Dislocated to Success (26 page)

Korea and the UK were enjoying the first fruits of their new relationship; the Koreans had taken a very practical attitude and a very sensible one with regard to their assets - like the French, they looked to buy in order to learn. We weren't making much money there yet, but their proposals were practical and hard headed. The Manganese for agricultural technology deal was a fine example of that.

Late in March of 1984, I was enjoying keeping a careful eye on the initial talks with the Japanese. These were best said to be proceeding at a fairly glacial pace; the Japanese could best be described as interested, but also fairly scared of what they felt to be contamination. As they had no great excess of agricultural products, any sizeable mineral resources or great excesses of wealth, I wasn't looking for much more than formal relations and some form of Nagasaki-like deal. I got the feeling from the reports that they were looking for the same, at least until their internal political problems were dealt with.

However, it was Qing China that provided the surprise. We had been dealing with China for some time, through the East India Company initially and mainly through the various companies that the more successful captains had created since. They provided considerable amounts of tea and fairly large amounts of rice; in return, we provided silver. The Treasury in particular did not like this, and nor did our advisory panel, who were mainly originally from Hong Kong. There was also the question of formal recognition and of sorting out a proper status for our port of entry, which at the time was Canton.

We knew that some fairly senior people had been attending the virtually permanent trade talks in Phuket, although we didn't actually know how senior - but the body language studies had long shown that those doing the talking weren't making the decisions. We had also started to pick up some other sources who indicated that there were people within the administration of China who had concerns that there might actually be something to learn from the Red Headed Barbarians.

However, Qing China liked surprises, and I arrived at my desk to find a very surprising telegram. The trade negotiators had been replaced with a new set which openly included senior officials - known names at that. There was a proposal that would follow by telecopier (and the original by aircraft) that was described as more than substantial. It seems that the Chinese had decided that Phuket was successful and wanted in on the action, but at the same time wanted us out of Canton. They were offering a lease on the Island of Hainan, albeit with what looked on the surface like very stiff terms.

I was sure that this was just a diplomatic volley, but compared to what had come before it was a considerable movement by the Qing. One wag even called it a great leap forward. The rules of the game meant that it would have to be carefully considered and appropriately replied to. China would take up a considerable amount of my time over the next year or so.

One of the interesting things about the Dislocation was watching nations react to what would have been; one of the more disturbing things was about how they acted in such circumstances. The Hapsburgs had taken a very interesting position with their multi-national holdings; they were concentrating their reforms on where they held direct power - Austria proper, Bohemia, Silesia and the Adriatic Littoral. They were clearly less concerned about other areas; there were rumours that they were making some very long-term plans for their empire and that some things were potentially up for sale. Their reforms were actually working fairly well for them - because of their central position well away from the UK, the money they generated benefitted small manufacturers in their lands, not ones in Birmingham or Bradford.

However, there were other voices in the Hapsburg fold and in the Spring of 1984 one of them became rather noisy - the Magyar one. At the time Hapsburg Hungary, which also included Slovakia and those parts of Croatia not subject to the Military Frontier, was an exceptionally poor and depopulated area which was just starting to recover from 250 years of war and Ottoman occupation. The only bit that could be described as recovering was Royal Hungary, which had not been occupied by the Turks - and which also had substantial German-majority areas, including the important cities of Preßburg and Ödenburg. However, the Hungarians had a proud tradition and an even prouder nobility; their superb cavalry, alongside that of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, had carried the field many times against the Turks. Their overweening pride and vanity led them into a confrontation with the Hapsburgs in an attempt to gain an Ausgleich similar to that of the 19th century.

Now the late Kaiser was not one of those who had risen superbly to the Dislocation; he was in some ways far too distracted by the question of the Succession. However, he had co-operated well with cis-advisors and was doing better than many. There had been some reforms, there had been some investment, there had been some scientific progress - nothing major, but a steady improvement. However, he reacted to the 10 point attempted Ausgleich with all the fury of an absolute monarch. He agreed on two of the points - one of which was essentially Hungary cutting its own throat - gave partial ground on another, and said that he would look at a fourth. He then told the Hungarian nobles to leave Preßburg, and two weeks later he evicted them from the city. There were to be no further talks, His Highness had commanded, and he deployed loyal Austrian and Bohemian regiments into selected areas.

Privately, I was informed some close sources that, if it wasn’t for the prestige and the fact that the Ottomans would swoop in, the Kaiser was perfectly happy with the idea of the Hungarians going their own way. He could see long term problems if and when nationalism arose with the numerous national minorities under the Crown of St. Stephen, and had plans to make it the first of the cadet states. This was actually the first time I had heard of the long-term plan for the Hapsburg Union, and it was - interestingly - predicated on the fecundity of Maria Theresa. The Hungarians were left simmering in their own juices; there were some attempts to call for Rakcozy, and a couple of atrocities against German settlers south of Lake Balaton, but it was mainly talk. The presence of six elite regiments, three of which were armed with the new Wiener Neustadt needle gun, kept the fire-eating to be mainly talking.

May 1984 was rather a trying time in the Foreign Office: we had the Chinese lease question, which was a long-running infuriation; we had questions being raised about the Hungarian situation; there was all the preparation for the big wedding in Vienna, which was likely to be the biggest diplomatic opportunity for a number of years; and there was the problem with Swedish protectionism, which had infuriated Tebbit enough that he had asked for advice.

Then Mysore blew up in our faces. We had reasonably good relations with Mysore, although they were better with the other Kingdoms along the coast. We saw them as an important partner with considerable potential; however, we were aware that the Wodeyars were rather prone to intrigue. Part of the problem was of our own making; many of our best people in the area were cis-Indians who belonged to the various ancient and charming Syriac Christian churches. We were fine with Travancore and Coorg and the petty states of the Malabar coast, but Mysore had taken its would-have-been history rather hard.

The Maharaja - Chamaraja Wodeyar VII - had been fairly amenable to trade, and had only required reassurances about the cloth trade. However, he had significant problems with his military and part of his family were happy to plot against him. He felt he had dealt with the problem by exiling Devaraja Girachuri, the chief military commander, but he was perhaps a little too kind-hearted in dealing with his father's wife; he merely placed her in confinement.

However, his precautions had not been enough - there had been a coup. He had been found unfit to rule by "The Council of State" and his 3 year old half-brother had been found to be suitable - with a regency council that looked remarkably like the Council of State. Devaraja Girachuri had been released from exile and was heading back.

I decided, after some thought, that the best thing was to withdraw our Man in Mysore to Bombay for consultations. These little coups have a habit of turning a bit nasty, although I hoped everyone understood that the consequences of harming a British diplomat had perhaps moved back to the era of Palmerston rather than going through the UN. We would let them stew for a month or so, and then go back and get back to the business of trade; we had no intention of interfering in the internal affairs of Indian states. This turned out to work fairly well, and we managed to eventually extract the young Maharaja and settle him with a small pension and an alias in Bombay - where eventually he became a quite successful architect.

We had - in my view quite wisely - decided after a suitable amount of time to reject the Hainan lease, or at least the Hainan lease as the Chinese proposed it. When it came down to it, despite a number of potential advantages in the long-term, it was just too big and too expensive. The Treasury objected to the cost in one massive instalment of silver; the Colonial Office pointed out that it was at full stretch anyway; the Ministry of Defence made some very negative noises about the number of troops that would be needed to deal with a historically rebellious island. The best possible assumption was that it was a good deal at the wrong time; had this been offered even a couple of years later, when it had become clearer that we were moving forward, we might well have taken it.

The question was, had this carrot been dangled in front of us in order to cause us to lose face or not? It was clear from the negotiation team that this was very much an all-or-nothing offer; attempts to just discuss a supportable area around Aichow had been rebuffed, whilst exceptionally minor points about the meaning of a single character in the lease had been taken up enthusiastically. We did get the hint that this was an offer that was meant to be rejected from one or two of the negotiators, but we also had a more general feeling that it was serious. The suggestion was that it was a one-time-only, take-it-or-leave-it offer, but at the same time, despite a lot of ritual noises to the converse, we were assured by the Canton merchants that trade would continue.

The question then was, how to reject it? Dr Dong, whom I had decided was a better voice to listen to on the matter, had suggested that we draw out the process a little longer and then give a flat, terse rejection with a closing line that maybe, perhaps, better offers could be considered at a later date. The other experts disagreed, to some extent; they all agreed that that flat and terse was the way to go. The biggest debate was the question of the hook at the end and how to leave a hint that a similar deal on a smaller place might just find the acceptance of the Queen of the Red-haired Barbarians.  All the experts agreed that we should not make a counter-offer.

Part of the problem was that Canton was not that suited for modern trade without some improvements - improvements that the Chinese authorities refused to allow, which was entirely their right. They had even refused a hydrological survey, but we had that done stealthily by submarine instead. The result was that we still mainly used sailing ships to Canton, although all of ours had some modernisation and a few had engines fitted. Because of the volume of tea being transported, we also had to hire in from the VOC, and there was the odd ship of other nations used as well. As the South China Sea was full of hardy piratical types, such ships had to travel in convoy between Phuket and Canton, which tied up RN resources.

One of the more interesting considerations was the potential fate of the Yongzheng Emperor; we had no idea how much the Dislocation was affecting the Celestial Empire. We suspected that history books had made it to Peking, but the expert poker-players we were up against showed absolutely no sign of that. They hadn't even blinked when Rifkind had discussed the question of equal treaties. Given the nature of what we knew, we suspected that any assumed conspirators against the Yongzheng Emperor would probably have been dealt with in a way not for the squeamish. Therefore, we were working on the assumption that we would be dealing with the Yongzheng Emperor for some time, which was generally regarded as being a good thing. However, Dr Dong did raise the question of whether the Emperor was pushing this forward to get the best possible deal before his fate ordained by heaven and the raising to the throne of his son, who was a somewhat different kettle of fish. It was felt that if Dr Dong was right, we would soon be seeing a quick second offer, only time would tell.

Of course, that was not the only problem to beset us as the summer wound onwards. There had been an ongoing situation in Egypt; Ottoman governors of that province tended to be rather short-lived, sometimes literally, and therefore were inclined not to look at the long-term situation in that rich and ancient land, but to feather their nests quickly and to look for a suitable bolt hole. It isn’t surprising that this happens when the average term in office is just over three years, mainly because the Ottomans strongly feared governors getting the idea of breaking away and becoming independent. The Dislocation hadn’t helped with this at all - the history of what would have been revealed Mehmet Ali and his family - and to be perfectly honest I was surprised that we were even allowed to trade in Alexandria.

This governor was no different to that, but was somewhat more daring; he could read the writing on the wall better than most and planned accordingly. He quietly arranged for two children to be educated in London, then for a wife to join two other children, and there was a steady stream of money into a UK bank account. What we didn’t realise was there was a somewhat larger stream filtering in via Malta to Genoa and then to the Isle of Man. Not only had he done that, but he had been clever enough to arrange excavation of the remaining untouched tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Many of the larger items remained in Egypt, but smaller ones made their way to the UK for sale; one small batch had been intercepted, but we had no doubt that collectors had snapped up others.