Chinese Maritime Customs Service
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Chinese Maritime Customs Service was a Chinese governmental tax collection agency and information service from its founding in 1854 until its dissolution in 1950. Until 1912 it was named the Imperial Maritime Customs Service.
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[edit] Organization
Largely staffed by Britons, the Service was controlled by Chinese central government throughout its history. It was founded by foreign traders in 1854 to collect maritime trade taxes that were going unpaid due to the inability of Chinese officials to collect them during the Taiping Rebellion. Its responsibilities soon grew to include domestic customs administration, postal administration, harbour and waterway management, weather reporting, and anti- smuggling operations. It mapped, lit, and policed the China coast and the Yangtze. It conducted loan negotiations, currency reform, and financial and economic management. The Service published monthly Returns of Trade, a regular series of Aids to Navigation and reports on weather and medical matters. It also represented China at over twenty world fairs and exhibition, ran some educational establishments, and conducted some diplomatic activities.
[edit] Inspector-Generals
Its first Inspector-General was Horatio Nelson Lay, who was dismissed in 1863. He was replaced with Robert Hart, who served as 'IG' until his death in 1911, and who oversaw the development of the Service and its activities to its fullest form. Hart was succeeded by Sir Francis Aglen (1869-1932) and then by his own nephew, Sir Frederick Maze (1871-1959), who served from 1929-1943. Amongst the many well-known figures who worked for the Customs in China were Willard Straight, botanist Augustine Henry, linguist Thomas Francis Wade, novelist and journalists Bertram Lenox Simpson (known as Putnam Weale) and J.O.P. Bland, and historian H.B. Morse.
In 1950 the last foreign Inspector-General, American Lester Knox Little, resigned and the responsibilities of the Service were divided between what eventually became the Customs General Administration of the Peoples' Republic of China, and the Republic of China Directorate General of Customs on Taiwan. It was the only bureaucratic agency of the Chinese government to operate continuously as an integrated entity from 1842 to 1950.
[edit] Reference
- Donna Maree Brunero. Britain's Imperial Cornerstone in China: The Chinese Maritime Customs Service, 1854-1949. Routledge, 2006.
- Fairbank, John King. Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast: The Opening of the Treaty Ports, 1842-1854. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953.
- Stanley Fowler Wright. Hart and the Chinese Customs. Belfast: published by William Mullen and Son for Queen's University, Belfast, 1950.
