Outposts: Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire by Simon Winchester

Author:Simon Winchester
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Europe, Special Interest, Travel, Essays & Travelogues, General, Great Britain, History
ISBN: 9781417629183
Publisher: Tandem Library
Published: 2004-05-31T23:00:00+00:00

But it was not enough. Hong Kong Island soon became wretchedly overcrowded, and the paranoia of Empire—the feeling that a piece of British territory was never big enough, or secure enough, and that there was always a mountain or an isthmus or a harbour from which it could be attacked by the barbarian hordes—soon led to demands for its expansion. The Chinese Emperor concurred, though from a position of great military weakness. Not one he was prepared to display to his subjects, though: he ended his address to them with the characteristically Imperial warning—‘Let every one tremble and obey! An Important Special Notice!’

The agreement that was signed in Peking, in quadruplicate, in both Mandarin and English, on ‘the twentyfirst day of the fourth moon of the twentyfourth year of Kuang Hsu’ (or, more prosaically, 9th June 1898) was designed for the short-term gain of the colony. But unknown to all concerned the agreement held the seeds of the colony’s ultimate destruction. It was called simply ‘the Convention of Peking, 1898’ it allowed Britain to lease an extra 350 square miles of Chinese territory—which the British insisted on calling the New Territories, even when they were quite old—and it can be regarded as one of the most significant and underrated documents in British Imperial history.

It was signed on the one side by two officials of the Tsungli Yamen—which is what the Chinese then called their Foreign Office—and on the other by the great Imperialist figure of the British Minister in Peking, Sir Claude MacDonald, who was known as ‘Gunboat’ MacDonald and was described by The Times correspondent as ‘the type of military officer rolled out a mile at a time and lopped off in six-foot lengths’. (His colleague in Peking at the time was another celebrated personage, Mr H. Bax-Ironside, whom everyone knew as Iron Backside.)

But the land was not Britain’s to keep. The Convention of Peking was only a lease, ninety-nine years long. It had come into force on 1st July 1898. It was due to expire at midnight on 30th June 1997. The British may have liked to regard the extra real estate as a new possession, an integral part of the Empire on which the sun would never set; some academics said that the phrase ‘ninety-nine years’ was a cunning Chinese device that meant ‘for ever and ever’ without actually saying so. The Colonial Office wrote papers insisting that Hong Kong had been expanded in just the same way as any other colony might have been. Territory had merely been added, for British convenience. The New Territories, a memorandum said, were ‘part and parcel of Her Majesty’s Colony of Hong Kong, in like manner and for all intents and purposes as if they had originally formed part of said Colony’. They may have liked to regard the land as such—but if they did so, they engaged in the most wishful thinking, and were to get their eventual come-uppance. The Chinese are a patient people, and they have long memories.

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