Politics, Power and the Chinese Maritime Customs: the Qing Restoration and the Ascent of Robert Hart

Abstract

On 6 November 1865, Robert Hart, the 30-year-old Inspector General (I.G.) of the Imperial Maritime Customs Service, presented to his supervisors in the Zongli Yamen, the Qing Empire's new foreign office, a long memorandum critiquing Chinese administrative practices and offering suggestions for improvement. He criticized corruption and inefficiency at all levels of government, called for tax reform, greater specialization and better technical education of officials, improving contacts with the outside world, and promoting foreign methods and technology. The memorandum, written in Chinese, was entitled the ‘Bystander's View’ (juwai pangguan lun). A few months later it was submitted by the Zongli Yamen to the throne, and together with a similar tract by British diplomat Thomas Wade, distributed to senior Qing officials for comment. It had little impact at the time. But forty years later, when the Empress Dowager Cixi reportedly told the author that she wished she had followed his advice, it became a foundation stone of the mythology of Robert Hart, a symbol of the failure of the Qing court to take full advantage of the Portadown native's wisdom. Hart's premise, encapsulated in the title, was that as an outsider to the Qing system he could see problems that insiders could not. ‘The true face of Mount Lu can only be seen in its entirety by one who stands away from it.’ But the memorandum, for all of its notoriety, was uncharacteristic of Hart.