounters with Davis's disdain of a community whose sympathies were all with Hulme. The public enquiry was held in November r847 in an atmosphere dangerously charged. Davis had little to do with it and the proceedings were perfunctory and irregular. There were three specific charges against Hulme: that at a public entertainment on 22 November r845 aboard the flagship HMS Agincourt in Hong Kong harbour, he was in such a state of intoxication as to attract public attention; that on 23 July 1846 in the house of Major­ General D'Aguilar, the Commander-in-Chief, he was intoxicated and unable to look after himself; and that he was a habitual drunkard. D'Aguilar, believing the Englishman's home to be his castle, sprang to the defence. Two members of the Executive Council, before which the hearing was held, who were called to give evidence against Hulme were therefore both his accusers and his judges; other witnesses were no longer i_n Hong Kong. Hulme explained his unsteady gait on the precarious grounds of his varicose veins. The outcome was that he was judged guilty of the first but innocent of the second and third charges. He was suspended from office. He left Hong Kong in the following month in a blaze of glory, replete with a gold snuff box and testimonials from the citizenry, firecrackers, and libations of champagne.

Davis appointed his secretary, W. T. Mercer, in Hulme's place.

But that was not to be the last of Hulme. The Colonial Office (with some wisdom) declared the charges against him not proven. Hulme returned to the colony, to the great satisfaction of Hong Kong society.

The Compton affair and other 'indignities' suffered by the British at the hands of the Chinese at Guangzhou, and the arrival of a dispatch from London, dated r2 January r847, urging the punishment of the Chinese guilty of such 'outrages', put Davis on his mettle. The Secretary of State assured him that:

Governor Davis - One against All 5 3

the British government will not tolerate that a Chi11:ese mob shall with impunity maltreat British subjects . . . and that, if the Chinese Authorities will not . . . punish and prevent such outrages, the British government will be obliged to take the matter into their own hands.



Davis seems to have taken this almost as a declaration of war. Eitel opines that he 'lost his head completely'. And certainly the champion of fair dealing for the Chinese now embarked on a strange course. Davis persuaded his Commander-in-Chief, D 'Aguilar, secretly to reconnoitre the defences of the forts guarding the mouth of the Zhu Jiang. Finding that they were virtually unmanned, he mobilized a force of r,ooo men and on the morning of 2 April 1 847 thre e naval vessels and a chartered steamer, with the Governor and the Major-General on board, set out for the Bogue. They took the forts and sailed up-river. The following day they landed the troops at Guangzhou.

After an interval, perhaps required to regain some composure at this totally unexpected turn of events, Qiying met Davis. The ensuing exchange of letters between them affirms what was demanded by Davis and what con­ ceded by Qiying. Eitel, unjustly, states that Qiying 'as usual satisfied [Davis] with empty promises'. In fact certain privileges were accorded to the British at Guangzhou, and Qiying did indeed mete out punishment to the various Chinese involved in assaults on British subjects there. His was a strong and subtle hand and he played it well, for he knew that short of all-out war the British could not impose their will in any but minor ways. 7 Qiying's policy was based on this. In one sense, however, Davis had won his private war and gained at least on paper the result that the British government wanted.

Davis, an isolated figu(e, sincere, often misguided in practical matters,

seldom deigning to consult informed or popular opinion, surprised when he found himse lf in an erudite minority of one, must have found his last months in Hong Kong a disappointing end to a frustrating term of office. The obloquy accorded him was all but unanimous - and was clearly demon­ strated when he presented a cup for an event at Happy Valley racecourse, a race for which not a single horse was e ntered.

To an extent he was unjustly maligned. His was not the fault that trade declined, but the community blamed him for it. His achieveme nts in putting the colony's administrative structure on a firmer basis were overlooked. He was too much the scholar to find acceptance among that raw community in Hong Kong. And. at his going the community pointedly ignored him. The comment in The Friend of China echoed popular opinion. 'Never, surely, in the Heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth, did there ever exist, embodied or disembodied, such a pleasant little gentleman as ,Sir John Davis. ' If the sarcasm is laboured, the message is loud

54 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

and clear. Another paper prefe rred a more direct approach, stating that the Gove rnor evidently preferred to walk out rather than to be kicked out.

Sir John, however, went on to an illustrious career in Chinese studies, founding a scholarship at Oxford for the study of the language, and receiving a baronetcy in r876. He died at the age of 9 5.

6. Early Victoria Fabric and Society



FEW substantial accounts of what Hong Kong was like as a place at the time of Davis's departure have survived. Perhaps few were written. Murdoch Bruce, Inspector of Buildings since Pottinger's time and a draughtsman of considerable accomplishment, has left among his other work a delightful picture of Spring Gardens in Wanchai (where there is still a lane of that name). The pillared verandahs of the houses face the harbour and boats drawn up at the quay, with Jardine's godowns in the distance. Women and children seem just to have landed and are talking to a bowing Chinese while another lady walks her dog. Not a whiff of opium sullies the air. We are far from the stews of Taipingshan and from the disorderly disputes of ant­ agonistic civil servants. This, on the surface, is a politer world.

The mild and learned missionary, James Legge, who served in Hong Kong

for 40 years, losing his wife and four of his six children to its endemic fevers, gave an account of the plate as it was during the time of Davis. 'The hillsides now occupied by the graceful terraces of our city then presented a very different appearance . . . '. From a little to the west of Possession Point 'the streets running down from [Hollywood Road] to the Queen's Road, were . . . indicated in rudimentary fashion . . . Eastward there was little but a naval store and tents and huts peopled by the 5 5 th Regiment'. East of that:

all was blank to the bluff where the civil hospital rises . . . On the other side of the road were some godowns . . . The next European buildings were Gibb, Livingstone & Co's premises, enclosed within a ring fence . . . where partners and employees still managed to reside.



Running up the sides of the Peak were



thread-like paths with a Chinese house here and there, but the ground was mainly boulder and sa,ndy gravel. Turning to the west where Wellington Street turns into Queen's Road you could see a few Chinese houses, and Jervois Street was in the

56 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

course of formation, [the houses to the north of it] having the waters of the bay [harbour] washing about among them.



From there eastward, Legge continues,



on to Pottinger Street, Queen's Road was pretty well lined with Chinese houses; the Central Market was formed; and on the other side were some foreign stores and a tavern or two. Looking up Pottinger Street you could see the Magistracy and the Gaol of the day [where later buildings with the same functions stand today] where the dreaded Major Caine presided.



Eastward a little:



a few English merchants had established themselves, and . . . the Commercial Inn was a place of great resort on the west of D' Aguilar Street, not then so named . . . and just opposite it was a small house called the Birdcage out of �hich was hatched the Hong Kong Dispensary. All the space between Wyndham Street and Wellington Street was garden ground · [with a house belonging to Mr Brain of Dent and Company] . That great firm had its headquarters where the Hongkong Hotel now is [where Central Building now stands] . On the Parade Ground [site of the present Hilton Hotel] was a small mat building . . . the Colonial Church: about where the Cathedral and Government Offices now stand [and still do] were the unpretending



Lieut. Walford Thomas Bellairs, RN (c. 1794-1850), pictured the young settlement of Victoria in June 1846.

..



An English school artist painted the same scene in the late 1840s.



Government Offices of that early time and the Post Office. Far up might be seen a barracks, out of which have been fashioned the present Albany residences [today's high-rise building still bears that name], and beyond the site of the present Govern­ ment House was a small bungalow where Sir Henry Pottinger and Sir John Davis after him held court . . . On the right was the General's House, looking much as it does now [Flagstaff House, as it was later named, remained the residence of Commanding Officers until a century aftei:: Legge was speaking, and later became the Museum of Tea Ware] .



The missionary goes on: 'Following the bend of the road . . . we came to Spring Gardens.' Then eastward there was 'little Morrison Hill' where the Education Society 'was in vigorous action'.



Arrived at the Happy Valley there were to be seen only fields of rice and sweet potatoes . . . and on the heights above it were rising two or three houses built by Mr Mercer of Jardine, Matheson & Co. All those proved homes of fever and death, and were soon abandoned. Beyond the valley . . . came the offices of the great firm [ Jardine's] with workmen still busy about them. 1



The Revd James Legge, the distinguished Scottish-born missionary and Chinese scholar, shown here with his assistants.



A glance at the maps opposite shows decisively how the pattern of Hong Kong's central area was thus haphazardly formed and how the plan of the late-twentieth-century city has scarcely changed in basic layout.

A radically different view of Hong Kong at this time is to be found in one of the two reports by Martin, the Colonial Treasurer, which Davis treated lightly but was later forced to reconsider. The climate was unhealthy, he wrote, the nature of the terrain would prevent the growth of a sizeable town, the decomposing granite on which the place stood gave out fetid odours productive of disease, the mandarins prevented respectable Chinese from coming to Hong Kong. The conditions for commercial prosperity were absent, and in any case the harbour was filling up with silt. 'I have in vain sought for one valuable quality . . . I can see no justification for the British _ government spending one shilling on Hong Kong.'

The British government, from time to time, then and later, was half­ inclined to agree. The Colonial Office wrote in Davis's time that 'the mer­ cantile body have altogether mistaken the object of Great Britain in the occupation of Hong Kong . . . [a place that] except for the security of commerce is unnecessary'.

The population of this 'unnecessary' place at the annexation had been estimated (in May 1 841) at 7,4 50 villagers and fishermen. By October of that year local papers were suggesting that it had risen to 15 ,000. In mid-1845 the Clerk to the Magistrate's Court, Samuel Fearon, reported that the first six

Early Victoria - Fabric and Society 5 9

months of the Registration Ordinance showed a total of 2 3 ,8 r7 persons in various categories (see Appendix 3 ).



VICTORIA IN 1845 KELLET� l�l..AND



CAU-$€WAY 6,A,'(





, , .•,, :•-.- .. .

,HE ROYAL 6ATTE.RY



•



VICTOP.IA IN 1848





VICTORIA HARBou io.

KELLET� l� LANO





VICTO R.IA PE A.I(,





MOUNT C,OUGl-4



Victoria in rf45 and 1848. From the haphazard scatter of buildings in the first few years of the settlement, a pattern of streets has taken shape. Major changes to the pattern took place only as later reclamations were made.

60 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

Fearon noted that British occupation had brought thousands of Chinese to Hong Kong, the majority Hakka, whom he describes as 'careless of moral obligations, unscrupulous, unrespected'. Such snap judgements made by Westerners are a constant feature throughout the history of the colony. They were made by men with no knowledge of the Chinese language, only the haziest idea of the structure of Chinese society, and almost no knowledge of the fundamentals of Chinese belief and custom: yet they were all automatic 'China experts' on setting foot in the colony. Their pronouncements were seldom consonant with the facts, and even more rarely in line with the opinions of people who understood the Chinese language and dealt face to face with the people so casually condemned.

One conclusion to be drawn from the population figures is that a great influx of Chinese immigrants occurred soon after the British arrived, but no estimate of turnover of the population is attempted. The population statistics reveal a startling preponderance of males over females in all sections of the community. Other figures spell out the context of life in a settlement under active construction. One report of r844 mentions roo houses being built, and in the r 84 5 Registrar's report the number of stone and brick buildings is put at 264 European and 43 6 Chinese, which allows more deductions to be made, given the large number of Chinese and the few foreign residents. Shortage of accommodation had prompted Pottinger to build housing for his principal officials (the Albany, mentioned by Legge), to which the Colonial Office objected. Future officials were to fend for themselves like the rest of the community - a source of conflict since they had not the means of earning the sums common among the merchants.

Government House when Davis had arrived was still the suite of three rooms by the Record Office, hastily erected for the reception of Qiying after the Treaty of Nanjing. Noting this, he wrote to Lord Stanley:



No residence at present exists for the Governor . . . beyond a detached ground floor of two or three rooms . . . Behind this is another . . . in which the Private Secretary sleeps. The inconvenience as well as the unhealthiness of such an abode might tempt me to incur an outlay of more than £1 0,000 on account of a Government House, according to a plan . . . now preparing: but I feel great reluctance to proceed on this without Your Lordship's approval, and until the lapse of this summer shall have determined whether the sickness and mortality of last year proceeded from . . . the public residence having been fixed on the north side of the ridge of which this island consists.



He toyed with the idea of moving the town to the southern shores which might prove more salubrious, but there was no deep water for a harbour there. Soon he moved up the hill to what had been Johnston's house, at one time rented by Pottinger. This was a two-storey building with large rooms





' /

'

� '

.... .

The formal reception of Qiying, the Chinese Imperial Commissioner, by the British authorities in

Hong Kong in November 1845 (left to right, as inscribed on the painting) : 'The Honble F. M. Bruce; Major Caine, Chief Magistrate; Lord Cochrane, ADC; M. General D'Aguilar; attendant Mandarin; Keying [Qiying] (quite unworthy of him) ; Chaou Chongling, Keying's Secretary; Mr Gutzlaff, Interpreter; Sir John Dent; Adml. Sir Thomas Cochrane; Capt. B. Tung, Prefect of Canton; attendant Mandarin'. Inscriptions for two further figures are missing from the right-hand margin.



and a verandah round three sides. In August :i 844 he wrote to Stanley: 'My own present residence (lately the Land Office) is quite commodious enough to enable me to dispense with any other one until order shall be received from home for its erection, but" the actual condition of the public offices' might necessitate permanent ones being built soon.

The plan for a Government House which Davis received did not please him, and he thought little of its draughtsman, the Surveyor-General Gordon.2 In May 1 845 he submitted to London that 'the principal remaining sources of extraordinary expenditure are the church, the Government offices and court of justice, and the Governor's residence - which last I am quite content to postpone until all others are completed'.

By the autumn of r 846 tenders were finally called for both Government House and government offices. The Commander-in-Chief, who had been building at his own expense, moved into his handsome Head Quarter (later Flagstaff) House. Davis then appears to have given up, as did the Colonial Office. In March r847 the required buildings had all been finished except a court house and Government House. With those exceptions Government Hill, as it came to be called (flanking what is now Garden Road), was sub­ stantially complete from the parade ground at its lower end up through the site of the government offices to the Government House site.



St John's Cathedral, the Parade Ground with troops drilling.



Under Davis a start had been made on roads, even if they were rudimentary and after rain frequently impassable. Little more than paths, they wandered over the hills to Aberdeen and Stanley, and west towards the military camp at Sai Ying Pun. The eventual aim was to construct a ring road around the island. Once roads reached the various villages, police stations were built in the more important ones - Aberdeen and Stanley. A cemetery had been laid out on the western side of Happy Valley in 1845 with a small chapel. The prison that had been put up was quite inadequate for the number of prisoners, with only r5 cells, and from it the chain gang emerged at dawn to work on road-building.

While crime was one continuing bane of the colony, another was disease. The annual summer fever epidemics varied in severity, giving the place an evil name. The year r843 was particularly bad, one regiment losing roo men between June and mid-August. A Committee of Public Health was set up but it achieved little. With such a flurry of construction, some essential drainage· was installed and after this there were years when fever, malarial and other, was a less serious killer. It was universally believed that its cause was the combination of heat and offensive smells - a thesis which hot, watery Happy Valley's death toll appeared to confirm. Its paddy fields having proved so unfavourable to health, the early houses there were soon empty. The siting there of the i,cemetery was perhaps an unconscious comment on the in­ salubrious lo2ation. By r846 the rice farmers were bought out, the valley drained, and the chain gang set to build a road around it for recreational purposes.

Early Victoria - Fabric and Society 6 3

One of the first Western institutions the foreigners brought to China was the hospital. An American ophthalmic surgeon, Dr Peter Parker, had estab­ lished one at Guangzhou in r83 5 which proved popular - he even pre­ scribed a truss for Lin Zexu's hernia. In Hong Kong a Parsee merchant named Herj eebhoy Rustomj ee offered $ r 2,000 for the construction of a seamen's hospital, but in the fragile state of Hong Kong trade he became bankrupt before he had paid up. Later, in r844, several commercial companies got together with subscriptions and a hospital was built on high ground near Morrison Hill. Davis had been refused a Colonial Surgeon on the grounds that only if 'private benevolence' proved insufficient could such an appoint­ ment be made. But a Dr A. Anderson was employed to treat the police and lower-grade government servants.

The beginnings of Western-style education may be traced to the transfer from Macau to Hong Kong of the Morrison Education Society School whose aim was to gain converts to Christianity by this means. The results were mixed. In part, the requirement of absorbing a Christian ethic in place of the traditional Chinese one tended to create a class of Chinese who, when they grew up, were inclined to despise their fellow men, whom they began to see (as Westerners at the time did) as inferior beings. The School principal, the Reverend Samuel Brown, noted that he had 'overheard students who had noticed an instance of "falsehood and low cunning" among Chinese, say with a look of disgust, "this is Chinese" '. 3 He had begun the process of Western­ ization that was to produce a group of Chinese whose superficial under­ standing of the West and of the English language fitted them for the mostly minor jobs in Western businesses which they filled with such acumen. Brown wrote:



To have a class of young Chinese men on whom we may depend for truth, even though partially educated, living among us in our public and private office, will assuredly be worth to the community all their educational costs. Nor will it be to our comfort and advantage alone, for such a class will influence others that have not enjoyed equal advantages with themselves.4



These solemn predictions were fulfilled in the future when just such young Chinese were to succeed (if unintentionally) in the task not of evangelizing China but of introducing revolutionary ideas from the West. What ip effect happened was the implantation of the idea in impressionable Chinese minds that China - Chinese civilization - lacked some ingredient of crucial value which only Western philosophy and religion could supply. It was inferred that the duty of those 'enlightened' Chinese was to pass that knowledge on. They did. A century of Western influence, sacred as well as secular, was to mould the Chinese and segments of China in ways that the Reverend Brown could not have envisaged and would have deeply disliked.

64 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

Accounts of Hong Kong in the r840s reveal a community divided into virtually non-communicating groups. The few scores of wealthy traders formed one such exclusive group of Westerners. They had little or nothing in common with other groups save that they all had to exist on a smallish island with few recreational outlets. They had little inclination for mingling with the Chinese although some had Chinese mistresses. There was a small but growing group of poor whites, mostly seamen who had settled in Hong Kong, characterized by Endacott in a resounding phrase as 'the off-scourings of the port', who made a living as best they could and tended to marry or live with Chin•ese women in Chinese residential areas, all but totally cut off from inter­ course with other Westerners. A large Parsee community kept itself to itself and had its own graveyard at West Point. Other Indians formed a tight group. And by Europeans and others the large Chinese community was treated with the thoughtless contempt due to people seen as natural inferiors. Hong Kong resembled some outlandish ant-heap inhabited by several species who closely resembled each other anatomically, but whose customs and habits inclined them to ignore each other most of the time so as to perform their separate functions - one dominant but numerically small species having the means to inflict its will on the others, who had little means of retaliation.

The Chinese were subject to laws which discriminated against them. Forbidden to go out of doors after nine in the evening unless bearing written permission, they were required even then to carry lanterns to signal their presence. The first Bishop of Victoria, the Right Reverend George Smith, on an exploratory visit in 1844- 6, expressed his view that the colony was quite unsuited to his intended missionary plans. Westerners, he wrote, were hated for their 'moral improprieties and insolent behaviour', which he saw even in their conduct in the streets. The Chinese, whose behaviour he also castigated, were 'treated as a degraded race of people'. 5

In the Hong Kong of those years could be seen in microcosm the beginning of what was to become 'the European century in China'. The macrocosm of great China brought, to use a Victorian phrase, to its knees, began with the insistent Western traders at Guangzhou and their demonstration of power in the annexation of Hong Kong and the exacting of treaties whose terms the West dictated at gunpoint. The passivity of the Chinese response was in parf a traditional reaction to what could not be avoided, and in part the seizing of the opportunity to co-operate with the foreigners as a means of self­ advancement. Thus the Chinese who most successfully understood the needs and ways of the foreigners became the most successful in financial terms, and often the leaders of Chinese society in places such as Hong Kong and the Treaty Ports.

With legitimate trade in the doldrums since it was confined to the Treaty Ports, Hong Kong got off to a shaky start. To offset this, traffic in opium became the mainstay along with the smuggling of salt (an imperial monopoly

Early Victoria - Fabric and Society 6 5

in China), and of tea. Davis had written in 1 845 that Chinese small boats came in numbers loaded with cargoes of tea which had not passed through the Chinese customs.

Since it was a free port there are no reliable figures for trade at this time, no record being kept on a colony-\vide basis of imports and exports. While the Harbourmaster kept shipping returns, these are no more than indications of trading volume (see Appendix 4). Ships called at Hong Kong for reasons other than trade - for the latest information on conditions in the area, for water, food, and other stores. All \Vere included in the lists.

British exports to Hong Kong were largely beer, gin, wines, earthenware, cotton goods, coal, meat, and iron bars. From India imports were mostly opium and cotton. The export of British manufactured goods via Hong Kong to China was less by about half a million dollars in 1 850 than the 1 844 figure. Chinese consumption of opium increased from 28,508 chests in 1 842 to 43 ,075 in 1 849. By 1 850 a memorandum from the Governor noted that at least three-quarters of the entire Indian opium crop from 1 845 to 1 849 was off-loaded at Hong Kong and re-shipped from there, most of the foreign vessels proceeding empty up the coast to engage in lawful trading at Shanghai, Tianjin, and Ningbo. On their return journeys they bypassed Hong Kong, one inducement being that at Huangpu island up the Zhu Jiang there were facilities for repair, whereas Hong Kong had none until the construction of the Lamont Dock at Aberdeen in 1 8 5 7.

On the whole, trade remained sluggish until the end of the decade, when a turn came in the economic tide. One factor was an increase in the river steamer trade with Guangzhou which offered faster transport and insurance for cargoes carried in the safety of large steamers. Another factor was the discovery of gold in California in 1 848 and the 'gold rush' which, along with the cataclysm of the Taiping Rebellion ( 1 8 5 0- 64) in China, sent waves of the homeless and starving to join the immigrants to America. Passage money for the Chinese at $ 50 a head was paid to the owners of ships and consignees in Hong Kong, materially assisting the economy.

As a result of large numbers of Chinese taking up residence on the other side of the Pacific, demand arose there for Chinese goods of many kinds, and ships began to be loaded with such commodities as rice, ginger, and other foodstuffs, as well as Chinese furniture and other household goods destined for the United States. The first reports of vessels with such cargoes came from the Harbourmaster in 1 849, rising from 23 in that year to 34 in 1 85 2.

In the wake of massive upheavals as the Taiping forces swept through wide areas of southern and central China, the Chinese population of the colony grew rapidly. From 1853 to 1 855 the numbers rose from 39 ,0 17 to 72, 607. There was even a transitory period when, to escape the Taiping threat to Guangzhou, the junk trade of that port transferred itself to Hong Kong. Through all this, smuggling became ever more extensive and intensive due to

66 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

the paralysis of the Chinese Imperial Customs. A downturn in this boom occurred when the Taiping armies cut through the great tea-growing and silk­ producing areas of China disrupting production for a time.

A Select Committee of Parliament set up in r847 'to enquire into the present state of the commercial relations between Great Britain and China' produced a report whose preamble made the point that so far as Hong Kong was concerned no great commercial advantage had been achieved. Rather, the treaty stipulations opening the Treaty Ports, thus encouraging shipping to sail directly to them and bypass Hong Kong, debarred it from performing its function as an entre pot to the region. Hong Kong also 'appears to have laboure d under other [disadvantages] , created by a system of monopolies . . . and petty regulations, peculiarly unsuited to its position and prejudicial to its progress'. These had been the result of action taken to maintain security and order 'in the midst of a vagabond and piratical population' and also from an intent to raise revenue for the maintenance of its civil govern-ment. The report thought this to be contrary to the true interests of the settlement. 'Nor do we think it right,' the report stated, 'that the burden of maintaining that which is rather a post of general trade . . . than a colony in the ordinary sense, should be thrown in any great degree on the merchants or other persons who may be resident upon it. ' A revision of the administrative structure was advised. The report also criticized the predicament of the Governor, responsible to the Colonial Office as Governor, and to the Foreign Office as Plenipotentiary and Superintendent of Trade.

The merchants were mollified by the implied agre ement with their anger

over the vague nature of the initial land tenure agreements, which seemed to point to there having been a breach of faith. Another important recom­ mendation was that 'a share in the administration of the ordinary and local affairs of the island should be given by some system of municipal govern­ ment to the British residents'. And they were reminded that the best interests of commerce between Britain and China would be served 'by studying a conciliatory demeanour'. The forme rly disgruntled merchants were pleased, viewing the report as heavy censure of Davis's policies.

Most of Hong Kong's inbuilt inadequacies and problems, natural and man-_

induced, had by this time reared their contentious, implacable, unlovely heads in a society frequently, and singularly, at odds with itself. The colony was more than ready for a new Governor.

Governor Bonham



IT was in the baleful grip of economic stringency that Sir Samuel George Bonham began his six-year governorship of Hong Kong. All who were connected with the colony - whether in the Colonial and Foreign Offices in London, in Parliament where the Hong Kong vote had to be annually approved, in India where the funds of the administration were largely dependent on the sale via Hong Kong of opium, or in the merchants' houses and ruling circles of the colony itself - all knew by the end of Davis's reign and the arrival of Bonham in March 1848 that the economy was in exceedingly poor shape. It was no longer possible to see Hong Kong in that hopeful light mostly thrown on its prospects in years past, and there were few who now felt the colony was a viable entity. One significant point came in December 1848 when 130 persons returned their landholdings. Forty-nine were speculative, but the remaining 76 belonged to genuine buyers des­ pondent at the failure of the bright prospect of former years. The present was uncertain, the future opaque. The revenue from land dropped by one-fifth.

It was said at the time that if Hong Kong were to receive an angel as governor it would still be dissatisfied. Bonham, no angel, managed however by means of a cordial, outgoing nature to be its first popular Governor. A Frenchman of the time described him as a bon vivant who performed his function tranquillement. He combined that aspect with the caution, pru­ dence, and disinclination to do anything imaginative which characterize the more conformist British civil servants. Whitehall, for once, seemed to have made the right choice.

Born in 1803 , son of a captain in the East India Company's Maritime

Service, Bonham was given a legal training before leaving for the East to join the Company's administrative arm. By 18 3 7, barely 34 years old, he ·was Governor of the Straits Settlements, Singapore, Malacca, and Penang. A decade later he was appointed to Hong Kong and set out, honoured with the Order of the Bath. As his career demonstrated, Bonham was not lacking in talent, but perhaps his meteoric rise reflected more the punctilious carrying out of Whitehall's orders than real brilliance. Eitel calls him 'this model Governor . . . of the Colony', 1 but Endacott offers as comment only that he



Sir Samuel George Bonham - a contemporary photograph which catches something of the Governor's character.



had 'a nice sense of what was better left alone'. 2 Palmerston thought Bonham's 'practical common sense'3 was his chief quality. Taken together, these sentiments sum up not only the man but his work in the colony.

He arrived, in stark contrast to the exit of Davis, to cheers from the community. His first priority, one which was to remain a major preoccupa­ tion, was to implement the decisions of the r 84 7 Select Committee. Inherent in any solution he might discover for the problems�it posed was the financial crisis. Without financial stability nothing could be tackled in a realistic manner. The gravity of the situation emerged in the first summer of Bonham's time when revised estimates showed even less revenue and higher expenditure than had been anticipated. This forced a request to London for funds, to which Earl Grey, Secretary of State, responded by pointing out that the Hong Kong vote had already gone through at £2 5 ,ooo and that was all that could be sent. Expenditure would have to be cut 'at whatever inconvenience'. He insisted on a 'rapid diminution in the parliamentary vote in future years' . The colony, in short, would have to pay its own way.

To make matters worse, the Board of Audit for the colonies now dis­ covered expenditure of £23 ,000 in Hong Kong's early days which had never been accounted for - Elliot and Pottinger having apparently drawn from military funds for government expenses. The ensuing financial tangle took five years to sort out, with an anxious Colonial Office fearing future Hong Kong votes might be in jeopardy. Earl Grey's attitude stiffened further.

Governor Bonham 69

In haste, Bonham cancelled all public works other than those in hand. And in a gesture of magnanimity unparalleled in all colonial history, he balanced the budget by delaying payment of his own salary until the following financial year. Little could he have expected the next blow from London. Earl Grey demanded that a rigorous investigation be made into every aspect of expenditure so as to make permanent rules for the better financial manage­ ment of Hong Kong.

The outcome of Bonham's investigations was a root-and-branch reorgan­ ization of the administration, involving the abolition of several positions and combining of two or more others as a single appointment. Thus, the offices of Treasurer, Colonial Surgeon, Surveyor-General, and Assistant Harbour­ master were abolished. The duties of Surveyor-General and Colonial Surgeon were to be performed by military personnel working part time , and the Chief Magistrate was to take on the work of Registrar-General with an increase in salary. The job of Treasurer was to be done by the Colonial Secretary and his salary reduced. The suggestion was made that the Foreign Office might pay one-third of the Governor's salary (for his work as Plenipotentiary). Police expenditure was to be reduced. Bonham described the Judiciary as 'the most overpaid and underworked department' and suggested stinging cuts in salaries. Not surprisingly, some officers at once resigned on account of their now uncertain future.

In the outcome, the post of Treasurer was not abolished, and the Colonial Secretary's job was combined with that of Auditor. The able Registrar­ General succumbed to the lure of the Californian gold rush of 1848 but was soon back in Hong Kong, down on his luck. Many of Bonham's drastic cuts in manpower, which were to take place as the posts fell vacant, proved unnecessary.

Bonham then tackled the military. His basic concept was that 1, 200 men forming six companies of British and three companies of Ceylon Rifles would be a sufficient garrison, its senior officer a colonel whose salary would be less than that of the usual major-general. He had intended to reduce numbers in the Artillery, Engineer, and Ordnance Corps, but such cuts would have meant that his own proposals to use military personnel part time in civil offices would be invalidated.

These swinge ing cuts had the desired result. The expenditure of £62,6 58 in 1 848 plunged to £3 6,418 in 185 3 and, on Bonham's retirement in 1854, to

£31,5 09. The parliamentary grant tumbled from £25 ,000 in 1848 to £8,5 00 in 18 5 3. The cost' of the army and navy, a charge on the British taxpayer, fell almost as dramatically from £80,778 to £50,346 in the same period. Yet Britain remained dissatisfied at the cost of maintaining Hong Kong. Bonham was seen to have done well, but the colony was regarded as a dubious asset. As he took measures to alleviate Hong Kong's financial problems, Bonham began to implement the Select Committee's wish to straighten out the tricky

70 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

question of land. The mercantile community had pointed out how unjust was the 'questionable policy' of making a small part of the community foot the bill for a colony maintained on behalf of all, and of British trade in general. They complained that rents were too high because at the original land auctions too few lots had been offered, causing unwarranted competition for them, rents thereby being driven up. They wanted lower rents on rented property, and revision of lease agreements.

Bonham's response was to set up a Land Committee in 1 8 50 and he asked aggrieved lot-holders to place their claims before it. In spite of the vehemence with which they had made a case to the Colonial Secretary in London, only 11 of them complied. Of those, five had their claims about excessive rents recognized - half of the land involved belonging to the notorious land speculator George Duddell. Eventually the land question burned itself out. Later a single payment secured ownership and an annual 'rate' was set.

On taxation Bonham took the pulse of the people and said no to any fundamental change. The merchants, however, were not satisfied. In January 1 849 they sent a petition to Parliament regretting that apart from the land problem, little had been done to implement the directives of the Select Committee, most importantly on the question of giving citizens a say in the affairs of the colony. They again pointed out that since the island was essential for the conduct and protection of the China trade as a whole, the cost of its administration should not fall on them alone. Some sort of juris­ diction should be theirs. But this produced no tangible result.

Bonham, discovering that there were only 23 persons in the colony fit under the property qualification to serve as jurymen, reduced the sum involved from $1 ,000 to $5 00. In January 1 849 he published a draft ordinance designed to regulate the flogging of prisoners. At this the residents rose up in protest, insisting that flogging was the only means to punish Chinese criminals. Prudently, faced with this unexpected hitch, Bonham mothballed the measure and turned to weightier matters.

He now made an attempt to remove the friction between the Police Magis­ trates and the Chief Justice which had so inflamed Hulme and cost Davis his last shred of credibility. He created a bench of magistrates to be independent of government, with powers greater than those generally accorded, by estab__, lishing a Court of Petty Sessions. This was a failure. The low level of expertise displayed by the Court was not conducive to the aims for which the Court had been set up, and Hulme, the Chief Justice, apparently still sensitive to possible slights to his authority, was unhappy about it. As ever, the ground­ swell of bitterness and jealousy that seemed as endemic as Hong Kong's fevers took charge of saner councils.

Lord Grey had asked Bonham to suggest two men who would make worthy additions to the Legislative Council. The Governor asked the unofficial Justices of the Peace to nominate two persons, the decision to be

Governor Bonham 71

officially his own. They were sworn in. He then asked the Justices if they would take control of the Police provided they could raise additional revenue to make up the deficit in the Police rate. They refused. But Bonham was unjustly accused of establishing the Justices, at the stroke of a pen, as a new

'untitled commercial aristocracy'.4 Hulme was delighted at this failure and

remained wary of Bonham. Hulme retired in 185 4, replete with a document

testifying to the community's high esteem and to his 'undeviating impartiality and uprightness', a commendation which Eitel quotes without comment.5

Yet another administrative conundrum, for which no precise model existed in other colonies, was how to deal with a Chinese population often exploited on account of their ignorance of British law, and subject to abuse by their fellow men who secured Supreme Court affidavits, alleging some civil mis­ demeanour by newly arrived persons, and then extorted money from them. The Chinese petitioned Bonham for permission to settle in their own way those cases in which the participants were all Chinese. The truth of the matter was that the petition was designed to regularize what had for years been fact

- no such cases had come before the Supreme Court in the past six years. The thirty thousand or so Chinese residents of the colony were now a force and a voice to be harkened to - their activities accounted for about one­ quarter of all trade - and Bonham complied. He put through an ordinance empowering Chinese headmen to settle civil disputes provided that all parties were willing to abide by their decisions. The headmen were to be salaried, the money coming from special rates collected from the Chinese, who were to set the level of such taxes themselves. The ordinance was a voluntary one, to operate only in those Chinese districts which asked for it.

Whatever the cause, the crime rate did fall during Bonham's term of office. The 674 felonies of 1850- dwindled to 471 in 185 3. Yet the colony was far from tranquil. Piracy was still an everyday occurrence. A series of engage­ ments between the navy and pirate fleets resulting in naval victory was greeted with great joy in 'commercial circles', their gratitude taking the form of presentation services of silver plate with £ 200 each to the two captains involved. The pirate menace was, however, not susceptible to eradication at this time, however effective naval action might now and then be.

The Taiping Rebellion, begun in 185 o and not suppressed until 1864, was led by a deluded Chinese who had elaborated his own version of Christianity. The repercussions of the Rebellion in China, whose ravages eventually cost the lives of an estimated twenty million people and the almost total destruc­ tion of livelihood 'in several provinces, made for pandemic lawlessness which spilled over into Hong Kong as it did into other areas of China itself. Bonham, as he left the colony, remarked that 'to suppress [piracy] is im­ possible without the co-operation of the Chinese government. This . . . I have repeatedly requested without avail'. And in the current lawless state of China he was correct in supposing that it would not be forthcoming.

72 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

J.

As ever when trouble erupted in China, the population of Hong Kong swelled. The 1 848 total of 21,5 14 became 39,107 by 1 853 . And one interesting detail emerged - the percentage of females among the Chinese population grew from one-fifth to one-third, a clear sign that more families were taking up residence in contrast to the former immigrant gangs of male labourers. The European population showed a much smaller increase - from 642 to 776, excluding the armed services. The murder of M. F. Amaral, the Governor of Macau, in late 1 849 sent a wave of Portuguese flying to the security of Hong Kong. The housing situation for this swelling number of peopie improved with the construction of more houses, and by 1 8 5 3 there were 491 European and 2,41 6 Chinese houses recorded. In the Chinese residential area of Taipingshan the great fire of 28 December 1 85 1 resulted (apart from the tragic casualties) in the clearance of the area, in reclamation of land from the harbour, and in the construction of Bonham Strand, pro­ viding more space to build on - a project under the Governor's liberal influence.

As trade gradually improved, confounding the merchants' pessimism, financial retrenchment became less important, permitting the completion on 1 October 1 85 5, to a design by Charles Cleverly, of Government House at a cost of £14,940. But the delays had been so long that Bonham never lived in it. He spent the remainder of his term in Spring Gardens in a house with a 'fine well of spring water'.

The trend towards financial improvement was not, however, accompanied

by sustained diminution in another of the colony's hardships - the epidemics of various fevers. Life cannot have been carefree in a community which, in 1 848, had a mortality rate from fever among Chinese civilians of r. 14 per cent, among non-European (Indian) troops of 5 .14 per cent, and among European military personnel of 20.43 per cent. The-next year was better, but in 1 850 the European civilian death toll amounted to 10 per cent, and the rate among European troops was 23 .94 per cent. Incredible as it may appear, the Colonial Office stubbornly refused money for a hospital for civilians. Bonham, on his own initiative, took a house for the purpose. Disease, fluctuating in severity from year to year, continued sporadically to threaten the life and serenity of the colony.

The presence of the Taiping rebels at Nanjing, where their headquarters had been established in March 1 85 3, cast doubts over the always fragile relationship between China and Hong Kong. Bonham had no intention of exacerbating relations between Beijing and the Tian Wang or Heavenly King (as the leader of the Taiping rebels styled himself) now enthroned at Nanjing. He tried in fact to maintain strict British neutrality. Yet he was anxious to see for himself the realities of the situation. With the backing of the merchant communities of both Hong Kong and Shanghai, he left on HMS Hermes in March 1 85 3 for Nanjing. The home government withheld approval.

Governor Bonham 73

The Taiping Rebellion in China presented something of a mystery to Westerners in Hong Kong and elsewhere. It had been set off in r85 o by a Chinese who had absorbed a garbled version of Christianity from missionary activities in Guangdong Province. The army which he gathered together, in order to impose his version of the Christian faith on China, was at first well disciplined, but later turned into a scourge, a marauding rabble, looting and killing, razing whole towns as it swept through the country. There was some hope in foreign minds, at least in the beginning, that the Manzhu govern­ ment might be unseated by this 'Christian' force 'which would be more likely to bring about that moral regeneration of the nation without which China would never fully enter into the comity of nations'. Eitel, whose pronounce­ ment this was, shared the general opinion that the Chinese were uncivilized and that only Christianity could convert them into one of the right-thinking peoples of the world. It was an opinion that powered almost the whole of nineteenth-century Western thinking not only about China but about the rest of the world, and which was responsible for many a bizarre policy.

Bonham went to Nanjing to explain to the Taiping leaders the concept of

British neutrality, just as he and others had tried to impress this on the Imperial government of China. The proposition was viewed rather differently by the Chinese who had discovered that such neutrality was non-existent except when it was to British advantage. Bonham discovered in Nanjing that any hope of a stable (far less truly Christian) regime in China in the event of a major Taiping victory over the Imperial Qing government was mere illusion. The Taiping were as anti-foreign and un-Christian as the Manzhu. He returned a wiser man, unfairly castigated by the home government for having gone at all.

The Bonham years, as all agreed when he retired in r 85 4 at the age of 5 o,

had proved much better than those of Davis. Trade had picked up with the discovery of gold in California and Australia, Chinese immigrants to both areas passing through Hong Kong, and the depredations of the Taiping rebellion produced a continuing flood of immigrants to the territory. Japan was just beginning to open up to fore.ign trade at American prompting, and Hong Kong was now regularly visited by flotillas of square-rigged American whalers. An ice-house had been built at the foot of a street in central Victoria, to the gratification of Westerners boiling in their heavy Victorian British clothing in the heat of the colony's summers. Ice came from Alaska packed in straw or sawdust, and was dragged up from the shoreline to the ice-house on Queen's Road where Ice House Street, still so named, met it at the water's edge. Regular steam-ship sailings between Europe and the colony were established, the telegrams they carried from Hong Kong being sent off by wire when the ships reached Trieste or Gibraltar. Yet, oddly enough, this quickening in the pace of communication was not entirely welcomed by the merchants since it also heightened the competition. The formerly leisured life

74 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

in which fortunes were made in a year or two became marginally more taxing. It now took a decade to make a fortune.

It was during Bonham's time that the Governor's jurisdiction over the consuls in the Treaty Ports, established at the Treaty of Nanjing, was abolished, but the separation of gubernatorial powers from those of Superintendent of Trade was to take several more years.

Bonham was on the whole a reasonable man, and his term of office reflects that. His one curious failing was a firm belief that the study of the Chinese language warped the intellect and undermined the capacity for good judge­ ment: This belief caused him to appoint and promote men who had no knowledge of the language, something hardly conducive to a better under­ standing of the majority of the colony's inhabitants.

BowringJs War with China



TH E next Governor of Hong Kong was a man of re stless energy, gre at conceit, and brilliant mind. The complexity of his character was such that he defeated his own cherished ambition - to attain the status of an inte r­ nationally known and respected figure. An appraisal of his character and care er is relevant to the consideration of his work as Gove rnor in early Hong Kong, at a time when gove rnors and their actions exercise d a more telling effect on the colony than in later times.

Sir John Bowring was 57 when he first came to the East. He would not have done so but for his ill luck in losing his fortune by injudicious investment in an ironworks which faile d in a trade depression, forcing him to seek an income -producing appointment. Bowring had been privately educated and apprentice d to an Exeter merchant, later working in London as a clerk and gaining experience during the course of business journeys to various European countries. He then set up in business for himself and acquired a smattering of various languages, 1 coming to se e his role in life in promoting the dominance of 'commerce and Christianity in natural and necessary alliance' - a curi­ ously English nineteenth-century concept.

At 3 2 he became editor of the Westminster Review whose championship of radical views under Jeremy Bentham was much to Bowring's taste. He began making translations from various languages and was awarded a doctorate by Groningen University in Holland in 1829. Eitel, with some justification, comments: 'to use . . . his own epigrammatic critique of Byron . . . more could be said of his genius than of his character . . . His natural abilities were marked by great versatility but appeared to lack in depth'. 2

Standing for Parliament for Bolton, he was electe d in 1841, and took an interest in Hong :Kong affairs, perhaps, as Endacott suggests, because his son was with Jardine 's. Bowring then took the post of Consul at Guangzhou in 1849, where he seems to have aroused unfavourable comment from the me rchants there from the start. His own remarks a little later when he was appointed Governor of Hong Kong bear out the impression of conceit in his character: 'Tb China I went . . . accredited not to Peking alone but to Japan, Siam, China, and Corea, I believe to a greater number of human beings



Sir John Bowring, an engraving by W. Holl from the portrait by Bryan Edward Duppa ( fl,. 183 2-5 3 ).



(indeed no less than one-third of the human race) than any individual has been accredited before. '3

Bowring left Guangzhou on medical grounds and returned to England where he was knighted and secured the governorship of Hong Kong. 'Thus', writes the sarcastic Eitel, 'bearing his blushing honours thick upon him, he sailed to China with the sound of glory ringing in his ears. '

Within a fortnight of his arrival on r3 April r85 4, Britain declared war against Russia, and Hong Kong feared that the Siberian fleet might attempt intervention in its waters. Bowring rushed off northward in an effort to inter­ cept the fleet, but this turned out to be a wild-goose chase since the Russians had already departed. Still, fear of sea-borne attack lingered, rising to panic proportions in June r85 4 when the Lieutenant-Governor summarized the defenceless state of the colony. Batteries were put up at once. Hong Kong patriots subscribed £2, 5 00, and sent it to London to aid 'the noble struggle against Russian Aggression' in the Crimean War.

The question of separating the governorship from the other functions attached to it arose again at this time, in r85 4, a solution being adopted by the Colonial Office in the form of a reprehensible compromise, with Bowring the hapless victim. It was decreed that he was to act as Plenipotentiary and Superintendent of Trade, but to be Governor in name only. William Caine became Lieutenant-Governor with the clear understanding that he and he alone had control over the local colonial administration. To give him his due, Bowring, his salary cut in half, at first tried to make the best of a ludicrous position and, seated as he was in the new Government House, must have felt it keenly. 'I have China, Corea, Siam. I have no time for Hong Kong', he said.

Bowring�s War with China 77

Inevitably it was not long before he began to interfere with Caine's juris­ diction and encountered the latter's justified resentment. When the matter was referred home, Lord Palmerston put an end to the anomalous situation and made Bowring Governor in fact, but with no rise from half pay.

How this came about is worth recording, a typical instance of the way the affairs of the colony turned into acrimonious confrontations between adr.oini­ strators and others. In February r85 5 a temporary Colonial Chaplain was appointed in the person of the Revd William Baxter who came out from England. ' Belatedly it was discovered that he was a fugitive debtor. Bishop Smith refused to countenance him. An army chaplain was then appointed as a stopgap, but Bowring objected, demanding to know who had authorized the appointment. Caine replied that he had first consulted both the Bishop and members of the Executive Council, and presumed Bowring would agree. This precipitated a divergence of opinion about who should preside over the Council - Bowring saying that he should always be chairman, even if what was under discussion related solely to Hong Kong (over which Caine ruled). Palmerston, tardily, saw the position was 'an administrative solecism'. It may perhaps be wondered why he had not seen that in the first instance. Bowring then suggested that Caine should be retired, but Palmerston declined that since Caine had not been the cause of the problem. Caine remained, power­ less, in the sinecure post of Lieutenant-Governor until his retirement in r85 9. For a candid look at Bowring's Hong Kong at this time, a certain Albert Smith, an entertainer from London, offers a forthright note. 'To breakfast with Sir John Bowring, walking up pretty winding paths with wild con­ volvulus and bamboo blooming all the way. Found him in the garden with a native cutting flowers for the table. '4 Smith had a good eye for his unfamiliar

surroundings.



As we drove along the Happy Valley [we] passed Mr Jardine's at East Point . . . the granite rocks coming nearly down to the sea - water rills falling - Chinese graves and fishing stations all the way. Many people out in carriages, and some Yankees in light iron four-wheeled trotting gigs ; and also a string of Mr Jardine's horses led out for airing by black grooms.5



Albert Smith continues, remarking that the local 'journals are mostly filled with infinitesimally unimportant local squabbles, in which the names of Mr Anstey, Mr Bridges, Ma-chow-wang, Sir John Bowring, and Mr Caldwell are pitched about here and there'. 6

Bowring was nothing if not busy. His policy towards China was to result in war, yet in England he had been the vociferous president of the Peace Society, whose aims were the abolition of war and the settlement of international disputes by conciliation. The inherent contradiction between his policies and his philosophy is evident in his attempts to make friends with Hong Kong

78 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

Chinese by talking with them in Cantonese, and by attending their parties and theatrical entertainments. At the same time his attitude to problems with the Chinese authorities in China was to approach in summary fashion with the threat of force. Yet he tried to be fair to all, rescuing a wrongfully imprisoned British subject from the Chinese, and being conspicuously even­ handed to Chinese involved in Consular Court cases at Guangzhou. The Hong Kong Chinese thought him fair-minded and often tried to enlist his services. But he combined mildness towards them with total inflexibility when it came to the slightest infraction of the treaties between Britain and China.

Bowring's instructions on China were to avoid the use of force: yet he was ready with threats to get his way in a situation which he must have known had existed ever since the treaties were signed. This concerned British nationals in Guangzhou. In theory they had freedom of movement there, but were often molested, sometimes on account of their own high-handed attitude to the Chinese; and their right of residence had now and then been denied. As Governor, Bowring dealt with the Imperial Commissioner Yeh

Mingchen, to whom he wrote on 17 April r85 4 (four days after his arrival in Hong Kong) requesting a meeting. Yeh replied on 25 April that he would be

glad to see Bowring but that military campaigns were taking all his time. On the same day Bowring wrote again to the Commissioner, saying that he had been instructed to revise the Treaty of Nanjing, to gain entry to Guangzhou, to obtain the abolition of the tea commission, to establish regular meetings with Chinese officials, to lease land for merchants in Henan, and to obtain redress for Britons attacked by Chinese. He insisted that meetings be held in Yeh's yamen (official residence). Two days later he wrote again, to the effect that such meetings should take precedence over Yeh's military affairs. And on the following day he wrote once more urging payment of the debt of a Chinese to an Indian merchant. On 7 May Yeh replied that he could not force the people of Guangzhou to admit foreigners into the city; that the tea commission was introduced not by his government but by foreign tea merchants; that leasing land should be agreed between the parties concerned; that Chinese officials were not trying to avoid foreign envoys. He promised to write separately on the proposed meeting. In a separate letter on the same day - Yeh proposed to meet the Governor on 22 May outside Guangzhou. The furious pace of this correspondence was one set by Bowring.

This situation continued until an incident, in itself trivial, brought war. The makings of the trouble were simple. Chinese owners of ships who were lessees of Crown Land in the colony were allowed, under an ordinance of r85 5, the protection of the British flag as if their ships were British-owned. To achieve this all they had to do was to inscribe the names of their vessels on the colonial register. Not surprisingly, with piracy rife, many did so. One of these ships was the lorcha Arrow, Chinese-owned and with a British captain. Un-

Bowring's War with China 79

fortunately when the incident occurred its registration had expired. When boarded at Guangzhou by the Chinese authorities in the autumn of r85 6, the crew were imprisoned, charged with piracy. Typically, the Governor went on the attack at once, on r2 October. He defended the Guangzhou Consul's (Harry Parkes) demand for an apology and the swift return of the crew. He then wrote that, his two-day ultimatum having expired, the navy had taken an imperial junk hostage. On 21 October Yeh replied that no flag was flying when the Arrow was boarded, that its crew testified to its Chinese ownership, and that the registration had been bought at Hong Kong. He requested that further sales of registrations should cease, as laid down in the treaty. In a subsequent letter Yeh asked by which section of the treaty was it permissible for the navy to take Chinese ships hostage in the Zhu Jiang.



, . -- ·,

·��\{��·

1 ...- �

I •





.- .-A



Sir Harry Parkes, British Consul at Guangzhou, taking his leave of the old Co-hong merchants.



This minor incident was made by Bowring the excuse for hostilities. The real cause was the underlying grievance that the Chinese would not consent to treaty revision. The Treaty of Nanjing in fact contained no clause relating to revision, and the Chinese were entirely within their rights in refusing it. They were, however, foolish not to have learned the lesson taught them by the Royal Navy in previous confrontations.

80 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

Bowring saw the affair as his chance to settle once and for all the question of his right to official meetings with Chinese representatives at Guangzhou, and to secure safe entry for British personnel into that city. His advisers, Parkes and Thomas Wade, an interpreter at the Supreme Court trained by Gutzlaff, saw it (and Parkes stated this) as the inevitable conflict between Christian civilization and semi-civilized paganism. Admiral Sir Michael Seymour, Senior Naval Officer, Hong Kong, then bombarded and demolished some Chinese forts and the Commissioner's house in Guangzhou. But Yeh had already moved out. Seymour continued with more bombardments, but Yeh did not give in. He was in a strong position, able to command large reinforcements. Whereupon Bowring's policy was upheld and an expedi­ tionary force was dispatched from England. The force was diverted to deal with the Indian Mutiny, and it was not until the final month of r8 57 that Britain, joined by France which had grievances of its own, was ready for war. In the long interval, a continuous stream of letters passed between Bowring and the properly obstinate Yeh, and between Bowring and the Viceroy of Guangdong-Guangxi. The politeness of the Chinese in their missives is remarkable; they never give an inch and continue stone-walling in diplomatic language, even congratulating Bowring for not assisting the rebels when the

Taiping threat to Guangzhou was at its most hazardous.

Palmerston now decided to sever the powers of Plenipotentiary from the governorship of Hong Kong, removing Bowring from the former and sending out Lord Elgin as Plenipotentiary in July 1 85 7. Negotiations with the Chinese were continued by Elgin, totally ignoring Bowring. Guangzhou was taken in early r85 8 and the allied forces moved north where a treaty was signed in June at Tianjin. Separate treaties were signed by China with Britain, France, the United States, and Russia. These may, however, be regarded as one settle­ ment because of the operation of the most-favoured-nation clause, by which what China granted to one nation she must grant to others.

The treaties contained provision for the exchange of ministers, granting them right of residence in Beijing, and excusing them from performing the kowtow. Foreigners were permitted to travel within China with their pass­

ports countersigned by local Chinese authorities; the opening of ro ports to trade was projected, with foreign ships allowed to trade on the Yangzi · (Yangtze River); warships could call at any Chinese port for supplies and

repairs; missionaries were to be allowed into China and protected by the Chinese government; British Consuls were to have jurisdiction in disputes between British subj ects, while a mixed court of Consul and Chinese Magistrate would settle those between British and Chinese; in criminal cases the accused would be tried under the laws of his own country. Four million taels each were to be paid to Britain and France as reparation (for a war they had carried into China). The use of the character yi (barbarian) was forbidden.



The signing of the Treaty of Tianjin on 26 June r 8 5 8. Lord Elgin is seated centre, and Admiral Seymour is at the table on the right .with Gui Liang. He and Hua Shang (left) were Imperial Commissioners.



A supplementary agreement was worked out at Shanghai in October in which, for Hong Kong at least, the most significant change was the im­ position of a tariff duty on the importation of opium. In effect this legalized the opium trade, and the hopes of decades of merchants at last became a reality. The duties were to be collected by the newly formed Chinese Mari­ time Customs Service, established in r85 4 and headed by its first Chinese Inspector, the bravely named Horatio Nelson Lay.

The Imperial Commissioner (and stubborn patriot) Yeh met a sad fate. He was captured in the taking of Guangzhou in January 1 858 'when his apart­ ments were . . . burst into . . . by blue jackets of HMS Sanspareil and he was, while climbing over a wall, caught in the strong arms of Sir Astley Cooper Key whilst Commodore Elliot's coxwain "twisted the august tail of the Imperial Commissioner round his fist" '. 8 The temper of the times· implicit in this is evident in the combination of schoolboy glee and the total inability to see the Chinese side of the coin.

Yeh was sent into exile in Calcutta where he died. While in.Hong Kong en route, Bowring at last had the chance to see him aboard a naval vessel. But Yeh, unbowed in defeat, refused to talk, and the Governor's little triumph in the meeting rang somewhat hollow. Guangzhou was now governed by a mixed commission consisting of Harry Parkes, the Consul, a Royal Marine officer, a French naval officer, and Governor Pi Chengzhao.

82 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

The Chinese refused to ratify the Treaty of Tianjin, an act of foolhardiness as disastrous as it was brave. The treaty made China the plaything of Western political and commercial ambitions. To ratify it was to hand over the country to foreign control. Ratification was only obtained after the Anglo-French occupation of Beijing and the sacking and burning of the Imperial Summer Palace in r 860. The eventual treaty contained yet further provisions favour­ ing the Western powers. Tianjin became a Treaty Port; at Hong Kong, Kowloon Point and Stonecutters island were ceded to Britain in perpetuity, and the recruitment of Chinese labour for work abroad was permitted. The direct gains for Hong Kong were the de facto legalization of opium, the acquisition of strategic territory, and the profits which would accrue from the traffic in coolies passing through the colony.

Bowring, lately shorn of his appointment to the millions of whom he had boasted, was now in charge solely of the few thousands in Hong Kong, and the Supreme Court was soon to cease to be the appeal court of British subjects in the Treaty Ports. The post of Superintendent of Trade was given to the British Minister in Beijing:

In the period leading up to the Treaty of Tianj in, Hong Kong was intimately embroiled in the conflict. Bowring, having instituted a policy, found, after the first attack on Guangzhou in November r85 6, that he was unable to press it home. Commissioner Yeh perceived Admiral Seymour's withdrawal with his small force as a Chinese victory, and ordered no co-operation with the British. Setting fire to the Guangzhou factories, he also destroyed the port facilities at Huangpu island. And then placards began to blossom in Hong Kong urging the Chinese to struggle against the foreigners.

There can be no doubt of the depth of Chinese resentment. A month or so after this exchange of letters,9 in January r85 7, Westerners eating their fresh breakfast bread, baked by the E Sing Bakery owned by a Chinese named Cheong Ah Lum, became suddenly ill, some of them seriously. It was soon discovered that the cause was a plentiful dosage of arsenic added to the bread. Luckily enough, the quantity was so generous that most people quickly vomited their breakfast and absorbed little of the poison. Prudently, Ah Lum had left with his family for Macau before breakfast. Brought back, he alleged that he too had been poisoned. He was tried and acquitted, but 5 2 of his employees were thrown into gaol. That facility being temporarily full, their actual destination was a r5 -feet-square room in a police station where they were to remain for four days. Ten of them were then tried, but the rest suffered fQE another r 5 days in that Black Hole of Hong Kong before release. It says much for the residents, European and Chinese alike, that their vigorous protests were what secured the prisoners' release, although with the proviso that they leave the colony.

Hundreds more Chinese were deported. The baking of bread was taken

Bowring�s War with China 83

over by George Duddell, one of the colony's most devious crooks. Shortly after, his bakery burned down, doubtless on Chinese orders.

The story was not yet ended. William Tarrant, editor of The Friend of China, took it upon himself to sue Ah Lum for damages, and was awarded

$1 ,000. Prudence once more prompted the baker to quit Hong Kong before Tarrant could collect his winnings. Not to be cheated, Tarrant then accused Dr T. W. Bridges, the Acting Colonial Secretary, of letting the culprit escape. Bridges then brought a suit for libel against Tarrant who was forced to pay froo compensation - a sum subscribed by sympathizers. This was the 'infinitesimally unimportant' squabble that Albert Smith read about during his visit.

Before the ratification of the treaty, Hong Kong was a tense place. The

poisoning was but one incident heightening the nervousness that people felt and tending to exacerbate the series of public scandals and bouts of out­ rageous behaviour during the years of Bowring's governorship. One source of dispute was the Attorney-General, T. Chisholm Anstey, a rabid, prejudiced man who seemed incapable of minding his own business and was frequently overcome by the desire to mind others' for them. The Times, with commend­ able restraint, called him 'a man of imperfectly regulated energies'. His first target in Hong Kong was the barrister, Dr T. W. Bridges, whom he indirectly accused of extortion and malpractice. Bridges was a colourful character, a barrister who advertised his services in two brightly coloured signs in English and Chinese outside his office in Queen's Road. He lent money at exorbitant rates of interest, and his chambers were often stacked with goods left as security. Accusations were levelled at him of having had financial dealings, while he was Acting Colonial Secretary, with the man who obtained the opium monopoly at that · time. A committee of enquiry found that, while Bridges accepted a 'retaining fee' from the monopolist, this could not be regarded as cumshaw - the local term for a bribe.

Escaping once from Anstey's zeal, Bridges was soon implicated in an

enquiry into the affairs of Daniel R. Caldwell, Registrar-General and Pro­ tector of the Chinese. Caldwell was accused of irregularities in the licensing of brothels, and of consorting with Ma Chow Wong, a notorious informer on pirate activities who in the end turned pirate himself. The scandal of succulent quality which then convulsed colonial society formed another part of the newspaper reports that amused Albert Smith. The commission of enquiry found Caldwell guilty of four of Anstey's r9 charges, yet by some process of chop logic at the same time found that his guilt was not such that he should be dismissed. Nor was guilt sufficient to prevent his continuance as a Justice of the Peace.

The depths to which members of the administration could sink were demonstrated when, during the enquiry, it appeared that documents found at

84 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

Ma Chow Wong's house implicated Caldwell, and that these had been burnt by Bridges to whom, conducting an enquiry on Caldwell's behalf, they were taken. Tarrant, irrepressible, offered the opinion in his newspaper that Caldwell had been cleared by deception, by a 'contemptible and dramatic trick on the part of the Government'. For this he was charged with libel. At his trial Bridges admitted having destroyed the papers, and to being a close friend of Caldwell. Tarrant was then acquitted and even managed to extract damages from the government.

Tarrant continued to write of Caine's 'compradoric methods'. Caine, about to leave the colony for good, judged it time to clear his name, in­ stituting proceedings for libel after a 'particularly sharp comment' in The Friend of China in August r85 9. Shrewdly, Caine retained the services of every barrister in the colony to conduct his defence, forcing Tarrant to conduct his own. Tarrant was found guilty, fined £ 50, and sent to gaol for a year. But questions about the case were asked in Parliament and his release ordered. He was at once gaoled again for debt to Bridges but once more saved by public subscription. There was no doubt that public sympathy lay with Tarrant. His zeal in upholding the public good, however, was heavily admixed with the desire to sell more copies of his newspaper.

The Times in London summed up the situation in Hong Kong during these

days: 'Every official man's hand in Hong Kong was against his neighbour . . . and any attempt to deal in London judicially with these congeries of intrigues, accusations, and animosities must fail. ' With a nice turn of wit, the Colonial Secretary, Bulwer Lytton, when asked in the Commons to lay the papers dealing with the accusations on the table, replied that he 'shrank from the responsibility . . . '. He 'would rather lay the table on them'. They revealed, he said, 'hatred, malice, and uncharitableness in every possible variety and aspect' of Hong Kong life.

How much of this profound social disarray was to be traced to the tensions and unease generated by the situation vis-a-vis the Chinese, and how much to the inability of Bowring to take firm control of his administration, must remain a matter for argument; but assuredly the Governor was at odds with the majority sentiment in the colony. The legislation he introduced affecting _ the Chinese conflicted sharply with the liberal sentiments he expressed at other times. The need to cope with a situation which he had basically failed to control caused him to over-react, and this in turn induced popular counter­ reaction of some strength.

Bowring had plans to add an elected element to the Legislative Council by giving the vote to holders of Crown Land, irrespective of race, who were paying a minimum of £10 annual rent. In public works his schemes were ambitious and included the reclamation of land and construction of a praya at Happy Valley. He pieced together the ground for the Botanical Gardens up the hill from Government House for public recreation. His schemes for the

Bowring�s War with China 85

education of poorer Chinese- were far ahead of his time, and he recognized that the needs of 'a large population of children of native mothers by for­ eigners of all classes' were 'beginning to ripen into a dangerous element out of the dunghill of neglect. They seem to be wholly uncared for. '

Bowring turned to the problem pose d by extortion and i llicit fe es, setting up a commission. But immediately the fact had to be faced that those who paid such fe es to obtain access to officials were quite unwilling to come forward and disclose details of any actual case . Bowring had, in this, to admit defeat. 'We rule in ignorance,' he remarked, 'they obey in blindness.' And with that pretty epigram he perforce shelved the question. The cadet training scheme 10 would, he felt sure, in the fullne ss of time produce a body of incorruptible administrators skilled in the Chinese language, able to act as a sound bridge between populace and rulers. Foreign Office approval for the scheme to supply the Consular Service in China with cade ts was eventually forthcoming, but it fell to a future governor to implement it in the colony.

Most of Bowring's othe r plans, given the state of the colony, were scarcely susceptible of implementation. The Governor was at heart a reforme r faced with a situation over which he failed to find the me ans of control. In London the Colonial Secretary, Lord John Russell, remarked with some rightness but with little sympathy that Bowring 'was rathe r wild on all subjects' . That is perhaps a characteristic of reformers.

In a furthe r attempt to ameliorate the situation betwe en governed and administration, Bowring revived what Bonham had abolished - the office of Re gistrar-Gene ral, to which he added the title Prote ctor of the Chinese . To this office he appointed Caldwe ll, who was a good linguist. Given the character of this official, widely held to be in league with the pirate Ma Chow Wong, the Colonial Office was reluctant to concur.

This libe ral aspect in the Gove rnor's outlook appeared in many of his

actions but was flawed in detail. His idea that Chinese ought to have the chance to fill responsible positions in the administration was frowne d on by London, the Secretary of State remarking:



If you should hereafter be able to select from the Chinese inhabitants persons deserving of confidence whom you may think fit to hold this Uustice of the Peace] or any other administrative office I should be willing to assent . . . The experiment, however, should be very cautiously made . . . I should not think it wise to place a Chinese in any position in which he would exercise authority alone without a check on the part of British officials.



So Chinese working as clerks and student interpreters in the Magistracy and othe r de partments, a first step to higher posts, were in fact denied promotion to any important appointment in Bowring's time .

In the wake of a revival in trade and public demand for a voice in the

86 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

J.

colony's affairs, the question of enlarging the Legislative Council by means of increased unofficial membership, and even of introducing an elective element, came under scrutiny. Public meetings in support were held, and in response Bowring proposed that three unofficial members be included, elected tri­ ennially from the ranks of the Justices of the Peace. London vetoed the scheme, saying that simple nomination would do the same job. The Secretary of State had no objection to a small increase in numbers in the Council, but 'I shall . . . rely on your continuing to administer the Government in con­ formity with the principles on which it has been Established, and not parting with· due Authority, which [is] best calculated to secure the general welfare of a Community placed in such exceptional conditions.' The Council was in­ creased by adding one unofficial and one official member. The Legislative Council then consisted of: the Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, Chief Justice, Colonial Secretary, Attorney-General, Surveyor-General, Chief Magistrate, and J. F. Edger, Jardine, and G. Lyall.

J.

Unlike many another Governor, Bowring showed some concern about sanitation, appointing an army doctor, Caroll Dempster, on the death of Dr William Morrison. Dempster turned out to be a harsh critic, his first re­ port noting regretfully that in I 8 5 4 Hong Kong presented 'so much filth . . . Cowsheds, pigsties, stagnant pools' in Taipingshan. He wanted drainage, sewerage, the laying of pavements, efficient scavenging. He noted the crowded, miserable hou sing. His next report stated that nothing had happened except the construction of a few dustbins, and these were being used by the Chinese as latrines. Having seen as many as 16 men in one cell he condemned the inhuman overcrowding in the gaol, and in his I 85 6 report he again complained of no action being taken, and of being fobbed off with the statement that things were 'under consideration'. He underlined that phrase. Dempster's justification in his strictures came in tne cruel form of a cholera epidemic in the following year, I 8 5 7.

The Surveyor-General attempted to defend his position, but the ultimate culprit must be seen in Bowring whose ineptitude permitted the growing menace of the sanitary hazard. He responded with the Buildings and Nuisances Ordinance of I 85 6. And therein lay another quagmire of disputed authority. The Magistrates found it hard to interpret, and the Justices handed· down decisions quite contrary to its spirit. To Bowring's remonstrances they replied with tart comments on interference by the administration with the due process of justice. In law, the Justices were correct, if unhelpful. Bowring referred the matter to the Colonial Office which did not favour his approach. Then, boldly, he created a post of Inspector of Nuisances, the first step towards the later creation of a Sanitary Department. But the Governor failed completely to grasp the implications of the absence of both a sanitation and a public health authority.

Population, health, and water supply are at all times interrelated, acutely in

Bowring�s War with China 87

times of rapid population growth, and even more closely in climatic condi­ tions such as those in Hong Kong. The overspill of the Taiping disturbance s in China, together with the drift of manpower to service the rising trade of the colony, contributed to population growth in the Bowring years. Between 185 3 and 1 859 the population more than doubled. It was small wonder that inadequate sanitation was matched by inadequate water supply, com­ pounding the gravity of the situation. Many larger dwellings, such as Bowring's old house in Spring Gardens, had wells, but the average Chinese family was dependent on the erratic flow of water from streams and rivulets coursing down the hills. These were little gushers in the rainy season, but most dwindled to a trickle in the dry months. Bowring was neither the first nor the last Governor who took the curious view that provision of water supplie s was not the business of government. In Bowring, with his liberal principle s, it was more surprising than in some others. He suggested that a private company be formed which could levy charges for supplying water. Here , once again, he came into collision with the Legislative Council who argue d for government funding. The enthusiast for a plan to bring water to the town, via a conduit from an existing pool at Pok Fu Lam round the western slopes of the Peak, was W. T. Mercer, the Colonial Secretary. He pointed out that precisely when the streams lessen in volume or dry up, is the time of greatest fire hazard. The scheme was estimate d to cost £25 ,ooo, but nothing was done about it until the next administration.

Slightly more success attended Bowring's plan to enlarge the area available

for building on the north shore of Hong Kong island. He proposed a re­ clamation stretching out into the harbour from Happy Valley, achieved by me ans of draining the swampy ground and filling it in with soil and rubble. This was to continue westward, rationalizing the contour of the shore, to the central district. The praya scheme met with immediate opposition from the majority of those with premises and land fronting the harbour all the way from the central district to Causeway Bay, whose seaward outlets might thereby be blocked. The scheme had commercial potential in the provision of new land for building, and it allowed for public acce ss to the harbour at various points, something that had been re stricted by previous haphazard development. The whole problem had been recognized in earlier days by the first Colonial Engineer, Gordon, but not until the time of Bowring were there enough financial resources to contemplate a new praya. And even then the Governor had to accumulate the necessary funds in various ways.

Reclamation as well as construction was involved, finished off by a stout sea wall. The scheme was announced in November 18 5 5. Under it the marine lot holders were to pay rent, additional to that for their original holdings, for the illicit re clamation of land made by them, and were also to contribute to the cost of the new sea wall. Under threat, as might have been expected, they held animated protest meetings and the whole issue was referred to London.

88 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

London endorsed it. But only some of the Westerners agreed; and there were Chinese protesters too.

While this series of confrontations was being sorted out a start was made in areas where there was no objection - at Happy Valley where the praya scheme interlocked with the Bowrington Praya scheme extending seaward the area fronting Happy Valley. In central district J. M. Dent, holding land between there and the military cantonment, refused to give way. Bowring drafted an ordinance to apply compulsion, only to be frustrated when the official members of the Legislative Council (contrary to custom) voted against it with the unofficials. The praya was completed long after, and Bowring's name was not applied to it. His name survives only in Bowrington Road in the area of his reclamation north of Happy Valley, and in a canal near by which has nowadays disappeared under Canal Road.

The colony's financial state continued to be healthy, revenue reaching more than £62,000 by r85 8, and funds for law and order - the 'police rate' - rose from a little over £ 3 ,000 to somewhat over £13 ,000 in Bowring's time. The new, legal, status of the opium trade allowed the Governor to reintroduce the opium monopoly in r85 8, and that brought in another £4,508, all but equal to the revenue from licences for spirits. Yet he failed to balance his budget. Expenditure in r85 8 marginally exceeded revenue, largely through increased spending on public works; and had he been able to push through other schemes that his liberal mind suggested for the well-being of the colony, the deficit would have been much bigger.

For a man so well-meaning as Sir John Bowring, his actual achievements were not great. This was in part the result of his character defects. On arrival he inherited a colony in fragile financial condition, but that soon took an upturn beyond expectations, partly because of his efforts but more im­ portantly because of external factors. Bowring ihherited, too, a society among which there were numerous self-seeking individuals with no scruples about engaging in social warfare with anyone who crossed their paths or seemed to question their overweening pride or to eye their hypersensitive pockets. To this flammable situation in a house of buccaneers Bowring added the irritant of his high-handed manner, the combustible material of his liberal ideas which were shared by few, a tendency to be far ahead of Hong Kong times, and, anathema to almost all, his treating of the Chinese as equals under the law. A conflagration in society naturally followed. His abilities were striking, but not in the field of administration or personal relations. He cared for the things of the mind - setting up a small museum in a room in the Supreme Court - more than for the frequently squalid trade which it was his duty to encourage. A liberal man, a political radical, a reformer, and a Unitarian, Bowring was all the things the traders of Hong Kong disliked and distrusted. A man of peace, he none the less brought war to China, and sowed confusion in an administration whose workings he had set out to clarify.

Bowring's War with China 89

Bowring, approaching seventy, had lost what he most wished to have - the honour attached to achieving a settlement with China. His errors of judgement had impelled Palmerston to send Elgin to replace him. It cannot have been easy to remain at the seat of operations as an impotent spectator in the process he wished to control. But he did so with tolerable grace. Bowring left Hong Kong studiously ignored by the Western population and, like Davis before him, the object of spontaneous marks of respect from the Chinese.

In all this there must, it would seem, have been some fundamental lessons to be learned in London.

Consolidation under Robinson



IN the opinion of The Times when Sir Hercules Robinson took up office as Governor of Hong Kong, it was 'the worst period in the colony's history'. The leader-writer assessed its reputation in accurate if arch terms:



Hong Kong is always connected with some fatal pestilence, some doubtful war, or some discreditable internal squabble, so much so, that . . . the name of this noisy, bustling, quarrelsome, discontented little island may not inaptly be used as a euphonious synonym for a place not mentionable to ears polite.



Sir Hercules, after less than nine months there, appeared to concur, and he was to write to the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State for the Colonies: 'Indeed Hong Kong is totally unlike any other British Dependency' and its position is in many respects so grotesquely anomalous . . . '.

If Bowring had been a small man with big ideas, Robinson was a big man with generally smallish ideas which he proved capable of having carried out efficiently. For once the Colonial Office had sent the right man at the right time. In reality, it may be suspected, almost any firm,�competent administrator not consumed with his own personal theories, any normally balanced, fairly experienced civil servant endowed with a will to govern, could probably have done as well as Robinson. What the 'discontented little island' needed, for once it received. Aged 3 5 when he arrived in September 18 59, Robinson brought with him some experience in government appointments in England, and a spell as President of Montserrat in the West Indies. It was from the· Lieutenant-Governorship of St Christopher that he was hurried out to the

disputatious colony, with his young wife and infant daughter.

In several ways Robinson had luck on his side. Many of the assorted rogues in government service had left. That smudgy character (the adjective appears by coincidence for the first time in the year of Robinson's arrival) Caine, friend of Bridges and Caldwell, had just retired. Hulme, Chief Justice, was about to remove his bibulous self and his burgeoning family in April of r8 60. Anstey, litigious Attorney-General, had left under a cloud the previous January and was to learn on arrival in England that he was not to return.

Consolidation under Robinson 91

W. T. Mercer, a man who had skated fairly gracefully over the thin and sullied ice of Bowring's administration, and who was to administer the government in Robinson's absence, was still in the colony - a perennial from Davis's days who Bonham thought had 'a capacity far above the office he holds'. Still at work, too, was Charles May whose appointments had all been in the Police Department, and whose dogged efforts to clean it up over the 34 years of his stay went hand in hand with his ownership of a well­ known group of brothels, in more or less seemly fashion. And there was

D. R. Caldwell, Registrar- General, a character as nefarious and pliant as any in the colony's history, with whom the new Governor had at once to deal.

The collusion between Caldwell and Bridges, and the prosecution of Tarrant, which had left one of the indelible stains on the Bowring era, focused suspicion on both when Tarrant was acquitted. No one seriously believed that they were innocent, and in both Hong Kong and London there was pressure to reopen the case. Robinson was ordered to set up a public enquiry. During the course of it Bridges left the colony and was never heard of again, his fortune doubtless sufficient to support him, in the style to which he was accustomed in Hong Kong, in anonymity elsewhere. The Executive Council, before whom the enquiry was held, now included none of the old coterie of civil servants and merchants, with the exception of Mercer. The hearings,