The future of British Weihaiwei: A look at Foreign Office, Consulate and Legation Files, China, section II: The End of Empire, 1896-1911

AM has recently published the second section of our resource Foreign Office, Consulate and Legation Files, China. Spanning the tumultuous period of 1896 to 1911, it consists of the FO 228 series of diplomatic correspondence from The National Archives, London. 

Discover the material in section II as it documents China's relations with Britain to the beginning of the Xinhai Revolution that ended two-thousand years of imperial rule.

The first years of the twentieth century saw the continued expansion of the world’s industrial powers into China, extracting economic and territorial privileges from an increasingly beleaguered Qing government. The latter generally took the form of concessions: areas of land, most often parts of port cities

But in 1905, at the end of the Russo-Japanese War, power shifts in the region prompted discussion among the British authorities. These are documented in the file FO 228/2621 (1905-7) – about the future of their concession of Weihaiwei, on the Bohai Sea near Korea, which Britain had held since 1898. The lease stipulated that Britain would control Weihaiwei as long as Russia maintained its 25-year concession of Port Arthur (Dalian), at the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula opposite. However, the Japanese expulsion of Russia from Port Arthur in January 1905 posed the question of what this meant both for the legitimacy of Britain’s position in Weihaiwei and whether it was even now necessary or desirable, given the friendliness of Anglo-Japanese relations at the time. By March the headmaster of Weihaiwei School was writing anxiously to the resident commissioner, James Stewart Lockhart, to ask if it was worth his while employing an assistant master from Britain on a five-year contract given the uncertainty surrounding the territory. To which Stewart Lockhart replied that he had no idea what London’s plans were.

Only in July did Lord Lansdowne, the foreign secretary, inform the British minister in Beijing, Sir Ernest Satow, that in his government’s view Britain could successfully argue that the Russians had not vacated Port Arthur under the terms of the lease. So their supplanting by Japan did not affect Weihaiwei for its remaining 18-year run. However, Lansdowne added, British businessmen with interests in the town were agitating for an extension to 99 years, to best ensure the continued value of their investments and further their ambitions for Weihaiwei to bloom into a northern Hong Kong.

To further complicate matters, what would Japan want from Port Arthur? Would they be content with the remainder of Russia’s lease? Or would they insist on 99 years, which also matched what Germany had secured in Kiaochow (Jiaozhou) nearby? To address local concerns that the dearth of Royal Navy ships using Weihaiwei signalled that the end was near, Stewart Lockhart sought permission from London to publicly deny local gossip that a handover was indeed planned.

In the event, rumours of an imminent British leave-taking proved unfounded. Weihaiwei was, however, to become the first foreign concession in China to be handed back voluntarily. Germany’s concessions disappeared with the rest of its colonial empire during the First World War. And by 1930 any strategic justification for Britain’s presence in Weihaiwei had gone so it was returned to what was now the Republic of China. Only in the aftermath of the Second World War and Japanese occupation would the rest of the foreign concessions in China be consigned to history.

For more information about Foreign Office, Consulate and Legation Files, China: 1830-1939 section II, The End of Empire, 1896-1911, including pricing, please request a demo.

The document discussed in this article is FO228/261, Volume 391, which is available open-access for 30 days.