The Diplomacy Of Imperial Retreat

Confronted by Chinese nationalism and the rise of the revolutionary movement in South China, Britain commenced a retreat motivated by political, commercial, and economic considerations and aimed at the protection of British interests without reliance on gunboat diplomacy. This book analyzes British policy-making, diplomatic, military, and commercial, against the background of civil strife and political instability in China, and, in the wider sphere, of greater international cooperation. In a closely argued study based on expansive use of British and Chinese sources, Fung presents a balanced picture of this important chapter in the history of Sino-British relations.

History - Limits of possession - A window of opportunity - One country, two systems - Mrs. Thatcher makes a stand - Negotiations begin - Crisis and concession - A matter of form - The Joint Declaration.

Britain’s relationship with China in the nineteenth and early twentieth century is often viewed in terms of gunboat diplomacy, unequal treaties, and the unrelenting pursuit of Britain’s own commercial interests. This book, however, based on extensive original research, demonstrates that in Britain after the First World War a combination of liberal, Labour party, pacifist, missionary and some business opinion began to argue for imperial retreat from China, and that this movement gathered sufficient momentum for a sympathetic attitude to Chinese demands becoming official Foreign Office policy in 1926. The book considers the various strands of this movement, relates developments in Britain to the changing situation in China, especially the rise of nationalism and the Guomindang, and argues that, contrary to what many people think, the reassertion of China’s national rights was begun successfully in this period rather than after the Communist takeover in 1949.

The problems investigated in this collection had lasting consequences not only in the field of colonialism but in international politics as well. Decolonization and the Cold War, which brought about the most significant changes to global policits after 1945, are treated together.

Using archival materials newly available in China and records in Britain and the US, Robert Bickers paints a detailed portrait of the traders, missionaries, businessmen, diplomats and settlers who constituted "Britain-in-China." Bickers argues that the British presence in China was dominated by urban settlers whose primary allegiance lay not with any grand imperial design but with their own communities and precarious livelihoods. This brought them into growing conflict with the Chinese population and the British imperial government. Bickers goes on to examine how the British state and its allies brought an end to the reign of freelance, settler imperialism on the China coast. At the same time, other British sectors, missionary and business, renegotiated their own relationship with their Chinese markets and the Chinese state and distanced themselves from the settler British.

This book provides an overview of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service, focussing especially on its later years and in particular on the experiences of the foreign administration.

History - Limits of possession - A window of opportunity - One country, two systems - Mrs. Thatcher makes a stand - Negotiations begin - Crisis and concession - A matter of form - The Joint Declaration.

Examining Britain's imperial outposts in 1920s East Asia, this book explores the changes and challenges affecting the Royal Navy's third largest fleet, the China Station, as its crews fought to hold back the changing tides of fortune. Bridging the gap between high level naval strategy and everyday imperial culture, Heaslip highlights the importance of the China Station to the British imperial system, foreign policy and East Asian geopolitics, while also revealing the lived experiences of these imperial outposts. Following their immersion into a new world and the challenges they encountered along the way, it considers how its naval officers were perceived by the Chinese populations of the ports they visited, how the two communities interacted and what this meant at a time of 'peace'. Against the changing nature of Britain's informal empire in the 1920s, Gunboats, Empire and the China Station highlights the complex nature of naval operations in-between major conflicts, and calls into question how peaceful this peacetime truly was.