“When they ventured into the China trade, the English inevitably presented themselves before the attention of the Chinese with the double disadvantage of being foreigners and merchants.”
This observation is by Peter Auber, author of Analysis of the Constitution of the East-India Company (1826).
Auber, Company Secretary from 1829 to 1836, is mistaken only, perhaps, by the subtlety of the terms used. Rather than being a “disadvantage” the status of “foreigners,” let alone “merchants,” was a veritable anathema in China.
This belief was dictated by the Confucian way of seeing the world, ordering occupations according to their usefulness to the state and society. Because of the greed and potential instability it generated, commerce and those who practiced it, were one of the least regarded, particularly that which came from the sea, the dangerous domain of pirates and smugglers.
After at first being fascinated by Chinese civilization, the posture of Westerners became progressively harder, until arrogance was the most common attitude among those who, starting in the 18th century, began to arrive in the Middle Kingdom. They acted as if everything and everyone had a price.
In Portuguese, we have detailed descriptions of the transactions at the Canton fairs written by the Arabian friar José de Jesus Maria, confirming Confucius’ suspicions.
The desire for easy profits inclined the malicious to engage in trade, the reason for all relationships. “Since human nature always tends toward evil, it is more and more corrupted with the deadly poison of guilt, unworthy of spiritual and temporal happiness; and what can be expected, if not a total perversion of those men?” questioned the friar.
Canton was the most sought after port by the “foreign devils”, who were concentrated in the suburbs of the city, by the river, where they stayed during the fair season, from September to March. They were confined to the 13 fiefdoms of the exclusive Chinese merchants’ union, Hong, the only ones allowed to trade with Westerners. There the tea was weighed, packed and exported to Europe, along with the silks.
On the other side of the scale was an immense China that already had everything it needed, and dispensed with most of the products offered to it. As António Bocarro observed, as far back as the 17th century, “if we had only the free trade of China, it would suffice without any other, because what there is in the Orient will do for all the world.”
But there were always exceptions. One was opium. No amount of the drug that landed on the Chinese coast was enough to satiate the appetite there, which soon degenerated into a destructive vice.
In China, it is believed that the drug was part of an elaborate plan to break the morale of the country, instigating the social problems at the root of the great humiliation consummated in the two wars that bore the name of the cursed substance. Deliberate or not, it was the consequence. It is among these shards that we still live.
From the fog of history, however, a somewhat forgotten figure emerges, whose importance the current circumstances help to highlight, because it challenges the usual dualistic view of the world and shows that nothing is black and white, nor that good and bad are divided with unquestionable accuracy to one side or the other.
Of all the “foreign devils” that the opening of the ports attracted to China, Robert Hart was probably the only one remembered with friendship in the country, where he is said to have been the most influential Westerner living in the Qing Dynasty.
It was in 1854, at the age of 19, that the Irishman landed in Hong Kong. His language skills earned him a post in the British consular service of the colony, and he was transferred to Ningbo and then to the city of Canton. He soon became immersed in the Chinese language and culture, which he would master.
In the aftermath of the First Opium War, China was struggling with the Taiping rebellion (1850-1864), the bloodiest conflict of the 19th century. Having caused nearly 30 million deaths, it was a serious existential threat to the Empire – incredibly tumultuous times that the weakened Qing court tried, at great cost, to navigate.
The forced opening of the ports and the granting of trade privileges to the Western powers meant that the leading positions in the Customs Service were almost all held by foreigners. Hart was among them, but he strove not to be just another one.
Less than a decade after arriving in China, he was chosen for one of the most powerful positions in the country: Inspector General of Imperial Maritime Customs.
The assignment was taken literally. In a memo distributed to workers shortly after his appointment, Hart warns that “it should be distinctly and permanently reminded that the Customs Inspectorate is a Chinese service, not a foreign one. As such, it is the duty of each member to behave toward the Chinese people and the Chinese rulers in such a way as to avoid offense and ill-feeling.”
This was in sharp contrast to Hart’s predecessor in office (and successor), and most foreigners in China.
According to Edward B. Drew, Hart’s contemporary Commissioner of Customs, bribing or harassing agents was quite common among foreign merchants. While the agents were getting rich, the country was getting poorer without receiving the duties it was owed. “Demoralization was widespread and the government seemed unable to rectify the situation.”
During Hart’s 48 years as Inspector General, Chinese Customs became an efficient revenue-collecting machine that tripled in size, accounting for 80 percent of the money coming into government coffers, essential for the country’s modernization. Hart was thus able to lay the foundations for the postal service, the railroad, the meteorological system, and navigation, with the construction of a network of more than 60 lighthouses. It was not by chance that in Beijing he was referred to as “our Hart.”
Because of his duties, he also had to deal with the Portuguese and with Macau, which he even tried to acquire for the Qing Dynasty, due to the fear that the establishment would fall into the hands of other covetous countries, given the dilapidated situation in which the Lisbon government found itself.
Throughout all of this, Hart wrote… a lot. Everything he experienced was recorded in the more than 70 volumes of an exhaustive diary, in English and Chinese.
It is through these intimate records that we get to know the tormented (and failed) repression of his abundant sexual desire (he had concubines and illegitimate children), but also how he viewed the history he was conscious of living through.
In a passage from 1867, Hart writes that “the English are precisely the kind of people to whom the Chinese must look with the greatest aversion, the strongest hatred, and the most vindictive feelings. The English have dragged the Chinese into two wars, burned their palace, and we are the ones who speak the loudest about humanity.”
As his diaries show, Hart was human, too human. One of his great virtues, however, was that he knew how to recognize that the interests of one country can be the interests of another, and that a world more open, free, and entertained with trade does not tend to unleash conflict. May Confucius forgive us.