Between its founding in 1854 and its collapse in 1952, the
Chinese Maritime Customs Service delivered one-third to one-half of
all revenue collected by China's central authorities. Much more
than a tax collector, the institution managed China's harbors,
erected lighthouses, and surveyed the Chinese coast. It funded and
oversaw the Translator's College, which trained Chinese diplomats
while its staff translated Chinese classics, novels, and poetry and
wrote important studies on the Chinese economy, its financial
system, its trade, its history, and its government. It organized
contributions to international exhibitions, developed its own
shadow diplomacy, pioneered China's modern postal system, and even
maintained its own armed force. After the 1911 Revolution, the
agency became deeply involved in the management of China's
international loans and domestic bond issues.
In other words, the Customs Service was pivotal to China's
post-Taiping integration into the world of modern nation-states and
twentieth-century trade and finance. If the Customs Service
introduced the modern governance of trade to China, it also made
Chinese legible to foreign audiences. Following the activities of
the Inspectors General, who were virtual autocrats within the
service and communicated regularly with senior Chinese officials
and foreign diplomats, this history tracks the Customs Service as
it transformed China and its relationship to the world. The Customs
Service often kept China together when little else did. This book
reveals the role of the agency in influencing the outcomes of the
Sino-French War, the Boxer Rebellion, and the 1911 Revolution, as
well as the rise of the Nationalists in the 1920s, and concludes
with the Customs Service purges of the early 1950s, when the
relentless logic of revolution dismantled the agency for good.
General
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