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Kerry Brown, "The Great Reversal: Britain, China and the 400-Year Contest for Power" (Yale UP, 2024)
00:37:29
An interview with Kerry Brown
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:07]
B
Hello, I'm Nicholas Gordon, host of the Asian Review of Books podcast, done in partnership with the New Books Network. In this podcast, we interview fiction and nonfiction authors working in, around and about the Asia Pacific region. In the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth I tries to send several letters to her Chinese counterpart, the Wan Li Emperor. These letters try to ask the Ming emperor to conduct trade relations with faraway England. None of the expeditions carrying these letters ever arrive. It's an inauspicious beginning to the four centuries of foreign relations between China and what eventually became Britain, covered by Kerry Brown in his latest book, the Great Britain, China and the 400 year contest for Power, from Yale University Press. Kerry's book covers incidents like the McCartney embassy, the East India Company, the Anglo Chinese wars, the Communist takeover in 1949, and the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereign in 1997. Carrie Brown is Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Lao Chinese Institute at King's College, London. He is the author of over 20 books on modern Chinese politics, history and society. Carrie, thanks once again for coming on the Asian Review of Books podcast to talk about your latest book, the Great Britain, China and the 400 year contest for power. Perhaps it's best to start right at the beginning, as it usually is. What do you see as kind of the best candidate for the quote, unquote, first official or quasi official engagement between Britain and China.
- [02:46]
C
Well, it really was an attempt by Elizabeth the First, 430 years ago, to send letters to the one, the emperor who was reigning in China at the time, although he wasn't really reigning because he'd kind of disappeared behind a great wall and didn't really deal with these officials. So the country is really being run by regions. She wrote, I think, four letters in all, three of which survive, and they were sent by ships of traders to ask for greater trade with China. They were written in, I think, a mixture of languages, Latin. One of them, I think, was actually written in Spanish or Portuguese because they didn't know what language the Chinese spoke. And none ended up being delivered because none of the ships actually got there. But that was the first real attempt at formal contact. And then after the establishment of the East India company in 1600, that was really to try and bring about more trade with this great empire, the other side of the world, like the Dutch and the Portuguese were doing. And from that point, there was relatively frequent contact, but through traders, not really through politicians or officials.
- [03:56]
B
Well, then let's get into that. I mean, so then how does the East India Company get to get its first foothold in China? How does that presence start off?
- [04:05]
C
So the East India Company was, as the name suggests, to exploit trading opportunities with what is today's India and had a monopoly on trade with basically everything kind of east of Europe. So it was a sort of strange, I mean, an incredible organization. It was a quasi state. Eventually it had its own militia, its own administration. It kind of really created the modern entity which we called India. China was a sort of sideshow to that because it was more remote and it was really more the show for the Portuguese and the Dutch. But from about 1614, I suppose, until 1622, the British had a small post in Japan in Hirado, which is, I think, in the eastern part of the island. And from there they tried to do business with China through the East India Trade Company. And they succeeded up to a point. They did a little bit of trade with what was today's Fujian, but it was very, very modest. And that post was closed in the 1620s. It was really only later in the 17th century that there was more frequent trading. And the actual first formal establishment of a trading post in China proper was, I think, in Xiamen, as it was called then Amoy, where the East India Company had a small post sporadically. Then in the 18th century, things really expanded and it became a bit more permanent.
- [05:37]
B
So let's jump ahead a bit. I think one of the famous instances or instances, but kind of famous events in UK Chinese relations is McCartney's embassy to Beijing, which is kind of a symbol now of, well, symbol of many things, but, you know, China's refusal to modernize, its inability to, you know, enter the modern international system. There's this whole fight about, about, about, you know, bowing and kowtowing, which gets worse in a later embassy. But to stick on this point about McCartney, what do we know about McCartney, what was his background and what do we know about what he thought about China and his mission at the time?
- [06:26]
C
So the attempt to have formal contact with China, an official level was really caused by the fact that there was this big increase in tea trade, basically. I mean, the import of treat tea from China to Britain started quite modestly in the 1650s, and then by about 1780, was a huge amount of revenue in Britain. And, you know, in the 1780s, the Pitt government decided they would regulate it because there was so much smuggling. They reduced the overall import tax to about 12%. And this really made it a kind of huge trade in Britain because it was all done above board then. So basically they thought we better have formal relations with this country. We've got so much trade with. It's all through traders. And the government didn't really trust traders then. It doesn't trust them now, but it certainly didn't trust them then. And so there was a decision by one of the kind of key ministers under Pitt to try and, you know, the guy called Dundas, to. He was a Scottish guy who really kind of took ownership over all this business, decided to try and send a formal embassy, a government embassy to China, the first one in about 1787, did not work because the man who was chosen, Cartwright, basically, was very ill and died in kind of in the process of trying to go to China. And so a few Years later, Lord McCartney, George McCartney was chosen. He was a very experienced diplomat. He'd been a diplomat at the court of Catherine the Great in Russia. He had been involved in all sorts of diplomacy. He'd had an actual kind of duel with someone who'd offended him, an officer who'd offended him in the past, and that had wounded him, but he'd survived. He was regarded by everyone as very, very accomplished and sort of the right kind of person to represent Britain. And that was one of the main aims of this embassy as they built up towards it in 1792, 1793, to give the Chinese, a better image of British people, because until then, their main interaction had been with business people, traders who were a bit rough and ready, sailors who went to what is today's Guangzhou in Guangdong province, then called Canton, and basically kind of caused enormous problems by getting off their ships and sometimes being quite violent and sometimes being basically being drunk and disorderly. McCartney really was someone who tried to. And consciously tried to present a better image of British. And so his embassy, which was about four ships, one of which was carrying experts, artists like William Alexander, scientists, guy called, I think Dal was his name, you know, kind of people who were really going to create more knowledge and get more knowledge of China. This was a completely different endeavor to any that had been established before. And I think that's why even now this embassy has such an iconic status. Was the real kind of first attempt a significant political relationship between the European country and China on a more sort of balanced term, rather than, you know, kind of Europeans like Italian missionaries and others going to China and living there and trying to convert Chinese. This was really an attempt to create a balanced, reciprocal relationship. And of course, that was unfolded over the next century and a half in ways which no one foresaw and which were sometimes extremely difficult.
- [09:51]
B
But also, you know, I mean, but you also look at some of what McCartney wrote on his way back from China, you know, after the embassy has. Has failed. I mean, what do you kind of learn from what. What McCartney was writing about, like how he felt about his. His failure to really achieve his aims.
- [10:11]
C
I suppose what we learned from that encounter, and which is still true today, is that for any thinking person from Britain, from Europe, or for anywhere basically going to China, the impact is complex. It's not a kind of unilineal or unilateral kind of response of either liking the place, disliking the place. I mean, nothing as crude as that. I think McCartney showed a good mixture of admiring this very different culture, admiring its antiquity, admiring the way in which the governance of the country was undertaken with its official kind of literati class, as they were called, but also being bemused by how this great empire had ended up becoming technologically at least, quite backward, and how it seemed to be stuck in the past. And so, you know, his kind of account, which has partially been published, was a really, really interesting mixture of being really in wonderment at this extraordinary culture and also being sometimes quite appalled by it. He famously didn't have an easy time there. He didn't have an easy time in kind of getting to terms with the place. I mean, we would say that in terms of the politics and the trade, this was not a successful embassy. But in terms of, you know, creating a whole new amount of knowledge about China, it was seminal. It was absolutely seminal. And that's why it still has relevance till today.
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B
You know, now as we kind of move through, through the 19th century. Obviously, a lot happens in, in UK Chinese relations during the 19th century, including, including most famously the, the Opium wars or the, the Anglo Chinese wars as they're, as they're called in your book. But, but to kind of apply some very 20th century or 21st century terms on the discuss, it seems like there are hawks and there are doves over what the UK should do about China. I mean, so what was the political divide in British politics about how to deal with this, with this massive, with this massive but kind of declining empire?
- [12:35]
C
I think the response initially was quite idealistic and it's not surprising that the more British people came to know about China, the more complicated their responses became. In the 18th century, there was this famous period of shinoiseri, of kind of designs from China and some knowledge of China and writers like Samuel Johnson, the compiler of the great dictionary, and figures like, you know, kind of, you know, sort of really well known authors. Even Jane Austen, I think her brother was to serve in the Chinese, you know, kind of service as a naval officer for Britain. You know, there were all sorts of contacts, but it was very distant and remote. This was a mysterious place. But I think the Macartney mission and thereafter, I mean, there were people who really lived in China, learned about China and their responses were inevitably quite complicated. And so I think from this time when there was real, direct lived experience of China, things became more complicated. It was always a complicated response. And that's why you've got this kind of disconnect between those who knew about the place and probably had a more pragmatic understanding of it, because they had direct experience, they had lived experience. Some of them even knew the language and, you know, kind of lived there. And then you had other figures who were, you know, they just knew about. They knew of China and they knew of China in the UK and had strong feelings, sometimes very idealistic, sometimes very antagonistic. And it's weird that that still exists today. We still have, I think, quite a divided view of China. There are still kind of divisions between those in Britain who really feel sort of China is, you know, kind of a very great culture, very amazing place and almost above criticism. And those who feel that it's absolutely the antipathy you know, the absolute opposite of British values and British culture. And, you know, you've got that division. But at the beginning, it was pretty dramatic. I mean, there were kind of huge, huge differences in British society. And certainly, Obviously in the 19th century, the engagement with China after the Anglo Chinese wars, what are called the Opium wars in China from the 1840s onwards, was sometimes very bellicose and extremely antagonistic. Really regarded China as a place that Britain had to deal with. So, I mean, kind of quite strong, muscular responses at the period when Britain was the most powerful European actor in China and had the most trade and the most clout there.
- [15:21]
B
I want to. I want to make a very brief aside to ask about Robert Fortune, who you say in your book is responsible for one of the greatest IP thefts in human history. What does he actually do?
- [15:36]
C
Robert Fortune was a really interesting character. I mean, he was Scottish. Indeed, many of the influential people in the China British relationship are Scottish or Northern Irish. It's an interesting thing. George McCartney was actually born in. In Ireland proper. So Fortune had been a botanist, was sent to China in the 1840s and wrote about early Hong Kong and then was really kind of focusing on this issue of tea, you know, and how. How one could kind of really, you know, sort of release the Chinese monopoly on growing this wonderful, wonderful drink that had become almost an addiction in Britain. So what happened in the 1850s was he traveled around China. He left some very interesting accounts, remarkably presenting himself as a Chinese person. I mean, although he didn't, as far as I understand, although he didn't, you know, kind of speak any Chinese, he passed himself off as a sort of an ethnic minority and traveled around in, you know, kind of this remarkable clothing. And he was really responsible for managing to get tea plants grown in southern and southeastern China. In some means, he got them to the Darjeeling and other areas of India, managed to get them grown. And that is why today we have tea from India. We don't have it from China. Mostly, if you're British, it was an enormous act of intellectual property theft because the Chinese didn't know it was happening. But as a result of this, increasingly from the 19th century onwards, the main tea growing areas were not in China, they were in India. And that really changed the whole kind of dimensions of the relationship and the dynamics of the relationship. And so Robert Fortune is a pretty influential figure and one that was responsible for this, you know, kind of epoch, kind of, you know, changing action. Quite extraordinary.
- [17:46]
B
So now we move into, into the 20th century, and you note that the tide starts to turn against the British in the interwar period, kind of after the First World War, but before the Second World War, you know, why is it and how is it that Britain's imperial privileges in China start to get eroded during this time period?
- [18:13]
C
I think Britain's role changed for some reasons which nothing to do with China. I mean, Britain's role in the world definitely changed from the beginning of the 20th century. I mean, Germany became more significant military and economic power and that tragically ended in the First World War conflict in China. Japan and Russia became bigger players. Japan increasingly after the Russian Japanese War of 1905 and the Chinese Japanese War of 1895. So you kind of started to have its own colonies in China. And that grew in the 20th century too, as we know, resulted in the Second World War, but also because Britain's economic role changed very radically with the rise of the United States. And the United States was always a player in China from the beginning of the 19th century onwards, but became a much bigger player and wasn't tainted by anything to do with the opium trade. I mean, American traders were never involved in opium trading. It was was predominantly British. And so they had a kind of different image in China and were able to do things even though they were more isolationist, at least at the beginning of the 20th century. And so you get this initially quite slow change in the beginning of the 20th century with Britain becoming less of a player. And then that really dramatically changed as you go further into the 20s and 30s. Britain was still a significant investor in China, still a significant player in China. But a lot of the in inverted commas privileges that it had under the so called unequal treaties from the Anglo Chinese wars were really eroded from the 1930s and completely got rid of by the 1940s inevitably. And so it didn't have extra territoriality where British people could not be tried in Chinese courts, they had to be tried in British courts. It didn't have special privileges over treaty ports. It lost lots of its trading privileges. This is a kind of slow, what some people, slow retreat. It wasn't however, just in China. This was a global phenomenon of Britain's retreat from empire. Happened in many, many places. And in China. The odd thing is that China was not formally part of the British Empire. It was what some people call informal empire. There were complicated reasons for that. Britain didn't want the responsibility of having to run China. It knew that this would be extremely expensive. It was not happy with the experience of India being such a huge draw on fiscal Revenue. And so it really avoided any kind of big commitment in China. But it certainly became less of a player after the end of the 19th century until as we see it, by the 1950s, it was a very moderate player even though, if it, even though it still had representation in China in a way that America during the Cold War didn't. So this was a slow retreat from rather than a dramatic exit, but it was a retreat all the same.
- [21:10]
B
Well, that's a, that's a perfect segue to my next question, which is that Britain is one of the first countries to recognize the prc. You know, did that get Britain any tangible benefits? And also, I guess why was it one of the first to recognize the People's Republic of China?
- [21:27]
C
Well, there's a two word answer to why Britain recognized the People's Republic of China and that was Hong Kong. I mean, that was a very, very kind of tangible link between the two. As you, you know, you probably know had Roosevelt remained president and lived after the end of the Second World War, Britain would probably not have maintained its interests in Hong Kong. He was resolutely against the empire, you know, continuing, felt the British Empire was something that could be consigned to history. But his successor had a different view and believed that it was okay for Britain to maintain its interests. And so more by accent design. Despite the Japanese occupation of the Hong Kong during the Second World War, Britain had a reversion to its sovereignty in the 1940s and continued until 1977. So the People's Republic of China, the new regime, like most British officials and I looked at the records of this, they were a bit bemused by this strange new force that no one expected to come to power. Didn't really know whether they just were sort of slaves of the Soviet Union or very autonomous. Thought of them as being more kind of agrarian revolutionaries rather than the kind of proletariat based revolutionaries that had existed in Russia, at least in theory. But they felt we've got to have a relationship with this place. And so I think it was the 5th or 6th January 1950. They recognized the PRC first Europeans by a matter of days, I think to do it. There were other Europeans that were a bit later and certainly America was not happy at that time, but Hong Kong was the excuse. So Berlin is kind of unique in having representation in China all the way through the PRC period. In the early period, in the early 1950s, in fact, some people who served in that legation, it wasn't an embassy formula, it was a legation In Beijing, still alive. Douglas Hurd, who's in his 90s, he was a government minister, he served in Beijing as a diplomat from, I think, 1952-54, and has spoken about that in recent years. What he said was it was like just waiting for things to happen. And nothing ever happened because what China wanted from Britain in those years was non recognition of Taiwan. And that was something Britain wasn't formally willing to do while the Americans were still allied to the Republic of China on Taiwan. But also kind of other things about the role in Hong Kong and what China's role was. There was always a fear that China would take it back by force. That didn't happen. But it was always a very contentious issue and was only cleared up decades later in the 80s and 90s with the negotiations over Hong Kong by Margaret Thatcher at that time. So Hong Kong was the reason we had so much to do as British with China, for good or bad. It meant that we had a content, constant link and that makes us quite distinctive, particularly compared to the United States, which of course only really had formal contact from 1972 and President Nixon's seminal visit.
- [24:31]
B
I mean, a very. Just a very quick question on this. I mean, how much does the US bound or not bound? I guess how much does the US bind what Britain can do in terms of its relationship with China? Like, does the US get involved and say, you can do this, you can't do this, or is it generally just kind of not get involved at all and just ignore Britain?
- [24:55]
C
Well, in the. In the early period, in the early 1950s, Britain had some autonomy. As I said, Britain was not supported by the United States, and recognizing the PRC and the Korean War complicated things. Britain fought in that, obviously as part of the UN forces with the United States against China. It had an embargo, but it still had delegations coming from China, it still had links with China. And indeed, and indeed, the last British enterprise to close in China was in 1959, before things restarted a couple of decades later. Britain always had links. It always had delegations going at a time when there were very few Americans going, if any at all. It was pretty much illegal for an American to go to China because of these embargoes, but they were British delegations, and I cover that in the book. Some of them were by philosophers like AJ Air, the artist Sydney Spencer, I mean, writers, journalist James Cameron. I mean, there were lots of delegations of people going who got some sense of what was happening in China. The former British Prime Minister Clement Attlee went in the early 50s and met Mao, Zedong and Joe and Lai and people like that. British politicians were going. And indeed, there were ministerial visits which showed some level of formal recognition. But it wasn't a particularly expansive relationship, largely because at that time China was pretty enclosed. So America kind of didn't have anything like that relationship. And there was some autonomy until really the 1970s and 80s when America became more dominant. And I suppose today you could say that there is much less scope for British to have autonomous relations with China because its links with the United States and security terms are so important. It's a constant attempt to have some kind of autonomy, but it's not really that expansive. It's unlikely that Britain would be able to really go against American interests in dealing with China. You know, it would be a big, big loss of political capital because of the importance of our relationship with Washington.
- [27:09]
B
You know, one other thing that kind of. That kind of struck me in our. In reading about this period was what happens to all the British companies like Jardines that were left behind in China after the Communist takeover. You talk about how there's a sign put up that says, like, you know, I can't remember. The first part of it was like, you know, something. Something welcome takeover, as the Chinese start talking about taking over these offices and factories. But kind of. But kind of what happens to the. To the British business community in China after. After the prc?
- [27:40]
C
Well, Jardine is a hugely important part of the British Chinese relationship, as is HSBC and as is Swire. So their archives were very central to being able to write this history. And I mean, they're quite remarkable from the early 19th century really, Till. Till today. And Jardine's departure from China, which was temporary because they went back there from the late 70s, early 80s, made a great comeback, is quite a poignant story because they had representation in China. They had factories producing various different things. And I managed to get sight of the negotiations between the Jardine officials or Jardine representatives in Shanghai, particularly with the new regime's officials. And it wasn't easy. It was a very, very different and difficult kind of atmosphere. By about 1955, 56, Jardine mostly had got whatever assets they could out of China. The standard issue was that China would not agree to people leaving the country. They were literally kept as hostage in a way, until they had sorted out a deal where factories and assets were basically kind of given over to the Chinese and then some schedule of compensation was agreed. I mean, Jardine is a really interesting case because it was associated with the opium trade, and there's plenty of evidence for that, and there's been books written about it. And yet they managed to rebrand themselves in all sorts of business areas. They built railways, they were involved in manufacturing, they were involved in property. I mean, all sorts of different things. And today, of course, are, you know, really, really quite big in China. So it's a kind of interesting thing about this massive, massive issue in the past of the being them being involved in business, which you would not say was popular in China, which was guarded as a terrible, terrible tragedy. And yet today they are still relatively active in China doing working there in Hong Kong. An extraordinary comeback. So there are definitely possibilities of second acts in China. But in 1957-58, Jardine were not present in the country after a century there until a couple of decades later when they came back.
- [29:58]
B
You know, I think. So last question, and we'll jump right to the present day with this. You know, Britain's now a much smaller economy than China. I believe it's kind of number seven, whereas China's number two. And that's not taking into account, you know, parody. It's also got a lot less power on the global stage, I think. And so how is that reversal, to quote the word you use in your title, how has that reversal changed the UK China relationship in the past, let's say, quarter century between the return of Hong Kong in 97 to today?
- [30:38]
C
Well, it's been a very, very dramatic and quite rapid reversal. Britain's economy was larger than China's till 2005, and now China's is significantly larger, something like five or six times larger. So that's one massive, massive difference. Militarily, technologically, in all sorts of areas, China is now really either at parity with Britain or, you know, in many measures beyond it. And so I think for British mentality, the problem is that there's this sense of quite a long history, maybe not that explicitly known, but kind of recognition of the importance of China to Britain and how we had a relationship largely where we were more dominant. But the reality today is that we, of course, are, you know, in a very different situation. I think that comes across in the way that politicians and others sometimes talk about China in Britain, where they still have this lingering sense that it's we who are in the kind of more dominant position. And the reality is not that case. I mean, China is now very different power even to the one it was, as you said, in 1997, when the retrocession of Hong Kong to China happened. So I Think mindsets in Britain have got to change. We've got to think in a different way. I think also there is a knowledge disparity in much of the history of British relations with China. Actually it was British people going to China, British people learning about China, more than the other way around. That's changed now. There are now something like 200,000 Chinese students in Britain. It's an extraordinary profusion of knowledge about Britain in, in China, in ways in which Britain isn't producing that amount of knowledge. I mean, in terms of China graduates, graduates in Chinese studies from British universities, it's actually declined in recent years. It's about 250 a year and it was 300 a year a few years ago. That's one measure by which we can say that Britain's not really kept up its knowledge resources with China. And I hope that this understanding of history helps a bit in making clear that China matters to British people. It's got a long history, it's not unfamiliar. Links go back a long, long time. And I think that we need to have a better narrative for that, a better understanding of that. And that's really what this book is trying to do.
- [33:03]
B
So I think that's a great place to end. Our conversation with Carrie Brown, author of the Great Britain, China and the 400 year contest for Power. Kerry, very quickly, where can people find your work? Not just this book, but all of your work. And what's next for you? What do you think the next project might be?
- [33:22]
C
Well, I have a website, kerry-brown.co.uk that has all of my books and various things where they're available on it. The next book actually comes out with Penguin Random House in November on Taiwan. Totally different kind of book about the importance of Taiwan. And in the future. I'm currently working on a short study of Mahong and at some point next year I will be doing something on Wang Huning, the great ideologue of contemporary China. So hope to keep busy and really appreciate your help and others in talking about these books. That's really, really appreciated and I'm really grateful for it.
- [34:02]
B
You can follow me, Nicholas Gordon on Twitter Nick R I Gordon. That's N I C K R I G o R D Wen. You can go to asianreviewbooks.com to find other reviews, essays, interviews and excerpts. Follow them on Twitter BookReviews Asia. That's reviews, plural. And you can find me more often at newbooks network@newbooksnetwork.com we're on all of your favorite podcast apps, Apple Podcasts Spotify rate us, recommend us, share us with your friends to support us interviewing those running in around and about Asia. Next week, join us interview with From Poshes to Pokemon by Maria Syed. But before then, Carrie, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
- [34:34]
C
Thank you.