-Caveat Lector- from: The I.G. in Peking Edited by John King Fairbank Katherine Frost Bruner Elizabeth MacLeod Matheson Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College©1975 ISBN 0-674-44320-9 pps.1543 -----
>>it is not so surprising that the Ch'ing rulers of the nineteenth century should have committed themselves to taking the British into a junior partnership, letting China become a part of Britain's world-wide informal empire of trade and missionary proselytism. The Manchu dynasty, still obliged to identify its own interest as a bit different from that of the Chinese people, had been forced to accept the British invaders and take them into the power structure of the empire. Only this can explain how Robert Hart could work for the general foreign interest in the orderly growth of trade while also working steadily to maximize the Manchu dynasty's revenues from foreign trade and facilitate in every way the progress of Western civilization under the wing of the Ch'ing government.>> ----- THE ORIGIN OF THE CUSTOMS SERVICE Before 1842 the only port in China open to foreign trade was Canton, where, because of China's traditional fiscal system, foreign merchants and shipping operated under highly restrictive and irregular conditions. The system was similar in many respects to that common in the West until comparatively modern times-for example, under the farmers-general of France: the revenue was farmed out to an official who was required to pay in to the imperial treasury a fixed sum annually, but not required to account for any surplus. At Canton this official was called the Hoppo (always a Manchu appointed directly by the emperor for a three-year term), and he enjoyed what must have been one of the richest plums known to history. In a typical year he would have to pay some 900,000 taels (about $1,350,000) to Peking, but his actual income might be as much as 11,000,000 taels (equal to about $16,500,000). Out of this income he had to maintain a huge staff of subordinates and also make frequent large gifts to various influential members of the court in Peking. H.B. Morse, who had a distinguished career in the Customs before he became in retirement the major historian of late Ch'ing foreign relations, states of the Hoppo that "it took the net profit of the first year of his tenure to obtain his office, of the second year to keep it, and of the third year to drop it and to provide for himself."[1] The Hoppo was bound by no published tariff on exports, imports, tonnage dues, or the like, and charged what the traffic would bear according to established custom. It is not surprising that this system encouraged bribery and corruption from top to bottom—a situation taken for granted by both Chinese and foreigners as a normal part of the personal arrangements that were the stuff of Chinese life. In contrast, individual business relations between Chinese and foreign merchants were conducted on the highest level of mutual trust, once they had established the bonds of a personal relationship. "They both had a reputation for commercial honour and integrity such as has not been surpassed in any part of the world or at any time in history," says Morse.[2] The Nanking Treaty of 1842, ending the "Opium War," provided for the opening of four additional ports to foreign trade, and for the first time, required the publication of a fixed tariff. This treaty was followed in 1844 by treaties with the United States and France, which incorporated, in general, the provisions of the British treaty. These early treaties also established the system of extraterritoriality, whereby foreign residents were exempted from Chinese law and could be prosecuted only in their own national consular courts. During the first post-treaty decade, Shanghai quickly outstripped Canton as the principal center of China's foreign trade. In spite of the tariffs laid down in the treaties, however, the old customhouse practices continued. False declarations, false manifests, open bribery, and under-the-counter payments were the order of the day, and the business ethics-on both the foreign and Chinese sides-were deplorable, for the Chinese collectors were both timid and venal, and the foreign merchants aggressive and competitive. This situation was a source of constant complaint among honest traders, and the various consuls, especially the British, who were expected to make the treaty system work, became involved in acrimonious disputes with Chinese officials and their own countrymen. In 1853, during the Taiping Rebellion, a political accident gave the consuls an opportunity to improve the situation. In that year the city of Shanghai was taken by a rebel organization called the Small Sword Society (Hsiao-tao hui), which forced the taotai (the official in charge of the customs) to flee and destroyed the customhouse. Although the customhouse had ceased to function, the treaties remained in force, and the treaties required foreign merchants to pay duties to the Chinese government. It was the task of the harassed consuls to see that this treaty stipulation was carried out. As an expedient, the British and American consuls required their nationals to declare exports and imports at the consulates and to give bonds for the eventual payment of the required duties. This expedient, known as the Provisional System, was understandably unpopular with both British and American merchants, who complained that merchants of other nationalities, in the absence of the customhouse, were shipping and landing their cargoes without paying a cent of duty. After the rebels were stalemated, the consuls induced the taotai to return and reopen his customhouse in the British-controlled area of Shanghai. At the same time, they proposed that the customs authorities engage a few foreigners to assist them in collecting the duties. This proposal was accepted and embodied in a document signed on June 29, 1854, by the taotai and by the consuls of Great Britain, the United States, and France. Article I of this agreement reads: The chief difficulty hitherto experienced by the Superintendent of Customs having consisted in the impossibility of obtaining Custom House officials with the necessary qualifications as to probity, vigilance and knowledge of foreign languages required for the enforcement of a close observance of Treaty and Custom House Regulations, the only adequate remedy appears to be the introduction of a foreign element into the Custom House establishment in the persons of foreigners, carefully selected and appointed by the Taotai, who shall supply the deficiency complained of and give to his Excellency efficient and trustworthy instruments wherewith to work.[3] In view of the assumption frequently made that the foreign customs administration was somehow forced on an unwilling Chinese government at bayonet point, in order to place control of China's trade in foreign hands and provide funds for foreign loans and indemnities, it should be noted that the Customs agreement of 1854 was freely signed by the Chinese authorities and that the foreigners engaged as inspectors were appointed and paid by these authorities. Within a year after the beginning of this foreign inspectorate in the Shanghai Customs, these foreign members were held by the British government to be officials of China, and not of any foreign country. Their official loyalties were anchored to their employer, the Chinese government. There was no intention in the minds of the signers of the agreement that it should lead to control of China's foreign trade revenues, and it was not until years later that the Chinese government began to make use of the customs revenue as security for loans and indemnities. Except in the case of the first three foreign inspectors at Shanghai, who were nominated in 1854 by the consuls concerned and appointed by the taotai, foreign governments never participated in the appointment of Chinese Customs officials: all nominations and appointments were made by the head of the Service, acting for the Chinese government. On July 12, 1854, the Shanghai customhouse reopened for business with its first "foreign element"—one man each seconded by the American, British, and French consuls. These men were called inspectors. The infusion of this foreign element into the customs organization was a success from the start. Not the least pleased with the experiment were the higher Chinese officials, who saw the government revenue increase dramatically. Many of the merchants, however, both foreign and Chinese, regretted the end of the old free-wheeling system of personal arrangements and chafed when treaty and customs regulations were enforced to the letter. The new customs administration was cordially disliked by this large segment of the business community, not least because for the first few years Shanghai was the only one of the five treaty ports to have foreign inspectors in the Customs. But the British government favored the foreign inspectorate principle, because it seemed to be the one way to make the treaty system effective: foreign inspectors, speaking English, unafraid of British, American, or Chinese bullies or scallywags, impervious to threats, and uninterested in bribes, could enforce the treaty tariff equally upon all comers. Moreover, they could advise their Chinese superiors how to deal with foreign evildoers while at the same time gaining their confidence as conscientious accountants of revenue. Consequently the treaty settlement that was made in 1858, stipulated that a customs system on the Shanghai model should be established at the other treaty ports. The degree to which this was a British innovation may be seen from the fact that Horatio Nelson Lay, the son of an early British consul, had become the sole foreign inspector at Shanghai, leaving the British consular service for the purpose, and yet in 1858 was re-employed by Lord Elgin as a chief British negotiator of the Treaty of Tientsin. In effect, Lay wrote his own ticket. The charter of the Customs was in Rule 10 of the Tariff Rules negotiated at Shanghai and signed there by the Ch'ing and the British representatives on November 8, 1858, to give effect to the Anglo-Chinese Treaty signed at Tientsin the previous June. Rule 10 was headed "Collection of Duties under one System at all Ports" and read as follows: It being, by Treaty, at the option of the Chinese Government to adopt what means appear to it best suited to protect its Revenue, accruing on British trade, it is agreed that one uniform system shall be enforced at every port. The High Officer appointed by the Chinese Government to superintend Foreign trade will accordingly, from time to time, either himself visit, or will send a deputy to visit, the different ports. The said High Officer will be at liberty, of his own choice, and independently of the suggestion or nomination of any British authority, to select any British subject he may see fit to aid him in the administration of the Customs Revenue; in the prevention of smuggling; in the definition of port boundaries; or in discharging the duties of harbour-master; also in the distribution of Lights, Buoys, Beacons, and the like, the maintenance of which shall be pro-vided for out of the Tonnage Dues. After the exchange of treaty ratifications had been refused by the Ch'ing in hostilities at Taku in 1859, a second Anglo-French expedition fought its way to Peking and secured the acceptance of the Tientsin treaties and trade rules in conventions signed in October 1860. Soon afterward, the new committee of the Grand Council deputed to handle foreign affairs, the Tsungli Yamen, appointed H.N. Lay to undertake the responsibility of opening and operating the new customhouses and of recruiting the foreign staff required. Mr. Lay was given the title of Tsung-shui-wu-ssu, officer in general charge of customs affairs. He translated his title as "Inspector General of Customs.'' The service was known in Chinese as the Hai-kuan or Maritime Customs in order to distinguish it from the anciently established collectorates (Ch'ang-kuan), known to foreigners as the Native Customs, which functioned at twenty-nine key points throughout the empire, including five seaports. Lay was a talented, forceful, and energetic administrator, with an excellent command of the Chinese language. He was also, unfortunately, a megalomaniac whose arrogance and conceit soon led to his downfall. In 1862, while on leave in England, he was instructed by the Chinese government to build and man a fleet of vessels to be used to suppress smuggling, piracy, and rebellion. He fulfilled this commission and engaged Captain Sherard Osborn of the British navy to command the fleet. Then, acting completely without authority from the Chinese government, he signed a secret agreement with Osborn stipulating that all operations of the ships would be controlled exclusively by Lay, who, in turn, would accept orders only from the emperor, and then only if he considered the orders reasonable. When this incredible arrangement became known in Peking, it was naturally repudiated by the government. Osborn resigned, the fleet was sold, and Lay was dismissed from the post which he had done so much to create. Perhaps only a man of his headlong self-confidence could have brought the Customs enterprise into being. But it took a far different and more disciplined temperament to carry it on to fulfillment. To replace Lay the Tsungli Yamen selected Robert Hart, then twenty-eight years old, who had joined the Customs Service at Canton in 1859. THE PRINCIPALS AND THEIR CORRESPONDENCE Robert Hart was born in County Armagh, in Northern Ireland, in February 1835, "a child of that English-Scotch blend, peculiar to Northern Ireland, which has left so deep an imprint, especially on Irish and American history." His early life, in a typical Uster clan-conscious, middle-class family of shopkeepers, distillers and small farmers, was passed among what Wright calls "the strictest sect of the Pharisees—the evangelical Protestants of Uster ... This strict and unbending Puritan tradition exerted its influence on him all his days, but it did not dominate him."' On the contrary, Hart's life in China, his study of Confucianism and Buddhism, and his wide acquaintance with men of many nations and diverse religions made him a broad-minded and tolerant man. Yet it may be that his ancestors stirred in their graves when, in 1883, he was made a Commander of the Order of Pius IX by the Holy See. He himself commented to Campbell: "Fancy me—an Ulsterman!—with a Papal decoration!" (letter 550). 1. Hosea B. Morse, The International Relations of the Chinese Empire, 3 vols. (London: Longmans Green, 1910-1918),1, 34-35. 2. Ibid., p. 85 3. See Consul R. Alcock's dispatch no. 56 of July 6, 1854, enclosed in Sir John Bowring's no. 77, in FO 97/100, Public Record Office, London. pps. 4-7 ===== In seeking our own perspective on Hart and his work, we must recognize that present-day views of the nineteenth century have greatly diverged in China and in the West. The history of the treaty-port era from 1842 to 1943, in which Hart figured so importantly, has entered into the confrontation in politics and values between China and the outer international world. It may be worth it, therefore, to seek some perspective on our own perspective of today. First of all, we must note the tremendous acceleration of change in the course of China's modern history. If we look before and after, we can see that Hart's treaty-port generation of the 1860s to the 1900s came midway in a long process that is by no means finished-the spread of Western influence over the world and the response of Asia and other regions to it. Thus if we look back to 1760 we see the final establishment of a strict Chinese domination over the Western contact at Canton, replete with minute regulations for foreign trade and conduct in the Thirteen Factories. In 1860, an even century later, we see the treaty system finally established and the principle of the "foreign inspectorate" (that foreign employees of the Chinese government can best assess the tariff duties due to be paid on foreign trade) fully accepted as part of the Sino-foreign treaty-port order. Yet if we come down still another century to 1960, we find that under the People's Republic, all Western privileges and most Western contacts have been rejected; indeed, this rejection of the outer world has included even the rejection of Soviet tutelage. Within the two hundred years since 1760, a comprehensive system for Chinese domination of China's foreign contact has given way to an even more carefully regulated foreign assertion of special privileges in China but has been followed as of 1960 by a severe reduction of contact and almost a stalemate in Sino-foreign relations. Since 1972, of course, another phase has opened. To see the motivation behind this contrast of phases, we must note the steady and unremitting growth of the modern Chinese spirit of nationalism. In the early nineteenth century it was still muted under the conquering Manchu (Ch'ing) dynasty's policy to stress the universal nature of imperial Confucianism. Even though the scholar-official elite of the Ch'ing empire were steadily subjected after 1840 to the example of Western nationalism that motivated the British, French, American, Russian, and other Westerners in China, it took more than one generation for this ruling class to respond in a nationalistic manner to the foreign menace that threatened their way of life. The lesson of Japan's nationalistic response to Western contact after 1854 was driven home only forty years later by the Japanese victory over China in 1894. After the Boxer failure in 1900 to expel the foreigner by violence, the new patriotism of "young China" contributed to the end of the alien Ch'ing monarchy, the creation of the Chinese republic in 1911, and the Nationalist unification of the 1920s. Fired by the resistance to Japan in the 1930s and '40s, this rise of Chinese nationalism has more and more vigorously galvanized the formerly inert political mass of the farming population. Patriotism has come like an avalanche, at first slowly and then with gathering volume and momentum. In short, the Chinese revolution which is still unfolding has seen a political mobilization without parallel in history. The world's most anciently rooted peasantry, established for millennia in their semi -self-sufficient and cellular market areas, have steadily found their way into a more active national life. The Maoist revolution in Chinese politics has propagated its version of modern history to meet its ideological needs. China's growing nationalism has been focused in the last two decades on the unequal treaty era as the expression of "Western imperialism," the greatest evil in China's modern experience. We in the West are consequently confronted with a bifocal perspective-that of the Maoist world view and that of the Western record, which has of course been less responsive to the compelling sentiments of China's political revolution. There could hardly be a greater contrast between two views. In the People's Republic today the treaty era stands out as a time of foreign privilege, imperialist exploitation, and Chinese suffering and humiliation. A special series of volumes in Chinese has published translations of archival documents selected to illustrate the theme of "Imperialism and the Chinese Maritime Customs" (Ti-kuo chu-i yu Chung-kuo hai-kuan). In the Victorian view of Robert Hart's day the treaty system in China stood proudly as a product of the beneficent spread of commerce and progress, bringing modern science and civilization to a heathen and backward land. Times have changed. The historical scene in Shanghai of the late nineteenth century as pictured by foreigners at the time and by Chinese today, seems like two utterly different worlds. A wide gamut of interpretations is thus offered to the inquiring student, and much ambivalence hangs over the history of the late nineteenth century in China. Today the perspective on the unequal treaty era which is most generally applied by Western historians sees it as part of a process of "modernization." This is a term which many social scientists hope may be used in a purely technical, "value-free" fashion, if any term can be so used, though I rather doubt that "modernization" can shake off the connotation of "improvement." At all events, modernization is not only what has happened in modern times; it is the process of growth and change in the modern period as analyzed by the concepts of the social sciences and synthesized by the historian, who of course has his own special function of synthesis to perform. >From this point of view one may suggest a series of propositions: first, that the Chinese Maritime Customs as an institution, though only indirectly named in the treaties, nevertheless helped importantly to make the treaty system work. Second, that the system was a modus vivendi worked out between the stronger Western powers led by Britain and the weak Ch'ing government. By it Western treaty-power nationals were given privileged individual rights of access, residence, travel in the interior, trade, and proselytism in China's territory, with the force of Western arms and gunboats held in reserve to maintain the treaties. Third, this system was "semi-colonial," in the sense that the Westernizing sector of China in the treaty ports was dominated by foreign influences, while China's traditional polity and economy in the interior underwent a gradual disintegration and metamorphosis. Like the colonialism of a bygone time in other parts of the world, this dispensation reflected the disparity of power, capacity, resources, and dynamism between the expanding West and a local regime left over from an earlier day. A judgment on whether this whole process was on balance "good" or "bad" is about as feasible as a similar judgment concerning modern history in general. A historian can only say that this situation existed and developed; moral judgment concerning it can be only a personal and piecemeal matter. Within such a perspective certain further distinctions may be made. The treaty system went through several phases: it began in the early nineteenth-century era of commercial expansion with the Treaty of Nanking of 1842, followed by the treaties with the United States and France in 1844. But the treaty ports were not established in full fashion until after the war of 1856-1858 and the final settlement of 1860. The foreign customs inspectorate that began at Shanghai in 1854 thus got started in time to form a basic part of the treaty system as finally constituted. A second phase of the system, the main period of its continued growth and functioning as the matrix of Sino-foreign contact, runs from 1860 to 1911. Yet during this time the ictus of foreign exploitation gradually intensified, particularly after the Japanese war of 1894-1895 required the earmarking of customs revenues to pay off indemnity loans and after the Boxer war of 1900 led further to the enormous Boxer indemnity which was also to be paid from the customs and other revenues. The year 1911 marks the end of this era. The outbreak of revolution and the disintegration of central power in that year led the Maritime Customs commissioners for the first time actually to receive and handle the revenues, which were now almost wholly committed to meeting foreign payments. A third phase of the treaty system continued from 1911 to 1943. The Washington Conference of 1922 began the attempt to modify the system, and the new Nationalist government at Nanking after 1928 was able to secure tariff autonomy and reclaim certain other elements of Chinese sovereignty. In its final phase the treaty system was thus modified and adjusted part way to meet the demands of Chinese nationalism, and a beginning was made to dismantle it. But the Japanese invasion that began in Manchuria in 1931 seemed to necessitate the continuation of Western privileges in China, partly to check Japan, and so the unequal treaties were not formally abolished until 1943. Viewed in this perspective, the work of Robert Hart belongs to the middle period of constructive effort, when the British hegemony in China fostered the Sino-Western cooperative policy of the 1860s and the foreign powers supported the Ch'ing dynasty as the best prospect for law and order and the continuation of trade. Hart was at work in the same decades as Li Hung-chang and other Chinese Westernizers, who were inaugurating arsenals and industries for China's "self-strengthening" in order to get rid of Western dominance. Like them Hart was loyal to the Ch'ing government as his employer, which was requisite, on the whole, for his continued employment in a position of such trust. As a former British vice-consul who had left Her Majesty's service with British permission to be employed by the Chinese government, Hart took full responsibility for the Customs Service. He reported to the Tsungli Yamen, a subcommittee of the Grand Council which until the mid-eighties included its leading members and served in effect as a proto-foreign office at Peking. Hart was thus an appendage of the Ch'ing court at Peking, and his unusual status as both a British subject and a Ch'ing employee reflected the special nature of China's government, under which an alien dynasty of conquest was accustomed to using not only Chinese but also Manchus, Mongols, and other non-Chinese in its administration. By the 1860s the Manchu conquerors were in their third century of rule in Chi na. The imperial family was descended from the Tungus tribal chieftain Nurhaci (1559-1626), whose descendants had conquered the Middle Kingdom from their base beyond the Great Wall in Manchuria (known today as China's Northeast). Throughout Hart's career as Inspector General the top powerholder in China was the Empress Dowager, Tz'u-hsi, a Manchu concubine who came to power after the death of her husband, the Hsien-feng Emperor, and who at first was tutored in ruling for her infant son by the late emperor's brother, Prince Kung. The court at Peking, non-Chinese in origin, was perhaps less moved by the xenophobic sentiments felt by Chinese against foreign invaders. The Ch'ing court used Robert Hart and the Customs Service much as it had originally used its alliance with the Mongols or the services of Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century, for purposes of state in the great task of ruling China. >From this point of view it is not so surprising that the Ch'ing rulers of the nineteenth century should have committed themselves to taking the British into a junior partnership, letting China become a part of Britain's world-wide informal empire of trade and missionary proselytism. The Manchu dynasty, still obliged to identify its own interest as a bit different from that of the Chinese people, had been forced to accept the British invaders and take them into the power structure of the empire. Only this can explain how Robert Hart could work for the general foreign interest in the orderly growth of trade while also working steadily to maximize the Manchu dynasty's revenues from foreign trade and facilitate in every way the progress of Western civilization under the wing of the Ch'ing government. In short, the community of interest between the British in China and the Manchu dynasty provided the original platform upon which Hart erected his revenue service. In the end, of course, the rise of Chinese nationalism rejected both Manchu rule and British influence. From this stems the patriotic sense of grievance or victimization among many Chinese of today. This sentiment is now a political fact of life but it cannot alter the facts of the 1860s and the succeeding decades, when Chinese nationalism was still in the future and the old loyalty to imperial Confucianism still animated the Chinese political elite. Robert Hart stands out especially in the perspective of modernization, viewed in its more concrete and technical aspects. Under him the Maritime Customs became China's first modern civil service. It provided public services of value both to the foreign merchant community and to the Chinese government-for example, the coastwise lights of China, charts for navigation, buoys and markers in the harbors, and the services of pilotage and berthing of ships; the whole modern procedure of customs handling and appraisal of goods, with opportunities for bonding, drawbacks, and other transactions in international commerce; the application of the customs tariff and the collection of a growing revenue for the central government; the settling of disputes and claims between the Chinese government and the merchant community; publications of essential trade statistics and information on a great variety of products and problems. Beyond these technical services, the Customs also served frequently in a semi-diplomatic capacity to resolve international disputes. Under Hart's leadership the Customs funds were also used for building up an interpreters' college at Peking, creating a Chinese postal service, getting China represented at international exhibitions abroad, financing the establishment of foreign legations and a great variety of other projects in which Hart played an informal if not principal role. The work of this Victorian administrator in China of course invites comparison with the careers of other British subjects who played key roles in developing modern services and maintaining equable foreign relations in other non-European states. During the latter part of Hart's service in China, Sir Evelyn Baring (from 1892 Lord Cromer) was active in Egypt: between 1883 and 1907, as British resident and consul general, he saw to the appointment of a corps of foreign advisers, reorganized the Egyptian government's finances, reformed its tax system, abolished the ancient corvee, and fostered a variety of measures for economic growth, while all the time deeply involved in problems of Egypt's foreign trade, financial obligations, and diplomacy. Hart and Cromer, as foreigners working within sovereign states whose sovereignty had been limited but not eclipsed by unequal treaties, were at one end of a broad spectrum. As colonialism reached its high point toward the end of the nineteenth century, foreign administrators came to power in many lands-not only Englishmen in India, Burma, and Malaya, Dutchmen in the Indies, and Frenchmen in Indochina, but also Japanese in Taiwan, Korea, and Manchuria, and Americans in the Philippines. Hart's type of administrative achievement was not unique. As time goes on, it will be studied in comparison with others of his time. This edition of Hart's letters to Campbell has been made possible by the foresight and initiative of the last foreign Inspector General of the Chinese Maritime Customs, Mr. L. K. Little, who has been of inestimable assistance in handling the complexities of the enterprise and has also supplied the valuable introduction which follows. It is therefore appropriate to give here some brief indication of his career. Lester Knox Little was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, on March 20, 1892, and was recruited for the Customs while a senior at Dartmouth College. After graduation in 1914, he entered upon a career of some forty years of service to the Chinese government. A brief outline will indicate the stages through which a young man might rise in this service. With the rank of assistant, Mr. Little spent two years at Peking getting acquainted with the clerical routine at the Inspectorate General while at the same time studying both spoken and written Chinese. The four years from 1916 to 1920 he spent at Shanghai handling clerical work and the assessment of duties at the big Shanghai Custom House. After each half dozen years of service he had a year's leave of absence-in 1920-1921, in 1926-1927, in 1932-1933, and in 1938-1939. In between, his terms of service, usually of two or three years' duration, ran as follows: 1921-1924 at Amoy as acting deputy commissioner in charge of the Native Customs, learning still another side of the work; 1924-1926 at Peking again as acting deputy commissioner but in charge of the Customs pension system; 1927-1929 at Tientsin as acting deputy commissioner for the port; 1929-1931 at Shanghai again as acting deputy commissioner in charge of the General Office. He was then promoted to deputy commissioner and made acting administrative commissioner at the Shanghai Custom House, a central post. In 1931-1932 at Shanghai, he served in the Inspectorate General as personal secretary to the Inspector General, Sir Frederick Maze. In 1932 Mr. Little was promoted to full commissioner and sent to Geneva in October as adviser to the Chinese delegation to the League of Nations, which was then debating the Manchurian question created by Japan's seizure of the area. After a year's leave, he resumed in 1933-1934 his post at Shanghai as personal secretary to the I.G. In 1934-1938 he was commissioner at Canton and after a year's leave resumed this post in 1939-1941. On December 8, 1941, he was put under house arrest by the Japanese invaders, and in 1942 was repatriated and served about a year in New York City in an American government post. By the time he was called back to Chungking to become Acting I.G., Mr. Little had thus had many years of experience in different aspects of the Customs work as well as several years' experience at the center of its administration. As indicated at the end of his introduction, he became the last foreigner to be appointed Inspector General in 1944, reopened the Inspectorate General offices in Shanghai in 1946, moved them to Canton in April 1949, and to Taipei in October, where he resigned as I.G. in 1950. pps. xi-xv ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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